Every election cycle there are new groups that spring up to engage in the political process. Several cycles ago it was Neighborhoods for Responsible Growth, which continued their advocacy on behalf of a sustainable community. Others, like 2007’s Friends of Affordable Housing, come and go.

This year we have Citizens for Responsible Government. Founded by developer Carol-Ann Zinn (whose Ayden Court development recently failed to proceed through the Town’s approval process), the group’s charter was to “support candidates and policies that promote the responsiveness, efficiency and fiscal health of our local governments.”

Though I’ve worked on improving the responsiveness, cost effectiveness and financial condition of Chapel Hill for over 5 years, it has turned out that many of the key members of CFRG have been steadily promoting the slate of Czajkowski DeHart,Pohlman and Pease from the beginning of this cycle.

That said, their questions raise a number of relevant issues.

All of the candidate responses are here.

CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT CANDIDATE QUESTIONNAIRE 2009 CHAPEL HILL ELECTION

A) Downtown is an asset to our Community. How would you address these issues: panhandling, loitering, safety, parking, pedestrian access, redevelopment.

Panhandling/Loitering

Over the years the term “panhandler” has been broadly applied to a whole range of persons loitering Downtown. It is important to discriminate between the various groups that loiter, panhandle, participate in thuggish and illegal behavior because the solutions for managing potential and real problems caused by each group are different.

I have seen Franklin St. evolve and change over the last 30 years. I worked Downtown for the last eight years. While I, my wife and my son continue to feel safe and welcomed on Franklin St. I well understand the concerns of both the visiting public and the business community.

As far as simple loitering, there are folks that hang out Downtown that cause no problems.
A draconian approach to moving loiterers along will impede our attempts to make Downtown a more accessible and pleasant place for our citizens and visiting public. Loitering used to be the norm on Franklin St. We used to invite the public to “come down” and “hang out” in what was the center of our community. We had benches to sit on, inviting spots to wile away the hours. Those are gone but the need for such public amenities, like a family-friendly pocket park, decent public restrooms, proper signage (like a Downtown directory) and drinking fountains remain.

The Town has passed several panhandling ordinances meant to curtail aggressive panhandling. I am open to reassessing the current ordinances effectiveness and benchmarking their success against other progressive communities approaches.

In my experience, though, it appears that we are not effectively implementing the current ordinances and I would like to make sure we improve our enforcement before adopting strategies that infringe on civil rights.

The most troubling behaviors I have seen on Franklin St., though, involve thuggish and illegal acts.
I have escorted Aveda students to their cars because of the threatening and boorish behavior displayed by a few malingerers. This behavior, in my opinion, verged on the illegal. And what wasn’t illegal was definitely unacceptable.

I am also well aware of illegal acts, like the smearing of excrement at Sugarland, that clearly transgress the law. In both these cases, along with the panhandling issue, visible and vigilant law enforcement are necessary.

While we increased the number of officers working the Downtown beat, made an attempt to reach out and maintain contact with our Downtown business community, the visibility of law enforcement, at least from someone that worked Downtown nearly a decade, has diminished. And in cases, like those at Sugarland, the prosecution of the law has fallen short.

As a Council member I would work with Chief Curran to increase the visibility and vigilance of law enforcement Downtown. I would make sure the Chief and his officers were equipped with the training and legal framework to pursue and curtail illegal behaviors. I would also request regular reviews of progress to make sure that the strategies we adopt to manage issues Downtown are effective and sound.

Safety

As a member of the Town’s new Sustainability Task Force, I attended all of the recent forums to find out what my neighbors, our citizens and other interested parties thought about Chapel Hill. I found it interesting and encouraging that many of the folks participating continued to find Downtown a generally safe venue.

That said, more could be done to increase not only the perception but the reality of a safe Downtown. As I outlined in my response to the panhandling issue, it is important to increase the visibility and vigilance of law enforcement. For one, foot patrols were a common sight on Franklin and Rosemary Streets. They need to be so again.

We also need to make sure that law enforcement has the tools to effectively discharge their duties.
Along those lines, I called for increased resources to train our officers in gang activity recognition and remediation six years ago. At a WCHL community forum on Downtown, then Captain (now assistant Chief) Chris Blue and I discussed the need for better gang awareness, a topic that wasn’t on many citizens radars at the time. In the ensuing years I have continued to press for greater resources to proactively manage this growing problem instead of waiting for a series of additional tragic incidents.
Former Chief Jarvies made a series of recommendations that we have not fully implemented that would enhance the safety, especially of our student population, Downtown late-night. I will work with Chief Curran to help flesh out and apply those recommendations.

There are a number of additional practical and cost effective measures – better lighting, the blue-light safety posts, increased coordination with our Downtown business community – we can make to enhance personal security. As a Council member I will work with our law enforcement professionals, Town staff, the business community and concerned citizens to make sure the best ideas for improving security are not only brought forward but implemented in a fiscally and timely responsible manner.

Pedestrian Access

My focus will primarily be on the “nuts-n-bolts” of pedestrian safety and access.

For instance, the sidewalks along Franklin St. continue to need basic maintenance. Last Fall I rushed forward to catch an elderly woman who had stumbled on one of the many cracks that are in the walkways. She isn’t the only person I’ve observed falling because of the broken infrastructure Downtown.

Why, after years of Streetcape bond improvements, are folks still tripping on Franklin St.?
I believe that while the Council has spent a lot of time, money and effort on high concept revitalization efforts, the “simple” problems of well-lit, safe walk ways has languished. I will take responsibility for making sure that these “simple” problems are addressed.

Another issue I will work is handicap accessibility. While we have taken some steps to improve accessibility along Franklin St., basic improvements along Rosemary have languished. In addition, re-timing of the signals to accommodate wheelchair or other forms of assisted access across our intersections has not been done effectively. The crossing problem has been lingering for years but the majority of Council has not apparently taken a personal interest in making these necessary improvements.

I will champion these and other basic “bread-n-butter” approaches to improving pedestrian, bicycling and other forms of access to Downtown.

Redevelopment

Revitalizing Downtown by redeveloping existing brownfield and commercial venues is an important and necessary process. Redevelopment decisions must be guided by sound fiscal, environmental and social policy. As redevelopment plans that promise enhanced economic or other community benefits are implemented it is just as important that there is not only a firm commitment to follow-up on those promises but to measure the success or failure of policies adopted to encourage this type of growth.

There are a few key projects and improvements we need to help revitalize Downtown. Primary is a consistent and effective policy for managing parking Downtown.

As a member of the Downtown Parking Task force, I helped craft many of the key recommendations for improving visitor’s parking access and experience. A few – like courtesy tickets, more free parking especially during holiday’s, more spaces, moving leased parking off of prime parking lots, etc. – were implemented. A few – like lowering parking fees and shrinking hours of operation – were not only rejected but, as in the case of fees, turned on their head.

A key recommendation of the task force was to form a smaller implementation team of staff, concerned citizens, business partners and the University to roll-out the many pragmatic and practical approaches suggested by the group. As a Council member I will work to create this implementation task force to make parking an attractive feature of Downtown.

While I believe the Town has a role to play in kick-starting redevelopment, I continue to believe that the Lot #5 project is both fiscally irresponsible to our taxpaying public and, as the facts have borne out, poorly designed to achieve the economic and social goals originally set forth.

The University Foundation’s proposed redevelopment of University Square, though, does fulfill many of the stated objectives of the Lot #5 (West140) project. As a Council member I will ask my colleagues to end the Lot #5 project and will encourage them to work with the University to make the University Square project the success we had hoped for on their own wayward project.

From early indications, the University Square project will provide a near doubling of near Downtown public parking, a mix of commercial/office/residential spaces that are affordable along a much wider continuum of the spectrum than the Lot #5 or Greenbridge projects, an integrative commercial element (like a grocery store) that will draw folks in from surrounding neighborhoods and help reconnect Franklin St. to Cameron Ave.

This exciting opportunity should be the progenitor of a type of reasonable, fiscally sound and environmentally responsible growth along Franklin St. – growth that reaches to the future without sacrificing those values we have inherited from the past.

As far as other projects, I will continue to encourage growth Downtown that is human-scale, designed to fit within the current context and which benefits all of our community.

B)Sustainable Tax Base – In year 2008, 80% of the Town’s tax base was residential; 20% was business and commercial and 3% was designated other. Please share your thoughts on how our community can address this existing imbalance.

Five years ago I called upon our Council to create the position of an economic development officer to help our Town create a strategic and tactical plan for attracting and maintaining a vibrant business community. The Council eventually created the position but, in my estimation, has not been utilizing the economic development office in an effective manner.

As an entrepreneur, former chief officer of a multi-million dollar business, I will bring my experience to bear creating a pragmatic framework for expanding our commercial tax base. Working with like-minded Council members, I will call upon the Council to reorganize our approach to economic development and re-target our existing economic development resources to meet the challenges before us.

Key to that effort is the work of the Sustainability Task force, of which I am a current member. The task force will be identifying brownfield and commercial zones that are ripe for redevelopment. We will be assessing strategies to encourage jobs growth within these new commercial corridors. Hopefully, we will also be discussing how to streamline and regularize the development process so that folks wanting to do business within Chapel Hill will have known guidelines to adhere to and predictable outcomes for following the rules.

Irrespective of that task force’s work, as a Council member, I will bring my business acumen to the problem of growing our commercial tax base in a socially, environmentally and sustainably responsible fashion that, while honoring those values citizens of Chapel Hill hold dear, will also move our Town’s tax base to a more equitable foundation.

C)Responsible Government/Development Review Process – Please comment on the current development review process, including the selection, composition and role of advisory boards and commissions.

Over the last 5 years I have pressed our Town government to make the development process more accessible to both the development community and to our citizens.

Elements of that new accessibility involve better information flows, predictability in outcomes, honoring existing Chapel Hill values while addressing new economic demands, transparency in the decision-making process and intensive efforts to foster community involvement early within the process.

Beyond that, we must make sure that the positive and negative trade-offs inherent with any development are clearly identified, clearly advertised and clearly followed-up on. In the last few years, the public has been promised great benefits from select projects without an equivalent pledge to measure, objectively, the promised benefits years hence. Without follow-up study, the Council and community are left unsure of the consequences of our current policies.

New technologies allow us to better track the progress of projects as they move through the pipeline, to better integrate public feedback and concerns and to regularize the process so that the outcome of meeting required zoning regulations becomes much more predictable.

In terms of these necessary structural and process improvements, not a lot has been done. One encouraging development, though, was Neighborhoods for Responsible Growth (NRG) recently joining with me in calling for an online development project tracking system so that the public had improved access to information and existing milestones in ongoing projects. Unfortunately, there is no current Council member taking ownership of these required process enhancements.

As a Council member, I will work with our staff, concerned citizens and citizen groups, the business community and their representatives, in implementing structural changes to make the development process more “user friendly” for all involved. A “user-friendly” process, to be clear, is not a rubber stamp for development, but a guarantee that all involved stakeholders are playing on a level field.

As a member or former member of several advisory committees (Technology Board, Horace Williams Citizens Committee, Downtown Parking Task Force, Sustainability Task Force) and as a citizen engaging many of the advisory boards our Town has (for one, the previous Citizen Budget Board), I am quite appreciative and thankful for the talented folks that contribute many hours to improving our community.

There are occasional problems in staffing or managing these groups.

For instance, I was one of the first persons to call into question the charge and membership of the Sustainability Committee. Originally, the charge seemed quite narrow – where to build dense development in Chapel Hill – compared to the advertised intent of establishing a vision of sustainable growth over the next 10 years. The Mayor and Council agreed and has granted the task force the capability to expand that charge. In addition, the task force was not representative of Chapel Hill. I was also first among others in calling for a more representative balance of citizenry in the task force’s membership. Through aggressive recruiting, the task force recently brought on 6 new members that more accurately reflect today’s Chapel Hill to better balance to discussion.

As lucky as we are in staffing a number of these groups, the Council needs to do a much better job in recruiting folks outside current pool on interested candidates. Not only should we recruit for talented individuals who can share their expertise but also look to dissenter – that don’t agree with current policy – in order to broaden and strengthen the array of policy choices.

Bringing in a disparate view not only will break up the current trend of consolidating power amongst a small pool of well-liked individuals sympathetic to Council’s current goals but will also provide a reality check on what are taken to be core assumptions. Freshening the perspective, encouraging the best possible outcomes irrespective of the Council’s current policy, should be the goal of our advisory board system. As such, as a Council member I will seek a broad range of members – especially those I would not necessarily agree with – in order to promote thoughtful and reality based policy.

Responsible Government /Cost of local government – How do you think the Town of Chapel Hill can reduce operational costs? What areas will you focus on to contain the budget for local government?

As a member of the Town’s Technology Board, I worked alongside other technology and entrepreneurial experts in recommending a series of cost reducing measures that the Town eventually implemented.

As part of that effort, we emphasized that the Town needed to review basic operational processes and benchmark the cost/reward profiles against established equivalent business processes. While government is often constrained in adopting particular reasonable and effective business practices, there are a wide range of daily operational activities that are amenable to improved efficiencies using proven approaches. Within the technology realm, the Technology Board felt that hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional savings were possible.

As a Council member I would bring our citizenry’s expertise to bear on identifying cost efficiencies within our Town’s operations.

Primarily, I would, as I have the last 4 years, call for the creation of a standing Citizens Budget Board to independently review the cost structure, expenditures and operational aspects of the Town’s budget. As a citizen, I participated in making recommendations through this board that were eventually adopted by our Council.

I know that without an independent review, the Council is left too often with either shading or ignoring budget realities. Unlike many locales, Chapel Hill is blessed with many financially adept individuals that would be more than happy to help us make sure we are providing services in a cost effective fashion. We should actively solicit the best advice we can get from both the general public and UNC’s incredible roster of financially adept talent.

Over the years I have challenged the Town to incorporate practical cost cutting measures – like reducing fuel costs through a real “green” fleet initiative – that won’t impact bottom line delivery of service.

Other than technology enhancements, reductions in operational expenditures, there is a need to face the challenges created by our debt service.

Debt service has skyrocketed the last few years as various bonds have been discharged. In addition, reserves have been reduced due to political and other expediencies. Restoring our reserves and managing our debt service are key to the Town’s continued fiscal viability. Along with the current obligations, the largest unknown fiscal liability, the Town’s Lot #5 project, with at least $8 million in taxpayer dollars committed (with another $2-5M easily foreseeable), riskiness needs to be clearly defined.

Citizens deserve an honest assessment of the current and future budget outlook . Along those lines, as a Council member, I will follow up on my commitment to issue a quarterly “report card” of the Town’s fiscal health. This report will be the unvarnished facts and represent the most realistic prognosis of the Town’s fiscal condition. I believe that our citizens, forewarned, will rise to the challenge of helping Council build a financially sound foundation for sustainable operations.

Finally, as unpopular as it might be with staff, I am renewing my commitment to bring salaries, benefits and bonuses more in-line with the experience of Chapel Hill’s taxpayers. Our taxpayers pay more of their salary for health-care, they often work for companies that use merit-based approaches to reward excellence and they understand that performance is the yard stick that they are going to be judged upon. We have wonderful staff that deserve decent wages, the best health-care that is fiscally prudent and a bonus mechanism that rewards performance. The current system is not reflective of those qualities and needs to be reformed.

There is a role for government in our lives, there are programs – notably human service and human service grants – that need more dollars than we spend today. We need to accommodate those growing needs while keeping the lid on other costs.

As Chapel Hill’s tax bite grows year after year, as the attempt to move the burden off of homeowners’ shoulders lags, it is absolutely crucial that every dollar Council raises is spent in the most effective manner possible. For over 7 years I have been a diligent participant in the Town’s budget process. I have consistently challenged adoption of policies that have high upfront costs with no commitment to measure returns. I have provided recommendations, which have been adopted, that have already saved our taxpayer dollars.

As a member of the Town Council I will continue that role of challenging our government to provide the highest level of services without breaking the bank.