An LR List: Top-10 Reasons Why City Manager Ruffin Hall Is Bailing on Mayor Baldwin.
Speculation, of course. But would Ruffin quit with Raleigh in turmoil, the city looking to him for leadership, and no new job in sight, unless his working conditions were intolerable?
Weasel Conditions: A Zoning Tool for False Council Promises
Weasel Conditions. This is a case study of how the Z-41-19 zoning applicant and complicit Councilors falsified the meaning of zoning condition #8 to create a misleading narrative, suggesting it offered significant environmental protections, when in fact, it did not.
UpZoning 102: Making Your Community’s Voices Heard
Based on the collaboration of neighbors facing the upzoning Z-41-19 near Shelley Lake Park, here are 7 Actions developed by WeLoveShelleyLake that you can implement to make your collective voice known to city leadership and advocate for responsible, equitable development of our city.
Courtney Napier Weighs In on Forte Appointment and Gentrification
Posted here are some excerpts from Courtney Napier’s recent op-ed for INDY Week. Why did Raleigh City Council give Carmen Cauthen unanimous support, then turn around and vote six-to-one for Stormie Forte to take the District D seat vacated by Saige Martin?
Fair Housing Attorney: Baldwin Tramples Truth about Equity and Housing Bond
Some people wouldn’t know what equity looked like if it walked up to them and slapped the mask off their face. Equity is not a word we just toss around in the air because it sounds good. Equity is about ensuring fairness in programming, local policies and outcomes.
UpZoning 101: The Money and Politics of Growing Raleigh
Even though Shelley Lake neighbors were joined by literally thousands of Raleigh residents in petitioning the Council to protect Shelley Lake Park, Council, by a 7 to 1 vote, continued its pursuit of density wherever profitable, regardless of the impacts. Here are 5 lessons the Shelley Lake neighbors learned, and what neighbors of future upzonings can expect from this Council:
Melton flip-flop
Let’s be very clear. There is one and only one reason the council abolished CACs. They wanted to eliminate the independent voices of citizens involved in rezoning cases as payment to the developers who paid for their campaigns.
Delivering for Barnhill
Hillsborough-Wade CAC Chair Donna Bailey spoke at the July 7 Raleigh City Council meeting on Mayor Baldwin’s conflicts of interest.
Raleigh City Council votes for a more powerful Police Advisory Board
We at Livable Raleigh are very pleased that the Raleigh City Council wants a more powerful Police Advisory Board. On Tuesday, the Council voted unanimously for a letter to be sent to all three branches of state government asking for additional powers. The Council wants authority to provide more transparency, oversight, and power to our community.
Nicole Stewart Wants to Hear the ‘Right’ Voices
Nicole Stewart consistently uses coded language such as ‘right-sizing’ voices to find ‘the right voices’. Her code words sound vaguely progressive, but her motive is not to expand and empower all voices, but to conceal and distract from her real political motive: to silence voices she doesn’t agree with.


