Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Tuesday, August 9. She discussed the new Solarize the Triangle Initiative, Monday’s Board of Commissioners Meeting, a recent resident satisfaction award, and more. This is a transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity. Listen to the full interview here.
Andrew Stuckey: We are joined as we are every Tuesday by Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver. Jenn, how are you today?
Jenn Weaver: I am doing pretty well. Thank you. It’s good to be back.
Stuckey: I actually misspoke. We haven’t been joined by you for the last couple of Tuesdays, and one of the reasons that we weren’t joined by you is that you were in Colorado for a conference last week. Let’s start there with any takeaways that you had from that conference.
Weaver: This is my third time attending the national convening for an organization called Local Progress. It’s comprised of self-identified, progressive, locally elected public officials from across the country from jurisdictions of all sizes. There are places represented that are smaller than Hillsborough, all the way up to the biggest cities in the country. It’s a national convening where people come together and talk about issues and policy ideas in the interest of progressive governance. It’s just always a great event to be among other people who I am politically aligned with. We had a good group from the Triangle. There was representation from East Spencer, North Carolina, and Fayetteville as well. It was a good group.
Stuckey: Did you find any takeaways that were worth repeating?
Weaver: I think one of the major takeaways is that this group is really committed and the organization is very committed to centering equity — racial equity especially. It’s probably more than I can describe over the radio, but there are so many different people taking really innovative, creative and determined approaches to this across the country. It’s also true that local government in North Carolina is restricted in all kinds of ways. This comes up a lot in things like housing discussions. Things that are happening in other communities just aren’t possible here in the same way in North Carolina, but it’s a place to pick up ideas. Maybe if we can’t do something exactly the way somebody else does, it is still inspiration and gives ideas for what we might try in a different way here at home.
Stuckey: Speaking of the sort of things that we might try here at home, we had a pretty interesting thing come across the news desk last week that a lot of us ended up getting excited about, and that was this Go Solar Initiative.
Weaver: This is the “Solarize the Triangle” effort that the Triangle J Council of Governments (TJCOG) helped organize. They were the organizers along with the member municipalities of the TJCOG. This is basically a group that offers group discounts for solar in this program. There are participating solar equipment providers. If you participate in the program, then you can get solar panels installed on your home at a discounted rate. There was an earlier effort for this called Solarized Orange several years ago that our household actually participated in, and that’s how we got solar panels on our roof here in Hillsborough. I’m excited to have another more expansive rollout of this that will cover our whole region.
Stuckey: You know, I’ve never actually talked to somebody who has solar panels on their roof about it. I assume that you’re happy with it.
Weaver: Oh yes, we are very happy. It’s really great. We started out actually when we first moved into our house. We have had solar hot water for a long time. In the summertime, we rarely have to turn on our hot water heater. And of course, having the additional panels that we added to our roof through the Solarize the Triangle program is something we have been very satisfied with. The whole reason that Solarize the Triangle and other programs like this are so important is that unfortunately, the way it works in North Carolina is very cost prohibitive for many people. So any opportunity to lower that price tag makes it more available to more homes.
Stuckey: And there were several municipalities in the Triangle area that had signed onto that, including Orange County, Durham County, Chatham County, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough. So pretty much every place seems to be participating. If folks are interested, you should definitely check that out as an opportunity to go a little bit greener and bring down some of your energy costs. I wanted to talk for a minute about the board of commissioners meeting last night. That was the first meeting in a while as we have gone through the summer. I wonder if you have any updates on what went down at that meeting?
Weaver: First of all, it was just great to be back together after the July break. Members from Hillsborough just take off the month of July from our formal meetings. It is nice to be back with my colleagues on the town board and back with staff. It was a somewhat lighter agenda last night, but one of the main things we talked about was a list of board projects. The town board of commissioners is made up of people who really care about the community. Everyone is very enthusiastic about the work and eager to serve our community. So individual board members have ideas, learn about initiatives in other communities, or have things brought to us by constituents that they want us to explore. What happens over the course of time is sometimes these project ideas will be offered out in parts of other conversations. Every now and then we have these check-ins with staff because our staff needs to understand what ideas are just sort of said in passing, and what might be high priority that the board as a whole wants staff to dedicate resources to because their resources are limited and they have a lot on their plate already. It is good to have these check-ins from time to time with this accrued list so that we can weed out things that are maybe just on the wishlist from things we really want to pay closer attention to.
Stuckey: Are there any highlights from that project list? Were there things that you were reminded were urgent, or things that you are particularly excited about?
Weaver: Some of the things on the list have been checked off or are things that we anticipate diving into more when the comprehensive sustainability plan is done. Also, our strategic plan and the strategic planning process were delayed by COVID and other things that came up. However, we are getting back to wrapping up the strategic planning process, plus the comprehensive sustainability plan. It’s somewhat gratifying to see things that are on that list are going to coincide with these bigger umbrella projects we’re already committed to. We will just have to wait on those.
Stuckey: I wanted to take a moment also to talk about the recent resident satisfaction survey that the town won an award for. We haven’t visited since that happened, so I’ll let you celebrate that a little bit.
Weaver: Thank you for bringing that up because really all credit goes to our staff because they do such incredible work. This award was given by the market survey entity that does the community survey for us. The scores came back very high from our community in all sorts of categories that show our constituents are very happy with the services the town provides. Also, they feel that with the taxes they pay, they are getting high benefits and services as part of that. We are just very proud of that and much gratitude for our staff, and for the absolutely stellar job they do providing those services.
Stuckey: Congratulations on that. I believe there were only 18 communities nationwide that received that distinction and Hillsborough and Carrboro were both on there. It was pretty exciting for Orange County.
Weaver: We are really happy to share this honor with our friends in Carrboro.
Stuckey: Thank you, Jenn. We’ll talk again next week.
Weaver: All right, sounds great.
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