CHAPEL HILL - Over its first 20 years, Carolina North will either cost Chapel Hill taxpayers almost $17 million or save them more than $2 million, depending on how you look at it.

As they have for years, town officials and university leaders are looking at it quite differently.

The substantial cost to the town comes through direct expenditures for services such as schools, fire protection and garbage pickup. These will add up to nearly $35 million over the first 20 years after construction begins at UNC-Chapel Hill's northern satellite campus, according to a fiscal impact study presented Thursday night in draft form by the consultants at Tischler-Bise.

The economic analysts say these costs will be partially offset by more than $18 million in direct new revenues to the town from private development that will be part of the new campus.

That still leaves a huge shortfall that has worried town leaders for years. The consultants tried to assuage their fears by analyzing the indirect economic benefits of a new campus, which they tally at $42 million in revenues against $23 million in new costs for a net benefit to the town of nearly $19 million.

"When you layer in the indirect benefits, it generates a considerable net surplus to Chapel Hill," said Carson Bise, president of the consulting firm.

But not everyone was convinced.

"It seems like statistical fortune-telling for the community," said Adam Smith, who lives near the future campus. "The university's about the have a child, and we have to take care of it."

Town Council member Bill Strom, long a critic of the planned campus, advised the university to "back out the indirect benefits."

"Well, I'm sorry," Carolina North executive director Jack Evans said. "But we've paid for that [analysis], and we're going to look at it."

Counting only direct impact, Orange County is projected to fare much better. The consultants predict a $26 million windfall over 20 years for the county. The Town of Carrboro should expect a net gain of $3.5 million over 20 years, the analysts said.

Community leaders also bristled at consultant Howard Kohn's projection that Carolina North would create more than 8,600 new jobs at $17 billion in economic impact, including investment in new businesses and homes.

"A whole bunch of high-end housing units is not necessarily something that we would consider to be a benefit," Carrboro Alderman Jacquelyn Gist said.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Matt Czajkowski, who supports the new campus, said the community needs access to the consultants' model to plug in its own assumptions. "The sooner we could get the model into people's hands, the sooner people could begin to assess it and come to their own conclusions," he said.

Bise said his firm might be able to host a one- or two-day workshop so interested parties could work with the proprietary computer program they created for the university.