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DURHAM -- City Council members signaled Thursday that they weren't happy that the leaders of a charter school on West Chapel Hill Street passed up an invitation to meet with them to discuss the fate of two school-owned bungalows.
Criticism of the leaders of the Healthy Start Academy came from Councilmen Eugene Brown and Howard Clement, as they and their colleagues agreed to come back to the issue again next month whether or not the school participates.
The council asked Healthy Start officials to attend Thursday's meeting after hearing complaints from residents of the Morehead Hill historic district who fear the school will soon demolish houses at 804 and 806 Jackson Street to make way for a new playground.
But Healthy Start's executive director, Liz Morey, sent word early this week that she and other school officials had "a conflict" and couldn't meet until mid to late November.
Morey told The Herald-Sun Tuesday that the school has leads on groups who'd be willing to move the houses and hopes to "get concrete answers" from at least one by the middle of November.
That could have the effect of presenting a fait accompli to a council that's being lobbied by neighbors who want the houses kept where they are, intact. Brown and Clement didn't like that.
"I really don't appreciate Healthy Start's dilatory approach to this whole issue," Clement said. "We've let them know of our concern."
Brown went further.
"I'm a firm believer in two-way exchange," he said. "This is becoming more and more puzzling. There are in my judgment some credibility issues here."
Council members agreed, at Clement's urging, to hold off on conducting a full debate Thursday in Healthy Start's absence. But they also said they'll come back to the issue next month, whether or not school leaders choose to attend.
Morehead Hill residents told council members Thursday they want to be in on whatever conversation takes place. They have opposed demolition as an encroachment into an area now given over to single-family homes.
School leaders have the legal right to demolish the houses more or less whenever they want. A one-year cooling-off period imposed by the city's Historic Preservation Commission has ended.
The school needs to get one more permit before actually knocking the houses down, but state law allows administrators no choice but to approve it.
So far, school officials haven't applied for that permit. City/County Planning Director Steve Medlin promised Thursday to notify council members if and when an application comes in.
What leverage the council does have in the situation comes from the presence of an 8-foot-wide right of way for a public alley between the two houses.
The school can't build anything on the property covered by the easement without first getting the council to abandon the right of way, Medlin said.
State law makes abandonment decisions a matter of council discretion, provided they don't landlock neighboring property and "it appears to the satisfaction of the council after [a public] hearing that closing the street or alley is not contrary to the public interest."
Neighborhood leaders in Morehead Hill and other parts of Durham are already urging council members to take a hard line on what constitutes the public interest.
"We need more transparency before allowing a street closing that has a clear private purpose, but no clear public purpose," John Schelp, president of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association, said in a Tuesday message to council members.
Charter schools are public institutions under state law and receive public funding. But they generally are not accountable to local elected officials. The City Council does retain its authority to use zoning laws to dictate, in general terms, where charter schools can and can't set up shop.
