Yeah, WRAL’s headline here is a little muddled about what actually happened yesterday. Anna Johnson’s story in the N&O last week did a much better job explaining it.
The funding itself was approved back in August. The county and city (of Raleigh) put out an RFP and the the city (of Cary) was the only applicant. The Board voted to approve Cary’s proposal, and I suspect the Raleigh City Council will do the same without controversy.
Of the $193 million price tag, no more than $59 million (before adjusting for inflation) will come from from interlocal funds. The county and city approved spending up to $2.36 million annually for 25 years, to leverage $35 million in debt. Obviously, it’s easier to get a request approved if you’re only asking the the county to stump up less than a third of the cost rather than asking them to eat the whole thing.
As a resident of Cary I would be supportive of a Raleigh-Cary merger, or even unifying all of Wake County into a single entity somewhat like Fairfax County, VA… but that aside, to state that all interlocal funds must be spent in the part of the county occupied by the City of Raleigh seems… not right.
And spending the interlocal funds on something that can broadly benefit county residents rather than just attract more tourism and business from outside the area is a great outcome. Back in my hometown of Asheville, the body that allocates hotel tax funds tends to be much more selfish with it and spend it almost entirely on tourism plays.
I think the report uses sub-urban to describe places that are in the grey area between areas that are organically urban and those that what we typically think of as suburban – low density, cul-de-sacs, and strip malls.
I agree, I hope we can be included in the future too. I’m not sure that the report has a hard threshold on retail. Five Points certainly might be aspirational in my list, but with the right planning could certainly take advantage of the street grid and transit access to be a true walkup. I’d say the same about the small downtowns. The bones are often there in a way that can’t be easily reproduced in a greenfield location.
My wife and I actually love Hampton Inns and actively make those our default choice when we travel. Two weekends ago I had a trip where I was in Columbia on a Friday for work and then Charlotte over the weekend for fun and I stayed at a Hampton Inn in both cities and had a very pleasant stay in both places. So if Raleigh got some more Hampton Inns, that would be great, honestly, and attracting some more middle school basketball tournaments sounds like it would be really cool as well. The kids love those.
But, yes, there are families in America that either can’t or don’t wish to pay for fancy five-star hotels, and it’s actually quite fine for elected officials to treat those families like they matter and are worthy of consideration, too, and the whole premise of this quote seems extremely classist, honestly.
BTW, I know some folks have said “I can’t tell when Dave is trolling and when he’s being serious,” so I would just like to clarify that no really, I went to Charlotte, for fun (I’ve been meaning to post about it in the “Other Cities” thread), and I stayed at a Hampton Inn while I was there, which I think might make me the Normiest Normie Who Ever Normcored, and I’m choosing to lean into that. #liveyourbestlife
I think the amazing thing is that people are mad Cary is getting a slice of a fund to which they contribute. If people are cool with such a fund I would like to propose a home improvement fund that everyone contributes to and I use to buy things for my house.
Yeah, to put this in context, the city and county have allocated $1.21 billion in funding from interlocal revenues between FY 2020 and FY 2034. $45 million is earmarked for Town of Cary Sports Facilities Maintenance, and $35 million is earmarked for this project to construct an indoor sports facility on the site of what is currently the Cary Towne Center. (Another $24 million of debt payments on the indoor sports facility would extend past FY 2034.)
So that’s a total of $80 million, or about 6.6 percent of total spending. And that’s everything that’s currently allocated to spend on anything located outside the boundaries of the city of Raleigh. (It’s possible, but not especially likely, that projects from outside of Raleigh could get some small share of the $46.6 million left to allocate to “medium projects.”) As it stands, Raleigh is currently slated to get 93.4 percent of interlocal funding–way, way more than it’s fair share. Complaints that Cary is getting–gasp!–6.6 percent of total county funding are really, really hard to take seriously.
Cary is 170/486 = 35% the size of Raleigh
Durham is 280/486 = 57% the size of Raleigh. (just for comparison sake; I thought Cary and Durham might be closer in size)
Cary is probably under-represented in a lot of county spending. But I"m just guessing at that.
I’ve stayed in that Hampton Inn in DT Columbia no less than 100 nights (used to have to go there a lot for work). Right next to the Liberty Tap Room. No complaints whatsoever.
You meant Brier Creek
But this is weird. I just was by there today, which is unusual, and noticed that specific crane and was wondering what it was. Meant to post here…
Where does this money come from, no city produces money, it came from hard working people through fees and taxes, so why not let the ppl have a say in what gets funded. Without us hardworking happy citizens all 3 cities would be dust.
