At the request of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners, the state Department of Transportation has agreed to make improvements to make a heavily-traveled Chatham County roadway safer.

County commissioners requested in August that the DOT make improvements to Pittsboro-Moncure Road.

Commissioners said that the two-lane Pittsboro-Moncure Road, a much-traveled thoroughfare leading to and from one of the county’s primary industrial areas, is too narrow and unsafe.

According to DOT board member G.R. Kindley, improvements to the road have been included in the DOT’s North Carolina Moving Ahead projects.

"Plans are to widen and rehabilitate the pavement on this roadway from US 15-501 in Pittsboro to SR 1011 (Old US 1) in Moncure," Kindley informed Chatham County officials in a recent letter.

Kindley said the division staff will be preparing plans for the improvements, with the anticipated work to be undertaken in 2004.

County commissioners have resolved, at least for now, one of the big issues they face in creating rules for compact communities: size.

On Monday, commissioners agreed to limit the size of all potential compact communities in Chatham County to a maximum of 2,500 dwelling units.

Commissioners arrived at that agreement after a lengthy discussion of size limits, during which they considered maximum sizes as low as 1,500 units and as high as 3,000.

Size has been a central issue to the compact community ordinance discussion since work on it began, though there has been little consensus until this week about what the size limit should be.

The county planning board, in its consideration of the matter, agreed unanimously that if a maximum size is required, it should be based on the number of dwelling units, not the number of acres in a compact community.

But the planning board also initially split 5-5 on whether there should be a size restriction.

Part of the curriculum for North Carolina fifth graders is learning about energy sources.

Last week, about a dozen area elementary school teachers, including three teachers from Chatham County public schools, participated in a day-long course on nuclear energy at the Harris Nuclear Plant in New Hill which was aimed at educating teachers so they can pass the knowledge on to their students.

The course, the first of its type offered by Progress Energy, included a tour of the plant’s control room simulator, a detailed working replica of the actual control room, and a look at the plant’s emergency operations facility, where Progress Energy personnel oversee situations such as last December’s ice storm and the more recent Hurricane Isabel.

Robert Duncan, director of site operations at Harris Nuclear Plant, said Progress Energy remains committed to helping students learn about energy sources, but that security concerns prohibit visitors at the actual plant.

"Since 9/11, we can’t take them out to the plant anymore," Duncan said.

But the control room simulator, which is located at the Harris Energy and Environmental Center near the plant, is the next best thing.

Chatham County commissioners on Monday unanimously approved a pay raise for county manager Charlie Horne.

The three percent raise is retroactive to July 1.

The raise increases the manager’s annual salary from $94,518 to $97,353.

Commissioners initially considered a salary increase for Horne last summer, but postponed taking action while they considered hiring a consultant to perform an efficiency study for all county departments.

But commissioners recently decided to wait until December to consider whether or not to undertake the study, which one consultant said would cost around $53,000.

Because commissioners have delayed a decision on the efficiency study, they decided to go ahead and consider a pay raise for the county manager, which the five-member Board of Commissioners approved unanimously.