UNC-CH wants panel leader's ear

Chapel Hill officials object to administrators meeting privately with the head of the Carolina North committee

Town leaders are protesting UNC-Chapel Hill administrators' request to meet privately with the head of a Carolina North committee.

Ken Broun, a former Chapel Hill mayor and current UNC-CH law professor, leads the group of political, university and business leaders assembled to advise on how Carolina North, the research campus the university plans to build a few miles north of downtown, should be developed. He is supposed to be a neutral facilitator, town leaders say, helping the often-disagreeable parties forge consensus.

UNC-CH officials want to be able to meet with Broun behind closed doors once or twice between monthly meetings to discuss "agenda and goals," Broun wrote in an e-mail message to Mayor Pro Tem Bill Strom.

Nancy Suttenfield and Tony Waldrop, two UNC-CH vice chancellors who sit on the committee, floated the idea.

"The committee is advising the university," Waldrop said. "We thought it was important to stay in touch with the person running the meetings to make sure we're moving forward."

But Strom, speaking for the Chapel Hill delegation, balked.

"Ken's saying, 'I'm neutral; I'm disinterested,' " Strom said Tuesday. "When you're agenda-setting, it's difficult to stay neutral and disinterested. The group has to decide what's important."

Strom also said substantive talks should not be secret. "Full public view is the only way elected officials can participate in this body," he said. "Full public view is just that: discussions out in the open."

Barry Jacobs, chairman of the Orange County commissioners and a committee member, said he is not as concerned about UNC-CH leaders wielding undue influence.

"I don't see what there is to conspire about behind closed doors because I don't have to agree to anything, and I don't have to be railroaded into anything," he said, adding that he doesn't think Broun "has any bad intentions."

But he said the group did not agree to such meetings.

"So let's not do that for now," Jacobs said. "Anything that undermines what little trust there is, isn't getting us to where Ken wants to go or anyone wants us to go. We just need to all be equals in an open setting so that everyone can see everyone else's hand and see that there's nothing up their sleeve."

Broun, at Strom's request, has agreed to hold off on private conversations with anyone until the group's next meeting, April 6.

Broun also invited Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County government officials to meet with him if they wished. He said he thought that committee members agreed that such meetings were fine so long as their content was aired afterward.

"I'm just trying to conduct myself in accordance with what I'm used to doing as a facilitator," Broun said Tuesday. "If the committee doesn't want me to do it, then I don't do it."

But Broun said there could be some value in getting the university's input. The committee was formed to advise them, after all.

"Nancy asked me if I thought it was a good idea for the University to form an internal committee to discuss what principles it would like to see developed and perhaps to pose some questions to the Committee," Broun wrote in a memo to committee members. "I told her I thought that was a very good idea."

But Strom said that is overstepping Broun's bounds.

The group should decide whether it's a good idea, Strom said. Broun's not a mediator, who can discuss ideas with one side and present them to the other, Strom said.

"A mediator's got power," he said. "A facilitator is a nurturer of interests and ideas. This should be a forum for ideas, not a negotiation."