Lunsford Lane Cruises the Beltline

Some gentle readers of BTB.org take exception with my assertion that District C City Councilor James West will vote to appoint a white male developer who has used the Planning Commission to line his pockets over a qualified African-American female neighborhood leader who would use the Planning Commission to make Raleigh a better City for all of its Citizens and Stakeholders.

Just to review: White male developer is Charles Walker, who previously served for six years on the Planning Commission. His most recent claim to notoriety is that he is current Planning Commissioner James Baker’s boss. He has had Baker commit serious ethics violations in order to line his own pockets. Now he wants back on the Commission so he can have double the fun breaking the Code of Ethics for Planning Commissioners.

African American female is the Reverend Renee Bethea, President of the Method Civic League. Method is an historic black neighborhood in Southwest Raleigh. Her interest in planning stems from her work in creating a new Small Area Plan for her imperiled community.

You might say that race shouldn’t be a factor here, and you might be right. But Councilor West, the sole African-American Councilor, made it a factor with that speech he gave last January when he voted to put Joyce Kekas in departing then-Councilor-now-Senator Janet Cowell’s Council seat. You remember, he really wanted Paul Anderson, the bit about being a token, and how it is unconscionable to pass over a person of color so well qualified.

You regular readers know our shtick here at BTB.org - first and last you follow the money.

An election is the perfect time to be reminded of who is important to you, and we recently had one. In comparison to his fellow Councilors, West raises relatively little money compared to some of the other Councilors, which isn’t a crisis for a candidate running unopposed. But almost all of what West collects comes from Big Real Estate. In 2003, they gave him about $2,500 (about 90% of what he collected). This year, they upped it by about 40%. Here’s the take:

All of those with the exception of the last are in the development trade. The last is the former District C City Councilor and former state auditor, who has hung out his own shingle and trying to drum up private business with the public sector.

Not a single contribution from a plain old garden variety citizen? Nobody in beleaguered South Park had five bucks they could chip in? OK, there were another 17 checks of between $25 and $100, for a total of $1,225, but for some reason West chooses not to disclose the names of these donors, so we choose not to count them as Citizens.

Look, we know there’s not a lot of spare change jingling in pockets around South Park and Idlewild and similar neighborhoods, but if those neighbors want to be heard, they gotta at least try. Have a chicken pastry dinner some Friday night, and collect a couple hundred bucks for your City Councilor. Everybody’s gotta eat, and if you only make a buck a plate on two hundred plates, well hey, your Councilor is gonna see you tried hard and he is apt to remember you whilst counting his thousands from Big Real Estate.

Walker is not fit for public service on the Planning Commission because he and his man Friday Commissioner Baker have severely broken the public trust. Oh well, it’s a done deal now. Money talks, honesty walks, and District C has been sold out.

DIRTY DEEDS AND THEY'RE DONE DIRT CHEAP
Lunsford Lane
December 21, 2005

I was filing a stack of old minutes of City meetings the other day, and I got to wondering, did the City of Raleigh get those metalheads AC/DC to write the Codes of Ethics for the Council and some of its various Boards and Commissions?

What had rattled my sensibilities was this little item from the Planning Commission meeting on August 26 earlier this year (emphases not added by me):

The Planning Commission developed the recommended Municipal Code change and sent it on to the City Council. At its last meeting, the Council sent it to its Comprehensive Planning Committee. Pretty technical change, basically what it says is that if your house is on a lot of 5,000 square feet or less (that's pretty small at just over a tenth of an acre) and you can get to the rear or side of your lot by an alley, you can build a garage up to 500 square feet in size in your backyard. Right now if you have such a lot, you can only build a garage up to 150 square feet in size.

To be honest, I doubt any of you gentle readers really give a rat's whisker about this.

What got my goat was that it was reported out by Planning Commissioner James Baker - you remember Baker from my previous blog, he's the one that works for Charles Walker, who's wanting back on the Planning Commission.

The lots in this one are between 0.07 and 0.1 acre in size. That's about 28 feet on the front, and 110 feet on the side. Between 3,050 and 4,350 square feet more or less - all considerably less than 5,000 square feet.

In other words, this change is designed specifically for the type of subdivision Baker is building.

Baker has done little on the Planning Commission except rubber stamp anything his developer bosses put on the table. So you'll understand why I take notice when he finally steps forward with an initiative, and then raise an eyebrow upon realizing that it is specifically targeted at helping his own business.

Isn't that illegal? Okay, maybe illegal is too strong a word, but isn't that unethical?

To try to find out, I go to the homepage for the Raleigh Planning Commission on the City website. There you can download the Commission's rules of procedure, but a Code of Ethics is nowhere to be found. Upon careful reading of the rules of procedure, you find under section VII. Voting:

So try to find it, 'cause we can't (well, it's out there for the finding, but there is only so much snooping one can do in cognito). Quick, go ask any Planning Commissioner to show you his or her copy. Fat chance, at least until a couple of days after they all read this post. Folks, it's not by accident that the Planning Commission's Code of Ethics is well hidden.

So I get to asking myself: Self, what do other City Commissions do for Codes of Ethics? Go to the page for the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission on the City's website. There you can download not only the Commission's bylaws and rules of procedure, but its Code of Ethics as well. Actually, it's the Code of Ethics for the American Planning Association. And it's not just the regular Code for garden variety planners, it's a special Code developed just for Planning Commissioners!

Seems reasonable to BTB.org that our Planning Commissioners would also be well served by the standards of the American Planning Association. So until the Resolution governing Raleigh's Planning Commission reappears, and even after it does, it seems reasonable to hold our Commissioners to the national standards.

But wait, there's more - the American Planning Association also has Rules of Procedure for Planning Commissions. And get this - are you sitting down? - this national association developed these rules specifically because they were asked to do so by the Wake County Planning Board - yes, our Wake County!

All it takes is a reasonable command of English and an IQ above 60 to read the above and know that Baker's got troubles. He initiated the legislation to help his business. He voted as a member of the Planning Commission's Strategic Planning Committee to support the legislation. He voted again as a Planning Commissioner to send the legislation to the City Council.

In past blogs, I've called for the heads of various politicos. Sometimes because their politics are distasteful, other times because of legal or ethical violations. So we at BTB.org have decided to create a new feature: an official list of who needs to go - we'll call it the Dirty Deeds List.

To make it onto the Dirty Deeds List, you need to commit an illegal or unethical act serious enough to warrant your departure. So even though I am still prosecuting a low-grade one-man war against District B Councilor Jessie Taliafero, she doesn't make the list (yet) because my beef with her is not one over law or ethics violations.

And to aid the process of fixing the problem, each appointee to the list will come with an action plan for fixing whatever it is they broke.

And the honor of being the first to take the BTB.org Walk of Shame goes to James Baker, Raleigh Planning Commissioner, for shamelessly, unabashedly, and unethically using the Planning Commission for his own personal gain.

And now Baker's boss Walker wants on the Planning Commission, to have a more direct hand in this kind of hanky panky.

SHALLOW POOL
Lunsford Lane
December 13, 2005

We've gotten quite a few inquiries lately about some of the goings-on in City politics. Since there is not a second regular City Council meeting this month (though there is a special meeting of the Council), we thought we could devote a few lines over the next couple of weeks to answering some of those.

First, we take on Charles Walker. Mr. Walker has been nominated to serve (again) on the Raleigh Planning Commission, and it's no secret that he is not a pick of BTB.org. But a couple of readers have heard tell that there is a business relationship between Walker and Planning Commissioner Jim Baker, and they want to know what it is. Well, this one is easy.

There are lots of good reasons why neither Mr. Baker nor Mr. Walker should be a Planning Commissioner, and few if any good reasons why either of them should. This tight relationship between the two is yet another compelling reason why Walker shouldn't be appointed again - the last thing the Commission needs is two appointees from what is essentially the same business firm. Baker will have to do on the Commission whatever Walker tells him to, which is not exactly a problem for Baker because that is how he operates now. But it will be yet another disaster for the Planning Commission.

And just so y'all know, Walker cut his teeth in the building business under District A Councilor Tommy Craven.

BLINDERS ON A HORSE(shoe)
Lunsford Lane
December 12, 2005

Maybe they’ve turned a corner over there at Horseshoe Farm Park, I don’t know. You can read at the N&O and the Indy the nitty gritty of how the park planning committee has now recommended nixing the active recreation features and going back to a nature park.

What’s still getting my grits is that some of the Parks folks continue to insist that they know better than the public what said public wants (see my post just prior to this one). The City’s Parks Recreation and Greenway Advisory Board formed a master planning committee, which solicited public comment on the proposed plan they put forward for Horseshoe Farm Park. The N&O found that for every person that said they wanted the proposed dog park or the proposed tennis court or the proposed gymnasium at this particular park, there were 25 others who said they simply wanted a nature park along the Neuse River.

Unless you’re Kathleen Serow, who is a member of the committee appointed to develop a proposal for Horseshoe Farm Park. Ms. Serow says that said the disproportionately negative comment on the proposed plan doesn't reflect the community.

"What we heard was a group of people with a common interest," she said. "There's other people out there besides the people that spoke at the meeting."

Excuse me, but that’s about as dumb of a comment as they come. Of course all the folks at the public hearing have a common interest - that's why they're there - it’s called "parks", duh. The same interest that all the folks on the Horsefarm Farm Park planning committee and the all the folks on the Parks Recreation and Greenway Advisory Board have.

And of course there are a gadzillion Citizens out there besides those who spoke at the meeting - they’re called the ones who don’t really care all that much about this.

The fact is that beyond election day, there are only a limited number of ways that citizens get public input into City affairs. The best way of course to get what you want out of the City Council is to buy it. Different Councilors have different prices - for example, At-Large Councilor Joyce Kekas sold her vote on the Glentree Tower project for $5,000.

Problem is, normal citizens like you and me aren’t very likely to have $5,000 burning a hole in our pants pocket whenever we would like the City Council to act in a way important to us.

We can write letters to City Councilors and Advisory Board and Commission members, and many of us do. Of course, if you haven't given much if anything to the Councilors' campaign funds, you risk not getting a lot of their attention at letter-reading time.

And we can show our faces and run our mouths at public hearings, and many of us do.

But as I said last time, what’s the point of having a public hearing or soliciting written public comment if those to whom it is directed sit there with closed ears?

It’s a recurring theme with Serow and some of the other Parks folks. Way back in July, the N&O reported that Serow was the only Horseshoe Farm Park committee member to speak in favor of the high-intensity elements like tennis courts and gymnasiums:

"We're representing a lot of people that aren't here," said Serow. "We can't forget those people."

Those people were nowhere to be seen in July, and they still haven’t shown up now that it’s December. I doubt seriously that they’ve been forgotten, rather it is much more likely that they simply don’t exist.

The parks planning process is seriously broken - too broke for a simple patching up. As I said last time, the City Council desperately needs to disband the current Parks Recreation and Greenway Advisory Board and start all over again from scratch.

PUBLIC DISTRUST
December 5, 2005
Lunsford Lane

Here’s a bit of Hollywood trivia - BTB.org’s own Dr. Walter de Gama was originally cast to play Dr. Ian Malcolm in the movie version of Jurassic Park. He even worked a bit with novelist/screenwriter Michael Crichton to refine the dialogue. But Dr. de ultimately lost the gig when he kept failing to show for rehearsals - so many Tinseltown starlets, so little time. In a pinch, Spielberg asked longtime friend Jeff Goldblum (a real actor, who doesn’t need to rehearse) to fill in, and it was Goldblum who uttered this now-famous apercu of the stone age park planners, actually penned by de Gama:

Across this City, many are now uttering the same about the Raleigh park planners.

Though “nature study” is cited as a planned activity at several city parks, Our Fair City operates two parks ostensibly as Nature Parks - Lake Johnson Nature Park and Durant Nature Park.

What is a nature park? I haven’t been able to find out exactly what the City thinks one is, but I think I can give it a pretty good guess. It’s a place you go for a stroll away from the noise and smell of the surrounding city, to commune with the birds and the squirrels and the raccoons and the deer - what the City calls passive recreational activities. Activities that require infrastructure beyond pleasant surfaces to park and walk on are considered active - ball fields, skateboard tubes, tennis and b-ball courts, gymnasiums.

The nature parks in the City are very popular (try finding a parking space at one on a pleasant weekend), so more than ten years ago the City bought Horseshoe Farm, on the banks of the Neuse River. It took several years to raise enough money to begin park development, and about a year ago planning finally got off with an earnest but bumpy start. The Parks, Recreation, and Greenway Advisory Board, a group of citizens appointed by the City Council to advise it on Parks issues, violated the open meetings law when it first approved the Horseshoe Farm Master Plan Committee. It’s been downhill ever since.

Seems that at public hearings, meetings that are held so that City leaders can hear from the public (duh), most citizens supported a passive nature park. But Parks Advisory Board Chair Jan Kirschbaum was having none of it, calling the public comments “skewed.” She said that “your average citizen doesn’t have the time to email the city.” So what’s the point of having a public hearing if the public official who is supposed to be listening decides to ignore the public comment made at the public hearing and just offers her opinion about what public comment would actually be if only the "real" public had time to write an email or two?

And so it seems that Kirschbaum and Krewe have determined that the public does not want nature at Horseshoe Farm, rather it wants ball courts and dog parks and other active recreation.

Just when things were heating up good over at Horseshoe Farm, the Parks Advisory Board showed up on the opposite side of town, at Lake Johnson Nature Park. That’s where these Parks folks want to park a dog park in part of the nature park (and no, my fellow philocynics, our adorable pooches are in no way compatible with nature). Probably 95% of the public that attended the hearings spoke against that idea, for too many reasons to go into here. Once again, Parks Board Chair Kirschbaum has taken it upon herself to speak for the “real” public, which is obviously not the public that shows up at public hearings, and so thus the Parks Board moves full speed ahead with a Lake Johnson puppy park.

To be fair, every decision will have its supporters and its detractors, you can’t please all the people all the time. But with so many folks so upset with the Parks planning process, it's become more and more difficult to believe that it’s just the typical sour grapes fermenting here. For the last three or four months, folks all across the City have been sending their complaints about Parks planning to us here at BTB.org. I give you these excerpts for a letter sent last week to the City Council by one Denise Thorpe, who lives in North Raleigh, as they are representative of what we have been hearing:

Wow! Is she really talking about the Parks Board? Ya think she really meant my favorite dysfunctional family, the Planning Commission, where at any given meeting over the past few years you probably heard the likes of a Jack Reed or a Chuck Walker or a Scott Cutler or a Maha Chambliss figuratively and often literally sneer with disdain at a poor Citizen expressing his or her opinion? How dare an ordinary Citizen interfere with their work of handing their developer bosses and cronies whatever they want?

Clearly, that same holier-than-thou attitude has now so tainted the Parks Advisory Board that it no longer enjoys any citizen trust.

A new City Council will be sworn in tonight. First order of business should be to restore public trust. My advice to the new Council:

GET ON THE BUS, GUS!
Lunsford Lane
November 22, 2005

Both the News and Observer and the Independent now run political blogs. Mostly they post short blurbs intended only to point you to stories in their papers. We tire of that fast, but we keep reading because occasionally a kernel of golden rice falls through the chaff. The N&O has a winner with its Lone Vote Watch, and Indy writer Bob Geary was banging on all eight cylinders when he dented the City Council Development Machine yesterday. His analysis of the current battle for open seats on the Raleigh Planning Commission was spot on.

Let's not forgot that this is wartime, folks, and even if I haven't done much war reporting lately, District B City Councilor Taliaferro still holds her place as public enemy numero uno. Geary tells you how Taliaferro is insisting that departing Commissioner Scott Cutler (ding dong the Witch is dead!) be replaced by an even scarier Developer Ghost from Commissions Past. According to her, the seat is pegged for a development industry representative that lives in North Raleigh, and her man fits that bill.

Wait just a New Jersey second - since when are seats at the Planning Commission table reserved by occupation and location? Well, District D Councilor Thomas Crowder says he can play that game as well - since almost every seat is filled by a developer, since most seats are filled by North Raleigh residents, since all but two seats are filled by males (note 11/24: thanks careful reader, yes, it's 3 of 11, my brain burped), since all but one are filled by Caucasians, he has nominated, now get this, an African American female from West Raleigh (which has no seats at the table). And here's the kicker - she is apparently well qualified, having been involved in neighborhood planning for quite some time.

So how can the Council possibly say no? Here's how. A candidate needs five votes from the eight-member Council to get appointed to the Planning Commission. Councilors Craven and Isley will vote with the Developers and the Republicans, so count them as nays. Big Real Estate owns both the Planning Commission and City Councilor Taliaferro - she'll vote nay and she will lean on other Councilors for that fourth nay. The Mayor is unpredictable, so you can't count on him either way. Councilor West all too often falls in line behind Councilor Taliaferro, but can he stand the heat of not voting for an qualified African American female? At least in the first rounds of voting, I don't think so.

That leaves At-Large Councilor Joyce Kekas. Who is she loyal to? You already know our answer to that - Big Real Estate. Yes, even after my last blog on how the Soleil group bought her vote for $5,000, some of y'all are still insisting that she is a good progressive. How many nails do I have to drive into that coffin?

OK, OK, at least one more you say. A recent report from the N&O should have clued you in on how tied to Big Real Estate At Large City Councilor Joyce Kekas really is. Final campaign reports aren't in at the Board of Elections yet, and audits aren't complete, but we thought it might be instructive to take a bit closer look than the N&O at just who from Big Real Estate funds Kekas. You know about Soleil, so here's another 15,000 of the developer dollars she raised:

So it's blatantly obvious - Kekas will vote against Crowder and for Big Real Estate. It's four to four, deadlock, what's next? West caves, like he did when he nominated Paul Anderson and Taliaferro nominated Joyce Kekas to fill the City Council seat that Janet Cowell vacated when she was elected to the NC Senate. He had a choice then - progressive African American vs. Big Real Estate lackie. He went with Big Real Estate and was rewarded handsomely (that's for the next blog). Sure, he made a big show of initially supporting Anderson, but he didn't see it through. So what's to make him do it differently this time?

The "what" is you, and us, and as many other progressives as we can muster into this ragtag unit unfit for duty. Call your Councilors. Call every Democrat you know from Dogcatcher to Party HeadHoncho. Write the News and Observer. Write the Independent. Write the Carolinian. Call the local TV stations.

Together, we were able to get Dr. Erin Kuczmarski back on the Planning Commission. We can save our politicians from themselves once again, but only if we try.

THE ~~BIG~~ TALL FIX
Lunsford Lane
November 17, 2005

We've been smelling fish in At-Large City Councilor Joyce Kekas' campaign for some time now, and it's taken us longer than we like to connect the dots.

Yes, we know that Kekas is deep in the pocket of Big Real Estate, which funded her campaign (more on that to come soon). But there were five $1,000 donations that we just couldn't make hide nor hair of. All from physicians. All but one from out of town, from Cary to Gastonia to Alexandria in northern Louisiana. All with eastern ethnic last names. Not a one ever seen by us on the political scene here before.

Then it hit us - the Soleil Group! You know, those two whacky guys building the 42-story tall tower in the floodplain of Crabtree Creek. You know, the two guys who wanted to sponsor Kekas' campaign kickoff. It wouldn't be fair, okay fair but not fun, to tag them as Big Real Estate - let's call them Tall Real Estate.

Sound implausible? Quick, before the recycle truck comes, go get page 8A of Tuesday's paper out of the bin. Play this little game - try to pick the mysterious five names from the list of thankees, then truck on down to the Wake County Board of Elections and find those same five names on Kekas' campaign donor list. Here's a hint - 4 of the 5 are named Singh. If after playing you still think the dots can be connected any other way, we want to hear how.

As for the Soleil boys, we here at BTB.org like immigrants, a lot. Most come here and work harder and study harder and make more of their lives than most citizens born here. Families stick together, with each member who achieves financial success at any scale expected to reach down and pull other family members up. So it's no big deal for family members to pass money around. But it's against the law in the U.S. to give a family member or a friend a "gift" of money that is expected to be passed along to someone else - true gifts come with no strings attached. "Gifts" with a hook aren't considered gifts at all by the IRS, so let's hope that all of the "Friends of Soleil" are reporting any and all "gift" income to the IRS. We'd hate to see this become an even bigger scandal than it already is.

As for Kekas, well, we told you so. That woman is owned lock stock and barrel by Big and Tall Real Estate. She sold her soul long before the local Dem women cast their lots in her camp. Expect nothing from her for the next two years except full speed ahead to turn Raleigh into a Small Atlanta.

Folks, like I said last blog, when Dr. de Gama winks at you to let you know the fix is in, you can take that $5,000 to the bank. There's more to come in this sad Soleil saga, folks. For example, we're still trying to find out how much NC State's Marvin Malecha was paid to sprinkle his academic holy water over this tower. How about one of y'all calling either him or the Soleil boys and asking? Sounds like a job for the N&O, no?

EYE IN THE PYRAMID
Lunsford Lane
November 14, 2005

Come tomorrow afternoon's City Council meeting, District E Councilor Philip Isley is gonna get squeezed between a rock and a hard place. That’s because some of his inside-the-beltline neighbors have asked the City Council to downzone a historic property on Glenwood Avenue. Local developers count on Isley, as he seldom meets a development he doesn’t like - with most of the exceptions being in his part of town. So what side does he go with this time - high rolling developers who will bankroll any future bid he makes for Mayor, or high rolling neighbors who live on some of the most expensive real estate in town, and vote early and often?

The Josephus Daniels house (read the rich history at this link) sits in the most prestigious neighborhood in town, where it has served as the center of Raleigh Freemasonry for 55 years. Now the Masons want to cash out - cut up the four acre estate for a dozen or so new homes. Neighbors say that would ruin the character of the historic property, not to mention their neighborhood. They present an interesting case - based on the legal standard that if the property were to be zoned for the first time today, what would be the appropriate zoning classification? It's a complicated case on both sides, but sparing you the nitty gritty, I will say the neighbors make a persuasive case.

So what do the Masons say? The Grand Poohbah of the local Masons told the Raleigh Planning Commission last week that the rezoning should be denied because it will prevent them from getting the maximum amount of money out of the property, and that will hurt their charitable works. You can’t knock the Masons for supporting orphan kids but the simple fact is that good planning decisions aren’t made on where the money from the development eventually lands.

The developers who want to buy the Daniels house hired local attorney Tom Worth to make their case, and he did one of the worst jobs of lawyering ever seen in the Raleigh Council chambers. First he said that it was impossible for the neighbors to conjecture how Masons two decades ago would have responded if their property had been included in the neighborhood rezoning that occurred then. Then he repeatedly said that Josephus Daniels is spinning in his grave at the prospects of this rezoning. It’s the classic sword/shield dichotomy - you can’t use an argument as a shield to protect yourself from your opponent (say, make the case that he can't put words in the mouths of Masons long gone), and then violate the same rule to beat down your opponent (you say Daniels is rolling over in his grave). Try it in court and see how fast the judge upholds the opposing attorneys’ objection.

Worth also argued that in all his years he has never seen the Council approve a downzoning, and to do so would be a taking. Wrong on both counts - the Council has, and downzoning is a legal and constitutional mechanism provided in the Raleigh Municipal Code.

Worth’s problem - the law wasn’t with him, and the facts weren’t with him, but he wanted to get paid so he had to stand up and say something anything no matter how silly. Having witnessed this poor showing, one of the proposed developers decided to get up and try to speak for himself. He promised to restore the Daniels House to its original condition (not a trivial or cheap task, mind you) and only build eleven additional homes. Which fits quite nicely into the R-4 zoning the neighbors desire. Under R-4, 15 homes would be allowed, under the current R-6 zoning 23 homes are allowed. But what Attorney Worth can tell his developer client with certainty is that he can promise anything he wants in front of the Planning Commission, because none of it is legally binding. Promise 12 homes now, defeat the rezoning, then later conduct a new "market analysis" that shows it will take 23 homes to make the project work.

If you were just looking at which side made the strongest case at the Planning Commission meeting, then you'd have to admit that the Masons and their developer did an abyssmal job of defending themselves within the law. But Big Real Estate doesn't run its Planning Commission to determine what is right and best for the City, rather its sole purpose is to promote developers. Several of the Developer Lackies aka Planning Commissioners, including Jim Baker, Scott Cutler, and Mark Everette, stated that they could never ever vote for a downzoning that was not endorsed by the property owner. Of course, they never give a single reason why not. It’s allowed, it’s legal, it’s a legitimate planning tool. Yes, Cutler gave a convoluted sophistic argument about who's rights come first, but he confused (probably intentionally) interests of the City with interests of the neighbors. What these guys are saying is that they don’t care about the toolbox the City Council has given them - they chuck out the tools they either don’t know how or don't want to use and try to construct a liveable city with just a monkey wrench. If you don't like a law in the toolbox, fine, work to change it. But don't cynically sit on a City Commission and apply the law as you see fit rather than as the City Council saw fit to give it to you. Thankfully, Cutler is leaving the Commission soon, having asked not to be appointed for another term. Baker and Everette, who is now Chair of the Commission, obviously know little and care even less about planning, and need to follow Cutler’s lead by falling on their swords.

The Planning Commission voted 7-4 to recommend to the City Council that they not downzone this property. Woefully, the City Planning Staff seems to be coming up just as short as the Planning Commission. The Staff also gets to send a recommendation to the City Council, and they also recommend that the Council not downzone this historic property. Why? Because, among other reasons: "the majority of the Commission is opposed to the filing of a rezoning case on an individual property without the consent of the owner of that property."

Got it? The Planning Commission is owned and operated by local developers and makes decisions based on what is best for their bosses, not the City of Raleigh. But at least, you say, the City staff represents the City’s interests - except that they are now shirking their responsibilities to the Councilors and Citizens and just going with whatever Big Real Estate says. Kleisthenes must be spinning in his grave.

So which way is Isley gonna go? Philosophically he’s opposed to downzoning. He also knows he can’t stand the ill will that will come with ticking off his super-rich neighbors. For me, it’s just too close to call. But if you put a gun to my head, I’m gonna have to call it for the developers, ‘cause nine times out of ten they win out Isley’s vote over us Citizens.

STEEPLE CHASE
Lunsford Lane
November 13, 2005

Some of y’all have been calling out my main man de Gama for tagging the proposed Glen-Tree Tower as a Herculean Steeley Dan designed for tickling the fancy of a certain female City Councilor.

Crude? No doubt pushing the limits of our "family style" blog. But dead on accurate none-the-less, and no cruder than Joyce Kekas’ bid for Council. Supporters left and right are fuming that she went with the developers faster than the speed of light.

So why are you complaining to us? We have been trying to tell y’all for months that Kekas is the choice of developers everywhere. She’s modeled herself on fellow Councilor Jessie Taliaferro - DINO, as in Democrat in Name Only.

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up. So when de Gama winks at you to say the fix is in, you can take it to the bank. But since you didn’t believe us, maybe today’s N&O feature on the two fellows who will build this behemoth, now called the Soleil Tower, will convince you:

Yes folks, this tower was already a girl’s best friend before she even kicked off her campaign for Council. These Tower Boys are used to buying whatever it is they want. Imagine if Kekas had taken the bait, then again maybe just the idea that they would have been willing to support her would make her swoon because of their deep pockets, maybe that was their strategy all along, hint that they might sponsor her knowing that ultimately she would have to refuse or look bought. At least the Kekas campaign had enough good sense to realize that they couldn't pull off the Taliaferro-DINO flimflam if they opened with a developer love fest. Instead, she was able to hoodwink Democratic stalwarts Congressman Brad Miller and his wife Esther Hall into sponsoring her kickoff (who were also going to sponsor Taliaferro before they got wise to her - they'll be wise to Kekas too by next election).

CIRQUE du SOLEIL
Lunsford Lane
October 30, 2005

Yuck! Not in public! There was such a kissy-face love fest going on between local developers and the Raleigh Planning Commissioners down at City Hall last Tuesday morning, I almost walked up to the podium and screamed, “Get a freakin’ room!”

Which won’t be a problem if all the luxury hotels either already planned or being dreamed up get built. Let’s do a recap, and we’re not talking Super Eights and NoTell Motels here. Please gentle readers let me know if I miss any:

The 400-room 4 star Marriott to be built next to the new Convention Center downtown, heavily subsidized by you and me, scheduled to open in 2008.

The three star 250-room hotel associated with the proposed Conference Center on NC State’s Centennial Center, yes this idea is still alive, and yes it will be heavily subsidized by you and me.

The hotel proposed by Mayor Meeker and County Commission Chair Joe Bryant for the Dorothea Dix property, again, to be heavily subsidized by you and me.

The proposed 168-room Pullen Place, between the NC State’s Main Campus and Centennial Campus, current status unknown.

The five-star “boutique” hotel that Ted Reynolds wants to crash land on Hillsborough Street, right next to the 19-story old round Holiday Inn (Holiday Inn built a bunch of these round buildings all over the world in the seventies).

The Umstead, the five-star 50-room hotel being built on the campus of SAS Institute by business and philanthropic titans Ann and Jim Goodnight, scheduled to open next year.

The hotel, name and type unspecified, promised to the City Council when they approved the PDD for the 168 acres that NC State University sold off just west of the ESA.

And lastly, the hotel that inspired this blog, the at least 4-star 225-room Westin in the 42-story GlenTree scraper, proposed by the Soleil Group and scheduled to open in a couple of years or so.

Lord o’ mercy! Remember when coming to Raleigh meant staying downtown in the Sir Walter Raleigh, at the edge of downtown in that old Travelodge where Capital Blvd becomes Dawson, or waaay out north in the boonies on Capital Blvd. at the Plantation Inn. Of course, that was long before fleets of stretch limos plied the streets of Glenwood South, and let’s be real, it’s humiliating when you’re spotted stepping out of the 20-passenger Hummer Limo with 10 or 15 of your shiniest dimes in front of the Red Roof Inn.

It speaks well of the City and the Triangle that there is so much perceived demand for luxury suites. But one has to wonder how any of them will survive if all of them get built, and if there really is such a demand, why we the taxpayers are subsidizing some of them? If you use my tax money to build a luxury hotel near a convention center or a sports and entertainment arena that you also used my tax money to build, then I damn well expect you to protect my investment from private speculators who would like a piece of that action for themselves (which I know many if not most would say it how it should have been done in the first place).

The primary tool for protecting those investments, as well as accomplishing a variety of other social goods, is the City's Comprehensive Plan. The plan is primarily concerned with physical development and those City actions which can be reasonably expected to influence development. And the Crabtree Valley area where the proposed GlenTree tower will be built is NOT where such a building fits into that plan.

When you are talking about a building the size of GlenTree, you're talking about a lot of physical infrastructure (primarily roads) that is needed to service the building. District E City Councilor Philip Isley says "Anybody who is willing to invest $90 million to $100 million of their own money is owed a lot of latitude". Damn straight, Phil. And since I will have invested at least ten times that in a Convention Center and an Arena and a fancy Fayetteville Street and a concert hall and a couple of hotels and all the roads to service them all, you owe me at least ten times more latitude than the GlenTree developers deserve.

Isley also says, "The infrastructure is there. The roads are there: Lead Mine, Creedmoor, Glenwood." I don't have to waste any cyberspace explaining to anyone who has ever struggled through six or eight light cycles to drive the mile or so through the traffic nightmare that is Glenwood and Creedmoor just how ridiculous that statement is. So who's gonna pay the millions and millions of dollars to build and improve the infrastructure there when gridlock brings Glenwood to a dead stop? Not the developers to be sure, rather once again that bill will fall to you and me.

That's why you and I should get to say where and what 42-story hotels get built. Because for better or worse, it's our money paying for not only the entertainment facilities that drive much of the demand, and the infrastructure to service it all, but we actually pony up a significant share of the some of the actual hotels.

But no matter how bad a 42-story building at Crabtree is for the City, the City Council WILL approve this project. The best we here at BTB.org can do is review what some of the supporters are saying, and just shake our heads in disbelief and shame. So here we go.

Dave Heinl, President and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau points out that with the addition of GlenTree, there will be over 2,000 rooms in 12 separate hotels clustered around Crabtree Valley Mall. He claims this is very important when going after convention business. Will somebody please run downtown to tell that to Mayor Meeker? He's spotted our new Convention Center at the southern end of downtown, which is a hell of a long walk from Crabtree Valley Mall, which is apparently where conventioneers really want to be when they come to whoop it up in Raleigh. What, they don't have shopping malls where those hillbillies come from?

Dr. Larry Wheeler, Director of the NC Carolina Museum of Art (one of de Gama's favorite haunts), declared this building to be a significant work of art for the City. Marvin Malecha, Dean of NC State's College of Design, has similar accolades for this urban architecture. I'm not gonna argue for or against Doc de Gama's Birthday Cake School of Architecture, because that's not the issue here for me (and thanks a bunch for passing the baton to me, Doc - you're the big picture guy in this operation - though it was my turn to skip out of work and attend the meeting at City Hall). The better half thinks I spend all my time in the garage because that's where the car parts are, but it's really because it's the only place in the house where she lets me hang my collection of Dogs Playing Poker portraits. For the sake of argument, I'm gonna just declare this spire a sculpture of monumental proportion and significance. Drape that sucker in 42 stories of crushed velvet for a Christo inspired homage to the dapper Sir Walter, and I instantly become an art aficionado.

Considering the recent awful experience both of these men shared with good art in bad context, they should understand that better than anyone. Remember the recent Catalano Pavilion fiasco (which drew at least a bit of local press attention)? World reknown (and dying) architect Eduardo Catalano, who eons ago was a professor at State, wanted to build a monument to the cutting edge home he designed and built in Raleigh (and which long ago was torn down). A pavilion topped with his now-famous roofline sounds like great art to me. He first tried to build it at the NC Museum of Art, but it didn't fly. Word on the electronic street at NC State (I'm getting to that part) was that Catalano insisted it be placed in a prominent but inappropriate location on the museum grounds, and finally the Museum, to its credit, balked at good art in bad context.

So Catalano offered his pavilion to NC State, and when he sweetened the deal by throwing in some scholarship money for Malecha's Design school, Malecha chomped at the bit. Malacha and Crew had the project designed and ready to go before the student body even knew what was coming. But the students eventually learned that it was going to plopped down smack in the middle of the Court of the Carolinas, and they went ballistic. The Court is "sacred ground" they cried, and Malecha had sold them out for good art in a terrible context for a few dollars of scholarship money. Problem was, Catalano insisted that his pavilion go in the most prominent and sacred spot on the entire huge campus or not at all. Eventually the students prevailed, and now there will never be a lasting memorial for the once great NC architect.

The GlenTree Tower is the Catalano Pavilion - arguably great art in an undeniably terrible place. At least the Museum apparently had the presence of mind to just say no to that concept, so it's puzzling as to why Wheeler, who's credibility is unquestionable, doesn't see it here. And it's odd that he would publicly support direct competition for the $70 million + Goodnight hotel, which is about equidistant as GlenTree from the Museum, just in the opposite direction. The Goodnights are huge benefactors of the Museum and lots of other great NC institutions. What has the Soleil Group done for us recently? As for Malecha, he can obviously be bought cheap, the only thing left to learn is what he got from the Soleil Company for his support.

Steve Stroud, CEO of Carolantic Realty and former Chair (and still a member) of the Centennial Authority, the body charged with overseeing our Arena, is ga-ga over the GlenTree hotel. Damn it, Steve, you're supposed to be looking out for my investment in the Arena. So instead of wasting time on GlenTree, how about getting downtown and stopping the rezoning of that huge tract of red clay next to the Arena? When it was rezoned a couple years back, the owners promised a hotel, which they never built (they never built anything). A little birdie that flew out of City Hall tells BTB.org that the new owners of the property want to renege - Mr. Stroud, how is it that your "Meadowlands of the South" has been open for six years now this month, and there is only one restaurant and not a single hotel that has seen fit to open anywhere around it? The GlenTree tower is the RBC Center - no one should know better than you about right buildings in wrong places.

BTB.org's main man Russ Stephenson set a new record for how quickly after election a newly minted politician can become afflicted with Dark Side Syndrome.

But even his failure to insist on answers about a project that runs counter to every planning principal he knows is right can't hold a candle to what is perhaps the most illogical premise ever put forth in any City Hall anywhere. These words actually dribbled from the lips of Planning Commission Chair Mark Everette:

A historic moment, when we held witness to the birth of the neoretrominimalist It Is Where It Is School of Urban Planning.

That might be an argument for siting a mine - dig where the gold is. But I can see it now, every developer with a cockamamy proposal to build a Best Buy in Oakwood or a sausage factory in Wakefield or a fraternity house in the Meredith Woods neighborhood will tell the Planning Commission, yes, perhaps it might be better to build my project elsewhere, but it does pass the Commission's principal test - the dirt is where it is.

Look Commission Chair Everette, you had such a huge conflict of interest you shouldn't even have voted on this case, much less sprained your brain with an attempt at analysis. Your boss stood up and endorsed the project in front of the Commission. Yes, folks, Steve Stroud is Everette's boss - so he couldn't vote nay even if he wanted to! So, whizkid, next time your boss publicly supports a development project, don't try to play us for a bunch of Mayberry bumpkins - just keep your yammer shut and vote yes. For those occasions when you just can't resist the urge to blurt out something dumb to justify your vote, I've prepared a statement for you. I typed it on a 3x5 index card, so just cut it out and keep it on the table in front of you at all times:

The Planning Commission meeting last Monday was such a grand incestuous orgy of developers and their inamoratos that they would have had to rent a whole floor of hotel rooms to contain it all. The Soleil Group packed the auditorium with their employees paid to make a crowd and create a buzz. Local developers packed the Planning Commission with hacks on their payroll who do nothing but make sure their bosses get to crowd the City with whatever they want. The only Commissioner who walked out of the Council Chamber last week with her virtue intact was Betsy Kane. There are thoughtful and compelling arguments in favor of GlenTree (though you didn't hear any of them last Monday), but ultimately they fail the tests of public good. Rightly or wrongly, we have chosen a Comprehensive Plan for our Fair City, and we've jacked it up with huge taxpayer investments in Arenas and Convention Centers and Museums and Concert Halls and roads and highways and more roads and maybe even trains to come.

AAARGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lunsford Lane
October 28, 2005

THERE WERE NO SMOKE DETECTORS IN THE NC STATE FRAT HOUSE THAT BURNED AND KILLED TWO KIDS!

I’m so furious as I write this that my hands are shaking. But there it is, in black and white, in the headlines of the News and Observer, affirming what I asked in my blog last week:

In fact, damn near everything we've told you about this needless tragedy is panning out to be true, but only after three weeks of out of control spin to deny anything was amiss.

I told you that this house was not a simple duplex as described; it has now been established that it was a full blown frat house.

I told you that the City of Raleigh refuses to enforce housing codes. Says Raleigh Fire Chief Larry Stanford:

Unfreakin’ believable candor from a guy who still won’t completely stop the spin:

Fire dude, this was not a typical residence like you and I live in, THIS WAS A FRIGGIN’ FRAT HOUSE!!!

FRAT HOUSE. FRAT HOUSE. FRAT HOUSE. SAY IT THREE TIMES FAST AND IT WILL STICK IN YOUR BRAIN.

No, you can’t inspect every single family residence in the City every year. But we can check every high risk structure where lots of people live. Every hotel, every dorm, every high rise, and duh, the structures that historically are the riskiest of all - every frat house!

I told y'all two days ago that this house was all about frat parties - off campus, in a neighborhood, on a weeknight, going until 4:30 am, where neighbors with families and jobs have to get up at sunrise. And what do we read in the paper today?

As I told you before, the landlord was not only breaking laws in the operation of that frat house, she was committing criminal offenses. Would someone out there in La La Land stop by the old folks home today and find a WWII veteran in good shape? Borrow his cohunes, take them over to City Hall, and try to find an inspector, an attorney, a politician to pin them on.

I told you that it really doesn’t matter that the City and the University are trying to cover up the fact that this tragedy occurred in a frat house, because the parents of the kids who died would hook up with mad dog lawyers who would dig the dirt. Sure enough, now the parents are preparing for the lawsuits, and one of the fathers vows to discover the truth about what was going on in that house.

Nothing crushes a heart as completely as the loss of a child. So we can rest assured that this man will not be denied. As he points out in the newspaper, a landlord that hasn’t visited her property in over a year and a half is completely derelict. The N&O will stay on the story (even if they don’t, we will) so you go, man!

S.O.S.
Lunsford Lane
October 26, 2005

Stop the Outrageous Spin and Start Saving Lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The report of the fire in the Sigma Alpha Mu (SAM) frat house at NC State is out, and spin mode has been slipped into high gear. Let’s take the News and Observer’s report apart bit by bit:

No it ain't. Stanford is a Raleigh Fire Marshall, maybe he needs to read my last blog. You could have at least easily eliminated much the human element - you don’t let fraternities operate in 70-year old buildings in neighborhoods. You don’t let ten unrelated folks reside in a single house, even if it is split into two “dwelling units”. You don’t kick the fraternities off of campus. And on, and on, and on, ad infinitum.....

First, when the fire broke out it was Fall Break at NC State. Most students had gone home for the holiday, yet ten were still sleeping in a house in which it was only legal for eight to reside. Come on, guys, what’s the real story? How many beds were in that house? How many Sammies et al. slept there on a typical weeknight when school was in session?

Second, don’t give me that good grade BS, as it's just waaay too easy to check. I'm not ragging on the boys that died, I've already acknowledged that they were special kids. But the data don't lie:

On average, students in fraternities and sororities at NC State have slightly lower grade point averages (GPAs) than the average State student. And Sammies don’t do even that well. Over the last nine semesters, the brothers averaged a 2.6 GPA. That means that the average Sammy made a C in a class for every class he made a B in. I'm not saying that's shameful, mind you, but it sure ain't emphasizing good grades either.

The University also tracks fraternity and sorority performance in ten standards, from scholarship to risk management. How'd the Sammies do last year? They didn't meet two standards, and they only conditionally met seven others. The only standard they met unconditionally was alumni/graduate relations, which pales in importance next to risk management. You just don't send a group of kids doing this poorly off campus to fend for themselves.

In other words, we didn’t learn anything last time? Even the NC State student newspaper knew the risk was great long before this fire. But all they got when they quizzed the University was more spin.

Yep, as a rule, fraternities like to party all night. No big deal, college should be fun, but you don’t hold all night parties - with booze and cigarettes and other fun plant derivatives - in ancient structures in single family neighborhoods.

Why not? I guess because there would need to be a criminal investigation first, and nobody seems to be running out to see just how many were actually living in that frat house and what the conditions in there were. But that’s alright, ‘cause more than likely there will be attorneys asking lots of questions in preparations for lawsuits, and when they're deposed the Sammy Brothers will tell it like it was.

Yep, a frat party, off campus, in a neighborhood, on a weeknight, going until 4:30 am, where neighbors with families and jobs have to get up at sunrise. And administrators at NC State wonder why neighboring communities get mad at them for not providing adequate housing for students, frat houses or otherwise.

Hey City! Hey University! Stop the spin! Kids are dying! Deal with the problems for a change, dammit!

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
Lunsford Lane
October 18, 2005

I wanted to post this blog/rant/plea/outburst more than a week ago, before the elections. But Dr. de made me sit on that first draft. A couple of readers had already questioned my sensitivity for writing

on the same day that two of what by any measure must be described as NC State’s finest perished in a fire. de Gama didn’t want even the slightest appearance of exploiting this tragedy for political gain. I wasn’t aware that the story of the fire was breaking as I was posting that crass comment, and of course Doc was right, so I've edited out a fair amount of the indignation and vitriol. But now that a dozen days have passed, I am all the more certain that the question bears asking.

The local news told us that two NC State students, members of the Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity (affectionately known as Sammy), died in a fire in a neighborhood just off the NC State campus. They described the house simply as a duplex with two private apartments. But the students knew it was really a fraternity house. And the University knew it was really a fraternity house. And the landlord knew that it was really a fraternity house.

The Sammies always referred to the duplex as their frat house. Doubt it? Just look at the shell of a webpage they have left - first event listed is poker night at the House. Touching online tributes by friends mourning their loss refer to the good times they had together recently at the frat house.

The University’s Department of Greek Life knew the duplex was the Sammy House - after all, the University's Department of Greek Life hosts the Sammy webpage where brothers described functions at the House.

And of course the landlord knew, because even on a quick walk-through of the house and grounds it would be impossible not to notice the Sammy logos, the game room, the whole setup screaming Frat House.

Back in 2000, when they were still on campus, the local Sammies gained national notoriety by losing a group of pledges during a hazing incident in the Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina . It was, more than anything, a simple matter of poor judgement by the brothers. Kids make mistakes, no one was hurt, end of story. Not.

At that time, the Sammies occupied a University-owned house on the campus’ Greek Court. But overall academic performance of the brothers was slipping, membership was down, and they lost the campus house a couple of years ago. So they found a place off campus. A tri-level duplex with lots of room for the brothers to sleep, and a full basement and other common areas for those wacky college toga parties.

The News and Observer editorialized that “...these families must know as well that the larger community, of the university and of Raleigh, stands with and around them as well.”

I smell a huge stinking pile of bovine manure - neither gives a damn about those kids.

Either could have easily prevented this tragedy. Both had the responsibility to prevent this tragedy. Both were ultimately overcome by self-interest.

When I was an undergraduate at a big state university which shall remain nameless, we had a pub under the dorm, and you only had to be 18 to drink there. Today, alcohol sales are prohibited on NC State's campus, and you have to be at least 21 to partake. Of course, most fraternity brothers are under 21, and what’s an after-game party without alcohol? Wanna to throw a frat party on campus? Better plan well in advance because there are forms to file and three pages of procedures to follow. Off campus, there are no rules, no planning, no alcohol restrictions, no house mothers, no RAs, so naturally over time all of good parties have moved off campus. Which suits the University just fine, as it slowly but surely sloughs off its responsibilities as in loco parentis - the practice of Universities keeping students under their wing for the four years of college, a declining national trend since the late 60's.

Indeed, once students are off-campus they are considered just citizens in the community. So the special status of student is really a misnomer. Ten people living together is just ten citizens living together - we can't have it both ways that these are "children" and also "responsible members of the community." Of course, the kids will scream that they have the same rights as everybody else (as vividly described in recent N&O articles about Duke punks off-campus), but they naturally don't want the same responsibilities as everyone else.

Some brothers accuse the University of pushing them off campus to make room for more lucrative ventures. The University denies the charge, citing investments designed to keep the Frats on campus. From the outside, it’s hard to figure what the University is really up to.

Whatever University intentions are, one by one the Frats are leaving the campus. As are the other groups, formal and informal, that like to whoop it up now and then. They're heading for the surrounding hoods. Often single family neighborhoods. Where the responsibility lies now with the RPD rather than Campus Cops.

Neighbors bitched, nothing happened. So a couple of years ago when good folk from all across the City decided they were mad as hell at pounding music in the wee morning hours and drunks applying Miracle Gro to the petunias in their yards at midnite and derelict landlords who wink at tenants who behave like that, and that they weren’t gonna take it anymore, residents around Campus joined those at the head of the pack that charged into City Hall to demand action. The Council balked when an unholy alliance of slumlords and students flooded the Council chambers to fight for your right to parr-tay. The Mayor tried to save the day with his PROP.

But Big Real Estate got ticked when the City hired a few new inspectors last year, and now it’s gunning to take down the PROP. Pesky rules about occupancy and safety and noise and trash and what-not don’t jive with milking family neighborhoods for maximum profit.

Unlike most neighborhoods, fraternity houses are actually allowed in the zoning district where the Sammies have their house. But remember, this is being described not as a frat house, but just as a duplex. We're not likely see the fire report, but what is particularly damning is that the N&O reported that one of the students had been given a smoke alarm by his mom - it was on his dresser and it worked, saving his life. So it seems likely that several zoning and housing violations probably existed at the house. Where were the smoke detectors? Ten kids were sleeping there, during a university holiday when most kids go home, when only four are allowed in each of the two rental units. So how many fraternity brothers actually lived there?

Has the City conducted a criminal investigation of the landlord? Not that we can tell. Yes, our attorney - yes, we have one, out of necessity - assures us that it is a criminal offense to ignore zoning ordinances. If the landlord is culpable, and if she sat in jail for a bit, she 'd have some quality time to ponder if the rent collected was enough to justify two lives gone. (And I hope the parents sue the hell out of her and whatever fellow investors she may have - it's the only way we'll learn the truth about what was going on at that house. Surely the TrianglePMG will take up a collection for her defense.) The City can hire more housing and zoning inspectors, and put them on notice that it's zero tolerance time on housing and zoning violations by landlords - right now inspectors have their hands full closing down wayward soup kitchens, so they've got little time for wayward landlords.

Has the University moved to bring all fraternity functions back to campus? Not that we can tell. The University can get serious about student housing, on campus and off. It is a member of the Fraternity Information and Programming Group, a national risk management association for fraternities. They have guidelines for fire safety - for a start, how about applying them on campus and off?

I’ve read a lot about the young men that died in that fire. There is no doubt that they were destined to be two of the great ones - both engineering majors, both brilliant, both much loved and respected. In due time we will inevitably learn that both boys drank heavily the night before - NC State had a rare mid-week football game that night, and they won, and it was fall break with no classes the next day, so what self-respecting fraternity wouldn't party into the wee hours of the night? That’s what college kids do when the homeboys win one for the Gipper. But the Sammy brothers are just kids, and it is our responsibility as the adults to make sure they whoop it up in a safe environment. In loco parentis.

And what of the TrianglePMG and their multitude of slumlords, who have no concept of what a neighborhood is supposed to be, and prey on students, guest workers, and all varieties of poor and less fortunate with few resources?

DEJA2
Lunsford Lane
September 19, 2005

When it comes to the writing business, de Gama and me, we’re rank amateurs. In fact, we’re not even in the writing business, because any reasonable business would call for others to pay us to write, but dimwits that we are, we shell out money to put up this website.

And when it comes to digging up information, we’re just as inefficient. We send an intern downtown to manually pour over stacks of campaign contribution reports. It takes weeks to compile the data, and some of the candidates clearly have their first-graders fill out the reports, just to frustrate any whacko bloggers and their interns who might try to read that scribble.

So what would a pro who wanted the same information do? Assume, correctly, that someone else has already done that hard work, and then get the data, already nicely summarized, from them. Sue Sturgis is a successful journalist who publishes in local print and also finds time to write a blog (Raleigh EcoNews) on environmental affairs in North Carolina. A couple of years ago, she wrote a comprehensive article on how developer money taints State and Raleigh politics. A nonprofit group called Democracy North Carolina had done an extensive analysis of Big Real Estate’s influence buying, and supplied Sturgis with much the same information that so laboriously gathered.

Below we copy her original article, with her permission of course. We do this because:

The North Carolina Home Builders Association — a leading foe of stricter environmental regulations — has in recent years developed into a deep-pocketed lobbying powerhouse at the state General Assembly. NCHBA also has become a mighty force in Raleigh city elections, giving more direct contributions to candidates than any other political action committee.

“Money builds relationships, and the Home Builders through their PAC and individual members are using money to gain advantages that the ordinary person doesn’t have,” says Bob Hall, research director of Democracy North Carolina, a Carrboro, N.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for campaign-finance reform.

Hall’s organization last month released a report (PDF) examining contributions to state legislative candidates from the NCHBA political action committee, called Build-PAC. In the 2002 election cycle, Build-PAC gave state legislative candidates $223,150. The only PAC that gave more to candidates was the N.C. Realtors PAC, an NCHBA ally on development issues. It gave a total of $255,450.

NCHBA’s giving dwarfs that of the state’s environmental lobby, which consists of the Sierra Club and the Conservation Council of North Carolina (CCNC). In the 2000 and 2002 election cycles combined, those two groups together contributed a total of $23,500 to candidates, according to a Democracy North Carolina analysis.

The NCHBA spreads its funds broadly around the General Assembly. Of the 170 members in the current legislature, 131 of them or 77 percent accepted contributions from the NCHBA, according to the report. And 91 members — more than half of the legislature — got $1,000 or more from the NCHBA.

The 13 members of Wake County’s legislative delegation accepted a total of $9,750 from the NCHBA. On the Senate side, John Carrington (R-15) and Eric Reeves (D-16) each took $1,000, while Vernon Malone (D-14) and Richard Stevens (R-17) each took $500.

In the House, David Miner (R-36) took $2,000. J. Russell Capps (R-50), Rick Eddins (R-40), Sam Ellis (R-39) and Paul Stam (R-37) each took $1,000. Don Munford (R-34) took $500, and Bernard Allen (D-33) took $250. Deborah Ross (D-38) and Jennifer Weiss (D-35) got no contributions from the NCHBA.

Not all lawmakers who accept NCHBA’s money vote with the organization on every issue. Nevertheless, the NCHBA’s contributions taken as a whole appear to be a political investment that has paid off handsomely for the organization.

“Again this year, NCHBA was able to stop all the legislation it opposed, and pass all of the bills it supported,” according to a statement on the organization’s Web site.

Indeed, the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research (NCCPPR) ranked NCHBA lobbyist Mike Carpenter 37th out of about 600 lobbyists in its latest rankings of the state’s most influential lobbyists.

“That’s a lot of influence,” says NCCPPR Executive Director Ran Coble. “He has been ranked among the most influential lobbyists for five straight legislative sessions.”

NCHBA Cash Appears to Sway Swift Creek Vote
Democracy North Carolina’s report looked specifically at the role NCHBA contributions appeared to play in the legislature’s decision this summer to rescind development restrictions for a section of Swift Creek, a pristine stream in Eastern North Carolina’s Pamlico-Tar River Basin that is home to numerous rare species.

Last year, after a decade-long process involving extensive public input, the N.C. Environmental Management Commission (EMC) voted to classify a 14-mile stretch of Swift Creek in Nash County as an “Outstanding Resource Water” and to increase protections for the 270 square-mile watershed upstream to protect water quality and wildlife.

But in 1995, the N.C. General Assembly passed a law that allows regulations established by state commissions, including the EMC, to be placed on hold if any legislator submits a bill challenging them. Acting under the law’s provisions, first-term Sen. Clark Jenkins (D-Edgecombe) this year submitted House Bill 566 to overturn the Swift Creek protections — a move backed by the NCHBA’s lobbying muscle.

In the end, the legislature voted to uphold protections for the upper part of Swift Creek but to allow development on the lower reaches of the stream. The NCHBA supported the compromise, but the CCNC and other environmental groups did not. Noting that the EMC rule already represented a compromise between developers and environmentalists, environmentalists pointed out that loosening restrictions along the lower portion of the waterway would negatively impact the broader ecosystem.

NCHBA money appeared to influence the vote, according to Democracy North Carolina’s findings. State lawmakers who voted with NCHBA to allow the regulatory change got on average nine times as much money from Build-PAC in 2002 as those lawmakers who voted against the change. Of the lawmakers voting on the issue, those who got $1,000 or more from Build-PAC voted with NCHBA by a margin of 7-to-1, whereas a majority of those who received $250 or less from Build-PAC voted against the NCHBA.

Six members of the Wake County legislative delegation (Capps, Eddins, Ellis, Miner, Munford and Stam) voted with the NCHBA on Swift Creek. These members, all Republicans, took a total of $6,500 from Build-PAC, an average of $1,083 per legislator. Five members of the county delegation (Malone, Reeves, Allen, Ross and Weiss) voted against NCHBA on Swift Creek. These members, all Democrats, took a total of $1,750 from Build-PAC, an average of $350 per legislator.

NCHBA officials denying there’s a correlation between contributions and policy outcome, and they bristle at Democracy North Carolina’s assertion that campaign cash influences lawmakers. “Their theory is that campaign contributions buy votes,” says Paul Wilms, NCHBA’s director of governmental affairs. “That doesn’t comport with reality.”

Wilms notes that not every lawmaker who accepted NCHBA money voted with the organization on Swift Creek. “What prevailed was common sense and the desire to reach a workable compromise,” he says.

Hall’s theory, however, is not so much that NCHBA cash purchases votes directly but that it procures familiarity. “Their money buys influence,” Hall says. “It buys an intimacy and a coziness.”

NCHBA cash isn’t only an issue at the legislature: It was also a considerable force in this year’s municipal elections in Raleigh. The following figures represent campaign contributions to city council candidates reported as of the Sept. 18 pre-election disclosure deadline.

In the election cycle leading up to last month’s vote, NCHBA gave a total of $7,500 in contributions to Raleigh City Council candidates, or 53 percent of the total $14,151 in PAC contributions. No environmental PACs were active in this year’s races.

NCHBA was the biggest giver out of all the PACs active in the election. Coming in a distant second was Bank of America’s PAC; it gave $2,000, all of it to incumbent Mayor Charles Meeker, who raised a total of more than $234,000.

NCHBA gave nothing to Meeker but contributed $2,500 to his challenger, John Odom, whose campaign raised more than $106,000. A former council member representing Northeast Raleigh’s District A, Odom in his time on council proved more willing than Meeker to bend the city’s planning rules in favor of development. Meeker defeated Odom outright and will not face a Nov. 7 runoff.

In the city’s at-large race, the only candidate to get money from the NCHBA was incumbent Neal Hunt. A developer himself, Hunt got $1,000 from Build-PAC out of a total of more than $40,000 raised. He and fellow incumbent Janet Cowell were re-elected outright and will not face a November runoff. Cowell’s only PAC contribution out of the more than $34,000 her campaign raised was $250 from Friends of Art.

In North Raleigh’s District A race, winner Mike Regan accepted $2,000 from the NCHBA. Regan raised more than $61,000 to defeat Roger Kosak, who raised just shy of $8,700, none of it from PACs.

In Northeast Raleigh’s District B race, Jessie Taliaferro accepted $2,000 from the NCHBA out of the more than $13,000 she raised prior to the October vote. Taliaferro will face Karen Moyes-Stalling in a November runoff. Neither Moyes-Stalling nor defeated candidate Bruce Spader got contributions from the NCHBA as of the Sept. 18 pre-election reporting deadline. Spader raised more than $6,500 while Moyes-Stalling did not cross the $3,000 threshold for reporting campaign contributions.

In Southeast Raleigh’s District C, unopposed incumbent Councilor James West did not get any money from the NCHBA or other PACs out of the more than $3,200 he raised.

NCHBA PAC money did not play a role in Southwest Raleigh’s District D race, where pro-environment incumbent Benson Kirkman will face pro-environment challenger Thomas Crowder in a November runoff. Kirkman raised more than $26,500, none of it from PACs. Crowder raised more than $27,000, his only PAC contribution $100 from former at-large council member Julie Graw’s PAC.

The NCHBA also did not give anything in Northwest Raleigh’s District E race, where incumbent Philip Isley handily defeated challenger Jim Roush. Isley raised a total of more than $55,000, while Roush’s campaign did not cross the $3,000 reporting threshold.

The development lobby was also active in the pre-runoff reporting period from Sept. 19 through Oct. 20 — particularly in Taliaferro’s District B campaign. Build-PAC contributed an additional $500 to Taliaferro, and the NC Realtors PAC contributed $1,000.

Neither Taliaferro’s opponent Moyes-Stalling nor Kirkman and Crowder in the District D runoff got any money from Build-PAC or the realtors’ PAC during the pre-runoff reporting period.

That the NCHBA’s PAC exerted such a strong influence in the Raleigh race did not surprise Democracy North Carolina’s Hall.

“It follows the pattern I’ve seen elsewhere, with developers becoming dominant players in local elections by giving a large share of money,” Hall says. “They view donations as an investment in getting leaders who will be clients to their interests.”

Hall presented the findings of his report on NCHBA’s legislative largess at the CCNC’s annual conference last month. He used the occasion to urge environmentally minded citizens to work for campaign finance reform.

“There’s no way they can compete the way the system is now,” Hall says, referring to environmental advocacy organizations. “We need to change the system so money is not such an important commodity — so private donors don’t have so much clout.”

A statewide campaign-finance reform bill called the Voter-Owned Elections Act has been introduced at the General Assembly for several sessions running. The version introduced in the most recent session applied only to the council of state races; previous versions also addressed gubernatorial and legislative campaigns.

The measure would create the N.C. Democracy Fund, which would be supported by earmarking $5 from citizens’ state income tax payments. Candidates who chose to participate in the voluntary program would have to raise a minimum number of qualifying contributions and agree to abide by strict spending limits.

Lawmakers in Arizona and Maine have enacted similar campaign finance systems. In North Carolina, the approach has won the endorsement of numerous environmental groups, including the CCNC, Environmental Defense, Neuse River Foundation and the N.C. Coastal Federation.

The latest bill’s sponsors include Rep. Weiss of Cary and Sen. Reeves of Raleigh. It was referred to committee in both the House and Senate, and no further action was taken.

However, there has been movement at General Assembly to enact campaign-finance reform in certain races: North Carolina recently became the first in the nation to pass a judicial elections reform act that gives candidates for the bench the choice of public funding for their campaigns.

But even if the state legislature approves a bill to publicly fund elections, the state law would not limit the influence of special interest PAC money in local municipal races.

There have been some attempts in the Triangle area to implement reforms in local elections. The town of Chapel Hill is currently studying the idea of publicly funding elections. Chapel Hill already has some of the strictest campaign rules in the state, limiting contributions to just $200, a fraction of the $4,000 donations permitted by the state and city of Raleigh.

In 2000 the town of Cary passed a package of campaign-finance reforms that included the first public funding of municipal races in state history. But earlier this year the state Board of Elections scuttled those reforms when it ruled that towns cannot finance political races without the General Assembly’s authorization.

State Sen. Wib Gulley, a Durham Democrat, submitted a bill to authorize such reforms; its co-sponsors include Reeves, himself a former Raleigh city councilor. The Senate approved the measure, which is now awaiting action in the House Committee on Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform.

Of course, even if Gulley’s bill passes, there’s no guarantee change will come to Raleigh’s electoral system any time soon, as campaign-finance reform remains off the radar screen of city politics. City council has not considered any such reforms. They are not part of Mayor Charles Meeker’s “Plan for Raleigh’s Future,” (PDF)and no one stumped on the issue during the recent campaign.

Until that changes, Raleigh residents can expect well-heeled special interest groups like the NCHBA to continue to exercise disproportionate influence in city elections.
--------------------------------------------------
Sue Sturgis is editor and publisher of Raleigh Eco News.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
Lunsford Lane
September 1, 2005

Yeah, yeah, I hear y’all. It’s “impact” fees. Impact fees, development fees, facility fees (what the City actually calls them), that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. To answer some of your questions about my last blog, we should look at the history of how we got these fees.

This is where I normally write “now we rewind the videotape”, but truth be told, in the early ‘80's neither de Gama nor I had a VCR. Or cable TV. Or a computer. Or a cell phone. Though I did have a hellacious ‘72 El Camino 454 with cowl induction, QuadraJet 4-barrel carburetor, and a Positraction rear axle. Good Lord I miss that car... but I digress...

So a little history, based on way too much recall (and a lot of Google), but thankfully it’s the short-term memory that goes first. To set the mood, ponder these factoids for a moment:

Population of City of Raleigh in 1985 - 184,000
Population of City of Raleigh in 2004 - 326,653

Wake County per capita income in 1985 - $12,759
Wake County per capita income in 2003 - $28,256

Average price of new home in Raleigh in 1985 - $107,000
Average price of new home in Raleigh in 2002 - $211,279
Average price of new home in Raleigh in 2004 - $214,824

# of new homes sold in RDU in 2002 - 12,155
# of new homes sold in RDU in 2003 - 12,449

Now let’s think 1984, when the idea of impact fees first got traction in Raleigh. The year started with Ma Bell being broken up into 24 Baby Bells, and ended with Union Carbide pickling 20,000 Indians in Bhopal with 27 tons of methyl isocyanate gas. And well, it was 1984. From 1977 to 1984, the total ad valorem tax value of all property in Raleigh had increased by 15% a year. Raleigh was busting at the seams and rampant development was straining the City’s infrastructure. The State Highway Trust Fund was running out of money (sound eerily like 2005?).

The City of Raleigh Planning Commission asked City Staff to cook up a scheme for collecting impact fees from developers, to be used to expand infrastructure. (Yes, folks, you read right, THE Planning Commission. I don’t remember who was on it then, but it was clearly a different Planning Commission than the one today that is jointly owned and operated by Carolantic Realty, Clancy and Theys Construction Co., and A and M Construction Co.)

That same year, the City struck a deal with developers in Northeast Raleigh to finance construction of miles of new sewer lines. The City would have built them sooner or later, but if the developers kicked in, they could open up huge expanses of undeveloped land years earlier than expected. In a 2:1 match, the developers ponied up $3.1 million and the City $6 million.

Inspired by this public/private cooperation project, the City Planning Department put out their recommendation for development fees in Spring of ‘85. The News and Observer jumped into the fray, reporting how other cities were suffering under the crush of uncontrolled growth.

Raleigh needs approval of the NC General Assembly to levy taxes, but the City probably could have simply created the impact fees using its police powers. But no, we have the most conservative City Attorneys on the face of this planet, and they take no chances on the City being sued over local legislation. So the City went to the legislature for explicit authority to impose the fees. (Those were some of the same attorneys still with the City today, and that silly TrianglePMG continues to threaten to sue the City over its authority to issue a PROP - Ha! Bring it on, Big Dawgs!)

Had the City asked for an impact tax rather than an impact fee, the money collected could have gone into the big melting pot to pay for whatever cockamamie idea the City's Community Services Department could dream up. But impact fees must go to the specific uses for which they are collected. Raleigh wanted to collect fees for roads, wastewater treatment, water treatment, stormwater drainage, parks, fire stations, and downtown parking decks.

Big Real Estate got spooked - a one-up deal for sewage pipe was one thing, but regular fees were quite another. And remember, Big Real Estate has its big claws sunk deep into the state legislature as well as the City Council. It wanted as few fees as possible set as low as possible. So Raleigh only got legislative authority to collect fees for roads, parks, and stormwater drainage (now stormwater is handled by a new Utility).

And - no more than 50% of any single project built can be paid for with impact fees.

And another “and” - the State exempted itself from any fees, a pretty big and in a City that has so much State property and development.

And yet an even bigger AND - fees can’t be used to pay down debt on these projects. In other words, if the City builds a road with capacity that anticipate future growth, they can’t later use the impact fees from a development that eats up some of that road capacity to pay off the loan taken out to build the road. This leads to really bad planning - you have to wait until the existing roads are completely jammed and you’ve collected enough impact fees before you build another road, or pay for it with other money. Same thing for parks.

In the last column, I’ve adjusted the fee for the rise in the consumer price index since 1987. Had the City made that simple (and fair) adjustment, we’d be collecting 68% more in impact fees than we currently are.

Maybe it's even illegal NOT to adjust the fees? The City Charter states The amount of each fee imposed and collected hereunder shall be based upon reasonable and uniform considerations of capital costs to be incurred by the City as a result of new construction and shall bear a reasonable relationship to such capital costs.

I guess it depends on what the word shall means to lawyers and politicians, but to normal people shall means will - Thou Shalt not Covet. Have you priced a bag of cement lately? If these fees bore a reasonable relationship to capital cost in 1987, how in the hell can they be reasonable in 2005?

Taxpayers subsidize a lot of core as well as non-fundamental industries - food, energy, $3.50 per gallon gas guzzlin' SUVs - why, it’s the Republican way! So what’s the big deal about a little Developer Welfare on the backs of the taxpayers?

As I challenged you to do in my last blog, pull out your property tax bill from 1985 and compare it to your latest bill.

WELFARE FOR BUILDERS
26 August 2005
Lunsford Lane

In a nutshell - homes around RDU have only appreciated by 0.6% over the last year. Over the last eight years, our homes have appreciated by 2.6% annually, which is less than half the national average of 6.2%, and far less than cities comparable to Raleigh.

If you’re a buyer of a new home, this isn't at first glance a bad thing. Especially if you sell your home in another City that’s experienced average or appreciation before you buy here. But it’s a short-lived advantage, and ultimately for you, like it is for the rest of us already settled, it’s a disaster.

Build a new house, bring on a new citizen or three. That’s cool. Build a few thousand new houses, and you’ve gotta find a new school, a couple of roads, a new water tower, a playground or two, a few new police and firefighters with cruisers and pumper trucks, well you get the idea. I’m cool with that.

In most cities, the new folks moving in and the old folks already in sort out an equitable way to share the burden of paying for all of this stuff with:
• property taxes that we all pay,
• utility fees (like your water bill)
• bonds - repaid by utility fees and property taxes that we all pay, and
• development fees, which are paid only on each new home or building.

What’s uncool is that in our unFair City, new homes aren’t paying their fair share, nowhere close even, and it’s having disastrous effects on the average citizen.

You’re an everyday blue collar worker, so chances are better than even that the primary way you’re going to build a little wealth is through appreciation of the home you own. Home ownership not only builds wealth, it builds citizens vested in the community. A little accumulated wealth means a little better education and a little better healthcare and a little better life for your offspring. A little better life for the kids is the universal dream of every hang dog parent on the face of this planet.

But because developers get such a sweetheart deal for building here, they keep the market flooded with new homes. The result, as the N&O reported, is that the greatest home equity boom in U.S. history has passed Raleigh homeowners by.

When Raleigh growth was off the hook in the early ‘80's, the City couldn’t keep up with development. The Raleigh City Council instituted development fees to more fairly share the costs of infrastructure development among existing and new property owners. Big Real Estate fought it tooth and nail, and in the end the fees instituted were just a fraction of what were proposed, or needed, or for that matter, just plain fair. But something anything was better than nothing.

But almost two decades later, I repeat A-L-M-O-S-T T-W-E-N-T-Y Y-E-A-R-S, Raleigh Citizens pay an ever-increasing, grossly unfair share of new development. That's because Raleigh’s development fees are ridiculously low - that’s because they haven’t gone up one red cent since they were instituted. Rifle through the dusty boxes in the attic and dig out your property tax bill from 1987, and see how much that’s gone up since. And don’t even ask how many bonds we’ve had to float since then.

To make matters worse, the City Council, owned by Big Real Estate, packs the Planning Commission with developers. Not developers that are at the table to implement the Comprehensive Plan, which is our best attempt at providing an appropriate mix of land uses that can be supported by current and planned infrastructure. Rather, developers that are at the table to make sure their buddies (and ultimately, themselves) extract the maximum profit from their landholdings, regardless of the deleterious effects on the roads and the parks and rest of the infrastructure.

You’re picking up speed in the downward spiral. Refusal to follow plans and equitably share costs means infrastructure is stretched beyond capacity. So the City has to borrow money for new roads and new parks and new water treatment plants. Indeed, this October you’ll be asked to bless the borrowing of $60 million for new roads. But your home is appreciating much more slowly than the debt is mounting, so eventually the City will be forced to raise the property tax rate in order to generate the bucks to pay off all these loans. So you'll get to pay yet again.

This, my friends, is conservative Republican government at the beginning of the 21st century. Bill Clinton got rid of welfare mothers, for all intents and purposes, by the end of the 20th century. In 2005, Welfare Mothers have been replaced by Welfare Builders.

Now you learn that by subsidizing so much new home construction, you've crippled your own financial future by severely restricting the appreciation of your home value.

And just to rub salt in your wounds (and maybe pay for a new Welfare Cadillac), the Welfare Builders are pressing the General Assembly to exempt them from local property taxes. This is a step towards making property tax almost as regressive a revenue collection system as a lottery, but the Senators headed back for the hills this week without approving either. And like the lottery supporters, the Welfare Builders vow to return next legislative session, hellbent not to fail again.

Had development fees gone up only at the rate of inflation over the last two decades, many of those roads would have already been built, and we’d all be sitting in traffic a lot prettier. To be sure, lots of new homes also would have been built, but supply would not have so greatly outstripped demand, so all homes would have appreciated at a reasonable rate.

So why not raise development fees? Because really low fees mean really high profits for developers. And developers control the City Council.

So no matter how bad it gets for you and me, the City Council isn’t going to give us relief. What'd they give us this year? Back to the N&O (June 21 and August 13):

Progressive, if you're the lackie of the development industry (remember, this is war!).

The main reason developers give for not wanting fees raised to restore some balance between old and new is that it raises home prices, with the worst effect on affordable housing. That’s not how it works, but since it’ll take another thousand or so words to explain, I’ll get to it another day soon. (And despite ridiculously low development fees, we’re being asking to approve $20 million in borrowing for affordable housing in the next election.) For now, I’ve got to get some work (that pays) done, so I can make some honest jack, so I can shell out yet another buck to pay off loans for new roads and sewer lines, so that some Welfare Builder can sip rum punch on a private beach in the Caribbean.

NEVER ENOUGH MONEY
20 August 2005
Lunsford Lane and The Intern

I think de Gama's got it right - it’s too darn hot to even blog. But we’re trying to keep at it, and hopefully we'll pick up the pace as August wanes. With The Intern back at college, it’s way past time finish our report on Council Moolah.

We’ve made our way through all the Councilors currently serving who ran for election in 2003. Councilors Craven and Kekas were appointed to replace former Councilors now Senators Cowell and Hunt, so there’s nothing to report for them. Just for old times sake, and because they still represent us in gov'mint, let’s follow the Cowell and Hunt money from 2003.

Janet Cowell raised just under $27,000 from 68 contributors, for an average of $392 per contributor. Development interests gave 25% of that, which is $6,450. Add in another $1,700 out of her own pocket. Almost $6,000 from the Democratic Party (wow!). Quite a few out-of-towners pitched in too, must be old college buddies.

Neal Hunt got $42,050 from 104 contributors, for an average of $404 apiece. He got 65% of that money from Big Real Estate. Which isn’t surprising, as Senator Hunt earned his prosperity in the apartment rental business. The NC Homebuilders Association threw in $1,000. And Julie Graw, everyone’s favorite former Councilor, chipped in $100.

And while we’re at it, let’s throw in Benson Kirkman, who held the District D seat for 2 terms but lost it to Councilor Crowder in a contentious race. Kirkman raised just under $43,500 from a whooping 339 contributors. He did it by getting lots of small contributions - 256 of them at $100 or less. Yee haw - we like that! So with such wide support why didn’t Kirkman win?

An awful lot of his contributions came from outside his district - was he attending to business city wide while neglecting those who actually vote in District D? It would appear to be the case. 35% of his money came from Big Real Estate, much of it near the end of the race. When he entered the runoff with Crowder, the NC Homebuilders Association threw in $2,000 in a last ditch effort to save him. This is troubling. At first, Big Real Estate poured a boatload of money into the failed campaign of Jack Alphin, who got knocked out in the first round of voting. So they probably struck a deal with Kirkman in hopes of staving off Crowder - the only Councilor currently at the table NOT disturbingly close to Big Real Estate.

And what about John Odom, you ask? Well, he ran for Mayor rather than defend his District B Council seat and raised a ton of money from a gazillion contributors and frankly we weren’t able to plow through all of his data before The Intern bugged out for college. But Odom is back, now running for an at-large seat at the Council table, so you can bet that before long we’ll get you the scoop on him.

Look at it this way - no matter what you as an average citizen say to the City Council, it counts less than half as much as what Big Real Estate says.

SIGN OF WHAT'S TO COME
Lunsford Lane
August 11, 2005

Jeremy Weitzel owns Allkindsa Signs. The bottom has dropped out of the temporary sign market now that the City of Raleigh is enforcing the sign ordinance, and signmakers around town like Weitzel have been feeling the pain. Weitzel, who actually lives in Holly Springs, showed up in downtown Raleigh last week to let Councilors know that the big red (illegal) LED sign that the Arena has erected has not gone unnoticed. Under current City law, the “copy” on a sign cannot change more than four times in a 24-hour period (excepting a couple of time/temperature signs that are grandfathered in). Changeable-copy electronic signs are expensive, and Weitzel would like to sell a bunch. So he wants to be able to change the copy on these signs every 30 seconds.

Weitzel points to Walgreens at Falls of the Neuse and Wake Forest Road. Sit at the stop light at that intersection for 2.5 minutes, says he, and you could get to see five different 30-sec adverts on it's sign. Sprinkle a couple more signs around the intersection, you could get maybe 20 messages while you wait. Weitzel recognizes that Raleigh isn't Vegas, yet, so he's not asking for animation, like when you see the big flea that looks like a spastic spider dance across the huge (illegal) LED sign at the Fairgrounds. Yep, folks, your tax dollars spent on fancy (illegal) signs to advertise a flea market. Weitzel says the signs he wants to install would go from “Save Our Troops” to the time to the temperature, then the price of Pepsi on sale.

Mayor Meeker asked City Attorney Thomas McCormick if he had studied this proposal. McCormick usually limits his comments to just the legalities, but Weitzel’s presentation elicited an uncharacteristically pointed response. McCormick would “certainly be against it. The driving force behind the sign ordinance that has been in effect over twenty years now is traffic safety... and that’s why this thing only changes four times a day. I think the gentleman makes the case for why you shouldn’t do this when he says you’re sitting at the light you ought to be watching the light, you shouldn’t be watching the sign to see if the price of milk is going to come up after the price of aspirin has come up... I would hope the Council would not do this.”

Then the Mayor asked the Councilors for comments and questions. Their silence was deafening.

Not taking the hint, Weitzel wasn’t giving up that easily, and his additional comments forced Councilors to verbalize that change isn't needed.

Which prompts BTB.org to say Thank You, Mayor Meeker and the entire City Council, for not giving this guy the time (and temperature) of day.

I stopped at Walgreens this morning to take a picture of that sign, and just my luck it wasn’t working. A car had taken out three utility poles just down the road and apparently everything wasn’t back to normal yet. Then, as I’m waiting at the red light to leave Walgreens, what pulls up but this big box truck with flipping signs changing on all four sides. Right there in front of my eyes, all four sides of the truck change advertisements at once! I fumble around for the camera, and by the time I get it out of the case, the sign truck's down the road, and we’re trapped in the traffic nightmare caused by utility workers trying to get the poles back up. So no picture for those who haven’t seen these yet, but just look here. Outdoor advertising is not longer just visual clutter, now it's actively contributing to our traffic congestion and bad air. And what can we expect next to top this? Video on trucks! At least when the bike signs finally get here they will be non-(air)polluting.

You consider yourself a sentient being that relishes a pleasant environment. Hence you’d like a glimpse of trees and flowers and nicely kept buildings as you wait for the light to change. But guys like Weitzel don’t see you as a thinking person; to them you are a consuming automaton that must be guided and controlled by constant signals from blinking flashing blaring signs affixed to every surface stationary and mobile.

Shame on the State of North Carolina for thumbing its nose at the good Citizens of Raleigh by refusing to follow local ordinances, regarding signs as well as other regulated activities. The City is noticeably more attractive now that most of the temporary signs are out of the rights-of-way (though we notice quite a few still sprouting up on weekends).

You can bet that the sign industry guys will be back - also at last week’s Council meeting, not long before Weitzel spoke, Attorney McCormick reported to the Council that “the city needs to develop a program to allow community wide events that attract 10-20,000 people to have some limited directional signage on the right-of-way. So I would like you to authorize me to prepare something that would allow the City Manager to approve those very limited probably directional signs. They would be things like Special Olympics, Parade of Homes, those kinds of things.”

McCormick got the nod, and the City Manager can simply approve these exceptions as they arise. We’ve come to trust the City Attorney, as he seems to share a vision for an attractive yet interesting City, but we are not so sure of the City Manager’s judgement (he brought us curbside garbage, which has given us higher refuse-removal rates and messy streets - thanks). We agree that occasional signage for community events isn’t intrusive, but it’s a slippery slope. The Parade of Homes ain’t the Special Olympics, and you can bet that Big Real Estate will use this opening to come up with other excuses for peppering the roadside with signs every weekend.

Save Our Troops, my derriere. We’re sending Weitzel back to Holly Springs, let him turn his own hometown into Vegas Lite, and we're inducting George Lee Swearingen, Sign Fighter Numero Uno, into the BTB.org Hall of Fame.

So, City Attorney McCormick, since you’re already drafting some new sign law language, how about adding a few lines to rid us of blinking flashing flipping truck signs?

DONE THE RIGHT THING
Lunsford Lane
August 1, 2005

I filled the tumbler tonight with Maker’s Mark rather than the usual Fightin’ Cock. There's cause to celebrate, and I need help washing down a half-pound of felt.

Get home late from work, rewind the tape of today’s County Commission meeting, and there it is. Dr. Erin Kuczmarski and Marcia Deans are both nominated for the Raleigh Planning Commission. Five hands go up for Kuczmarski. So she becomes the official nominee. In a subsequent vote, all the Commissioners vote yeah, and just like that Dr. K is back on the Planning Commission. Why they do two votes like that I don’t know, I’m just telling you what’s on the tape.

We here at BTB.org had pretty much decided that Kuczmarski wasn’t coming back - now we’re eating our hats. Oh we never gave up hope, mind you, as we continued to plead that you keep calling the Commissioners on the outside chance they would reappoint Kuczmarski.

We say thank you very much to all of the County Commissioners. Y'all did the right thing, we sincerely appreciate that.

We say thank you to all of y’all for letting the Commissioners know how you feel about Dr. K. There is real power in the hands of Citizens - you should be proud that you helped make a difference.

Don’t forget to follow up with letters of thanks to the County Commissioners. Every politician knows that the thank you notes are far fewer and further between than the letters of complaint.

Thank you to Esther Hall, wife of U.S. Congressman Brad Miller but respected politico in her own right, for throwing down the gauntlet in front of Councilor Jessie Taliaferro. And thanks to IndyWeek for following the story.

And we say thank you, Dr. K, for your willingness to continue to serve on the Planning Commission - your seat at the Commission table is still warm.

But we’ll not be cutting any slack for Councilor Taliaferro or Planning Commissioner Cutler, who tried to engineer the attempted Kuczmarski takedown. They’re both better suited for lines of work other than public service.

GONNA DO THE RIGHT THING?
Lunsford Lane
August 1, 2005

The summer heat has relaxed its grip on the City, and perhaps the brutal heat has loosened just a tad the Tongan Death Grip that Big Real Estate has on the Raleigh Planning Commission.

Today the County Commissioners are scheduled to fill the last vacant ETJ seat on the Planning Commission. It’s not easy getting information, as the County doesn’t post the Commission’s agendas on its webpage until well after its meetings have occurred. But we believe that at the moment there are two nominees for the post: Dr. Erin Kuczmarski, whom we all know and love, and Marcia Deans, a new face to many.

We here at BTB.org want Kuczmarski reappointed, as we think that’s the right thing to do. But if you’d asked around here last week, we’d have placed our bet on Deans if there were no other nominees: small business owner, mother of three, attorney (not currently practicing), active in a variety of neighborhood and school activities, registered Democrat. Appears to be a fine choice if the Commissioners are not going to reappoint Kuczmarski. Like all of us, Deans has her detractors, but she would give the Commissioners an easy out - a reasonable replacement for Kuczmarski, without the perceived embarrassment of having to admit it was a mistake to ditch Kuczmarski.

But the smart money on the street in now on Kuczmarski. Seems that the political heat wave got to be a bit too much for some County Commissioners - hats off to all of y'all that called or wrote your Commissioners. The only votes that count are those actually cast at the meeting - we've got a tape in the VCR set to go off at 2:00 pm, and you'll hear back from us shortly either way.

If Dr. K is reappointed, we'll be obliged to eat our hats and offer our props to the County Commissioners. We can do that. It's usually not a big deal to make a mistake; it's only not owning up to it and correcting it that gets to be a big deal.

SHOW ME THE MONEY VI:
James “Wild Wild” West
Lunsford Lane and The Intern
July 25, 2005

We told you earlier that we would present these campaign finance analyses in order of largest to smallest percentage of contributions from Big Real Estate. We lied a bit.

Councilor James West got 89% of his campaign money from Big Real Estate. 100% of his money from big business.

Carlton Midyette, owner of Creedmoor Partners (development company) - $500
NC Home Builders Association BuildPAC - $500
Richard Mullins, President of DSM, Inc. (development company) - $500
Robert Jones, Davidson Jones Hotel Corporation - $300
Charles Bell, Bell Commercial Real Estate - $250
Frank Gailor, owner of Hedgehog Holdings (development company) - $250
Fred Mills, Mills Construction - $250
Pat Long, Founder and President, Longistics (a transport company) - $200
Alex Macfadyen, VP for Government Affairs, First Citizens Bank - $125

Other Councilors got $25 and even $10 from folks who cared enough about politics to give but didn’t have more. But it's just Big Business for our self annionted Councilor of the Downtrodden?

West didn't have an opponent, so you could make a case that he didn't need any money. Of course, even an unopposed candidate is going to incur incidental expenses of a couple of thousand dollars. So the question is: Is Councilor West in any way owned by Big Real Estate?

On the left hand, $3,000 is chicken scratch in the political vortex. On the right hand, we can’t help but notice that he’s marching in lockstep behind Councilor Taliaferro, aka the Homebuilders Association. That's not just our paranoia - Geary at the Independent notices it as well (see the last line here).

SHOW ME THE MONEY V:
Thomas “Clotheshorse” Crowder
Lunsford Lane and The Intern
July 20, 2005

He owns his own company (note to self - find out what kind of design company doesn’t have a webpage in the 21st century).

Crowder raised just under $36,000 in the last campaign. He got a few hundred from his mom and other family - we don’t count that - after all, short of being Chuckie Manson, your Momma is gonna support you.

Some folks with addresses close to Crowder’s ponied up $500 and $1000 checks - good neighbors to have.

One little old lady gave a buck. Another, two bucks. Three women gave $5. Three between $10 and $15. Twenty-one between $20 and $25. Thirty-one between $30 and $50.

We’re starting to like this guy. Normal folk who got 25 bills burning a hole in their pocket but have never seen a portrait of Grover Cleveland are forking it over.

About 2,300 bucks from the development industry, for 14% of the take. That includes his architect buddies. Given what we’ve already seen with the other Councilors, we can live with that.

Sir Walter Raleigh said that ”no man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women.”

OK, so ol' Wallie Raleigh wasn't much for political correctness. But Crowder the natty architekt may just be more than skin deep.

HATE TO SAY IT, BUT....
Lunsford Lane
July 18, 2005

Actually, we don’t mind saying it at all. Raleigh has been coming up with the short end of the stick much too often when it comes to quality planning and development, and folks, we here at BTB.org told you so.

Dilapidated Dorothea Dix - it’s all about real estate development, and Dr. de Gama told you so. The N&O reports today that LandDesign, the firm contracted to develop a plan for the property, has released two conceptual plans. One calls for a park, the other for mixed use development. The public is united behind the park concept, and even the consultant recognizes that. A few developers, and the many politicians that they own, prefer money-lined suit pockets over tree-lined park promenades. LandDesign organized the public forums, and so couldn’t ignore the public cry for public space. But they gave the politicians and developers what they really paid for - a real estate development plan.

(July 19 Update: Thank you, News and Observer, for saying some of the same today, in gentler terms of course.)

Dilapidated Housing - a while ago I told you that while other cities would be getting relief from the absurd rule that requires a waiting period of one year before a boarded-up house can be condemned, Raleigh was likely to get none. Well, it’s done. The NC General Assembly has changed the law so that Cary and Greenville now only have to wait six months.

State Senator Janet Cowell only asked the General Assembly to “study” the same change for Raleigh. Gee, thanks a lot.

That bill has been referred to the Senate Committee On Rules and Operations of the Senate. What that means in plain English is that the resolution is dead.

Cary and Greenville get six months, Raleigh gets nothing, not even a study. Ever seen a boarded up house in Cary?

Dilapidated Planning Commission - We've been telling you that Dr. Erin Kuczmarski got thrown off the Planning Commission because the development industry was incensed that a moderate citizen not aligned with Big Real Estate was chairing the Commission. The developers and their lackie Councilor Taliaferro wanted a “yes man” in her seat.

Originally the excuse for canning Kuczmarski was that her record of attendance at Planning Commission meetings was poor. But the record says different - her attendance was good.

Then Wake County Commission Chair Joe Bryan and Commissioner Philip Jeffreys told you that Dr. K. had no expressed interest in remaining on the Planning Commission. But the record says different. The Commissioners receive an information packet for each meeting. The packet for the June 6 meeting said:

So the County Commissioners pass over two highly qualified but moderate women not aligned with Big Real Estate, and appoint three white males who work in real estate/development. The only thing dumber was not checking to see that they all live in the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction.

Clearly, the County Commissioners are not going to reappoint Dr. K - apparently Commissioners find the letters of support normal citizens like y’all have been sending them “belligerent and not very respectful”. Like loading the Planning Commission with only white development males is anything but disrespectful of the County and City Citizens? The only two unknowns are what white male developer they will appoint to the remaining open seat, and what lame excuse for not reappointing Chair Kuczmarski they will toss out next. Here’s a novel idea - just tell the truth: Dr. K. was fair, and she was canned because Big Real Estate don’t play fair. We still encourage y'all to keep sending those "belligerent and not very respectful" letters of support for a balanced Planning Commission, on the outside chance that the County Commissioners can be shamed into doing the right thing at least once (find their email addresses in the blog entry immediately below this one).

Yes, our mothers taught de Gama and I that it is bad form to say “I told you so.” But folks, this blog ain’t called BelowTheBeltline for nothing.

A CHANCE AT REDEMPTION
Lunsford Lane
July 13, 2005

So, the County Commissioners appointed someone to the Raleigh Planning Commission (to represent, what else, the woefully under-represented development industry) who doesn’t live in the Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction, as required by law. So now they need to appoint someone who actually lives in the ETJ.

She lives in the ETJ, she has impeccable credentials, she has previously expressed interest.

Call and write your County Commissioners NOW - tell them to bring back Dr. K!

Joe Bryan - Chair
206 Maplewood Drive
Knightdale, NC 27545
(office) 856-5575

Tony Gurley - Vice Chair
10037 Sycamore Road
Raleigh, NC 27613
(Wake County) 856-5579
(business) 866-0965

Phil Jeffreys
2701 Brookwood Dr.
Raleigh, NC 27603-5207
772-6949

Kenn Gardner
5417 Hunter Hollow Dr.
Raleigh, NC 27606
(Wake County) 856-5574

Harold Webb
1509 Tierney Circle
Raleigh, NC 27610
(Wake County) 856-5573

Herb Council
3309 Marblehead Lane
Raleigh, NC 27612
(Wake County) 856-5577
(business) 467-5772

P.S. - lots of readers are calling for Walter and me to find a viable candidate to replace Councilor Taliaferro. We're doing our small part, but the successful candidate will arise from grassroots efforts within the district. So folks, who's it going to be?

SHOW ME THE MONEY IV:
Charles “Man in the Middle” Meeker
Lunsford Lane and The Intern
July 10, 2005

Wow, this one was a bear to figure, with almost 500 contributors for us to sort out. Thank the good Lord for The Intern and for The Internet.

Mayor Meeker and various relatives kicked in just under $32,000, so we don’t count that. That puts his at $231,000 from 479 contributors.

Meeker’s an attorney, so it's no surprise that fellow attorneys accounted for 23% of all contributions with just under $53,000. BTW, Meeker’s wife is a successful MD, and fellow doctors kicked in more than $14,000 (6% of the total).

Big Real Estate comes in a close second to lawyers at just under $51,000 for 22% of the take. Just assume that if they're in big real estate, chances are good that they gave, and chances are better that they wrote a big check.

The Democratic Party gave $18,589 - add that to the $1,000 that the Democratic Women of Wake County collected, and many thousands more from other Democrat politicians (including $1,000 from former Senator and current Boss Hog Wendell Murphy).

Many thousands more from News and Observer and WRAL and Independent employees, owners, heirs, whatnot.

And a couple of thou from various CAC Chairs and other neighborhood activist types.

The prior three reports - on Taliaferro, Isley, and Regan - were easy. Those three are owned by Big Real Estate. But this one is harder to call. Lawyers and development industry types gave almost half. The City doesn’t do so much business that directly affects attorneys. But if City business is about anything, it’s about development.

So is 22% of all contributions from developers too much? Is Meeker owned by Big Real Estate? He sure acts like it a lot of the time. You make the call.

For the moment, until y'all tell us otherwise, we’ll call it much too cozy for comfort with developers, but not completely owned.

SHOW ME THE MONEY III:
Phil "Lawn Dart" Isley
Lunsford Lane and The Intern
July 8, 2005

For the last election, Isley reported raising about $47,000. Almost $5,000 of that came from him, his family, and business partners, so we’re calling it as a bit more than $41,000 from 99 contributors.

Once again, the biggest group of contributors is Big Real Estate, coming in at a bit less than $25,000 for a whopping 60% of all contributions. $1,000 from the Homebuilders Association, and equal or lesser amounts from a slew of developers, realtors, etc.

About $5,000 from fellow attorneys, and a bit from the banking industry, including $750 from the Wachovia NC Good Government Fund. And $500 from Councilor Thomas Craven. Nominated by Isley to fill Neal Hunt's vacated Council seat, Craven invested wisely.

And a combined total of $836 from the campaign funds of former Councilor now Senator Neal Hunt, former Mayor Paul Coble, former City Councilor and Mayor wanna-be John Odom, and former NC legislator Don Munford. One thing about politicians, they can be tightwads with their own money, but they have no problem spending money from other folks. You think that when you give to a political campaign that the money is assurred to be used for that campaign? Think again.

And $500 from the Turf Grass Industry. Isley and good grass - what’s up with that? Send us an email if you know.

The tally so far: Big Real Estate - 3; Joe and Jill Blough, average citizens - 0.

SHOW ME THE MONEY II:
Mike "Buy a House from Me" Regan
Lunsford Lane and The Intern
July 6, 2005

Today’s fundraising report looks at District A Councilor Mike Regan. Since the Real Estate Industry is far and away the top special interest contributor to City Council campaigns, we’ve decided to report on the Councilors in order of their contributions from Big Real Estate. District Councilor Jessie Taliaferro got 89% of her money from Big Real Estate, and Councilor Regan is close behind with 84%.

Regan reported raising about $69,000, but $23,000 came out of his own pocket, so we won’t count that. With 94 contributors, Regan's average contribution was just under $500.

Taliaferro got big checks from 35 developer types, but Regan got almost twice that many to fork it over. The Homebuilders Association threw in $2,500, two developers gave $1,500 each, another 16 gave $1,000, and yet another 16 gave $500, including current at-large Councilor Thomas Craven (and of course Regan voted yeah to appointing Craven to fill Hunt's Council seat when he moved on to the Senate). I’ll spare you a complete list - just think up a developer’s name, assume it’s on the list.

The NC Republican Party ponied up $2,000. Republican NC House Rep Russell Capps, always a cheap bastard, pitched in $200 - not from his own wallet, mind you, but from his campaign account. Cliff Benson, namesake of the Beltline, another $200.

$357 from the two local Firemen and Police Associations. And the remainder from what appears to be only about 8 to 10 ordinary garden variety non-special interest voters.

In fact, Regan was so taken by Big Real Estate that after he was elected, he became a Realtor!

$23,000 from his own pocket? He sure wanted to win bad. It’s an investment that didn’t pay off. The Republican Party's not-so-big tent apparently can’t stretch far enough to cover an extreme right-wing nut case like Regan, so he got the boot, and will be exiting politics.

SHOW ME THE MONEY I:
Jessie "The Builder" Taliaferro
Lunsford Lane and The Intern
July 4, 2005

I gotta hand it to de Gama - The Intern was his idea. She doesn’t want to be identified on the web - she won't come right out and say it, but we think it's because she'd die of embarrassment if anyone under 40 knew she is associated in any way with two squares like de Gama and I. So until she gets over her shyness, she's just The Intern.

But damn the girl is good. And persistent. We sent her downtown to the Wake County Board of Elections with a new package of legal size yellow pads, and told her to learn everything she possibly could about everyone who gave money to our current City Councilors in the last election in 2003. Thank the good lord above for Google and the rest of the internet (and The Intern).

Taliaferro raised just under $30,000 during her 2003 campaign. She threw in $700 and her Dad chipped in another $500 (that’s sweet, but we don't count it).
So the remainder breaks out as:

Nope, that’s not a typo - 89 to 91%, depending on how you attribute the money. No matter how you slice it, Taliaferro is owned lock stock and barrel by the Real Estate Industry. With 55 contributors, the average contribution was just over $500. Notable contributors include:

Along with other Developers, and a Who’s Who of Developers’ Attorneys at $150 to $500 a pop. Of course, businesses aren’t supposed to be giving money to candidates, so the actual contributors are principals or employees of the businesses. No real difference in our minds.

What does A&M Construction get for its $1,250? Its man - Brad Mullins - on the Raleigh Planning Commission, nominated for the post of course by Councilor Taliaferro.

$7,000 from the NC Homebuilders Association PAC is far and away the largest single contribution received by any candidate in the last race from a contributor other than the two policitical parties.What do the Homebuilders and Realtors PACs get from Councilor Taliaferro for their $8,000 combined? Anything their little hearts desire, including expulsion of fair-minded Commissioners from the Planning Commission, who might put the brakes on hare-brained development projects.

What does the Democratic Party get for its $1,200? To be the butt of the whole "Democratic Majority on Council" joke.

What do the 15 or so regular constituents who combined gave less than $2,000 get? Not even a short suckle at the hind teat.

And the really big losers? Democratic women in local politics. For the most part, local Democratic women support Councilors Taliaferro and Kekas, who take their money and return the favor by shafting the Democratic Party in general, and progressive women in particular.

All of which leads to this important question (asked by de Gama - we rely on him to ask the big questions): Without Big Real Estate money, was Taliaferro a viable candidate? At first take, you'd say no, not with the couple of grand she raised on her own.

But on second take, her opponents didn't do much with fundraising. Taliaferro could have concentrated less on raising money from the Real Estate Special Interest and more on Citizens in her District. As a Planning Commissioner and former CAC Chair, Taliaferro surely could have won without crossing over to the dark side.

So why'd she do it? Because it takes Big Real Estate Money to run for Mayor, and that's where Taliaferro wants to be. Sign on now, pay your dues, and soon enough you'll be able to tap into the really big money. You can run for a District seat with as little as a few thousand dollars and have a shot. Want to be Mayor? Better put a least a quarter-million in the bank.

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE
Lunsford Lane
July 1, 2005

I said it may take a couple of turns of the Independent Weekly before they got to Eringate. And happily they didn’t disappoint. Many thank yous - welcome to the War..

Well, I’ll be, Councilor Taliaferro really did talk to the County Commissioners about former Planning Commission Chair Kuczmarski. And IndyWeek reports that Democratic Extraordinaire Esther Hall really dresses her down for it.

Not much was said at the last Council meeting about the affair (Kuczmarski was front and center to deliver her final Commission report to the Council). There were plenty of rumors of motions to honor Dr. K. and perhaps ask the County Commissioners to reconsider her appointment, but we didn’t think any Councilor take that tack.

Councilor West did gently open the door to reconsidering the composition of the Planning Commission. He asked “what is the protocol, the procedure, related to the composition and the needs that we may have in the Planning Commission as we look at our issues of planning, growth, etc... ?”

The needs are clear - more than just one stakeholder group (Big Real Estate) needs representation. And Commissioner Cutler needs to go for meddling in the appointment process.

Best we can tell, several hundred folks are regularly reading this blog (the numbers are growing quickly). The Independent’s audience is orders of magnitude greater. This War is finally getting some traction.

What could derail it? Citizen Geary calls it in IndyWeek - none of the potential candidates that could run and win against Taliaferro are taking the bait.

SMOKIN’!
Lunsford Lane
June 28, 2005

Thanks to a kind and gentle reader, we now have Taliaferro's smoking gun. The memo from the City Clerk to Councilor Taliaferro, confirming that she was indeed digging for dirt on deposed Planning Commission Chair Dr. Erin Kuczmarski.

The memo says that Kuczmarski was present at 8 of 11 joint City Council/Planning Commission public hearings. These occur a few evenings a year, and the only order of business is that Councilors and Commissioners listen to what those who have filed zoning applications as well as interested citizens have to say about them. And occassionally some change in a planning law. That’s 73% attendance. The hearings are televised (we tape them) so an astute Commissioner who misses a hearing can still hear everything that is said - there is no interaction with the speakers, so nothing much missed there.

The memo also says that Dr. K made 5 of 10 of the Planning Commission reports to the City Council since elected Chair. The Vice Chair and Planning Director made the remaining. These reports to Council at its regular daytime meetings, typically short and sweet, seem adequately handled. A good Chair is likely to delegate some authority, and sending the Vice Chair is hardly inappropriate, so nothing much there.

The real question, not answered in the memo, is how did Dr. K. do in attending the regular meetings of the Planning Commission, where business is conducted and recommendations to the City Council are made?

The Intern, the good Lord bless her, pulled all the Planning Commission meeting minutes available on the City’s website - that’s 36 meetings since mid July - and calculated attendance rates for each Commissioner. The numbers don’t lie:

Looks to me like Dr. K was A-OK. I don’t know how low attendance has to be to be unacceptable. But a citizen volunteer who missed one meeting in ten, and made every meeting once elected Chair, was doing OK in my book.

If Dr. K’s attendance was unacceptable, then the City Council should immediately dismiss Commissioners Cutler and Kane, and the County Commissioners should have canned Commissioner Reed a long time ago (he’s an ETJ rep who is required to retire now at the end of his three 2-year terms).

Let’s be real clear about this - Commissioner Cutler, who misses meetings twice as often as Chair Kuczmarski, calls the County Commissioners to tattle on Kuczmarski. Now that’s some real nerve.

And mull this over - Cutler works for a huge development firm. He gets PAID to attend the Planning Commission meetings. His bosses WANT him at the meetings. Same with Commissioner Mullins. Compare them to a normal citizen with no vested interest in Big Real Estate. Let’s just say hypothetically a chiropractor with her own practice - she has to miss work, lose billable time, forego actual income, make a real sacrifice to be a good citizen and lend a helping hand to the community by serving on the Planning Commission.

Commissioner Kane is fine at 88%. But I repeat what I have said before - to have any credibility when it comes to the Planning Commission, at a minimum the City Council must remove Cutler from the Commission immediately - they can use his attendance record if they don’t want to use meddling with the County Commissioners as the reason.

Now back to Councilor Taliaferro. She is on record as denying any involvement in the take-down of Kuczmarski. Yet the City Clerk, who has no dog in this fight, writes a memo that verifies she’s in it up to her ears.

When did Taliaferro become the little errand girl for the County Commissioners? When the County Commissioners want information from the City, they ask Gwen (Clerk to the Board of Commissioners) to call her pal Gail (the Raleigh City Clerk), who zips whatever is needed right over.

DEMOCRATS EAT THEIR YOUNG...
Lunsford Lane
June 24, 2005

You saw the article in today’s N&O about how the Raleigh City Council snuck in a budget last Monday by taking advantage of District D Councilor Crowder’s early departure from the Council meeting. But the paper doesn’t even attempt to tell the real story - that the Republicans got the budget they could live with without having to vote for it.

What’s that, you say? Lane’s really gone loco now? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

If the typical City Council meeting is hard to follow, these budget sessions are killers. But here's our best shot.

The City Council was stalled on negotiating a budget that would get the five votes needed to pass. The Republicans were going to vote no, not because they didn’t want the budget (they did, I’ll explain in a bit), but because there is no way in hell they are going to be on record as giving the Democrat Mayor the budget he wants. Crowder had argued hard for more funding for restoring the historic carousels, and he wanted to increase impact fees in lieu of raising property taxes and other fees. He got nowhere with either, and said that he wasn't ready to go along just yet.

So there it was, apparently at 4 yeahs, 4 nays. The Council takes a recess, Crowder leaves asking to be excused. This being only the second of three Monday sessions scheduled exclusively for budget deliberations, Crowder probably assumes that the matter will carry over to another day (June 27, to be exact). Must figure that since he and the Mayor are on the same Democrat team, that the Mayor will work with him on the budget for a bit longer. Upon resuming the meeting after recess, the Mayor asks the Councilors to excuse Crowder. Unlike other motions, explains the City Attorney, an excused absence takes 5 votes, not a simple majority of those sitting at the table at the time. So Republican Councilors Isley, Craven, and Regan vote no, and Democrat Crowder is AWOL.

But the Mayor, rather than sit tight for a couple of days to massage his Democratic “team” away from the Council table, decides to capitalize on Crowder’s absence by pushing for a vote on the budget. As per the rules of Council procedure, unexcused Crowder is automatically recorded as voting yeah for any motions made. Not that it made a hill of beans difference for the budget - even if he had been excused, the budget would have passed 4-3 as it takes is a simple majority.

But with a 5-3 vote on the record, the Republicans can claim they alone oppose a united Democratic program of “wasteful spending.”

So why did the Mayor choose to let Crowder get thrown to the lions at the N&O rather than sit tight for a couple of days? We here at BTB.org have no idea, other than the fact that the Mayor has a history of watching quietly as political allies get thrown into the lion pit.

Don’t think so? Look at the Kuczmarski thing we here at BTB.org have been so up in arms about. The Mayor made a big issue in his last campaign of saving trees. His tree ordinance was stuck in the Planning Commission, as the clock ticked down on the resignations of then Councilors Cowell and Hunt who were moving on to the NC Senate. Both had promised to vote for the ordinance, but their replacements might not.

Dr. Kuczmarski became Chair of the Planning Commission, and one of her first accomplishments was to break the tree ordinance out just in the nick of time for the City Council to pass it. What did she get for her efforts? Canned. Canned in part by the effort of Democrat Councilor Taliaferro.

What did the Mayor have to say about it? That he didn’t realize that the three ETJ positions were due for consideration, that maybe he should have been paying more attention.

So where has Crowder been these last 18 months? Though in his first term, he can no longer claim to be a greenhorn. Surely he’s seen that the Mayor has an under-developed sense of party loyalty. Surely he’s seen Councilor Taliaferro eat progressive Dems alive so she can hand the Republicans whatever they want. Surely he’s watched Councilor Kekas march in lock step behind Taliaferro. It’s simple common sense that when you’re swimming with sharks, you don’t go throwin’ chum into the water.

Putting his trust in this band of "Democrats" to do the right thing by working with him to resolve his issues on the budget wasn’t dumb. It was major dumb.

Unless he had a life or death situation (nothing short of, say, leaving his mother-in-law waiting for her ride home after her bingo game), he should have not left the meeting until he knew he had the five votes to excuse him (note to self - find out if he could have voted to excuse himself or if that is too obviously conflict of interest).

Maybe he thought Councilor Isley would surely vote to excuse him. Dig your May 28 2005 issue of the News and Observer from the stack you’re saving for the bird cage, and remind yourself that Isley decided to take off for Costa Rica with a youth group for the better part of a month and miss all the prior budget discussions. What’d he say then?

"I feel pretty guilty about that... but I've had these kids under my tutelage for three years, and I know them all pretty well."

The entire Council voted to excuse him. Now back in town and miffed that he had to scramble to find a babysitter for an unusual Monday Council meeting, Isley decides not to return Crowder’s favor and votes nay to excusing him to attend to his personal business. What’s he saying now?

“Everyone was angry that he just decided to leave... That’s the most important policy decision we make the entire year.”

Isley wasn’t being a smug bastard about it. He was being a super smug bastard.

The Mayor, to his credit, raised his brow at the Council’s refusal to excuse Councilor Crowder, and with what he called “this interesting procedural matter in front of us,” distributed a sheet outlining $596,750 in budget amendments. Things like $110,000 for de Gama’s graffiti removal. The motion to approve the budget with the changes passes, with the three Republicans voting nay.

The rest of the meeting went by so fast we could hardly keep up with taking notes. Next order of business, the Council agrees to hold a referendum to sell bonds to build affordable housing. All except Regan vote yeah.

Next up, a referendum on transportation bonds. Faux-Democrat Councilor Taliaferro moves to change the bond referendum to divert $2.1 million for improving Jones Franklin Road, a plum for Crowder, to other uses. Like a naughty schoolkid, she grabs the dessert off her mate's plate and wolfs it down while he runs to the little boy's room for a minute. The Mayor, again to his credit, speaks against the last-second strike at Crowder, but the referendum as amended passes 7-1 with only the Mayor in the nay column.

Get it? With Crowder absent, he votes yeah to screw himself out of one of his few pet projects. Fellow Democrats Kekas and West follow in lock step behind Taliaferro, the real Mayor, not Meeker, the titular Mayor. Taliaferro not only hit Crowder with this move, but she took a big bite out of the Mayor as well.

That doesn’t mean that Taliaferro was being a bit greedy. It means that she was being a royal glutton.

Next, funding to study Land Trust acquisitions of sensitive areas in the drinking water watershed, so maybe our grandchildren might have clean water. Passes unanimously.

Raise utility rates - this is one that Crowder said earlier he couldn’t support. But he’s AWOL, so he votes yes along with all the other Councilors.

And to close the meeting, a motion by the Mayor to adopt the 2-year budget. The three Republicans - Craven, Isley, and Regan - vote nay.

Get it? Here and there, one or two or all three of these GOP guys vote yeah for various expenditures in the budget, but when it’s time to vote the budget package up or down, they always say nay. That’s a standing, predetermined agreement among the Republicans. Get what you want in the budget to the best of your ability, but always vote nay at the end. Because the budget is going to pass anyway, and like everyone else (who's at the table when the vote comes) you’re going to get some of what you want, and you still get to poke a stick in the Mayor’s eye.

Mayor, seriously lame.
Councilor Crowder, major dumb.
Councilor Isley, super smug bastard.
Councilor Taliaferro, royal glutton.
Republican delegation, hugely disingenuous.

So if you run into Councilors Craven, Isley, or Regan somewhere around town, and they ask you not to blame them as they voted against the City budget, you just wink and say through your grin, “Yeah, voted against the budget, that’s the story.”

SWEET SWIFT WATER
Lunsford Lane
June 23, 2005

Last week, a state law intended to help insure good water quality in the Swift Creek watershed was enacted. That’s good news, as we’ll soon be drinking water from that watershed again. The official name of the legislation is:

It’s a long name for a bit of a long story - let’s see if I can get it straight (if not, one of you will surely write and correct me).

In 1998, Wake County, Raleigh, Apex, Cary, and Garner jointly developed the Swift Creek Management Plan to protect drinking water quality. They all agreed that land use is supposed to be restricted to low density development in much of the watershed, with sewer lines necessary for higher density banned. This includes the southernmost portion of Raleigh and its extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Not everyone believes that these Cities and the County have been true to the plan. Cary has called the plan only a "gentlemen's agreement." The N&O and Independent have been following the story of degraded water in Falls Lake. The unincorporated village of Swift Creek fears that its neighbors will annex their rural area. In 2000, 58% of the residents in the area voted for a non-binding referendum to incorporate as Swift Creek Village, in order to protect their groundwater from development. Bordering Cary and Raleigh, these folks clearly don’t trust their neighbors not annex their land and increase development. State law says that Raleigh, Cary, Apex, and Garner must agree to allow the incorporation, and they don’t (de Gama can give you good reasons why they should oppose the creation of another town, but that’s not my point here)..

So this year, State Representative Nelson Dollar introduced a new bill to change state law to allow for Swift Creek Incorporation. But like similar bills before it, it was DOA. As an alternative, Representatives Stam, Ross, Dollar, and Weiss offered legislation that would give folks that live in the watershed standing to sue the County and Cities if they don’t honor the watershed protection plan, and this is what has become law. What the law says is that:

I don’t know if this new law will placate the folks in Swift Creek, who just aren’t going to get incorporation. But at first glance, it seems to me to be a good law. It's embarrassing to say, but you can’t trust Raleigh’s City Council or its Planning Commission to always do the right thing when it comes to protecting water quality. And apparently lots of citizens in our neighboring Cities feel them same about their government leaders.

It will be a rare case that will cause either the governments or citizens to sue. But just the fact that they can means that the plan to protect our drinking water is more than just a “gentlemen’s agreement”. The legislation would have been better if any citizen living in the jurisdictions of the Cities or County in the agreement had standing to enforce the agreement. Maybe you drink fizzy water from Italy, but I still drink out of the tap. So when two Republican and and two Democratic State Representatives from your County delegation get together to do even a little something to protect what I drink, I’m grateful.

IT'S LONELY AT THE BOTTOM...
Lunsford Lane
June 20, 2005

... of the trenches, that is, when you’re at war, and you don’t have any allies.

A couple of months ago, when I hadn't kept this site up for a couple of weeks as I battled lingering influenza, the News and Observer jumped all over us for inaction.

Now, we hit the internet wires with real news, and the N&O is MIA. OK, so you can’t expect the local newspaper of record to repeat all the political gossip and innuendo that gets around, but the raw fact alone of the replacement of the Chair of the Raleigh Planning Commission by the County Commissioners is real news. In fact, the Commissioners just appointed three new white male business types to the Planning Commission. Even if it’s “just the facts, Ma’am,” that alone deserves at least a paragraph on the 3rd page of the City/State Section.

But not a peep from the N&O. Not a peep from the Independent. As the Independent is a weekly, not a daily, and it might take a couple of editions for a story to make it to any paper, they’re off the hook until the next edition. But the N&O has had more than a dozen printings since Dr. Kuczmarski was unceremoniously deposed, and still not a peep.

Are we discouraged? Yes. Are we retreating in the war to bring down Councilor Taliaferro? HELL NO!!!

We’ve gotten several suggestions of credible candidates to run against Taliaferro. The most frequently suggested is himself a former Chair of the Planning Commission. But we don't see it happening - if he was going to run, he’d have broken out a long time ago. There are at least two other credible potential candidates being worked over - we’ll just have to wait to see if one emerges. We here at BTB.org believe that any of the potential candidates being bandied about can on any given day beat Taliaferro.

We’ve got beaucoup rumors that the Council will make a move for damage control at its regular meeting tomorrow. We don’t believe anything will happen. First, the Mayor is always uncomfortable fumbling with hot potatoes at the Council table, I can understand that. He’ll try to let the whole thing pass as quietly as it can. Secondly, what can they do? Scold the County Commissioners for making a bad decision in letting Dr. Kuczmarski go? That should go over real well in the County office building.

There’s really only four things the Council can do at this point:

1. Do the Right Thing - That means reform the Planning Commission. There are eleven Commissioners. The County Commissioners just appointed three white male businessmen. So that constituency is well represented. Russ Stephenson and Betsy Kane can be called the smart growth representatives. All the rest are Big Real Estate, and we have that covered with the County Commission appointees. So all of those guys go, immediately, and get replaced by representatives of stakeholders currently not represented on the Commission.

2. The Nuclear Option - The heck with ‘em all, all eight of the City appointees are off immediately, and eight new Commissioners are appointed by the City Council. We don’t like this option, as it is unnecessarily harsh, and we’d hate to see Kane go (we assume Stephenson will go to the Council soon anyway), but it would get us to the right place.

3. Do the Absolute Minimum - Get rid of Planning Commissioner Cutler immediately. He overstepped his bounds when he went to the County Commissioners to lobby for the removal of Kuczmarski. He’s too far out of line to be forgiven. It’s not negotiable - he goes immediately.

4. Do Nothing - This is the most likely option. The Mayor doesn’t like conflict, the major news outlets aren’t following the story, so lie low and let the whole thing pass. Taliaferro and Commissioner Cutler get off scot free. The Council recognizes that the Planning Commission is about Big Real Estate, and not about fair representation for all stakeholders.

If it sounds like we’re flagging in the war effort, don’t count us out yet. The Intern is proving remarkably adept at digging dirt, so we’ll have more missiles to launch at Taliaferro - just bear with us as we build and then launch them over the next few weeks.

But some reinforcements would sure help. Shaffer, Geary, come on boys, how about at least a little care package for a couple of dirty and hungry GIs? Where's Major General Lindenfeld-Hall? - she's been MIA for awhile. Call her back up out of retirement for a special tour of duty.

RED BADGE OF COURAGE
Lunsford Lane
June 13, 2005

The front page of this morning’s News and Observer declares recent City Councilor now Senator Janet Cowell as “Rookie of the Year” in the NC General Assembly. Wanna know why? So do we, but the N&O doesn’t offer a single line of explanation. So this is a good time for me to take a break from war reporting, and get back to legislative issues that affect Raleigh.

Cowell is the prime sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution 982 - Unfit Housing Study. The idea is to do a study of cutting the time a City must wait until it can take action against boarded up houses from one year to six months.

Compare this to Senate Bill 474 - Cary/Greenville Unfit Housing. Introduced by Senator Carr from Goldsboro, this bill doesn’t study anything, rather it just gets on with it and reduces the waiting time to six months for Cary and Greenville.

Got it? Winston-Salem and Reidsville already have the six months, Cary and Greenville will get the reduction, Raleigh gets a study.

A study? U wanna a study, I gotch ya study rite chere (read with really bad Joisey accent). No, not that, I mean your study is literally right here. That’s everything you need to know about why the waiting period needs to be reduced. The Legislative Research Commission will spend thousands preparing its study. Tell you what, the Senate can have ours for a hundred bucks and use the savings to do something nice for the mentally ill. Just make out the check to... hmmm, that won’t work. Dangle a brown paper bag stuffed with fiddy $2 bills from the fishing pole on the Andy and Opie statue in Pullen Park at midnite on the next full moon, and the study is yours.

Studies are what passed too often for political courage when Cowell was Councilor as well. Rewind the videotape WAY back this time, to January 21, 2003. The City Council and Planning Commission held a public hearing on a proposal to limit the number of unrelated people sharing a rental unit - a common if sometimes controversial practice in zoning regulation. Realtors and students and slumlords packed the house, and it took us a couple of videotapes to get it all. At the end of the hearing, Councilor Cowell announced that she would like a study, best done by a task force.

The Neighborhood Preservation and Housing Task Force was constituted, and after endless study brought recommendations to the Council. But even these consensus recommendations were too much for Cowell and Crew, so the Council adopted their own “licensing lite”.

With all due respect, Senator Cowell, shtuddies? We don't need no shtuddies. I don't have to show you any shtinking shtuddies. Walk out of your Senate office, head due south for exactly 10 blocks (they’re downtown blocks, so it’s less than a mile). Stand in South Park for five minutes. Take a deep breath, let the sweet funk of African American pride and history tainted with the stench of slumlord rot and neglect permeate your lungs.

Invigorated, march back to the Legislative Building, go straight to Senator Carr’s office, and get him to add Raleigh to the Cary/Greenville bill.

That’ll get you BTB.org’s Rookie of the Year award. An award that means something, not some fluff from a newspaper that admits that it no longer does much reporting anymore.

Next legislative report, it's Swift Creek. Last time, it was trees. A couple of folks emailed to tell us that we don't know Raleigh's tree ordinance, that it's safe from the General Assembly. True, we don't know it well, but we've read it, and we do know a little something about the development industry and politics in this state. Folks, it's not a one-shot battle. They've only flown the first sortie, more will come, mark my words. I'm standing by what I wrote.

Radio Contact from the Front Lines
Lunsford Lane
June 11, 2005

Forty days you've been tired and tempted,
Forty nights you've been out in the cold.
Every phoneline conversation's been intercepted,
And you can't reconnect 'cos the frequency is closed.
So many miles you've been out of direction,
So many signs but you ain't got nowhere to go.
Your Cadillac's got its headlights disconnected,
Rolling your wheels down the wrong side of the road.

de Gama says that never again will I post a blog while on a major bender. Yeah, right, if both of us write only when we’re off the ether, this blog is dead.

Since declaring War earlier this week, hits per day are up five times. Same with email. We had no clue we were tapping into a mainline - we expected some serious negative vibes, but most have sent effusive praise:

But you can see them now,
You can see them now,
You can see the sisters swinging.
You can hear them now,
You can hear them now,
You can hear the brothers singing.

How can you really know this? Are you really an elected official or a City employee? Where do you hear all of this stuff?

All are really asking how we can know what we know. It's easiest just to tell how this blog got to be what it is today (which ain’t much).

de Gama and I’ve got history as buds that goes way back before our partial transfomations into family men. We both've always loved fast rods, sloe gins, and good reads. A while back, Dr. de sprung for cable, a big deal for that Luddite, but it pleased Inga. He took to occasionally watching tidbits of public access TV. We’ve always talked politic trash, so he’d rag on dis, dat, or d'udda from some meeting he’d seen. It takes a while to rebuild the tranny off a ‘62 Olds 442, and when you tear up old rides like we do, that’s a lot of talking politics. Soon I had one eye on Channel 11 too, just to keep up with de Gama - you can’t argue what you don’t know, not very well anyway.

Inevitably, we’d always get around to asking ourselves why we almost never hear about this stuff in the local media. So a couple of years ago, we decided we’d try to track local politics, and see if we couldn’t peddle some of our new-found knowledge. We got religious about video tape. We downloaded minutes from the internet (Mr. Allen, fix the City website dammit!), and filled in with our own notes. It was work, but we'd pump up on whiskey and chocolate milk for lightning fast control of the fast forward on the VCR. Once we'd filled a whole freakin' file drawer, we really knew the players and the stories. Now what to do with it all?

de Gama hears something on This American Life about blogging, and gets hell-bent on going virtual. That from a guy still using a manual typewriter, leaving me to figure out how to make a website. That only takes six months and major phone time with under-employed tekkie friends, but by last Christmas, we're good to go.

We opened for business on New Year’s Day, with simple recounts of what we’d seen on TV - see my first post. We got a few hits. A supporter gave us a couple hundred email addresses he thought sympathetic to our viewpoints, and we tapped out a press release. Hits shot up, and stayed up. Folks started writing in. Mostly they sent encouragement, but some sent tips. We were on to something.

We decided to sprinkle just a bit of rumor into our posts, so we adopted a rule - absolute anonymity to anyone offering info. Leads and rumors picked up. We got proactive - we’d see someone speak at a public hearing, google for an email address, send a note. Most ignored us, but a few took the bait. More tips and rumors, more blog material.

With a couple of mentions in the N&O, hits were up again. Good words from the Independent, up more. Well damn, this thing really got a life of its own - good audience, good sources, good alternative for two guys getting too damn old to be spending occasional nights in the slammer for running 110 down the Interstate (and a hell of a lot cheaper than attorneys and insurance).

We were getting a lot on Taliaferro, and just sat on most of it. Then on Wednesday, the floodgates opened, with waters rushing in from readers we’d not heard from before. Rumors about the deposition of Erin Kuczmarski were everywhere, and most checked out. It was a big jigsaw puzzle - we broke out the vids, notes, and emails and threw all the pieces on the table. When we'd fit enough pieces together to see the basic picture, we ripped off a few emails for verifications, checked out a few names and dates on the tapes, and finally went for broke with a late day post.

You’d think we’d made N&O front page headlines. Hits and email through the roof. Yeah, we missed with a few unimportant details, but the basic tale of the quashing of the Planning Commission under the thumb of Councilor Taliaferro is still holding.

We couldn’t have done it without you, still can't. And we’ve gotten more tips in the last two days than in the entire five months prior. About half from readers who identify themselves, the other half from anonymous readers. We'll see what pans out.

The deal still stands - absolute anonymity, we only use your name if you tell us we can.

It’s that simple, folks. Just a good bit of elbow grease from two unremarkable guys who stumbled into the right idea at the right time, now enjoying their fifteen minutes.

But we’re rock hard on both, because neither is doing what it takes to rebuild the Party in the face of relentless Republican attack. It’s been frigid weather for Progressives, we’ve grown impatient waiting for the seasons to change.

Calling for ejecting Scott Cutler from Planning Commission does seem a bit extreme. Why bother?

Two reasons. First, it’s completely inappropriate for a Commissioner to try to influence the composition of the Planning Commission to suit his or her personal agenda - that's the work of elected officials.

Second, we’re down to two Progressives on the Commission - they're good, but they can't mount a fair fight against the nine reps of the development industry. If When Stephenson wins a Council seat, that'll leave Kane as too often a lone voice of reason. The Council really needs to dismiss at least three of the Developer Nine immediately, and replace them with folks who represent the many other stakeholders besides the development trade that pay taxes in this City. That would be democratic, so don’t hold your breath.

One astute observer whom we trust emailed to say not to be so quick to judge Planning Commissioner Brad Mullins, he's a good guy. Fair enough, he's a good guy, we said that. He's still pretty new, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for a while longer and re-evaluate later. We’re willing to support the Council keeping him as one of the developers' reps that gets to stay on a reconstituted Commission.

Honest answer? Yeah, a bit. It would be uncomfortable, but we figure what the hell, it ain’t like we have real political lives anyway. We really do love this City, so we take the chance because we think it might actuate some infinitesimally small improvement in Her.

We have wondered about a couple of emails we’ve received in the last 48 hrs - seem mighty fishy, they're trying to get at us. That’s why we try to get a least one reliable confirmation before we repeat any rumor.

Part with some bling for Russ Stephenson. In the For: line at the bottom left of your check, write This is War!

A DECLARATION OF WAR
Lunsford Lane
June 8, 2005

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Not the French Revolution, folks, I’m just talking about today in Raleigh.

The morning started beautifully, drinking Nicaraguan shade-grown coffee over a News and Observer report that District A City Councilor Mike Regan will not seek re-election. This means that At-Large Councilor Tommy Craven, who was tapped to fill Neal Hunt’s seat when he went to the NC Senate at the beginning of the year, will surely run in A against the Reverend Paul Anderson. We here at BTB.org like Anderson, but let’s be real - liberal democrat Anderson is DOA in conservative District A, so a bet on Craven is cha-ching money in the bank. But it also means that current Planning Commissioner and announced candidate Russ Stephenson now has a much better shot at winning one of the two At-Large Council seats. And no matter what else happens, we will be rid of certified-whacko Regan. Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day!

But lunchtime had hardly passed before the hotline here at the BTB.org headquarters was ringing off the hook. Dr. Erin Kuczmarski, Chair of the Raleigh Planning Commission, was thrown off the Commission. Kuczmarski was appointed two years ago by the Wake County Board of Commissioners. She doesn’t live in the Raleigh City limits, but she does live within the City’s Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction - a zone around the city limits in which the City exerts its zoning control. Three of the eleven Planning Commissioners represent the ETJ, and are appointed by the County Commissioners. The remaining eight Planning Commissioners are appointed by the Raleigh City Council. Each Commissioner can serve for three consecutive terms. Tradition has it that any Commissioner that has not been completely derelict is reappointed to serve the three terms; exceptions to this rule are rare.

Kuczmarski’s troubles started last year when she was elected Chair of the Planning Commission by her fellow Commissioners. She was nominated for the post by frosh Commissioner Maha Chambliss, who had been nominated for appointment to the Planning Commission by District B Councilor Jessie Taliaferro. What then-naive Maha didn’t know at the time was that Councilor Taliaferro had put the fix in to elect Commissioner Mark Everette as Chair - she must have just assumed that Chambliss would know her place. But Chambliss inadvertantly broke ranks, and Dr. Kuczmarski was in.

Kuczmarski was a great choice. Blessed with super brains and equally good looks, Dr. K is the total package. Efficient at running Commission meetings, a good listener to all sides of the various planning and zoning cases presented to the Commission, and centrist in her development decisions. Everything anyone could ask for in a Commission Chair.

But Chambliss caught holy hell for interfering with Taliaferro's conniving to gain total control of the Planning Commission. We’ve reported to you before that Taliaferro is nothing more than a shill for the development industry posing in (ill-fitting) sheep’s clothing as a progressive Democratic. Chambliss is a civil engineer who co-owns a local engineering firm that lives and dies by the development trade. And Taliaferro reminded her that she put her on the Planning Commission (at great effort, I’ll explain in just a moment) to carry the development industry’s water, not to promote centrist Commissioners. Shape up, Ms. Maha, or you’ll be shipped out.

The effect on Chambliss was immediate. Obviously bright but apparently a tad short in the common sense department, Chambliss now never sees a development project she doesn’t like, and can be openly hostile to citizens who appear before the Commission to question development proposals.

It took some serious dirty trickery on Taliaferro’s part to get Chambliss on the Planning Commission. Rewind the video tape to January 20th of last year - newly elected Councilors Taliaferro and District D rep Thomas Crowder vacated their Planning Commission seats, and the Councilors had nominated six folks for the two seats. Votes were taken before the Council meeting by secret ballots which were submitted to the City Clerk. West Raleigh resident Ted Shear was the only candidate to get the five votes needed to get a seat on the Commission. Shear had been tripled nominated by Mayor Meeker and Councilors Hunt and Crowder, the only candidate in memory to have been triple-nominated. That left one seat to be settled by voice vote at the Council table. But then-Councilor now Senator Janet Cowell had nominated one of her loyal campaign volunteers, Betsy Kane, who was likely to get the other seat. That left Taliaferro’s candidate, Maha Chambliss, high and dry.

So Taliaferro, a supposed Democrat, and her development industry goons went to work on the Republican Councilors, and they were able to convince Councilor Regan, who is severely wishy-washy, to attempt to change his vote. Mayor Meeker, asleep at the wheel, let him do it at the Council table when Regan claimed that he had made a mistake and that his change would not affect the outcome.

The result was that Shear was out, and Kane and Chambliss were in. The final result was an ugly confrontation at the Council table, with the Mayor telling Regan he had lied (obviously), and Regan vehemently denying the charge (he was caught in the act). It was a disturbing exchange, truly must-see TV on cable Channel 11. The final final result was that the Mayor said he would let it pass this one time, but that a vote change after the votes are public record will never happen again. Score one for Taliaferro, zero for Hunt and Crowder and fair play.

The next time a Planning Commission seat came open, in October of last year, Taliaferro joined with Republican Councilors to engineer the appointment of yet another development industry patsy - realtor Brad Mullins. Young, bright, likeable if a bit ditsy, like Chambliss he has yet to meet a development plan he doesn’t like.

That left the Commission with three centrist Commissioners - Kane, Stephenson, and Kuczmarski. Taliaferro next set her gun sight on Russ Stephenson, and was rumored to be making noises that he risked reappointment if he didn’t start showing more sympathy to development proposals. But Stephenson pre-empted her strike, by announcing that he is running for an at-large seat on the City Council. That ham-strung Taliaferro’s efforts, as any bold moves now will certainly be seen as an intentional attempt to influence the election. But faint rumors now have it that Taliaferro is making noises that she will work to make sure that fellow Democrat Stephenson is not elected. (BTB.org is a political blog, not a newspaper of record, so yes we peddle rumors that are plausible, particularly those we can get more than one source for, as is the case with the rumors in this blog - this sordid tale is all over town now.)

Next in line for Taliaferro was Kuczmarski, who having absconded with the Commission Chair surely had to go. With Kuczmarski at the end of her first term, Taliaferro personally calls the Republican members of the Wake County Board of Commissioners to talk trash about the good Dr. K. And she recruits Republican Planning Commissioner Scott Cutler to make similar calls to the County Commissioners.

The double sucker punch left-right combo sends Kuczmarski to the mat knocked out cold.

That leaves Commissioner Betsy Kane, who is undoubtedly next. We don’t know how, we don’t know when, but don’t you doubt for a New Jersey second that Taliaferro has her sights trained on Kane now.

So we have a supposed Democrat hard at work to hand over the Planning Commission lock stock and barrel to the Republicans in the development industry. The same “Democrat” whom BTB.org told you made sure the Republicans got their lobbying contract from the City of Raleigh (see Goon Squad).

Enough is enough. I won’t spend bytes now telling you how important the Planning Commission is - you already know that - and how undemocratic and totally tilted towards one stakeholder - the development industry - the Commission is (note to self - learn how to properly use dashes). Taliaferro has been a traitor to the Democratic Party since she was elected to the Council. One Citizen reader of our blog described her in an email today as a DINO - Democratic in Name Only. We like that - DINO - so much so that we regret we weren’t clever enough to think of the term first, yabba dabba doo!

But we’ve seen this coming. Since Day One of this blog, my brother in arms Dr. de has warned Mayor Meeker that he needed to gain control over the Democrats on the Council. But Meeker won’t step up.

A Progressive can only take so much sitting still. In rinky-dink local politics, chucking Dr. Kuczmarski off the Planning Commission is the metaphorical equivalent of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

THIS IS WAR.

We didn’t want war. We don’t like war. We didn’t start the war. Our hearts tell us to seek reconciliation. But we’re Progressives, dammit, not Quakers, and our minds tell us that when attacked on our own soil, we must respond in kind and in double. After all, we started this blog because Progressives are eating dirt in this town, and somebody has to start hitting back. Hard. Where it hurts.

SO WE HERE AT BTB.org
DECLARE WAR ON COUNCILOR TALIAFERRO.

Mayor Meeker, join us in this important battle. You have the power to reign in any Councilor with your appointments to Council Committees, your control of the Council agenda. Councilor Taliaferro is de facto Mayor, leaving you to act as de facto Councilor At-Large. Reclaim your Mayoral role. Move to relieve Planning Commissioner Scott Cutler of his duties immediately. Commissioners serve at the pleasure of the Council, they can be removed as easily as they are appointed. Of course, you won't get the five votes necessary, but you can force Taliaferro and her fellow "Democrat" Councilor Joyce Kekas to go on record as either with us or agin' us.

Joyce Kekas, you were appointed to fill Democrat Janet Cowell’s seat, but instead, you have hitched your wagon to Taliaferro. Stop acting like the Scarecrow, start acting like a Dem; morph into a credible replacement for Cowell now, and you might be able to save yourself. Don’t, and you’ll be collateral damage in the war on Taliaferro.

Keith Karlsson, you’re chair of the Wake County Democratic Party. It’s time for you to make it clear to Mayor Meeker that he needs to take control of the City Council, as his indifference and hands-off management is killing the Democratic Party in local Raleigh politics.

Jerry Meek, you’re Chair of the NC State Democrat Party, and we here at BTB.org are delighted that you are. You need to reach down into the Party ranks, grab both Karlsson and the Mayor by the collars, and shake 'em hard. Tell them in no uncertain terms that you are not going to let a DINO (love that term) hand functional control of the Capitol City over to the Republican Party.

Fellow Progressives, we need you to join us in this fight. First, recognize that it’s going to be a long war. No one has stepped forward to run against Taliaferro, and at this late hour, it’s less than even odds that a credible candidate will. But it’s not the District B Council seat that Jessie really covets. No, she wants to be Mayor. She’ll run in two years, knowing that six years is Mayor enough for Meeker. And if we unite, we can stop her from winning. Second, we’ll need each and every one of you to get the word out around District B and around the entire City that Jessie must go.

For our part, de Gama and I will run the munitions factory. Against my better judgement, I let de Gama talk me into taking on a BTB.org intern this summer. She’s our first foot soldier in the war on Taliaferro (like every private first class, she works ridiculously long hours for ridiculously low pay).

We’ve had her over at the Wake County Board of Elections, pouring over campaign reports. We’re planning a series in July on who owns your City Councilors (how much you wanna bet that it ain't you?). It’s a bit early, as we are still tracking down each donor to each campaign, but we promise to give you the report on Taliaferro first. And folks, I can assure you that it won’t be pretty.

The W word has been thrown pretty loosely around City politics lately, for example, the TrianglePMG declaring war on neighborhood activists and neighborhood preservation ordinances. But when we use the term here to describe our commitment to ending the political career of Jessie Taliaferro, we mean real political war.

Erin Kuczmarski can wear her notice of eviction from the Raleigh Planning Commission as a badge of honor. As soon as we get a chance, we’ll induct her into the BTB.org Hall of Fame.

You can honor her exemplary service by emailing us your ideas on how we can join together to rid the Council of Taliaferro.

Together, as Brothers and Sisters in Political Arms, we can, we must, we will prevail.

THIS IS WAR!

TIMM....BERRR?
6 June 2005
Lunsford Lane

For most draft bills now in the General Assembly to have any chance at enactment, they had to be approved by either the House or the Senate by last week. Now is a good time to look at a couple of bills that might affect the City of Raleigh.

Let’s start today with Senate Bill 681. This bill is ostensibly about not letting cities and counties interfere with the business of forestry. Sounds innocuous at first glance, but let’s look closer.

The bill says that no City or County “shall not adopt or enforce any ordinance, rule, regulation, or resolution that regulates either: (1) Forestry activity on forestland that is taxed on the basis of its present-use value... (2) Forestry activity that is conducted in accordance with a forest management plan that is prepared or approved by a forester...”

Then it says that a City or County can deny a building permit or refuse to approve a site or subdivision plan within two years after a site is clearcut. The idea here is that developers love to get a site, strip it clean of trees under the guise of practicing forestry, then suddenly have a change of heart, finding the developing business more satisfying than the tree growing business. With no pesky trees in the way, they don’t have to worry about local tree ordinances, or intrusive neighbors demanding that at least a twig or two be spared.

The original draft of the bill said that cities and counties could choose to deny building permits and subdivision and site plan approvals for five years after clearcutting. Five years would be some deterrent to this pre-emptive clearcutting. But just before the final reading of the bill in the Senate, five years was cut to two years, and it was sent on to the House.

Two years is clearly within the time frame of most development planning. Get a conceptual design for the project, get the rezoning, find a few potential clients, design the project, finalize the loans from the bank, bam! two years have gone by in a flash, now it’s time for site plan approval and building permits. Score one for the developers’ team.

Raleigh’s new tree ordinance went into effect on May 1, just a few short weeks ago. Under Raleigh’s law, a landowner must get a permit to practice forestry, and must wait five years after clearcutting before getting any approvals or permits to build. I’m no lawyer (though I play one on the internet), so it’s not clear to me how this legislation would affect Raleigh. There are caveats that allow for zoning regulation and for local tree ordinances that have been authorized by the General Assembly, as Raleigh’s has. But how current zoning and tree protection regulations that conflict with this new legislation are resolved is not obvious to me.

I do know that only three Senators in the entire State voted against the bill - former Raleigh City Councilors now frosh Senators Neal Hunt (Republican) and Janet Cowell (Democrat), and former Mayor of Carrboro and 4-term Senator Ellie Kinnard (Democrat) representing parts of Orange and Person Counties. Raleigh and Cary and Chapel Hill and Carrboro already have their tree ordinances, so their votes lead me to believe that these three Senators perceive this bill as an attack on local tree ordinances. You’ll remember that after being elected to the Senate, Hunt and Cowell delayed their resignations from the Raleigh City Council to enact the new tree ordinance. Surely they don’t want to see their handiwork undone before it has even had a chance to have any effect.

The General Assembly keeps a tight reign on local governments - cities and counties cannot pass any laws that are not authorized by the General Assembly. And the development industry keeps a tight reign on the General Assembly. This bill still has to make it through the House, but with only token opposition in the Senate, it'll be tough going to get it stalled.

Raleigh’s new tree ordinance is a diluted version of what was recommended - frosh Councilor Thomas Crowder (District D), who served on the City’s tree protection task force before he was elected, deemed it so watered down that he couldn’t vote for it (the only other vote against it was by District A's frosh Councilor Mike Regan - he just don't like trees). Part of what’s left is now under attack by the General Assembly - expect other salvos regardless of the fate of this particular bill.

So, Mayor Meeker, hug your favorite trees now, as they may be gone sooner than expected.

Re-SIGN-ed TO MEDIOCRITY
May 25, 2005
Lunsford Lane

If you’ve driven into Raleigh on Wade Avenue within the last week or so, then surely you’ve seen this new sign put up by the ESA (now called by some the RBC Center).

It’s a honking big sign, lots of lights and changing LED messages, you can’t miss it. You’ve been driving that road for years, you say, and now that you think about it, you can’t remember any signs along that stretch of Wade Avenue, or for that matter any further west where Wade turns into I-40.

That’s because that roadway was long ago declared a scenic roadway. Astute City and regional leaders understood that keeping the new I-40 clear of signs made aesthetic and economic sense for a high-tech area trying to attract new business and investment. And so, if you’ve had to spend your mornings and afternoons stalled in New York City-worthy traffic, at least you didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of a landscape visually cluttered with advertising billboards.

But the boys that run the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team organization, which runs the RBC Center, as well as the boys that run the Centennial Authority, have always thought their cohunes are twice as big as anyone else’s in the City of Raleigh, and they’ve long wanted a big flashy sign to prove it. So up goes the sign.

The sign isn’t necessary. Who doesn’t know how to find the Arena? If you’re coming down Wade Avenue, you can’t miss it - it’s that gigantic dome you just passed with the enormous Royal Bank of Canada logo on the side. If you are going to an event at the Arena, just follow the dozens of portable road signs and State Highway Patrol Officers waving flashlights that are trotted out to direct traffic. And who goes to the Arena because they saw an event posted on the sign? Cecil and Leonard drive the farm truck from Efland to Raleigh, and suddenly they see on the sign that the Rolling Stones are in Raleigh tonight. Cecil says through his three teeth, “Well lookey hey Lennnurd, there’s a rocky roll show playing, let’s pick us up a coupaler $125 tickets and have us a look-see.”

But this sign is clearly illegal. So how did it get erected? There’s only one other like it in town and it advertises the State Fairgrounds at the corner of Blue Ridge Road and Hillsborough Street. But that’s on State land, and the State tells the City of Raleigh that when it comes to local control of state land, it can take its puny City regulations and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine.

So the Great State of North Carolina declares the parcel of land beside the highway on which the sign is erected to really be Department of Transportation right-of-way. And so the City of Raleigh can’t touch the sign. Screwed again.

Not that the City Fathers and Mothers (hereafter to be known as the City Mothers) really care. Heard the rumor that the Royal Bank of Canada might want to locate its new headquarters in downtown Raleigh? Let ‘em trash as much of the City as they like, as long as they build something anything downtown.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. This City Council has been hell-bent on the uglification of Raleigh. Garbage cans left in the streets, a hideous design for a convention center, an equally uninspired redesign of Fayetteville Street, enforcement of the sign ordinance only under duress brought on by angry citizens, and now a junky sign polluting a scenic corridor.

When the Arena was built, the State cut down all the trees along Wade Avenue. That’s illegal too, because the side of the road is considered a Special Highway Overlay District, and trees are protected in those. Wake County is developing a SHOD too. And when a private citizen just a stone’s through down the road cut his trees just like the Centennial Authority did, he lost his land. But the State thumbs its nose at us local yokels, and they want the Arena visible from the road. Fine, but it’s the Western Gateway to the City. Build a building that announces that you have really arrived somewhere when you drive into town from the airport for the first time. No can do, we got a building as uninspired as the new Convention Center we are going to get.

And now we completely trash up the Gateway to the City with a really cheap-looking LED monster.

SLUMLORDS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
May 14, 2005
Lunsford Lane

Up before dawn this morning, I trod out in the silk PJ’s to get the morning paper. Top story, City and State Section, is: ORDINANCE RILES SOME LANDLORDS.

Not all landlords, mind you, just some. As in, the bad ones. And they now have their own organization - the PMG, for Property Management Group. And they’ve hired Attorney Clyde Holt to sue the City of Raleigh over the PROP. They’ve been preparing for this for months, so we here at BTB.org have been wondering when the paper would get around to the story.

This band of homeowners a bit west of the university campus was formed about five years ago, in large part to combat the decline of the hoods, in large part a result of trashy rental homes, in large part managed by the members of PMG. And they’ve been somewhat effective, with a new Neighborhood Plan in the works with the City of Raleigh. Cruise the PMG website, and notice how much virtual reality is devoted to the workings of the Avent West Neighborhood Association and its neighborhood plan.

Interest piqued, I slipped a pair of trousers over the PJs, jumped into the hotrod, and cruised the Inner Loop over towards the University area, to get a peak at what the Avent West hoods look like in dawn’s early light. Getting off on Western Blvd. I figure to start at the fringes, closer to Cary than the University, and am immediately greeted by this site (click to see the photo).

A giant Bud Light beer can in front of a rental house. That damn can is two stories tall, and it isn't even good beer! In a residential neighborhood. In front of a house that looks like it not that many years ago was well maintained and attractive, but in recent years has developed the patina of a home maintained by the likes of a member of the PMG. And according to MapQuest, 3.5 miles from Central Campus, not exactly Fraternity Row. Imagine waking up one morning, and having to explain to your kids why the world’s biggest beer can now lives on your block. Or worse yet, imagine trying to sleep through the party that generated the need for that monster beer can.

Driving around, it’s easy to spot a trashy rental, as they are numerous and obvious. Six or eight cars parked on the lawn, trash and recycle bins permanently affixed to the curb, lawn badly in need of mowing, gutters clogged with pine needles. No wonder the Avent West Neighborhood Association is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. I got the picture, literally and figuratively, so it was time to high-tail it out to the burbs to find a Panera Bread for some cheap sugar and Vitamin C (caffeine).

The PMG obviously blames the Avent West Neighborhood Association for the PROP, but they are dead wrong about that. First, the University is ringed with neighborhood groups. University Park Homeowners Association, Cameron Park, Method Civic League, Kirby-Bilyeu Neighborhood. These hoods have been active for decades longer than Avent West. What the formation of the Avent West Neighborhood Association, the largest of them all, did was bring the total mass of energized citizens above the critical loading point, at which City Councilors begin to take notice and worry about their political futures (vis-a-vis former Councilor Kirkman, noticing too little too late).

And the issue of problem rental rings throughout other parts of the City - Southeast Raleigh and Northeast Raleigh have similar problems and are no where near NC State University.

In response to the cries for peace in the hoods, the City Council formed the Neighborhood and Housing Protection Task Force. Manned with representatives of the Real Estate Industry, the City’s neighborhoods, and NC State University, the panel sent a slew of recommendations to the City Council. All but the most benign of which the Councilors found unpalatable.

In an effort to avoid meltdown in the wake of rejecting months of Task Force toil, Mayor Meeker promoted his own solution - the Probationary Rental Occupancy Permit, affectionately known as the PROP. And that’s what the Council ultimately adopted in lieu of the more sensible and more effective landlord license that was proposed by the Task Force.

And the Mayor has promoted the PROP heavily. He talked about it at his State of the City address in February. It's mentioned on his campaign website and in his stump speeches. It’s the one little bone he threw to the neighborhood folks who are responsible for his political career, and now the Big Dawgs in the Real Estate Industry want to snatch it from them.

Attorney Holt told the PMG to build a “warchest” of $50,000 for the initial assault in court, and another fiddy-grand for cleanup. WARCHEST, because make no mistake about it, these property “management” companies are declaring WAR on the hoods. Homeowners see their neighborhoods as peaceful respites for communing with family and neighbors. PMG sees neighborhoods as just another opportunity to make a quick buck at someone else’s expense. And for years they’ve had their way with the City to do with her as they please, flaunting violations of city laws, as they control most of the City Councilors. But the natives have been restless, and some Councilors have been forced to listen.

So the Mayor pitched a softball - the PROP - instead of the hardball - Licensing - needed to solve that problem. But even that crumb is too much to escape the avarice of the PMGers. So bring it on, Big Dawgs. The Mayor can’t back down now, he’s in too deep. The City Attorneys are renown for writing law they believe can stand Constitutional challenge. And if the PROP should go down, the Mayor will be forced to bring out the big gun - Licensing. It’s used elsewhere, it’s time tested, and it's Constitutional.

So spend your suitcase full of bling. This is one battle in the war for a civil City that the hoods can’t lose, and the lords can’t win. Beautiful.

REALITY TV
May 4, 2005
Lunsford Lane

I bought a bourgeois house in Raleigh’s North Hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on.

Close enough to Springsteen anyway, and it sure is cable TV in Raleigh. I got friends with bumperstickers that say “Kill Your Television”, but hey, I’m a lover, not a hater, and I can’t bring myself to do it.

It seems that the only things on anymore are the reality shows. Chop a bike, remodel a room, survive on a fake deserted island, eat nasty worms. There are even Emmy awards now for reality shows (the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences prefers you call them “programs” rather than “shows”). There is one reality program that is so funny that I am seriously considering nominating it for an Emmy this year.

The May 3rd 2005 episode of The Raleigh City Council Show is destined to become a classic in comedy. The Show is an ongoing series on cable Channel 11; it can be a hoot, and the last episode was one of the funniest yet. Yeah, cable Channel 10 gives Channel 11 a run for the money, with its gay simian and the buxom blonde alien that telepathetically communicates with outer space. But for all-out barrel-of-monkeys chortling, nothing else comes even close to the twice-monthly Raleigh City Council Show on Channel 11. This week it had me in stitches, and I mean literally.

I’m sitting at my desk in the office, TV on in the background, one eye on the spreadsheet on the monitor, one ear on the TV set. Like all good television, The Raleigh City Council Show follows the same basic story line each week, so it’s predictable - the Mayor opens with a recap of what great things have happened since the last episode (de Gama’s favorite art-bridge won an award), some Boy Scouts are recognized, and then the Council passes the consent agenda (a bunch of stuff nobody wants to read and assumes is not controversial so it gets passed as a package).

Next is the report from the Planning Commission. This week? The Planning Commission voted unanimously to ask the City Council to “restore functionality to the Planning Department Web Site.” Lots of Commissioners find the new website “much less efficient”. In plain English, the Planning Commissioners can’t find a damn thing on the City’s new website, and they want it fixed! Now, dammit!

Like yours truly and about 10,000 other citizens haven’t been saying the same thing for about six months now? The Planning Commission pleading for help with the webpage, well that’s just a hoot! Hearing this, I let out a howl and spin around in my swivel office chair to see the close-up of the City Manager’s face. On the way 'round, I inadvertently step on the tail of the dog, sleeping at my feet under the desk. The mutt, thinking I've lost my mind, jumps up and over me to run out of the room. I topple over from the chair, and catch my head on the corner of the file cabinet.

I'm laughing so hard I don’t feel the cut on my forehead. On the floor, holding my belly when I should be holding my head, I listen as best I can. The City Manager reports that City Staff will soon hold a “special training session” to instruct Planning Commissioners on how to use the new and improved web site. Now I'm busting my gut so hard I think I’m gonna die if I don’t stop and catch my breath. Did he really say that? On TV???

How about all the other City Commissions? And can I get in on this training? And how ‘bout the few thousand other garden-variety citizens like me who might like to find something useful on the City webpage? Do we all get special training sessions?

"It’s just a FREAKIN’ WEBSITE, ANY IDIOT LIKE ME OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO USE IT WITHOUT SPECIAL TRAINING", I scream at the City Manager on the TV. (My father always screamed at the TV during football games, those and Archie Bunker being the only things he ever watched. He was certain that the coaches could hear him, and talk back to him, either directly or through their play choices. So, much to the chagrin of the rest of my family (and dog), I too yell at the TV, fully aware that the characters on the other side can hear me. I don’t yell at the computer screen - the internet just doesn’t transmit sound vibes.)

So District D Councilor Thomas Crowder makes a motion that the old website be put back until the new one can be made functional (supposedly there is a “hard launch”, whatever that is, scheduled for “sometime in June”). The City Manager says that’s technically impossible. So I’m laughing again - I figure he’s saying that no one made a backup copy of the old site so it’s gone. I mean, I know little about websites, and it's all I can do to keep this blog running (de Gama, King of the Underwood Typewriter, isn’t much help). We’re bungling amateurs and we can post a site and save back-up copies - surely the high-priced contractors building the City website can do as much.

So just for giggles, the webpage fiasco gets sent to the Comprehensive Planning Committee of the City Council. I scream at the set, “Oh, who writes this stuff? Put website management in a land use committee - those guys will surely save the day!”

That shtick finally over, blood running down my cheek, I get to the bathroom mirror to see that I’d split my head open when I hit the file cabinet. Not wanting to miss my favorite show, I press an old towel to my forehead and get back to the tube ASAP.

Just in time to see to Lois Nixon, the coordinator of Wake County Keep America Beautiful, read (okay, be fair, Lunsford), briefly describe to the Council the children’s book The Wartville Wizard (it's a good story!). The people of Wartville are slobs, and apparently so are some of us Raleighites. Unable in past years to make an adequate impression on adults, Nixon resorts to a kids book she uses in elementary school presentations. Very cute, for sure, and just enough irony to keep the episode moving along.

A serious moment in the show - apparently Raleigh doesn’t have but desperately needs "litter enforcement officers". The Beltlines, Inner and Outer, are a mess. Research shows 75-90% of the trash comes from trucks. Maybe we need a new litter tax on trucks, to pay the cost of cleaning up after them.

On to the Human Relations Commission, which is rewriting its bylaws to, among other things, rid them of gender-specific language. Councilor Regan moves to disband that bastion of gay rights, Councilor Isley seconds. Mature adults frightened by gays is a bit always guaranteed to get a laugh on any TV show. In the end, the Commission survives for yucks in future episodes.

A zoning case comes up, completely inappropriate land use proposed. Planning Commission says it’s a bad idea. The City Planning Staff says it’s a bad idea. Then Councilor Isley reminds us that the Comprehensive Plan is just a guide. That’s hilarious - where'd he get that from? Oh yeah, that’s the punch line all the developers use when the joke's on us! Actually, the joke's on Capital Blvd., 'cause it's getting yet another inappropriate retail mess.

Councilor Regan claims not to have a conflict of interest when asking for special favors from the City for his church. The Council, fresh back from a trip to Boston, has discovered that in other cities theaters sell half-price tickets on the day of the show; apparently none of the Councilors had ever before been to Boston, Washington DC, New York, London. Councilor Kekas says “Technology attracts investment, and we’ve got the technology.” Oh, somebody just shoot me and put me out of my misery - that last one's a humdinger for a City that can’t even make a webpage!

Just when it seems like the one-liners will never end, we get a much-needed intermission. Whew!

There’s a few hours break in the episode, with the second half of the show on in the evening. I use the time to clean the wound to my head with a little alcohol (drinkin' not rubbin' type), get out my wife’s sewing kit, and tie two tiny sutures in my forehead - a useful trick I learned in the service. By 7:00 pm, head throbbing, tumbler of Fightin’ Cock in hand, I’m back in front of the tube.

The second half is always as predictable as the first, and just as entertaining. First a long line of transgressors marches up to bitch and moan about being busted for keeping their properties a mess. The Chief of the Inspections Department shows slides of garbage heap after garbage heap - apparently one person’s trash really is another’s treasure. One guy is complaining that he got nailed for aluminum he is storing for future use. Upon questioning, he owns up that the jumble of tangled metal is an old storage shed that fell down a long time ago. “Oh, dude” I scream at the TV, “don’t you get me laughing so hard that I pop these stitches out of my head.” Thankfully, he heard me and slunk off.

Next - a Reverend (presumably Christian) complaining about a Muslim mosque violating zoning conditions. Apparently Councilor Crowder told her to do an investigation, take pictures, gather the evidence to prove it so, so here she is with evidence in hand.

Next - an African American, as in a polite fellow who was born in Africa and immigrated to Raleigh to live the American dream. He bought a house (btw, Lane’s favorite way for immigrants to build wealth and fully integrate into the community), but recently his next door neighbor started running a liquor house, and the “American Dream is turning into my nightmare”. Strange cars, strange folk all times of the day and night. Police come out, the neighbor says he just likes to have lots of friends over all the time for a drink, so that is that for the police. Yeah, right, tons of friends, just like those thugs selling drugs on the street corners in South Park are only there to give helpful directions to lost motorists. So apparently Councilor Isley had told the guy (who has an impeccable English vocabulary and quotes Sherlock Holmes) that he needs to get up a petition from the neighbors asking to have the law enforced. He has to do an investigation, take pictures, gather the evidence to prove it so, so here he is with photos in hand.

Oh, this is over the top, have the citizens do their own investigations - that’s certainly a way to save tax money. Bumbling Police Chief Wiggum on The Simpsons couldn’t have thunk up a more harebrained plan!

Well, I could go on, but you get the gist of the show. And if you’ve made it this far and are still reading, you're probably saying to yourself, “Give it a rest, Lane, it’s easy (though fun) to be flippant about folks where they can’t defend themselves, but democracy is serious business and it isn’t always pretty and those folks up at the Council table are doing the best they can to run this City.”

And my answer to you is, “Excuse me, but here we are firmly in the 21st century, and just look at the cast of early 20th century characters we're talking about:

Maybe the Raleigh City Council TV Show is better classified as an Unreality Program, because it’s unreal just how pitiful we have become.

Once I remember my father shooting out of his butterfly chair in front of the TV and hitting his head on the ceiling. Archie Bunker had asked Sammy Davis, Jr., in a guest appearance on the show, "Bein' colored... I know you had no choice in that. But whatever made ya turn Jew?" In return, Archie got a big kiss on his flappy jowl from S.D. Jr.. And we got a dent in the ceiling that my father never patched.

If the Raleigh City Council TV Show wants to clinch an Emmy, in a future episode when Mike "Archie Bunker, Jr." Regan goes off on one of his tirades about anyone and everyone that doesn't look and "think" exactly as he does, Councilor West ought to just get up from his chair and glide on over and plant a big wet one right on little Archie Jr.'s smug mug.

Goon Squad
Lunsford Lane
April 25, 2005

I’ve bit my tongue since the April 5 City Council vote to extend the City's contract with Washington lobbying firm Capitol Link. You’ll recall that this is the beltline bandit company owned in part by State Republican Party Chair Bill Cobey, who was running for Governor when the contract was initiated in late 2002.

We pay Cobey $4,000 per month plus expenses to “represent” us in Washington, D.C. Mayor Meeker and City staff say we get nothing for the money. The City Manager says he has no idea how much extra money the lobbyist gets for us, as no one tracks it. Even Cobey’s supporters on Council can’t point to anything definitive that his firm has done for the City. In other words, this contract was a big gift to a highly placed Republican.

The contract was just renewed with the five Republicans on Council (Craven, Isley, Regan, Taliaferro, and Kekas) voting yea, and the three Dems (Mayor Meeker, Crowder, and West) voting nay. Wait, say you, there are only three Republicans on Council. I’ve been waiting to hear what alleged Democrats Kekas and Taliaferro (de Gama’s Joisey Goils, I think that boy is smitten) had to say about writing a monthly welfare check to a rich Republican white guy.

We’ve heard what we are going to hear: At the Council table, Taliaferro stated that she sees no need to change the procedure if the Council isn’t dissatisfied with the present lobbyist. The Independent's Geary says “Later, Kekas and Taliaferro, for their part, say they didn't know Meeker's views until after they voted. They backed a GOP firm, they told me, because Washington's run by the Republicans.” (Remind me, didn’t we send Democratic Reps Brad Miller and David Price up to DC?)

Also at the Council table on April 5, Councilor West pointed out that earlier in the Council’s Budget and Economic Development Committee he voted to support the contract, but since then he’s gotten some ol’ time Democrat religion, and he’s had a change of heart.

West's sudden about-face makes it very clear that there was considerable arm-twisting by the Democrats to bring their folks into line; it just didn’t work with the Joisey Goils. Their claim that they didn’t know what the Mayor wanted just don’t hold water.

Not that the Mayor and fellow Dems have always been consistent on this issue. Time for a history lesson, albeit awfully recent history that Taliaferro and Kekas shouldn't have forgotten already.

Y2K2 - Remember way back to 2002? The United States Department of Justice announces it is going to pursue a criminal investigation of Enron. A student shoots 6 people at the Appalachian School of Law. Oh yeah, and the U.S. invades Afghanistan.

And newly elected Mayor Charles Meeker gets the bright idea to hire a lobbyist in DC. The City Manager figures we could get a minimum 10 to 1 return on investment in additional federal dollars to Raleigh. A dozen firms apply for the job, and the City Manager and the Council’s Budget and Economic Development Committee recommend Ball Janik, LLP, which would have assigned a former staffer to U.S. Rep. Chuck Taylor, a Brevard Republican, to the City.

Republicans decide they’d rather give the money to Bill Cobey and his Capitol Link. So it’s apparently four Dem votes for Ball Janik, four GOP votes for Capitol Link, apparent deadlock. But on his way into the Council meeting, then-District D Councilor Benson Kirkman gets a personal phone call from none other than Bill Cobey. Kirkman immediately breaks ranks, its five votes for Cobey - Kirkman skunks the Mayor, who is visibly pissed.

Y2K3 - It’s election year, things aren’t going well for the Kirkman campaign. On Election Day, two out of three voters in Southwest Raleigh's District D vote for somebody other than Kirkman, and he enters a runoff election against upstart Thomas Crowder. The Dems jump in late; even if they weren't the ones that knocked him to the ground, they’ll at least kick a man while he’s down.

So smelling blood less than a week before the runoff election, the Party sics its goons on Kirkman. Phones start ringing at the News and Observer - it’s Bob Etheridge’s office, as in U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat. He plants a Tanino Crisci Apelle in Kirkman's kidneys, telling the paper that he doesn’t endorse Kirkman, who is claiming that he does.

Ring, ring. Now it’s David Price’s folks on the line - that’s U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Dem. He puts a size fourteen basic black Oxford to the side of Kirkman's head, telling the paper that he doesn’t endorse Kirkman, who is claiming that he does.

Kirkman, bleeding from every orifice, says "If they want to waffle, that's their problem."

Y2K4 - The lobbyist contract is considered for renewal by the Budget and Economic Development Committee. Councilor (now Senator) Janet Cowell asks if Capitol Link is doing a good job, the City Manager replies that he doesn’t know how to determine that (politically correct code speak for “hell no”). The Mayor still wants Ball Janik. But Dems Cowell and West join Republican Isley, and the Mayor gets stiffed again.

At the Council table, right-wing Councilor Mike Regan is his normal whacky self: Councilors are sworn by to uphold the United States Constitution; many of the things on the Federal legislative agenda are not things the City should be asking the Feds to provide, as they aren’t permitted by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and the authorities granted to the Federal government, such as funding for regional rail. All Councilors except Regan vote to keep Cobey and Co.

Must have been a lot of sunspots in early 2004, with all the Democrats voting yes to keep writing Cobey’s welfare check, and a Republican voting no.

Y2K5 - It’s an election year again, and the Mayor takes a second try at imposing a bit of party discipline on the Council when it comes to lobbyists. He wants to end the Capitol Link contract, but the Budget and Economic Development Committee stiffs him yet again, with the Mayor and Dem Crowder voting nay, and Dem West and Republican Isley voting aye. But by the time the item hits the agenda for the full City Council, West is back on board, hence his backtracking at the Council table on April 5, but the Joisey Goils aren’t budging.

Now, Councilors Kekas and Taliaferro, given this sordid and very public history of the City's lobbyist contract, the brutal beating Kirkman took over it, and the much milder reprimand that West just suffered, do you expect anybody to believe for a New York minute that neither of you knew what the Mayor’s views were before you voted?

Lunsford Lane ain’t the brightest bulb in the lamp, but this lame excuse insults even his limited intelligence.

So what happened? My guess - the fix was in months ago, when Taliaferro stiffed the Dems on outgoing Councilor Cowell’s replacement (Kekas was her hand-picked choice) in return for supporting Councilor Tommy Craven to take outgoing Councilor Hunt’s seat, and a host of other concessions.

There will be more payoff to come, as Taliaferro makes ever more onerous deals with the Devil, and Kekas, her puppet strings firmly in Taliaferro’s grip, unable to do anything to break free.

Last election, the Democratic Party was a big supporter of Taliaferro. And they've got nothing to show for it. So will the Democratic goons make another appearance before the 2005 elections are over?

Not that there's much they can do short-term to Taliaferro, as she will run unopposed. But they can damn well make sure that she doesn't make Mayor in 2007, which is all she's really running for anyway. And they can throw all of their support behind Russ Stephenson in the at-large race, leaving Kekas to make her way with Republican support alone. Surely the Democratic Party will balk at this, as she is the only woman in the at-large race, but it needs to be done.

And the whackiest thing of all? This year strict Constitutional literalist Regan changes his mind on handouts from the Federal Government (including for regional rail?), and votes in favor of paying lobbyists to ask for them, yet again setting a new standard for the term "unprincipled".

What was it Mayor Meeker said in the run-up to the last Council election? "The next council should be less contentious and more willing to have unanimous decisions on most issues... I'm hopeful that regardless of who wins the last two district races that we'll have a group that really works together."

I’m getting me some of whatever the Mayor is smoking - I'm gonna need to numb my brain during the upcoming election season.

Southern Discomfort
Lunsford Lane
April 17, 2005

Well, your humble blogger has been negligent about keeping up for a couple of weeks; a very long bout of influenza (I finally won) put me behind at work and cut into blogging time. But never fear, I’ve still been lurking around City Hall.

The most contentious issue to be dealt with in the last two weeks? Undoubtedly City housing inspections in South Park. It’s a delicate, muddled, abstruse subject, set with a trip wire running straight to a case of racial dynamite. But since we aren’t getting insight or analysis from the local media (except Eichenberger in the Independent, who got it wrong, as he is usually apt to do - here he mistakes incompetence and insensitivity on the City Council for terrorism), it falls to your fearless bloggers to untie this Gordian knot, hoping along the way not to unintentionally trip that wire.

William Christmas laid out a one-square mile City of Raleigh in 1792. Not much changed for a really long time (the city limits were first expanded, by three blocks in each direction, in 1857). By the end of the 19th century, there were industries circling the City (such as the newly redeveloped Caraleigh textile mill). Oakwood was the first exclusive residential neighborhood - rich white folk lived there (many still do). Po’ folk, especially poor black folk, were confined to the southeastern and southwestern African-American neighborhoods such as Idlewild and College Park. Segregation was firmly in place.

South Park, bordered by Bledsoe, Wilmington, Hoke, and East streets, was created in 1907 specifically for African-American residents. This was land which then was on the outskirts of town (funny how that’s now considered downtown). In the 1920's, the southern African-American neighborhoods were targeted for infill, and street car lines were extended to South Park and others. Building boomed, segregation continued unabated.

In 1990, the National Register of Historic Places listed the East Raleigh-South Park Historic District. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same - segregation, now as much a choice as an imposition, continued.

Fast forward to the 21st century. As the Arena on the highway at the outskirts of town mostly sits empty, the Mayor turns his sites on downtown. New main street, new convention center, new entertainment districts, lots of new housing. Time to clean up these degraded neighborhoods around downtown, lest they stifle redevelopment. So the hoods are declared redevelopment areas, and the inspection drill begins.

Parts of southeast Raleigh look like hell, have for a very long time. I took these photos a few days ago in South Park - nobody wants to live anywhere near crap like that. Boarded up homes attract homeless folk and drug users. Drug users attract drug dealers. Dealers openly sell their wares on the streets (I’ve seen it myself in South Park on several occasions, but I didn’t take any pictures - your homey Lane knows that pushers and mac daddies don’t pose for portraits).

So the normal law-abiding neighbors rightfully complain, as they have for years. City says okay, we’ll take it on. With vague interpretations that the US Constitution prevents targeting certain classes (say, for example, absentee slumlords?), inspectors take on every home, owner-occupied or rental, in obvious disrepair or not. This is called concentrated code enforcement, a cold term for an ugly process.

Most of the homes in these hoods (some historically black, some not) are quite old, have had minimal upkeep for decades, and weren’t constructed all that well to begin with. So it’s easy to find disrepair, and the inspectors found plenty. Often in homes that have been owner-occupied for decades by folks of lesser means. Problem is, once the violations are found, they must be fixed, with decades of foregone repairs all coming due at once, at the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. It’s not unusual for the repair bills to be higher than the actual value of the home!

By the time the inspectors got to South Park, the locals knew the drill, and they were having none of it. They complained to the City Council, yeah they want neighborhood improvement, but they don’t want to be thrown out of their homes to accomplish it.

The City Council agreed to halt concentrated code enforcement, and to work with the residents of South Park to develop a process for neighborhood improvement that all can agree to.

Folks in South Park have always felt put upon, probably always will. So what’s really the problem here?

One part of the problem is the City doesn’t follow its own plans. In his address to the City Council about South Park, the Reverend Henry B. Pickett, Jr. adroitly noted that the South Park Neighborhood Plan, which is part of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, outlines all the elements necessary for the improvement of South Park. This plan was developed jointly with residents (note to self - Rev. Pickett isn’t a resident of this neighborhood, come back to that later) and City staff, and was accepted by the City Council. Problem is, the City Council is famous for ignoring neighborhood plans. Also small area plans, corridor plans, watershed plans, hell, for that matter, the whole damn comprehensive plan!

What’s the point of having a plan if you don’t read it? A neighborhood plan or small area plan is developed with full participation of all the stakeholders in the hood - home owners, landlords, businesses, and whomever else has a stake. They take a long time to put together, as consensus must be reached on many issues. They are expensive to make, requiring significant work on the part of City staff, and often outside consultants, such as those hired to develop the Arena Small Area Plan. And they must be approved by the City Council.

But much more often than not, the plans are ignored, and the results are predictable. The power brokers in the real estate industry looking to build the latest shlock development hire slick attorneys who tell the Councilors that these plans are just suggestions, mere guidelines that couldn’t have anticipated the panoptic benevolence of their clients. The neighborhood residents, who thought they had an active voice in City planning and almost always represent themselves before the City Council, learn that their time and energy were for naught, as the Council approves development plan after redevelopment plan that flies in the face of the neighborhood plans and small area plans. Folks rightfully get ticked off for having wasted their time on meaningless plans, and become disenchanted with and disenfranchised from City government.

What a brilliant idea the good Reverend has - the City follow its own rules and guidelines. Absolute genius, an idea apparently far beyond the intellectual capacity of the garden-variety City Councilor.

On any given day, it’s easy to find drug dealers in South Park. South Park ain’t so big, so the presence of these guys makes the whole neighborhood a problem area. This nation’s drug problem has proven intractable, but there is no excuse for the City allowing drug dealers to work openly on the streets. If I can find the dealers, the police can find them as well, hell, they’re just hanging around on street corners. Drug dealer shows up on a corner, cop goes and strikes up a friendly conversation with him (I haven’t seen a female dealer yet, though I'm sure they're out there). Drug dealer moves to another corner, cop follows him. It’s a technique that Charleston, S.C. Police Chief Reuben Greenberg tried almost twenty years ago. And, big surprise, he found that drug dealers don't get many customers when cops are standing next to them.

Earth to City Council: Nobody should have to live with drug dealers on their streets - get the dealers out of South Park now!

There’s something terribly wrong with a City that lets slumlords run homes into the ground, then just throw some plywood over the doors and windows when even the poorest of the poor can no longer tolerate the squalor. The City has done a good bit to clean up these structures, but obviously not enough and not quick enough. The proof is on the ground - drive through South Park and see for yourself how many houses and buildings are boarded and abandoned.

Earth to City Council: Nobody should have to live with boarded up structures on their streets - get these buildings cleaned up now!

It's hard to know how many homes in South Park are owner-occupied and how many are rentals. A good bit of snooping around downtown produced a best guess of about half and half. A big problem is that the landlords operate businesses, but for some bizarre reason are exempt from having to purchase a business license. So it’s impossible to know the extent of the activity, and difficult to find scofflaws when buildings go unkempt. There was an initiative a couple of years ago to license or register landlords, but the Council, with a majority of Councilors controlled by the Real Estate Industry, balked. And so South Park, and many other neighborhoods, continue to rot while the slumlords laugh all the way to the bank.

For the average American, the key to building wealth over a lifetime is home ownership. And there are plenty of homeowners in South Park, many have been there for decades. So what of their investments? Paula Surles spoke to the City Council of the home on Bragg Street in which she was born. Small but neat as a pin, it is. Assessed tax value in 2004? $19,853.

A single family home in downtown Raleigh, built in the ‘30's, admittedly small but still neat as a pin, worth less than $20,000? And a few blocks north condos of similar size trade for $200,000 plus? That’s no accrual on several generations of investment. How is one generation going to lift the next higher on the socio-economic ladder with that kind of return? Talk about keeping folks down.

And it’s a bad deal for the City. That home generated $198 in property tax - less than the cost of services any home receives from the City. And what of those properties on Wilmington street that I photographed (top right in the photo)? Owned by Worth P. Gurley, Jr., who owns twenty three properties, many of them in South Park, many of them boarded up. The tax generated from these properties can’t even cover the cost of the inspectors that have to deal with them, so the rest of us pay the difference. The absentee slumlords drive down the values of the nice properties of the resident homeowners and landlords, like Ms. Surles’, who pay their unfair share in foregone value.

Earth to City Council: Get over your love affair with slumlords and sleazy developers, get a real licensing program for those in the rental business, and inspect their places of business - their rental properties. And leave the owner-occupied homes alone - they’ll take care of themselves over time if you’ll just deal with the bums who run rental property into the ground.

And let’s get on with that goal of promoting resident ownership of rental properties. If someone can’t keep boards off the windows, they have no business owning a rental property - put them out of business. Use whatever means legal and otherwise to wrest these properties away from the slumlords, and get real homeowners into them. Not a grant program, mind you, because one of the fundamental principals of development is that the people being helped need to make a financial stake of their own if they are to have any long-term interest in the project. But low interest loans with plenty of time to pay will help folks get into these homes, and help those already in them clean theirs up a bit.

There’s more, but that’s enough for City government’s side for now, there’s also things that the residents of South Park can do for themselves.

The first two of the four speakers that made the South Park case for no concentrated code enforcement before the City Council don’t even live in South Park. You’d never know that, as they spoke of invasions into “our homes” and “our neighborhood”. There are lots of very bright very articulate folks in South Park. Nicole Sullivan, Chair of the Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council, and Paula Surles, property owner, spoke volumes more than Octavia Rainey, the self-appointed and self-righteous spokesperson for the downtrodden.

Rainey, a well-known finger-wagger who lives in the east end of Oakwood, not South Park, and doesn’t own any property in Wake County, did her usual bit - she dressed down the City Council as a bunch of insensitive white folk who think of and treat black folk as if they were still slaves. Even if that were true, it’s not particularly smart - what do you think the answer is going to be when you call a bunch of powerful white folk hateful racists to their faces, then demand that they pony up their green as grants to black folk so they can fix their up homes?

At least the good Reverend Pickett, if a bit of an interloper, offered real solutions to real problems. And Sullivan, a South Park resident active in the Downtown Housing Improvement Corporation and the Southeast Raleigh Assembly, is a rising star, and we'll undoubtedly hear more from her in the years to come.

The South Park Neighborhood Plan and the Southeast Raleigh Assembly both have visions of a future South Raleigh significantly different from what exists now. New businesses, new infill housing targeted at a mix of incomes, and new residential developments. All good, but all different from what’s there now. Many in Southeastern Raleigh still hold to the notion that all this will come without racial integration. It won’t.

It’s white folk moving into the newly renovated Caraleigh Mills. Hispanics are all over South Raleigh - most of these folks aren't going back south of the border, and it’s going to be important to the future of the City to get many of them to be homeowners. (Might also help if they could get a college education, but that’s a state issue and BTB.org takes on City issues.) South Raleigh isn’t going to be an African-American enclave. That doesn’t mean there won’t be vibrant and historic African-American communities, but the evolutionary forces that wrought voluntary segregation out of forced segregation are going to continue, bringing next economically and politically driven integration.

For right or wrong, white folks out in (racially exclusive) Wakefield who pay $8,000 a year of property tax are not going to support that money being used to perpetuate racially exclusive neighborhoods in South Raleigh filled with homes that generate $100 in tax revenue. It’s going to take a mix of some public and mostly private investment, that’s going to produce a diversity of residents, and it’s either embrace the change or continue with the status quo. The change doesn't have to be total gentrification - not just out with all the old, in with the new. The City needs to take care to preserve the best of the old elements as the new develop. As new folks move in and improve properties, the current residents benefit as the values of their own properties rise. They will make the appropriate investments in their homes, with no need for City inspectors telling them to shape up or ship out. And finally they will be in actual pursuit of the American Dream, owning a home that is a real investment in their future, and the future of their heirs.

There's an entrenched leadership in South Raleigh that is not moving the community forward. The Raineys need to make way for the Sullivans - in that vein, James West, District C City Councilor, needs to go. West is prone to rambling, often incoherent speeches in support of his constituency in Southeast Raleigh, but he has not worked effectively with other Councilors to get much done about them. Concentrated code enforcement has been going on for quite some time now - if West was on his toes and doing his job, this whole South Park enforcement fiasco never would have occurred.

But you don't hear barely a whisper in South Raleigh calling for his head. Well, you're hearing it here. A new Councilor can stop appointing the same small clique of folk to every City Board and Task Force (Rainey, Norman Camp, and 3-4 others) and tap some new blood that may actually work to make a difference.

West "fought" unsuccessfully to have the Rev. Paul L. Anderson appointed to fill the City Council seat that Janet Cowell vacated, and Anderson's now running against Councilor Regan in District A. If Anderson wins (and we here hope he will, though we doubt it), West may come to rue his support, as Anderson would likely be the African-American consensus builder and community leader that West aspired to but never succeeded in becoming.

There are plenty of up and coming young (and not so young) stars in Southeast Raleigh, many African-American, others white and hispanic. Lots of good choices, time to let these folks have their chance in city politics.

Enough for now. If I hear a loud boom soon, I'll know I stumbled across that trip wire to the booby trap.

Born Under a Bad Sign
Lunsford Lane
March 16, 2005

You don’t realize what a monkey on your back a blog is until you get sick and can’t do it for awhile. But I think I’m back to normal and ready to feed this monster again. And thanks for all the e-mails and e-cards wishing me quick recovery.

Easing back into it, I’ll pick up with something comfortable - my ongoing frustration with the Council’s refusal to enforce the sign ordinances. At the City Council’s Law and Public Safety Committee meeting on February 8 (that's Councilors Isley, Regan, and Kekas, with Chair Isley predictably absent), City Attorney Tom McCormick reviewed the history of the problem. In a nutshell:

The City of Raleigh sign ordinances have been around for about 22 years. It's illegal to post a sign in a public right-of-way. Several years ago the Council entered into an “unwritten agreement” with the real estate industry to wink at real estate signs that go up late Friday evening and come down Sunday night. The City of Raleigh wasn’t much of a City, and there weren’t a lot of the signs going up.

Time marches on, the city grows, and he (McCormick) now sees literally 100’s and 100’s of illegal signs on the weekends. The City of Raleigh is getting bigger, people with businesses are using more and more of these signs, and the quality of life issues are becoming more important.

The Council needs to think about if we’re going to continue our existing ordinances that make these signs illegal and if it should instruct the sign police to get out and begin serious enforcement. There is a Constitutional problem allowing one kind of sign versus another - you can’t say yes to your realtors and no to your discount mattress sale signs.

The City does not regulate political signs - they are recognized political speech which is (my note - used to be) very important in our society.

Next we heard from Big Chief of the Zoning Inspectors Larry Strickland. Also paraphrased:

Enforcement has varied over the years. Several years ago the Council took a hard stand against these signs. On a single Saturday, eight inspectors yanked signs for about six hours, slapping a $50 ticket on each. That’s $11,000 in six hours! You may see more than 40 signs at one intersection. Businesses hire other businesses to put them out on Friday and pick them up on Sunday, though sometimes the signs aren’t picked up. During the week, inspectors are supposed to be issuing citations for these signs.

It costs the City about $3.50 to remove each signs - the City is spending a lot on enforcement and is not making a dent.

Under questioning by Councilors, City Attorney McCormick came to Mr. Strickland’s rescue, explaining that Strickland is forced to live a double life by saying signs are legal part of the time and illegal part of the time - for Strickland’s benefit the matter needs to be resolved by saying whether we are going to either commit to enforcing the code or amend the code.

What followed next was a pack of real estate and apartment folks, who seeing an opportunity to weaken the already weak sign laws, pounced. Others jumped in to ask for more flexibility for signs that are actually posted on businesses and not in right-of-ways.

City Attorney McCormick adroitly noted that the Town of Cary has the same sign ordinance as Raleigh, but you don’t see signs all over the Cary right-of-ways.

So what did the Law and Public Safety Committee do? What every City Council Committee does when it can’t decide a simple matter (such as enforcing the law) - it created a task force. In this case, it’s an informal task force, ostensibly to develop recommendations for enforcing the existing sign ordinance and to investigate the possibility of allowing temp signs which are currently illegal.

And when it met on February 21, we got our first glimpse of who is on it: representatives from the Homebuilders Association of Raleigh-Wake County, the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors, the Triangle Apartment Association, the Greater Raleigh Merchants Association. Oh, and for just a bit of balance, one from the Raleigh Appearance Commission.

Now there's a novel concept. Put the chronic lawbreakers in charge of making recommendations for enforcing the law. How about a task force made up of drunk drivers to assess the need for security at local nightclubs, an issue also now before this same City Council Committee?

What happened to the normal citizen who wants a neat and pleasant city? That’s exactly what City resident Roger Corner asked the Councilors at yesterday’s City Council meeting. And for that, he is BTB.org’s newest Local Hero.

Citizen Corner told the Council what is obvious to all - the temporary signs are out of control, and the City should be ashamed of itself. His is a two step plan - enforce the ordinance vigorously, and conduct a creative education campaign. Ask local folks to call in sign violations - the number to dial the inspectors is 890-3748, so let’s ring those city phones off the hooks, folks!

As just reward for his passion to “make our City pretty again”, the City Council immediately appointed Roger to the sign enforcement task force. Thank you, Councilors, for including one regular citizen on the task force, and thank you, Roger Corner, for shaming them into it doing it.

On a very positive note, City Attorney McCormick reported that the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors has considered this sign issue, and now supports vigorous enforcement of the current ordinance. BTB.org has yet to confirm this, but we take McCormick at his word and send our props to the Realtors. They know, as we know, that an ugly city where laws are winked at is not a city in which you want to make your living selling houses. (Update 25 March - BTB.org has its hands on a copy of the letter from the realtors: "we fully support the city's complete and aggressive enforcement of it's current sign ordinance... we take this position in an effort to 'clean up' the city..." Credit where credit is due - hurray to the realtors. Sure it's self-serving, as realtors know that the City looks like hell on the weekends, when the bulk of their business transpires, and less signs probably means more need for a realtor, but what matters is that they have come down on the side of right. Let's see if they can drag the apartment industry and the homebuilders along with them.)

Where’s the N&O when we need it? The public needs to know if we are going to have any chance of winning this thing. Though we remain cynical and skeptical here at BTB.org (hey, it's our job), it seems that this train may finally be leaving the station.

And if it arrives at the right destination, Thomas Crowder, who got this ball rolling despite resistance from fellow Councilors, will be able to claim a real accomplishment for a frosh Councilor.

Go Away!

I'll try to keep de Gama up to date for the next few days, and when (if?) I recover I will sit that boy down and teach him how to use a computer so he can post his own damned logs.

From Heaven Sent, to Heaven Returned
Lunsford Lane
February 26, 2005

It’s been a helluva week around here at BTB.org, with mi hombre principal de Gama moping around the halls. Hunter S. Thompson races off to a place where nothing ever happens, then Mike Regan announces that he’s out of the race for Mayor.

It was all just too good to be true. With no prospect of winning the Mayor’s race, Regan would be off the City Council. And it would have been just too easy pickin’s for de Gama, who goes Pavlovian at the mere mention of Regan’s name.

Just when it feels like the fog of funk is lifting, I awake today to the truly sad news that former City Councilor Miriam Block died in the wee hours of the morning.

Few folks in Raleigh today were here during the local political revolution of 1973. Elsewhere, the last U.S. soldiers air-lifted out of Vietnam, Spiro Agnew resigned as VP after revealing that he had evaded income taxes, Elvis Presley waved Aloha from Hawaii to over a billion TV viewers. And Hunter S. Thompson published Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, in which he deconstructed the Nixon and McGovern campaigns of the prior year, when the country took a hard right turn away from the liberal ideals upon which it was built.

And here in Raleigh, we got our first modern popularly-elected Mayor and district City Councilors.

All the Councilors had been elected at-large, and they then anointed one of themselves as Mayor. It was great for the few in power, but it sucked for the rest of the City. But new rules created five districts with a Councilor from each, and a Mayor elected by the people. Long time Councilor, and our first and only African-American Mayor, Charles Lightner found himself surrounded by a coalition of neighborhood activists turned politicos.

Miriam Block was one of those activists, representing the newly created District D encompassing Southwest Raleigh. She fretted over suburban sprawl around the town (Crabtree Valley Mall was new, out in the boonies, and flooding badly, having been constructed in the flood plain of Crabtree Creek -duh

), neighborhood viability in-town, and all but the most conservative fiscal policies. She felt that Southwest Raleigh was being neglected (a message eerily similar to that of current Councilor Thomas Crowder, a full 30 years later).

Miriam established a progressive standard that every successful candidate for District D Councilor since has had to adopt. The result has been that District D is the only Council district (including James West's District C) that reliably produces strong progressive Councilors. Notable Councilors from District D include:

Charles Meeker - now Mayor, he served 3 terms as District D Councilor. Many of his original supporters now accuse him of having abandoned his neighborhood friendly roots, but that's for a later blog.

Barlow Herget - who was desperately seeking Mayor, only to be run over by the Fetzer train, which revolutionized political campaigning in Raleigh.

Eric Reeves - young, progressive, imminently likeable, and supremely well connected, Reeves knocked out Benson Kirkman in a race most thought was Kirkman's to lose. Raised with privilege and wealth, it would have been easy for Eric to join the Young Republicans and line his pockets. But he always chose the high road, and his appeal to common folk propelled him to the State Senate.

Benson Kirkman - the hardest working man in City politics, and who still desperately wants to be Mayor. He lost his seat (and with it any hope of becoming Mayor, but that's also another blog) to successor Crowder primarily because his constituents found that he had become too chummy with the development crowd that ponies up the cash necessary to run a post-Fetzer mayoral campaign.

Thomas Crowder - current frosh District D Councilor, some say he's the most progressive yet. He knocked out Kirkman in a race most outside of District D, without a finger in the political winds that blow there, thought was yet another race that was Kirkman's to lose.

Julie Shea Graw - former 3-term At-Large Councilor, resident of District D. Elected by more votes than any other Raleigh politician, she was the most reliable advocate on the Fetzer Council for the working folk, the poor folk, the normal you and me folk of Raleigh. She took Miriam's example of female decency in local politics to heart, and raised the bar to a new level no Councilor since has been able to clear.

Janet Cowell - former 1.5-term At-Large Councilor, District D homeowner, current State Senator. 'Nough said.

One thing all these glad-handers have in common is that they sought Miriam’s blessing when they entered the local political arena. Only Crowder didn’t get the tap on the shoulder, as Miriam continued her long-time support of Benson Kirkman. It was a sign that poor health and time had moved her a bit too far out from the inner circle, where she could not appreciate the dynamics working against Kirkman. But to her credit, she wasn't fickle - once she committed to a candidate, she usually stuck with him or her to the bitter end.

Occasionally a credible candidate appears to challenge the progressive stranglehold on District D. Most recently it was real estate broker Jack Alphin. But his hybrid platform of providing the developers anything they want except the Dorethea Dix property fell flat in this district. (He has a relative that has need for Dorethea Dix's services, and is rightfully concerned about how those services will be provided once the facility is mothballed.)

One thing that few of these politicos have in common with Miriam is their motivation for entering politics. Miriam served solely because she was concerned about the City, particularly District D. It was never about Miriam. Meeker, Herget, Reeves, Kirkman, and Cowell all saw their bids for Council as stepping stones to higher office. Not that that’s inherently bad - BelowTheBeltline.org does no ~!`t ridicule ambition, as it is an admirable trait, particularly in the young.

But there was a purity in Miriam’s duty to community that has only been matched since by Julie Graw. Crowder may have it as well, but it’s still not clear if he has designs for higher office.

Those were heady days in the mid-'70's, with strong women finding their way in local politics. Today's female Councilors - Jesse Taliaferro and Joyce Kekas - are mere pretenders to this ideal, having sold their votes to the highest bidder - which, no surprise, is the real estate development industry - exactly what Miriam fought so doggedly against.

If establishing a tradition of progressive politics in District D was the only thing Miriam accomplished, the accomplishments of all other Councilors then and since would still pale in comparison.

Hit Me with the Obvious

Well, duh, like we needed a formal news conference today from the NHL commissioner to inform us of that. Since the beginning of the new year at least, only a handful of megafanatics were still suffering the delusion that the ice hadn't yet melted. Not only is the season gone, but hockey in Raleigh may well be gone as well. Carolina Hurricanes owner Pete Karmanos said as much over a month ago, indicating that he's game for putting next season in the can as well, even hinting that the end of National Hockey League may well be nigh.

Money wise, the Canes are a losing proposition, always have been, always will be. Supposedly the Canes (that is, Karmanos) lost $10 mill last year alone. Rich people with more money than they know what to do with buy money-losing propositions like hockey teams, 'cause the entertainment value is worth the loss. But what I can’t get is why normal folk like you and me invest in such a red herring.

And invest we have. We took our hard-earned money - a boatload of it - and built the ESA (now RBC), in large part to support the Canes. Probably $200 million if all the hidden costs (roadworks, utilities, etc.) are included. And then we handed the building over to a businessman (Karmanos) who’s hobby is collecting businesses that lose big money. (Karmanos also owns pieces of the Florida Everblades, which is on the auction block, and the Plymouth Whalers.)

Of course, even the filthy rich can’t bleed green forever, and chances are better than even that the Canes are already toast. The CIAA took its tournament ball and went elsewhere, Karmanos will take his puck back to Detroit, and we’ll be footing the bill for the one of the most expensive college b-ball arenas on earth. Go State! Problem is, Coach Sendek ain't exactly packing in the fanatics either, so as much as I like the guy, he won't make a decade here. Sayonara, Herb.

So how does Steve Stroud, the local real estate mogul who chairs the Centennial Authority, which oversees operation of the arena for its public owners, see the situation?

What's this cat smoking? When the Canes are cold in the grave, Karmanos will go back to the mahogany bar on his yacht in Miami and the gold-plated faucets in his Detroit mansion, whilst yours truly, L. Lane, will crawl back to his humble abode built of Piedmont red clay dried hard, where he'll contemplate a second job at Fast Fare to pay off his part of the arena.

Earth to Chairman Stroud: "Obviously, Mr. Lane is the loser here." Not to mention all the other residents of our fair city and county.

Earth to City Council: "No." Or at least, "No, unless we see some big changes out there on the highway."

BTB.org ain't the Wake County Taxpayers Association. We understand the need for public investment in economic development engines. Arenas don't break even on their own - they pay for themselves through the economic development they generate.

But few rationale choices were made when siting the arena. It should have been wedged between NC State's Centennial Campus and Downtown. The TTA should have laid a rail line underneath it in anticipation of the train. The newly planned Raleigh Convention Center could have been sited just a bit more south, to synergize with the arena. It was obvious from day one that the primary tenant, the Canes team, was a short-timer, and an in-town arena would have left us many more options and opportunities after their inevitable departure. We could have transplanted a new heart into the City, rather than developing a bunion on our big toe.

But Steve Stroud always dreamed of his Meadowlands of the South. NC State University, which seems incapable of thinking of itself as part of rather than apart from the City, followed in lock step.

And what of the original Meadowlands in New Jersey, the model for sports and entertainment in Raleigh? The New Jersey Devils hockey team has just inked an agreement with Newark to build a new arena downtown so they can get the hell out of the Meadowland's Continental Airlines Arena. (Can you imagine anyone making such a deal with a NHL team right now? That's real faith!)

Yes, it's time to move on from both the failed model of the Meadowlands of the South and its local champions. The mistakes are made, the arena is where it is, and it's still fifteen or more years away from redevelopment. So let's make the best of it. We need a new champion of the Arena, someone with real vision and real experience with sports and entertainment management, to dig us out of this mess.

The CIAA tournament tips off in 11 days. Opening day of the tournament would be the perfect time to send out the news release annoucing the reorganization of the Centennial Authority.

Another Bad Sign

Now these signs are patently illegal, so end of discussion, no? Enforce the law - the most basic function of government. Without law enforcement, we have anarchy. And indeed we do have sign anarchy.

Councilor Crowder's current concern is that the sign issue is now relegated to Councilor Isley's ironically named Law and Public Safety Committee (ironic because Councilor Isley routinely opposes proposals to increase the rule of law and the safety of the public). The Law and Public Safety Committee is asked to receive comments from realtors and other scofflaws who skirt the law, and report back to the Council on the issue as soon as possible. Given the record of this Committee, from Crowder's viewpoint his issue got a big smack on the lips by the Kiss of Death.

So at the last Council meeting (February 1), he tried to resuscitate his dying patient. Councilor Crowder asked that while the Law and Public Safety Committee contemplates its collective belly-button ad infinitum, the law on the books be enforced. He pointed out that the local Real Estate Industry, in it's fight over the last couple of years against new regulation (e.g., the PROP), adopted the mantra Enforce the Current Regulations.

Taking their word at face value, Mr. Crowder made a motion that while the Law and Public Safety Committee ponders, the City enforce the current sign ordinance as it relates to temporary signs. His motion died for lack of a second.

And, as I said last time, no other Council has done more to promote the uglification of this once quaint town.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign

If you caught the January 18 City Council meeting on cable, you couldn’t help but notice the bright new decorations on the podium. Perched behind the Councilor’s seats were rows of signs - KMart 60% off signs, BP super nitro space age gas signs, signs directing you to your brand new dream home. Has the Council decided to provide a little free advertising for its favorite businesses?

Literally tens of thousands of these signs appear across the City every weekend. They decorate every corner, every road median. They surreptitiously appear every Saturday morning, and like magic most disappear on Sunday under the cover of darkness.

The signs are illegal, and that’s why they only make their appearance on the weekends. There are businesses that specialize in putting the signs out late Friday night and early Saturday morning, then collect them during the late hours of Sunday night. As the City inspectors work a normal five-day week, they don’t “see” these illegal signs.

Seems Councilor Thomas Crowder (District D) has that '70's hit song stuck in his head: “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind...”. He trucked a load of the illegal signs into the chambers, to convince his fellow Councilors to take an interest in enforcing the sign law. So far he’s got no takers.

The current City Council has done more to uglify the once quaint City of Raleigh than any Council in recent memory. Curbside garbage might be efficient (though we are getting revised (that is, lower) estimates of the savings expected), but with 5-10% of the Citizens parking the rolling cans on the street permanently, the City looks like hell. Seen the design for the new Convention Center? - it's so awful the City doesn't even put pictures on its website description. Regardless of whether it's viable or not, that thing with the alien roof looks like hell. And Councilor Crowder has not yet convinced his fellow Councilors to direct the City staff to enforce the existing law and get the signs off the road, so the City looks like hell on the weekends.

It seems that the business interests that run the City like their free albeit ugly advertising and the majority of the Councilors are willing to wink while they break the law. This is inexcusable. The law is the law and it’s not to be winked at.

Those signs don't come cheap, costing as much as fifteen smackaroos apiece or more. So if they go up around your 'hood, yank 'em and throw them in a nearby dumpster.

Or better yet, buy a cheap paintball gun from Dick’s Sporting Goods, and take a shot or two at each sign. The scofflaws will quickly get the message.

Kill It Before It Spreads!

Hang around City Hall for just a bit these days, and you’re bound to hear it - a low grumbling about the demise of the City website.

But the City recently launched its new look. And like an American-made car in the 80's, it looks pretty good, until you lift the hood. Finding anything useful on the site is a crap shoot that you will lose more often than you win. Of course, you could always search for your neighborhood small area plan, except for two things - the search engine doesn’t work properly yet, and even if it did those plans are no longer available over the web.

Citizens, Councilors, and City staff are calling for the old site to be rebooted until the new site is ready for roll-out. But the City Manager paid a consultant big bucks for the new site, and taking it down is egg on his face. So the staff and consultants are frantically scrambling to fix problems as fast as citizens can point them out.

But there is no fix, as the site design is fundamentally flawed. In theory, the new site organized to reflect the structure of the City government, with four main sections; Resident, Business, Leisure, and Government. But how many citizens visiting a city website are going to be intimately familiar with how the city is organized? I doubt most of the City Councilors have yet figured out how the City is organized. And when you do find something of interest, it's invariably in a section counterintuitive to where it would be expected to reside. Want to learn something about your neighborhood? You might want to start in the business section rather than the resident section. Click on the Links link in the Planning Department page, and you get a PDF file - huh?

It’s hard to believe that well into the 21st century the City could make such a blunder over a website. Imagine if Amazon.com or Ebay.com or (BelowTheBeltline.org ?) rolled out a new website that left its visitors clueless. Remember New Coke in the 1980s? Only a government would create such a boondoggle and then refuse to fix it. BelowTheBeltline will do its best to flush out the rest of the story, because when something is this bad you know there's some hanky-panky going on (did the contract go to the Mayor’s nephew, or perhaps a high rolling donor of a Councilor?).

Mr. Allen, we’re not asking that heads roll, we just want a functional website. The Web has made much of government accessible to the average Joe and Jill Citizen, and Raleigh was just becoming a tad citizen friendly.

Isley takes credit for PROP and Stormwater Utility Fees

Well, it's New Year's Day 2005, and time to launch BelowTheBeltline.org. Welcome to our world!

I think it would be fun to start the New Year by looking back at the most absurb thing said by a Raleigh City Councilor in 2004. Reviewing Council meeting tapes, the well is deep, and the inclination is to polish one of Councilor Regan's many rough-cut gems. But resisting that urge, I've settled on this amazing display by Councilor Isley.

The City Council was discussing a proposed towing ordinance, when Mayor Charles Meeker lost patience with District A Councilor Mike Regan, and sharply dressed him down for letting the issue languish in the Law and Public Safety Committee, on which Regan sits. Councilor Isley, who chairs that committee, immediately called the Mayor out of order, and angrily demanded that the Mayor retract his statement immediately.

“If you will just let this thing percolate for a month or two at the most, in my committee or anyone else’s committee, I think you’ll get something that you can agree with. We just came up with the PROP, we have come up with stormwater fees.”

The PROP and the stormwater utility. Two of the true accomplishments of that Council, and both fought tooth and nail by Councilor Isley. But now that they are done deals, and popular ones at that, he takes the credit.

NC Realtors PAC	Big Real Estate	$3,000
NC Home Builders Association	Big Real Estate too	$2,000
Carlton Midyette	Creedmoor Properties	$1,000
Stephen Kenney	Apartments, apartments, apartments	$750
Smedes York	Granpappy of Local Development	$500
RW Mullins	His development company owns a large share of the Planning Commission	$500
Joel Clancy	His development company also owns a piece of the Planning Commission	$500
Gregg Sandreuter	Hamilton Merritt - the development company, not the Nobel Peace Prize nominee	$500
Donald Fraley	Building houses, lots of houses	$500
Franklin Holmes	Hobby Properties - strip malls, but with fancy food!	$500
RE Jacobs	Dude lives in Ohio - when it comes to shopping centers, he's the big boy.	$500
Charles Francis	puts the money behind Big Real Estate	$250
Richard Daugherty	Centennial Campus may be State owned, but it's big development thru and thru	$250
Carter Worthy	Local 2nd tier realtor who just won't go away	$250
David Permar	Paved paradise, put up a parking lot	$250
Roger Perry	Lives in Chapel Hill, builds all around	$250
Wayne Bailey	Tried to ruin the King Charles hood	$250
David Clancy	Development company a owns controlling interest in Planning Commission	$250
John Kane	The New North Hills Mall	$250
Steve Stroud	Architect of the RBC Center fiasco	$250
Harlon Stafford	Centennial Campus	$250
Philip York	His name is York, he gives campaign donations, you guessed right, his game is commercial real estate	$250
Isabel Mattox	Local real estate attorney specializing in shlock development	$250
Mack Paul	Local attorney who just pulled off the Soleil Center with no public input! Should consider offering seminars to the Isabel Mattoxes of the industry.	$250
James Baker	Planning Commissioner, so chances are better than even that he is a builder - bing bing, we have a winner!	$250
Scott McCrary	Carolina Communities Development Group - the name says it all	$250
Chuck Walker	Former Planning Commissioner, now trying to buy his way back onto the Commission through Carolina Communities Development Group	$250
John Beard	Where Builders Come First (the rest of the City be damned)	$200
Tom Worth	Not-So-Smart growth	$200
Robert Younce	Real Estate Referrals Incorporated	$200
Matthew York	Another guy named York, so yes, more commercial real estate	$150
William Hood	Jerry Turner and Associates - gotta live someplace!	$125
Roland Gammon	White Oak Properties - Downtown, Where the people aren't, Downtown...	$110
Ben Taylor	Just a bit of a misnomer (cheapskates too =>)	$75

	Current Fee, as set in 1987	What Current Fee would be had it been adjusted for inflation
ROAD FEE
Single family home	$307	$516
Apartment unit	$187	$314
Warehouse	$302 per 1,000 sq.ft.	$508
Retail - Less than 50,000 sq. ft.	$1,092 per 1,000 sq.ft.	$1,836
Retail - Greater than 299,999 sq. ft.	$950 per 1,000 sq.ft.	$1,597
OPEN SPACE FEE
Single-family home	$307 - $365	$516-$614
Apartment unit	$223 - $272	$375-$457

COUNCILOR	REPRESENTING	SUMMARY	POINTS FOR
COUNCILOR	REPRESENTING	SUMMARY	Big Real Estate	Average Citizen
Regan	District A	Lackey for Big Real Estate	1	0
Taliaferro	District B	Roget’s now lists “Taliaferro” as a synonym for “Homebuilders Association”	1	0
West	District C	Confused at best, compromised by Big Real Estate at worst	.5	.5
Crowder	District D	Unencumbered	0	1
Isley	District E	Owned by Big Real Estate	1	0
Meeker	Mayor	Too close to Big Real Estate for comfort	.5	.5
Cowell	formerly At-large	Not as close to Big Real Estate as Meeker, but too close to be considered Independent	.35	.65
Hunt	formerly At-large	Big Real Estate's Numero Uno	1	0
Kirkman	formerly District D	Crossed over to the Dark Side	1	0
Odom	formerly District B	Not looking good from the data we've entered so far	-	-
		TOTAL SCORE:	6.35	2.65

Kuczmarski - since elected Chair	100%
Mullins	100%
Mallette	97%
Stephenson	97%
Chambliss	96%
Baker	94%
Everett	92%
Trotter	92%
Kuczmarski - entire term	89%
Kane	88%
Reed	83%
Cutler	78%

LUNSFORD LANE IN 2005

ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING Lunsford Lane December 29, 2005

DIRTY DEEDS AND THEY'RE DONE DIRT CHEAP Lunsford Lane December 21, 2005

SHALLOW POOL Lunsford Lane December 13, 2005

BLINDERS ON A HORSE(shoe) Lunsford Lane December 12, 2005

PUBLIC DISTRUST December 5, 2005 Lunsford Lane

GET ON THE BUS, GUS! Lunsford Lane November 22, 2005

THE BIG TALL FIX Lunsford Lane November 17, 2005

EYE IN THE PYRAMID Lunsford Lane November 14, 2005

STEEPLE CHASE Lunsford Lane November 13, 2005

CIRQUE du SOLEIL Lunsford Lane October 30, 2005

AAARGHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Lunsford Lane October 28, 2005

S.O.S. Lunsford Lane October 26, 2005

Stop the Outrageous Spin and Start Saving Lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother Lunsford Lane October 18, 2005

DEJA2 Lunsford Lane September 19, 2005

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN Lunsford Lane September 1, 2005

WELFARE FOR BUILDERS 26 August 2005 Lunsford Lane

NEVER ENOUGH MONEY 20 August 2005 Lunsford Lane and The Intern

SIGN OF WHAT'S TO COME Lunsford Lane August 11, 2005

DONE THE RIGHT THING Lunsford Lane August 1, 2005

GONNA DO THE RIGHT THING? Lunsford Lane August 1, 2005

SHOW ME THE MONEY VI: James “Wild Wild” West Lunsford Lane and The Intern July 25, 2005

SHOW ME THE MONEY V: Thomas “Clotheshorse” Crowder Lunsford Lane and The Intern July 20, 2005

HATE TO SAY IT, BUT.... Lunsford Lane July 18, 2005

A CHANCE AT REDEMPTION Lunsford Lane July 13, 2005

SHOW ME THE MONEY IV: Charles “Man in the Middle” Meeker Lunsford Lane and The Intern July 10, 2005

SHOW ME THE MONEY III: Phil "Lawn Dart" Isley Lunsford Lane and The Intern July 8, 2005

SHOW ME THE MONEY II: Mike "Buy a House from Me" Regan Lunsford Lane and The Intern July 6, 2005

SHOW ME THE MONEY I: Jessie "The Builder" Taliaferro Lunsford Lane and The Intern July 4, 2005

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE Lunsford Lane July 1, 2005

SMOKIN’! Lunsford Lane June 28, 2005

DEMOCRATS EAT THEIR YOUNG... Lunsford Lane June 24, 2005

SWEET SWIFT WATER Lunsford Lane June 23, 2005

IT'S LONELY AT THE BOTTOM... Lunsford Lane June 20, 2005

RED BADGE OF COURAGE Lunsford Lane June 13, 2005

Radio Contact from the Front Lines Lunsford Lane June 11, 2005

A DECLARATION OF WAR Lunsford Lane June 8, 2005