US Senate races are expensive. In defeating Ms. Elizabeth Dole, Ms. Kay Hagan spent over $8,500,000 in 2008. Unless you are Mr. John Edwards, that money comes from contributions. What better way for Senate hopeful, and current Chapel Hill Mayor, Kevin Foy to start the contributions running than to bail out a group of big pocket Chapel Hill real estate investors.

Lame duck Mayor Foy held a special closed meeting to buy a white elephant that’s draining the coffers of Developer Dream Team member D.R. Bryan, developer of Southern Village. This company is filled with campaign contributors who dutifully give local campaign contributions in response to their favored real estate development treatment, people such as the former mayor of Chapel Hill, Ms. Rosemary Waldorf. (It's all perfectly legal mind you.)

Hopeful Foy Senate campaign contributors have been sucking air on an unoccupied, spanking new 70,000-square-foot office building for sale off Weaver Dairy Road in the Vilcom Center area. Over 18 months of interest payments on a commercial loan and no occupants in sight (until now), another example of the commercial and retail real estate bubble collapsing around you.

To the rescue comes Mayor Foy, who just happens to need oodles of boodle if his dream of a US Senate run is to come to pass. Foy and his fellow Councilors approved negotiations between The Town Council, in a closed meeting, directing Town Manager Roger Stancil to continue negotiating with Red Wing Land, a D.R. Bryan affiliate. It's marketing “Dawson Hall” as separate office condos for about $150 per square foot, a steal at only $10,000,000!

Why should Chapel Hill buy a building convenient to nowhere after having just spent $25,000,000 on a new town operations center? The excuse given is that the town needs a temporary home for the library while the old one is being rebuilt and needs a permanent home for the police department on the northernmost edge of the town.

Which begs the question, why was the Chapel Hill library built not to be expanded while maintaining current operations? Which begs the question why can't the police department facility be expanded in place? Which begs the question is any municipal act done competently in southern Orange?

That’s right, Mayor Foy appears to be unaware of the concept of leasing temporary space. Pulpsters, needn’t ask why the police need a new permanent home on the northernmost edge of the town when they already have one centrally located on Airport Drive (MLK Boulevard) that could be expanded.

Mayor Foy pulled the old “we don’t have to time to think” ploy for his fellow Councilors. After months of sitting vacant, the keen negotitor Mayor Foy believes that listing agent Gary Hill with Grubb & Ellis/Thomas really is negotiating with two real future tenants and a real condo buyer for parts of Dawson Hall. What timing!

In an apparent attempt at humor, town manager Roger Stancil said, ”Any decisions have to be made in public. The town always operates with a lot of transparency.” (See N&O Campaign Contribution Story.)

In most of North Carolina, state employees are holding on to their job at any cost. Times are tough. Private jobs are being shed, not added. That attitude would be particularly true for a land use planner being paid about $74,000 a year.

But Orange County isn’t like most of North Carolina. Here a land use planner can slide from gown to town and back to gown, if the need is there for UNC. The factory university town of “Chapelboro” specializes in having local residents pay for university costs or expenses. From subsidizing free student transportation to lowered municipal water and sewage costs to revitalizing UNC-owned Franklin Street properties, it’s all about feeding the big blue academic smokestacks.

As reported in the Chapel Hill News, Ms. Mary Jane Nirdlinger resigned her $74,000-a-year job at UNC earlier this summer, allegedly without having another job lined up. (There aren’t too many of those jobs lying around on campus at that salary.) In the past few years, she has concentrated on the development of Carolina North and the ancillary public-private development of univeristy housing called Carolina Commons.

Ms. Nirdlinger is most famous among the adjacent Carolina Commons neighborhoods for pulling a bait-and-switch on the public-private D.R. Bryan-UNC partnership. She saw no need to inform neighborhoods about the particulars as to how seven high-end executive homes built individually transformed into a non-publicly bid UNC partnership deal of 19 homes built by D.R. Bryan, and how the land would be sold by UNC. She is remembered for her indignance at neighborhoood informational public meetings for being questioned about her lack of openness.

Now, Pulpsters are supposed to believe that Ms. Nirdlinger decided to cast off from the moorings of a well-paid state planning job with no job in hand, and no intention of landing a job with the town of Chapel Hill. Reportedly, she just happened to be hired by Chapel Hill Town manager Roger Stancil as a “special projects manager” after letting Mr. Stancil know she was leaving her UNC job. According to Mr. Stancil, “I wasn’t recruiting people who work for the university to come work for the town. She was leaving, and I diverted her path.”

Ms. Nirdlinger certainly was in luck. Mr. Stancil was willing to pay her even more than she made at UNC - $78,000 a year. Such managment skills by the town manager, offering someone without a job more taxpayer's money in the midst of the “Great Recession”.

What will Ms. Nirdlinger do? How about laying the regulatory foundation for Carolina North over the next few years while the state waits for the economy to recover before funding the next mega-round of capital investment in UNC? Much work must be done to align town regulations with UNC desires for Carolina North.

With the pressure on the UNC budget, and the high visibility of a UNC planner making $74,000, what better solution than to have the town pay for the planner doing the work needed by UNC? In the words of Ms. Nirdlinger, “I care about what happens in my community, and I care about what happens at the university.”

No word from Mr. Stancil as to why Ms. Nirdlinger needs to be hired in the midst of a commercial and residential building meltdown.

Yes Sir Boss!
The Chapel Hill Town Councilors approved a special use permit (SUP) for the building of the UNC Innovation Center, first building to rise on the UNC research park known as Carolina North. But the building apparently won’t be owned or built by UNC. Private capital will build the UNC Innovation Center. Private capital will profit from the UNC Innovation Center in an opaque financial process. At a time when banks are crumbling from a lack of financial transparency in junk mortgage portfolios, UNC has responded with its own opaque deal – the UNC Innovation Center.

The town approved a permit to build to a three-story, 80,745 square foot building on eight acres at Carolina North. The building is slated for the site formerly occupied by the Town's public works and transit operations. (See Chapel Hill Herald Story.)

Permitted But Not Being Bid
Curiously, the permit has been issued in the face of an announcement that the building won’t be built any time soon. Alexandria Real Estate Equities (stock ticker ARE) told UNC’s Carolina North bosses in December 2008 that it’s suspending work on the project.

On 3 November 2008 ARE CEO Joel Marcus told ARE investors that ARE would halt work on all projects in its development pipeline that had not already broken ground. In the words of Carolina North spokeswoman Susan Houston “Alexandria continues to express interest in the Innovation Center project, but it is not clear when the project will proceed.” (See BRN Carolina North Story.)

The Opaque Deal
But who pays for the building? Who owns it at the end of the lease? Who receives rents? Who pays rents?

According to Mr. Marcus, ARE and UNC-CH have agreed that UNC will contribute land to the venture. ARE would lease at the land for $1 a year for 40 years. ARE is indicating that it must find other private partners to fund the building. (According to Mr. Mark Crowell, UNC associate vice chancellor for economic development and technology transfer, the Innovation Center will cost about $20,000,000 million to build.)

Even though ARE will buld the physical Innovation Center and apparently own the building for now, ARE didn't have to be involved AT ALL in the permitting process with the Town.

No word on who will pay what taxes to the town of Chapel Hill?

Why ARE?
Unreported in the local media is the factor of whose inevitable local pal is involved in the Innovation Center deal. In this case, the UNC pal is none other than Mr. John L. Atkins, III, an ARE director since 2007. Besides profiting from other deals made by ARE, Mr. Atkins is also chairman and CEO of O'Brien/Atkins Associates, PA, a multidisciplinary architectural design services firm that he co-founded in Research Triangle Park in 1975. He is also director, executive committee member and treasurer of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. He is also director of the North Carolina Railroad Company. He is also director of the Kenan Center of Engineering, Science and Technology at North Carolina State University.

Obedient Town Staff
The town appears happy to issue permits for a building with no timeline for being built. According to town manager Mr. Roger Stancil prior to the Councilors decision, “It’s a matter of Alexandria and the university deciding what they’re going to do. We, meaning the town, don’t know what will happen. In all likelihood, the deferral of the project would cause the innovation center, the Alexandria project, to just become part of the development agreement for all of Carolina North. It wouldn’t be treated separately, like it is now.”

Carolina North Sketch
Since June 2007 Carolina North continues to grow on paper. According to UNC’s original 2007 Carolina North Plan, the first two phases have added the following: 125,000 square feet of “corporate partner space”; 50,000 square feet of “centers and institutes space”; and 30,000 square feet of research space. At a combined 3,000,000 square feet, Carolina North Phase 1 and Phase 2 are 21% denser.

Here’s the latest Carolina North configuration (subject to change without notice, no implied or express warranties).

Imagine having to meet a deadline for introducing a new product to consumers. Imagine that your product development and commercialization staff is already overloaded with a big “must-do” product introduction. What would you do? Would you employ an outside, collective of pro bono (read “free”) people to get the job done? Or would you contract for for-profit professionals that must perform or lose future business?

If you’re the town of Chapel Hill, and your product is high denisty infill approval for your developer pals, then you opt for the pro bono non-profit people. Fortunately, when the job doesn’t get done, you shrug your shoulders and act chagrined. Even better, you use pro bono people with ties to the client (UNC) that’s got the rest of your town staff tied up. Failure is an option.

Over a year ago Mayor Foy sought to divert public concern over relentless dense infilling by creating a committee to rubberstamp the densification policy, the Strategic Planning Committee” (SPC). Unfortunately, Mr. Foy starts this year off by announcing on 7 January 2009 that the SPC can’t find a plan to move forward with its planning. In Mr. Foy’s words, town leader ”have not been successful”. Mr. Foy offered up the Durham Area Designers (DAD) as the sacrificial lamb. DAD didn’t facilitate the strategic planning process for the SPC in the Fall of 2008.

Who is DAD? DAD is a pro bono collective of planners centered about the UNC sphere of influence. They have done work not only for Chapel Hill (guidance on the Rogers Road Small Area Plan), but also work for the city of Durham. While a laudable collective, it’s not an operating enterprise with accountable staff and deliverable capacities.

With Mr. Foy being ”concerned that we've got Carolina North jamming us up”, the obvious question is, why then did you engage DAD, a non-accountable enterprise? If Chapel Hill and UNC are negotiating at long-term development of the university's Carolina North research campus, the next obvious question is, why did you engage DAD, a UNC-centered collective?

After piddling away a year, Chapel Hill town manager Roger Stancil offers the brilliant idea of hiring an outside, high density, planning professional to manage the project, at no cost to UNC of course. The town planning staff is ”really strained” from the combination of normal town business and the tight Carolina North timeline.

Is Mr. Stancil concerned about ordinary Chapel Hill citizens and what they want for their future? Not really. Mr. Stancil is concerned over the frustration of developers in interpreting the town’s drive for densification. According to Mr. Stancil, some developers interpret density as four-story buildings while others think it's 10 floors. Citizen concern over densification is planned to be strategically overlooked.

(See Herald Sun Straining Staff 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.

The failure of Chapel Hill to arrest a resident charged with serial misdemeanor criminal offenses leads to the fecal smearing of a public bathroom in Sugarland, a Franklin Street business in downtown Chapel Hill. Town leaders don’t rally to the victim, the business owner. In a “three stooges” response so typical of Chapel Hill, they rally instead to the side of the fecal smearer.

If you commit misdemeanor crimes and warrants are issued, in most towns in North Carolina you will be arrested. Not so in Chapel Hill.

Here are the bare facts, as reported by the local media. (See Herald Sun Homeless Man Story.)

Walter Cates, a homeless man, was being held in lieu of $300 secured bond in the medical unit of Raleigh's Central Prison on Thursday, one day after a warrant was taken out by the owners of Sugarland. (See Sugarland.) He was arrested in the 100 block of Main Street in Carrboro.

Mr. Cates is wheelchair-bound with part of one leg amputated as a result of severe diabetes. He regularly sits outside Sugarland near a bus stop and a crosswalk.

On 15 July 2008 a man wheeled Cates into the bathroom at Sugarland. Co-owner Katrina Ryan told the two men to leave, citing previous disputes with Cates and complaints of trespassing they'd filed with the Chapel Hill Police Department. They refused to leave the bathroom. When Cates exited about 15 minutes later, Ms. Ryan found human feces scattered on the floor and smeared on the walls.

Upon being called to the scene, the Chapel Hill police told Ms. Ryan that they couldn’t arrest Mr. Cates because they hadn’t seen him smear the feces on the wall. However, the police stepped in and told Mr. Cates to leave and not return to Sugarland.

Too bad the local media doesn't report that in Chapel Hill, no one from the town government will step in and assist a business owner until they have feces smeared on their walls… and then only out of fear of embarrassment will they give as minimalhelp as possible.

In Chapel Hill, victims have to go out and claim justice for themselves. So the Sugarland owners had to go into court without town support and repeat their complaints to a magistrate the next morning in order to geta warrant.

Pulpsters may remember previous Pulp stories about troubles downtown. (See Pulp Genital Exposer Story and Pulp Genital Exposing Civil Rights Story.)

Yes, Mr. Cates was involved.

No, no one from the local media or police did anything after the Pulp publications.

Why is that important?

Mr. Cates has gotten bolder in his criminal actions over time, what one would expect as a rational response to irresponsible criminal justice administration. The untold story is that Councilors (such as Sally Greene and Mark Kleinschmidt) have interfered with the administration of justice using their executive imprimatur.

Mr. Cates is alleged to expose his genitals to Sugarland employees. Town response is having Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt comes to his general defense.

Mr. Cates is alleged to lewdly solicit young women at Sugarland. A warrant is taken out. Nothing happens. In fact, according to Orange County officials, a series of warrants dating back to 2006 have charged Mr. Cates with disorderly conduct, soliciting or begging for money, misdemeanor larceny, driving with a revoked license, and, now, damage-to-property.

Frustrated by town inaction, Sugarland co-owner “Doc” Ryan is reported to say, ”It's horrible, We feel it's a fraudulent misrepresentation for the Town Council to say that they care about downtown at all.”

Town stooge “Moe” (Councilor Mark Kleinschmidt) charges “Doc” Ryan with being associated with a ”school of thought in town” that any punishment short of hauling panhandlers off Franklin Street and jailing them for a long period of time is too soft. “Moe” believes Chapel Hill's panhandling ordinances are “plenty tough”. In Chapel Hill you can get fined up to $50 if you ask for “contributions” within 6 feet of a bus stop, 20 feet of an ATM or on a town bus.

“Moe” Kleinschmidt also labors under the belief that Chapel Hill has ““challenges related to this issue that other communities don't have. We're a community that fortunately has a lot of people on the street at a time. Those people are having a good time and visiting businesses downtown and they're walking around spending money. That kind of place is generally where people ask for money and where people gravitate to.” (No report on whether or not “Moe” has ever visited the many towns scattered across North Carolina to see that, amazingly,they too have tourists walking sidewalks.)

Town stooge “Larry” (town manager Roger Stancil) responds to the arrest by blaming the actions of an individual on a broken mental health system in North Carolina. (There is no record of any mental health problem with Mr. Cates that would require being put in a mental health institution.) “Larry” says ”I think it's really easy to blame the town and the police because we're right here.”

Town stooge “Curley” (town police chief Brian Curran) says that Mr. Cates is a well-known exception who poses several challenges for the Chapel Hill Police. According to “Curley”, Mr. Cates' wheelchair is a problem for patrol cars. (Apparently, “Curley” forgets that the police own a number of SUVs that can easily accommodate someone with a wheelchair.) Also, if the Orange County jail doesn’t have room for Mr. Cates, then the police ask for Mr. Cates to be released. (No word on why “Curley” felt that feces had to become involved before Mr. Cates is put in jail, as in this instance.)

“Curley” Curran also confirmed that Chapel Hill police have previously waited to serve warrants on Mr. Cates until he had sufficient warrants for them to be embarrassed at their inaction. For “Curley”, ”It's such a production to get Walter served. We're not talking about warrants where he's shooting people or anything like that; it's usually failure to appear or something like that.” (No word on whether or not any other miscreants are piling up warrants in Chapel Hill. If about to be arressted by Chapel Hill police, you can mention the policy regarding Mr. Cates and ask for equal treatment.)

Unbelievably, although Mr. Cates committed his fecal smearing less than two blocks from the local courthouse, according to “Curley” Curran, it's a ”challenge” getting Mr. Cates to show up in court. Because of his travel difficulties, the Chapel Hill police runs a taxi court service for Mr. Cates when he needs to show up.

In a related business story, sales of Sparky’s turd polish have skyrocketed.

After two years of raising debt and raiding a “rainy day surplus” fund (asw well as enjoying rising property values) to avoid raising ad valorem property taxes, Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil has nowhere else to turn and now proposes raising the town ad valorem rate by 11% for FY 2008-2009 (adding 5.9 cents per $100 of assessed value, for a town total of 58.1 cents) to keep existing services intact. This 11% increase includes sucking $2,800,000 out of the town “rainy day” fund balance.

Demonstrating keen foresight in municipal management practices, Mr. Stancil said ”I don't think we will stand alone this year. Tax increases of 3 to 10 cents in local jurisdictions will not be uncommon.”

The town fund balance stands at $18,000,000 but only $6,300,000 has not being previously committed. Upon seeking to spend $2,800,000 of the $6,300,000, Mr. Stancil says ”At this point, it is depleted as low as it can get.”.

Meanwhile, town debt payments are at an all-time high and climbing, doubling in the last three years. The town will pay more than $6 million toward principal and interest in each of the next two years, and over $7 million for FY 2010 through FY 2012. Town debt is being applied to pay for the new Town Operations Center, the planned underground parking at 140 West Franklin Street, the Aquatics Center at Homestead Community Park, the new Southern Community Park, and the public library expansion.

Additional ad valorem property tax increases will be needed to be applied to pay for the operational costs of these capital projects as some of them come on line.

Of note, Chapel Hill will spend $14,600,000 for the Chapel Hill Transit Fund to support UNC.

The proposed budget includes the following: - $611,000 for a 3 percent pay raise for employees - $363,000 for cover a 10 percent increase in medical insurance - $400,000 for retiree medical liability (Other Post-Employment Benefits Fund) - $41,000 for groundskeeper at Southern Community Park - $546,000 for retiree medical insurance - $295,000 for Police Separation allowance - $478,000 for operating costs of the new Aquatic Center - $812,500 for contributions to social agencies - $125,000 for web hosting project - $233,000 for vehicle replacement increase

The proposed capital program includes the following: - $400,000 for parks light pole replacements - $106,000 for capital maintenance to Fire Station No. 3 - $100,000 for emergency repairs - $100,000 for Fire House Mobile and GIS System for response units - $60,000 for small park improvements - $50,000 for fiber optic cable - $50,000 for greenways - $50,000 for parking lots, paths, and trails - $20,000 cemetery beautification

No word on whether or not retired town manager Cal Horton foresaw the coming tax storm.

No word on how Fayetteville has recovered from the loss of Mr. Stancil as town manager there.

No word on whether or not the town council will seek a town property transfer tax like the county commishes have.

See N&O Chapel Hill Budget Story.