The intersection of Jones Ferry and Davie roads in Carrboro is quiet just after noon, but three hours earlier, more than 20 men waited here for contracting companies to hire them for the day’s work.
Emily Burns photo

by Sam Giffin
Carrboro Commons Writer

The Tuesday, Oct. 23 Board of Aldermen meeting hosted the monthly public hearing session during which citizens are allowed to sign up to present their opinions and findings to the board. One issue to be discussed at this meeting brought a relatively large public presence. Many citizens of Carrboro stood up to speak their minds about loitering issues concentrated near the Route 54 bypass.

At the intersection of Davie Road and Jones Ferry Road, day laborers wait between the hours of about 6-11a.m. in the morning for contractors to pick them up for manual labor work. These men are mostly Hispanic and according to a Town Staff report are often accompanied by unemployed men who are not looking for work.

At a previous meeting on Sept. 18, the Town Staff presented evidence they had compiled on issues occurring repeatedly at this intersection to the Board of Aldermen. The report included concerns such as loitering, public urination, littering, public consumption of alcohol, trespassing on private property and harassment of passersby.

The Board approved an action plan for resolving this problem including an increased police presence, a new public trash can and talking with both El Centro Latino and the contracting companies that hire these workers. More significantly however, the Board set in motion the process for instituting a limited anti-lingering ordinance at the intersection and surrounding area between the hours of 5 to 11 a.m..

In recent weeks some of these measures have been implemented. A trash can had been set up and police presence has been augmented over the past month. Many citizens however clearly believed that not enough had been done to solve these problems.

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by Emily Burns
Carrboro Commons Writer

At dawn each day of the week, men gather at the intersection of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road in Carrboro. These men, most of who are of Hispanic descent, convene in and across from the parking lot of the BP gas station, waiting for contracting companies to arrive and take a few people at a time to area construction sites.

The daily gathering has occurred at the location for several years, but over the past six months, residents of the surrounding neighborhood have begun to complain more about the activities that take place at the intersection after the construction companies and day laborers have come and gone.

The Carrboro Board of Alderman, which addressed the issue at its Oct. 23 public hearing, is actively searching for a solution to the problem, which has caused a great deal of controversy in the Carrboro community over the past several months. Currently, the board is working to pass an ordinance that would prohibit lingering at the intersection except during the hours of 5 to 11 a.m.

“It’s a matter of a neighborhood and of workers who want to go to work,” said Carrboro Alderwoman Randee Haven-O’Donnell. “We can’t just send everyone out.”

Haven-O’Donnell has been working closely with El Centro Latino’s Executive Director Ben Balderas and other organizations to find the best way to solve the issue of disruptive loitering at the intersection without preventing day laborers from finding work.

“The Hispanic-Latino workforce is a good, honest workforce that is absolutely needed in North Carolina’s economy,” Haven-O’Donnell said.

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by Cameron Weaver
Carrboro Commons Editor

Cotton candy, games with prizes, silent auctions, people of all ages… Sounds a lot like the State Fair, but these scenes actually took place at McDougle Elementary School’s Fall Festival on Saturday, Oct. 27.

Ted Calhoun Jr. and his daughters, Lara and Cecilia (l to r), show their hair paint at McDougle Fall Festival’s beauty booth on Saturday.
Cameron Weaver photo

The first annual Fall Festival was a fundraiser for the school’s PTA, according to PTA president Karen Frisch. The festival brought in about $18,000.

“This money goes toward school programs we’ve traditionally supported,” she said. Such programs include skate nights, teacher appreciation days, homework assistance, ice cream socials and camp scholarships.

More than 60 PTA members, parents, students and community volunteers organized the event. The PTA began planning the festival in May. “We’ve been working on this since before the end of last year,” Frisch said. The festival lasted from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. and was open to the public.

The school building was transformed into a virtual carnival, with almost all of the hallways filled with activity booths. Volunteers ran the booths, which offered games, food, crafts and more. Some of the activities included beanbag tosses, a cake walk, a moon bounce and a dress-up station.

Raffle prizes, “class baskets” and a silent auction were located in the school auditorium. The class baskets were based on themes that each class put together, such as “Movie Night” or “Arts & Crafts.” The silent auction included items donated by students’ families, including beach getaway weekends, as well as donations from Carrboro businesses, such as a gift certificate from Milltown.

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by Kendal Walters
Carrboro Commons Writer

Bikes rest against a hand-painted sign that posts the “Guidelines and Idiosyncrasies.”

Number one: Help/ask for help; learn a skill and share it. The other guidelines mostly deal with safety and logistics, like signing in and out and tallying volunteer hours. Number seven on the list explains the exchange program: Cost: 10-20 hours service. Simply put, if you want a bike, fix two.

ReCYCLEry director Chris Richmond in front of a sign that displays the not-for-profit organization’s ‘Guidelines and Idiosyncrasies.’ Richmond says he came up with the list a while ago, but his mom helped abridge it and then painted it on the sign two weeks ago.
Kendal Walters photo

At Carrboro’s ReCYCLEry, a direct-service not-for-profit organization that encourages bicycle use for transportation and recreation, notice that there are not rules; there are “guidelines and idiosyncrasies.”

The ReCYCLEry accomplishes its mission in a community education setting where everyone is a teacher and a student. The Web site explains an exchange program that allows individuals to “earn a refurbished bicycle by spending time helping another member of the community.”

And the result of such an organization, says Director Chris Richmond, has to do with a quality-of-life return, not a monetary one. He adds that the mission includes both sustainability and bringing the community together, and that “the topic just happens to be bikes, but often diverges.”

Under the guidance of Richmond, who has been working with the ReCYCLEry since 2001, Sunday bike workshops are run completely by volunteers of all ages and skill levels.

Shannon Gigliotti says she didn’t know a lot about bikes before she came. But now, after a month and a half of admittedly hard work, she has successfully refurbished a bike that needed new tires, tubes, brake parts, and derailleur cables. “I thought I would never finish. It was like one step forward and five steps back,” says Gigliotti.

“Everyone has such a random mix of knowledge,” Gigliotti comments. Ryan Miller, a UNC-Chapel Hill senior, adds that “nine times out of 10, even if you don’t know anything about bikes, if you get two people working together, you’ll figure it out.”
Miller chose the ReCYCLEry out of a list of possible internship sites for his environmental studies service-learning course because he says he is interested in transportation and city planning.

Jeffrey Williams, of Winston-Salem, and Ryan Kirkman, of Kannapolis, both juniors at UNC-Chapel Hill, volunteer as part of the N.C. Teaching Fellows program in a course called Service-Learning for Educators.

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By Jon Sullivan
Carrboro Commons Writer

It seems like no matter which town you live in, there is a Web site that has something to do with it. Most often there is a town Web site providing government services. Other times, it is a local news provider getting a leg-up in the changing face of publishing media.

Carrboro has both of these things and more, which is not very surprising in itself. What’s amazing is how many other Web sites there are and how much diversity and variety come from their pages. After looking through most of them, the real surprise comes from the openness, the opinions, and the downright strangeness of some of them.

The “It’s Carrboro” Web site, providing humorous songs and videos created by locals Brian Risk and Billy McCormick.

One of the most oddly amusing Web sites dedicated to the Carrboro area is put out by locals Brian Risk and Billy McCormick. The Web site, www.itscarrboro.com, is not just a community Web page where people can post events and find the school lunch menu… well ok… it’s not that at all. Instead, it’s a Web site where you can listen to, watch and download the local hit song “It’s Carrboro!”

The lyrics to the song pay homage to the community that residents know and love. Plus, the video stars dancing residents, yelling locals and community hot spots. If you like the song a lot, you can even download the exclusive “It’s Carrboro!” ring tone.

Brian and Billy have been putting out stuff like this for a while. Some people may have seen the YouTube video of Brian and Billy walking, singing and playing a strange-looking guitar from Carrboro to Chapel Hill. If not, it’s on the Web site too.

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