Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda - 10-17-1995 - XI-1 Stoney Creek Appts1 ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT Meeting Date: October 17, 1995 Action Agenda Item #� - I SUBJECT: APPOINTMENT TO STONEY CREEK SMALL AREA PLAN WORK GROUP DEPARTMENT: COUNTY MANAGER PUBLIC HEARING: YES _X -NO ATTACHMENT(S): INFORMATION CONTACT: - Stoney Creek Neighborhoods Map County Manager, Ext. 2300 - 9 -14 -95 Meeting Minutes TELEPHONE NUMBERS: Hillsborough - 732 -8181 Chapel Hill - 967 -9251 Durham - 688 -7331 Mebane - 227 -2031 PURPOSE: To consider appointment of an additional member to the Stoney Creek Basin Small Area Plan Work Group. BACKGROUND: On December 5, 1994, the Orange County Board of Commissioners adopted the following charge: "To prepare a land use plan, including recommendations for implementation, for the Stoney Creek Basin Planning Area southeast of the town of Hillsborough." A Planning Group composed of neighborhood representatives, elected and appointed officials, and three "at- large" members was formed. The group currently has 21 members and 7 alternates and has met 8 times since March. Discussion at the August 17 and September 14 meetings of the work group revealed that there is a significant and important group that hasn't been represented because of the way neighborhood boundaries were drawn. This is the Bumphus Road .Muclu L11:' l.L1C P1GW 1'1111 AL ca • V . James Bumphus has attended approximately half of the Stoney Creek meetings and has a strong interest in the plan and what it may eventually mean for his community. It has been requested by the work group that Mr. Bumphus be added. RECOMMENDATION: The Administration recommends the appointment of Mr. James Bumphus to the Stoney Creek Work Group to either neighborhood or "at- large" status as the Board may decide. so AMR Q ,Q1 . 0 t Val GED p Imago 11 son m IN WT/J�y' Al. Me 3 1' 11 STONEY CREEK BASIN SMALL AREA PLANNING GROUP SEPTEMBER 14, 1995 The Stoney Creek Small Area Planning Group met on Thursday, September 14, 1995 at 7:30 PM in the EMS facility training room, New Hope Church Road, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Members Present: Lee Rafalow, Judson Edeburn, Bob Strayhorn, David Yelton, Steve Price, Curtis Bane, Michael Warner, Dean Zehnder, Elio Soldi, Bob Hall, Meg McKean, Bill Bracey, and Renee Price. Members Absent: Bobby Nicholson, Trudy Cuffe, Gary Hanker, Dan Teichman, Keith Cook, Clint Burklin, Dr. Stephen Halkiotis, and Don Willhoit. Facilitator Present: Verla Insko. Staff Present: County Manager John Link and Planners Gene Bell and Emily Cameron. Visitors: James Bumphus, Frank Bumphus, Harold Daye, Sr. and Dan Dunbar. CALL TO ORDER AND ANNOUNCEMENTS - Verla Insko called the meeting to order and asked if there were any announcements. Dan Dunbal- said he had recently moved to area and lives on Bumphus Road. He asked why representatives) for Bumphus Road could not be elected or- appointed: Verla Insko said the Commissioners had decided not to expand the group and did not want to revisit that decision. David Yelton said the problem is not that the whole area is —not -- - represented, but rather that there seems to have been a breakdown in communication. He suggested that representation already in place for this area should get in touch better. Gene Bell said this was the purpose of the newsletters sent to neighborhood representatives and alternates for distribution. He indicated he had had phone calls indicating that distribution was not everywhere, however. Harold Daye stated that discussion at the last meeting seemed to indicate it wouldn't be a problem to get a representative from Bumphus Road. 1 4 Verla Insko said this committee didn't have the authority to make appointments; that was the responsibility of the Commissioners. Meg McKean said the map of Stoney Creek neighborhoods was confusing. She said the map chops everything up into pieces and some of the pieces were un- natural. Verla Insko said the group was about half -way through the planning process and the sense she got from the Commissioners was that people could come to meetings and through their representatives or themselves make their concerns known; but the Commissioners had chosen not to change the makeup of committee right now. Elio Soldi said the opinion of the Planning Group at the last meeting seemed to be strongly in favor of additional representation. He asked Insko is she would entertain an. official request to the Commissioners if the committee did not think it disruptive and found it advisable. Verla Insko said she believed an official request had been made and the Commissioners had declined to put it on their agenda indicating they did not want to add any more members to the committee. Judd Edeburn said he thought in terms of consensus, a mechanism was needed that would satisfy a group that may have concerns about' representation; some way for input so that when the group comes up with a recommendation, as many folks as possible can buy into it because they' feel a part of it. Verla Insko said she agreed. Lee Rafalow asked what the group was going to do about the fact that people on Bumphus road did not feel that they were being adequately represented. Elio Soldi said if the group intended to make a recommendation that had any chance of being adopted and implemented, everybody needed to be included. He said there seemed— to—be__.a_ strong feeling that people in the community long before he was there, who had a history in the community, and did not feel represented posed a great problem. He strongly recommended opening the process to admitting a representative from Bumphus Road. He felt that there was clear evidence that as long as a group in the community did not feel represented, anything the Planning Group did would be secondary. He said the Bumphus Road residents could express their concerns to committee members or come to meetings and express them, but that was not the same as being part of the committee and that feeling seemed to be important. Bob Hall asked if the group could not re- affirm its previous consensus that Bumphus Road had an official recommendation and request that it be passed back to the Commissioners indicating that 2 9 it wasn't a "willy - nilly," last minute type of thing, but something the group had taken time to think about and felt it was very relevant. David Yelton said that without further discussion, he wouldn't be able to go along with consensus on that. Bob Strayhorn said it was unfortunate that the commissioners left early when this issue was discussed at the August meeting. He felt they would have looked at it differently if they had been there. He said it wasn't like James Bumphus and his brother and brother - in -law have not been involved, because this was the fourth or fifth meeting he had seen them at. He said they were concerned enough to be there and that half of the members who have been appointed stay away. He thodght it was a good opportunity to get some long- standing members of the community involved who were willing to be involved. He said if the Commissioners were not sensitive to that, then everyone needed to go home. David Yelton said he he wasn't out to reject someone, but was concerned what it represented. Lee Rafalow speculated that there were two reasons the Commissioners may not want to consider this. The first was continuity in the group and he agreed that people who participate. need to have all the information. He said he would argue that James Bumphus had been to as many meetings as some formal representatives and for that reason his appointment would not be disruptive. The other reason the Commissioners might not want to do additional appointments is it raises whole specter of participation to anyone who has an interest in the process. He said he had advocated early on that everyone should be able to participate, but felt the process was too far along now and that continuity was needed. He said if the group could express to the Commissioners that there was a way to improve the representative aspect of the group and that continuity was not lost because James Bumphus had been a participant, then the problem could be solved without opening a can of worms. Elio Soldi said he agreed with Lee Rafalow that this was an exceptional case. He didn't think other groups would be asking for membership and felt that a strong case could be made to the Commissioners that this would not disrupt the process. David Yelton said he intended no disrespect to the people from Bumphus Road, but asked if people had been attending meetings, why was the connection never made that there was a representative for that geographic area? Harold Daye responded that no one ever said anything. The only thing they ever heard was Stoney Creek; there was no indication that Bumphus Road was included. 3 n. Meg McKean said there were four Stoney Creeks - the creek, a subdivision, a proposed development named Stoney Creek Farms, and the whole area. She thought that when the term "Stoney Creek" was used, the whole area was being referred to. Bob Strayhorn made a motion that the group ask the County Commissioners to reconsider appointing a member from Bumphus Road and requested that Mr. Link deliver this request to the Commissioners. Bill Bracey seconded the motion. David Yelton asked how many people were being talked about in the Bumphus Road area and /or was the group talking about somebody represented by large land holders in the area. He suggested maybe it was just a matter of shifting who spoke for that group. He asked if the group was talking about a group of people or a chunk of land that needed to be represented. Bob Strayhorn said they were talking about a community. Dan Dunbar added they were 'talking about a historic community composed of people, land, and kinship patterns; land that amounts to roughly 100 acres and represents historic continuity. John Link said the discussion of the last 15 minutes had become much more focused and positive and as he understood it, they were talking about a community that may have been represented geographically, but did not feel like they were represented as a community.,.He felt that it was a very legitimate message to send back to the Commissioners that way. A community historically present in this area that did not feel like they had been represented by the previous appointments. He said if they could agree on one person to represent the community, he would be glad to carry that to the Commissioners and felt that in that context, they probably wouldn't have any trouble making an appointment. David Yelton asked the size of the Bumphus Road community. James Bumphus responded that there were twelve houses on Bumphus - -Road. David Yelton asked if they had been getting the newsletter? He said it seemed like it had just been a miscommunication. Meg McKean said that Michael Warner represents Bumphus Road as people and Bob Strayhorn represented them as landowners. David Yelton said it seemed they had two representatives already. Michael Warner said there were a lot of people on the group who didn't come to meetings and here we had a group that did come, that wanted to be on it, that wanted to contribute, and that was the point to him. 4 7 Dan Dunbar added that they were a community, a unique community. He thought the planning group had an opportunity to improve their power as a group. Bob Strayhorn said he was absolutely right. Verla Insko said the group needed to have consensus on this before sending it to the Commissioners. Meg McKean said she thought the problem stemmed from the original drawing of neighborhood lines. Verla Insko asked if there were additional comments. David Yelton said he would go along with a proposal to the Commissioners telling them of the group's dilemma and that they wanted to have everyone who had something to offer to the committee and particularly people who had a community or historical base. He thought it needed to be explained to them where the problem came from, i.e., that it was a miscommunication, a misunderstanding of the lines of representation and then let the Commissioners make the recommendation back to the group. Bob Strayhorn asked if his motion had been out of order. The group responded that it had not. David Yelton said the group was still in a discussion mode. He said as part of that discussion, he thought it would be a better recommendation to the Commissioners than just saying we want a representative for this group of families. Verla Insko indicated that this ,was one of the dilemmas of consensus building. When you had consensus, motions are sort of a formality., She asked-Yelton how he would frame a recommendation to the Commissioners. David Yelton said he would say that the group had found that there was a significant and important group in the Stoney Creek Basin that had not had proper representation because of misinterpretation of the bounds of the districts and would like to incorporate them. He suggested the group should leave it to the Commissioners to decide how that would be done. Bob Hall asked David Yelton if he felt like the group was setting a precedent. He questioned Yelton's reluctance to support an issue on which there seemed to be consensus. David Yelton said consensus had been thrown out by several people, but there were people on the group he hadn't heard from regarding opening up the representation question again. He indicated there could be other areas that would say they didn't feel represented and wanted more representatives. He said the point was that there F". E had been representation; it had just been misconstrued and needed to be corrected. He said that everyones' opinions needed to be expressed if consensus was to mean something at the end of the process, but now that the group was at this juncture, he didn't know if there was a perfect way to do it. Elio Soldi observed that David Yelton seemed to be concerned that there was representation, but it had not been properly communicated and he seemed reluctant to send a message to the Commissioners that the group thought that representation was not there to begin with. He said the point was to solve what seemed to be an impasse. He stated that a large number of people seemed to understand that for this community, representation meant to be able to speak directly and to be part directly of the planning group. Soldi continued that they had participated far more than some representatives and he didn't see why Yelton could not understand the importance for the group to convey to the Commissioners what they felt. Verla Insko asked if someone could make a proposal back to David Yelton that would address h'is concerns about setting a precedent. Lee Rafalow said the fact that James Bumphus had been to more meetings than many of the representatives who were official participants should allay concerns about it being disruptive to the progress of the group (assuming James Bumphus was appointed). If, James Bumphus wasn't the one appointed, then concerns about new participants not having the background to participate was a legitimate concern. Rafalow said if wording was to the effect that there was a community that hadn't been adequately represented and there was a solution that was not disruptive, he felt it would deal with the-,potential for any kind of precedent setting. David Yelton said his question to the Commissioners was should Bumphus Road be represented as land holders or as so many families. Lee Rafalow said that appointments to the group fell into three categories: 1) representatives of an arbitrarily drawn district line (in some cases less arbitrary than others) ,• 2) people who were appointed because they have long- standing interests or were recognized by the commissioners as being a particularly valuable addition to the group; and 3) people who were active in other committees of the County's set of advisory panels. He said it didn't matter to him how somebody got appointed to this group; the fact of the matter was there was a group that felt unrepresented because the arbitrary lines didn't recognize the standing of their community. Verla Insko said they had three things: 1) this is a neighborhood; 2) the group believes that it has not been adequately represented; and 3) Mr. James Bumphus has come to these meetings and he has provided continuity. She asked the group if they wanted to recommend to the Commissioners that James Bumphus be appointed as 0 Ai a new neighborhood representative. David Yelton asked if they could be incorporated under large land holders. Verla Insko said she thought large land owners was being confused with at -large representatives, a mix up of terms. She said the question was would they be appointed as at- large, or as representatives of their neighborhood. David Yelton indicated he thought the decision should be left up to the Commissioners. Bob Strayhorn said he thought he had made a motion that was clear and he thought he heard the County Manager say he understood the group's intent and that he would deliver it to the Commissioners. He said he was satisfied with that and felt that it would get the group back on the agenda and satisfy the Bumphus family too. James Bumphus said that was correct. Verla Insko said she thought the group had consensus and the Commissioners could decide the question of neighborhood or at -large representation. John Link said if Insko could summarize the three points mentioned earlier, without raising the question about type of appointment, he thought it would be pretty easy to carry to the Commissioners. Verla Insko summarized as follows: 1) We have a defined neighborhood that has not been represented on this group; 2) there has been a member of this neighborhood who has been a fairly consistent. attendee;. and 3) the planning group requests that an appointment from that neighborhood be made. 7