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Saiiy (Ear Brri CITY BRIEFS Missing Chapel Hill lawyer could face multiple lawsuits Chapel Hill lawyer John McCormick, who was last seen July 10, could come under investigation for illegally mishandling clients’ accounts, said Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall. A missing person report was filed July 11 for McCormick, 58, after a car registered to the family was found parked near an entrance of Duke Forest. McCormick was last seen at about 3 p.m. July 10 near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Weaver Dairy Road. He has been the attorney for the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Board of Education for more than 20 years. School board officials have said McCormick did not have access to public accounts. McCormick also owns several million dollars’ worth of real estate in Orange County. The N.C. Bar Association has asked that trust accounts where McCormick placed client money be frozen after about $1.3 million appeared to be missing from the accounts. National homebuidling company D.R. Horton Inc. has filed suit against McCormick claiming more that more than SBOO,OOO from real estate closing agreements is missing. CAMPOS BRIEFS UNC medical school gifted a radiology imaging system Philips Medical Systems has donated an image and informa tion system to the UNC School of Medicine’s radiologic science divi sion in the allied health sciences department. The iSite Picture Archiving and Communications System delivers images that can be used for diag nosis over existing networks, to advanced radiology reading sta tions for radiologists and for long term storage. The technology increases image availability and overall reading effi ciency. The system has been installed in a teaching laboratory in the newly renovated Bumett-Womack Building and will allow instructors to use the images as teching tools. STATE BRIEFS Democrats could run Perdue for governor in 2008 Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue is the most likely candidate to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for North Carolina governor in 2008, according to a poll of likely voters. Public Policy Polling asked voters who among Perdue, Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange, or N.C. Treasurer Richard Moore they would be most likely to elect. Of the 542 likely Democratic primary voters polled July 12, 36 percent responded that they would pick Perdue. Moore garnered 23 percent and Faison took 6 percent. The remain ing 35 percent of those polled did not list a preference among the candidates. Two UNC-TV shows will be canceled due to budget cuts Two public affairs shows will be canceled this year because of a budget shortfall at UNC-TV. “North Carolina Now,” a 30- minute show that has aired for 12 years, ends Sept. 29. “Legislative Week in Review* will end after the current legislative session. UNC-TV spokesman Steve Volstad said the station budgeted $l.B million a year for the two shows. Volstad said the cuts were nec essary because state and private funds haven’t grown with the sta tion’s costs. N.C. Green and Libertarian parties sue election board The Libertarian Party of North Carolina and the N.C. Green Party have filed a lawsuit stating that candidates third and independent parties are unconstitutionally restricted from state elections. The suit, against the N.C. Board of Elections, asks that laws such as the requirement of about 70,000 verified signatories to petitions to add independent candidates’ names to primary ballots be repealed. The parties also cited the elec tion law that a candidate must receive at least 10 percent of the vote in a primary to remain on the ballot as a way the state discrimi nates against outside parties. In May, Judge Orlando Hudson denied the state’s motion to dismiss the case. The Green Party is being rep resented by the American Civil Liberties Union’s N.C. Legal Fund. The Libertarians are being repre sented by attorney Robert Elliot, of Winston-Salem, a partner of theACLU. -From staff and wire reports. Drugstore probes downtown Walgreens keeps eye on the Hill BY GRAY CALDWELL CITY EDITOR Another big business could be headed to Franklin Street. Walgreens Cos. is opening new stores in North Carolina and is look ing specifically at Chapel Hill, said Carol Hively, the corporate spokes woman for the drug store. “We have been growing very quickly in the state, and we’re looking at a lot of locations,” Hively said. “It’s just too soon to say where we’re opening a store and when. It BVffjßWta. 1 JUj i' |P jB Ilfr M .- ■. gf' ? uk if ptxUs' \HHBSRB3Ki ' 1 a w jpjflß | •*, * - SkSi Al I SL ’fnU l “ HIKL DTH/COURTNEY POTTER Niles Barnes, 21, bikes through Weaver Street Market on Tuesday afternoon before a run with Greenway Pedicabs. "It's becoming a national trend," said Barnes, who initiated the formation of a Pedicabs service in Chapel Hill and Carrboro just this summer. A NEW WAY TO GET AROUND BY TOM HARTWELL STAFF WRITER You might have seen him one of these sum mer evenings, gliding along Franklin Street on a bicycle with a rickshaw in tow, and maybe you pictured those cheery old cabmen from back in the horse-and-carriage days. Tim Yarborough is a student at UNC pursuing a major in environmental science, but he moonlights as a driver for Greenway Pedicabs, a bicycle taxi service that has been growing in both visibility and ridership since it began operating 3 weeks ago. The service runs on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings from 5:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., and is available for reser vation during the day. The company is the brainchild of Dennis Markatos-Soriano and Niles Barnes, two environmentalists who conceived the idea as a way to raise money for a campus activ ist organization that Barnes worked for and Markatos-Soriano managed. They decided to start their own compa ny. They enlisted private investors, raised SIO,OOO and received a $2,500 pledge from the A. J. Fletcher Foundation. They Buffaloe charged with BOG post BY STEPHEN MOORE STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR ■ Anew face will soon be com ing to the UNC-system Board of Governors, adding new life a year after the board last changed shape. Laura Buffaloe, a retired North Carolina educator and 1965 graduate of Elizabeth City State University, will be joining 31 other members of the board as result of legislation coming from the General Assembly. Nominated to the post by Sen. Jeanne Lucas, D-Durham, Buffaloe said she couldn’t wait to get started. “I am very excited,” she said. “I have given 40 years up to education in the state of North Carolina, and I do look forward to this.” Buffaloe comes aboard the sys tem leadership to replace Willie Gilchrist, the superintendent of Halifax County Schools since 1994 and a 1973 graduate of Elizabeth City State. Gilchrist can no longer serve as a member of the board, as he is leaving to become interim chancel lor of ECSU. Born in Elizabeth City, Buffaloe said she knows the ins Top News could be that we’vasked or made inquiries, but there’s nothing (in our database) right now.” The potential location is expected to be on the comer of Franklin and Columbia streets, underneath Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery’. “What we’re looking for is the very comer of a major intersection,” Hively said of typical Walgreens locations. Hively said the time frame for opening a Walgreens drug store ranges from nine months to three years, because of factors such as who owns the property and how long it takes to get a project green lighted by Walgreens itself. Joe Riddle, of Fayetteville-based also bought insurance for both their driv ers and customers. They hired drivers, applied for special permits and bought bicycles and two rick shaws from a Colorado company called Main Street Pedicab. Barnes said their company was modeled after similar programs in cities such as New York, Charleston and Charlotte. “It’s great,” said Barnes, who also drives for the company. “The weekends are great, people really love it locals and out-of towners. I think it’s going to blow up once school gets started.” The activism group that both own ers are members of, Students United for a Responsible Global Environment, will receive 25 percent of.profits earned in Greenway Pedicab’s first year and 10 per cent of profits in following years. The owners said the program encourages emissions-free transportation. Not surprisingly, the rickshaws have become a favorite medium for getting home safely after a night out at Franklin Street’s bars. “Sometimes people are pretty inebri and outs of the state’s education system, having worked in a vari ety of capacities. “Since I have retired, it would be a good thing to do (to join the board),” she said. Originally working as an eighth grade teacher, Buffalo also has served as a professor at Halifax Community College and later as vice president of instructional services for the school. Buffaloe retired from those positions last year. “She appeared to me to be quali fied,” said Sen. Johff Garwood, R- Wilkes, who also signed on to the bill that makes Buffaloe a BOG member. Buffaloe said that she was flat tered by the legislative nod and excited about the opportunities that it could bring. She said she had a variety of ideas of what she would like to work toward as a member of the board. However, she said that since she had never been to a BOG meeting, she needed to look over what the board was currently working on .before she would move forward with her own ideas. SEE BOG, PAGE 4 Riddle Commercial Properties, owns the property under Top of the Hill. He was unavailable for comment Tuesday, but has told The Daily Tar Heel in past interviews that he hoped to fill the space with a single tenant. Scott Maitland, the owner of Top of the Hill, wrote in an e-mail that his restaurant was originally plan ning to move into some space in Riddle’s property. “At one point there was discus sion about Top of the Hill taking some space downstairs that was unwanted by a national organiza tion that would be taking the rest of the space,” Maitland wrote. “Unfortunately, it appears as if there is some holdup with the ated, they want to get home. And we get ‘em there,” said Markatos-Soriano. “Other people want a pleasure ride. It’s a mix. It’s something that’s a really nice novelty but also something that can be functional and useful whether you want to get to class or go to a romantic restaurant for a date.” Yarborough named outdoor exercise as one of the job’s perks. “I really enjoy the kind of job where you can be physically active and outside and talk to people, be social, but at the same time provide a service that I think the town of Chapel Hill is really going to pick up on.” Markatos-Soriano said he is looking for ward to more opportunities for the service that may arise. “We have gotten a couple of wedding reservations, which his kind of fun. We’re looking forward to that ride and making the pedicabs look a little nicer than they do now, putting some flowers on them. We’re just excited to be a part of important events in peoples lives like that.” Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu. School slips below U.S. standards Kids may leave Carrboro Elementary BY GRAY CALDWELL CITY EDITOR Carrboro Elementary School failed to meet federally mandated standards for student performance last year —and the school could lose students because of it. School officials announced Tuesday that the school’s Latino students failed to meet so-called Annual Yearly Progress standards outlined by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Because at least one of the school’s populations hasn’t met those standards for the second straight year, parents have the option of taking their students out of the school and sending them to either Ephesus Road Elementary or Estes Hills Elementary instead. But Stephanie Knott, assistant to the school superintendent for community relations, said all other elementary schools in the district would be in danger of overcrowding if students tried to transfer there. “I think the message for parents in particular is: If your child is pro ficient and is well adjusted in the environment at Carrboro has friends at Carrboro, Carrboro is convenient because it’s your neigh borhood school— you want to stay at Carrboro,” she said. national organization and, quite frankly, it is unclear if the deal will work out with our landlord.” IfWalgreens is the national orga nization, it would compete with Kerr Drug, located across the street at 109 E. Franklin St. and Sutton’s Drug Store, at 159 E. Franklin St. Hively said the location in Chapel Hill, within walking dis tance of campus, as well as so close to UNC Hospitals, would be very beneficial to the drug store. “The pharmacy is the biggest part of the business at the store,” she said. “The other part, the convenience SEE CORNER, PAGE 4 “The school choice option is spe cifically made available for parents who feel their children’s needs are not being met.” Under the No Child Left Behind Act, certain populations of pupils in every school must meet federal standards. If even one group fails, the entire school is considered to have failed. That’s what happened to Carrboro Elementary. Only 62 percent of Latino students at the school achieved proficiency in reading short of the 77 percent required for the group to have met the benchmark. Because students who receive free or reduced lunch didn’t meet federal standards last year, Carrboro Elementary is consid ered to have failed Annual Yearly Progress standards for two years in a row leading to parents’ ability to transfer their students out of the school. Estes Hills was on a federal watch list after failing to meet mandated reading proficiency scores last year, but the school met all standards this year. Lisa Stuckey, chairwoman of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education, said the federal numbers don’t necessarily mean that Carrboro Elementary is a THURSDAY, JULY 20, 2006 Shelter faces unclear future New location a ‘top priority’ BY TOM HARTWELL STAFF WRITER The Inter-Faith Council for Social Service is unsure about the future of its homeless shelter in downtown Chapel Hill. The 100 W. Rosemary St. build ing, once home to the Chapel Hill Police Department, houses a men’s shelter and a soup kitchen. But Executive Director Chris Moran said the needs of the area’s homeless population now exceed the capacity of the building. “We have outgrown the space,” Moran said. “We want to transform either the facility we own in Carrboro or another facility.” Finding the right location for a larger shelter has been an ongo ing project for several years. The council has considered sites on Millhouse, Merritt Mill and Legion roads. Opposition from residents of those areas was strong. The IFC met Wednesday at the United Church of Chapel Hill to discuss its ongoing projects and future. The meeting occurred after The Daily Tar Heel’s press time. Moran said finding a location for the men’s shelter was a top priority. “We need to tie up a piece of property,” he said. “We want to do that this year. After doing that, we can get more specific about things like what the facility will look like and who will pay for it.” Another priority is to open a soup kitchen closer to the IFC’s food pantry in Carrboro, Moran said. “Our pantry and our kitchen should be brought together, so that when people can’t get food at the food pantry, we can send them across the hallway to get a hot meal,” he said. The problem of space at the facility has become especially pressing this summer, as construc tion workers working on projects around UNC’s campus have been crowding the 48-seat dining room at lunch, sometimes bringing the crowd to more than 150 people. “This is something that’s been growing slowly all year, but once school let out it exploded,” said Paul Eberhart, who manages the shelter and the kitchen during the day. “There was a time when we would have said 120 was a busy day. Now we’re saying 120 is a slow day.” By the staff’s own estimates, the kitchen served 6,740 meals in April; in June that number bal looned to 8,200. “It’s completely blindsided us,” Eberhart said of the influx. “The numbers are up, but donations aren’t up to reflect the increase in demand.” SEE HOMELESS, PAGE 4 By the numbers: AYP for local schools 89% Carrboro Elementary School's overall proficiency rate 93% Chapel Hill-Carrboro elementary schools average 77% Annual Yearly Progress standard for proficiency in reading for 2005-06 62% Latino population's reading proficiency at Carrboro Elementary Source: Chapel Hill-Carrboro bad school. Since the standards only refer to small parts of school populations, she said, that’s not the case. “We wa"* >ach category of stu dents to be successful,” she said. “But the failure of one group of students results in the failure of the entire school. That does not mean that the vast majority of students aren’t doing very well.” Tammy LeMoine, president of the Carrboro Elementary PTA, said the response she has heard from parents indicates that most students will stay put. SEE AYR, PAGE 4 3
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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