CHTC Candidates Agree (Mostly) On Rural Buffer

CHAPEL HILL - With the cost of housing higher in Chapel Hill than anywhere else in the Triangle, some residents are asking the Town Council to take action by adjusting the town’s rural buffer.

 

But at last week’s Sierra Club-Chamber of Commerce candidate forum, the nine Council candidates all answered mostly in unison.

 

Click here to listen. (Comments are from Lee Storrow, Jon DeHart, Donna Bell, and Augustus Cho, respectively.)

 

Chapel Hill’s rural buffer is designed to check urban sprawl by limiting the reach of the town’s water and sewer service. It’s effective—but it’s also costly: home prices in Chapel Hill are elevated partly because the buffer reduces the housing supply. According to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, the average price of a home in Chapel Hill was nearly $330,000 in 2010.

 

Nevertheless, nearly all of the Town Council candidates at Wednesday’s forum said that was a price worth paying. 

 

"I'm a proponent of diversity in Chapel Hill, but...Chapel Hill is what it is because of the rural buffer," said incumbent Donna Bell. "There's a reason why people say 'I would live in Chapel Hill--if I could.' Chapel Hill is still the better place to live."

 

And fellow incumbent Matt Czajkowski noted that merely increasing the supply wouldn’t necessarily have the desired effect on home prices.

 

"The argument is that building up would mitigate (cost)," he said, "but I would submit that where we've built up...those units are the most expensive, per square foot, of any in town."

 

But while none of the candidates were on board with the idea of adjusting the rural buffer to lower housing prices, most of the incumbents did agree that an adjustment might be worth considering in certain circumstances—if it could help keep more tax dollars from leaving the county. 

 

"In the southern part of the county, at Starpoint...we've got another large shopping center that's going to be three feet over the county line," said incumbent Jim Ward. "If we extended the rural buffer (or) annexed some land in Chatham County, (we could) take advantage of that economic development opportunity."

 

Wednesday’s forum was sponsored by the Sierra Club and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce. The next Town Council candidate forum will be Monday, October 3, sponsored by the League of Women Voters.