Rogers Road community center approved by Board of Commissioners

Orange County Commissioner Earl McKee has a saying — “All hat and no horses.”

At a Thursday night meeting, McKee urged the Board of Commissioners to step away from decades of empty promises and move forward with plans to build a community center for the Rogers Road neighborhood.

The meeting could be a defining moment in the 40-year discussion about Rogers Road — the historically black and low-income neighborhood that has housed the county’s landfill since 1972.

In a unanimous vote, the board opted to move forward with the community center. In a later 5-2 vote, the board extended the life of the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force by six months.

The task force — made up of representatives from Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Rogers Road — was created in February 2012 when the commissioners set a landfill closing date of June 2013.

During a Dec. 6 Assembly of Governments meeting, some local officials suggested disbanding the task force.

This prompted Town Council member Lee Storrow, Alderman Michelle Johnson and UNC research fellow Molly DeMarco to petition the board to extend the task force.

“There was a group of citizens who were concerned and surprised by the suggestion to not continue the task force,” Storrow said. “There is work still to be done.”

In August, The Rogers-Eubank Neighborhood Association’s community center was shut down for violating fire and safety codes.

Since then, local officials have united behind the promise of providing the neighborhood with a new, 4,000-square-foot community center — though funding has been a point of contention.

The Board of Commissioners has agreed to allocate $650,000 to fund the center.

At Thursday’s night meeting, the commissioners vowed to take the next steps towards opening the community center — with or without help from Chapel Hill or Carrboro.

“I want to hold us to the fire,” said Commissioner Bernadette Pelissier. “If the towns don’t want to participate then that’s fine — we’ll go ahead without them.”

But the conversation has splintered over a $5.8 million plan to provide water and sewer services to the neighborhood — a plan that has sparked concern about unintended concern like gentrification.

“The day that sewer line is extended, development will follow,” said McKee.

Newly-minted Commissioner Mark Dorosin urged the board to move forward with plans for remediation despite these concerns.

“These are political decisions to be made,” he said. “I don’t think deferring to bureaucracy of local government’s is a better strategy or more likely to produce outcomes that most of us want.”

Contact the desk editor at city@dailytarheel.com.