April 19, 2008

This week consisted of only a few non-staff meetings but they addressed key issues. Other notable events this week allowed me two, once in a lifetime, encounters with certain infamous individuals.

On Tuesday evening the Cary Town Council met with the Board of Education. The meeting was set up by the board to host Cary, Morrisville, and Fuquay councils to meet and discuss issues. The board presented three main issues: 1) the status of the 2006 project in the capital improvement program, 2) review of the ten step real estate acquisition process, and 3) the future site selection and reassignment planning. Since the Cary council was there almost in its entirety and other councils were sparsely represented, Cary officials dominated the questions and discussion. Most of the Cary questions and comments came from Erv Portman and Don Frantz. Erv framed most of the school board problems as capacity and funding issues. Don’s questions and comments centered mostly on reassignment, busing, and building renovations. Additional discussion topics included taxing authority, bonds, and future funding options. It is my opinion that this meeting was a success. We asked that the school board hold another meeting like this in the future.

On Wednesday I attended the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Transportation Advisory Commission meeting (CAMPO TAC). The vision of this group is to create a multi-modal transportation network that is compatible with our growth, sensitive to the environment, improves quality of life and is accessible to all. This particular meeting included items on CAMPO’s Legislative Agenda. One of agenda items asks for permission to levy a half cents sales tax to pay for transportation needs in the region. If approved by the general assembly that will still leave several questions for CAMPO TAC to answer like: How is the money going to be distributed? What formula is going to be used in determining what is equitable? I expressed Cary’s desire to have input in both of these processes and that these processes were of critical importance to gaining support of the funding initiative.

Thursday’s most notable event was attending the Obama talk at the NC State fairgrounds. I was very impressed with Obama’s delivery and ability to think on his feet during the question and answer period. I was fortunate enough to meet him and have a picture made after his talk. He graciously spent a lot of time talking and having pictures made with several elected officials from the area including congressman and local government officials.

The Cary council held their second bi-monthly breakfast on Friday. We discussed several issues of importance the first of which was road maintenance. My concern, shared by the rest of the council, is that Cary has roads below standards that are state maintained rather than town maintained. So the decision we need to make is whether or not to repair state maintained roads to keep our roads at a certain standard. We directed the town manager to have staff bring us a report on this cost. Council will then prioritize these roads and work with DOT on potential cost sharing for the highest priority roads. I agreed to meet with state board of transportation members that represent Cary area roads. This may be followed by a meeting with DOT officials and staff and possibly include members of the legislative delegation. We may also decide to work with other municipalities facing similar problems.

Another topic discussed at the breakfast was the potential of partnering with Chatham County on a business park. Some Chatham County commissioners have expressed past interest in this but do not want Cary annexing into Chatham County. A business park in Chatham County will require water and sewer from Cary. Cary does not normally provided water to a business without having them annexed into the town. We will have to approach Chatham County to see if there is any interest in pursuing this in the near future.

The council also discussed several other topics at the breakfast such as defining exactly what “revenue neutral” means and providing that definition to the public. In addition, we discussed the need to have a community visioning process. That is, Cary’s real estate is 90% accounted for so how are we planning to grow in the future? We want this visioning process to include every aspect of community building (land use plans, public safety, environment, open space, parks and recreation, roads/transportation/transit, schools, etc). Staff will present a report on this at a June Planning and Development meeting outlining a process on how to proceed.

On Saturday I had the pleasure to attend the USTA National Campus Championship held at the Cary Tennis Center. In attendance was tennis legend Billie Jean King. It was and honor and a privilege to meet her and discuss how we can bring the next level of tennis competition to the Cary Tennis Center. She believed it was a great facility but with a few changes could attract world class events. Cary’s staff will be looking at costs associated with any such changes and will report them in the future. BTW, the University of Texas beat out the University of California Berkley in the finals. It was a fantastic event to watch.

Well that’s about all for this week. I hope to post next week on Saturday, April 26th.