Durham People's Alliance Newsletter

Aug / Sept, 2009
 
In This Issue
1. Questions for City Council / Mayor Candidates
2. PA-PAC Endorsement Meeting -- 9/1/09
3. Where Does PA's Money Go?
4. Jordan Lake -- Environment be Damned?
4. Dry Cleaner Solvent Hazards


Quick Links...
www.durhampa.org


Join Our Mailing List
   
What Would You Have to Know to Run for City Council ?

Do you daydream -- or think more seriously -- about running for a local elected office?   What issues would you have to learn about (or what go-to people would you have to identify who know particular issues)?    PA-PAC's questionnaire to this year's City Council and Mayoral candidates will give you an idea of what issues some PA members think it is important for elected officials to be able to address.  Yes, it's a long list - there's a lot at stake in local city and county government!   (If your question isn't here, be sure to connect with us next election cycle!). 

Questions for 2009 City Council and Mayoral Candidates

1) What should the city of Durham do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

2) Local, state and federal organizations all plan to increase rail service to Durham. What is your perspective on these initiatives, and what should the city do to prepare for the impact of increased rail service?

3) What is your position on the proposed half-cent sales tax to support transit in the Triangle Area? Should Durham have this tax?

4) What is your perspective on the JordanLake watershed and 751 assemblage issues? Where would you draw the JordanLake watershed line and why?

5) When should it be appropriate for the planning director or his staff to change zoning boundary lines administratively?

6) Explain why you believe Durham ordinances and state laws and rules protecting lakes, rivers and streams are (circle one): a) too strict. b) just right. c) not strict enough. If you circled (a) or (c), please list the changes you would make.

7) Under what circumstances would you vote to rezone a parcel of land in a way that reduces its market value?

8) Do you favor or oppose city financial incentives for private development projects (past examples include the American Tobacco Campus and WestVillage). Of the several planned projects, which would you support with city incentives or co-dependent capital expenditures (like parking structures, landscaping on city property, or street construction)? Why?

9) Would you vote to change Durham's ordinances regulating billboards? If your answer is yes, explain how you would change them and why.

10) Cut $4,000,000 from the city's 2009-2010 budget. Show us where in the budget document your cuts would fall and explain your decisions.

11) A bill that would authorize cities to work with the State Board of Elections to develop their own public campaign financing program ("Voter Owned Elections") has been introduced in the General Assembly. Funding would come from the municipalities, not from the state. Would you support the adoption of this legislation to allow a public campaign financing program for Durham's municipal elections?  Why or why not?

12) How can the city of Durham use federal stimulus dollars to create sustainable, family-wage jobs and increase home ownership in Durham? Describe specific elements of programs the city should create to make the most of the stimulus money for Durham's citizens.

13) What can the city of Durham do to help citizens get the most from the recent changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit regulations?

14) If you are an incumbent, briefly state why you should be re-elected. If you are a challenger, briefly explain why you would do a better job than the incumbent.

15) What is your position on enforcement of immigration policies by local Durham law enforcement personnel through the 287(g) and/or Secure Communities arrangements with Federal immigration authorities? 

16) Do you support the proposed legislation that would allow NC public employees to bargain collectively with their employer? 

Call or email Dave Austin:   682-7777;  or,  durhampa@mindspring.com 


9/1/09 Democracy in Action - the PA-PAC Candidate Endorsement Meeting.     

Although a PA-PAC committee has interviewed City Council and Mayoral candidates, and reviewed the candidates' responses to our questionnaire, the decision of whom PA will endorse rests entirely with the membership.   If you're a PA member, you can - no, you should! --  be a part of this process.  The PA-PAC committee will summarize the candidates' questionnaire and interview responses and bring that information to the 9/1/09 PA endorsement meeting

Place:  St. Luke's Episcopal Church; 
               1737 Hillandale Rd.;   (Hillandale & I85)
Time:    7:00 PM)   

All PA members and new supporters may attend and debate --  only current (paid-up)  PA members can vote (although if you're a lapsed member, you can pay at the door, re-establish your membership, and vote).  


Where Does the Money Go?

PA Chapter  membership is a relatively low-cost mechanism for helping the progressive Durham political community continue its many missions.   The PA Chapter needs your membership support, and, if you've been a member in the past, we may have recently asked you to renew your support of PA. 

You may have also received a solicitation from PA-PAC.   "What's up?" you may have wondered - "why does PA need all this money right now?"  

Remember that PA-PAC is a political action committee.   It must - independently from the PA chapter - raise all the money it spends in the upcoming election campaign.   It costs a significant chunk of money to mail to 5-10,000 targeted Durham households (and pay for a little bit of staff time) --  but that's one of the ways that will help good candidates get elected.

Thanks for supporting both our organization-building and our election campaign efforts. 


Jordan Lake -- City-County Planning Commission sends a powerful environmental message -- will it go unheeded? 

On August 12th, the Durham City-County Planning Commission listened to environmental and neighborhood advocates and agreed that it's a bad idea to accept a private developer's survey to dictate land-use decisions in rural DurhamCounty.   The Commission voted 12-0 to reject a change to Durham's zoning and Comprehensive Plan based on that survey.   That non-binding opinion now goes to the Durham County Commission for its ultimate decision at its Sept 14th meeting. 

A PA and neighborhood activist, Tom Miller, offered the CountyCommission a way out of the re-zoning morass occasioned by the practice of measuring boundaries as a fixed radius from the water's edge.  Instead, Miller argued, the city and county could and should tie the buffers to readily identifiable and hard-to-dispute landmarks like property lines, ridgelines and roads. 

However, if reports in the local press are accurate, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that County Commissioners will listen to this argument, or the argument that the County isn't going to increase its positive tax flow through more residential development, since cost-of-community studies in the Triangle have shown that residential developments cost more than $1.40 in taxpayer-funded services for every tax dollar contributed by those developments. 

Instead it appears that CountyCommissioners who support the boundary change will argue that the development will bring so many jobs that the environmental impacts costs (now estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars) will be outweighed - despite the fact that the developer's job estimates have not been carefully scrutinized and compared with those environmental costs. 

There's still time to make your views known to our County Commissioners.   Then attend the critical meeting:

Sept 14th;   7:00 PM;   200 East Main


Do you know where your dry-cleaners' solvents end up?

Two PA members, Elizabeth Jezierski and Dave Austin, attended a July 14 NC House Judiciary committee meeting of proponents and opponents of Senate Bill 700, which amends the 1997 Dry Cleaning Solvent Act.   The issue is "perc",  the primary solvent used by many dry cleaning businesses.  Perchloroethylene, or perc, contaminates groundwater, seeps as a gas into buildings and is suspected to cause cancer.   Other PA members have been active in publicizing concerns about a former dry cleaning site in Durham at 1103 W. Club Blvd.   Perc has been detected in the groundwater beneath that building, which has, in the past,  housed a dry cleaners, a BB&T bank and, most recently, a church. The city condemned the building after DENR found "unacceptable" levels of perc in the air; however, church members may had been exposed to the chemical for as long as two years. The building is now vacant.  

The legislative history and objective is long and tortuous, however, the Indy recently had a great summary, including exchanges between industry representatives and the main community advocacy group, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL).   Read all about it at:

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A397971&cb=09c25b1108a6ef1165653d330c330330#comments

     
Sincerely,
 

Durham People's Alliance
1821 Green Street, Suite 102
Durham, NC 27705
durhampa@mindspring.com