Meeker’s Majority: Thinking Big?
The new City Council takes office Monday, with Charles Meeker firmly in charge. Hizzoner is starting his fourth term, but it will be the first in which he’s got a majority of the Council planning to work with him from the get-go. Gone are Tommy Craven and Jessie Taliaferro, who aligned with the developers. In are Nancy McFarlane and Rodger Koopman, who defeated those two by aligning with Charles. Good times, eh?
So Meeker the other day had a press conference and announced that he’ll be asking the Council to double the impact fees on new development, which sounds like a lot until you remember that they’re less than one-third the allowable limit now. The mayor also came out for water conservation and better bus service — even if it requires a 1/2-cent increase in property taxes. A whole 1/2-cent? Well, it’s a start. But this Council’s got bigger fish to fry than that over the next two years. More below.
Here’s a short list of worthy Council objectives gleaned from the ‘07 campaign:
1) Rewrite the comprehensive plan as a smart-growth document that fosters density where it belongs, in transit corridors, so that buses, streetcars and (someday) commuter trains can take hold in Raleigh and curb the traffic congestion before it’s totally out of hand. (With the possible exception of Phillip Isley, every Council member supports this goal, at least in theory — which means, at least until the first developer comes in asking for something else.)
2) Resolve to include transit funding in any future transportation bond referendum. Not just more road widening, in other words. (This is from Councilor Thomas Crowder, who’s proposing that one-third of future bond issues should be committed to transit.)
3) Create an affordable housing advisory commission. (Heard this one from Ken Maness, the former city planning staffer now working on the homelessness task force.) Great idea. The new comp-plan must reckon how to redevelop downtown, ITB and especially Southeast Raleigh neighborhoods so they’re not just McMansions and $500,000 condos. The Council’s gonna need some help on that one.
4) Beef up the CACs. Remember them? Time to plug the people back into the gummint.
5) Speaking of which, this Council should — but probably won’t (again) — increase Council salaries. $10,000 a year for what is damned near a full-time job if you actually do take the time to talk to regular folk? It’s a miracle anyone other than developers and their hired help is willing to do it — and we’re not that far removed from the days when Mayor Tom Fetzer was on developer Bob Hughes’s payroll. Oh, and maybe meetings of the planning commission and Council could be held when working people can attend on an equal footing with the current attendees, who are — yes — developers and their hired help.
6) A living wage ordinance. Insist that companies working for the city pay every employee a living wage, not just the minimum wage. How much is a living wage? I’d say $10 an hour is the least it could be, but would defer to the fellow who spoke up for this in the campaign: Councilor Koopman?
7) Domestic partner benefits. Again, we had every Council member on record during the campaign as saying it’s time for Raleigh to take its place as a progressive employer by de-linking employee benefits from marriage eligibility. This isn’t only about gay rights, though it is absolutely about equal rights for gays.
8) City wifi. Raleigh as a 21st century city? Go for it. (Another Crowder mission.)
9)Before it’s too late, do something about the teardowns. That meeting of the outgoing Council last week was a serious clusterf— on the subject of “interim infill standards.” No surprise: the old Council majority mucked around for five, six years without doing (or wanting to do) anything to curb the plague of giganto-houses running the smaller ones out of Raleigh’s older neighborhoods. Why Meeker allowed a “hearing” on a stopgap idea from Planning Director Mitch Silver when Silver himself wasn’t even willing to defend it is a mystery. But that’s water over the old Council dam. Time for the new Council to do better. How about a radical idea like CONTEXT — you can build as big as you want as long as it doesn’t dwarf what’s next to it … and doesn’t reduce neighboring values to what the land beneath the presumed teardown(s) is worth.
10) And this is to say nothing about “Dix 306″ — is anyone talking to anyone in the Easley Administration about that? Or about Hillsborough Street. Talk about your roundabouts 
11) Finally, it’s about time to bury the idea of TIF-financing for John Kane’s parking decks, and for Council to write a policy on when, if ever, TIFs are a good idea for Raleigh. (That whispering you hear in the halls is about TIF’ing transit-oriented development if the TTA and Cherokee Investments ever get around to it. Dunno about that.)