Many of Raleigh’s residents have been reaching out to their representatives on City Council hoping to have a discussion about the city’s Missing Middle policies and what can be done to modify them to make them less harmful to established neighborhoods. But, they are being told no discussion can be had.
If you watched the two City Council meetings on May 16, 2023, the Work Session discussing election reform at 11:30 followed by the City Council Afternoon Session at 1:00, we wonder if you noticed what we noticed. We were disappointed but not surprised at the way city survey data was perceived differently by some councilors at these two separate meetings.
They say politics makes strange bedfellows. Not so strange, however, when the thing they have in common is big-money backers like our good friend developer John Kane.
On April 19, 2023 the News and Observer ran a story on mayors calling for action on gun control. But, Mayor Baldwin is conspicuously absent from the list of three NC mayors and over 150 mayors nationwide calling for action.
At the April 4th Council meeting Donna Bailey shared a video showing Mary-Ann Baldwin’s embarrassing style of governing. Bailey’s video shows Baldwin abusing her elected position to promote a big donor’s rezoning by suppressing fellow Councilor Jane Harrison’s participation in the rezoning discussion.
An email dated March 1, 2023, shows communication from the Raleigh City Clerk to the Raleigh City Manager detailing a timeline of events that resulted in two speakers being removed from public comment at Mayor Baldwin’s request. On June 6, 2022 Mayor Baldwin asked a deputy city clerk to remove two speakers signed up to speak about community reparative justice, under the guise that the city would schedule a public hearing on the matter “soon.” During the March 21, 2023 afternoon council meeting, Councilor Jones directly asked Mayor Baldwin if she had indeed authorized the removal of two individuals from public comment with the promise of a public hearing that, to this day, had yet to occur or be scheduled. Mayor Baldwin simply stated “no,” which is in direct contradiction to the email authored by the city clerk.
Mayor Baldwin knows the most important goal of City Council’s upcoming 2-day retreat is to set strategic priorities for action in the coming term. She also knows that the chances of her priorities prevailing will depend on her ability to prevent other competing Council priorities from being adopted. That is why the first line of defense in Baldwin’s retreat agenda this year is to make sure it is chock-full of plausibly interesting things to see and do, minimizing the time available for other Councilors’ ideas about the future of Raleigh.
