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4/19/2006 -
NoMerger.org Endorses Alice Gordon & Fred Battle
4/14/2006 - NoMerger.org
Reactivates PAC & Announces Plans
3/22/2006 -
2006 BOCC Candidate Survey
Available
Click here for references to NoMerger.org on other sites (like media articles)
10/05/2004 - Contributions Closed For Now
In order to reduce PAC-related paperwork, NoMerger.org is filing papers
to become inactive as a PAC until we start again receiving or spending money
to endorse candidates in the 2006 election. WE WILL REMAIN A VERY
ACTIVE issue group - this move merely reduces the amount of paperwork we
have to file as a PAC since we have no reason to receive or spend money to
endorse candidates.
We plan to return to active PAC status in 2006. Current funds on
hand remain "frozen" until we return to active status. We will simply
not take contributions nor spend any additional money to advertise
endorsements until the next election. As long as our hosting expense
is properly accounted for in our inactive filing, then we may continue to
publicize our endorsements on our website, per confirmation from the NC
Board of Elections.
7/21/2004 - Valerie Foushee Wins the Democratic
Primary and Pam Hemminger made a very strong showing!!!
7/17/2004 - Join Us for our "GET OUT AND VOTE" Party
On Saturday July 17 from 10AM-12noon, an Early Voting
party is being sponsored by
NoMerger.Org at McCorkle Place on Franklin St. adjacent to the Morehead
Planetarium.
Balloons, a clown, face painting, stickers, snacks and drinks will make it a fun
event for
the kids. Election hand-outs will be available for undecided voters.
7/15/2004 -
20 Neighborhoods were flyered
7/15/2004 -
Recent Endorsements
- Valerie Foushee received the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Federation of
Teachers endorsement!
- Pam Hemminger received the Chapel Hill News and Sierra Club
endorsement!
"We're in the midst of the most hotly contested race
for county office in recent memory..."
"NoMerger.org has helped to make this a different
kind of race, and for that reason it's no accident that the group's role in
the election is attracting criticism from partisans of the incumbents."
7/13/2004 - NoMerger.org was on NBC 17
6:00pm news
6/24/2004 - NoMerger.org on WCHL "Life on the Hill" 1 Hour Show!
The show aired on Thursday at 10:10 am and was replayed Saturday at
3:10pm.
Couple of corrections:
- The 9,800 figure was the number of democratic households who
voted in the 2002 Democratic Primary. The number of individual
voters in that primary was around 13,500.
- Members will receive about 1-2 emails per week until July 20th
and then will receive 1 email per month until things heat up again.
6/23/2004 - All Endorsement Signs Distributed to Volunteers - Thanks!!
We are not planning to endorse OCS BOE candidates, but we want our
membership to know where candidates stand.
6/8/2004 - NoMerger.org Endorses Foushee and Hemminger
Congratulations to
Val Foushee
and
Pam Hemminger,
the official NoMerger.org
endorsed candidates.
Six of the Seven Candidates answered our questions about merger.
Chapel Hill News Article
(2nd
article)
Chapel Hill Herald
Article
News and Observer Article
WCHL Commentary:
2004-06-08 "You need to vote on July 20th"
6/5/2004 - NoMerger.org on WCHL
Morning News
Steering committee members David Weinberg and Mark Peters were
interviewed by James Butler on the Saturday WCHL Mornings News Program.
Thanks David and Mark!
6/5/2004 - NoMerger.org Awareness Signs Go Up
50 signs have gone up at major intersections in Chapel Hill and Carboro.
We hope to put up the endorsement signs with more comprehensive coverage
(for example, we are not allowed to put up signs in Hillsborough for another
two weeks). Once we endorse candidates, we will order many more signs
with the endorsements on them.
5/30/2004 - NoMerger.org Newspaper Ads Started
5/21/2004 - NoMerger.org becomes a County PAC
NC law requires that 2 or more people who support a candidate to be
registered as a PAC. To date, NoMerger.org has been issues-based and has
talked about candidates' position on merger, but has not endorsed anyone.
5/5/2004 - Commissioner Race is Finally Getting Going
Valerie Foushee and
Pam Hemminger have stated that
they are against merger. Merger is not the only issue that voters
should be studying, but it is a very important issue. We will update
you as we find out about other candidates.
Useful Election Links
At the March 4th, 2004 Orange County Board of Commissioners meeting, NoMerger.org read the
following statement:
NoMerger.org has published a spreadsheet analyzing the stated positions of
all speakers from the 3 public hearings regarding possible merger of the city
and county schools of Orange County.
Moses Carey, Jr. stated in the Feb 12th BOCC meeting that 35%-40% of the
people speaking at the hearings were in favor of merger. Our analysis shows
that this figure is incorrect. After counting each speaker who spoke at
multiple hearings only once, we found that only 25% were for school merger. By
contrast, 64% were AGAINST merger, and 11% were neutral. This means there were
2 1/2 TIMES as many speakers AGAINST merger as FOR it.
NoMerger.org calls on the BOCC to represent the will of its constituency
and officially vote to take merger off of the table and focus on implementing
recommendations of the studies which are soon to begin. However, we have a
serious concern that the current studies are intended to hide merger from the
citizens and voters until the election is over.
We call on all the Board of County Commissioners to pledge to respect local
control of the separate school districts.
3/1/2004 Current Status of Possible Merger
- Merger Lives. While the decision to study merger for the rest of
the year may look like a pragmatic decision, the real reason is to remove
the cloud which hovers over the incumbents' re-election campaigns.
- Commissioner Carey has declared that Merger will be brought up after the
election. Clearly, He will take re-election as a mandate to merge.
- We, the citizens, continue ask ourselves the hard questions. Why have the
county schools been overbuilt? And how did such a large funding disparity
come about?
- If you are a city schools parent, you need to be concerned that schools
have been built in the wrong places. Who is going to pay for this mistake?
It will be your kids, for they will be bused long distances to the overbuilt
schools. This busing will delay the building of the schools that should have
been built near your neighborhood in the first place. Had the schools
been built in the right places, merger would not be on the table as a
purported way to save capital dollars.
- If you are a county schools parent who believes there is a per-pupil
funding disparity, then remember that this occurred as a result of conscious
decisions by the very commissioners who act like the disparity just sprung
up one day.
- Merger will cause development of the rural buffer. It's also a bad
environmental move as children will be bused long distances, encouraging
sprawl, congestion, and pollution.
- Merger defies smart growth principles where services are placed near the
population to be served.
It is time for a change in leadership. We need to elect commissioners who
will actually represent their constituents, commissioners who will have
strong, productive relationships with our elected school boards.
2/12/2004 - Commissioner Meeting February 12th
The commissioners decided not to go for a supplemental tax (Gordon and Carey
supportive, others not) and are now poised to start these new studies:
- The collaboration group with Andy Sachs. Interim report end of April.
- An efficiency study
- School Excellence task force
- (maybe) A group to look at countywide supplemental tax
John Link, County Manager, indicated that an outside consultant would need to
be brought in for the efficiency study and that it would likely not be ready by
November. Jacobs, Brown, and Halkiotis thought the efficiency study should
be completed prior to seeking any increase in OCS funding via a county
supplemental tax.
Carey indicated that 65% of people speaking at hearings were in favor of
increased funding and 35-40% spoke in favor of merger. We ran the numbers
on the Oct 16th hearing transcripts and came up with this breakdown: 24% FOR
MERGER,
61% AGAINST, 15% Neutral. An analysis of the second and third hearing
will be done soon and the details will be posted so folks can compare the
analysis to the transcripts.
So what do we make of this? It appears that these studies will get
merger out of the way for the election.
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