Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, and Staff,
As you know, there is an update on restoring Citizen Advisory Councils on the agenda for today. While it may seem like the same information that you heard prior to your summer hiatus, there is one key difference. If everything proceeds as agreed upon today, you won’t just hear from staff. You will also hear from Robert Rice, our Raleigh Citizen Advisory Council Chairman. That was the plan for the July 1st Council meeting, but Robert was not recognized because he was not on the agenda.
So I am here today to set the table for Robert in the event that there is still a miscommunication between intent and proper procedure. Hopefully, this is something that can be fixed in the near future.
As far back as the Council Retreat in January 2024, the one thing that was requested to properly restore CACs was to get a seat at the table. The intent was to meet with all City departments that had a role in restoring some of the privileges that CACs had before they were suspended in 2020. To date, that has not happened. While we have been meeting with the City Manager’s representative, Community Engagement, and the Council liaison for almost two years, others that have a role in defining a plan to achieve the Goals of the CACs, including this Council, have not been a part of those discussions.
Hopefully, that will all change today. Instead of just hearing what has been proposed by Community Engagement and the City Manager’s office, you will actually hear the other side of the discussion from Robert’s viewpoint, representing both the RCAC and its member CAC organizations.
Our request to fully restore the CACs to what they were prior to 2020 was simple:
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- Re-establish free community meeting space
- Re-establish a CAC information page on the City website to inform residents and grow individual CACs
- Provide funding for meeting software, mailings, and miscellaneous expenses
- Provide technical support and training for hosting hybrid meetings
- Provide equipment for hybrid meetings
- Establish a link and partner with the Leadership Academy to facilitate succession planning for the CACs.
We have already been fully recognized and restored. We just haven’t had all of the benefits and tools that we have had in the past. The recommendations today are a strong first step to achieving that. Let today be the day that you fully recognize and restore CACs and provide them with the necessary tools to be successful, for both the residents and the City of Raleigh.
Thank you,
Larry Helfant
Midtown CAC Chairman
Epilogue:
At the Council meeting, Councilor Jones made the motion to accept the staff proposal and Council approved the motion unanimously.
There were three additional items mentioned that were not on the slide but were approved:
– Releasing the CAC ListServe to the RCAC
– Creating a dashboard with information about the CACs on the City website
– Facilitating better communication and interaction with the Raleigh Neighborhood College
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