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Maybe itâs time for Wake County towns and cities to think about doing a New York 1898 thing and combine some of the smaller towns into Raleigh. Would or should be cost savings and lead to more standardized zoning among other benefits.
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IMO, the towns that make the most sense to incorporate are Knightdale and Garner. While these two are certainly not the marquee towns in Wake, both have the proximity to DT in particular that make them the most likely candidates. I think that development in both would benefit from having a Raleigh address as well, and especially Garner might see accelerated investment
Iâm sure that this opinion will be triggering to some, but thatâs how I see it.
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I have access to the data at my job. It is a shape file called Wake.City that I calculated the geometry on to get the square miles. It is accurate as of Monday.
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Wake Forest, Rolesville, Wendell, Zebulon, Knightdale, and Garner are what we call the âmerger townsâ of Raleigh because they all get their water from Raleigh. So those would be the ones who would be the most likely candidates. As I am a Cary resident, I would NOT want to be part of Raleigh. I think we run a city much better than Raleigh doesâŚ
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Can you put this in the Raleigh and Statistical Area Population thread as well? Or, do you mind if I lift it and put in there?
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Done as requestedâŚ
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Is your opinion based on the lovely shade of beige that colors the town of Cary?
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Of those, Garner seems like it would make the most sense geographically.
Everything is easier to manage when itâs smaller - families, companies, cities, etc.
I understand the general benefits of growth - as @scotchman mentioned you can share costs and take advantage of economies of scale - but the obsession with constant growth that seems to affect many economic entities is bizarre to me sometimes.
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Nahhhh⌠itâs based on the great service that Cary provides for us citizens. As a side note, when I drive through much of Raleigh, it pretty much looks like the same beige to meâŚ
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LOL Ted, I was going to say something about Cary would not like the idea of merger but did not want to get a war-of-the-words started.
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Actually the more likely merger would be Cary and Morrisville. Cary pretty much surrounds Morrisville and manages their utilities. Also, Apex and Morrisville now use the 911 call center in Cary.
I think the preoccupation with growth makes sense in a way. As the population (and economy) of the country, and more generally the world, continues to grow, if you arenât growing as well you are actually falling behind in relative terms. Even more so in recent years, as more and more people move to economic hubs for the access to economics opportunities that they offer.
But, in general, you get economies of scale in the deployment of regular and routine services, so one would actually expect service quality to improve based solely on there being more users of municipal services. If you left that administration up to the same number of people, then yes it would be harder as those people will eventually hit their upper limit for sustained effort, but with a greater tax base you have more revenues and can hire more people to handle the work.
In this case, if Cary has better services, it may be due to household income (and subsequent tax dollars), rather than ease of administration.
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It also could be that Cary has a younger overall infrastructure while much of Raleighâs suburban infrastructure from the 60s & 70s is in need of more attention. Caryâs time will come as it ages.
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Admittedly, my frustration lies with companies that are laser-focused on scaling and growth at all costs more so than municipalities, but the annexation discussion falls in that same vein. Iâd rather Raleigh, as an economic hub that people are moving to in droves, concentrate on managing its natural growth rather than create it through land grabs. To get back to the topic, create density within the existing boundaries and you can more easily improve services over a smaller geographic area. Then expand geographically.
Iâm not as convinced as I used to be that unending population growth (whether within the US or in the world in general) is an assumption we can rely on in planning for the future. Municipalities certainly shouldnât assume they will always grow.
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This would be how I would look at annexing our neighbor cities as well.
If large parts of them had spread out infrastructure that was going to be very expensive as it aged and not create enough tax value to replace it I would give it a pass. If you could create some real corridors for density that would create more tax value than they take in then I would annex.
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Thatâs the key question. Would Raleigh annexing Garner spur more development there? Itâs something that is unknown.
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Cary also still has some greenfields left where they can get developer fees. The Town has kept saying for years now that the time for a property tax increase is coming, because theyâre running out of space to charge those fees and still maintain services that residents are accustomed to.
Cary to me seems to be a prime example of typical American suburban sprawl. Sure there are a few nice blocks of the original downtown area, but outside of that, itâs pretty much same old suburbia anytown USA.
But the same could be said for N. Raleigh, wake forest, and most other areas surrounding any city in the US. Cary just seems to be more snooty about projecting some sort of idealistic suburban utopia.
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You just perceive Cary as being snooty. We are just regular people who have the same problems in life as everybody else. People in North Carolina and Wake County especially love their homes in suburban neighborhoods and that is the lifestyle they want. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having that if that is what one desires. I love working in downtown Raleigh but I would never want to actually live there. It offers nothing that I desire.
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