Occupation & employer: Change Management Consultant, Pinwheel Associates
Years lived in Raleigh: 23
Raleigh continues to receive accolades from major publications. The fundamentals that put us in the national spotlight, and the spotlight itself, have resulted in a steady stream of growth. The city has struggled to manage this growth effectively for the benefit of both current and future residents. COVID and the aftereffects have had significant impacts on small businesses and our downtown. A lack of a cohesive and proactive approach has caused our downtown to suffer and many long-time businesses close.
I am running specifically because I believe the city has lost a focus on ensuring all voices are heard and that we have a sustainable plan for growth. This includes supporting law enforcement while developing a comprehensive plan that serves both economic activity and our most vulnerable citizens. If we do not take into account all the needs in our community we will end up with lack of progress and left with rising costs and a depleted city core. As we grow it is important that Raleigh provides opportunities for everyone and that council works together to ensure our city takes into account quality of life elements like ensuring we meet our housing demand, public safety, and economic development.
2. If you are a candidate for a district seat, please identify your priorities for your district. If you are an at-large or mayoral candidate, please identify the three most pressing issues the city faces.
Wake County is growing by 50 people/day which means a focus on the following are needed:
Area familiarity
I have called the Triangle home since 1986 growing up in Durham, moving to Cary in high school and attending NC State in 1997. I served as a volunteer for the Raleigh Rescue Mission and Communities in Schools, leveraging my French minor to teach students from the Congo and Haiti in math. For nearly 40 years I have seen our area evolve and fostered relationships with varied members of our community from all backgrounds and interests. This intimate familiarity of our area provides me with context to know what has happened and why, which will aid in my ability to weigh issues with a deep perspective of our citizens in mind.
Relevant Education
I earned my MBA from UNC with specific coursework in urban planning learning how cities grow responsibility taking into account infrastructure needs, environmental impact, socio-economic equity, financing, financial modeling, and leveraging grants, tax credits and public/private partnerships.
Civic Experience
I am a founding member and Treasurer of SkateRaleigh, a public private partnership with the City of Raleigh bringing a skate park to the future site of Smokey Hollow Park in Downtown Raleigh. This effort using private investment on city land exposed me to how our city works, the incentives and needs of various stakeholders and how to make progress in the face of various obstacles. Ultimately the park was completed in only 18 months from inception to the first skater hitting a ramp.
Professional Experience
I have spent nearly 15 years in organizational development driving professional development initiatives through companies as large as Fortune 250. Since the pandemic, based on the request of my clients, I have focused more specifically on executive coaching and change management helping organizations make shifts in direction while ensuring that all stakeholder perspectives are heard, aligned where possible, and paths forward are pursued ethically and methodically. This experience seems particularly relevant if we look at our growing city as a perpetual change management exercise. Change is inevitable, how well we plan, execute, and adapt to this change is reliant on city leaders who understand how to do this well. This experience bringing all parties together is the key reason I have been endorsed by the North Carolina Democratic Party Jewish Caucus.
3. In 2021, the Raleigh City Council enacted a missing middle policy to allow for the construction of new, diverse types of housing across the city. More than 2,000 newly-allowed units have been added to the city's housing stock under the policy, yet there has been pushback from residents, including lawsuits. Do you support Raleigh's missing middle housing policy as is, or do you think it needs amending? If you feel it needs to be changed, please explain.
Based on the well documented backlash to Missing Middle, the public notice of the text change associated with these policies seem, in hindsight, insufficient in ensuring citizens felt engaged.
Ultimately there is still confusion around what Missing Middle is and its motives to drive relative affordability based on location by providing housing types between single family homes and multifamily apartment buildings, and thus a "middle" product type. With rising land and construction costs, the only chance of having lower cost housing without subsidies is to build smaller with gentle density.
There is also quite a bit of contradiction, even among the opponents of the policy that range from those uncomfortable with smaller unit product types that put housing in reach for citizens who would otherwise not be able to afford to live in affected affluent single family neighborhoods to advocates for affordable housing that say either the policy doesn't do enough to ensure affordability or that new market-rate construction risks driving gentrification in historically underserved neighborhoods.
With that said, I believe a series of education and citizen feedback sessions should be conducted to ensure that we find a path to accommodating this rising demand for housing while causing minimal disruption to current residents.
Thus far, the feedback from concerned citizens, including currently impacted property owners, is around setbacks from with adjacent properties, tree protection, and height incompatibility with established neighborhoods, all of which represent areas that can be considered for adjustments and clarity. Beyond that, higher density development should be subject to objective engineering studies to ensure that new development does not adversely impact stormwater runoff and sewer capacity.
4. Raleigh has many funds, programs, and partnerships in place aimed at addressing affordable housing, but still has a deficit of some 23,000 affordable units. What more can the city do to secure affordable housing, and what more can it do to ensure that low-income residents don't face displacement?
Raleigh has a housing shortage at all price points. Nationally our housing starts have not recovered from the 2008 financial crisis in which 2 million home starts per year fell to roughly 600,000 per year and never fully recovered.
If our goal is affordability, we must address both income restricted housing and market rate housing supply. Income restricted housing focuses on citizens making less than our area median income (AMI). However, for many citizens earning our area median income or slightly above, our housing market is still out of reach.
To improve affordability for those that make at or above AMI, the only path is to increase our housing supply. Without this, housing will remain unattainable as buyers who can afford to spend more will continue to use their means to buy, tear down, and rebuild our existing naturally occurring affordable housing.
Income restricted units typically require some subsidies which defray the land cost, construction cost, and financing. For income restricted housing I would like to see more partnerships with developers who are experienced in and comfortable building affordable housing, using preferred and/or tax increment financing (TIF), targeting city owned land to control our land cost. I would also like to see more rental assistance and assistance for longtime cost-constrained homeowners to maintain and repair their homes either in the way of tax abatement or direct financial assistance.
Beyond that, often hidden costs associated with delays with permitting and approvals unnecessarily increase the cost of projects that I would like to see eliminated with more efficient processing.
5. The recent resignation of GoTriangle's CEO raises questions about the future of the county and regional transit strategy. How do you see the future of transit in Raleigh when it comes to Bus Rapid Transit, microtransit, and commuter and regional rail projects?
Public transportation is at the core of any city. If we can not move people around efficiently and effectively without a reliance on single occupancy vehicles it will ensure our quality of life deteriorates. Public transportation is not a single focus issues as it involves zoning impacts, economic opportunity, and multi-government cooperation.
The lack of progress on bus rapid transit, considering the overwhelming bond support, is frustrating. I believe that we need to immediately implement the BRT to ensure our businesses have access to the employers they need and our citizens have expanded access to jobs and commuting options. We need to actively work with the community, government entities and developers to achieve this vision.
In addition, we need to continue to push for ways to increase transportation infrastructure to ensure our growth maintains a sustainable path and we set a vision for the future demands not just our immediate needs.
6. A common complaint from residents is that the city council doesn't do enough public engagement, with the plan to relocate Red Hat Amphitheater being one recent example. Do you agree with this assessment? If so, what more should the city government and council do to engage residents with city business?
I do wish there had been more public debate, awareness, and consensus of plans considered regarding the Red Hat relocation.
I believe that we would have landed in the same place, but in a way where we all celebrated retaining this key cultural amenity for all citizens and to support our small businesses downtown as well as, the quality of life and enrollment of our downtown universities as emphasized by Shaw University President Dr. Paulette Dillard at the October 15City Council session on the subject.
As for keeping the public informed, council meetings are recorded, minutes are published, and I would like to see a more representative level of citizen engagement to ensure that a balanced view of all issues are presented, but we need ALL parties to be involved. All are welcome, and required, for us to evolve together. I believe that our Community Engagement office can be a wonderful resource, as would a better working relationship with a diverse set of Citizens Advisory Councils, which can be a helpful resource to streamline communications between citizens and the city.
I would also like to ensure that public comments are reserved for city issues that the city can impact rather than co-opting public comments with divisive international issues out of the city's control.
7. Downtown Raleigh has had a rough five years following the COVID pandemic with the transition to working from home and business owners reporting an increase in crime and other issues. Many see keeping Red Hat Amphitheater downtown as a positive step; what else does the city need to do to help downtown with its recovery and plan for its future?
As our downtown businesses and residents continue to contend with the aftermath of COVID we must ensure that downtown is both safe and has positive foot traffic that supports our downtown businesses.
The best path to achieving a safer downtown is to ensure that our police force is fully staffed which relies upon increased pay to attract and retain top officers otherwise lost to neighboring municipalities. My opponent voted no on the budget that increased police pay. Luckily that budget passed anyway but there is still more work to do.
To achieve positive foot traffic, making downtown a place people want to go, we must make way for residential projects in our downtown to bring a neighborhood feel that is more welcoming while absorbing our growing demand for housing. My opponent's voting record, particularly on the West and Peace project and opposition to the vote to make way for the necessary move of Red Hat Amphitheater, seems to have a bias against new market rate residential and downtown amenities, which makes attracting people to downtown more difficult.
8. Since 2012, the City of Raleigh has paid more than $4 million in settlements to 47 individuals, families, and estates related to RPD officer's use of excessive force and other unconstitutional interactions. What are your thoughts on the current culture at RPD? For what changes would you advocate to improve the culture of policing in Raleigh, if any?
There is no doubt that our nation has a well-documented track record of inequities in policing and over-policing, particularly for black and brown communities. However, Raleigh's supremely talented chief, Estella Patterson has worked tirelessly to build our community's trust and for that, I applaud her.
More work is certainly warranted, in the way of de-escalation training and mental health support for our police officers who place themselves in harm's way every time they put on their uniform and subject themselves to consistent low-grade trauma as a result.
Beyond disciplinary processes already in place for the occasional "bad apple", we must continue our work to foster community policing, in which officers establish positive relationships with the communities they serve. We must ensure that our police force is fully staffed so they have the help they need to do their jobs as safely as possible with the support they need to do so.
9. Some municipalities, such as Durham, have seen success with crisis response units that deploy trained workers to respond to non-violent behavioral health and quality of life calls for service. Should Raleigh consider such a crisis response program that's NOT housed in the police department?
I am a huge fan of the H.E.A.R.T. program adopted in my hometown of Durham. As for where that unit is housed, I have no preference, assuming that a unit outside of the police department is in close coordination with Raleigh police to ensure that calls are triaged appropriately and to ensure that the members of alternative response teams have timely safe support from police for the small percentage of mental health crisis calls that do turn violent.
10. The next city council will transition from two-year to four-year terms with staggered elections. What other changes, if any, should the city council make to how voters elect its members? Should any additional changes be put to voters in a referendum or should the council make those decisions?
Yes, our city council should have at least one additional district seat due to overall growth of the community. For example, District A ranges from the increasingly dense Midtown area around North Hills to past 540 which can often have very different interests and advocacy. It is important that as we grow, distinct areas have advocates for their main areas of interest.
An odd number of seats would ensure that each and every vote lands in a decisive place rather than an evenly split vote resulting in a "no".