A couple of weeks ago, we published a joint report with our newsroom partners at The Assembly about a Durham coalition’s campaign to get Duke University to pay $50 million to the City of Durham or Durham County annually in lieu of property taxes. We got a lot of feedback from readers and are excerpting some messages below.
From reader Gann Herman in Durham:
… I hope you will add to the topic I kept reading to see commented on: the relationship between Duke and its low-income employees. Much of the “grumbling” I hear relates to exploitative labor practices. It would be clarifying to have your reporters interview Duke’s custodians, food service workers, groundskeepers, all the hourly wage employees across its properties. Is the grumbling justified or are their labor practices in need of sunshine? Are their wages high enough for such workers to actually live in Durham or do they have to commute from other counties?
From reader Mike Massey in Durham:
… Duke’s obstructing the area transit project on 2 occasions came across as Duke’s wanting to make a statement, whether intended or not, on where the power resides in Durham. The most recent plug-pulling was especially irksome as the rationale, if genuine, should have been voiced in the project’s earliest considerations before the spending of such vast resources by project partners. At least Duke’s original voiced objection, although largely over aesthetics, came earlier in the initial plan’s process.
Duke’s presence is of monumental benefit to our area. Finding ways of dispelling any lingering effects of the above would be important as Duke and Durham move forward together.
From reader MaryPaul Thomas:
Here’s the point made by the campaign that was missed in the article: when Duke’s philanthropy, no matter how generous, is determined by Duke being in full control, there’s an antidemocratic distribution. If “payments in lieu of taxes” (PILOT) were made to Durham County, then Durham and its elected government decide how best to use it for the benefit of ALL people who live in the county.
We also wrote about Durham Public Schools’ new superintendent, Anthony Lewis, and the series of listening tours he took in his first three months on the job to hear from the Durham community. While we concluded that Dr. Lewis has a lot of work ahead of him to fix understaffed bus routes, address aging facilities, and repair the relationship between the district’s administration and school staff, reader David Frac notes there are other issues Lewis will need to address:
The new superintendent certainly has his work cut out for him. According to the school district’s 2023/2024 Academic Achievement Report, only 47% of Durham students achieved Grade Level Proficiency for that period.
We wrote about the parting words from outgoing Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and District A member Mary Black at their last city council meeting.
From reader Lisa Bellamy:
Good story on the changing of the guard at City Hall following the elections.
Hope you continue to cover Black’s cause of tenant advocacy in Raleigh. It’s true that the rents are ever increasing and salaries just can’t keep up. Not everyone has high-tech/ high salary employment.
If something more isn’t done, the affordable housing crisis is going to make Raleigh less attractive for young workers.
Finally, we offered five takeaways from the Raleigh City Council election this fall. We received the following email from former Raleigh City Council District E representative and Livable Raleigh co-founder Stef Mendell:
In your November 15 article in Indyweek about takeaways from the Raleigh City Council election, you refer to me as “Livable Raleigh co-founder Stef Mendell, who ran on an anti-development platform.”
This has got to stop. I am not and have never been anti-development. And neither is Livable Raleigh.
I support development if it meets three criteria. 1) Development must be environmentally sensitive, i.e., don’t bulldoze lots thereby destroying natural habitats, increasing stormwater runoff, and creating heat deserts by eliminating our tree canopy. 2) Development must be supported by appropriate infrastructure, i.e., the roads and water and sewer systems must be adequate to meet the demands of increased density. And first responders must be able to provide services to the development within appropriate time standards. 3) Development must be compatible with existing neighborhoods, i.e., don’t put a 30-story building in the backyards of one and two-story single family homes. That’s what transitions and buffers and stepdowns are for. We shouldn’t have to fight so hard for them.
There is a lot of controversy around Missing Middle development. It sounds good and it makes people think that we are improving housing affordability. That could indeed be the outcome IF Raleigh’s Missing Middle policies incentivized affordability. But they do not. The man who invented and popularized Missing Middle essentially advocates for carrots and sticks, to allow increased density in a thoughtful and non-disruptive way. Unfortunately Raleigh has adopted all the carrots and none of the sticks. (And they did this in the guise of a text change, when it was actually a massive city-wide rezoning, so that they wouldn’t have to proactively notify every single homeowner in Raleigh. If you bought a house in a neighborhood that was zoned R-4, that no longer means four houses on a one-acre lot. Your property was rezoned via a text change (during a pandemic I might add) and you had very little opportunity to contest that.)
Missing Middle is not delivering affordability and that is one of the reasons why affordability is such an issue here. Raleigh pats itself on the back for any increase in affordable housing, but doesn’t bother to track how much Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing is lost every day as developers sweep in and buy up those properties and replace them with luxury housing. Are we making progress? Are we falling behind? Nobody knows. This matters, and if it matters, it should get measured!
When I was on Council, we pioneered a way for developers to voluntarily offer conditions that would include some affordable housing in return for increasing a developer’s profit by upzoning their property. But unfortunately most developers are reluctant to offer anything other than a token amount of a few units at 80% AMI (Area Median Income) for a limited number of years. There’s fear-mongering in the community about people who need housing at 60% AMI or even lower. The fact is these people are not low-life criminals and freeloaders. These are the people who teach our children, the police officers and firefighters who keep us safe, the cooks and servers who work in our restaurants, and the nurses and healthcare aides who tend to us when we are sick.
Yes, it is true that Raleigh must, and should, develop to accommodate all the people who want to live here and help grow our community. But we must not turn our backs on the people who built the community that is now so attractive to newcomers. And we must not destroy the quality of living that attracts those newcomers.
Let’s try to work together and find reasonable ways to accommodate appropriate development. Labeling individuals or groups as anti-development only furthers polarization.
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