If you want to truly know a person, without the hassle of talking to them, look at their collection of bumper stickers. After coming in and leaving work every day and touring some of the town departments across and (slightly outside of) Chapel Hill, I have had the opportunity to view a multitude of bumper stickers of Town of Chapel Hill employees. And let me tell you, these employees have some unique interests, and the entire political spectrum is covered.
(Well, I’ve yet to find any anarchist or communist/fascist bumper stickers yet, but I’ve only been here for 3 weeks, cut me some slack).
I particularly enjoy a T.E.A. party bumper sticker (Taxed Enough Already) that I pass by daily. Just seems to me that this person would experience occasional crises of self knowing that their pay and benefits rely on solely on taxes and continuous dependence on a healthy tax base. Regardless, the point I wanted to make was that I find it oddly reassuring that I can see bumper stickers that express such disparate opinions about the world and yet these people come to public service every day to make life better for the residents who live here. Maybe (probably) I’m being naive, but this is the story I am going to tell myself for the time being.
Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be working with various people on helping the town develop their long term strategic plan, updating town policies, and rewriting the town’s Land Use Management Ordinance (LUMO). I’m pretty excited to have these be my projects over the summer. I think it’s really important for any major organization to have a fully developed and operational strategic plan. The Town’s LUMO hasn’t been updated for over 30 years and is a major source of political and administrative tension for the town and needed to be rewritten/revised like…yesterday.
As I do a deeper dive into these projects I’ll update you on how everything is going. Till then’ be more vigilant about all of those bumper stickers out there.