Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 08:32:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Brad Page <bradp24@embarqmail.com>
Subject: Re: Samantha Capitol’s “Pittsboro matters to all of us”
I do not question the sincerity of Samantha Capitol’s assertion that Pittsboro Matters is not neutral. Far as I can tell no one is neutral who looks at the fact of the development plans of Chatham Park.
Still, the PDD (a phased-development plan ) does not fully spell out the precise moves the developers will take on their 7000+ acres in Chatham County and adjacent to Pittsboro. So far all I see is promises unfulfilled in the sense that we are offered some fine fantasies but they’re just air. The Town Board has broad zoning and regulation powers after the signing of the PDD but it does not have enforcement power over the details that must be worked out in advance to protect the already vested interests of Pittsboro’s citizens. This development will undoubtedly take place but no one can claim that a population increase of 55,000+ new people in this area over the next 30 years is not going to be traumatic for the existing social, environment and economic structure. Our only chance, and Pittsboro Matters is concerned mainly with this, is to dot the i’s and cross the t’s as much as possible now.
Of course many people are FOR this project. A frog placed in a cool pan of water is FOR that until the pan is placed on a stove and heated. By the time he or she has detected the heat it’s too late – can’t jump out.
Drive to Apex for a little outing. Apex itself is a roadside attraction amid a mass of concrete, glass, asphalt and traffic jams at every light. Apex stopped being Apex a long time ago. That pot over there is coming to us in the form of a cool set of promises, coolly unspecified, coolly dreamed up the same highly skilled and persistent professionals who do nothing but slowly turn up the heat – first with “vested interests.” What is not taken into consideration in this cool moment is that this project proliferates. It’s very presence creates demand in a thousand directions, a thousand ways that no one can control. I moved here from Charlotte – the amoeba that’s swallowing South Carolina with it’s strip malls and massive developments of McMansions. That’s our future if we don’t make intelligent choices now.
No. No one is neutral: not the Town Board, not the citizens, not the Chatham Park developers, not Pittsboro Matters. Neutrality isn’t important right now, Pittsboro is what’s important to those of us who live here, raise our children here, care for this environment, and care for each other.
Brad Page