Here is what a new Council could do:

• Enforce our tree ordinance and apply existing buffer regulations.
• Reinstate single family zoning because it does not create affordable housing in a college town.
• Start listening to individuals, petitions from hundreds of people, and advisory boards. This Town COunil put them on the chopping block. See 02/15/23 Town Council meeting.
• Stop building parking decks – such as the one downtown that is 2 times the original cost of 24 million, as well as $9 million dollars over budget, the one here at Aura, and buildings and more decks along 15-501 without a transit plan to relieve traffic congestion.
• Find new transit solutions. Relying on the adopted Complete Communities framework to solve traffic problems won’t work: commuters to RTP will not ride e-bikes, nor will incoming hospital employees. While building greenways for recreation is needed, building them for commuter transport is not practical or financially viable.
•  Stop depending on external consultants. Chapel Hill no longer has an in-house engineering department to review plans. The Keesmaat Group, was paid $412, 801.12 for a “complete community study” and a “planning systems review”. All we learned was that density, transit and parks are integral to good development. See official tally of funds spent in pdf below.
• Approve permits for real affordable housing. The Town talks a great affordable housing game but continues to displace affordable rentals while producing thousands of luxury apartments. There are nearly 9,000 units in the pipeline, less than 10% of them are affordable units.
• Follow plans that are made with extensive input from the public. Most are not followed: Ephesus Road Small Area Plan, Central West plan for Estes Drive and MLK, and the 2013 Chapel Hill Parks Plan.
• Restore citizen public’s right to comment on the fast track code for Blue Hill and has been unwilling to fix the Form Based Code (FBC) ever since. Seven other NC communities with FBC hold public hearings projects. We could do the same,
• Use the conditional use permit as it was intended – to drive a hard bargain with developers to get the kid of development we want and need.
• Protect the Town’s three historic districts.  Even the General Assembly’s bill protected them from preemptive zoning changes.

• Reverse plan to build office buildings and housing in the future on the coal ash site. The experts advise that nothing be built unless all of the coal ash is first removed.