Unbelievable. After a rain shortened Daytona 500 you just knew rain wouldn't be an issue going to California right? Wrong. Hopefully they can at least get the whole race in this week. Oh well, on with my week in review.
Tuesday evening I attended the third community meeting with residents of the Silverton/Silver Oaks community and Singh, the developer of a proposed project at the corner of Cary Parkway and Evans Road. At this meeting Singh presented proposals in response to neighborhood concerns identified at the previous meeting. The meeting went well and I was pleased to see how hard Singh has worked to address many of the resident’s concerns. The majority of residents indicated they were supportive of the direction Singh was heading, but as with anything the devil is in the details. Singh will work to implement a few more modifications to their plan before scheduling another meeting with the community.
I was pleased to meet with a Boy Scout this week to discuss a concern of his regarding the lack of sidewalks on the south side of Walnut Street from the Barnes and Nobles shopping center to US 1/64. While there are sidewalks on the other side of the street, crossing 4 lanes of traffic to get to them is dangerous to say the least. I will be meeting with staff to discuss this issue next week.
Our Planning and Development Committee meeting was Thursday evening. There were three topics of discussion – consideration of a tower to replace the decommissioned water tower on Kildaire Farm Road near Cary Elementary, consideration of the stormwater quality study in regards to land use scenarios in Chatham County, and creating a citizen award to honor an individual that exemplifies the “Preservation and Continuation of Traditional Small Town America” in Cary.
In my opinion the proposed tower compliments the community and fits the vision for downtown – especially the historic district - much better than the original proposal which was very modern in design and would be more at home somewhere like SAS campus. We must be very careful as we allow new projects downtown to ensure that we preserve and protect the character and charm of our historic district.
The Preservation and Continuation of Traditional Small Town America Award was an initiative suggested to me by a citizen. This citizen wanted to ensure that as Cary continues to grow into a city we remember where we came from, and honor someone who promotes small town values and culture. I am very pleased to see this move forward to council on consent.
Afterwards I attended my Wake County GOP precinct meeting at the VFW on Reedy Creek Road. I am honored to once again be elected a delegate to both the county and state party conventions.
This week the Wake County School Board finally agreed to commit to the required road improvements associated with the addition of 22 modular classrooms at Panther Creek High School. Hopefully they will submit their final site plan soon (they hadn’t as of last week) and we can get the students out of media centers and into classrooms. Thanks to Ron Margiotta and Eleanor Goettee for all their hard work on this issue. As a council member I contact school board members regularly – both Ron and Eleanor always respond when contacted. I’ll leave it at that.
Along with lots of email and preparation for our P+D committee meeting that’s about it for this week. Thanks for reading!
