Agenda - 07-05-1988 - Laserfiche WebLink

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. 144 fifty-one are in mobile home parks. Those parks cover less than 0.5% of the area's total land area. Circulation A modified version of the North Carolina Highway Functional Classification system is used to describe the County's road network. This system describes parts of the network based on mobility and access factors. The most important roads, interstates and arterial roads, provide the shortest travel time between activity centers. Roads of lesser importance, collector roads, do not provide as good a service function, but do provide large areas with access to major roads. Local roads function in the most limited service capacity, but in the aggregate serve to provide large land areas with access to the collector and arterial systems. In part because of the area's physical boundaries, the circulation system for Chapel Hill Township north of the JPA cannot be separated out from either the Joint Planning Area to the south or Hillsborough and Eno Townships to the north. At its most narrow north-south point the region is only 1/4 mile wide and nowhere exceeds 1 1/2 mile wide. While all major north-south routes between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill pass through the area, few east-west roads traverse the area. There are no major intersections in the area, although the junction of the collector road New Hope Church Road (SR1723) and the arterial road NC86 lies just: to the south within the Joint Planning Area. Agriculture While agricultural and managed forest lands make up only a small portion of the area's total land area, they nonetheless provide an important component of the rural character much of the . area has. With the increasing development pressures radiating from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, and Durham, however, it is a component that is rapidly declining. The Orange County use value taxation program, begun in the early 1980's, allows land owners whose property meets certain agricultural production or forest management criteria to have that property taxed at its use value rather than the higher market value. Changes in program enrollment can give some idea of the trends in farmland conversion taking place. In the five year period from 1982 to 1987, the amount land in Chapel Hill Township north of the JPA enrolled in the program declined from 875 acres to 494 acres, a drop of 57%. For land in the program classified as agricultural, as opposed to managed forest, the decline was even more precipitous, 3.12-