Minutes 01-24-2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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John Roberts said that this differs from the task force recommendation in that Habitat is not willing to donate the land. To be legally constructed, this cannot be a neighborhood facility only, but a public facility. Commissioner Price asked how much control RENA would have over the facility. John Roberts said that whoever they contract with must accept people from the general public. There must be equal access to the facility. Commissioner Dorosin said that this Board has already committed $650,000 to build the building, whether the towns kick in money or not. Chair Jacobs said the Board of County Commissioners said it was committed to having it built even if it costs $650,000, whether anyone else contributed. Commissioner Dorosin made a friendly amendment to Commissioner Price's motion to instruct the Manager to make a deal with Habitat and to start with construction of the facility and ask the task force to commit to assisting with the operational expenses. Commissioner McKee said that the critical issue is that there have been multiple task forces and Chapel Hill did a small area plan that was never adopted/implemented. He said that these two issues need to be separated out—the sewer and the community center. He said that the community center is set and ready to go. The community center needs to move forward now. He suggested handing the community center to the staff and attorneys and they can take care of a lot of the technical questions. Commissioner Pelissier concurred with Commissioner McKee. She said the Board originally created the task force to get something done and if the towns are not going to participate on the center then she sees no need for a task force. The task force and Board of County Commissioners want to do the community center now and Orange County budgeted for it, so the towns need to budget something too. She is reluctant to create a new task force until the towns commit. Chair Jacobs said the Board wanted to talk about the outcomes and only one of them is the community center. He made reference to page 28, which is the draft recommendation to the Assembly of Governments from the task force, which specifically said that the costs would be shared between the County and the towns to build a community center. He said the County Commissioners can still move forward and make a request to towns to find a way to make the funding happen, but the County can still move forward. Commissioner Price said when she made a motion to move forward with the community center, it was to make sure this got done and not to hold things up. Commissioner Rich said she wanted to defend Chapel Hill Town Council. All Town Council members agreed to do this community center. She said Chapel Hill is not saying that it does not want to fund this. The Managers need to get together and create the interlocal agreement and move forward. She believes that the towns are already committed to this. Commissioner Dorosin said sewer has always been the core issue facing the community along with water and the task force did not start talking about sewer until the end of the last six months. He said the task force has not resolved this issue and there is no funding model in place. He said this conversation needs to continue to happen and this is the critical issue. He thinks the task force needs to continue to resolve this issue of the sewer. Commissioner Gordon said that the community center is ready to go, and the task force may need to stay together for the sewer issue. Commissioner Rich said at all of the task force meetings they did talk about sewer issues and they did go a lot further than has been indicated here tonight. She said many elected officials may not be aware of how far these discussions have gone. She said as Commissioners that they need more information on a sewer authority and they would need to get more information from OWASA.