2.7.24 Planning Board Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Approved 3-6-24 347 common. These processes are, that's what makes them interesting and challenging, because not everybody 348 sees the world in the same way. 349 350 Lamar Proctor: Correct. I just didn't know how you weigh these things, or if you're just like, "here they 351 are. Here's what the statistically significant survey say, here's what the self-inviting group say, and here's what 352 the stakeholders say." I'm just wondering in terms of the themes and narratives in stakeholders, for example, 353 the issue with Mebane, in your report, there's an indication from stakeholders, without really parsing out how 354 many stakeholders or who said it, or where this information's coming from, that Mebane is not really as 355 development hungry as it seems to be. But I think there's plenty of examples that that is also not true, so 356 there's a disconnect between what is verifiable, accurate information, and what stakeholder summary 357 interviews are, and the way they're presented. 358 359 Leigh Anne King: I think so. It sounds like you're interested in more kind of quantifiable reporting of what 360 the stakeholder interview responses were. And I think that we typically write them as more qualitative than 361 quantifiable at that stage. The purpose of those stakeholder surveys and interviews is really to give us a pretty 362 quick dose of what the issues are in the community and then we kind of use that to help define the questions 363 we want to ask the community and test, "is that right, are we hearing it right?" So, what we learn from the 364 community engagement and the Strategic Plan Survey, is that, to your point, there's less of an emphasis on 365 economic development in terms of the community aspirations that we're reading through those two reports 366 than we heard from in the stakeholder information. Does that make sense? 367 368 Lamar Proctor: And that's why I'm noting that kind of disconnect there. 369 370 Leigh Anne King: Yep. And that's something that we will help to shed some light on as part of that new 371 Issues and Opportunities Report. And we're not going to go through line by line comparing every single issue, 372 but I think that we can talk about how there's some differing opinions about some different topics within the 373 community. 374 375 Lamar Proctor: And then, UNC. So, there was,just kind of like, "UNC is there." Is there a way to 376 engage? I know UNC has a school of government and they have a whole branch of people who look at the 377 interface between local government and development, they have small business advisors. And what I did like 378 about your report is it got me thinking about one of the largest, if not the largest employer in the county is UNC 379 Hospital and is there any way to interface with them and get them to be a stakeholder in the community in 380 terms of affordable housing. Because a lot of the people who need affordable housing are the people who are 381 working at UNC Hospital or University of North Carolina, generally. And I didn't know if there was any fertile 382 ground there moving forward, because they are a huge part, and they just seem kind of silent in this 383 conversation. 384 385 Leigh Anne King: I think that that is a really good idea to be exploring. As a land use plan, since our kind of 386 focus is on developing a land use plan at the end of the day for this project, and I think that land use plan can 387 include some recommendations for how the County might go about either partnering or being a funder, or 388 whatever the recommendation is with respect to affordable housing. And it seems like that's a very important 389 opportunity—is how can we be kind of partnering with our biggest employer in the county, that generates a lot 390 of the workforce that can't live here because of wages, etc. and the lack of affordability, that seems like an 391 important kind of recommendation to be considering. 392 393 Lamar Proctor: And last point on the stakeholder interview answers. I think going forward, I'd like for it to 394 have some clarity as to like, this is a qualitative analysis. Because someone who is reviewing this can get 395 misled into thinking, "well, these are quantitatively important things,"as opposed to, "this is kind of the 396 conversation themes that come up when we talk to stakeholders."