[Durham INC] 751 Ass./South update --

[Melissa Rooney]

See the news links below for updates to the most recent interventions of the Board of County Commissioners in the rezoning case for the 751 Ass./South.

Note that 
1) The opposition was forced to file their protest petition yesterday because of the possibility, despite our appeal to the BOA, of the County Commissioners' voting to go ahead with a June 1 public hearing during their closed session. [Yesterday at 5 PM was the deadline for submitting a protest petition for a June 1 public hearing. Since the Commissioners had intended on holding a closed session meeting about this, and we citizens weren't supposed to know about this, it is hard to avoid considering that their intent was to subvert the filing of a protest petition.]

2) After the protest petition was filed, the Southern Durham Development team (via K&L Gates) asked for a deferral until the end of June, presumably to give them time to 'deal with' the protest petition. Up until this time, they had not even intimated that they would ask for a deferral, not even to help the county out and give the opponents the maximum one month deferral that was due to them according to the UDO.

There is still some question as to whether SDD officially submitted their deferral request by 5 PM yesterday, in that they have allegedly asked for an extension of this deadline until 6:30 PM.

3) Because the protest petition had to be filed yesterday, in order to be on the safe side, the opposition withdrew the appeal to the BOA. Based on past (sometimes questionable) practices involved in development rezonings, and particularly the handling of the protest petition in the Jordan Lake Watershed Rezoning case (which necessarily preceded this rezoning case), the opposition obviously prefers for the case to move forward as quickly as possible now that the protest petition has been filed, thereby acquiescing to the short 8-day delay provided by the currently and still officially scheduled June 1 public hearing. 

Of course, the planning department has to grant the deferral to the developers (they have to grant one deferral to each side). What's interesting is that the BOCC isn't discussing a rescheduling of the public hearing for June 14, the date that they originally
offered the opposition (through my request for a deferral). Even then the developers would be granted a delay that is approximately double the
time given to the opposition (they gave us only a deferral of 8 days). In addition, in discussing the opposition's deferral, commissioners apparently discussed how a June 23 date wouldn’t work with their schedules. Now suddenly their schedules are clear to make way for the developers' requests. Just more evidence
that the deck is stacked against Durham citizens.

-- Melissa (Rooney)
P.S. News Articles Below:

From the Bull City Rising blog:
751 Date: After we signed off last night, it's unclear whether a definitive date for the hearing on the 751 project site rezoning was selected; the H-S notes a June 23 consensus date, though the Indy's Samiha Khanna says a final vote will happen today during a work session. As the Herald-Sun notes, the citizens protesting the project who had pressed for deferral of the hearing are now -- protest petition in hand -- pushing for a sooner-than-later rezoning hearing, while the developer team have suggested June 24, a date that citizen-activist Melissa Rooney suggests could allow for lobbying of petition-signers to change their minds. 

Link to Herald Sun article:
http://heraldsun.net/view/full_story_news_durham/7639862/article-Decision-on-lottery-money-delayed?instance=main_article

Link to Indy article:
http://www.indyweek.com/triangulator/archives/2010/05/24/residents-file-protest-petition-in-751-south-case-in-preparation-for-june-1-public-hearing



      
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