Lineberry Alliance Blogs

Our plan, our city, and our future

On September 8, 2009, the City of Raleigh website reported City Council Conceptually Approves Comprehensive Plan. I want to first start by commending Mayor Meeker and City Council for approving the plan. Next, a round of applause to the city staff, particularly Mitch Silver and Ken Bowers from the Planning Department, for their dedication and numerous hours put into this project. I was extremely impressed with the level of engagement from the District D Neighborhood Alliance (DDNA) and the expertise, patience, and perseverance they provided during the entire 10-month process.

City Council approved the 2030 Comprehensive Plan

However, I was not impressed with recent News & Observer coverage of the 2030 plan which belittled the free consulting work that DDNA provided over the past 10-months to City Council and the citizens of Raleigh. (Reference: Council adopts new vision for growth, Late tweaks add conflict to city plan)

These articles fail to mention that the DDNA group was following the process made by the planning department and city council. We presented our recommendations at the public hearing on August 13, 2009. Then we finalized those changes at our August meeting and submitted them to Councilor Crowder per the process the Mayor prescribed at the conclusion of the public hearing.

Unlike the N&O, I’ve been providing updates for DDNA on our participation with the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. This started in December 2008 when DDNA started to organize into citizen lead focus groups to review the plan. This was shortly after the plan was being rolled out and numerous public sessions were in the works. We started setting dates to meet, taking advantage of the many public sessions. We set milestones for the short time frame we had to review the plan during the holiday season.

DDNA members attended the December 2008 Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council (RCAC) meeting and filled the room for a public briefing at the start of the year to become more knowledgeable about the plan, how it was organized, and how we could participate.

As the DDNA focus groups got deeper into their review, we felt that we needed more time to thoroughly review the plan. In January 2009, I requested a comment extension from City Council that was denied in a 4-4 vote. Again, the N&O failed to pick up this story, as well as publish my letter to the editor.

DDNA study groups and other citizens rushed to get in comments before the January 31, 2009 deadline so they would be accepted against the draft plan. Approximately 1,200 comments were submitted, which was less than 1% of the citizen population in Raleigh who were commenting on the draft plan through the Limehouse Portal. DDNA submitted a large portion of these 1200 comments.

The plan went to the Planning Commission for several weeks. In March, DDNA was highly visible at the joint public hearing with City Council and the Planning Commission. The N&O did cover this portion of the plan.

The real work began for DDNA in May 2009. We started to look at the Future Land Use Map (FLUM) and decided to review District D in detail and submit comments against it. And now we’re back to August, where we submitted these changes at the public hearing and followed the process I described above.

With these facts at hand, I fail to see how the N&O can report that DDNA recommendations to the FLUM were “a flurry of late changes put forward by Councilman Thomas Crowder in his West Raleigh district have drawn the ire of some fellow councilors.” What? Did I miss a public hearing? According to the meeting notes (sorry for the word document) all councilors were present and “He [Jason Hibbets] pointed out they [DDNA] looked at the land use map for their neighborhood and they went into the map and suggested changes in some of the categories.”

I also noticed in the follow-up article, the tone changed from “a flurry of late changes put forward by Councilman Thomas Crowder” to “Crowder had put forward 53 land-use map revisions…recommended by a group of his West Raleigh constituents.”

These updates were the culmination of the DDNA collective study and we followed the process. I don’t see where DDNA or Councilor Crowder should be blamed because the City Council reviewed those changes at their final 2030 session this week. The only thing last minute is the choice to review our changes on a Tuesday, at high noon, after a holiday weekend.

To end on a positive note. I am also impressed with the documentation available at the Planning Raleigh 2030 portal on the cities’ website. The portal includes numerous updates for the 2030 home stretch, clearly outlines the proposed changes made, and includes Memo 17–District D Future Land Use Map recommendations [PDF]. I was finally glad to see my comments proposing a transit stop at Dix get some serious attention from staff. It’s nice to close this chapter and have the plan approved.

For me, this was a very rewarding experience. I was exposed to numerous planning terminology and have gained that experience, I got to lead a great group of citizen experts, and I feel that I had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. Even though some recommendations were rejected, many were accepted. Our participation made a difference. It made the plan better. Stronger. It protects our neighborhoods while at the same time allowing for future growth in the right places. And that’s what makes me proud of our motto: our plan, our city, and our future.

Tags: 2030, district D, growth, n&o, planning, raleigh

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under 2030 Comp Plan, DDNA, Raleigh City Council. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.