About the Themes

Chapel Hill 2020 is organized around several main themes.  The themes were developed from the community’s input at our visioning sessions and form the basis of the working-group discussions.  Themes are a way to organize the conversation and the goals and action steps of theChapel Hill 2020 plan.

what a theme  is, how it works, who is in a theme group and what the group does.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The 6 Themes

8 thoughts on “”

  1. Pingback: December 1 Working Session |

  2. Pingback: Responding to Data Requests: 1st Cut |

  3. I wrote a much more detailed feed back comment on the main page but this wordpress site seems to have something broken on the main page. Here in shortform is what I wanted to give feedback on

    1) The website is super confusing… right now there are 3 websites dedicated to 2020 or economic development in chapel hill, you have 2020buzz.org, 2020chapelhill.org and then this website->http://www.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us/index.aspx?page=1069 which mentions nothing of the other two websites. This is ultra confusing (let alone the layouts, information provided, etc). I think 2020buzz.org should just be discontinued and the blog migrated to 2020chapelhill.org (this is easy I have worked with wordpress before and I would help if this is a problem).

    2) The comment system is a hard thing to do feed back on (I know becaue I just lost a long comment… maybe a web forum (like phpbb) would be better… again this goes with my point #1…

    3) The meeting today (Nov 19th.2011) seemed very high level, where there is already low-level specific information for projects on townofchapelhill website, For example what state is this University Square project in->
    http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1570

    or this detailed framework plan that goes down to extending roads, or greenway projects

    http://www.townofchapelhill.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=6806

    what is the status of these projects, are they part of the 2020 plan? Why are they not mentioned on the 2020 websites? This seems like very relevant information. Maybe a status graphic (like what state each project is in) for example something that is the same for each project that tells you what state it is in
    Planning/Brainstorming->Concept->Financed->Planned->Building->Finished

    4) The next meeting on Dec.1.2011 starts at 4:30 which seems unacceptable for young professional to be able to attend, I would like to contribute and help.

    Thanks!

  4. Pingback: Come See Us Saturday! |

  5. Pingback: 2020 Resource Library: “Just right” |

  6. Pingback: Agenda for November 19th – Reporting Out |

  7. Pingback: Chapel Hill 2020 Comprehensive Planning | Neighbors For Responsible Growth

  8. FredLampe says:

    The following are our comments on Theme Notes from “Community Prosperity and Engagement” based on the document listed above and actually published here:

    Click to access community-prosperity.pdf

    Since it is not possible to directly edit this pdf format web document, it is impossible to enter specific comments about a given item in any kind of orderly fashion. In general, many of the phrases captured by the Oct. 27 meeting note taker have lost sufficient context such that the phrases have become meaningless, some topics are totally absent and others are completely inaccurate. Examples:

    1. The recorded comment is “Property values are high — why is this the case?” Without context, this is an absurd question. 

    2. Another recorded comment “Tax base is not diversified and challenging for Seniors”. What the heck does this mean?

    3. Or try this recorded comment “Why is it so expensive to live here?” Perhaps the obvious answer is “Because people are willing to pay a lot to live in the southern part of heaven”.

    4. Or this comment “Crime statistics”. How do you deal with this?

    5. Here is one that we think was created from a request that was made for information: 

     “10 year budget projections showing expenses and revenues based on the current level of Town services and population/land use.” 

    What was actually requested was data to show whether the Town will be better or worse off financially in 10 years based on projecting out budget expenses at current service levels compared to projected tax revenues given historical tax rate and evaluation changes for the most likely forecasted population growth. This will allow us (this Theme group) to know if population growth is a help or a hinderance to providing money to pay for more and better services/infrastructure and thus to be able to model the cost tradeoffs of incremental changes in services, e.g. more bus routes, and increased facilities, e.g. more public housing.

    6. Here is a comment that was discussed by 3 parties (Kim Stahl, Mary Buonfiglio, and Del Snow) that didn’t make the note taker’s list at all:

    “Property taxes are high because our valuations are high. Our valuations are high because of what Chapel Hill offers and the desire to live here; to cut services will lower property taxes by cutting the value of our homes.”

    7. In Chapel Hill, we like schools and pay extra for them, yet the discussion of the 2 remaining future school sites and other potential solutions did not make the list at all.

    8. There are also complete inaccuracies, e.g. it was recorded that a Suggested Action was to “Shrink the rural buffer” while the actual topic was introduced by the facilitator (Gary Saleeby) and his comment, specifically, was “So, we need to look at the rural buffer and decide if we are going to go into it for development.” 

    9. Another discussion lost — specifically discussed was the need to determine how much business tax revenue would have to grow to allow residential taxes to remain at current dollar levels so that we don’t force seniors on fixed incomes to have to leave the Town because of rising property evaluations and associated tax increases. (We were told in a previous 2020 meeting that on average Orange County property evaluations for Chapel Hill homes have risen 5% per year over the last 20 years with a somewhat lesser rise in property taxes equal to more than doubling the combined Orange County, school and Chapel Hill property taxes over the period.)

    10. The notes implied that the decision process of “consensus, votes or majority votes” was covered via this comment “Discussed how achievability, resources and priorities would influence the final plan.” There was no discussion of how decisions would be made.

    In addition to the above, it must be noted that the undersigned are in disagreement with the notetaker’s summary of “Key subject areas identified”.

    … Fred Lampe, Molly McConnell, Del Snow
    Stakeholders in Community Prosperity and Engagement

Comments are closed.