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Commissioner Gordon said that right before the TAC meeting on September 29th the two TACs, the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro TAC and the CAMPO TAC, met jointly and they agreed on the wording for a memorandum of agreement between the two groups, which will have to go back to the two TACs. She has copies of the memorandum of agreement. Commissioner Gordon said that the Triangle J Council of Governments seated new officers -Frances Dancy is the chair of this group. Chair Jacobs is on the Air Quality Committee and the Regional Legislative Agenda Committee. She said that she was also appointed to a couple of committees. Commissioner Gordon said that she and Chair Jacobs attended the open house for Twin Creeks on October 4th. The recreation map was distributed as well as the Orange County Parks Projects Status Report. Commissioner Carey made reference to the issue of the library in Hillsborough. He saw the article and was a little taken aback because they have not had a chance to meet with Durham Tech officials yet. He knows that one of the Town of Hillsborough Commissioners sits on the Library Task Force. He said that they might need to rethink how they fund the libraries, because Hillsborough is the only entity that has a library and does not contribute anything to the operation of the library. Carrboro has stepped up to the plate, and he thinks Hillsborough should also. Chair Jacobs said that this has come up in the task force meetings. Chair Jacobs congratulated Commissioner Carey for his election as president of the North Carolina Association of Black County Officials. He also congratulated Commissioner Gordon for being elected the Vice-Chair of the Triangle Transit Authority Board of Trustees. Chair Jacobs said that they received information from the North Carolina Solar Center. On December 10th, it is sponsoring a N. C. Landfill Natural Gas to Energy Conference. He asked that someone from the Solid Waste Department attend this meeting. He would like a report back from whoever goes to this meeting. Commissioner Halkiotis said that he would love to attend this meeting. He would like someone from the Manager's office to attend also. Chair Jacobs said that Orange County and Hillsborough have been meeting about land use planning issues. He said that he could bring up collaboration on protecting Hillsborough's water supplies. There was also another school collaboration meeting yesterday and they are going to try and give more specificity to some of the timetables of the issues. They also talked about trying to group some of the items that were listed under "other areas for future collaboration." Chair Jacobs said that he attended a meeting of the Triangle Chairs today and they talked about school issues. Today, they talked about funding formulas, state standards, impact fees and taxes, capital costs, facility siting, and other matters. He asked Rod Visser to synthesize what was heard at the meeting. Rod Visser said that there were interesting facts shared at this meeting. He said that Wake and Durham Counties are experiencing similar challenges as Orange County as it relates to school funding. He said that the Wake County Public Schools did a calculation at the request of Wake County Commissioners and determined that 28% of local funding for schools goes for things that the State requires. The implication is that 72% of local funding is going to the discretionary area. Another trend is that very sizable portions of the debt capacity is taken up by issuing debt for schools - in the 80-90% range. Another trend, particularly in Wake County, is that there are very large amounts of school fund balance left on hand, to the tune of the equivalent of two cents on the tax rate in Wake County. Rod Visser said that they shared with the group the policies of Orange County and they got some in return. He said that there was a clear consensus among all three chairs that it is important for the counties, the school boards, the County Commissioners' Association, and for the North Carolina Association of School Boards to work together to deal with the disturbing