Chatham County Sheriff Richard Webster and the county Board of Commissioners have joined a statewide effort to ban video poker in North Carolina.

"It’s nothing but a racket," Webster said of the electronic poker machines.

He estimated there are as many as 150 of the machines in Chatham County and he said the machines have presented problems with illegal gambling.

"All it is it’s people making money off people who don’t need to be spending the money," Webster said.

Although cash payouts from the machines are illegal, that hasn’t forced all store owners who have the machines to obey that law.

Despite a tall stack of petitions against it and a Planning Board unable to reach consensus on the matter, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners on Monday unanimously approved a conditional use permit to allow construction of a new shopping center at the intersection of US 15-501 and Lystra Road in north Chatham.

Last week, the county planning board, with three members absent, split 4-4 on a motion to recommend the county approve the requested conditional use business district and permit that would allow developer Lat Purser & Associates to build a shopping center on 28 acres at the north Chatham intersection.

Harris Teeter supermarket will anchor the center, which will be called Chatham Downs.

At recent public hearings, residents in the area have objected to a new shopping center so close to the existing Chatham Commons and Cole Park Plaza, which are about a mile north of the Chatham Downs location.

Residents have opposed it for a number of reasons, including traffic concerns and what many say is an unnecessary addition to existing retail in the area.

The matter proved troublesome for the Board of Commissioners as well.

Anyone hoping for an early Christmas present in the form of the county wrapping up work on its proposed compact community ordinance will be disappointed.

But not for long.

The Board of Commissioners is expected to complete work on the extensive planning document, which has been in the formative stages for months, in January.

Commissioners anticipate they will wrap up their work on the document, the county’s first-ever plan for high-density development, at their January 5 meeting.

"Assuming we can come to agreement on the ordinance [on January 5], then it would go the public hearing on January 20," said Board of Commissioners chairman Tommy Emerson.

Most of the hard work has already been completed and commissioners have ironed out many of the details of the ordinance in a recent series of exhaustive work sessions.

Work on the proposed compact community ordinance began soon after the county voted down a proposal for Briar Chapel, a 1,490-acre mixed use project off US 15-501 between Pittsboro and Chapel Hill.

Developer Newland Communities first came to Chatham with plans for a high-density development in June 2001, proposing a compact community with 2,780 home and 840,000 square feet of commercial space.