Graham’s city council agreed by consensus Tuesday night to add several new items of business to the agenda for the council’s May meeting.
Graham mayor Chelsea Dickey asked her fellow council members to consider, and they agreed, to review and discuss a portion of the city’s ordinance that pertains to “skates and other motive devices” at their next meeting on May 12.
“Our skateboard ordinance is very restricting, to the point where it wouldn’t allow for wagons or even strollers,” Dickey said during the “council comments” portion of the monthly meeting Tuesday night.
By way of comparison, Dickey said that Burlington and Mebane’s ordinances are “more inclusive [and allow] for things like wheelchairs.”
Graham’s ordinance specifies that “no person shall operate, ride, or use any motive device propelled or designed for propulsion by human power, including… tricycles, coasters, scooters, skateboards, roller skates, roller blades, sled or wagon on any public street, public sidewalk, public park, public vehicular area, or the premises of any municipal building or municipal parking facility within the central business district.”
That prohibition against “motive devices” within the downtown business district was adopted on March 7, 2006 and hasn’t been revised since, according to the city’s code of ordinances.
The council subsequently agreed by consensus to resume discussion on an agenda item next month.
Two public hearings postponed until May
The council agreed earlier in the meeting Tuesday night to postpone until next month a scheduled public hearing and vote on a proposal to amend a city ordinance pertaining to Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). Staff had recommended reducing the maximum square footage for attached and detached ADUs from 1,600 to 1,200 square feet and requiring minimum lot sizes of 20,000 square feet (or just under a quarter-acre) for all single-family residences with a free-standing ADU.
The proposed revision to the ordinance allow provides that, for lots already connect to city water/sewer services, the primary residence and ADU “may use the existing primary tapped connection to connect” to an ADU, if sufficient capacity is available.
Mayor pro tem Ricky Hall expressed opposition; council member Bonnie Whitaker expressed “real reservations.” Councilman Bobby Chin raised the issue of whether the General Assembly is considering statewide regulations for ADUs.
Mayor Dickey and councilman Jim Young were more receptive, with Young saying he thinks ADUs are “the coolest thing.
The council voted 5-0 to delay the public hearing and discussion about the proposed amendments to the city’s ADU regulations until next month. The council also postponed until May a scheduled public hearing and discussion about the city’s comprehensive future land use plan.
Legal advertising
Meanwhile, the council agreed by consensus, at Hall’s request, Tuesday night to add his proposal to next month’s agenda to use The Times-News of Burlington exclusively for all legal-notice advertising that state law requires the city to publish.
“They publish three days a week, versus the one,” Hall opined. “A lot of times we get caught having to wait for the one day for everything to get published.”
Asked by Dickey whether his proposal was to publish legal advertising in the Burlington paper, instead of the city’s current practice of running legal notices with The Alamance News, Hall said yes.
Before Dickey could poll each of the council members to see if they wanted to discuss it at the May meeting, council members Chin and Whitaker immediately responded that they wanted Hall’s proposal added to next month’s agenda.
[Story continues below link to editorial on legal advertising proposal.]
Read the newspaper’s editorial page view on the retaliatory proposal: https://alamancenews.com/graham-councilmans-idea-spend-more-for-less-by-boycotting-the-alamance-news/
Truck traffic
Dickey also asked whether the council would agree to have the city’s staff look into the possibility of re-routing logging trucks around the historic downtown business district. The city’s public works director, Burke Robertson, has identified a couple of alternate routes that might work, the mayor said Tuesday night.
“I would be in favor,” said Whitaker.
Councilman Jim Young, however, said his father had been a truck driver and that, while he agrees “that the way some of them come through is a nuisance,” he’d prefer not to “get involved in something that’s going to affect the truck drivers’ income or their livelihood.”
Assistant city manager Aaron Holland told the council Tuesday night that the staff had met recently with Graham police chief Brian Neil to discuss the possibility of rerouting truck traffic.
The state Department of Transportation (DOT) “saying they’re not going to enforce anything on a city street as far as weight is concerned,” Holland said. “There are two separate solutions, but neither one is clear at this time; we are still studying it.”
Graham officials have discussed, on and off for years, the possibility of rerouting large trucks, particularly logging trucks, around the city’s historic downtown business district.
Historically, logging trucks entering the city from the east (from either NC 54 or NC 49) typically come into the downtown area along either Harden or Elm Street, turn south on North Main Street (or enter at Court Square), and then proceed south through downtown and then farther south toward a lumber yard south of Graham.
A downtown master plan developed for the city in 2019 had proposed rerouting trucks off of North and South Main Streets, requiring them to exit off of Harden or Elm streets and then travel south along either Marshall Street or Maple Street, both largely residential areas, where neighbors protested the idea – re-entering South Main Street at Gilbreath Street near I-85/40.
That idea was panned by the council and was not adopted as a part of the downtown plan; though several components dealing with water/sewer improvements were adopted in September 2019, the plan itself was mostly shelved.
Graham’s city council agreed by consensus this week to discuss the possibility of rerouting heavy trucks at next month’s meeting.
Return of benches downtown?
The council had previously agreed last month to resume a discussion at this month’s meeting about bringing back some of the benches that were once located along some of the sidewalks downtown.
Noting the warming spring weather, mayor Chelsea Dickey, said at the March 10 meeting, “We used to have benches downtown. Can we bring the benches back downtown?”
That idea hit a buzzsaw of opposition from Hall and councilman Bobby Chin – as well as former mayor Jennifer Talley, for whom Chin moved to reopen the public comments period so she could speak on the issue. Chin and Hall depicted the benches as a magnet for vagrants.
The former mayor recalled hearing numerous complaints about the benches during her tenure on the council, as well as reports of people “smoking weed” on the benches and problems with homeless and mentally ill people.
Another audience member, Jeff Benes, pointed out that those things could happen downtown, regardless of whether benches are there or not.
Whitaker and Young were more amenable to looking into the possibility of restoring the benches, though Whitaker had said she wanted to hear what the police chief has to say about the idea.
The council took no action on the issue this week but agreed by consensus to discuss it at its next meeting on May 12.
Juneteenth
The city council also agreed to consider at its May meeting a proposal by Young to provide an additional paid holiday for city employees in observance of Juneteenth, which is celebrated annually on June 12 and commemorates the official end of slavery.
The day marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 – two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to ensure that all enslaved people were freed. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in June 2021 and a state holiday in 2007..
No cost estimate of the impact was known as of press time Wednesday.
