CHAPEL HILL -- The Town Council will hear a request for an outside investigator tonight to review the police raid on the Yates Motor building last fall.
The council is scheduled to go into a closed session before tonight's regular 7 p.m. meeting to discuss the raid, in which police led by a Special Emergency Response Team, removed squatters from the vacant former car dealership. Eight people were charged with misdemeanors in the incident.
The 5 p.m. closed session is intended to "provide an opportunity for the chief of police, senior police legal adviser, and town manager to provide information and responses to council questions and concerns arising out of the November 13 incident on West Franklin Street and issues that have arisen related to that incident," according to Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos, in an e-mail to the Town Council Thursday.
Karpinos says the council and officials will discuss matters related to personnel of "an attorney client nature" in the session, which is in accordance with the state Open Meetings Law.
During the regular session the council will receive the request from the new Community Policing Advisory Committee, which is seeking the investigator to interview witnesses and compile a factual timeline of events.
In other business tonight the council is scheduled to
-- consider whether to allow food truck vending on private property in commercial zoning districts under certain conditions and a budget ordinance revision to account for proposed vending fees.
-- receive a report in preparation for its Jan. 26 joint meeting on solid waste with Orange County officials. The report discusses the status of the Rogers Road Small Area Plan, landfill and solid waste issues resulting from the impending closure of the Rogers Road Landfill, and the financial and legal implications of potential changes moving forward.
-- consider a development that proposes 134-154 dwelling units,
27,000-40,000 square feet of office space, 18,000-27,000 square feet of specialty retail, and a 5,000 square foot drive-through bank as part of a Planned Development. The 15.7 acre site is located on the west side of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard just south of Weaver Dairy Road and is presently located in the Residential-2 (R-2) zoning district.
