By Gregory Childress

gchildress@heraldsun.com; 918-1046

Chapel Hill -- A public hearing on Monday moved the Town Council a step closer to adopting the long-awaited Rogers Road Small Area Plan to guide growth and development in the predominately African-American community.

But even so, officials acknowledged that the town is no nearer to identifying a designated source of funding to implement the plan that calls for, among other things, extending municipal water and sewer to the area than when the task force was formed in December 2006.

When asked about money to pay for the projects recommended by the task force, David Bonk, the town's long range and transportation manager, said public funds would be used for some such projects as the water and sewer extension, and private money would be brought to the area via new development.

In addition, Bonk said the town aggressively would pursue state and federal dollars to help offset the cost of projects.

"Whether we can take advantage of some or all of these is still an open question," Bonk said in an interview Tuesday.

Bonk said it is difficult to know what funds Rogers Road will be eligible to receive until the plan is adopted by the council early next year, and gets approval from other local governments that are part of a joint agreement. The economy will dictate private developers' interest in the area, he said.

The public hearing came just days after one of Rogers Road's leading activists for environmental justice was invited to the White House to speak with EPA officials about clean energy and public health issues in the Rogers-Eubanks roads community.

Minister Robert Campbell told The Chapel Hill Herald that he hopes to come back from Washington with stimulus money to clean up longstanding water and air quality issues in his neighborhood.

At Monday's public hearing, Campbell said he believes private-public partnerships will be one of the keys to bringing the Rogers Road community into the future.

"I think we have an opportunity here where we can work together," Brown said, stressing that a collaborative effort to bring the town's best minds together to solve problems in the Rogers Road area is just as important as money.

Created by the Town Council, the task force looked at several broad issues including transportation and infrastructure, open space and recreation design and land use and community preservation, which has been of particular concern to some residents. They worry that water and sewer extension and other improvements might cause an unmanageable bump in taxes that would price them out of the neighborhood.

"The irony is that the people who will be affected the most by increases in taxes are the ancestors of the people who founded the community," said Neloa Barbee Jones, explaining that the ancestors of the founders will carry a larger tax burden simply because they own more land than the residents who moved into the area later.

Other residents, however, have been critical of municipal officials for not moving more quickly to establish services in the Rogers Road area.

Jones said the town should create another task force to develop a plan to help residents weather the coming financial burden so that they can hold on to the property that has been passed down for several generations.

One of the task force's recommendations calls for the town to explore options similar to the homestead exemption that would enable current property owners -- descendants of the founders and Habitat residents in particular -- to retain ownership of their property.

Bonk said that extending water and sewer lines would cost anywhere between $4 million and $4.5 million. He said for residents to connect would cost $8,000 to $18,000, depending on the size of the property and any unique circumstance a homeowner might have in connecting to the system.

The council will consider adopting the plan as an amendment to the town's Comprehensive Plan early next year.