Raleigh should transition to full-time councilors

Cole McMullin, an active member of Raleigh Democratic Socialists of America spoke to City Council on October 8, 2024:

On May 7^th of this year City Council voted to switch to 4-year staggered terms without putting the issue on the ballot for voters to decide, effectively buffering city council from the corrective action of Raleigh residents’ voting power.

Thank you, Councilors Black and Patton, for voting against that measure.

While I have heard and respect the arguments in favor of 4-year terms, it should be voted on by residents.

Personally, I think a transition to full-time Councilors is a greater priority than longer terms because that would allow regular working-class people seeking to serve on City Council to solely focus on the job of governance.

However, a full-time Councilor should not make more than the median salary of City Workers. And I suspect there may be some conservative members of our community clutching their pearls just at the mention of more spending for “big government” full-time Councilors whilst ironically advocating spending more and more money on the Police which is an inherently reactive “solution” to crime.

For those fellow residents, need I remind you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

If you are truly concerned about efficient government, then our public dollars would be much better spent providing permanent stable housing for those unfortunate individuals who find themselves unhoused. Because when people are stably housed, they are not forced into desperate circumstances that require desperate illegal acts to survive.

Further, a growing body of research demonstrates that providing housing and voluntary services is more cost-effective than criminalization and incarceration.

I would think that if one truly supports fiscal responsibility, then funding for housing and social services should be much higher and comparable to the amount of money spent on policing.

Much like stable housing helps preventatively reduce crime, I think having full-time Councilors would allow more time for our City Council to be more actively engaged with the community and city staff, thus allowing them to be more effective at their jobs and would be money well spent.

Circling back to incarceration, I agree with Cindy Lowe that Raleigh shouldn’t incentivize the incarceration and captive breeding of animals by allowing circuses within city limits, and should amend the Dangerous Wild Animal Ordinance to remove circuses from the list of exempted entities.

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