The City Council is considering the next Planning Commission appointee. The Planning Commission, with a couple or three exceptions, is stacked with (1) developers, (2) developers’ consultants, and (3) random people who know little about planning.
For the current opening, a Raleigh citizen named Heather Vance has been nominated and is willing to serve. She has a degree in planning as well as the professional certification in the field (AICP). She has worked as a transportation planning consultant and as a local government planner. She currently is the Communications Director for the American Institute of Architects, North Carolina chapter.
She is eminently well qualified to be on the Planning Commission, and the city is fortunate that she is willing to serve: the role is entirely volunteer, and consumes at least a half-day each week, or over 200 hours per year.
On top of all that, she happens to be a black woman, and there are currently only two women and one black person on the 11-member board.
With the board in such desperate need of talent and expertise, and growth and planning and design issues so very pressing in our city, you would think she’d be a shoo-in. But her appointment is being held up by Mayor Meeker and, of all things imaginable, Councilor James West of District C, who is continually saying that minorities need better representation on city boards.
For years, there haven’t been enough progressives on City Council for a voting majority. District councilors who wanted to get things done had to side with developers’ interests, pitting plurality against plurality with their “swing” vote, and extracting concessions from one side or the other in the process. That’s what any effective councilor naturally does when not in the majority.
But now that there’s a four-vote progressive bloc on the eight-member Council, nothing stands in the way of a five-vote majority—with Southeast Raleigh forming the critical fifth vote.
That’s Crowder, McFarlane, Stephenson, Koopman, and—West?
At long last, Southeast Raleigh stands with the potential for real majority voting power, able to do so much more to advance the interests of the neighborhoods.
It’s the local equivalent of the Obama transformation: Transcending race, the Council is poised, finally, to deal with the pressing issues that are facing all citizens across Raleigh—taking the costs of growth off of the backs of the general taxpayers, improving the transit system, strengthening neighborhoods, protecting the drinking water supply, helping young people succeed with education and opportunity, and ensuring that new development takes the form of great new places instead of just more oil-dependent sprawl.
Only Mayor Meeker and Councilor West know the real reasons they are withholding their support from the black woman who is, far and away, the best-qualified candidate for the Planning Commission.
But some think the dynamic behind this apparent stall-out might be explained here.
“Power is not gained by hoarding it, it’s gained by sharing it ... if the Old Guard is afraid to reach back and mentor the next generation that wants to be in this realm of electoral politics ... that younger generation is going to elbow them in the face, and they’re going to find themselves on the sideline as the next generation takes their seats away.“—State Rep. Ty Harrell
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