“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com.
Vote With Eyes Open
A perspective from Bill Green
I just read the piece on rezoning and have just this past week started seeing yard signs. Having been conceived in Chapel Hill,, graduated from Carolina and returned to Chapel Hill twenty five years ago I care deeply about our town. Rezoning is a very big issue for the future of our town and should be debated and voted on by everyone. Admittedly I do not remember or recall whether rezoning was an issue in the last election. It should have been for those elected leaders pushing it now.
My view is that all politicians (with no known exceptions) represent themselves, not you or me. Therefore, each town council; candidate for the next election should clearly articulate their position on rezoning and let everyone voter know their stance.
No candidate should cloak their positions in alleging a particular developer will be required to set aside some percentage of housing for moderate or low income folks or other false justifications. No one can credibly argue that rezoning does not expressly benefit developers and others who profit on population increases.
Growth may not be wrong but let’s vote knowing every candidate’s position. Much of my adult life has been spent in Houston where there is no zoning. Yes, no zoning. Thus, there have been no restrictions whatsoever on growth, the public schools are generally awful and traffic is a nightmare. But, we should all vote with our eyes open..
“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.
Rezoning was not a primary issue in the last election. However, CM Michael Parker stated directly in public forums that he did not think developers had any obligation to provide community benefits. In addition, some candidates openly said they would accept campaign funds from developers. IMHO, accepting donations from anyone with major business before the council is a conflict of interest and should be treated as such.
We keep equating (re)zoning with the development process. Development is the transformation process, zoning is the pattern of the built world created afterwards, the one that we live in likely for generations. We can say we do or dont want that pattern…but why do we need to keep point fingers at the developers? Is it because the process of change is what we dont like and we cant see past it to what we want to create? Yes, lets all get clear on what we want and dont want including understanding what avoiding change for the sake of avoiding change means…it means what we have today has to meet all our needs in the future. There is no reason to just assume that is true.
How is zoning not a guideline for development? A big issue with Blue Hill’s form-based-code was that it was approved without design guidelines among many other deficiencies. Subsequent town councils have done virtually nothing to fix the code so we now have what one CM said “is a mess”. Moreover, the public through prior small area planning processes (e.g., Central West) repeatedly told the town exactly what it wants from development – what we want to create. Why haven’t those requests been honored?