I got a call back from Penrose Hollins yesterday evening. Councilman Hollins was at the meeting on Thursday night because he was the sponsor of the Workforce Housing Ondinance. I give him a lot of credit for showing up. That was a rough crowd if you are a Councilman from Wilmington.
Mr. Hollins gave me about 40 minutes of his time to discuss the issues that he heard discussed on Thursday. He maintains that there was a lot of misinformation thrown out during that meeting.
Here’s what I think I learned, these projects are in their exploratory phase. They haven’t applied for traffic studies, environmental approval or spoken to the school districts affected. ALL of that would be required before the projects can proceed. Each of these projects will likely have to be addressed individually as they proceed.
Paul Clark (Mr. Pam Scott) proposed a change that would waive a number of the requirements for UDC. This is the reason that access to public transportation, sewer requirements, etc. don’t need to be addressed. This change is what has made the Workforce Housing so lethal.
There is some very bad news, too. The projects now know what they have to do to get passed. As long as they meet the weakened requirements, we may not be able to stop them. I got the feeling from Mr. Hollins that the county council had no ability to really reject an application, as long as it meets all of the requirements that are on the books. They could be accused of acting capriciously if they don’t use objective measures to judge these project’s merits.
Here’s what I propose; Get rid of Paul Clark. Really. Then get rid of Bill Bell (he really brings nothing to the table). The restrictions that have been waived need to be reinstated. We need to fight these projects at every turn with overwhelming force.
I’ll have more later.