All posts tagged: orange county

Election Day 2021

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By Monica Chen It was a beautiful, sunny Autumnal day on Tuesday as voters in the Triangle headed to the polls to cast their ballots. After 2020, this year was decidedly less intense, but for many, it was still an important election. In Orange County, the school board and the town council were up for re-election, as was the mayor. Durham had a less complicated election, with three seats on the city council and the mayor’s position open that, as it turned out, became an uncontested race. On Tuesday, candidates and volunteers made a last-minute push to get out the vote, camping out at polling places with booths and flyers. Meanwhile, voters headed to polls with major concerns about their communities and their governments. Growth and development were the biggest issue for voters in both counties. Here was the scene at four polling places in Durham and Orange. Carrboro Town Hall, 11 a.m. In sunny Carrboro, candidates and volunteers alike flocked to the parking lot to appeal to voters, who arrived in a steady stream …

Election Day 2020

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On the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 3, this year, people quietly, wearily went about their business, too exhausted to be excited about the election. Later that night, voters would see the results of this contentious, overly partisan fight between President Donald Trump and the former Vice President Joe Biden for the White House, in this historic election that has been much referred to as a fight for the soul of this country. For more than a year, there have been protests, bumper stickers, yard signs, a screaming, shouting Democratic Party primary, followed by the fears, anxiety and exhaustion resulting from the lockdowns from the coronavirus. But in the end, many people still went about the voting process like normal, rushing to cast their votes before polls closed at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. At Hope Valley Baptist Church in Durham, toward the end of the day, voters were still rolling into the parking lot, bringing their kids with them after work. Erin Durkin, a volunteer with Democracy NC, a Morrisville-based nonprofit advocating for voter’s rights, had been …

Marc Dreyfors’ Eco-Innovations

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Behind a small, nondescript building in Efland, a gravel driveway reveals an old textiles manufacturing warehouse, biodiesel production tanks and rows of vegetables at the Orange County Eco-Innovations Park. A fleet of buses that run on biodiesel sit across from the warehouse. “This pink party bus runs green!” whimsical slogans on the front say. “We are a revolution in motion!” Because of the coronavirus, the buses have been out of commission, and the Eco-Innovations Park’s founder and General Manager Marc Dreyfors is busy working to to keep his nonprofits and businesses afloat. “That was a blow to us,” Dreyfors said of the buses. Walking across the sun-baked grounds toward potted hemp plants and rows of vegetables, Dreyfors stops to examine the squashes and help a worker fix a stand of tomatoes that have drooped over. Dreyfors’ main enterprise is the nonprofit, The Forest Foundation, which he founded in 2001. It’s the umbrella organization for Carolina Biofuels, Greenway Transit, Green Tracks, Forests of the World, and the newest business, CannDo CBD Oil. After a grant application …