Russ Stephenson
I got a chance to catch up with one of Raleigh’s At-large City Councilors, Russ Stepenson, between his day job, city councilor duties, and a recent Chamber of Commerce Intercity trip to Washington DC and Fairfax, Virginia. Russ is very knowledgeable about a variety of topics. Often on City Council, he’s asking lots of questions to make sure he understand the issues. As an At-Large Councilor, he represents citizens from all of Raleigh. It was great to get his thoughts on the Lightner Center, Raleigh’s New Development Code, water conservation, city council goals, and community involvement.
1) How does the proposed Alternate Resolution to the Lightner Center [PDF] impact citizens in Raleigh?
Memo #2 referenced in your question was produced by Councilors Crowder, Gaylord and myself. It explains why we think the current Lightner Center proposal is more expensive and less secure than it should be. Memo #2 also describes an alternate proposal that accomplishes three very important things for the citizens of Raleigh:
- It addresses critical security questions that were ignored in the current design
- Provides for the city’s long-term emergency response and coordination facility requirements in a much more cost-effective way
- Does not require a tax increase, or sacrifice of other citywide priorities such as public transit, bus shelters, road repairs, sidewalks, bike lanes, parks, greenways, sustainable initiatives, cops on the street, promotion of the arts, and economic development
2) We know you’ve got a background in design and architecture. Why should citizens get involved in Raleigh’s New Development Code?
The short answer for most neighbors who haven’t experienced infill pressure or nearby redevelopment pressure is that the new code probably won’t create significant changes in or near your neighborhood. Looking at the larger impact of how Raleigh will grow over the next twenty years, the new zoning code will have a dramatic effect on whether Raleigh will become a sprawled-out third-rate city, or whether it will grow more sustainably than in the past – in concert with Raleigh’s new Comprehensive Plan.
Thanks to Councilor Crowder and others, the Council formed a UDO (Unified Development Ordinance) Advisory Committee of representative stakeholders to advise Council throughout the course of the new code’s development. The neighborhood representatives are Phil Poe, Rodney Swink and Jeffrey Leiter. This committee has already delivered its first comments on the consultant’s “Diagnostic and Approach Report.” Their recommendations include suggestions about structuring the remainder of the code-drafting process to facilitate public outreach and committee engagement, as well as highlighting areas of the new code where particular attention should be focused. Probably the best resource for those wanting to keep up with neighborhood issues related to the UDO rewrite is a website created by Phil Poe for that purpose: http://www.fivepointscac.org/newraleighcode/
Another area that may be of interest to some neighborhoods will be where new development or redevelopment is likely to happen in the near term. In at least one of these areas, the consultant, Code Studio, will write a customized ‘form-based overlay zoning code’ that will provide a fine-grained set of rules for urban form that is less suburban and more compact, walkable, mixed-use, and transit friendly (bus and rail). Since there are limited funds, the consultant is currently scheduled to create the first form-based district, with city staff being responsible for all remaining ones. Since there will likely be more areas of town interested in getting this special zoning treatment, citizens may want to track the selection process for these form-based zoning districts to let Council know if more funds should be directed to creating more of these form-based districts early on.
3) Is there any progress being made on changing how Raleigh water customers are charged for water usage to encourage conservation?
Ever since the drought of 2007-08, several Councilors have been pressing city staff to move from a water resources philosophy of consumption to one of conservation. In the wake of continual calls by the administration for utility rate increases, our message has been simple: the cheapest new water capacity is from conservation. Rather than continuing to encourage the discretionary use of tens of millions of gallons of drinking water a day for hot-month irrigation, the city should be creating a variety of incentives to reduce that summer peak, thereby slowing the need for additional rate increases to build new water treatment plants and reservoirs.
We have emphasized the need for incentives in four areas:
- Tiered water rates: The idea here is to set rates so that low water users pay less and high water users pay more.
- Conservation equipment rebates: In addition to the water-conserving toilet rebates already in place, the city needs to implement rebates to encourage installation of additional conservation equipment such as efficient appliances, high-efficiency irrigation equipment, rainwater cisterns, and more.
- User fee rebates: While raising development fees to help reduce the ratepayer’s burden of paying for new treatment plants, the city should offer rebates to applicants willing to certify no drinking water will be used outside their buildings. In this scenario, the city benefits whether the applicant chooses the rebate or not: Those choosing the higher fee in order to irrigate will help pay down our utility capital debt. Those choosing not to irrigate will help keep our summer capacity peak down, reducing our need to build expensive treatment plants and reservoirs.
- Stormwater reuse: Here is an opportunity to incentivize the installation of stormwater capture devices such as cisterns. Capturing rainwater not only reduces the downstream flooding and stream bank erosion impacts of stormwater runoff, but also provides an alternative to using drinking water for irrigation and other outdoor use. Property owners installing approved systems should be able to amortize part of the cost through reductions in their monthly stormwater utility fee.
To date, all of these measures have been proposed, but none have been enacted. Please contact the Mayor and Council and tell them that we need to give citizens conservation choices that will help them reduce their water utility costs over time – both in their utility bills and in the city’s utility rates.
4) What do you hope to accomplish on City Council this year?
Many of my near-term goals for Raleigh are early steps towards the city’s long term health and competitiveness. Some of my 2010 goals are described in my answers above:
- Resolving the Lightner Center question in a way that provides the most benefits for Raleigh citizens,
- Ensuring our current zoning code-writing process is open, inclusive and meets our sustainable growth goals, and
- Setting fiscal policies that encourage wiser and more equitable resource management.
Other 2010 goals include:
- A strong school system: I am continuing to work with the School Board, County Commissioners and other local municipalities to make sure our public school system does not lose ground in these difficult economic and partisan political times, but continues to improve all student achievement. We cannot afford to lose our public schools’ strong quality of life and economic development draw that has been so successful in attracting quality growth to Wake County.
- Responsiveness to tough economic conditions: I will work to ensure Council adopts a 2010-11 budget that is responsive to the difficult economic conditions being experienced by most Raleigh citizens. That means no tax increases and no fee increases that don’t include rebates and incentives to keep customer and city costs down.
- Raleigh’s transit future: Our city’s long-term prosperity hinges on our ability to reduce our dependence on expensive polluting fossil fuels, sprawling land consumption, expensive new far-flung infrastructure, and wasting increasing amounts of time in congestion. I will continue working regionally to build support for a 21st century transit system with broad service improvements that will support more sustainable growth.
- Day-to-day responsiveness to citizens: In addition to keeping my eye on Raleigh’s long range goals, it is important to me to help solve citizens’ day-to-day problems. We have a great city staff that works hard to provide high quality services to all citizens, but there is always room for improvement, so don’t hesitate to contact me to get answers to your questions and solutions to your problems. (919) 828-3699 | Russ@RussStephenson.com
5) As an At-large councilor, you represent the entire city. What’s one piece of advice you would give to communities to help engage citizens to become more involved with their Citizen Advisory Councils (CACs) and city government?
The key to any effective community is good communication. While community engagement takes many forms, the most cost-effective method presenting itself these days is in using the Internet to host community information and dialogue. While many Raleigh communities are using email and web-based discussion groups, the city has an important, but un-fulfilled opportunity to host and expand access to these community communication tools. Fortunately, the city’s website is being redesigned (powered by Red Hat), so we look forward to a vastly improved tool for accessing city information. But the city needs to go further in two ways. The first way is by taking the lead in narrowing the digital divide so all Raleigh communities can grow in capacity and benefit from these new information and community-building resources. The second way is by being more proactive in soliciting citizen involvement in and responsibility for decisions that effect our daily lives.
Thanks Councilor Stephenson for answering our questions.
You can find out more about Russ Stephenson at russforraleigh.com.
Tags: at-large, CAC, community, conservation, engagement, goals, Lightner Center, newraleighcode, new_code, Raleigh City Council, re-use water, tiered water rates, udo