2
Wednesday, October 4, 2000
Center Sets Sights
On Solar Power
Bv Kentia Etheridge
Staff Writer
The Hargraves Recreation Center
soon will be utilizing a more environ
mentally friendly powensource - the sun.
The center, located in Chapel Hill,
will be outfitted with energy-creating
solar roofs to cut the use of natural
resources like fossil fuel.
The center will be participating in the
Million Solar Roofs Initiative, which will
help install anew roof as part of a
statewide effort to develop new solar
energy systems. Solar roof panels will be
used instead of fossil fuel to gather elec
tricity and to heat water.
“The sun shines on the panels and
energy from the sun transfers and direct
ly heats the water that you’re going to
use,” said Peter Dreyfuss, National
Coordinator of the Million Solar Roof
Initiative.
The town of Chapel Hill agreed to
build one of the solar systems on the
Hargraves Recreation Center, w'hich will
be funded by a grant. Officials say they
expect the project to be finished within a
month. Bill Terry, internal services
superintendent, said the Hargraves
Center was chosen based on three crite
ria, which recreation officials said the
building meets. “The building has to face
in the right direction, due south,” he
said. “The second criteria is that it has to
have a slanted roof. A slanted roof is the
best angle to collect solar energy.”
Third, Terry noted, the roof can be
no older than tw o years old or efficien
cy decreases.
N.C. officials also have agreed to
allow' solar energy systems to be
installed across the state. James E.
Rannels from the Director’s Office of
Solar Energy Technologies said the pro
gram has been well received so far.
“We have looked and solicited part
ners for the program who are commit
Campus Calendar
Saturday
9 a.m. -- The Department of Public
Safety will be hosting a car seat and
seat belt demonstration and informa
tional seminar.
The free event will take place at
Victory Village Child Care Center
ffcttUpf jn
with the purchase of two beverages f fIgJEY
and one lunch at the regular price,
receive a second lunch
of equal or lesser value / “
FREE! Jig
(Dine-in only. One coupon per table.) /flBRk
Lunch Monday-Saturday If I®
Dinner 7 days a week % £
MEXICAN CAFE
1591/2 E. Franklin St. • Downtown Chapel Hill • 967-5048
I
fa
October 3-8
Showtimes:
Tues-Fri 8 PM • Sat 2 & 8 PM • Sun 2 & 7 PM
Rush Tickets • All Seats S2O
Available at door only one hour prior to curtain
Box Office Sales Only
Raleigh Memorial Auditorium Box Office
Presented by The Best of Broadway
ted to doing this goal,” Rannels said.
“We have 50 partners accounting for
more than a million solar systems. We
have partners working with us also com
mitted to working for this goal.”
State officials are coordinating to cre
ate four local partnerships in Orange,
Durham, Guilford and Watauga counties.
Committees from these four counties
will come together to raise public aware
ness and to focus on policy issues.
“We are trying to get together a steer
ing committee to achieve this goal,” said
Phil Hervey, long-range planner for
Chapel Hill.
These committees have yet to be
appointed, but efforts are being made to
establish them. The N.C. Solar Center at
N.C. State University has become
involved in the program by working to
increase public awareness and training
professionals to install the equipment.
“We work with state governments
who have a lot of money for solar ener
gy and find ways to make them more
effective,” Dreyfuss said.
Other local efforts have been made
to conserve energy. Chapel Hill Town
Council member Joyce Brown said the
council has played a substantial role in
promoting solar energy systems.
“We have, over the past eight years or
so, converted most of the lights in the
town buildings (to energy efficient
lights),” she said. “The new fire station
will have to meet new ordinances.
Buildings must use energy ordinances.”
Community involvement in the
Million Solar Roofs Initiative is being
stressed by all of the people involved in
the program. “We need to look serious
ly at our energy sources,” Brown said.
“This is an opportunity to recognize
this publicly and to w'ork towards
changing our energy sources.”
The City Editor can be reached
at citydesk@unc.edu.
until Ip.m.
The public is welcome.
Satin ear Irrl
Wednesday, October 4,2000
Volume 108, Issue 87
PO. Box 3257. Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Matt Dees, Editor, 962-4086
Advertising & Business, 962-1163
News, Features, Sports, 962-0245
Carrboro Residents to Keep Protest Alive
Residents plan to fight the
connection of Autumn Drive,
despite the aldermen's
approval of the plan.
By Theresa Chen
Staff Writer
The Carrboro Board of Aldermen
might have dismissed further discussion
of the Autumn Drive controversy, but
residents of the area still refuse to give
up the cause.
Despite residents’ protests, the board
decided Sept. 26 that it would no longer
publicly discuss the connection of the
200 feet between Autumn Drive in the
Barington Hills subdivision and Autumn
Drive in the Wexford neighborhood.
What’s more, the board will not
change its stance on the decision,
Alderman Diana McDuffee said.
“We received (the residents’) ques
tions and reconsidered, but chose to
stick to what we decided originally,” she
said.
“We reviewed our connector road
policy and saw that it was appropriate to
this case.”
But Alderman Jacquelyn Gist, the
only board member who voted against
the plan, said she does not believe the
TURNING GREEN?
JagF .: s JflC HA
DTH/SOMMER BASINGER
G.R. Quinn expresses his desire "to start an anti-environmental
movement in Chapel Hill for the 21st century." Quinn shared his views
at the corner of Columbia and Franklin streets Monday.
Wr>
< ’
B
( Buy One |
Sandwich and
Get A Second
Sandwich for
50% Off
Buy One
Sandwich and
Get A Second
Sandwich for
50% Off
Summer School Abroad
... "great course, great prof, greatfun. ”
Priority Registration: Oct 19 - Nov 1
• Belgium/Germany • Sevilla, Spain
• Great Britain/Norway • Oxford
• Greece • Montpellier, France
• Ireland/England • Morges, Switzerland
• Honduras/Nicaragua • Sydney, Australia
• Yucatan
www.unc.edu/suminer
SUMMER SCHOOL, 134 E. FRANKLIN ST., 2ND FLOOR
919-856-4364
City
issue will die so easily.
“As far as the town’s concerned, that’s
it,” she said. “But I don’t imagine this is
the last we’re going to hear from that
neighborhood.”
Administrative Informational Ser
vices consultant Richard Ellington, a res
ident of Barington Hills, confirmed
Gist’s prediction.
“We’re not going to let it die,” he said.
“We won’t roll over and play dead. We
want to keep (the issue) in the media.”
Stephanie Padilla, another Barington
Hills resident, said the residents were
throwing around other ideas for action,
but the possibility
of a recall, which is
a vote to determine
whether certain
aldermen should
remain in office,
would be a last
resort.
For a recall to
happen, the resi
dents must gather
signatures on a
“We’re not going to let it die.
We won’t roll over and play
dead. We want to keep
(the issue) in the media.”
Richard Ellington
Barington Hills Resident
petition calling for anew election.
“It’s one of the ways we got (the
aldermen) to listen to us, but it’s a lot of
work and would be very disruptive to
the town,” Padilla said.
Ellington said the residents will con
tinue to hound the aldermen to address
149'/: E Franklin St
Chapel Hill, NC
9608688
Best known secret in Chapel Hill
Offering burgers, chicken sandwiches,
and specialty sandwiches for lunch
and dinner, with a late night menu and
23 beers on tap. All ABC permits.
•Mon* 25 cent wings and sl. 50
domestic bottles and
late night jazz
• Tiies • $2.00 Pints
• Weds • All you can eat spaghetti
$5.00 and $2.00 micro and
import bottles
• Thurs • $2.00 Local Brews
• Daily food specials and $ I .<X) off •
appetizers from 4:00-7:fX>
Monday thru Saturday
their specific concerns, which they felt
were not being taken seriously.
“Even though the aldermen said they
wanted to answer our questions, they
just put together some rambling essay,”
he said. “We’ve not been dealt with
forthrightly. We’ve been patted on the
head like little children and told to sit
down.
“They’ve committed to be a tree city,
but they’re going to come in and whack
down our trees.”
Gist said lack of discourse is one of
the main reasons residents are unhappy.
Gist said another concern is that
although conges
tion would
decrease in other
parts of the town
with the new road,
the increased traf
fic will decrease
safety in the devel
opments.
“It’s going to
overburden a
small neighbor-
hood,” she said. “This is supposed to
make the town transportation-friendly,
but it makes the area less pedestrian
friendly.”
Although the town would pay to
build sidewalks on the existing Autumn
Drives, Ellington said these safety mea-
County Census Returns
Beat National Average
By Phil Perry
Staff Writer
Remember those annoying census
forms that came in the mail earlier this
year? Apparently many Orange County
residents didn’t find them such a hassle.
Orange County residents returned
their census reports at a rate of 68 per
cent this year, a number that is four
points higher than the state average and
one point higher than the national aver
age. The county had a 66 percent return
rate in the 1990 census.
Daniel Newman, a former Orange
County Board of Commissioners intern,
coordinated the efforts of the Orange
County Complete Count Committee.
He said he credits the increase to the
committee’s efforts. “I think we had an
excellent committee and excellent lead
ership on the committee,” he said.
The committee was composed of a
cultural cross section of society, includ
ing Hispanic, black and Asian members.
Representatives of the University,
Orange County school systems, area
religious communities, the media, non
profit organizations, county municipal
ities and the Census Bureau also com
prised the team, Newman said.
The committee displayed banners
encouraging people to return them, as
well as distributed T-shirts and placed pub
Ryunam / Chinese Restaurant
weekly specials banquet room facility
take-out university account
catering service beer & wine
daily lunch specials
DELIVERY SERVICE AVAILABLE
Including Campus Locations
967-6133
967-6723
790 Airport Rd. "fgFi M ESS Serving
Near Inside Scoop WKZi Lunch & Dinner
Ample Parking Serving Chapel Hii.l. Since 1981 7 Days A Week
UNC Women’s Tennis Carolina Fail Classic
Friday, Oct. 6 through Sunday Oct. 8 - All Day
Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center
(Located behind Friday Center oft Route 54)
UNC Field Hockey vs. Radford.
Sunday, Oct. 8 \/
/] 1:00 pm Henry Stadium JC
Hardee’s sports shorts
***** UWW W Students & Faculty Admitted FREE w/ID!
ulljr latUj (Far Hrrl
sures would not compensate for the con
nector road.
“I’m going to end up paying for side
walks I don’t want,” he said.
“It’s abominable to tell me they’re
going to give me something, then walk
behind me to take it out of my pockets."
Gist said paying for the sidewalks and
safety measurements would be one to
two cents on the tax rate.
Furthermore, a burden would be
placed on the developer, which would
be required to build the road at its
expense.
But Carrboro Planning Director Roy
Williford said he does not think the
property would be harder to sell than
other pieces of land.
“We’ve had some interest shown but
nothing official yet,” he said.
Until there is a developer, the resi
dents will continue their efforts to make
their voices heard, Padilla said.
“We had to go through so many peo
ple to get to the aldermen, and I don’t
think they even listened to us,” she said.
“The most frustrating thing was that it
was obvious some of the aldermen had
never been out here. They knew about
this hearing for six months. It was ridicu
lous.”
The City Editor can be reached
at citydesk@unc.edu,
lie service announcements in local papers.
But what this increase means for
Orange County is still unclear.
Buck Tredway, information specialist
with the commissioners, said the impact
on the county would not be known until
after the final numbers of the census are
turned in by the Census Bureau.
According to the Census Bureau’s
Web site, the final count will be deliv
ered to the president nine months after
census day, on or before Dec. 31,2000.
Orange County could receive an
increase in federal funding as a result of
the improved census returns, but that is
not assured. Federal funding for states
and counties is determined by popula
tion, based on census returns. Tredway
said what is assured is that the increase
reflects well on the county. Financial
compensation was not the county’s ulti
mate goal, Tredway said. Instead, just
getting people to return the census
forms was the focus of the committee.
In addition to crediting the commit
tee for the increased return rate,
Newman also praised the residents of
Orange County. “Chapel Hill and
Carrboro and Orange County tend to
be more educated areas, and tend to see
the benefit of an accurate count.”
The City Editor can be reached
at citydesk@unc.edu.