Looks like there’s an article in today’s N&O that seems to hint at 'Can’t we all get along?.." kind of reporting. I’m sure the CAC ‘controversy’ is part of the article.
I personally am fine with the City blowing up the CACs. I attended several 5 Points CACs and the only thing I recall is the majority of the people showing up were always complaining. That “majority” represented a very vocal minority in every one of those instances…but they were always loud. They were the ones who would say brilliant things like 'casting shadows on my house…" The last city council was a direct by-product of those types of people…….and I for one an glad they were eliminated.
I’m slightly confused… I’m reading here the CAC will be eliminated but, yesterday I received and email from the Midtown CAC(my previous residence) talking about them revamping into virtual CAC meetings?
Here is a copy and paste of the email they sent :
Thanks to everyone who attended our first virtual Midtown CAC meeting last night. I hope you found it useful. As stated during the meeting, if you have topics you would like to see on the agenda, please reply and let me know. I cannot guarantee I can get such topics lined up quickly, but I can certainly search for knowledgeable speakers to address us.
Those who were online heard the discussion that a nominating committee is being formed to develop candidates for MCAC officers and assistants for the coming city fiscal year July 1 2021 to June 30 2022. If you would like to join the nominating committee to search for and interview potential officers and assistants for MCAC, please let me know. I know the current three midtown residents who have volunteered to serve on the committee would welcome additional participants. And if you would like to be considered for a leadership position with the MCAC, also please let me know. For either category of interest, I will pass your name and contact information along to the current nominating committee. If you are interested, it would be wonderful if you >ngcould send my your contact information certainly by Friday so that the nominating committee could start organizing and working very soon.
For those who asked about getting a copy of the final report presented by Mickey Fearn to the City Council regarding his recommendations for Citizen Engagement, the report can be found on the web at the following location. Thanks to Patrick Buffkin for providing this information today:
Remember our next virtual meeting will be on Monday April 26 at 7:00 pm (please start to log in at 6:45 to spread out all the log-ins).
Having them be part of the rezoning process for the city was eliminated already, but the people involved still have freedom of assembly. In other words, they still have the right to be an organization and meet about things if they so choose.
OK, good. As long as they’re not negative influencing projects, it wasn’t easy to sit through those CAC “approval” meetings for the “Woods of St. Albans”. The requests asked of the developers were laughable and sadly actually taken into consideration.
That email looks like it’s more official than just grassroots organizing. I haven’t gone through the recommendation by Mickey Fearn but it seems the Midtown CAC is following some plan laid out by that study?
Yeah in Five Points, the CAC is just meeting regularly - they don’t have any official standing with the city but they’re just still meeting for informational/organizational purposes (I joined a virtual Five Points CAC meeting a few months ago and I laughed when I saw Stef Mendell doing most of the talking during the meeting, she doesn’t even live in Five Points)
She’s passionate about her version of Raleigh. I wonder if “Livable Raleigh” realizes “livable” is subjective and a lot of people don’t agree with their version. Maybe that was the ploy to bring people in as everyone wants Raleigh to be “livable”.
Perfect opportunity for ‘Bless Her Heart’ since it seems she believes she’s doing right by a certain coterie of citizens but so many others think differently…Truth is probably in the middle — or maybe in that ever-so-elusive missing middle housing we need more of in entrenched neighborhoods ?
Haha yeah, I try to follow those just to see and they don’t have much to say actually.
They have a police report of what happened during the last 2 months and they usually talk quickly about ongoing developments. People usually have nothing to comment on those, even on the “15 stories massive development” East End Market.
The final report that recommends Raleigh’s post-CAC game plan is out, to be discussed in Tuesday’s City Council meeting!
Notice I didn’t say “the replacement to CACs”; that’s on purpose.
The report thinks much more deeply by reframing the question to understand why CACs became what they became (click me!)...
…and recommending that the city make two new functions of local government. Neither of them are what you’d think they’d be from just their names.
1. Office of Community Engagement
Think of them like a constantly-curious group of consultants. Instead of having planners upload online surveys or making parts of rezoning hearings into NIMBY soapbox platforms, this office would work with existing functions of the city as a one-stop shop the city and residents to engage with each other. City employees here would be the policy experts on getting citizen input on city functions, and lead the way in strategic efforts to make Raleigh work in a more democratic way.
2. Neighborhood Enrichment Units
They may sound like the old CACs, but they’d have a much more defined purpose with specific responsibilities. They’ll be expected to be the eyes, ears, and mouths of their local communities by training neighborhood ambassadors, organizing block parties and neighborhood cleanups, and otherwise creating direct ways to build lasting connections between Raleigh and its residents. (Sound like a certain website we all know of…?)
…and the two branches will have the following shared responsibilities:
So the idea is that the Office and Enrichment Units work together to constantly inform each other of things citizens want, as well as what the city wants to do.
The report has a full table of what each arm is, and how they’re different from each other. The OCE is proposed to report directly to the City Manager, while the NEUs are only as influential as the OCEs let them.
This is just a recommendation, though, and the city will need to accept them and come up with new funds/methods to bring any of these things to life. Until then, we’ll still be stuck with lots of unknowns like how many NEUs will there be or how they’ll be formed/held accountable.
EDIT (in hidden text): the report said the proposed OCE will report to the City Manager, not City Council. This is probably the smarter idea, since it makes citizen engagement into less of a nonpolitical process.
Somehow, for the past few months, my local mid-town CAC has been meeting again. I have no idea what for or about. I have seen notices for virtual meetings. Was surprised since I thought that was done.
Nice post. One thing that jumps out at me is that, and I can’t believe I didn’t really see this before, is how CACs were getting all the attention when Raleigh has registered neighborhoods and they used to get some benefits from the Community Services (name?) department at the city.
I was once president of my neighborhood org for a few years and we held meetings, cleanups, and had a block party. The city guided us, even funded some, after applying for, portions using grant money. I can’t help think this sounds the same but perhaps more formalized? I think that’s good cause sometimes people weren’t sure if they should go to their CAC meeting or their neighborhood meeting.
One difference between the two, at least in my neighborhood, is that where the CACs had an agenda and you were informed of things going on, the neighborhood meetings were kind of the reverse. You brought your own topics and people helped each other figure it out. It was more bottom-up than top-down, the former always being my preference.
Either way, I’d like to see council put this in place ASAP with some sort of review at years 1, 3, 5 or something to tweak along the way. I think it’s long overdue and we can’t debate all year for the perfect system. Start now and improve it over time.
Oh that sounds interesting! I tried looking this up, and realized Raleigh has lots of similar things going on like community enhancement grants and neighborhood improvement funding; it’ll be awesome if this new system could make better use of those resources, too.
Same, but I’m also wondering (and ngl, a li’l worried) about how this will happen and whether it’ll be start off on the right footing. People, especially including pro-CAC NIMBYs, need to see this as a legitimate successor to CACs, and its progress needs to be tracked and managed in an involved and thorough way. The report has some good ideas on the latter, to its credit, but I’m not sure if the current city council can pull off the former.
Looks like they could be called CEBs (Community Engagement Boards), now!
From a slide deck in yesterday’s City Council meeting, presented by Linda Graham Jones, the woman who’s sitting in the seat that will become the new Director of Community Engagement this July:
Remember that CEBs are only one half of the equation. The City’s new Division and Office of Community Engagement will be the yin to CEBs’ yang.
Here’s the video version of that presentation:
Timestamps of council members' Q&A
1:10:17 - Q&A begins; Cox disagrees with recommendations, saying “this is really about the administration and Council acting as gatekeepers to citizens participating in this community”. He points out that it seems like City Council will decide conversation topics, and citizens cannot decide on their own governance structures (or vote on rezoning), making City Council into a dictatorship over these organs
1:11:23 - MAB asks about what will happen to the grassroots organization of community members that helped write the Fearn report. Jones responds that this is actually up to the Council and City Manager’s discretions.
1:11:54 - MAB says she likes the idea of “Welcome to Raleigh” events to encourage civic engagement for newcomers; notes that she “would hate to see [Fearn’s commission on coming up with similar, welcoming ideas] end prematurely”.
1:12:40 - Corey Branch points out that CACs went through the same process as well: City Council appointed the first members, only for it to grow into what it became. Still, he points out that “this is not the same city as in 1978”, and shows optimism for this new process. Branch then indirectly addresses Cox’s concerns by pointing out that the structure of the CEBs are not even decided yet, and political decisions like voting and zoning decisions are “food on the plate” that should come after the core constitution of the new organs are defined.
1:15:43 - Jonathan Melton asks the same question @dtraleighasked last month: could neighborhood registries be more publicized as a part of this whole process? (He didn’t know that initiative existed until the Fearn commission, either.) Melton agrees with Cox in that grassroots organizations should be harnessed further, and confirmed with Jones that that would happen.
1:18:20 - MAB doubles down on why all of these lofty-yet-technical conversations matter: “Community engagement is more than about zoning. It’s about making communities feel heard and a part of the community. It’s about making young people […] renters […] seniors […] [people with] disabilities [are heard]”
TL/DR: Most council members are in support of the new, proposed structures that will debut in July. David Cox says he doesn’t like some of the specific policy recommendations due to how top-down they are. Melton and Branch seem to agree with some of the governance-related questions, though they played it down since a lot of things are still not decided yet. Most members seem to be very enthusiastic for what’s coming next.
