Lately, there’s a narrative going around town that’s become popular among the people most opposed to growth in Chapel Hill. The story goes that Town Manager Roger Stancil has gained way too much power, especially over new development, and there must be something nefarious afoot.

It’s a serious question: Does our town manager now single-handedly decide what does and does not get built in Chapel Hill?

Well, not quite.

First, let’s clarify that we’re specifically talking about the Ephesus-Fordham area, where the town adopted a new form-based code earlier this year. (Everywhere else in Chapel Hill, you’ll still need the approval of the full town council before you may build anything new, a process that can still take years and offers no predictable path to success.)

In the Ephesus-Fordham area, however, the new form-based code means that your building application will now be pre-approved if your plan meets all the requirements outlined in the code. There are a lot of requirements in that code, 65 pages of them in fact, covering everything from how many floors the building has, to how close it is to the street, to how many trees you have to plant along the sidewalk, to how you manage storm water, to the lighting, the signage, and even the style of the windows.

Did Stancil personally determine these guidelines? No. The guidelines came from the hundreds of citizens who participated in seven years’ worth of community forums and debate. Most residents were clear that they wanted a more walkable place and fewer strip malls and parking lots.

Naturally, not everyone agrees. Some think the buildings are too tall and too much like a city. Others simply liked the old zoning system, especially since almost nothing new ever got built under that system.

Is the new system working?

After over a decade of stagnation, we now have a proposal to transform the vacant lot where legend has it a movie theater once stood into a place that adds new retail shops, generating much-needed sales tax revenue, and provides homes well-suited for graduate students and young professionals, two populations Chapel Hill’s current housing stock of single-family suburban homes woefully fails to adequately accommodate.

Furthermore, the Community Design Commission review process is already proving effective in its role of ensuring new buildings interact with the public in ways that adhere to the goals of the guidelines. The Commission did not rubber stamp the new Village Plaza Apartments. Instead, they told the developer they needed to do a better job with the building’s aesthetics and pedestrian connectivity. The town council addressed these same kinds of refinements in the past. The difference is that the Community Design Commission can negotiate in one month what the full town council might take more than a year to settle.

So, what is the Town Manager’s role in this process?

There is a kernel of technical truth to the notion that the town manager is the final step to approving a new building in Ephesus-Fordham: If an applicant’s proposal meets all 65 pages of requirements in the form-based code, and after the proposal receives the green light from the community design commission, the application approval will bear the signature of Roger Stancil.

However, it is not the town manager who ultimately says yes or no: It is the guidelines our community crafted that decide yes or no.

You might not personally care for those guidelines. After all, 58,424 people are never going to agree on anything, especially in a community as diverse and as engaged as Chapel Hill. However, don’t blame the town manager: Blame the thousands of your fellow Chapel Hillians who, as I do, believe it’s high time our community has something better than some old movie theater’s vacant lot.