City Council Election Focus: Helen Tart

September, 04, 2007 , by Barden

I sat down with Helen Tart at the new Oakwood Dog Park, one of the many projects she has helped engineer in her active career of community involvement. Some of the other accomplishments include: using federal funding to get bike racks placed on all CAT buses, neighborhood organization to combat irresponsible development and crime reduction, and participation in the creation of the 2003 Five Year Transit Plan. Her past careers have included work at North Carolina State University’s Technician newspaper as well as the News and Observer as a proofreader.

Tart and her husband have lived in the Oakwood neighborhood since 1989, and have worked hard to preserve the character of their community.

When I asked Tart why she decided to run for one of the two seats, she said that she now is fortunate enough to have the time to get out in the city and listen to people’s concerns and to get people talking to one another. She told me that her past advocacy had focused on getting city information to city residents, through email, regularly updated web-newsletters, and the old-fashioned knocking on doors. Tart said that this kind of community participation was necessary to having good government.

Tart is a tireless advocate for public transportation and has taken the bus regularly for many years. She said it was “heart-breaking” that the light rail option has not progressed in Raleigh.

With all the unending downtown development, I asked if there could be a balance between preserving the city’s historic character and continued economic development. Tart said she hopes there can be. One proposal she presented was an incentive-based program of potential tax breaks for downtown businesses that employed people living in downtown apartments or condos.

She said some people may find her ideas “radical, but they really were common-sense.”

I enjoyed our conversation at the park, and found Helen Tart to be very knowledgeable about the finer points of public transit and community involvement. Her experience of service no doubt makes her a good candidate in this exciting race!

An added note: Helen maintains a blog which elaborates further on her campaign.

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JZ
09/04 01:06 PM

I have engaged Helen twice now as she has helped lead public meetings for the floundering development at the corner of Brookside and Glascock Streets. I found her intelligent, pointed in asking the right questions and able to orchestrate the finer aspects of leading a room full of agitated citizens (agitated, not with her, but with the village-idiot developer) in a very open-hearted and -minded way.

Thanks for offering another window into her capabilities and ideas, especially regarding tax-incentives to help grow downtown (although, how about a tax-break for ALL RESIDENTS since the infrastructure required to sustain a downtown citizen is more compact and easily serviceable? this is not a complaint about my tax bill…but a legitimate question of how to discourage further sprawl…Uh, segue in to a conversation about impact fees? anybody? anybody?)
Helen Tart
09/04 02:13 PM

Thanks to Barden for getting my profile up so quickly and for spending over an hour listening to all my ideas.

A couple of corrections:

* Starting in 1980, I worked in production at the N&O;, first in paste up (now a lost art because everything is done digitally) then as a pagetech. I was never a proofreader there. I was a proofreader for 5 years at an advertising typographer TypEstetics in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I worked at the N&O;on the weekends during most of that time (and afterwards until November 2006).

* My husband and I don’t live in Historic Oakwood. We live down the hill (near the corner of Glascock and Brookside) and about $200,000 below the price range of official Oakwood. Everybody(except me), including City Parks and Rec, insisted on calling the dog park just “Oakwood Dog Park” instead of “Oakwood Park Dog Park”. That’s one of those public participation decisions. As was our neighborhood deciding to call itself “Oakwood Park” when we did a Neighborhood Plan back in 1999. ( The plan is on the city website as part of the Comprehensive Plan at:
http://www.raleighnc.gov/portal/server.pt?space=Dir&spaceID=1&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=0&in_hi_userid=2&control=OpenSubFolder&subfolderID=1688&DirMode=1)

And a clarification:
My proposal for Downtown was not just for employing people that happen to live downtown, but have employees of downtown restaurants or stores to get to live in one of the condos as a benefit of their job. I understand that not everybody wants to be the on-call person for the boss, but it could be a great benefit for a workaholic that’s focused on saving money. Sort of an upscale version of the old living above the store concept. (My family lived in back of my father’s country store for seven years when I was growing up. It was kind of fun, especially when you’re a 4 year-old that wakes up before everybody else and can get at the candy counter.)

Of course Barden’s description: “an incentive-based program of potential tax breaks for downtown businesses that employed people living in downtown apartments or condos” is probably a much easier proposal to get approved.

I’d love to hear what you think the City Council should be doing.
Feel free to contact me at 833-0586 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
and again my blog is: http://htartforcouncil.blogspot.com/
Helen Tart
09/04 02:15 PM

BTW: I tried 3 times to get rid of the extra semi colons in preview but it never took. My lack of technical expertise I guess.

HT
David
09/04 06:48 PM

Helen sounds like a very involved individual. I like her focus on personal relationships and issues relevant to citizens. It seems to me that it takes someone downtown to understand what is so messed up about the development trends in North Raleigh.
Georgia
09/06 01:48 AM

Can you add Tart to the top Election Banner? It looks like you are endorsing Baldwin.
David
09/06 11:44 AM

Banners are chosen on the site to give as much variety of content on the homepage as possible. No preference was given to Baldwin, the Tart Profile was still new enough that it was on the upper half of the homepage so it didn’t need a banner to promote it yet. Glad you all are paying attention.
Betsy
09/22 01:35 PM

Helen, if I weren’t advising people to single-shot Russ, I would endorse you for one of the two at-large seats. Your positions are just what Raleigh needs for a vibrant future.
Helen Tart
10/04 09:51 PM

Update:

I was endorsed by the Independent Weekly for the second At-large seat. Russ Stephenson was their (and my) first choice, of course.

for the details:

Endorsement story :
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:161004

My Indy questionnaire:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:160789
Barden
10/05 01:33 AM

Congratulations Helen! Here’s to October 9th!

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City Council Election Focus: Helen Tart