a mere 480k,then? just 71k from 09 to 20 or is this group also way off? like i said everyone seems to slant population in some way. 20k fewer challenges over a decade then?
According to the Census’ latest 2021 estimate, we haven’t yet broken 470K.
feds must be right then, thx
Who knows whether they are correct or not, but they are the single source that is used nationally and the one that’s used for comparing cities using population data.
Lord knows that I want to see Raleigh crest 500K and reap the visibility that passing that benchmark will bring.
3 Likes
This is simply because she has a long history of experience on the City Council for years before she ran for Mayor - which was also the primary reason she got my vote. I don’t really care what ANY of these people running say they believe or stand for - what have they done that gives any weight, at all, to their thoughts and opinions? The possibility of a “Council of Derp” as @NoRaAintAllBad has coined is a legitimately worrisome one… since these people quite literally shape the future of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. They need to know basic functions of our city gov’t, development processes, etc - otherwise they will simply be a hinderance to the growth that is occuring and will continue to occur, either with the City Council, or in spite of them.
10 Likes
This is a worrisome trend across the country actually. It seems that we have become willing participants in putting people into office that have zero experience in how government actually runs.
10 Likes
NO idea what you could POSSIBLY be referring to. Sounds like a YUUUUGE, YUGE issue 
5 Likes
Without going into a partisan conversation, the greater point is that we are trending toward electing people on ideological lines and not governing experience. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there are candidates all over the place, at all levels of government that are running for office and have no real experience. MAB has experience. Whether one agrees with her or not, she knows how things get done and how to navigate the system to those ends.
13 Likes
Seems to me a council of Derp would either constantly throw up arbitrary roadblocks to any development because they don’t know what to do or how things work, or developers and their lawyers will run roughshod over them because they do know how things work. I fear it would be more the former.
1 Like
One interesting dynamic to this is also the planning commission. I feel I am remembering this correctly but during the Council of No from 2017-19, our PC was very pro-growth and supportive.
Then, after 2019, it completely flipped. Probably not to the same degree but the PC has been more cautious compared to previous years so I’m curious to see if it’ll flip flop again.
5 Likes
Was some guy really out here trying to play, and later quote, lose yourself by Eminem at the city council meeting?
2 Likes
Lol. Because North Hills reminds him of so much of 8-mile?
2 Likes
My dad voted for a particular presidential candidate in 2016 because he “wasn’t a part of the existing corrupt system.” He was hoping said candidate would shake things up, and he certainly did, just not in the ways he thought he would. I think that’s been a huge influence on the trend you’re referencing here: voters are (understandably) fed up with the way things are currently run on all levels of government and think bringing in an “outsider” who isn’t “influenced” by the “political machine” could bring about some positive change.
Instead, these candidates end up getting dropped into a world they don’t understand and just start spouting nonsense and complaining instead of actually doing anything (a few current House reps come to mind). They function better as talking heads than as actual representatives of the people.
Conclusion: yes, working in politics for too long can certainly make you a bit detached from the real world (cough term limits cough), but having virtually no experience whatsoever more often than not seems to breed mismanagement and incapacitation.
12 Likes
The proposal to reduce all downtown speed limits to 25 mph and eliminate 7 of 11 double turn lanes downtown was passed unanimously. They also want to look at mid-block crossings, like by Moore Square/Bida Manda, and eliminating all right on red downtown in coming months.
News story covering this here:
16 Likes
Any discussion of pedestrian safety outside of downtown? I appreciate downtown being the safest since it has by far the most pedestrians, but I’d prefer to see a unifying vision for the city as well.
A common criticism of the council recently has been that they’re too focused on downtown. On this site most people understand why - downtown is the tax base of the city and provides much of the money needed to support the infrastructure of the city as whole, it’s really important. It’s also one of the few areas where you can already live without a car.
I do believe personally, though, that there also needs to be a vision for how to transform the entire city of Raleigh into something more walkable and mixed-use, even the parts of Raleigh way outside the beltline. There are a bunch of changes that the council has done that could contribute to that. ADUs, ACUs, more parks and greenways, boulevard bike lanes requirements, etc. could all help improve sprawl, but they feel more piecemeal than unified. Is it just because the economics and culture of the suburbs make retrofitting too difficult?
6 Likes
There is information on the city’s website for sidewalk projects and the comprehensive pedestrian plan, etc. @RaleighBikeLady is an expert and can likely point you to more, especially as it relates to bikes. As you can see with the sidewalk projects, it’s a lot more than just downtown. Downtown likely gets a decent amount because of the volume of existing pedestrians and the relatively small size of the projects (called micro gaps in the plan), aka bang for the buck. As you point out, retrofitting the suburbs is more expensive and harder to justify to the myopic types who says things like, ‘there’s no one on buses [not true] so why do we fund them’, which misses the point.
I’m not sure if this has been covered somewhere else, but Baloch dropped out of the race for Cox’s council seat yesterday, supposedly to focus on another project of hers.
5 Likes
I’m suspicious of this now. Why didn’t Cox vote against it?
Finally wised up. Already lost 2 of the races she ran for with zero experience (first for City Council, then inexplicably for Mayor, an even higher office), probably realized going 0-3 wouldn’t be a good look 
3 Likes
North Hills (Midtown) comes to mind.
North Hills is a great example, but there you have huge tension with walkability over Six Forks. I was thinking more about council members overall visions rather than specific policies or developments. Looking over the candidates again, Jenn Truman actually does have this kind of vision on her site:
An equitable future and a sustainable future depend on building differently than we have for the past half century.
To build a different future, we need to:
- incentivize building mixed-use projects that center community and support small businesses
and
For a better sustainable future, we must:
- encourage hyper-local neighborhood businesses
This is exactly the kind of thing I want to see. Even if you can’t live fully car-free, just being able to safely walk to a couple neighborhood businesses would be huge, and a vision like this connects the dots on all the things the city has already been doing, like what @JetsJessie brought up with the pedestrian plan.
10 Likes