Rogers Road community eligible for grant

Orange County completed the final step toward establishing reliable water and sewer connections for members of the Rogers Road community at a meeting Monday.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners approved the expansion of the Town of Chapel Hill’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ, to include 1,033 additional acres encompassing the Rogers Road community, the old county landfill and the Greene Tract.

“This is an important step in giving Chapel Hill the tools we need to right historic wrongs,” said Chapel Hill Town Council member Maria Palmer.

Previously a part of Chapel Hill’s joint planning area, Rogers Road is a historically black, low-income neighborhood that housed the county’s landfill for 40 years before the landfill closed in June 2013. In the ’70s, county officials promised the neighborhood water and sewer connections and a new community center in exchange for housing the landfill, but they did not follow up on those promises for several decades.

Now that Rogers Road is part of Chapel Hill’s ETJ, the neighborhood will be eligible for federal and state grant funding as well as funding from Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County that could contribute to building long-awaited water and sewer infrastructure.

“It’s to our benefit to be candid about what we’re doing here,” said Commissioner Mark Dorosin.

“This is part and parcel of getting overdue reparations to the Rogers Road community.”

Commissioners raised questions about Rogers Road residents’ representation in county planning, since those living in the ETJ will not be able to vote for municipal leadership.

Dorosin said the neighborhood’s location in Chapel Hill’s joint planning area was problematic for the same reason because the town oversees planning, inspections and enforcement there.

“We can have an academic discussion about the pros and cons of ETJs and the fairness of people living in an area where they’re not able to vote for the municipal leadership that controls the land use planning in those areas, but the truth is, in this case, Chapel Hill already has all that control,” he said.

As a solution, commissioners discussed ETJ residents having a representative on the Orange County Planning Board.

Craig Benedict, Orange County director of planning and inspections, said very little would change for the area added to the ETJ apart from its access to funding.

“Under the ETJ program, the city has more autonomous abilities to approve projects,” he said.

Earl McKee, the board’s newly-elected chairman, spoke to Rogers Road community members sitting in the audience just before the commissioners’ approval of the expansion.

“Even though it seems like we’re moving like a herd of turtles, we are moving.”

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