Already three candidates have declared for the race to succeed Kevin Foy as mayor of Chapel Hill. And they're three very different candidates, offering voters a real choice: the opportunity to choose between candidates whose agendas and approaches are likely to vary markedly.

That's refreshing in a town that often has had a pretty politically homogeneous slate. When your only choices are between one shade of blue and a slightly different shade of blue, it's pretty hard for anyone who prefers red -- or green or purple -- to be heard at the ballot box.

Town Council members Mark Kleinschmidt and Matt Czajkowski are running to move over into the mayor's chair, and non-incumbent Augustus Cho has joined the race as well.

Kleinschmidt and Czajkowski have been on opposite sides of a number of issues before the council, and Cho is best known around here as the chairman of the Orange County Republican Party (he also writes My View columns for The Chapel Hill News).

Those three alone should make for an interesting race, and there are still three weeks before the filing period actually begins. The field may grow further in the coming weeks.

Four council members' terms are expiring this year: Kleinschmidt, Laurin Easthom, Ed Harrison and Jim Merritt.

Kleinschmidt, of course, is running for mayor. We expect to see the other incumbents on the ballot in the fall, and challenger Penny Rich, who ran unsuccessfully in 2007, says she intends to have another go.

Things have been a bit quieter over in Carrboro thus far. The terms of Mayor Mark Chilton and Aldermen Jacquie Gist, John Herrera and Randee Haven-O'Donnell expire this year.

Chilton has already said he plans to run again. So far nobody has spoken up to announce challenge candidacies in either the mayoral or aldermen's races, but, hey, the season is early.

Elections work best when voters have real choices. So we're happy to see the intriguing trio already planning to run for mayor of Chapel Hill, and we hope the other races draw equally varied fields. Everybody into the pool!

Pushing for progressive planning

Neighbors for Responsible Growth got its start in February 2004 as a grassroots gathering of residents from a dozen or so local neighborhoods concerned about the potential effects of UNC's planned Carolina North satellite campus.

Five years on, NRG is still at that mission, and it has been an important player in encouraging the Town Council and the university to make sure that Carolina North is a progressive and responsibly done project. Of late, they have been especially proactive in addressing the key issue of transportation.

NRG wants planners to pare down the number of parking places at Carolina North in favor of more sustainable transportation systems such as dedicated bike paths, park and ride lots and other methods.

The group's argument, reasonably enough, is that if there aren't many places to park at Carolina North, people will get there by means other than single-passenger vehicles.

Carolina North planners have countered that if you reduce parking too much, people won't want to work there. That seems highly unlikely to us. A cutting-edge research institution should have a cutting-edge transportation system.

NRG, in taking an active role in the process, is living up to its goal: to ensure that, as Carolina North goes forward, "our environment and the well-being of our fellow residents are respected."