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A Few Questions About the 203 Project
A perspective from Diane Robertson
When I first heard about building a library in Carrboro many years ago, I envisioned a library. I questioned the need, given the excellent library in Chapel Hill that is also on a bus route, but I certainly did not expect this.
The scale and scope of this project deserved discernment, vision, and an implementation process that included the community and stakeholders who represent a cross-section of the community of 20000+ residents.
The town met in March 2020 and approved a 23 million dollar project, when they returned in March 2022, after two years of lockdown, it was a 42 million dollar project with costs that are almost certain to rise.
It was stunning to think that this was agreed to during a period of virtual meetings with limited public involvement.
The town is hosting a virtual public debt financing hearing on April 5th. There is a groundbreaking date of May 2022 AFTER over a million in taxpayer dollars has been spent on consulting, design, and engineering studies-sunk costs. Just a few questions that come to mind:
- How will this impact the financing of other priorities such as affordable housing and climate change mitigations that have been identified by those elected to Carrboro Town Council?
- Though this is a fine-looking building, is this in line with the architectural profile of the town?
- Will the entire building be usable on day one after completion?
- What is the impact on the residents in the vicinity?
- What do the downtown merchants think?
- How will the scale of this construction, over several years, impact their business?
- Do we think that another concrete parking deck enhances our downtown? How much will the parking deck cost?
- Were other building locations considered that would have accommodated the multi-use structure this ballooned into from its beginnings as a library?
- How does the Council justify using six million dollars of town reserves?
This is not about whether there is a library to serve Southern Orange County — this is about governance, decision-making, and fiscal responsibility.
The Council should welcome accountability to those who are expected to support their actions. It is disappointing that the opportunity to build consensus and buy-in was lost with this project. Let’s work for win-win solutions in our communities.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
There are some good questions in this viewpoint, most of which (if not all) were discussed and answered during the decades since the construction of a library in downtown Carrboro was first proposed and the years of extensive public engagement that took place during site selection, site development, and development of construction plans.
I’d love to learn more about this. It seems as though the town of Carrboro should consider adding more information on proposals, projects, budgets, impact reports, and the like to the town website to assist with transparency.