The Town of Cary’s planning director said Monday he will recommend this week that the Cary Town Council drastically revise the proposed study area for its Southwest Area Plan to exclude most of the proposed plan’s Chatham County portion.

Cary recently announced plans to update its 1996 Land Use Plan, including part of Chatham County east of Jordan Lake.

The town’s plan stirred concerns in many Chatham County residents and property owners unhappy that the Wake County town was attempting to oversee how eastern Chatham is developed.

More than 400 of those property owners attended Cary’s kick-off planning session at Green Hope High School, where they made it clear they were not receptive to Cary’s plan.

Cary planning director Jeff Ulma said that response was one of the reasons to town now appears to be scaling back its plan.

For about an hour on Monday, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners heard testimony regarding a complex tax issue, but ultimately decided more time is needed to absorb and consider the matter before taking action.

The issue concerns Honeywell International, a manufacturer of synthetic textiles used to make seatbelts and tires.

The company, whose Moncure plant employs 550 people and an additional 110 contractors, was formally known as Allied Signal.

Raleigh attorney Jean Carter, representing Honeywell, said the company has overpaid $990,000 in taxes between 1997 and 2002.

When Preston Wilson and his five-year-old sister, Kimberly Ellis, ran off into the woods Thursday night to chase a deer, they didn’t have any idea they would spark an 18-hour search.

But that’s exactly what happened. The two Pittsboro children lost their way and after searching two hours for her children late Thursday afternoon, Belinda Wilson called for help.

But Thursday’s story had a happy ending when two men on horseback found the children standing in a thicket not far from their home just after noon on Friday.

During the 19 hours in between, hundreds of people responded to news media reports about the missing children, combed the woods surrounding their home and offered to help anyway they could.

The parking lots of Citgo and Mendenhall Motors filled with the vehicles of people wanting the help.

At one point Friday morning just a few hours before the children were found, the number of volunteers had grown to the point that they were being turned away because there were already so many people in the woods searching.

Jeff Davis photo

Boaters sail past each other on Jordan Lake, enjoying an afternoon of sun and warm weather. It won’t be too much longer before the nice warm winds of fall turn into the colder breaths of winter. But for now, we’ll enjoy the crisp, cool mornings of October as the boaters sail around the lake.