Full name: Leonardo Williams
Party affiliation: Democrat
Campaign website: leo4durham.com
1) In 300 words or less, please give our readers your elevator pitch: Why are you running? Why should voters entrust you with this position? What prior experience will make you an effective mayor?
I am running for Mayor because I am dedicated to Durham’s prosperity. Drawing on my diverse background as a two-time Durham Public Schools Teacher of the Year, public school administrator, and entrepreneur, my journey from the classroom to City Hall highlights a deep commitment to community.
A proud North Carolina Central University alumnus, earning degrees in Music Education BA and Education Leadership MA, I met my wife, Zweli, at NCCU, and we are the proud parents of our son, Izaiah, who attends Duke University.
Elected to the Durham City Council in December 2021 and sworn in as Mayor in December 2023, I have the honor of serving a rapidly growing city of nearly 320,000, overseeing a $755 million city budget and championing policies that seek to significantly enhance quality of life for all Durham residents. During my first Mayoral term I was able to bring a national spotlight to Durham when was a featured speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention and I have welcomed Presidents and Vice Presidents to the Greater Triangle region over 25 times, showcasing Durham’s vibrant culture of innovation and economic opportunity on the world stage.
2) What would your priorities be as mayor? Please identify three of the most pressing issues Durham currently faces and how you believe the city should address them.
My three priorities are directly in line with what I see as Durham’s three most pressing issues. These are, (1) addressing housing supply and affordability; (2) fostering economic development; and (3) continuing to pursue a holistic approach to public safety. On housing, an increased housing supply is the best way to ensure that housing costs are lowered, and accordingly I have pursued an agenda that has focused on increasing affordable housing units of various types, including but not limited to new construction with negotiated affordable housing allocations, preservation of existing housing, Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (N.O.A.H.), Accessory Dwelling Units (A.D.U), social housing concepts with shared common space, and bolstering mixed income housing options with the Durham Housing Authority. On economic development, we have sought through various initiatives to attract business and jobs to the Bull City, and we have seen resounding success in this endeavor. If granted a second term, I will continue this push to ensure that there are plenty of well-compensated career paths for all Durham residents. And finally on safety, our approach over the past two years that I hope to carry on into the future has been a community-oriented model structured around shared input and accountability, and implemented through programs like the Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response (H.E.A.R.T.) program. I’m proud to have championed this incredible program, and I will continue to support its full funding and further expansion.
3) What’s the best or most important thing the Durham City Council has done in the past year? Additionally, name a decision you believe the city should have handled differently. Please explain your answers.
In light of recent events, I would say that the most important thing the Durham City Council has accomplished in the past year may well be one of its most recent actions, unanimously adopting the resolution committing Durham to being a 4th amendment workplace. This resolution seeks to defend out immigrant friends, family, and neighbors in the Durham community from the overreaches and abuses currently being perpetrated by the Trump Administration. In response to this action, Fox News has featured the story on their national platform, I and other members of the Council have received threats to our lives and personal safety, we’ve been threatened with doxxing of our personal details, and even in the face of all these efforts to silence us I will continue to stand proudly with our immigrant communities.
4) President Trump is working to ramp up deportations and curtail visas. At the same time, the state legislature has passed laws requiring cooperation with ICE. What do you think Durham officials can or should do to ensure safe, welcoming communities for immigrants in light of these policies?
Ensuring that all City staff and non-profit organizations are fully equipped to meet the needs of our immigrant community members, especially working to ensure the constant flow of information given the constantly changing legal landscape and the lack of coherent leadership we are receiving from Washington on the issue. We must ensure that there is adequate training for community members as well, and this is for individuals who may be vulnerable to the to the immigration system as well as individuals who are naturalized or native-born American citizens, as we have seen now numerous examples of American citizens being swept up in these large and poorly-executed ICE raids. All told we must be committed to reaffirming our values and our support of the Fourth Amendment and the law and we must constantly strive to maintain an agile and intimate communication protocol with residents that are the most vulnerable to the current climate.
5) Federal funding cuts this year have hit the Triangle particularly hard, from canceled grants to layoffs, and local government officials are having to make difficult decisions about what to fund and how. What are your ideas for how the city can prioritize competing funding needs, close funding gaps, and balance the financial burden on residents?
The first thing we must do is reassess our spending allocations within our current budget as we prepare for our next fiscal year. As we review the budget, the current Federal chaos requires us to unfortunately prioritize current city initiatives, which in turn requires us to increase our partnerships with private and nonprofit organizations in order to pick up the slack where the government may need to withdraw from funding on some community activities. Accordingly, given the current political situation, we will likely need to reallocate more funding toward immigrant services such as legal support, rapid housing support for migrant communities, and potentially small business support considering that many of our entry level to mid level jobs that form pivotal parts of our economy are filled by members of immigrant communities. This belt-tightening is an unfortunate reality due to the heightened presence of ICE and the fractured and unstable nature of the immigration services at the federal level, which is then causing great harm to our local community and our quality of life here in Durham.
This is also an unfortunate new reality for our community economically because it cuts jobs, and when jobs are cut, people spend less, small businesses struggle more to sustain and survive, personal and family expenses become strained, and you basically see families having to make difficult decisions for themselves to re-prioritize where their spending will be best allocated in their own lives. This is one of the most direct ways that the ripple effect of Federal mismanagement affects our lives at the local level.
We must combat this by continuously expanding our tax base–through new development projects within the greater development ordinance–to establish more sales tax revenue, which in turn allows us to better offset the burden of increased property tax revenue on local families.
6) As climate change leads to more intense rainfall, communities are at greater risk of inland flooding, such as the historic floods in parts of the Triangle caused by Tropical Storm Chantal in July. How would you like Durham to address climate resilience, particularly flooding?
Our approach to addressing climate change at the local level must be holistic and dynamic. Among many broader courses of action, we must prioritize doing the following as a city: (1) Assess the development process from 100 year storms to more frequent storms; (2) continue to support and contribute to a statewide coordinated response program for storm recovery, by way of our city/county emergency response service team; (3) assess our stormwater infrastructure city-wide to ensure proper capacity; (4) expand the city’s partnership with the Duke University Environmental Affairs program for Climate Resilience and Climate Action Plans; (5) I, as a National Executive Board member for Climate Mayors, must contribute and learn from Mayors all over the world on their approaches to Climate change; and (6) invite local colleges and universities to collaborate and create engineering tools to help Durham residents be better informed and react to severe weather events.
7) Describe what sustainable growth and development mean to you. Additionally, what is another municipality you believe has made smart decisions related to growth and development that could be similarly implemented in Durham?
Sustainable growth and development is our municipal ability to address our current needs as well as effectively anticipating needs to come. Regarding affordability, we must acknowledge that, yes, affordable housing is important, but the overarching goal of “affordable living” is of equal, if not greater, importance. True sustainability is a community where you can remain comfortable and enjoy a good quality of life in your own community without having to relocate or live frugally due to price increases. Durham must also utilize our AAA bond rating to back nonprofits which will support affordable housing projects in their attempts at being much more competitive in the private market. For example, I envision a situation where an apartment building is about to go to market, a nonprofit backed by the city acquires that property and creates affordable housing within a 90 day turnaround with minor renovations. This will provide 100% affordable/attainable housing options for individuals to be met where they are economically. This “P3” option for acquisition provides more affordable and sustainable options for housing in a shorter amount of time than traditionally received in new development projects, wherein we only usually get a small percentage of affordable housing within the new development. Atlanta has done a great job at identifying and uniting nonprofit organizations to partner with the city to build on smaller lots within the city as well as converting older buildings and properties into uniquely designed housing, which in turn provide attainable, affordable housing units for more people at more levels, specifically at the middle to lower-income ends of the income spectrum. This contributes to the overall ability to have more housing types at every income level. This also allows us to be much more flexible and effective in addressing environmental needs as it reduces sprawl, creates more walkable communities, and allows us to house more people on smaller footprints.
8) Downtown Durham continues to see growth, with large commercial developments and hundreds of new housing units, yet businesses say they’re still suffering. How would you reinvigorate this major business district?
Make no mistake, it’s great that we are increasing housing supply in the downtown corridor, however housing is not the entirety of what we need, but rather just one component of a vibrant downtown core and local economy. Durham is 4th largest city in NC but has the smallest convention center of any major municipality. Convention centers are typically economically damaging to downtown city centers, however, convention centers that integrate themselves into local retail, shops, meeting space, etc, invite visitors in large numbers to come to and engage with the local Durham economy, allowing Durham to benefit from outside dollars in larger amounts in shorter periods, bolstering our sales tax revenue, allowing us to regenerate investments for our local needs. I’m all about people being activated in their local context. When people are activated, they’re utilizing our parking facilities, they’re eating at local restaurants, (supports our parking fund and increases sales tax revenue, respectively), they’re patronizing local shops and staying in our hotels, yet again increasing sales tax. This is another avenue to lessen property tax burden with sales tax revenue. Allowing Durhamites to pay lower taxes while still reaping the benefits of Durham residency (fare free buses, homeless community support, grants for small businesses, and more).
9) The City of Durham is realigning its homelessness services. What can or should the city be doing to support this growing population, especially in light of recent changes to state law governing encampments and financial pressures on service providers?
First, Durham has a significant network for homeless services intimately referred to as “the continuum of care network” however, while grateful for those participating orgs, there are also some orgs that are negatively contributing to the increase of homeless population. My goal is to try to work with those detattracting orgs that are negatively contributing to homelessness to bring them in as partners. Denver worked very closely with their rescue mission and now they are one of the biggest assets in reducing Denver’s homelessness. Second, part of expansion of HEART is to assign homeless services within their portfolio as expanded scope of work. Our Heart team members are on the frontline working with our homeless population, from the 80% of the house-less population we don’t see that are on the verge of homelessness, to the 20% we see on the streets. Third, as an executive member of the Homeless Services Committee for the US Conference of Mayors, I will continue to contribute our best practices from Durham as well as learning from other municipalities to see what’s working there in order to bring those ideas home and put them to work in service of our community.
10) According to the Triangle Community Foundation, there’s a mismatch between the price point of housing units available in Durham and what Durham renters can afford, amounting to a nearly 25,000-unit deficit for low-income renters. What can the city do to ensure Durham housing is affordable for current and future residents?
Again, it’s important that we increase housing supply at every income level. Affordable units must be our top priority because of this very deficit. We also have to ensure that we do not sacrifice a high environmental standard for the sake of low-cost units. Therefore, we must take a holistic approach to housing. We must shift our thinking from affordable housing to affordable living, this I believe will help us address the economic deficit that we are experiencing.
Examples of corrective measures are as follows:
- Continuation of fare-free bussing
- Job trainings
- Robust workforce development board
- Public private partnerships with employers, not just developers, that pay higher wages and value the dignity of work
- Exploring creative policy solutions such as employers considering housing supplementation as a benefits package
- Encouraging development that aligns with our comprehensive plan and building more supply where it makes the most sense, such as densifying communities in urban areas.
11) For some residents, gun violence remains a persistent issue even though shootings and other violent crimes are currently down from last year. How would you rate the progress the city has made and what are your ideas for improving public safety?
We have made great progress, crime down in every major category, overall, crime is down 26%. However, violent crime events are happening amongst young people at an alarming rate. As someone who looks like many of these young people, it is my #1 priority is to ensure that their lives are infused with sufficient role models so that when they see folks like me in positions like the Mayor’s office, they know that such aspirations are within their grasp as well. I believe this City is making significant progress, however if we are relying just on the City we are already failing. Therefore I would like to highlight the amazing work by nonprofits in partnership with not only the city but with one-another. Regarding suggested ideas: the ideas I’ve implemented are not just aspirational, they’re practical and many are already in progress. I launched the Bull City Future fund in partnership with Triangle Community Foundation and the United Way of the Greater Triangle to raise $1M to directly invest (without red tape) in local nonprofits that are working on a daily basis specifically with Durham youth. The effort requested was to expand the amount of young people in their programs. I’m happy to report the first round of funding at $300K has been deployed and every partnering organization has expanded not only their enrollment of young people, but the scope of their work as well to save and engage with more youth. Further, in partnership with Duke Health, I have established the mayor’s collegiate working taskforce for youth engagement to decrease criminal activity amongst young people with a goal of an initial 50% reduction. This taskforce will work with Duke health, Duke health’s AI tech lab, and nonprofits within the Durham community, to establish profiles of support for every young person in the city of Durham under the age of 18. This is an experience where college students are solving real world problems in a professional setting before graduation.
12) If there are other issues you want to discuss, please do so here.
As attested to by the dysfunction and the constant betrayals of the public trust currently coming from the White House, we as elected leaders need to redouble our efforts to restore trust in the public domain. We need to do that by creating a capacity in which Durham residents can communicate with one another in a trusted and safe manner, without organized agendas to mislead and misinform one-another for political gain. We’re better when we set our minds on building bridges, not walls, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, and nobody else I’d rather be with than here in the incredible community that is Durham, standing shoulder to shoulder with every single person who makes up this remarkable community, united in our common purpose to show the nation that a brighter future really is possible when we pursue it together.
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