Too Much Power For Stancil?

This is Raleigh Mann.

We who have called Chapel Hill our home for a long time remember the flap over the size of North Carolina National Bank. NCNB, as it was known, liked to be thought of as a friendly, small town kind of place. “We want to be the best bank in the neighborhood,” its commercials said.

But when its officers wanted to build a four-story building in the heart of Franklin Street downtown, the people complained. A lot. Much too tall, they said.

That project was approved, of course, and now we just benignly accept it. And that sweet little old neighborhood bank has morphed into Bank of America and is still growing.

So when developer Roger Perry unveils his plans for a 90-foot-high, 305,000-square-foot building as his opening move of the Ephesus-Fordham redevelopment plan, he might expect the same outcome. Complaints, sure, followed eventually by meek acceptance.

What will this place look like? Well, it will be huge. Maybe Mr. Perry’s handiwork on East 54 will give us a peek into what it might look like. Enough said.

What is more important, what is truly crucial about this proposed project is that the final decision to approve it and others like it now rests not with our elected Town Council members, some of whom think they are smarter than us lowly residents. No, that final decision rests with one person: Town Manager Roger Stancil.

Does that much power in one person’s hands make sense to you?

If one person has that kind of power over the place where I live, we who actually live here deserve to know more about him, what his priorities are, whose interests he will serve. Who has his ear. We want — we need — to be able to trust him.