Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Thursday, May 26. This is a transcript of the interview where she discussed reactions to the Texas school shooting, the town Budget, Memorial Day activities, and more. To listen to the full interview, click here.
Andrew Stuckey: It’s time for our weekly conversation with Chapel Hill mayor Pam Hemminger. Pam, how are you doing today?
Pam Hemminger: I’m very well, thank you. It’s gorgeous outside and I’m hoping people are enjoying this pretty weather before we get hot.
Stuckey: Yeah, it’s a rare treat right now out there. It’s not bad. I’m getting a lot of sun here at University Place.
Hemminger: Oh, good. Well, I know I’m getting a lot of questions and emails and people very frustrated and upset about the gun violence that happened in Uvalde this week and last week and all during–I mean, it continues on and I share their frustrations and their sadness. This is so unacceptable, and people are saying, “what can we do?” The recommendations I have for people right now are first to join Moms Demand Action. We have a wonderful local group here that advocates to our state legislature and has ways to help people advocate and contact our senators. Burr and Tillis are part of the contingent that’s blocking the House bill that was passed that has sensible gun laws in it. Secondly, to contact them. The best thing we can do is raise our voices up and let them know we want them to vote for sensible gun laws.
Stuckey: Yes. Thank you for addressing that for sure. It’s definitely been the thing that’s dominating not just the news, but private conversations. It’s what people are talking about around town right now.
Hemminger: It is. And Friday next week, June 3rd, is Gun Violence Awareness Day, and we’ll be gathering at Peace and Justice Plaza to raise our orange flag. There’ll be more details about what time that will happen. People are welcome to join us, but again, the best thing they can do is to make their voices heard to our state senators. The house has already passed the bill. We need to raise our voices and make sure that they help move this bill along.
Stuckey: Yes, indeed. Thank you for that, for sure. Let’s talk a little bit about the budget if we can. What’s the current status of the town budget?
Hemminger: We’re continuing to work on it. Last night, we focused our conversation on the request from the IFC and the Partnership to End Homelessness. We’ve worked through most of the rest of the other items, but their asks, while well deserved, came late in the process and are big numbers. We have a lot of need in our community and we’re trying to figure out a way to make it work, so we asked the manager to go back and work with the numbers a little bit more. We are financially in good shape and so it makes sense to be able to support more people who need that extra help, but again, big numbers, and we’re trying to make it work. We know we can, so we will get there. I’m not sure we can get to the full amounts. The number keeps shifting, just so you know, so it’s a little difficult. We just got a letter today, and again, we’ll have a discussion at the work session next week on Wednesday, and then we will be voting on June 8th. People can still make their voices be heard and tell us what they want to tell us about the budget. I’m hopeful that we’ll have another fun balance surplus after this fiscal year, which gives us an opportunity to do some more things. And we still have our APA money to work on, so we are in good shape. We just need to make sure we use our dollars effectively to do the most good in our community.
Stuckey: All right, absolutely. What’s the situation with the SOHRAD funding, there seemed to be some confusion about if that was being funded by the county.
Hemminger: Yeah, a lot of confusion on everyone’s part, to be honest with you. So the county was funding it, we were funding one position. The county was funding the rest, but they were using their CARES dollars and some grant monies to fund it, which is not sustainable in the long term, so that’s why they’ve asked for this funding. We’re very pleased with the SOHRAD program. That’s the street outreach program for people who are listening and don’t know. To help get people transitioned from being on the street into housing, into some support services. They do a great job, and it’s so much better to have those interactions with people who are trained to work with individuals who need help versus having our police department do it. So we really do want this program and we will find a way to make that work. That was also spoken about at the council meeting last night.
Stuckey: All right. And that will be up for vote again in June?
Hemminger: June 8th is when we’re planning to vote on the budget.
Stuckey: Excellent.
Hemminger: We also last night talked about the lower Booker Creek working group’s report. They came and gave us an update. They want us to think differently about different ways to manage stormwater and reduce flooding and improve water quality in our stormwater. They’ve been meeting since I appointed the task force in the fall and they brought in a lot of experts from other jurisdictions. They’re going to be continuing to refine the report over the summer. It’s been really helpful to have more eyes and more options available. We will be taking a look at their data and their information in the fall. Our staff will have time to review it as well, and we’ll see what the next steps will be, but I’m so pleased. This group has really dug in and looked at many different things and worked well. We have a lot of great expertise on this board from the community. It’s a very diverse board and I’m just very, very pleased with the work they’ve done.
Stuckey: I apologize but as somebody who just moved to town, I don’t have very much context for Booker Creek. What exactly is being looked at and what are the options that are on the table?
Hemminger: So our consultants came forward with a plan to reduce flooding. We weren’t sure by how much, so we used an example. If your house is flooding by two feet and we reduce flooding by one foot, is that really helpful? Right. There are differences all over town where flooding happens, and the town consultant recommended creating six storage basins along the upper part of Booker Creek. Those are all heavily forested, old-growth forests. There were some community comments out there regarding why would we take down forests that are soaking up water and provide other kinds of habitat benefits to reduce the flooding by how much? We put a hold on that when we heard these comments because, for us, it was just drawings on a map.
The staff had these reports and we had said to go ahead and move forward, but we said, okay, no. And we all took walks out there and saw these forested areas and thought, well, there may be better plans than this. So I formed a commission. We stopped the construction of these six basins. We do have one basin we built, which is behind Eastgate over there, the lower Booker Creek basin park, which we made into a park as well. It’s actually performing very, very well, but it’s the lower part of the stream corridor. And so are there other options? Are there other parcels or other ways to reduce this flooding or to remove structures that are being flooded? That’s one thing Charlotte has done: start buying out structures instead of creating bins that flood naturally, and just not allow anything to be rebuilt there. We don’t know if those are options yet or not. We’re just looking for other opportunities at this point.
Stuckey: Thank you for catching me up on that. I appreciate it.
Hemminger: There’s a whole section devoted to it on our website.
Stuckey: Excellent, be sure to check that out. Well, there was a downtown partnership annual meeting recently?
Hemminger: On Tuesday morning we met at Still Life and it’s not quite open to the public yet. It’s a fabulous new venue on Franklin Street. It’s the old Stroud building, which is above Sutton upstairs. They have revamped this building. They’ve put in some amazing features and woodwork and stonework, and they have five different bars going on up there that will be open to host different musical events and sports events and any kind of event you can think of. The view is amazing. The top floor opens up to air or they can seal it off. It’s going to be opening in August. There’s also an elevator to get to the third floor if you want. They’ve just done this wonderful job of creating a new venue for our downtown for people to gather and come together. So that’s where it was held. We got the updates: we opened more businesses during COVID than we closed!
Stuckey: Wow.
Hemminger: Just amazing. It’s hard because people see some very vivid closures on Franklin and assume the worst. I always get Daily Tar Heel reporters asking me, “what are we doing about all the closings?” but we’ve actually had more businesses open and expand. And that feels good, right? We’re trying to make that a much better picture for downtown. As we move forward, we have some businesses coming downtown. We have the new wet lab building that was approved for the 136/137 building. Some people actually know it as the NCNB tower from way back. It’s going to be opening up some time in late summer or early fall, it’s been completely transformed. We will have workers. There are already a lot of leases in that building. Biolabs is taking a section. It’s just going to be an amazing upgrade for downtown and I’m hearing about the new hotel, hearing about some other businesses coming to the downtown area, and our Downtown Together program, which is working on making things. Sparkle is the term we use, we’re doing planters and things to help improve the experience downtown. The repaving and restriping of West Franklin are underway right now, actually. And then we will be taking the street over and creating a better pedestrian experience there as well. A lot of good energy focused on our downtown area.
Stuckey: That’s all really good to hear. And people around the station are pretty excited about still life. There was, there was a buzz going around about that earlier.
Hemminger: It’s just amazing to behold. I mean, I went in there not knowing what we’d see and they’ve just done a really, really fabulous job. So, yay!
Stuckey: Excellent.
Hemminger: And we started off last night with a proclamation for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which is celebrated in May. And we are very fortunate in Chapel Hill to have this growing Asian community living and working here with so many representatives, so many different countries and the contributions to the community, making us more diverse and being integrated in. We’re thrilled to have that, and it was nice to be able to announce that last night as well.
Stuckey: Yes, that’s good stuff. We do have a holiday coming up on Monday. Does the town have any Memorial day activities planned?
Hemminger: We partner with Orange County. The Orange County Peace Coalitions host their annual commemoration on Monday from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. It will be virtual this year. People are concerned. Our COVID numbers are on the rise right now. We are not seeing hospitalizations, but people are moving to virtual, and council member Michael Parker will be seeing a proclamation. A lot of things are closed, but a lot of things are open and we ask everyone to take time to pause and remember. Parks and Rec has a lot of things going on to commemorate this weekend so please check our website. You’ll see lots of good information about that, and the weather should be warm, but not overly so. I think it’s a great weekend to get outside and discover the town.
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