Community Engagement in Raleigh

Livable will suffer for these CACs I think it will show everybody what a joke they are cause it won’t go there way. Uhm now I think they want to not have CACs not have voices in development I think that’s great they don’t need a say in that, so if a revival is in the works unfortunately that a positive. Personally I’m against all neighborhoods having a say in buildings including the neighborhood meetings that they have for rezoning so I think they’re a waste. But I think the reason is I think this will increase Yimby turnout next election it may have been low.

They may as well just run a poll on NextDoor and enter the results and comments into the record. At least that would be a little more democratic

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For a second, I read demonic for democratic. My bad.

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I don’t know, but maybe some pro-urban retirees with nothing better to do should participate?
Also, I’m not buying that the younger adults don’t have time to attend these meetings while gyms are full, bars have patrons, restaurants have diners, etc.
Like voting, participation has to be a priority and not just something that everyone expects others to do for them.

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Agreed. Strong Towns said that the goal of community engagement should not be to listen to the community. It should be to build understanding with the community. Regular citizens are not experts in what makes a community better or worse. We elect people that should be or should find experts on these topics.

Instead of focusing on voting for projects to pass by CACs, the goal needs to be in helping them understand why these projects are necessary or not. Do a walk-around of the site they plan on putting the building up and show them why it would benefit the local community. Show some designs you have planned. And if you have any issues, you can take them up with the city councilor that you elected to represent you and they can vote it in or out.

We put the council in place to represent our interests and vote for us. There is no reason to have self-appointed people vote on these topics. The scale of control in our community should not be tipped towards the individuals with the most free time.

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INFORM AND EDUCATE!!!
:clap:t3:

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Hang on. Two-thirds of the City live in those suburbs outside 440, and it’s our tax dollars going into downtown which can’t pay for itself because so much of the property in downtown is tax-exempt, and besides a lot of us work in downtown.

If someone wanted to divide Raleigh at 440, I think most people in north Raleigh would gladly go along. But no one proposes that because it’s financial suicide for downtown.

There’s like no services in downtown not even a real library so your claims are suspect.

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I suspect it’s the opposite with much of the low-density single-family neighborhoods not paying enough property taxes to cover services consumed.

There is $83M in tax base located on the 0.68 acre downtown property where I reside with no impact on schools.

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Oh man, you’re going to be surprised when you hear that it’s actually the other way around. Suburbs are subsidized by urban areas.

Cities acquire much more tax dollars per acre in downtown than they do in the suburbs where everything is spread out. Infrastructure is expensive. Pipes, roads, concrete parking lots. That costs a lot to maintain.

After 20 years of being up, the net profit from the vast majority of suburbian locations actually ends up in a net negative for the city in terms of cost to maintain vs tax dollars acquired.

The reason downtown is being invested in is because it’s financially worth it to do so.

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For those of y’all who are curious, this is something that’s pretty well-known among urban planners -though it’s high time that the rest of us knew about it too.

For more specific numbers, this Canadian think tank made a really useful infographic back in 2013. Obviously the numbers don’t translate 1:1 since it’s in Canadian dollars, but it still gives you a good order-of-magnitude estimate of just how bad this is.

https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpg

To be clear, the data above is NOT for Raleigh, specifically, though I’m not aware of any reasons to think that we’d be an exception. I wanted to do similar math for our region by comparing property taxes paid for parcels ITB vs OTB, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to do it (though I found a good data source to get started). Anyone who’s good at GIS tools want to give that a stab?

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And to think people at LivableRaleigh want property tax ‘relief’ on their property which will leave the rest of us to subsidize them even more.

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People who come to public meetings are very unrepresentative of the population, so if the government simply obeys them, that is not democracy.

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It’s a trick bag… that all it is

This scenario…Most MSA spread…then, in a perfect world, equalize to begin to densify,
Let’s be real about how places grow and then we can all lean into what it takes to evolve.

(Invoke sarcasm mode)

Only YIMBY’s may enter.

(Sarcasm mode off)

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Zoning and Density

vice versa too? maybe this is the key to future transit development

excerpt … “The problem with community feedback is not the concept itself, but the way it is executed. We do it too often, for too many things, for too long, and in the wrong manner. We ask the wrong questions of the wrong people and use the answers in the wrong way.”

i said this example before and it is an old one from the late 60s in raleigh…but my folks neighborhood had subsidized housing placed at the end of a dead end st in raleigh. wexford drive…the units are still there. now i was a youngster at the time but i can remember that once the units were occupied crime did increase…and from what my dad tells me there were no signs posted at the woods edge to alert anyone of what was coming. the neighborhood was blindsided except for the developer. crimes such as gunshots on weekends, neighborhood theft increases (our ladder was stolen) and trash and litter. i guess this is one example where had the community been alerted early perhaps more streetlights could have been demanded, or speed humps to slow down cruising traffic or whatever else that i dont have the imagination for. there may be wrong questions being asked BUT if a community meeting might raise a particular point that noone who goes downtown raises and then suddenly “oh did you hear what so and so brought up at the meeting at the art center at the park…i never considered that”. i dont see that as a negative if most people in an area like the areas attributes. some may like more density and the new hotties on the sidewalk walking their pets.
already lots of negatives at public comments at city council anyway.

Besides the unrepresentative vote, my biggest problem is the grandstanding during the Q&A. People who have no idea what they’re talking about don’t deserve my undivided attention. Questions should be submitted in writing beforehand, and the only ones addressed will be those that are actual questions, not statements.

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