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.

The City Council decided in a closed session Tuesday to extend City Manager Russell Allen’s contract by a year and give him about a 5 percent raise.

The increase will bump Allen’s annual salary from $210,000 to $220,000. Allen’s pay has risen 57 percent since he was hired in 2001 at an annual salary of $140,000.

The council voted on the raise after discussing Allen’s job performance behind closed doors, as state law allows. 

Mayor Charles Meeker said after the closed session that the council believes that Allen continues to do an outstanding job and is a key reason Raleigh is recognized as one of the best places to live in the country.

Councilor Mary-Ann Badwin said today that the council did consider how Allen's raise would look given the wider economic crisis that is resulting in layoffs and reduced pay in many industries and some government agencies. But she said Allen has done a very good job, and that his salary remains below what other top managers make in cities of similar size to Raleigh. Here are her comments on the raise:

"We did talk about that. What the perception would be. But we also weighed the fact that he has done what we feel is an extremely good job managing our finances and managing the city. Part of the issue is his pay is actually pretty low compared to his peers in other cities of similar size. What we’ve struggled with over the years is trying to get his pay up a little higher. We did look at the fact that we are in an economic crisis, but we felt that we needed to reward him for his efforts and also get his pay up a little more so he gets more in line with other peers. Also, when someone doesn’t get a raise when they work very hard it’s de-motivating."

Allen had one year left on his existing contract.

Although Raleigh has had a hiring freeze in effect since July 1, 2008, the city has not frozen pay or benefits of its employees. City employees are eligible to receive merit raises up to 5 percent each year.

Allen is scheduled to present his proposed 2009-2010 budget to the City Council on May 19. He warned the council in March that Raleigh could face a budget shortfall of $18 million to $22 million next fiscal year in its general fund.

Allen said Thursday that he has reviewed employee pay and other benefits as well as all programs and services offered by the city. But he declined to share his recommendations in those areas until he presents his proposed budget to council.

Allen has already said he will not recommend any increases in the property tax rate, or any increases in the privilege license fee, the stormwater fee or the solid waste fee.

Allen also proposes reducing the number of general fund employees by not filling vacant positions in an attempt to avoid the need for layoffs.

The city will continue to fill police, fire and other critical service positions that become vacant but likely won’t be creating any new positions in those areas next fiscal year.

Raleigh’s planning director, Mitch Silver, is one of the co-editors of a new version of a popular planning text book. The book, “Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice,” may be of interest to Raleigh residents because it includes a critique of the city by Silver, who was hired to be the planning director in 2005. (Please don't confuse our Mitch with all those other authors named Mitch Silver.)

Silver said he wrote the piece about Raleigh in late 2006 or early 2007. It follows an approach he uses called “The Anatomy and Soul of a Place.” Silver describes the approach as being part detective, part evangelical and part doctor. He takes in the physical composition of a city, looks for clues like a detective to identify the invisible and spiritual aspect of a city and then makes a diagnosis.

So what was his view on Raleigh after about a year of living here?

“It’s part of the New South but it has roots in the traditional South,” Silver said of Raleigh.
He used the term “rural urbanism” to describe the city and its healthy tree canopy. He said Raleigh is a medium-sized city that still has the qualities of a small town. Most people give directions based on physical landmarks, not streets, for example.

Although Silver has used this approach in all his previous planning work, the text book was the first time he’d put it in writing.

On the agenda at tomorrow’s City Council meeting is a request to jump start the redevelopment of Moore Square. The so-called “Moore Square Design and Public Process Concept” would be split into three phases. Phases one and two would cost $9,000 and would involve asking for ideas about what should be done with Moore Square. The third phase would involve a design competition costing $40,000.

This process looks a bit like the idea dump the city had a while back to come up with ideas for downtown. (Let’s build a river walk!) The request notes that any implementation won’t occur until “once the economy turns around,” meaning that in the near-term there is likely to be lots of stuff being thrown against a wall and maybe eventually some renderings.

The request says public investment will jump start private investment in Moore Square. The key component to any revitalization plan for Moore Square remains City Market. Once regarded as the jewel that would spark downtown Raleigh's urban renaissance, it has not enjoyed the investment and development that other parts of the city have. Many blame Hakan Market Partners, the owner of City Market for the last several years, for the area’s fall from grace. Hakan Market Partners announced late last year that it would renovate the 1914 farmers market building and remodel surrounding storefronts. Work has started on those renovations but is not complete.

Another boost for Moore Square could be the Edison, a proposed four-tower office-hotel-residential mix that developer Gregg Sandreuter is behind. Last year Edison Land LLC paid about $12.1 million for at least 2.68 mostly undeveloped acres on the block bounded by Martin, Blount Davie and Wilmington streets. The block is east of the 33-story RBC Plaza tower and north of Progress Energy's new headquarters. Two of the Edison towers could be 39 stories and dwarf the recently completed RBC tower.

Sandreuter had once hoped to break ground on the first Edison building by the end of 2010, though that timeline may be tough to meet given the problems in the credit markets and the wider economy. The city isn’t expecting any actual construction on Moore Square to occur until 2011 at the earliest.

The City Council meets Tuesday at 1 p.m. at City Hall, 222 West Harget Street.

_{Mayor Charles Meeker’s announcement this morning that he will seek a fifth term in office doesn’t exactly qualify as a bombshell. Close observers of the City Council largely expected the mayor to run again, even if he had made hints earlier this year that he was considering stepping aside.
Meeker has said he didn’t want to walk away with the city’s economy in turmoil, and although Raleigh isn’t facing a budget crisis the City Council will have to make some tough decisions over the next year or two.
The mayor said this morning that he had come to the conclusion that changing the city’s leadership during a time of economic uncertainty would not be wise.
“The economy was a major factor,” he said. “This is the right decision at this time.”
Meeker is a man who loves the details of public financing, and he surely wants to be around when the council discusses potential budget cuts and debates what projects to go ahead with and what projects to curtail.
Just look at the council’s recent discussion about water rates. Several of Meeker’s colleagues proposed the possibility of letting the public utilities department’s credit rating slip, an option that the mayor is strongly against.
Asked whether he felt obligated to run because of the economy, Meeker said the job has become more enjoyable over time, particularly now that all but one of his fellow council members are fellow Democrats.
“I enjoy being mayor,” he said.
Meeker outlined three priorities for a fifth two-year term: Preparing the city to be in a position to act once the economy improves, adopting a regional transportation plan, and moving ahead with plans to turn the Dorothea Dix Hospital campus into a park.
Two of these items, regional transit and Dix, will require Meeker to do something that is not one of his strengths: build consensus beyond the Raleigh City Council table.
Asked this morning about what kind of leadership role he would take on these issues, Meeker said whatever is necessary.
“I will be involved with it, either up front if needed, or behind the scenes, if needed,” he said.
Meeker was also asked why he hadn’t faced much opposition in recent elections for mayor.
He mentioned the time commitment required for the part-time job, and the fact that in recent years Raleigh has been declared one of the best places to live in the country by an array of groups.
The election is Oct. 6, so there’s still plenty of time for a challenger to emerge.}

Taking his cue from an insurance company commercial, Wake Commissioner Tony Gurley on Monday engaged in a little political theater to accentuate his opposition to the county granting $25,932 in seed money for a new African-American Cultural Festival.

Shortly before cast the lone no vote against the proposal, Gurley placed a bound stack of cash on the ledge in front of his commissioners' desk and then added a pair of eyes and quizzical brows. The prop borrows from television ads for Geico, where the stack of bills follows around potential customers to represent the "Money you could be saving with Geico."

With the county facing deep budget cuts triggered by the recession, Gurley said it was the wrong time to be giving money for a new street festival that would be highly likely to require additional government support in the future.

"I think we're wasting taxpayer money to plan a party," said Gurley, a Republican. "Our responsibility is to meet the needs of our community first, not a party."

The proposed festival has been backed by board Chairman Harold Webb and Vice Chairman Lindy Brown following the departure of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference basketball tournament from the RBC Center to an arena in Winston-Salem two years ago.

The tournament, which drew thousands of graduates of the conference's historically black universities to Raleigh, was supported with $500,000 in county funds. Webb and Brown have suggested the proposed African-American Cultural Festival would also require taxpayer support for a few years, until it could become established enough to become financially self-sustaining.

The pair won the support of a majority of commissioners for the festival by getting Artsplosure, the non-profit organizer of the city's annual arts festival, to sign on as the new festival's professional organizer. The Raleigh City Council will match the county's expenditure to provide an initial $51,864 to plan a framework for the cultural festival.

What WakeWatch finds interesting is that Gurley, who makes a lucrative living as a pharmacist and lawyer, appeared to use a $500 bundle of real $20 bills to make his point.

Peter Batchelor, professor emeritus of architecture and urban design at N.C. State, has an interesting letter to the editor in today’s paper about the roundabouts planned for Hillsborough Street.

Batchelor argues that roundabouts are a good way for merging and moving vehicles through intersections, but they are not a pedestrian-friendly solution for the problematic intersections on Hillsborough Street. He says the roundabouts will not be able to accommodate the cyclists, skateboarders and rollerbladers who use the street.

“This dangerous and potentially lethal concept for a problematic intersection on Hillsborough Street needs to be re-examined by the City of Raleigh,” Batchelor writes. “Trendy as roundabouts may be in current planning circles, a far simpler and cost-effective solution was proposed more than 25 years ago: Extend Pullen Road straight through the intersection and connect directly to Oberlin Road.”  

Re-examining the roundabouts is no longer an option, as on Tuesday the City Council voted to spend about $9.9 million to construct the first phase of the project. Councilmen Philip Isley and Rodger Koopman were the only two who voted against the funding. Koopman argued that because of the economy it was the wrong time to go ahead with the project, while Isley has been loudly opposed to the roundabouts on Hillsborough since they were first proposed.

Only time will tell whether Batchelor is right about the roundabouts and Hillsborough Street. If he is, it will be a monumental embarrassment for the city. The Hillsborough project has been discussed and debated for years, and if it leaves drivers baffled about how to navigate the street it will have the exact opposite effect that officials intended.

Who knows, may the city will provide roundabout driving training for all residents with driver’s licenses. Of course, that would require the creation create of a roundabout mascot who can hang out with Neusie and Rainy.

The City Council also voted on Tuesday to spend $350,000 extending the Hillsborough streetscape project to a section of Oberlin Road in front of the Players’ Retreat sports bar, and $20,000 installing LED lights and a plug-in station for hybrid-electric vehicles. The $350,000 expenditure will make streetscape improvements to an area just down the road from the driveway of at-large Councilman Russ Stephenson's home.

Stephenson said after the meeting that he checked with the city attorney during the meeting about whether he needed to recuse himself from the vote and was told no.

It will be a shame when the city of Raleigh finally switches over to tiered water rates and the City Council has to find something else to discuss incessantly.

On Tuesday, the council found itself, once again, wondering aloud why the transition to tiered rates can’t happen sooner.

You may recall that last month it was agreed that residential water customers in Raleigh and Garner would move to a three-tier rate structure on Dec. 1. The structure is designed to encourage conservation as the rates will rise according to consumption.

City Manager Russell Allen has told the City Council on numerous occasions that Raleigh can’t make the switch until it has new billing software in place.

But on Tuesday, Councilman Russ Stephenson asked for an independent investigation to see whether that truly is the case. Yes, an investigation to see whether the city’s own staff truly knows what it is talking about.

The independent inquiry was one of a laundry list of utility-related issues that Stephenson wants both the council and the city staff to take up immediately. Others include a drought surcharge, water audits of area businesses and new capacity fees on water hook-ups.

Allen admitted serious frustration at the fact that Stephenson wasn’t buying staff’s explanation for why the shift to tiered rates can’t happen until December. Councilor Mary-Ann Baldwin said even she was frustrated by Stephenson’s request.

That caused Stephenson to play the garbage disposal card, telling anyone who would listen that the public utility staff giving them advice is the same staff that told the council it needed to ban garbage disposals. (We all know how that turned out, don’t we Neusie.)

Councilor Philip Isley eventually told his colleagues that they were exhuming a dead horse by raising the tiered rate issue, which led to a series of unfortunate horse puns.

So what’s really going on here?

Allen is recommending that the council raise water rates immediately by 17 percent to offset sluggish water sales. This unwelcome news has caused Stephenson to ask city staff why they haven’t made more progress on all the issues he’s been raising for months.

Stephenson essentially described the public utility department as being a black box that has been reticent about changing its ways. “None of us really knows what the reality is,” he said.

(Let's just hope Raleigh Public Utilities Director Dale Crisp wasn't involved in any credit default swaps.)

It was agreed on Tuesday that Stephenson’s issues would be discussed at the next council meeting on April 7. Some of Stephenson’s initiatives would encourage more conservation among Raleigh water customers, which could exasperate the revenue shortage that the department is currently experiencing. Other initiatives would create new revenue streams for the department, which could shift some of the burden away from residential rate payers.

The switch to tiered-rates has been talked about so much that it would be easy to mistakenly think of it as an elixir for all the city’s water woes. But the actual transition has the potential to introduce more instability into the department’s revenue model. The city’s consultant is designing the tiered rate structure to be revenue neutral, but the city won’t know if that’s truly the case until it puts it into practice.

In the meantime, the City Council is likely going to have to explain to customers who answered the call to conserve that their reward is an ahead-of-schedule rate hike.

If the listings of Wake County’s property tax liens printed Friday’s editions of The News & Observer seemed thicker than usual, you’re correct.

In March 2008, the county’s annual list of unpaid tax bills included listings for 12,100 past due parcels.

This year’s list was up to 16,071 parcels — an increase of nearly 33 percent.

Wake revenue director Marcus Kinrade said the actual amount of tax dollars outstanding is actually not that much more, however. As of March 6, the county had collected 96.12 percent of all outstanding taxes, compared to 96.25 percent collected through the same date last year.

Kinrade said the increased linage in the newspaper is largely due to the number of developers with unpaid taxes on multiple parcels, often undeveloped lots. That led to more parcels on the list, though the actual taxes owed on each lot are often relatively modest.

And while the uptick in parcels with unpaid taxes is a symptom of the region’s economic troubles, it would be disingenuous for WakeWatch to ignore that there was at least one beneficiary.

State law requires counties to advertise the liens in a local newspaper of “general circulation.”

Therefore, Wake County paid the The News & Observer $44,800 to print 30 pages of tiny type.

“I tried to talk them down, but they wouldn’t budge,” Kinrade said of the newspaper’s advertising department.

Sorry folks. We need the money.

Raleigh residents who participate in the city’s backdoor trash collection program may soon have to provide proof that they are unable to bring their refuse to the curb.

Concerned that the free program is being abused by some able-bodied customers, the city’s Solid Waste Services Department will recommend to the City Council on Tuesday that residents be required to fill out an application and provide a doctor’s note in order to participate.

City staff say the changes could save Raleigh $450,000 a year.

Raleigh currently picks up trash from 110,540 households across the city. About 4,100 households participate in Raleigh’s “need assistance” program, which allows disabled and elderly residents an alternative to having to drag their trash bins out to the curb.

The program is open to the disabled or residents over 65 years of age, and the city currently has no verification process for determining whether requests are legitimate.

Raleigh surveyed similar programs in other cities and found that the percentage of households participating in the Capital City is much higher than elsewhere. Charlotte, for example, has just 2,002 households participating in its program even though its trash department services 93,000 more households than Raleigh.

Tampa serves 83,000 households and only has 687 residents who participate in its program.
The four cities surveyed by Raleigh--Durham, Greensboro, Charlotte and Tampa--all have some verification process in place to prevent people from taking advantage of their need assistance programs.

The Solid Waste Services Department is recommending that Raleigh require potential participants in the program to fill out an application explaining why they need assistance. The application would also ask whether there is anyone else living at the residence who is able to bring the container to the curb.

Residents would also be required to submit a statement from a doctor verifying their inability to bring trash and recycling containers to the curb.

It costs the city about $905,000 a year to provide backdoor trash pickup to the 4,100 households in its need assistance program. If it cut that number in half it would save about $450,000 a year.

The City Council meets at 1 p.m. on Tuesday in the council chamber, 222 W. Hargett Street.