Raleigh
Raleigh City Council District D
Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker’s close amigo City Councilman Thomas Crowder has a plan to raise ‘Impact Fees’ – and it should warm the hearts of the Mayor’s developer-contributors downtown. Instead of raising the fees (taxes) on everyone Crowder wants a tiered plan. Which means different fees for different folks. Who pays more? And who pays…
Read MoreThe City Council Strikes a Blow for Butterflies
Seven of eight members of the Raleigh City Council live south of the 440 Beltline. So, maybe, it’s no surprise their attention is less than riveted on North Raleigh. For the first time in 30 years, the city was poised to build a gym and community center in North East Raleigh on city owned property.…
Read MoreDo You Know Jack Yet?
Jack Nichols, running for State Senate in Wake County, has an interesting strategy. He has been running TV ads on cable news during busy political times. His consultants, Mike Davis and Perry Woods, say the ads are aimed at high-information primary voters. The strategy makes sense. So does the message: Jack is a progressive who…
Read MoreIn Defense of “Teardowns”
One of our frequent readers – and commentators on Raleigh issues – sent us the following email. It gives a sensible perspective on the teardown/infill fight now going on at the City Council. So here it is, in full: This Council has a solution in search of a problem. The solution is regulation to limit…
Read MoreSledgehammer Time Again
Everybody who wants to know what’s next in the Raleigh Scandals can get the preview by reading the following email sent out this morning by Joe (the Sledgehammer) Sinsheimer. Inadvertently, I’m sure, Joe revealed the emails of everyone to whom he sent the statement. That makes interesting reading, but I’m not passing the list along,…
Read MoreAn Odd Thing
There’s an unusual thing happening on the City Council: Two of Mayor Meeker’s cronies, Councilmen Thomas Crowder and Russell Stephenson, are up in arms about people tearing down old houses to build new ones. Now, you wouldn’t think that would be troubling. It’s one way old neighborhoods evolve. It improves property values (having a big…
Read MoreIs DPI a Prize Worth Having?
Mark Binker, the Raleigh correspondent for The News & Record of Greensboro, has a good blog. He recently engaged in an exchange with GOP Governor-wanna-be Bob Orr over who should be responsible for education. Binker wrote: “Orr had said that responsibility for education should rest with the governor. And in my snarky way, I asked…
Read MoreMeeker Majority Outrunning Their Mandate?
Election victories always carry the seeds of defeat. Because winners too often can’t help but overreach. Look at George Bush after 2004, Newt Gingrich after 1994, Bill Clinton after 1992. Go all the way back to FDR trying to pack the Supreme Court after his historic landslide in 1934. Mayor Charles Meeker’s new City Council…
Read MoreRiding the Log
The liberal-anti-growth-activists at WakeUpWake had an interesting election day. And a wake up call. WakeUpWake’s been vociferously urging voters to 1) elect candidates who oppose growth and 2) support ‘transfer taxes’ (taxing property sales) to pay for growth. Voters, apparently, saw the contradiction. They voted for slates of no-growth candidates – then they figured they…
Read MoreBattle Lines Are Being Drawn
Both the pro-growth forces and the slow-growth forces are celebrating in North Carolina after Tuesday’s elections. The pro-growthers – say, Tim Kent of the N.C. Association of Realtors – are celebrating that the “property-transfer tax” (the “home tax”) got slaughtered in all 16 counties where it was on the ballot. The slow-growthers (they’d call it…
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