The city of Raleigh wants residents to unleash their grease.
City crews will collect used cooking oil and grease from resident's homes as part of a pilot program being enacted for the holiday season. The collected oils will be converted into biofuels by Triangle Biofuels, a local company that's buying the grease from the city for $0.25 a gallon.
The free program is up and running, so residents can begin putting their grease out on the curb along with their trash and recycling once they contact the city's Solid Waste Service Department to arrange a pickup.
The program will run through Jan. 15 and includes pick-ups at churches and places of worship.
Pickup won't be automatic, residents need to call solid waste workers at 996-6890 to arrange a pickup at least a day before their weekly trash day.
The grease should be in a sealed container, like a milk jug or old coffee can, but can not be kept in glass containers.
Questions? Call the city of Raleigh's Public Utilities Department at 857-4540.

It appears that Raleigh City Council member Mary Ann Baldwin used $1,800 of her campaign war chest to pay for an upcoming trip to China with the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
Baldwin said the trip offers chances to learn about the Chinese economy and viewed the trip as an extension of her council duties.
The trip, scheduled for Oct. 24 to Nov. 1, includes nine days worth of sight-seeing, with stops at China’s Great Wall and Tiananmen Square. Harvey Schmitt, the chamber’s president, said the trip is being billed as a way for participate to familiarize themselves with China to gain a better understanding of the nation’s economy and people.
Baldwin she used $500 of her own money, in addition to the $1,799 that her campaign paid for.
"You’re kind of between a rock and a hard place," Baldwin said about the decision to use campaign funds. "You don’t want to use tax-payer money for something like that.”
Nancy McFarlane, a fellow Raleigh city council member, is also going on one of the three trips the chamber organized this fall to China.
Baldwin, a marketing consultant elected to the council in 2007, is one of five people running for the two council-at-large positions in Tuesday’s Oct. 6 municipal elections.

The City Council voted unanimously today to include a median, and not a center turn lane, in a widened 1.3-mile section of Falls of Neuse Road.

The vote ends several months of debate over the road’s design. City and state officials had recommended that the widening of Falls of Neuse from Raven Ridge Road to Fonville Road include a median with interspersed turn lanes.

A coalition of residents along the stretch had been lobbying for a five-lane design that included a center turn lane. N&O reporter Sarah Lindenfeld Hall explained both sides of the issue in a recent North Raleigh News article.

The approved road design includes a 17.5-foot-wide median and traffic signals at Raven Ridge Road, Dunn Road and Wide River Drive.

Although the council voted for the median design, it also agreed to address several concerns raised by residents. Six months after the road widening is complete, the city will review the road’s performance to see if any additional traffic signals are needed. The city has also agreed to improve landscaping at several points along the stretch being widened.

The 1.3-mile section is part of a $29 million project to realign Falls of Neuse Road through Wakefield Plantation and add a new bridge over the Neuse River below Falls Lake. The city is contributing $15.2 million toward the project, with the remaining funding coming from state and federal sources.

Falls of Neuse is a state road.

As many television viewers may have noticed, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker greeted President Barack Obama when Air Force One arrived at RDU on Wednesday.

Meeker, a fellow Democrat, said this was the second time he'd met Obama, the first being a brief encounter on the Wednesday before the November election when the future president was in town for a campaign event.

Meeker said Wednesday's meeting was also brief and "entirely ceremonial."

"I thanked him for coming back to Raleigh and working hard on this health care and he said we’re going to get it done and got in the car and took off."

Raleigh residents may have noticed over the last six weeks that more of the plastic items they put in their green recycling bins are not being picked up by the city’s Solid Waste Services trucks.

The city hasn’t changed the rules about what plastic it accepts (only bottles and soft plastic beverage rings), but it had become more lax about rejecting illegal items during the first six months of this year.

On Jan. 1, Raleigh went from sorting recycling at the curb to having its processor sort it for the city. The processor is the company that collects, sorts and finds a market for Raleigh’s recycling. The processor pays Raleigh based on the tonnage of recycling it delivers.

Linda Leighton, a waste reduction specialist with the city, said when trash collectors stopped sorting at the curb they started just dumping the recycling bins no matter what was in them.
“Our crews became pretty lax,” she said. “They would just dump and go, dump and go.”

Soon the processor started complaining that Raleigh’s deliveries had too much contamination, meaning it included too many unacceptable items. The processor has to hand pick those items out and pay to dispose of them.

If Raleigh’s level of contamination is more than 3 percent, the processor may subtract that amount from the city’s tonnage, thus reducing the amount of money Raleigh gets for its recycling.

In recent weeks the city has been more proactive about not picking up illegal plastics. It’s also begun leaving behind a note reminding residents of what plastic items are allowed.
“From January until now they got used to throwing in anything they felt like throwing in,” Leighton said. “But we’ve got to get them back on the right track.”

Leighton has also recorded a two-minute video that can be viewed here.

Next month the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual planning retreat in Pinehurst. The two-day event will include an evening reception for candidates running for the Raleigh City Council. Last week Mark Enloe, a candidate for mayor, criticized the chamber for holding the event in Pinehurst instead of Raleigh. He said he would attend if the event was moved to the Raleigh convention center or a local hotel.

"We need the leaders in this area to show a stronger commitment to the cause of bringing revenue to the city and providing the services that the citizens have paid for," Enloe said on his campaign blog. "I think the decision to host this event in Pinehurst reflects on the mindset that has resulted in the decline in vitality in Raleigh that I've spoken about."

Harvey Schmitt, the chamber's president, said that for at least the last 15 years the chamber has rotated its annual meeting between Pinehurst and the Grandover Resort in Greensboro. Schmitt said both of those venues are members of the chamber and the two-day conference is paid for with member dues. Between 150 and 250 people typically attend, most of them being members.

As for why the event is held outside of Raleigh, Schmitt said the chamber believes it results in fewer destractions and a better conference.

"The reason we do it is because we get better results from the meeting when we hold it away from distractions," Schmitt said. "The reality is folks hold meetings out of town from time to time ... that's part of the reason they're often called retreats. You take folks away from their normal environment and get them to concentrate on something that they don't normally do and if you're too close to their daily routine it's too easy to get distracted." 

Not to mention the golf.  

If downtown Raleigh had as much interest from lenders as it did parking, the City Council and City Manager Russell Allen would be very happy people.

Last week the council voted to lease the property at 301 Hillsborough Street to Campbell University so that the school can turn it into a parking lot. You may recall that the land was supposed to be sold to the Reynolds Company, who were going to develop it into a hotel. But Reynolds could never nail down financing for the project, and the City Council and Allen got tired of waiting so they terminated the agreement earlier this year. 

Now the giant hole in the ground at 301 Hillsborough has been filled, and Campbell Law students and faculty will soon be able to park across from the school's new home, which opens next month. The lease agreement was approved at the same meeting where the council gave the developers behind Charter Square more time to get their two-tower project off the ground. The developers were given an extension largely because they are about to finish an underground parking deck below the site, which is at the south end of Fayetteville Street next to the City Plaza. 

The city will buy the deck for about $25 million once it's complete. And let's not forget the Wake County parking deck that was just finished on the other side of the convention center. That deck is supposed to be surrounded by Empire Properties L Building, another project halted by the credit crunch. 

Downtown Raleigh already had a lot of parking before these latest decks, so it seems reasonable to ask why the city appears to have never met a parking deck/lot it didn't like. The leasing of 301 Hillsborough is a sensible short-term use of the property, but are all these parking decks necessary? They're not cheap, after all, particularly when they're being build underground. 

What do you think?

Raleigh’s recently adopted $697 million budget was sharply criticized this afternoon by Wake County Republican Chairman Claude E. Pope, Jr.

In a speech before the Wake County Republican Women’s Club, Pope said the council’s budget was stuffed with unnecessary spending at a time when everyone, particularly governments, should be cutting back.

Pope criticized the council’s decision to not reduce funding for the arts, and also took a shot at City Manager Russell Allen for accepting a $10,000 raise.

Pope compared Raleigh’s budget, which increases spending by $53 million, unfavorably with Wake County’s budget, which reduced spending by $30 million.

Pope said the presence of three Republicans on the Wake Board of Commissioners showed that the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility.
“We applaud the efforts of the Wake County Board of Commissioners,” Pope said. “In contrast to the city, the county commissioners passed a budget that cut spending, showed compromise and fiscal restraint.”

Pope also criticized the City Council for adding $1.85 million in new spending by reducing the amount the city will put towards paying of existing and future debt.

“If you put off paying your mortgage for a year, you would no longer have a house to live in,” Pope said.

Pope praised Councilman Philip Isley, the only Republican on the 8-member Raleigh City Council and the only councilor who voted against the budget.

Pope said after his speech that he hadn’t spoken to Isley since the budget was adopted on Tuesday.

At least one of Pope's criticisms showed an unfamiliarity with Raleigh’s budget. Pope said the city should have cut inspectors since new building permits have dropped as the housing bubble has burst.
“Have any of these jobs been cut?” he asked.

The city’s adopted budget cuts 15 positions from the Inspections Department.

After his speech, Pope fielded questions from reporters. He said the City Council’s recent actions are an opportunity for Republicans to win back seats. City Council elections are officially nonpartisan, but the number of Republicans on the council has been shrinking in recent years.

Pope acknowledged that the GOP needs to field a stronger slate of candidates this fall.
“The Republican Party needs to do a better job fielding qualified candidates,” he said.

The filing deadline for this fall’s election is July 17.

Lee Sartain announced today that he is running for one of the two at-large Raleigh City Council seats. Sartain works on education technology issues at the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at N.C. State. He also graduated from NCSU.

Sartain is the fourth person to enter the race for the two at-large seats. The two current at-large members, Russ Stephenson and Mary-Ann Baldwin, are running for re-election. Realtor Champ Claris announced last week that he is also running.

Sartain's announcement said his campaign would focus on growing new jobs, comprehensive public transportation and strong neighborhoods:

“Raleigh’s high quality of life and embrace of education, technology, and innovation has led to rapid growth over the last twenty years. More people are calling Raleigh home than ever, and the pace is not expected to slow. This growth has also placed us at a crossroads, and Raleigh must take several strategic steps to ensure a bright future. Stepping up job growth downtown, building strong neighborhoods, and building a reliable transportation system will ensure that Raleigh is a destination city for years to come.”

Sartain also wants to create something called the Raleigh Innovation and Technology Zone in downtown Raleigh. He says it would be an economic development zone designed to compliment and model the success of the Research Triangle Park.

Michael Slawter, a 34-year-old examiner for the N.C. Secretary of State's office, announced today that he is running for the District C City Council seat currently held by James West.

West has held the seat, which covers Southeast Raleigh, since 1999.

In a release announcing his candidacy, Slawter said he's running because he's worried the city has become stagnant: 

“These are tough times economically, socially and I believe we need change. Mr. West has done a great job for Raleigh. However, I believe that more can be done for the Southeastern part of Raleigh and the wonderful folks in my district. We have store fronts that are boarded up, folks shot and left dead in the road, drug deals on corners and folks who are scared to shop at their local grocery store in broad daylight.  Now is the time to make changes. To bring about a new era in Raleigh that can move us in the right direction. I hope to be the leader of that movement.”

Slawter, who has lived in Raleigh for the past 16 years, is married with a young daughter. In addition to being an examiner, Slawyer acts as a the corporation's division liaison to professional boards in North Carolina. Slawter previously worked for the city of Raleigh and the sate Social Security Administration.