The October 2019 Raleigh City Council election is not far away. With campaign season starting to kick off you might be wondering just what these people you’re getting mailers for in your mailbox actually do. Why should you bother to vote? What impact do the City Council’s decisions have on you as a Raleighite? How does City Council change Raleigh for better or for worse?
How City Council Impacts Your Daily Life
It’s almost impossible for a day to go by without some news on what the Federal or State government is up to. That makes it easy for people to ignore what’s happening in their local government. Yet, if you think about it, your local government impacts your life many more times a day than those other branches of government.
Every time you turn on the water, flush a toilet, throw away the trash, or fill up a recycling bin, you’re interacting with your local government. City Council sets the rates that you’re charged for all of these services. The Council also implements programs such as its recycling program and decides who is eligible to receive those programs. For example, apartment complexes are not eligible to receive city trash and recycling services, those complexes instead contract out those services from private companies.
Now let’s say you’re on your way to work. City Council manages what public transportation is available in the city. So if you choose to ride a bus, it’s an option because City Council decided to put a bus stop within walking distance of your home, and another stop within walking distance of your work. If you ride a bike, City Council decides what city streets have bike lanes, and what funding goes towards maintaining and expanding the greenway network in Raleigh. If you take a car, the police that patrol Raleigh’s streets and enforce traffic laws are paid and operate under procedures approved by City Council. Same goes for the firefighters who are there to help if you get in a wreck.
Hopefully by now you’ve seen how City Council’s decisions impact your daily life, but we haven’t covered Council’s biggest responsibility. Zoning.
What Is Zoning?
Every piece of land in Raleigh is ‘zoned’. Zoning determines what can be built on a piece of land, and what it can be used for. Zoning is a very complex subject, but to help make it easy to understand I’m going to oversimplify it. If you’d like a more in-depth look at Raleigh’s zoning, I’d recommend looking at the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) on the city’s website.
At it’s most basic Raleigh’s zoning can be broken down into a handful of buckets. Residential, Mixed Use, and Speciality. Residential is primarily for housing. Mixed Use zoning combines a mix of Commerical, Industrial, and Residential uses. For example, the below image shows part of North Hills. CX stands for commercial mixed use where you typically have stores and restaurants on the bottom floors and offices or residential units on the upper floors. Specialty zoning covers a broad range of uses such as agricultural, office and school campuses, and other types of zoning.
The next part of zoning you should be aware of is ‘overlays’. Zoning overlays add additional layers of regulations, and you can have more than one overlay on a piece of land. For example, a historic district is added to zoning through a Historic Overlay District (HOD). All land that falls under that HOD overlay is subject to restrictions for historic preservation. City Council also created a new overlay district called the Accessory Dwelling Unit Overlay District (ADOD) in 2018. Unless your land is in an ADOD, you can not build a granny flat (mother-in-law cottage) in your backyard.
How City Council Impacts Zoning
Zoning isn’t “frozen” in place, but for it to change it must go through a rezoning process. Rezoning is a very lengthy and expensive process involving no less than five meetings open to the public to provide input on the rezoning decision. In addition to all the documentation, permitting, inspections, and other tasks a developer must undertake with city staff, a developer looking to rezone their land must also set up additional meetings with the public. At least two of these five meetings are at a Citizens Advisory Council which you can learn about here.
At the very end of the rezoning process, City Council has to vote on if it will approve the rezoning, or deny the rezoning. The Council typically opens the floor for public comments on a rezoning reserving time for those against the rezoning, and those for the rezoning. The Council will also review any CAC votes related to the rezoning, the recommendation from Raleigh’s Planning Commission, and potentially recommendations from other commissions depending on where the rezoning is located.
It’s not unusual for City Council to add additional restrictions (aka “conditions”) on a rezoning before approving the application. These conditions can include things such as playing amplified music, allowing for outdoor seating, allowing for group events, requiring the owner to provide a minimum number of parking spots, there’s even been a rezoning recently approved with a condition that requires them to provide a dog poop station to the public.
Other ways Council Impacts You
Here are some great examples from Twitter on how other Raleighite’s were impacted by decisions from City Council.
