The new City Council’s first day in session was a busy one. The evening and afternoon sessions combined for over five hours of public meeting time (plus several hours of closed session). A lot happened, and I could hardly keep up with Twitter. Needless to say, there’s a lot of excitement around this new Council. What did they deliver on day 1?
Afternoon Session
The afternoon session was one of the fastest City Council meetings I’ve ever attended, but a ton was packed into that 1.5-hour meeting.
First, Mayor Baldwin’s committee assignments we’re finalized without any controversy. All committees were balanced with four Council members. That’s already a huge change from the 2017-2019 Council who stacked a majority of five Councilors in the Growth & Natural Resources Committee when former Mayor Nancy McFarlane’s committee assignments were overruled.
Corey Branch was once again named Mayor Pro Tempore, but only until the end of next year. Councilor Nicole Stewart will serve as Mayor Pro Tempore in 2021.
Committees are important to City Council’s work. Issues big and small commonly get referred to committees where they’re worked through in smaller groups of Councilors. A recommendation to solve the issue is then sent to the full City Council to vote on. Issues like short-term rentals, granny flats (ADUs), zoning text changes, and more were all worked through committees by the previous Council. With many of those big topics about to be reworked [spoiler], having balanced committees will ensure all Councilors have a say.
Following the committee assignments and Mayor Pro Tempore’s appointment, Mayor Baldwin brought up the Council Code of Conduct. She emphasized the part of the code restricting Councilors from individually approaching City staff instead of going through the City Manager, Assistant City Managers, or Council staff people.
“…when a City Councilor goes to a staff person that can be really intimidating, we want to stop that from happening…”
– Mayor Baldwin
The Mayor made one of the focus points on her campaign to ensure City of Raleigh staff were treated more fairly and listened to. Later in the meeting, she made a motion to create and fund a reward program for city staff for bringing new ideas, solutions, and highlighting their work. The details of the program are to be worked out by the City Manager, but rewards would be done monthly and the winner would receive a $500 bonus.
When the Council was discussing finalizing the Council calendar for meetings, District D Councilor Saige Martin brought up adjusting meeting times to make them more accessible to citizens. One of Martin’s campaign priorities was to “… find times that are suitable for those that work standard hours. ” He directed City Staff to generate a report on adjusting meeting times to make Council sessions more accessible.
Mayor Baldwin also announced an ideation session for City of Raleigh Commissioners called “Raleigh Unleashed”. The event would bring commissioners together to discuss ideas for improving commissions, share what they’re working on, and meet one another. The date was set for January 25th. Mayor Baldwin suggested a well-known member of Raleigh’s tech community, Jason Hibbits, moderate the event.
Quickly proceeding into the Report and Recommendation of the Planning Commission, a number of items were referred to a January 7th public hearing date from the Planning Commission report. Most notably was text change TC-7-19 “Infill Subdivisions and Recombinations” was scheduled as well for a Jan. 7th public hearing.
IndyWeek writer Leigh Tauss has a great write up on why this text change is so controversial. If implemented the text change would prevent huge McMansions from being built onto small neighborhood lots, BUT it would also prevent large lots from being subdivided to build more housing. This would effectively freeze all residential density in the Raleigh neighborhoods to what it is today. You can check out her article for more details. The text change is expected to be voted down on January 7th, but it’s unknown how many will show up to Council speaking in support.
Report from The Mayor and City Council (RMCM)
This is usually the most exciting point of the meeting. RMCM is basically free response time for Council members to bring up concerns, items for discussion, and other issues. At this point, things started to pick up pace in the meeting, and there’s a ton of goodness to go through. So I’m going to go through each with a brief summary.
ADU’s Get A New Chance!
Councilor Nicole Stewart was up first, and came out swinging. She brought up that although Council had passed a text change to the UDO allowing ADUs, it came with a lot of restrictions on where they could be built. Also, and most importantly, nearly a year after this change was passed none had been built. Stewart made a motion for staff working with the planning commission to draft a text change removing the ADU overlay requirement (ADOD), remove landscaping requirements, and removing parking requirements for back yard cottages.
Surprisingly, Councilor David Cox seconded the motion but did say not all Councilors agreed on the removal of landscaping requirements and he was voting to move the conversation along.
The motion passed 8-0.
You can read more about ADUs and the restrictions the previous Council used in a past blog post here.
Stewart also made a motion that passed for staff to draft text changes making the UDO more predictable and fair in how it’s applied. There’s been a lot of issues with “Change of Use” causing trouble for small business owners in Raleigh.
Race and Gender Equity
Councilor Martin started off thanking the staff for seamlessly handling the change of Council members. He then mentioned a conversation with his birth mother he had recently had on the phone and brought two items in her honor to the Council table.
First, Martin directed staff to draft a report for options on race and gender equity training. He wants the training made mandatory for City Council members, city staff, and also volunteers appointed to boards and city commissions. Staff would bring the options and vendors to Council to study so the best one could be chosen.
Next, Martin requested another staff report on improving language accessibility in all city communications.
Scooters Restored? (Micro mobility)
Councilor Melton’s report focused on improving public transit. He made a motion to send the scooter ordinance for study in the transit committee. Melton said he wants Raleigh to be a leader in micro-mobility instead of just reading stories about other innovative solutions other cities are implementing.
Melton’s motion passed with no objection to sending the scooter ordinance and a study on micro-mobility to the Transportation Committee with a goal of it being discussed by the end of January.
The motion doesn’t immediately bring back scooter companies Lime and Bird to Raleigh.
Short term rentals (AirBnB) avoid enforcement!
The previous Council’s blanket ban on whole-house rentals and homestay policies were set to start enforcement action on January 1st, 2020. Mayor Baldwin made a motion to stay all enforcement action and send the issue back to committee for discussion. She clarified that this stay would cover both homestay (renting out individual rooms in your home) AND whole-home rentals.
The stay on enforcement would remain until new rules are in place. This basically resets the short term rental issue back to the way it was in early 2017. Those renting out their rooms or homes on services like Airbnb or VBRO should be able to continue renting through January 1st without issue (but I’m no lawyer!).
Additional:
Councilor Branch welcomed the new Councilors and mentioned most of his wish list items had been handled at the previous Council meeting.
Councilor Cox presented a packet of suggestions for raising Raleigh’s Municipal Equality Index score (MEI). He said he has worked with Equality NC for roughly two years on drafting the suggestions. The motion passed to send it to committee for discussion.
Councilor Buffkin brought up growing traffic issues in District A neighborhoods. He’d like staff to look into using ‘green streets’ solutions and also traffic calming to help combat the issue.
Councilor Knight thanked his supporters for sending him to office. He committed to working to make Raleigh a thriving city while still supporting its growth.
Mayor Baldwin had several additional items during her report:
– Asked staff to research forming a committee to better serve the Hispanic community.
– Formed a monthly reward program for city staff
– Set up work sessions to be held outside of city hall including one at a dog park in North Raleigh.
Evening Session
The evening session looked light on the agenda, but went nearly four hours, over double the time of the afternoon session. It included several sidewalk petitions, rezoning cases, and text changes. However, the discussions online in the days following the meeting were focused on what happened at the beginning of the meeting, during citizen petitions.
Citizen Petitions
I don’t usually write about the citizen petition portion of Council meetings. The topics discussed usually vary wildly, and each topic nearly always requires hours of research to write about. However, the main issue that came up was a modification to the “rules of decorum” or plainly, the rules you have to follow while addressing the City Council at the meeting.
During the June 2019 City Council meeting a rule was added to the policy requiring all citizens to address City Council as a whole and forbidding addressing individual Councilors by name. At the beginning of the December 3rd meeting, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin re-read the rules, and the June 2019 rule was amended to add petitioners could not call out the City of Raleigh staff individually. A video below has the rules being read, and the two citizen petitioners that were warned that evening, one due to the new rule.
It is worth mentioning the two groups that received warnings that evening both have a history of violating the City Council rules of decorum. Raleigh PACT has been in the local news several times (May 2019, Nov 2018, Sept 2018) after interrupting City Council meetings. The group advocating against abortion and for Raleigh to become a “sanctuary city for the unborn” has also made local headlines for their behavior in Council chambers (June 2019).
Mayor Baldwin indicated the rules are still being worked on, and the focus is to make it less intimidating for citizens to speak. Balancing the need to maintain order during the meeting, while also allowing citizens to speak out about issues important to them is difficult. Hopefully, adjustments will be coming soon.
Sidewalks
The next order of business focused on sidewalk petitions. Sidewalks have been a large focus of City Council for several years as city leaders try to improve transit options for Raleighite’s beyond cars. Raleigh residents used to not only have to pay for newly installed sidewalks, but they were also responsible for maintaining them (article).
Now, residents can file a sidewalk petition with the city and receive a sidewalk at no charge, the city will even maintain it. However, to avoid the assessment (charge), the road must have an existing curb and gutter. That difference was highlighted in two of the three sidewalk petition cases. The sidewalk for Brighton road would be built with no cost to property owners since there was existing curb and gutter. The sidewalk at Aberdeen Drive, and Lake Booner Trail, however, lacked existing curb and gutter and property owners would be assessed a fee of $32 per linear foot of street frontage.
One issue with sidewalk petitions is how the petition is voted on. Only property owners receive a petition, and generally, 50% or more must vote in support of the petition for the sidewalk project to move forward. Some argue only property owners should get a vote since if there is an assessment, property owners will be the ones paying for the sidewalk. However, others argue the cost is likely to be passed on to renters, and the renters should get an equal voice since their quality of life will be impacted.
Rezonings
Four public hearings were held for rezoning cases during the City Council’s evening session.
- Z-18-19 Ponderosa Service Road (Approved 8-0)
- Z-32-18 S. Saunders PD | AKA Park City South (Approved 8-0)
- Z-7-19 Proctor Road and Rock Quarry Road (Approved 8-0)
- Z-21-19 S. New Hope Road and Rock Quarry Road (Approved 8-0)
The links above take you to each rezoning case’s page on the digital Council agenda, you can find more details on each there.
Of the four approved rezonings, the biggest is Z-31-18 or better known as Park City South. In the rendering above you can already tell it’s going to be a big deal when it finally opens. The development will have 1 MILLION square feet of new commercial office space, 312,500 sq. feet of retail space, over 150,000 square feet of hotel space, and… 975 RESIDENTIAL UNITS! All of which will be located directly adjacent to Dix Park.
What do you think?
That was a lot to cover. As a recent IndyWeek article headline mentions there was a ton done during the new Council’s first day, but can they keep up the pace?
Does this new Council excite you? Worry you? Anything you would have done differently? Leave a comment below!
