ORD-2008-012 - Orange Co Zoning Ordinance -Buckhorn Rd Associates LLC Rezoning

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James Carnahan: I have been sworn in. I'm a resident of Carrboro and a designer. I'm going to briefly talk about some more lengthy comments and analysis, and I'm going to give to you two documents. The first one is an Op Ad written and endorsed by the Board of Directors of The Village Project, anon-profit in Carrboro, North Carolina. The remainder of material is entitled, "Assessing Buckhorn Village in the Context of Global Warming." Basically, this is asking you all first to find out, either from staff or from the applicant what will be the vehicle miles traveled, what will be the carbon emissions impact of this project. I think that is fairly easy to determine with GIS and other data. The applicant estimates something like 46,000 daily trips in and out of this development. We are being asked to consider and build this kind of a project that would be primarily automobile dependent, because we don't have any public transportation down by I-85, at a time when the message about global warming and climate change is becoming more and more ominous. So, the bulk of the material that I have prepared here, first of all talks about some of the consequences of global warming, and second, talks about the fact that many of these consequences are accelerating to the extent that James Hanson, who is the NASA scientist who first started talking about wanting to establish an upper limit for concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, recently wrote that the limit needs to be reduced to 350 parts per million. We are already at 380 parts per million. We need to have this information A and B. I think it is a concern that we're being asked to approve this based on a pretty outdated comprehensive plan, very outdated guidelines for the economic development districts, and also we have not completed the carbon inventory for the County much less established guidelines and standards for achieving some kind of carbon reduction in the County. Given the gravity of what former U. S. Vice President AI Gore calls the Global Climate Emergency, and given that the County's planning ordinances do not now effectively address the urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions, approval of the Buckhorn Village application at this time is not in the County's interest. The accumulation of knowledge about CO2 and climate change in conjunction with the significant increase in CO2 that Buckhorn Village would produce indicates that this project would pose a threat to the health, safety, and welfare to the people of Orange County and beyond." Glendel Stephenson (Mayor of Mebane): I have been sworn in. I am here tonight to support the proposal that was presented by your applicant concerning the property at the Buckhorn location. About two and a half or three years ago, the officials of the City of Mebane and Orange County met to talk about the need to supply water and sewer for the new Gravelly Hill Middle School that needed to be built in western Orange County. The City agreed to do that, and at that particular time, we also talked about what might take place over the next number of years with the properties on both sides of the interstate, particularly, that property that was occupied by the Jockey Lot. You asked us at that time if we could also make an allocation of water and sewer in each of those properties and we agreed to do that. I think we gave you a letter along that line. In the course of the conversation there, we said that this is not an open- ended deal, but a limited amount of uses that you can get from the City of Mebane, but it was far in excess of anything that's been described here tonight that would be needed on this development. We also said in our conversation, and I'd like to emphasize a few things, that the tenants going into that area would not be large users, and we're talking about industrial type users, of either water or sewage. That they would provide good employment opportunities, and we've heard something about the number of employees that might be involved here. That they would be a good addition to the tax bases of both Orange County and Mebane. In addition to that, that any development that takes place there should be to the benefit of the surrounding neighborhood. We have been approached by a number of people who live along Buckhorn about their septic tank problems and other things and asking that we provide some help, and that was part of the conversation we had with the Orange County officials. Mebane has provided water and sewage for Gravelly Hill and we are now ready to provide both of those