HIGHLIGHTS Mayor Baldwin absent from Work Session and absent and excused for portion of afternoon session and for evening session. City Council Retreat will be held on Friday, January 26, from 1-5pm at the WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary and on Saturday, January 27,...
The questions are worded with a bias intended to guide the respondents to answer the way the mayor prefers. So, the results of the survey will be meaningless because the questions weren’t inclusive and were engineered to lead to a predictable outcome.
ALL voters should remember this betrayal when next year’s election comes around. All four of the councilors who voted to restrict the time of the speakers have made it known they plan to run for re-election. What the four of them all said at this meeting is that voters CANNOT TRUST them to honor the commitments they make to the people of Raleigh.
One year into the terms of the four newly elected Councilors, and with Mayor Pro Tem Branch having filed to run for Mayor, I offer the following thoughts. By now, even our new Councilors own the positions by which Raleigh is currently governed. Your current record and what you do to distinguish yourself over the coming year will determine your perception by the voters in the election one year from now.
I’d like to talk to you tonight about how the city of Raleigh has declined under the leadership, or lack of leadership, with Mary-Ann Baldwin.
Raleigh City Council is doing another survey about election reform. We say another because they did a survey on the topic and published those results in January 2022. But, they didn’t like your answers. So, they are commissioning another survey and this time they are wording the questions differently to try to get answers they like.
Let’s all remember the City has had nearly a full year to create new safety protocols so that these parade cancellations could have been avoided. And, to-date they have made no public statements about what work they have done to develop the new procedures. Or, if they have even started the process. This debacle and the lack of transparency should be an issue in next year’s City Council election.
In 2017, ‘The Color of Law’ landed like a bombshell in progressive housing policy circles. In Raleigh, powerful development interests saw the opportunity to adopt — some would say co-opt — Richard Rothstein’s anti-segregation message by promoting pro-density zoning rules that not only lifted exclusionary zoning rules, but went much further. By 2020, a new alliance of developer money, self-righteous Council aspirants and their white privileged adherents provided the lubrication to fast track pro-density zoning proposals. Novice Councilors were assured that pesky public input needn’t impede this sweet deal to meld profits and equity.
Some Raleigh people are showing up at Wake County Board of Elections trying to vote in Raleigh municipal elections. You could be excused for thinking Raleigh is holding city elections now. Every other municipality in Wake County is. And there has been a lot of media reporting about the process and the candidates. Some area cities held primaries so when they have the final election it will result in winning candidates gaining over 50% of the vote. Some allow for runoffs if no candidate does receive over 50% of the vote.
Livable Raleigh believes two-year terms mean council members work harder to remain close to their constituencies. However, if four-year terms are to be implemented, Livable Raleigh strongly recommends that the Mayor still be elected every two years, and that a non-partisan primary be held before the general election.