It’s Monday, June 17.

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Good morning, readers. 

A Durham planning commissioner has resigned from the city’s land use advisory board in protest with a year left in his term.

In a resignation letter and comments at a planning commission meeting last week, Anthony Sease, a civil engineer and assistant professor at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, cited the ways some city council members “dismissed, sometimes ignored” and “even denigrated” the work of the planning commission as his reasons for stepping down. 

The resignation comes after the council approved a new development plan for 500 single-family homes on a 200-acre parcel of land along Virgil Road in Southeast Durham in a 4-3 vote. 

The planning commission had unanimously recommended against approval of the rezoning, and Sease characterized it as “auto-dependent” and “environmentally degrading” for its projected impacts on Falls Lake, the drinking water source for half a million Triangle residents.

Durham mayor Leonardo Williams, who was one of the four votes in favor of the project along with mayor pro tem Mark-Anthony Middleton and council members Carl Rist and Javiera Caballero, said he plans to call a meeting between the council and the planning commission due to “a lack of communication between the two bodies.”

He emphasized that development will happen on privately owned land like the Virgil Road parcel whether the council approves rezoning proposals or not.

“There seems to be this misperception that if the council says ‘no,’ then the [developer] can’t build,” Williams told the INDY. “No. It just means that they’re going to build less.”

Have a good Monday.

—Jane

Durham

The Durham City Council is expected to vote on the city’s budget for the next fiscal year at its meeting tonight. Read about residents’ budget priorities.

Wake

Pure Life Theatre Company delivers an iridescent production of the late playwright Samm-Art Williams’s “Home” at Raleigh’s Burning Coal Theatre Company this week.

Orange

Carrboro’s town council is expected to vote on a budget at its meeting on Tuesday.

North Carolina

Grants from South Arts will fund several arts programs across the Triangle. 


Gov. Cooper vetoed a bill that would see more 16- and 17-year-olds tried as adults in North Carolina.

Today’s weather

Sunny with a high of 90 degrees.

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