A year ago on February 6, 2024 City Councilor Christina Jones introduced the below motions to restore City support and official recognition of Raleigh’s Citizen Advisory Councils (CACs). The vote to approve these motions was unanimous.
“I move that the Raleigh City Council officially recognize and restore support for the Raleigh Citizen Advisory Council (RCAC) and CACs, returning them to their unique and historic role of providing opportunities for Raleigh residents to be heard and participate in two-way communication between themselves, City government, and their elected representatives.
Furthermore, that the City do so with the following supporting elements:
• Provide CACs with free, monthly-meeting space in a convenient City facility within the geographic boundary of each CAC;
• Allow access to City-owned technology from online meeting programs (like Zoom or Teams) to equipment for meetings (cameras, projectors, etc.);
• Succession Plan: Educate Raleigh residents and community about the Raleigh Neighborhood College and Citizens Leadership Academy and encourage participation to cultivate future civic leaders.”
While we’ve made some progress this past year, we are still working on getting City support of our online meeting efforts, like having the City pay directly for a CAC Zoom account instead of Raleigh residents. Hopefully that issue and others can be resolved this year.
The good news is that Raleigh’s CACs have a new triad of support: (1) a newly reorganized Community Engagement Department + (2) a new CAC Liaison + (3) clear RCAC goals = excellent community engagement for 2025.
District E City Councilor Christina Jones was recently appointed as the new Liaison to CACs. As you know she was a CAC Chair for years as well as being the previous RCAC Chair. Christina has championed CACs and community engagement at City Council since the 2020 vote to stop supporting CACs. Now that the City is supporting CACs again, we look forward to the newly reorganized Community Engagement Department taking advantage of the knowledge base from Housing and Neighborhoods to build up the CAC system for ALL Raleigh residents.
On Tuesday, January 28 at the Hillsborough-Wade CAC meeting we were joined by Councilor Jones, Tiesha Mosley and her team from the Community Engagement Department. Click here to view their presentation about the newly reorganized Community Engagement Department and how it now incorporates Neighborhood Services. Manager Dan Bagley gave us an update on his group’s mission and capabilities. Prior to their presentation, we had a update from the RCAC about our history, status and goals for this year. Click here to review the RCAC presentation which has been shared with City Council and City staff. We wrapped up the CAC meeting with Christina Jones giving us an update about her new role as the City’s Liaison to CACs. She plans on having regular meetings with the RCAC leadership team.
Looking forward to progress in 2025,
Mike Lindsay, Chair of the Hillsborough-Wade CAC
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