The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved installation of a sidewalk on Merwin Road, despite a majority of residents in the area voting against it.

In a report to City Manager Russell Allen, Raleigh's public works director writes that 73 percent of homeowners in the west Raleigh neighborhood attending a public meeting about the sidewalk, and 64 percent of those voted again a sidewalk on either side of the road.

Immediately after City Manager Russell Allen reported those facts to the council, Thomas Crowder, whose District D includes Merwin Road, moved to install the sidewalk.

More to come in next week's Midtown Raleigh News.

Three of the eight members of Raleigh's City Council came up with another idea this week about what to do about the the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center.

Start over.

In a two-page memorandum, councilors Thomas Crowder, Bonner Gaylord and Russ Stephenson, asked city staff to figure out how much it would cost to renovate the current police headquarters at 110 S. McDowell St. and build a new emergency communications center just for 911 dispatchers.

"At a time when some are calling for burdensome tax increases and others are calling for painful sevice cuts, we believe there is a middle path that is responsive to our long-term emergency services needs -- without raising taxes or overshadowing other important current and future needs of our citizens," the three wrote in a letter to the rest of the council and Raleigh City Manager J. Russell Allen.

The proposed Lightner Center had been in the works for years, but catapolted into the public arena once Allen unveiled the proposed way to pay for it -- by bundling it with $250 million worth of public works projects and raising property taxes by 8 percent.

If built, it would house police administrators and detectives, fire adminstration, the emergency communications center, traffic management staff and the city's information technology department.

The Lightner Center, named for the Raleigh funeral director who served for one term and was the city's first and only black mayor, would be 17-stories high and 300,000 square feet. It'd be the biggest, and most expensive, city building. 

There's little about the building that hasn't become controversial, with differing opinions from different city political corners weighing in on whether its needed, what it should cost and who should decide if the public safety center should be built.

The most controversial aspects have been the proposed tax increase to pay for the
building, a call to have the decision to build decided by voters at in
a citywide bond referendum and original plans to include up to $705,000
in public art in the project.

The request for a tax increase comes in the midst of an economic recession, and Raleigh's entire council has gotten hundreds of e-mails protesting the project, or asking to delay the project until the economy gets better.

Many of the opposition letters were identical, and appear to be a push from conservative quarters that think the issue should be decided by voters and not by city councilors.

Mary-Ann Baldwin, one of the council members, said she doesn't think the plan rolled out by Crowder, Gaylord and Stephenson meets the needs of the city, and reiterated that hte current 50-year-old bulding is falling apart and not suitable.

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, who wants the project to go forward in order to cash in on what he says is $50 million in savings, hopes it will still pass, but with a different funding scenario. Some of the remote operations projects can be delayed, and the cost of the building might be able to be absorbed by impact or facilities fees. Meeker also asked that the art budget be narrowed to a third of the size. 

The council has avoided taking action on the Lightner Center three times this year, and it's expected to be back in front of them at their next meeting on Feb. 16.

City Manager Russell Allen has told Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker that he will accept any decision by the City Council to lower his recent $10,000 raise.

Lowering Allen’s salary would be in violation of the city manager’s employment agreement, which states that the “employee’s base salary or other benefits shall not be decreased during the term of the agreement.”

But Meeker said Allen won’t object should that occur. “Russell Allen has told me that if the council wants to adjust his salary based on budgetary reasons he will not hold us to the written contract,” Meeker said.

Meeker said last month that the council would revisit its May 5 decision in light of public anger over Allen’s annual salary being increased by 4.76 percent from $210,000 to $220,000.

Allen’s raise is three-quarters of a percent more than any other city employee would be eligible for under the city manager’s proposed $696 million budget for next year. The raise was criticized by a number of speakers at Tuesday night’s public hearing to discuss the city manager’s budget.

Meeker said Allen’s raise will be reviewed after the council has looked over the entire budget. The council will meet each Monday at 4 p.m. until a budget is passed.

The City Council spent 95 minutes in closed session during its May 2 meeting discussing Allen's performance review. Only Councilman Thomas Crowder voted against the raise after that discussion. Councilman Rodger Koopman did not attend the meeting.

Some councilors wanted to give Allen a larger raise than he received, while others wanted no raise.
Meeker said today that the purpose of the raise was to reward Allen for a job well done.

“What the council was attempting to do was reward an outstanding manager for excellent performance,” Meeker said.

Critics of the raise have said the council’s decision was tone-deaf given the current economic environment and the budget cuts being implemented by the city. The decision drew even more criticism after Allen released his budget, which calls for smaller raises for city employees, the elimination of a cost-of-living adjustment and higher health care costs for some.

“It’s certainly a perception issue. It’s not a lot of dollars but it’s a perception issue,” Meeker said. “And the council pays attention to perception so we’ll take a look at it.”

A quick follow-up to last week's decision by the City Council to give City Manager Russell Allen a 5 percent raise.

The vote was not unanimous. It was 6-1 with District D Councilman Thomas Crowder voting no. (Councilman Rodger Koopman was absent and excused from the meeting.)

Fellow architect Ted Van Dyk recently announced that he will run against Crowder in the October election. District D covers southwest Raleigh.

Last year at this time Raleigh was mired in a historic drought and Mayor Charles Meeker's used much of his state-of-the-city address to talk about the need for water conservation. During his address on Monday, Meeker noted that water issues have taken a backseat to other matters this year, thanks both to the tanking economy and the fact that Raleigh has received 50 inches of rain since last spring.

But Meeker still used a portion of his 12-minute speech to talk about conservation. He said the city needs to renew its focus on conservation by making a push to install more low-flow devices and to use less drinking water to irrigate lawns. (The city is also expected to adopt tiered water rates later this year, a system that charges customers higher rates the more water they consume.) More notably, Meeker on Monday took a jab at City Council members who have made an issue of rising water rates.

Raleigh increased water rates by 15 percent in July, and City Manager Russell Allen anticipates that another 15 percent increase will be needed to pay for expensive capital improvements that are now being made to the system. Meeker said Monday that Raleigh's water rates remain among the lowest in the state and he went on to explain why conservation should be pursued even if it temporarily increases water rates: 

"This is a challenge very simply because you sell water to pay for the improvements ... at the same time the City Council doesn't want to increase the rates because the customers don't like rate increases and the customers happen to vote in city elections. But our community has got to be better than that ... we don't need to be using drinking water to irrigate our lawns as much as we are ... even though it may not be popular in the short run because it will affect rates, it's the right thing to do in the long run."

This debate over water rates is likely to resurface at the City Council's special budget work session in March and then continue on until a new budget is adopted in May or June. Councilmen Thomas Crowder, Rodger Koopman and Russ Stephenson have all expressed their displeasure with water rates increasing and are likely to press hard for the city to find some way to spare residents a rate increase this year. Meeker made his position clear in Monday's speech. 

As the only Republican on the Raleigh City Council since the 2007 elections, Philip Isley has gotten used to hearing Democrats gripe about the state of the country under President Bush.

Now, with the election of Barack Obama, Isley is learning what life will be like with a Democrat in the White House.

During Tuesday’s City Council meeting Democrats on the council made repeated mentions to the wonder of Obama’s campaigning skills and the bright future in store for America under a new Obama administration.

A mention of human rights led Mayor Charles Meeker to say America’s human rights record should start improving now that Obama is replacing Bush. A discussion of how to reform the city’s Citizens Advisory Councils led Councilman Thomas Crowder to mention how Obama’s victorious campaign showed what can happen when you empower everyday citizens.

When Isley questioned whether the city should still proceed with plans to build a $226 million new public safety center, Meeker noted that the council wouldn’t vote to provide the funding until next summer. By that time, Meeker said, the Obama administration could have turned the economy around.

Isley, who had until then mostly ignored the Obama lovefest going on around him, finally piped up.
“I think that’s the fourth or fifth Obama reference today!” he cried.

A smile creeped over the mayor’s face.
“I said that for Mr. Isley’s benefit,” Meeker said.

It looks like we can finally put the Broughton High School parking lot issue to bed.

The Raleigh City Council voted 7-1 this afternoon to allow Broughton to build a parking lot with up to 100 spaces on the school's historic front lawn. It represents a victory for students, parents and staff over alumni who had opposed the parking lot request.

The lone dissenter today was City Council Thomas Crowder, a Broughton alumnus.

The City Council delayed taking a vote Tuesday on a plan to speed up the process for creating neighborhood conservation overlay districts (NCOD), which are seen as a way to regulate teardowns, or the practice of replacing older homes with larger ones.

Changes to the NCOD process have been under discussion for months, and several council members said Tuesday that it's high time the city moved forward. But Councilmen Thomas Crowder and Russ Stephenson wanted to take a closer look at the proposal before voting on it, and thus it will be at least another two weeks before the council takes it up. The proposal will be discussed at the council's Comprehensive Planning Committee meeting next week.

Overlay districts set standards for new construction.Neighborhoods typically request the overlay district and more than 50 percent of property owners must sign on.