WEEKLY SUMMER EDITION
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A Century of Editorial Freedom
BMH Est. 1893
Volume 101, Issue 44
Mayor: Meal tax ‘unlikely’
By Kelly Ryan
Associate Editor
If the Chapel Hill Town Council opts
to abandon a 1-percent meal tax, the
local restaurant community has pledged
to join forces with the town to develop
a more acceptable solution for raising
money earmarked for downtown im
provements.
The proposed meal tax would be
levied on all food and beverages sold
for immediate consumption, which
would include most items bought in
restaurants. The legislation currently is
stalled in the Senate Local Government
Committee until the council decides
whether to push the legislation through
Kuralt charms audience with childhood stories
By Yi-Hsin Chang
Editor
N.C. native and 1955 UNC graduate
Charles Kuralt, host of “CBS Sunday
Morning,” entertained more than 300
University and community members
with memories of his early childhood
during a free lecture in Hanes Art Cen
ter Auditorium last Friday.
Kuralt was in town to receive the
1993 North Caroliniana Society Award,
which honors North Carolinians who
have made great contributions to the
state’s cultural heritage.
Because Kuralt’s younger brother
Wallace Kuralt, owner of the Intimate
Bookshop, was to be the keynote speaker
at the society banquet Friday evening,
the CBS anchorman decided to limit his
talk to memories his brother didn’t have
—the first six years of Charles Kuralt ’ s
life before his brother was bom.
One by one, Kuralt recalled the many
N.C. towns in which he had lived dur
ing his formative years Wilmington,
Lumberton, Fayetteville, Stedman,
Salisbury and Washington stories
that brought many laughs from the au
dience.
“In Washington, N.C., a number of
things happened that affected my life
ever after,” Kuralt said. “My brother
was bom there. That was a nuisance. I
knew he would prove to be a thorn at my
side, which he has been from time to
time, most recently yesterday morning
when he took me to Finley Golf Course
and beat me by 17 strokes.
“So I gained my first sibling in Wash
ington. Far more important at the time,
I caught my first fish.”
Kuralt went on to tell about the first
striped bass he caught while fishing
with his father and grandfather on the
Pamlico River. “‘Hold on to him,’ my
father shouted as he started rowing hard
for shore. But I couldn’t hold on to him.
I didn’t know where to hold.
“So I threw myself upon it, weighed
him down with my whole body and
with my whole heart and struggled all
the way to the dock to prevent that fish
from getting away.”
Coleman to leave UNC for provost position at UNM
By Yi-Hsin Chang
Editor
The University will have to say good
bye to its first vice chancellor of gradu
ate studies and research in two months’
time.
Vice Chancellor Mary Sue Coleman
will assume the post of provost at the
University of New Mexico in early
August.
Coleman, who received a Ph.D in
biochemistry from UNC in 1969, said
she would miss the people at UNC the
most. “I’ve had just a wonderful time
here,” she said. “I would not have gone
Town budget to include funds for two investigative police officers
By Kelly Ryan
Associate Editor
To keep up with increased crime and
growing police forces in the Triangle
area, the Chapel Hill Town Council
decided Tuesday night to try to find
money in its 1993-94 budget to hire two
narcotics officers for the police depart
ment.
The council met with the Law En
forcement Committee of the Violent
Crime and Drug Abuse Program at its
budget work session.
Former mayoral candidate Rosemary
Waldorf, who leads the committee, said
it was important for the Chapel Hill
Police Department to keep up with other
Triangle police forces.
“If Durham hires 38 more officers
and Raleigh hires 44, that’ll impact us,”
she said. “Criminals are going to come
over here.”
Police Chief Ralph Pendergraph said
Wednesday that the town council had
Thursday, May 27, 1993
during this session of the N.C. General
Assembly.
Mayor Ken Broun said that after
Tuesday’s meeting with Sen. Howard
Lee, D-Orange, town council members
would determine by June 7 whether to
go ahead with the tax plan. Local del
egates to the General Assembly will
offer the council advice by next week
before the council makes a final deci
sion.
Broun said the meal tax would likely
be killed this session. “I feel strongly
we need the support of the (Chapel Hill-
Carrboro) Chamber of Commerce and
of other business interests,” he said.
Joel Harper, president of the com
merce, said it was premature for the
Lag.
"S' " ' 'W i
DTH/Debbie Stengel
Charles Kuralt, right, sits with his brother Wallace Kuralt on Friday before his talk about growing up in North Carolina
That day made him a fisherman, said
Kuralt, who now does his fishing in
Montana. “I mostly put the fish back out
of sportsmanship I tell myself, but pos
sibly out of disappointment that they’re
never so big anymore that I have to fall
on them to hold them down.”
At the age of 5, Kuralt started kinder
garten at St. Agnes Academy in Wash
ington. Immediately after beginning
school, his teacher, Sister Rosalind, pro
moted him to the first grade.
“This was no favor to me, in fact,”
Kuralt said. “It was to mean that all the
way through school I was at least a year
(to UNM) for the same position I have
here.”
The University hired Coleman in
1990 for the position of associate pro
vost and dean of research. The position
was changed last year, and Coleman
was promoted to her current post of vice
chancellor of graduate studies and re
search.
Chancellor Paul Hardin said he sup
ported Coleman in her decision to leave
UNC even though it would be a loss to
the University. “I hate to lose her,” he
said. “She has done such a good job for
us. “(But) she’ 11 be doing good work out
there wearing the Carolina label (as an
been very receptive to the department’s
increasing needs.
The police department currently
employs two narcotics officers.
“You’re never going to run into a
police chief who has enough people,”
Pendergraph said. “The council has
given us a reason to reexamine what
we’re doing.
“The problem of narcotics in Chapel
Hill is so much a part of our other
problems, so we feel like we need to put
more emphasis on that problem.”
Mayor Ken Broun told the council
Monday that he thought it was a worth
while investment to hire two additional
narcotics officers.
“I think this is a service people need
and are telling us they need, and it’s our
obligation,” Broun said.
Town Manager Cal Horton said
Wednesday that the council has met for
several years with the law enforcement
committee.
“The council said in its annual plan
Do what we can, summer will have its flies. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Serving the students and the University community since 1893
town to consider raising revenue for a
multi-million dollar Streetscape plan
because too many residents did not un
derstand it.
The Streetscape plan is a proposal for
major downtown improvements, includ
ing constructing more sidewalks and
adding more lighting.
“When (restaurateurs) buy into it,
they ’ll underwrite it,” Harper said. ‘Tm
not aware of one restaurant on Franklin
Street who would benefit from
Streetscape that supports the meal tax.
That’s very telling to me.”
Harper said restaurant owners should
have been included in the legislation
process from the beginning but would
be willing to help the town start a
younger than my classmates.
“I was actually enrolled at this Uni
versity as an innocent of 15. My pals
were all older than I. My girlfriends
were older. In time, my wives were to
be older than I— both of them all
because of Sister Rosalind.”
Thinking back to the days before he
was 6, Kuralt said he had been a boy of
no money but much privilege. “I wish
every child in our state and in the world
had the kind of childhood I had in the
Depression days of the 1930s in North
Carolina.”
After his lecture, Kuralt answered
UNC alumna). We’re very proud of her,
but we will miss her.”
Provost Richard McCormick also
said Coleman’s departure would be a
great loss to the University. “She did
just sensational work here. We will miss
her very much.”
Coleman said she was looking for
ward to her new job. She pointed out
that UNM is about the same size as
UNC but has a very diverse student
body 45 percent of the incoming
freshman class are Hispanic.
“I’ 11 be learning about Native Ameri
can culture—things I don’t know,” she
said. “I’ll be learning about Hispanic
“T
If Durham hires 38
more officers and Raleigh
hires 44, that’ll impact
us. Criminals are going
to come over here.”
ROSEMARY WALDORF
LAW ENFORCEMENT COMMITTEE
ning meeting in January that public
safety and crime was their top priority,
and I think this is consistent with that,”
Horton said.
To improve police services, the com
mittee requested:
■ Purchasing a computer system for
the department’s records,
■ Improving downtown lighting, in
cluding lighting on Merritt Mill Road,
■ Completing the transition to sepa
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Streetscape public education program.
Lee said the council determined Tues
day that it had two options: to delay the
tax until 1994 to unify town and busi
ness relations or to develop anew pro
posal that would be more responsive to
the opposition’s concerns.
“It would appear that there is a slant
toward waiting,” Lee said. “I have not
made any recommendations at this point.
I have tried to let them know the facts—
the fact that not any tax bill of any
consequence has passed the legislature
this year.”
Last Friday, council members Julie
Andresen, Mark Chilton, Joyce Brown
See MEAL TAX, page 4
questions from the audience. One man
asked what CBS anchorwoman Connie
Chung was really like. Kuralt answered,
“Connie is sweet and talented, sort of
just the way she appears on the air.”
Chung was promoted recently to co
anchor the “CBS Evening News” with
Dan Rather. “This news came as a great
shock to me, but I think it’ll probably be
a pretty fair combination on the news,”
Kuralt said.
When asked for his advice to aspir
ing journalists, Kuralt quoted a col
league who said: “One good word is
worth a thousand pictures.”
cultures, and that’s real exciting to me.
I’m looking forward to it.”
Coleman’s husband, Kenneth
Coleman, a UNC political science pro
fessor, also will be heading for Albu
querque, N.M. Kenneth Coleman spe
cializes in Latin American studies, and
UNM has a well-known Latin Ameri
can studies program, Mary Sue Coleman
said.
Hardin said he probably would ap
point an interim vice chancellor until a
search can be conducted to find some
one to take Coleman’s place. “We will
miss her, and she will be very hard to
replace.”
rate police and fire departments,
■ Increasing crisis counseling,
■ Using more police dogs and
■ Hiring two more narcotics police
officers.
The 1993-94budget proposal already
includes funds for downtown lighting,
a computer system, crisis counseling
and additional police dogs.
Pendergraph said all parts of the plan
were important for making the depart
ment more efficient, but the town would
see the most obvious results from hiring
two narcotics officers.
“I would have to put the investigators
as my number one priority,” he said.
Waldorf said several police officers
estimated that drug-related crimes could
decrease by about 25 percent if two
more investigative officers joined the
force.
“Enforcement is not the answer —
it’s not the only answer,” she said. “Even
though nobody can solve the drug prob
lem, maybe the best thing we can do is
Davis, Jordan to
join DOT in time
for BCC decision
By Steve Robblee
Staff Writer
When Gov. Jim Hunt’s recent ap
pointments to the Board of Trustees
take their seats in July, they could
begin their term thrust into the middle
of the debate about whether to build a
new black cultural center on the UNC
campus.
Walter Royal Davis for whom
Davis Library is named —and Dr.
William Jordan, who earned his
bachelor’s and medical degrees from
the University, were appointed by Hunt
last week.
It is the BOT which will make the
final decision on whether to build a
free-standing BCC. The BOT plans to
meet June 24-25, but might not make a
final decision until July or later. Many
current trustees will be replaced by
new members in July, and the new
trustees could affect the decision
whether to build the BCC.
Jordan said he was still a “neo
phyte” regarding University affairs
including the BCC debate, buthe would
be talking with other trustees and go
ing over the minutes of past meetings
during the next month to become more
familiar with University issues.
If the trustees decide to approve the
center, Jordan said he hoped it would
be a place where all people felt wel
come.
“I think a black cultural center could
be an extremely positive thing, or it
could be a divisive thing,” he said.
The center could be a positive facet
of the University, provided it did not
Hillsborough ministers
might fight PHE appeal
By Yi-Hsin Chang
Editor
HILLSBOROUGH — The Orange
Coalition Against Pornography might
fight the appeal filed by PHE Inc. against
the town for denying the mail-order
erotica company a special-use permit to
relocate to Hillsborough.
“We’re going to do what the city is
not going to do. We’re going to fight it.”
said Rick Edwards, pastor of Fairview
Baptist Church and assistant treasurer
of OCAP. OCAP was founded in Feb
ruary by a group of ministers opposing
PHE’s attempt to move to Hillsborough
from its current location west of
Carrboro.
But another member of OCAP, Craig
Fields, pastor of Lawrence Road Bap
tist Church, said the group would de
cide its next course of action Friday,
after consulting with an attorney.
The Hillsborough Town Board unani
mously voted not to fight PHE’s appeal
after a 40-minute meeting behind closed
doors Monday night.
“However, we expect that Orange
Coalition Against Pornography will in
tervene and support the decision of the
Board of Adjustment,” Mayor Horace
Johnson announced to approximately
40 town residents after the board came
out of executive session.
The Hillsborough Board of Adjust
ment twice has denied PHE’s request
for a special-use permit to build a larger
facility. The move would bringjobs and
$20,000 in tax revenues to Hillsborough.
The Board of Adjustment voted 3-2
make it difficult to have a market here.”
Pendergraph said he thought it was
optimistic to expect a 25-percent de
crease in drug-related crimes, which
still are on the rise in nearby towns.
Waldorf said the presence of drugs in
the community contributed to the num
ber of violent crimes, including rape,
domestic violence, aggravated assaults
and armed robberies.
Town Manager Cal Horton told the
council that it would cost about $90,000
to hire two additional officers and pur
chase another police vehicle for the
officers.
Horton also said that $ 186,000 were
included already in the town budgets
for 1994-95 and 1995-96 to fund the
process of separating police and fire
departments.
The council should complete the
separation of the police and fire depart
ments in the next two years, Horton
said.
“You get to the point in the size of
© 1993 DTH Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved.
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separate black students from the rest
of campus, Jordan said.
Davis was traveling and could not
be reached for comment.
Jordan and Davis will join the Board
of Governors’ recent BOT appoint
ments: Ann Cates, Charles Sanders
and William Amfield. All of the new
trustees will begin their term at the
board’s July 23 meeting.
Provost Richard McCormick said
that because of delays in assessing the
needs of a physical-sciences library, it
was possible that Chancellor Paul
Hardin would not present his recom
mendation to the BOT until the new
members join in July. The chancellor
is waiting on a report from the Build
ings and Grounds Committee, which
will recommend a site for the BCC,
before he gives his report to the BOT.
Student Body President Jim
Copland said Hardin might have to
wait until July to give his report, espe
cially if the Buildings and Grounds
Committee cannot endorse only one
site for the BCC. Two sites have been
recommended for the BCC —one
located between the Bell Tower and
Coker Hall and the other next to Wil
son Library.
Copland said he met with Hardin
on Thursday to discuss the BCC issue,
and Hardin reaffirmed his support for
a free-standing BCC. But Copland
said Hardin probably would wait for
the Buildings and Grounds
Committee’s recommendation before
deciding which site to support.
See TRUSTEES, page 2
in favor of granting the permit, but four
votes are needed to approve the permit.
The two members who voted against
approving the permit, David Cates and
John Forrest, said that under
Hillsborough zoning ordinances, PHE
qualified as an adult-use business and
therefore required a conditional-use
permit.
The ordinance defines an adult-use
business as one that “excludes minors
for reasons of age,” such as adult book
stores, adult picture theaters, massage
parlors and adult cabarets.
PHE is appealing the decision in
Orange County Superior Court on
grounds that the company is not an
adult-use business because it does not
have walk-in customers.
Edwards said the town board’s deci
sion to not fight the appeal had shifted
the burden onto OCAP. “But we want
the battle,” he said. “Someone’s got to
do it.
“Their products, their mere exist
ence, is a blasphemy against God.”
But Hillsborough resident David
Gephart, the only person who clapped
after the mayor announced the board’s
decision, said fighting the appeal would
have been a waste of money for the
town.
“They gotta put money in the water
system, not in a lawsuit they’re going to
lose,” he said.
Town attorney Mike Brough has said
that the town could not win the case
against PHE.
See PHE, page 2
your community and the number of
crimes and the types of crimes, you
need to concentrate your training to get
the best possible services,” Horton said.
Town resident Rebecca Clark, who
served on the law enforcement commit
tee, said the comer of Merritt Mill Road
near Crook’s Comer was too dark at
night, and it needed better lighting.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Chapel Hill
weren’t so dead set on keeping trees,”
Clark said.
Waldorf said riding around Chapel
Hill in a police car exposed her to the
increasing crime problem.
“You see things you can’t see in a
memo,” she said.
Horton said the council would reach
a final decision on police protection
when it adopts a budget or an interim
budget before the 1993-94 fiscal year
begins July 1.
The council will hold its next budget
work session June 15 at 7:30 p.m. at
town hall.
962-0245
962-1163