This week was a busy week with an intercity visit to Carmel, Indiana and a long council meeting.

Monday started with phone calls to the council members for questions or comments that may concern them with the regular council meeting’s agenda. Unfortunately, I was only able to get in contact with one council member and left messages with the others.

Monday afternoon I met with staff directors to go over the agenda. This agenda was full of items that would generate a lot of discussion so I knew it would be a long meeting. I guessed it would take about 4 hours which would have put us at 10:30. Boy was I wrong. We didn’t actually get out of the meeting until close to 12:30. The meeting had four public hearings including a special use public hearing. Since that is quasi judicial the speakers didn’t have time limits.

Monday evening I taped the June episode of Cary Matters with council member Portman. The main topic was on floodwater issues. The question and answer portion of the episode included water conservation, internet service in public places, and unwanted material on mailboxes. We were able to knock this recording session out in about 45 minutes.

Tuesday, I along with roughly 30 others boarded a plane for Indianapolis for the Cary Chamber’s intercity visit. We arrived around 9:30 AM and started with a bus tour of Indianapolis. Lunch was held at the Lucas Oil Stadium (where the Colts play) with Carmel Mayor, Jim Brainard and several representatives of the NCAA which is headquarted in Indianapolis. The NCAA representatives are very important for Cary since we are one of the six NCAA championship cities in the US and want to continue to hold NCAA championships in Cary. The rest of the day was spent visiting sites such as the Carmel city square, their arts district, and one of the key roundabout interchanges (similar to US64 in Cary).

Wednesday started with a breakfast meeting at the hotel where we heard from a county commissioner on transit and several members of the Carmel staff on transit and road projects. The rest of Wednesday morning was spent visiting the Carmel aquatics center which was very impressive and even had several water park features such as giant slides and a lazy river. After lunch we finally got to a discussion of how Carmel paid for all the amenities they had. It turns out that they get about $30 million a year in income tax revenue in addition to a property tax rate that is about 40% higher than ours (assuming ours and the county rate were combined since they have their own school system).

On the way to the airport the bus went by the Indianapolis Speedway. It was “community day” as part of the Indianapolis 500 celebration which means people can ride around the track. So we asked if we could take the bus around the track. We were allowed to enter the infield and were queued up but were not actually allowed on the track. Oh well, it was impressive being in the infield anyway.

All in all it was a great trip. There were a lot of impressive things to see in Carmel which has about half our population. They are known in the region as the town with the roundabouts. Currently, they have around 60 of them. The one thing that stuck with me the most is how much more revenue they get than Cary. If we had their amount of revenue we could probably do wonderful things in short order. But in Cary I believe people want their representatives to be very conservative with their tax dollars and I believe our council does exactly that.

Thursday’s council meeting lasted close to six hours. Two of those hours were spent on the special use hearing that I mentioned earlier. Other discussions that took time included the Park at Westlake (approved), the Historic Preservation Master Plan (approved), the Cameron Pond Wall recommendation (approved), and the road waiver for Stone School Supply Store(approved). I voted against the road waiver because I strongly feel that waiving road improvements causes the next development to pay for them or the citizens to pay for them. One important point that I try to make is that someone WILL pay for them. In the past, it has been the taxpayers subsidizing development at over 90% in some cases. I want to make sure we don’t go back to that amount of subsidy. Having said that, I think it is important to do all we can to encourage new businesses in Cary. Balance is the key and that is how I approach each case.

Emails this week included a call for my resignation because I allegedly mix politics and religion and don’t know about the separation of church and state. Hmmm. I am very sure I do know and don’t mix them. Anyway, other emails included several requests for the wall option from Cameron Pond residents, several complaints about bridge guardrails on Kildaire Farm road near Lochmere, questions about Waverly place, a complaint about the lack of sidewalks on Dynasty Drive,  requests for money for non profits, and concerns about our fire policy on pine straw.

Next week I will be in Hilton Head so I won’t have anything to post other than I had a good vacation (I hope).

Well that is all for this week. My next post will be on Sunday, June 13^th. Please feel free to email me with a comment.