Shades of the 605 West Main development debacle in Carrboro have come to Chapel Hill, but, of course, on a much grander scale. Not quite two years ago, the Chapel Hill governance board approved a mixed use village type project called East 54. Now that the “cruise ship” buildings have docked, rising six stories from the ground, in their permanent berths alongside NC 54, those same enthusiastic approvers of East 54 are hedging their bets.

What Is East 54?
East 54 is a new “luxury urban village” built on NC 54 at the old site of the University Inn. Developer dream team pal East West Partners (Mr. Roger Perry, Meadowmont developer and UNC trustee) is the lead group building another Chapel Hill mixed use village having 113,000 square feet of class-A office space and 60,000 square feet of retail space. These spaces support about 400,000 square feet of residences. At an average of 1300 square feet per residence, that’s over 300 residences.

Pulpsters can take a virtual tour of the coming 580,000 square foot luxury urban village that’s about half the area size of the Durham SouthPoint mall.

It’s SO Big!
That anyone who approved the project is now surprised by what’s being built is a condemnation of the town of Chapel Hill’s land development approval process. The sketches glibly tossed around at the East 54 approval are not binding on what the developer builds. What you see at a development approval public hearing has nothing to do with what you will get. (The Carrboro Board of Alderman found that out when 605 West Main was built and roundly condemned for its appearance.)

Developers don’t have to get approval for the style, elevations aesthetics, or facades of what they build.

According to Town Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt, a dense devotee, ”It's challenging for me when I see these buildings going up because they are so large. Just seeing something of that size go up, I think it's emotionally evocative because the change on its face seems so great. … My emotional response is, 'Wow, that's so big.'.”

Mr. Kleinschmidt offers no explanation why he or anyone else didn't know how “big”, big really was.

Fellow Town Councilor and dense devotee Laurin Easthom said people “did not realize how big and how dense and how much that has changed that particular area. I'm hearing that a lot. When I drive down that road, it's just a total change visually to the skyline.”

Ms. Easthom offers no explanation why she or anyone else should be surprised.

Faith In The Catechism of Density
Dense is as dense does. Chapel Hill Mayor Foy wants people to know, the town governance board really knows what it’s doing.

”Is that going to line 54 in and out of Chapel Hill? Are those the kinds of projects that are going to line Martin Luther King from downtown to 40? Is that what our future looks like? No, it doesn't have buildings lining all of those corridors. It's much more focused than that. I think people need the assurance that we've thought this through. The council has not just plopped down density just in a random fashion. [East 54] has been approved because it was within walking distance of a proposed transit stop.”

Mr. Perry, who is being rewarded handsomely by the approval of East 54 by Mr. Foy and company, believes that a dense future is the only option. ”I think the vast majority of the people in this community recognize that this is the kind of development that needs to occur on transit corridors. … This town's drawn an urban growth boundary around itself. The only way it's going to be able to survive as an economically sustainable community is with dense development.”

Mr. Perry doesn’t explain how Chapelboro will ever be able to get beyond being a factory town beholding to UNC. As such, Chapelboro can never be economically sustainable. UNC draws its economic marrow from the bones of 99 other counties in the state. By definition, can't be a sustainable economy except by the legislative fiat of state taxation.

Faith In The Catechism of Light Rail
Although there is no funded light rail transit system for the Chapelboro area and there's no rail at all along NC 54 in Chapelboro, the town of Chapel Hill has faith that it's coming. According to Town Councilor Bill Strom said projects like East 54 can pave the way for a “more robust” mass transit system. ”It's a change in the development pattern, but the guiding principle there is that it is at a regional rail stop. In order to get federal and state support for these projects, you have to have density organized in a way that promotes ridership.”

Mr. Perry's town governance pals are working diligently towards getting a commuter rail station built behind East 54 at taxpayer expense.

Infiltration Of The Heretics
But hereteical winds of change are blowing. For the first time in a very long time, not all members of the Chapel Hill governance board are true believers in dense growth for growth sakes. Town Councilor Matt Czajkowski, who wasn’t a board member at the time of the East 54 approval said “Virtually all the reaction I get to East 54 is negative. Clearly, that tract was going to get redeveloped, but developed with these monoliths right along the highway? That block the view of the hill, of Chapel Hill? That cast a shadow on the road? Is that what we want?”

Newest Town Councilor Jim Merritt, appointed to replace the late Bill Thorpe in October, and thus, not a board member at the time of the East 54 approval, has also heard complaints. He attended a forum last weekend for Glen Lennox residents, another community under dense growth assault. In his words, ”I'm not sure that was the appropriate place to put something that large. It's quite a bit of development there, just coming into the town of Chapel Hill.”

(See Chapel Hill News East 54 Story.)

In the continuing saga which is the battle royale between the right for people to be free from abusive public behavior of others versus the right for beggars to ask for free money from others (an ability most highly developed in local politicians), the town of Chapel Hill is coming firmly down in the corner of panhandlers. Despite the efforts of that loveable, but wayward thinker, Councilor Matt Czjakowski, the right to beg for money is too precious to the social well-being of Chapel Hill society to restrict any further.

Mr. Czjakowski made the silly mistake of believing that he could look to town governments like Burlington, Vermont, i.e., towns with socialist leaning public policy, to find panhandling control laws that would meet the acceptable rigors required by Orange Progressives. He was wrong.

On 14 January 2009, Mr. Czjakowski proposed adopting the Burlington ordinances which would have increased panhandling free zones around bus stops from six feet to fifteen feet and increased fines from a maximum of $50 to a maximum of $500. In his words, ““The reason that I petitioned for this, obviously, is that there is sentiment within Chapel Hill and amongst other people who are familiar with Chapel Hill that Franklin Street is not a place necessarily that you always want to go. Not just because of panhandling, but because of loitering and aggressive behavior, use of loud obscenities and things of that nature.”

A fifteen foot beggar-free zone is just too much for solicitous Chapel Hill Councilors. Councilor Sally Greene, “friend of her backyard” neighborhood conservation district advocate, crack Lot 5 town negotiator, and a member of the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness executive board, said Mr. Czajkowski is “asking the wrong question. I think the right question is the right balance for our community given some competing interests, and one interest that our citizens have is the right to panhandling and the right to be on the street as long as they're not being aggressive. I think we have an ordinance that goes far enough. I don't think we need to look into making the ordinance stricter than it is. I think we can look at enforcement and think about whether our existing ordinances are being enforced enough.”

Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt joined in on the “Mad Matt” bashing by saying the town has done a good job of responding to specific issues. Demonstrating his keen grasp of human dynamics, Mr. Kleinschmidt apparently believes that his private warnings to the Chapel Hill Police Department last year to back off panhandling law enforcement solved the panhandling problem. (In Orange Progressive logic, if you declare a problem not to exist, it does not exist.) Mr. Kleinschmidt is silent about the embarrassment caused by “Mad Matt’s” persistent public elevation of the non-enforcement of local panhandling laws. (To an Orange Progressive, if you remain silent about an embarassing situation, then the embarassment never occurred.)

(See the Herald Sun Soliciting Story.)

Even in tough economic times, the Chapel Hill governance board doesn't want to remove “big ticket” expenditures from the consent agenda, displaying its powerful sense of fiscal responsibility and communication with citizens.

On 10 November 2008 Chapel Hill town council meeting, Town Manager Roger Stancil announced at a town council meeting that town sales tax revenues in FY 2008-09 will be 5% to 10% below projections, i. e., about $500,000 to $1,000,000 less than projected.

In response Mr. Stancil has asked his managers to reduced expenditures by 5% – about $2,500,000. He has also frozen new hires without his express approval. According to Mr. Stancil, ”[The General Assembly] will find ways to shift their expenditures and the only place to shift that is to us and the county.” He relayed talk of the state shifting responsibility for some road maintenance to local governments.

Recent financal restraint convert Councilor Jim Ward responded by asking for even deeper cuts. He wants a budget cut of $1 million beyond the 5% goal. ”I just think let's be real serious about the need to reduce our spending now,” Mr. Ward didn’t explain why just more than six months ago he was voting for an 11% tax increase in the face of an imploding housing bubble and a looming credit crisis.

Only a few minutes after a general headshaking about having to cut spending by several million dollars, Councilor Matt Czajkowski asked to pull an item from the consent agenda - the purchase of seven new hybrid electric buses. The consent agenda is supposed to be a mechanism to speed the business of town governance boards. Uncontroversial items that don’t require discussion are voted on, up or down, en masse. Usually, if even one member of the governance board wishes to have a discussion, the item is removed.

As Mr. Czajkowski put it, the council spent half an hour on tough economic times that “sprang from nowhere”, so wouldn’t it be “fair” in the future to ask the town manager to put “big ticket” town expenditures on the action item agenda instead of the consent agenda. The alternative proposed by Mr. Czajkowski would provide for an explanation to town citizens of the need for the expenditure now and the cost or risk of deferral.

The response of fellow councilors was pure Chapel Hill “responsibility”. According to Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt, he bends over backwards to make the budget “as tight as [he] possibly can.” There's no need to discuss items that the town ”needs”. A more typical response comes from Councilor Lauren Easthom. She ignores the general principle of fiscal responsibility. She only wants to talk about the specific need for new buses, completely missing the fiscal principle of discussing all “big ticket” town expenditures in detail. Apparently, she sees no need to explain every costly expenditure to the public while an approved budget is slashed.

See the Herald Sun Consent Agenda Story.

No word on the wisdom of the town council raising town taxes 11% as the housing bubble collapsed last summer.

No word on the fate of the recently hired arts administrator position and the sustainability coordinator position.

No word on how the $10,000,000 (25%!!) overrun on the new town public works complex affects the budget deficit.

Like the proverbial camel poking its nose ever deeper into the desert tent, a tax supported, local non-profit bureaucracy keeps pushing further into the public purse in order to fund affordable housing. The Orange Community Housing and Land Trust (OCHLT), through its 25% annual pay increase executive director, Mr. Robert Dowling, recently attended the Fall 2008 “Assembly of Government” meetings, aka the local turf battle and catfight for Orange Progressive politicians.

Pulp readers know that the affordable housing crisis is based upon the the declared belief that the inability of “lower income” people to live near median income residents creates an imbalanced society that hurts Orange County, not financially, but psychologically. For OPie purposes, someone making 80% of the median income is “lower income”. OPies do not take into consideration if that person's income is ascendant. For example, perhaps they are beginning their career path and will make more than median income during the term of their occupancy, or they are trustafarians living off trust incomes without really having to work, or they have made life choices temporarily reducing a two income family status to a one income family status.

Creating Your Publicly Funded Lifetime Job
After declaring a crisis loudly to the “stenographer pool” (aka the local media), crack, local, wannabe, tax exempt bureaucrats swing into action.

The first step in creating your lifetime job is to announce that government is not equipped to manage an affordable housing program.

The second step in in creating your lifetime job is to advocate in front of each local governance board for the adoption of a zoning requirement for developers to provide for a percentage of smaller size housing in a development, the smaller housing being equated to less expensive housing for lower income residents.

The third step in creating your lifetime job is to advocate for funding yet another tax exempt (read non-profit) non-governmental organization in southern Orange, in this case the OCHLT, to assist “lower income” (less than 80% of the median Orange County income) residents in finding housing.

The fourth step in creating your lifetime job is to get appointed to the OCHLT at a modest salary, with testimonials from local OPies.

The fifth step in creating your lifetime job is to advocate in front of the local governance boards for funding to support your bureaucracy’s operational costs.

The sixth step in creating your lifetime job is to advocate in front of the local governance boards for capital funds to buy housing and to rehabilitate into managed lower income housing, the right to own the property being retained ultimately by your bureaucracy.

The seventh step in creating your lifetime job is to advocate in front of the local governance boards for yet more funding for your bureaucracy to oversee developer-built affordable housing.

The eighth step in creating your lifetime job is to advocate in front of local governance boards for the adoption of a PILO (payment in lieu of) financial structure for developers. PILOs enable developers to give money to the town instead of building lower income housing mixed in with higher income housing. Effectively the raison de etre of an affordable housing crisis has evaporated (the need to mix socio-economic classes), leaving only the solution to a different crisis (the need to fund your lifetime job).

The ninth step in creating your lifetime job is to ask local governance boards to funnel PILO moneys to your bureaucracy to buy yet more bureaucratically controlled housing. (See Pulp Right to Shelter Story.)

There is no final step, as bureaucracy is never ending.

Flawed Program Bureaucratic Job Insurance
Even in the current depressed local housing market, there is one constant. Averaged over a long enough period of time, all maintained housing goes up in value. Apparently, OCHLT and its abetters (the local governance boards fo Orange County, Carrboro, and Chapel Hill) forgot to include this constant in their collective wisdom of funding the OCHLT housing empire. Four two bedroom, affordable housing units in Vineyard Square in Chapel Hill went up for sale in the Summer 2007. Under the terms of the OCHLT created program, homes that were bought by lower income residents for about $92,000 had increased in value to about $100,000 over several years. OCHLT can buy back the housing at the $100,000 price.

There’s only one problem, OCHLT can’t qualify lower income homebuyers at that $100,000 price. According to Mr. Dowling, by the time you figure in higher tax rates, home owners association dues and a stagnant median income standard, Mr. Dowling says, “many potential owners are priced out”.

Put simply, the OCHLT is in a financial mode of negative cash flow even with regards to selling its permanent stable of OCHLT owned housing. It can only sell the units it bought about five years ago at a loss of about 10% of capital because median income isn't increasing apace with housing costs.

Compounding a failed business model is the fact that OCHLT puts lower income residents into housing that they cannot afford to maintain. Only after having established an empire requiring his lifetime assistance has Mr. Dowling included the cost of maintenance by lower income homeowners into the model. He now estimates that over the next 25 years (taking him comfortably into retirement) OCHLT will need at least $1,500,000 in maintenance grants to OCHLT borrowed homeowners.

PILOS of Cash to the Rescue
No need to worry. Here’s where PILOs come to the rescue. Mr. Dowling wants local governance boards to fund the maintenance grants through PILOs, in yet another local, financially imbalanced, Ponzi scheme.

Chapel Hill Councilor and public micturator defender Mark Kleinschmidt says, “I think it speaks better of us when we find other ways of taking care of our affordable housing non-profits that don't take away from the ultimate goal of putting units on the ground.,” He’s also concerned that PILOS interfere with ”getting units on the ground, having a place for people to live.”

Showing continued trouble in adopting a “facts optional” approach to governance, Chapel Hill Councilor Matt Czajkowski counters Mr. Kleinschmidt’s visions by saying, ”My notion is, we've got a problem, we don't see any other source of funding and therefore we should try to fix the problem right now by accepting payment-in-lieu.” See the Herald Sun PILO Sory.

Failure Is Its Own Reward
No word from the Assembly of Government on the causal relationship between the failure to include maintenance costs in a funding program and the awarding of a 25% annual pay increase for such failure.

As reported in April 2008 in the Pulp (see Pulp Exposer Expose), civil rights are important to Orange Progressive politicians. Not in the manner of Dr. King marching in Memphis for the rights of municipal workers, but in the manner of browbeating municipal workers (the local police) not to do their jobs.

Rogue Councilor Matt Czajkowski, continuing his streak of not drinking the Orange Progressive Cool-Aid, raised the specter that Chapel Hill may not have a monopoly on good governance, in general, and may not have workable solutions to unwanted public behavior such as public urination, public shouting of obscenities, or public genital exhibition, in particular. As can be seen on video (see Chapel Hill Meeting Video at the five hour mark), on 25 June 2008 Mr. Czajkowski spoke up about people not wanting to visit Franklin Street. He spoke about finding successful, proven ways to counteract unwanted public behavior downtown.

The bastions of Orange Progressive civil rights, Councilors Easthom, Greene, and Kleinschmidt acted as if Mr. Czajkowski had publicly urinated on the council table.

In a surreal demonstration as to how “reasonableness” is considered “unreasonable” in southern Orange, Councilor Greene led the charge by going off on the assertion that “it's already been done”. She did so without once admitting that there is a real problem with unwanted public behavior in downtown Chapel Hill.

Councilor Easthom bemoaned the problem as not being one of irresponsible behavior for which an individual should be held accountable. For her, the problem is one of the social condition imposed by society on an individual. Apparently, homelessness induces public urination lewdness, and obscenity.

But the piece de resistance of surreal argument belongs to Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt. He used Mr. Czajkowski giving the example of a “street person” shouting public obscenities as “proof” of Mr. Czajkowski being biased against street people in terms of their civil rights. Without Mr. Czajkowski having said anything like that either directly or indirecty, Councilor Kleinschmidt had no compunction in charging Councilor Czajkowski with being only against unwanted public behavior by street people. Apparently, Councilor Kleinschmidt feels that if 95% of the public urination is caused by a small minority of people, then implementing effective ordinances against public urination by those people would be a violation of their civil rights.

Pulpsters remember that Mr. Kleinschmidt previously has marched down to Chapel Hill Police Department headquarters and read the riot act… to the police concerning a gentlemen in a wheelchair who has publicly urinated in front of children at Kidzu. To Mr. Kleinschmidt, the rights of a serial lewd pervert demand more protection than the rights of young children.

No word on when room and board at their home will be offered the Franklin Street flasher by either Councilor Easthom, Greene, or Kleinschmidt.

Showing the true nature of progressive leadership, the Chapel Hill Councilors voted on 9 June 2008 to give themselves health benefits most citizens don’t have and, even more amazingly, benefits even town part-time employees don’t have.

All you have to do is serve eight years on the Chapel Hill Town Council, and you have 75 percent of your healthcare benefits paid for by Chapel Hill after you leave office, period.

The caring and sharing nature of second termer Mayor Kevin Foy can be seen in the town’s “fair and progressive” process. The healthcare benefits decision was placed on the consent agenda, thereby depriving public input before a vote. Councilors took their vote BEFORE citizens could comment. One speaker after the fact said in a “disgruntled” tone, ”Does it matter what I have to say if you already voted to approve it?” To which Mayor Foy glibly responded, ”We can change it.” No changes were made despite Mr. Foy admitting the unpredictable nature of the cost of the healthcare benefits he will be eligble for at the end of his present term.

Once again Councilor Matt Czajkowski proved his “unreliable” progressive nature. He pointed out that town taxpayers could pay for decades if a young candidate completes two terms in a part-time job. (See Pulp Czajkowski Off Medications Story.) Not understanding how Orange Progressives ignore financial cycles relying on the non-local university economic engine, Mr. Czajkowski said, ”This is not the time for the council to be voting to spend money on itself” .

Mr. Kryder also ignored the true spirit of Orange Progressivism, offending the sensibilities of all Councilors, save Mr. Czajkowski, saying, ”I don't want a young person coming up here, serving eight years and then having me pay 75 percent of their health care, I think that's atrocious.”

See Herald Sun Healthcare Benefits Story.

On 28 April 2008, Chapel Hill Town Councilor Matt Czajkowski revealed once again that he’s not taking his political medications. He’s immune to bozo tax shilling.

Former Chapel Hill Councilperson, Orange Progressive propagandist, and Carrboro Mayor political attack surrogate (aka ”Weaver Guy” on local political blogs and forums) Joseph Capowski spoke at the town council meeting for the home equity tax/local land transfer tax vote on 6 May 2008. (See Hot Orange Capowski Shill Story.)

Councilor Czajkowski cast the lone dissenting vote against the local transfer tax resolution. Unbelievably, he claimed the home equity/land transfer tax was just a way for politicians not to be held accountable for the financial consequences of their growth policies. Again showing disturbing logic, he said, ”We need to put greater restraints on property taxes. To me, this is a backdoor tax that allows politicians to avoid higher property taxes.”

No word on how the rest of the council intends to administer medications to Councilor Czajkowski.

No word on what additional full time employee the town manager will now hire to address the Councilor Czajkowski “crisis”.

No word on whether or not the next state Bozo convention will be held in Chapelboro.

See N&O Capowski Shill Story.

On 14 May 2008, Chapel Hill Town Councilor Matt Czajkowski revealed once again that he’s not taking his political medications. He confused local town financing of elections with a guaranteed means for subsidizing incumbent campaigns.

Councilor Czajkowski got into a tussle with guardian of the civil right to micturate publicly, guardian of the civil right to expose genitalia publicly, and executive director of yet another local tax-exempt organization Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt. According to the stellar logic of Mr. Kleinschmidt, ensuring a candidate’s viability by requiring an unknown challenger to get a large number of contributors before receiving public money will increase the chances for a diversity of opinion on the town board. Mr. Kleinschmidt (an incumbent up for re-election next year and anticipating recipient of a taxpayer campaign subsidy) didn’t address the difference in difficulty between an unknown challenger reaching this goal and a well-known incumbent reaching this goal.

Town Councilor Laurin Easthom (also up for re-election next year and anticipating recipient of a taxpayer campaign subsidy) backed up Mr. Kleinchmidt in his circular thinking. Ms. Easthom, an apparently self-described not-as-privileged licensed realtor, licensed dentist, and amazingly low $460,000 assessed value, 4000 square foot homeowner in the Larkspur subdivision, raised the politics of envy by charging Mr. Czajkowski as being ”luckier” financially than most Chapel Hill citizens.

No word on whether or not the rest of the council will seek judicial authority to administer medications forcibly to Councilor Czajkowski.

No word on when the Councilors will file full financial disclosure statements to show just “how lucky” each has been in life.

See Pulp Czajkowski Transfer Tax Story.

On 22 April 2008, Chapel Hill town Councilman Matt Czajkowski revealed once again that he’s not taking his political medication. He’s not drinking the Chapelboro Cool-Aid.

A public hearing was held concerning the proposed “Residences at Grove Park”, yet another higher density infill project for Chapel Hill. The proposal is to tear down 111 units on 12.9 acres and replace them with 346 units and 580 parking spaces. The site is located between Hillsborough Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. at 624 and 626 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and at 425 and 429 Hillsborough Street

The developer is none other than Ram Development, the development group that is in partnership with the town of Chapel Hill in developing the town-owned Parking Lot 5 on West Franklin Street.

Councilman Matt Czajkowski had the audacity to question Mr. George Cianciolo (Chapel Hill Planning Board chair) with questions about why higher density infill is desirable for Chapel Hill, why growth for growth sakes is good public policy.

Further, Mr. Czajkowski showed disturbing logic in stating that “if more people are living in Chapel Hill but driving to work at RTP, what is accomplished by transit-oriented development? Certainly not a reduction in fuel usage or emissions”.

Finally, Mr. Czajkowski showed a complete lack of appreciation of planning poseur form (see Phictionary) in pointing out that Mr. Cianciolo was advocating for living near work and taking public transit while he doesn’t do so himself.

Consummate Chapelboro Cool-Aid drinker, executive director of yet another local tax-exempt organization, and on-again, off-again political power couple paramour, Mark Kleinschmidt showed the resolve of the majority of the board, stating that Chapel Hill is under a lot of pressure by developers who want to build similar properties. Speaking the language of a staunch property rights Republican, Mr. Kleinschmidt opined ”We as the town can't strip someone's private property interests from them. No matter how much we want to do that in some instances, we can't do it. It's a fundamental right that they have. We can't close the door on that. We did it for eight or nine months in the northern area and you remember what that was like. Everyone was screaming at us. We got sued.”

No word from Mr. Kleinschmidt on whether or not the town being a partner with Ram Development on Lot 5 colors his reasoning.

In a strategic planning aka cumbaya (see Phictionary) session, Chapel Hill Councilman Matt Czajkowski spoke up about the social engineering aspects of the craze for developer profits in pushing mixed use developments. Mr. Czajkowski had the audacity to challenge if families prefer to live in high rise, multi-family, mixed use developments. ”Guys, you're making a massive assumption that families want to move into high density development.”

Mr. Czajkowski’s remarks were in response to Mayor Kevin Foy’s comment that ”We assume that mixed-use development is the best development, and on top of that, we assume that people want to live in dense development.”

In an Orange Progressive put-down, executive director of yet another local tax-exempt organization, on-again, off-again political power couple paramour, and fellow Town Councilman Mark Kleinschmidt accused Mr. Czajkowski of “harboring a 1950s perspective”. Readers should note that Mr. Kleinschmidt wasn’t born until the late 1960s and is not a practicing breeder (see Phictionary).

Town councilman Jim Ward piled on indicating that he didn’t care what ordinary families wanted. He doesn’t care if people want to live in high density developments. He assumes that it's the best way to grow Chapel Hill. “And you're making the assumption that they will or will not [live in whatever the council wants them to live in],”

No word on why any social engineering councilman thinks that growing Chapel Hill’s population is desirable.

No word of any discussion of carrying capacity occurring to the social engineers of the cumbayah circle.

See Chapel Hill Herald Cumbayah Story.