theonollert.bsky.social
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Can you drop the Posting for Political Dummies thread?
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Finally, it's part of our job as representatives not just to serve as passive conduits for what people value, but to play an active role in shaping those values. That's one of the hardest parts of the job - and the most rewarding.
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Part of our job is to keep up with what's going on in the community. Some of our most important work is done with partner institutions - like the folks who provide affordable housing, or who make sure our homeless folks have a path back to housing.
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Councils can create laws and pass resolutions, but in NC, the laws we can create have a very limited scope. This is part of why we can't establish rent control or regulate towing fees, for instance.
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City councils and mayors (at least here in NC) typically don't directly oversee any town staff except for two people: the City Manager and the City Attorney.
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We approach both the building and budgeting processes with an eye to the future - what's happening with population, prices, and local needs?
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One of the most important things we do is approve the budget - allocating resources to implement plans and realize the community's goals and values.
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Cities set property tax rates, which fund personnel, services, amenities, and maintenance. But other districts that overlap can also add to the tax bill, like a school district or your county's tax rate.
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Unsurprisingly, they handle pretty much everything about what you're allowed (or not allowed) to build.
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Checking!
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inthesetimes.com/article/we-k...
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👉👉👉
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The next step is to get a strong grasp of the costs and benefits associated with each alternative: health impact, financial cost, energy efficiency. Whatever solution we arrive at, it shpuld be appropriate for a leading research institution - bold, smart, and innovative. (5)
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The big question remains: how to get electricity, and make steam, without coal? There are really two options:
1) burn something else
2) electrify the plant (boilers, heat pumps, etc)
(4)
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Moving away from coal opens that rail line up to other uses. I'm most excited by the idea of a greenway with housing and retail adjacent! (3)
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The cogeneration facility, which burns coal in order to provide electricity and steam to campus, is an essential part of UNC operations. Coal arrives via a rail line, which also takes coal ash out. (2)
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So, here's my promise to you: I'm not going to just bring you the protestations of a Democratic city councilman complaining about Republicans and Trump for the next two years. We deserve more than that. That's why I'll keep bringing you stories of how government works. (13)
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Sometimes, it means making one road a little safer.
When you're in it to help people, it is noble to serve. Our staff model that honor and duty every day, and it's my privilege to try to live up to it. I'm grateful for their example. (12)
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Elected officials and government employees - civil servants - work towards a great American ideal: a safe, free, healthy, and prosperous public. Sometimes that means big stuff, like tackling healthcare and public schools and retirement and taxes and post offices. (11)
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That's what our strategic plans are for. Our actions have to be consistent with a vision that we articulate and formalize by voting on policy. Staff does community outreach year round, our inboxes are always open, and every two years, voters tell us how they *really* feel. (10)
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We can usually learn something even when people object to our choices. For example, the neighbor unhappy about the traffic calming called attention to a blind turn that we might be able to make safer! (9)
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This request fit into the Town's "Vision Zero" commitment to eliminating traffic fatalities. So staff got to work. Fast forward, and we get that nice email. Of course, most of our decisions don't satisfy everyone. This one is no exception! (8)
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The best way to deal with this is to hire a good Town Manager, to flag constituent services requests to him or her, and trust them to prioritize the requests that fit into our staff capacity and strategic planning. Our manager has been great at this. (7)
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If you only do what's popular, you neglect essential functions that are less well understood or less sexy today (I call this "you gotta eat your vegetables before you eat your cake" 🤷) (6)
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One of our biggest challenges is balancing responsiveness to constituents with long-range planning. If you only help the constituents who ask, you leave a lot of people behind ("the squeaky wheel gets the grease"). (5)
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The response was quick. (4)
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This person also reached out to me on Instagram and asked me to look into it. I did. I'm pretty sure they wrote to some of my colleagues, too, who probably asked similar questions. (3)
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There's a wide street in one Chapel Hill neighborhood. People speed on broad roads. There are a lot of kids and cyclists in this neighborhood, so a cycling parent wrote to the Town to ask for help making things safer. (2)
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If yours is one of them, tell your story!
progressncaction.org/ballot-chall...