District A Councilor Patrick Buffkin hosted a virtual meeting on March 10. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was to make comments at the beginning of the meeting, but had a conflict, so he sent in a video. His presentation was only a few minutes long,...
We previously wrote about INDY Daily's comments on Raleigh Council's undemocratic actions here: INDY Daily BLASTS City Council's Undemocratic Behavior. One of their readers disagrees with their take on it and writes: "This is not a good take with respect to the...
Livable Raleigh held an “Open Mic” night on Tuesday, February 15. Sixty plus Raleigh community members joined us to discuss topics ranging from Affordable Housing to Zoning, the Environment to CACs, and upcoming elections to the undue influence of developers on the...
Edie Jeffreys is chair of the Five Points CAC and spoke at the February 1 City Council meeting. I’m Chair of the non-city supported Five Points CAC We’ve met every other month on Zoom for the last two years after the city withdrew its support. Our meetings are...
It’s been two years since the Raleigh City Council voted to abolish City support of CACs (Citizen Advisory Councils). They promised to replace them with a much improved community engagement system. After two years, that still hasn’t happened. Why the slow progress?
On Nov 2, 2021, in a 5-3 vote, Raleigh's City Council approved a contentious zoning case, Z-53-20, located on Lead Mine Road. In a statement, remarkable for its total lack of self awareness, Councilor Partick Buffkin, District A, who represents the affected area, told...
UPDATE - Last week we warned you to stay tuned for Phase IV and within days it has arrived. Phase IV follows up hot on the heels of the implementation of Phase III. We are republishing the entire piece, which now includes Phase IV, in case you missed the original....
PHASE I You may recall Phase I when Baldwin and her council majority abolished Citizen Advisory Councils, CACs, Raleigh's nearly 50-year-old formal method for two-way communications between citizens and their government. This first phase occurred on Feb 4, 2020, in...
A year ago in early June, Mickey Fearn signed a $72,000 10-month contract with the City of Raleigh. The contract called for designing new community engagement functions to replace Raleigh's CACs (Citizen Advisory Councils) during Phase 2. That should have happened by...
It’s budget season for Raleigh City Council and one line item has us scratching our heads: $190K for two new Community Engagement positions. Are we expecting two paid bureaucrats to do the work that dozens/hundreds of citizen volunteers used to do for free through...