Minutes - 08-28-2000 - Laserfiche WebLink

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community-based services to meet the demand for mental health, mental illness, and substance abuse. The task farce also has recommendations in the report on senior citizens, childcare, public safety, education campaigns, and the needs of the Latino population. Regarding K-12 education, the task force is encouraging cooperation between the two school systems and asks that the County and school systems consider the appropriateness of school merger. The task force also encourages increased cooperation between the administration of the two systems and to look at whether merger is a possibility. The task force would also like for the Board to look at adult education. The task force feels it is important to the citizens to have a continuing education program. Also, English as a Second Language is a critical component of bringing everybody in as an equal opportunity. Ellen Iranside talked about the citizen's roundtable. The Governments would actively pursue community and citizen involvement in decision making. An ongoing citizen's roundtable modeled after the SOCF Task Force was relied upon by the Town and County governments to provide an avenue for citizen's concerns to be transmitted and heard by the elected bodies. The roundtable is charged to examine issues, gain broad citizen input, come to consensus, and make recommendations to the governing boards to give serious weight and consideration to this input. The roundtable is also charged with monitoring implementation of the adapted SOCF recommendations and examining the County's vision for any necessary corrections. The roundtable members are volunteers who are selected for appointment by each of the governing boards in the County to reflect the diversity of Orange County citizens. The roundtable will use facilitation and dispute resolution techniques in working with community issues. PUBLIC COMMENT James Carnahan spoke on behalf of the Village Project, an ad hoc group of citizens {designers, planners, and environmentalists). They want to promote alternatives to sprawl by supporting traditional patterns of land use and transportation. Their primary goal is preservation of the rural landscape. They are commenting tonight about the environment and land use section of the task force report and support its call to, "identify areas of the County in which to promote denser mixed use development and channel growth into these areas." They ask the County Commissioners and the task force to consider two items. They ask that the County Commissioners consider the North Carolina railroad between Charlotte and Morehead City as an alternative transportation corridor along which to concentrate the growth. The Village Project believes it would be prudent and exciting to plan transit villages for several sites along the railroad line. Secondly, they strongly support the earlier language of the task force report, the proposed rural villages as growth receptors at appropriate sites in rural Orange County. He said that this would require some growth focussing mechanism for rural areas, and they support the task force proposal that rural citizens work in small area planning processes to establish a fair and equitable mechanism for directing development into a few sites where compact mixed use communities can grow over time surrounded by large conservation buffers. The Village Project shares the concerns about utility issues, particularly sewer, and they concur that extension of municipal services into rural villages is neither necessary nor desirable. Jeff Schmitt was representing about 75 citizens in the County. He commented about the item, Putting Community Building First, which involves convening asix-month study group to look at the basis for the representation and the election of the Board of County Commissioners. He said that 47 of the 100 counties in North Carolina elect their representatives on a basis other than fully at-large. He made reference to the executive summary and said that there was no mention in that document of convening a study group to look at the basis for the representation of the County Commissioners. With no further citizens to speak on this item, Vice-Chair Halkiotis closed the public hearing. A motion was made by Commissioner Gordon, seconded by Commissioner Brown that the Board of County Commissioners take the Shaping Orange County's Future report up at a work session before it is taken to the Assembly of Governments. VOTE: UNANIMOUS