The Chapel Hill Town Council met in a work session for the first time since Mayor Pam Hemminger, along with four other council members, were sworn in last December.

The meeting was used to get council members up to speed on major projects and procedures they will need in the coming year.

Rae Buckley, assistant to the manager for organizational and strategic initiatives, gave a presentation on five different downtown building projects, including Rosemary Street, Northside and Downtown 2020.

“We feel they’re very connected to one another,” she said. “As we’re working on our projects it’s very important for us to meet on a regular basis and do a better job at when one of these comes forward to you that it’s connected to the others.”

Town manager Roger Stancil gave a presentation about how council meetings work and how different issues become part of a meeting agenda.

“We could really divide what comes to (the council) in three large categories,” he said.

He said those categories were petitions citizens or council members make, the business of the town and development applications. Stancil said the third was most likely to take up the majority of the council’s time.

After presentations were finished, council members discussed what issues they wanted to talk about in future work sessions.

“I think the topic of affordable housing is so manifold that I would like to see us engage on a series of work sessions on affordable housing,” said councilwoman Sally Greene.

Other issues included student housing and public housing.

Hemminger said if there was an issue a member of the public wanted the council to discuss in their work sessions, suggestions could be made to council members via email, which can be found on the town website.

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