Honestly, I don’t think the new logo is as bad as a lot of people here give it credit for. From a branding perspective, it’s an amateur mistake to think that a logo will just magically give you some sort of meaning and symbolism; you need to consciously keep using it and making it yours until it’s true. Like “fake it 'til you make it” -but bigger.
If you go back to the Raleigh city branding thread, there were a few threads talking about Durham’s flag and branding. The simple colors and the seven stars are honestly pretty basic and you could easily recreate it on PowerPoint -but it fits Durham because Durham embraced it and actually went with it. Same thing with Nike’s logo (which looked no less than a crappy brush stroke when it was first drawn), or the Maryland state flag (it probably looked way tackier and stranger in the 1600s than today).
And it’s not like Raleigh doesn’t have any opportunities to actually make some artsy, lasting designs with their new logo/design language. Nope, not at all.