While some coastal North Carolina residents have already begun to evacuate in anticipation of Hurricane Isabel, the Durham City Council has initiated preparations to cope with the potential strike of the storm.
At the Council's meeting Monday night, City Manager Marcia Conner said all city departments have begun contingency preparations.
"Current weather modeling is all concurrent on the course... but in the event that the storm changes it could have a significant impact on Durham," she said.
The city has delegated extra personnel to respond to 911 calls and assigned public works personnel to clear out storm drains pre-emptively. City employees will also be taking measures to preserve city records and ensure the integrity of back-up generators. Conner also said several city officials will be meeting with Duke Power today for a seminar on planning for disaster control.
The approval of local beer and wine privilege licenses was also on the agenda and sparked some debate about how the Council could take efforts to ensure a more even distribution of establishments that sell alcohol throughout the city.
Council member Howard Clement said he would prefer if the businesses applying for beer and wine privilege licenses were grouped geographically--by ward, for example--so the Council could get a better idea of which regions of the city had a disproportionately high concentration of alcohol-selling venues before issuing the license.
Clement said he has received many complaints from constituents in and around the Trinity Heights and Trinity Park neighborhoods about alcohol-related noise disturbances.
The Council's approval of licenses is merely a formality if the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission has already issued a permit--the city itself has little say on establishing dispersal requirements for businesses with wine and alcohol licenses. Council member Thomas Stith expressed a desire to form an exploratory committee and engage other municipalities on working with the state legislature to resolve the issue.
Council members also discussed the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report on funds spent on housing development programs in Durham. The vote to approve the report was postponed until Sept. 25 after many citizens argued that the report's release did not allow for a sufficient amount of time for dialogue and discussion before the meeting.
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