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...
At Raleigh City Council's retreat, March 12-13, At-Large Councilor Jonathan Melton had this to say when categorizing priorities into two sets: "I think community engagement can move into the bottom set. I don't know that we need a one year deliverable in community...
Since the February 4, 2020 surprise vote by the Raleigh City Council to abolish City support of CACs, you may have heard that Raleigh's Citizen Advisory Councils were not diverse or representative of Raleigh's population. This is simply not true as the above photo...
The graph below comes from a Triangle Business Journal article contending that developers are “flooding” the current council with rezoning requests because they are confident that their requests will be quickly and easily...
In his 18-page report to the city council last week, Mickey Fearn—the consultant the city hired to study and make recommendations on how the city can best engage its residents with government processes and initiatives—all but suggests resurrecting CACs, or “community...
District A Councilor, Patrick Buffkin, has held three virtual Town Hall meetings since the pandemic has shut down in-person gatherings. The first was April 28, 2020. The second on Sept 29, 2020. And, the most recent was Feb 11, 2021. All other councilors who have...
City Council created a study group to explore if and how the council’s structure should change. That could include increasing terms from two to four years, upping council members’ pay (currently $17,412 for what’s considered a part-time job), and expanding the...