A Public Humbling at City Hall

A Public Humbling at City Hall
Viewpoint

By By David Phillips and Glenn Eugster
Wednesday, January 14, 2004


January 6 was important for the TC Williams High School project because it was to go before a public meeting of the City Planning Commission. It was also important for us, part of the public, as we would be living opposite the new school building, rising seventy feet over King Street (assisted by exemptions from planning regulations). It was also our first experience at City Hall and for some a first experience of planning-in-action.

We arrived at City Hall Tuesday evening and sat doggedly for four and a half hours. Around midnight TC Williams came before the Commission. We listened to another half hour of official presentations, including glowing descriptions of city plannersí consultations with the schoolís neighbors, and then finally we got our three minutes each.

The main issue on which we addressed the Commissioners was traffic. Most important, according to the impact study, 76 percent of vehicles (three times the existing number) were now expected to use one entrance to the school, at the end of our street, Kenwood, at its intersection with King, to drop students and access a parking garage.

Kenwood itself would nearly double its school traffic. However, the entrance driveway length would now be shorter, allowing fewer cars to line up. The study, done after the new configuration was already proposed, concluded puzzlingly that despite its projections of significant traffic increase, the maximum expected vehicle queue in the entrance driveway would be smaller than the existing one! So, hey, it could fit within the smaller line-up space!

Our calculations, par contraire, were that backups are likely, on King Street and past where we live, particularly in bad weather, creating an increased hazard. The bottom line for us was that there was simply not enough room for all those cars. It seemed obvious. We asked the Commissioners to consider reconfiguring traffic access.

Another group of neighbors at the meeting, from Quaker Lane, better organized than us, had succeeded in getting a school entrance closed under the new plan, ridding themselves of a few commercial vehicles that used their street each day. And they brought another request for more restrictions on amplified noise from the school's sports stadium. For 30 minutes the Commissioners energetically discussed noise, and then generously adopted a further noise-pollution-limiting resolution.
And what happened to us, with all our weird stuff about traffic and increased accident risks outside the school? Well, the Commissioners deliberated not a word.

It was as though we had not been at the meeting. Even our modest proposal for traffic calming was summarily dismissed. A city engineer coolly reassured everybody that our street had no special calming problems. We couldn't believe our ears. It was as though the public, sitting at a public meeting, was in fact not relevant, even treatable with contempt. We got home at 1:30 a.m, wiser after a lesson in local democracy and six hours attending at the pleasure of Their Excellencies the Planning Commissioners.

David Phillips and Glenn Eugster are members of the Chapel Hill Home Owners Association.