Coffee with Council

Every year around this time, Durham City Council members meet with their public, usually in conjunction with the various Partners Against Crime (PAC) meetings held monthly around the city. the idea is to listen to what various citizens consider to be funding priorities as the Council puts together the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

I made my usual appeals for enforcing speed limits on residential streets, enforcing noise ordinances, implementing the pedestrian and bike plans that Council spent so much damn money on developing over the past 4 years, and maybe finding some money to fix the Roxboro/Markham/Mangum intersection before the new downtown theater opens up and people from north Raleigh start coming to Durham for a night on the town.

I mean, really, is there another city of our size on the east coast that puts a traffic sign mounted on a cut steel barrel in the middle of a busy intersection?

The folks from the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association brought about 80 supporters to request more funding for greenways in general, and the Pearsontown and West Ellerbe Creek trails in particular. Very impressive presentation.

One thing that both surprised and disappointed me was the number of neighborhood representatives requesting sidewalks. Come on, Council, this is why you spent $315K on developing a pedestrian plan. Much of the money went for creating an inventory of existing sidewalks, and developing a priority list for constructing new sidewalks, improving existing sidewalks, and creating connections where sidewalks end. Take that blueprint, and put together a five year plan that says, these are the sidewalk projects that are going to be funded in each of the next five years, and this is why we've prioritized them in such a way. Otherwise, we're still back in the same old situation where whoever yells the loudest or is the best organized gets the goods. You basically guarantee continued inequity when it comes to infrastructure throughout the city. Some neighborhoods have the resources to lobby for improvements, others don't.

The best proposal i heard all night, though, came from the Durham People's Alliance, who called for a new position to be created at the Assistant City Manager level for Neighborhood Advocate:

We ask the City Council to hire a Neighborhood
Advocate at the assistant city manager level. The neighborhood advocate should be an attorney or an experienced city planner who would help tackle many of the issues raised at the Coffee with Councils.

The new position would assist neighborhoods and would evaluate rezonings, planning initiatives, and board of adjustment matters -- independently of other departments.

The neighborhood advocate would serve as a liaison between City and County governments and neighborhood groups –and provide support and staffing for a new neighborhood advisory committee.

I hope Council can find the money to create this position. Ten years from now, it will be looked back on as one of the best decisions made, if they do it.