On June 17, the Chapel Hill Town Council met for their last meeting of the season to discuss the Land Use Management Ordinance (LUMO) rewrite, affordable housing and the bond referendums being added to the 2024 ballots.
What’s new?
- The council reflected on accomplishments over the past season.
- “In January, we came in with three new council members, a new mayor and a relatively new town manager,” Mayor Jess Anderson said. “And together, we’ve made some really good progress.”
- Sarah Viñas, Chapel Hill’s director of affordable housing and community connections, held a public hearing for a funding application for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement competition, which is a grant offered for the preservation and upkeep of manufactured housing.
- Though the grant totals $235 million, the Town is only applying for $10-15 million to support the acquisition of new manufactured home communities and to aid in the upkeep of preexisting ones.
- “Chapel Hill includes four manufactured home communities totaling about 160 units of housing. The average income of households living in the Town’s manufactured home communities is around 30 percent of the area median income, so these are primarily extremely low-income households,” Viñas said.
- She said that the majority of the residents of these communities are Latino and that many of the units are in need of rehabilitation and are aging.
- She said that, based off of an inventory completed by Orange County several years ago, nearly half of the units in these communities needed major repairs.
- She said that the majority of the residents of these communities are Latino and that many of the units are in need of rehabilitation and are aging.
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Tasmaya Lagoo, Chapel Hill’s principal planner, presented suggestions for the Town’s LUMO rewrite.
- One suggestion made by planning staff is to remove the process for creating new neighborhood conservation districts. According to a report by the planning staff, language used in the previous edition of LUMO does not reflect the Town’s values.
- Another suggestion was to allow more housing along higher-capacity roads and greenways based on infrastructure rather than on zoning considerations.
- “What we recommend, with the new LUMO, is to start to allow that next increment of missing middle housing — things like triplexes, fourplexes and some cases, cottage courts — start to allow them not necessarily based on zoning district, but instead, [on] things like infrastructure,” Lagoo said. “Things that tie into our complete community vision of a walkable, bikeable town.”
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The final suggestions surrounded design and dimensional standards.
- One suggestion was to impose standards on frontages — the space between the road and the front of a building.
- Another was to regulate building types, including the orientation and size of buildings, based on contextual needs.
What decisions were made?
- The council proclaimed July 2024 as Parks and Recreation Month in Chapel Hill.
- The council unanimously approved all five proposed bond orders for the November 2024 referendum.
- The first bond designates $15 million to affordable housing efforts.
- The second allocates $15 million toward public buildings including public safety stations, administrative buildings and headquarters.
- The third allocates $7.5 million to provide streets, sidewalks, overpasses, bridges and other road features.
- The fourth bond will provide $4.5 million to parks and recreation facilities.
- The fifth bond will allocate $2 million to open space and greenways.
- The council voted unanimously to become signatories on a settlement against Kroger — who owns Harris Teeter — for their role in the opioid crisis.
What’s next?
The next Chapel Hill Town Council meeting will take place in August.
