Raleigh

Community-focused posts

There are 774 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 28 of 78).

“Culture of fear” echoes in the press

Looks like what I’d heard about Tony Tata’s “culture of fear” was right on the mark. The News and Observer’s T. Keung Hui wrote about it on October 6th:

Wake County school board Chairman Kevin Hill said Friday that former Superintendent Tony Tata’s autocratic leadership style created a culture of fear among school system employees.

Then on Wednesday, the Indy Week’s Will Huntsberry wrote about it and included quotes from many school employees backing it up:

Some school board members and former administrators allege that former Wake superintendent Tony Tata created a “culture of fear” in the central office. His generous public persona, which earned him wide popularity, contrasted with his threatening private demeanor in the workplace, they say.

I was particularly galled when I read what Tata allegedly told his staff:
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ABB lights up Marbles with $1 million donation

I meant to say something about this yesterday because it’s so chock full of awesomeness. Power grid giant ABB is donating $1 million to Marbles Kids Museum to build an interactive power grid play area for kids. When I told my kids about these plans this morning, their eyes lit up like a solar farm at full sun.

Bravo, ABB, and congratulations Marbles! (Oh, and hey ABB: we’d love to have you in downtown Raleigh, too!)

Global engineering firm ABB, which builds electricity grids and designs utility equipment, is donating $1 million to Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh to develop an interactive play area that will let tykes pretend they are operating wind farms and power plants and lighting up neighborhoods.

ABB officials said the donation symbolizes the Triangle’s emerging reputation as a national smart-grid hub known for attracting research, startups and federal grants. ABB, which employs 2,000 people in North Carolina, made the initial payment of $100,000 Wednesday. ABB will also contribute equipment, including motors, towers, cables, transformers and control systems.

The exhibit is scheduled to open to the public in 2014 and shows interest in downtown investment by a global conglomerate that does not have a downtown presence.

via ABB lights up Marbles with $1 million donation – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Chatham bunker served Cameron Village bunker

“Big Hole” bunker in Chatham County


Remember when I wrote about the secret AT&T tropospheric bunker in Chatham County, and how N&O reporter Jay Price knew it pointed to downtown Raleigh but didn’t know where? My blogging friend John Morris discovered that the other end of this Chatham bunker’s communications link was in the basement of the 401 Oberlin building in Cameron Village:

Two years after this testimony, one of the new buildings within Cameron Village housed a top secret facility with communications equipment and provisions to survive a nuclear disaster. There were many other similar installations across the country built at the same time.

John says Jay Price wrote about 401 Oberlin in a follow-up to his Chatham bunker story but the article doesn’t appear to be online.

Interesting spot for a top-secret communications facility, and a shame it’s no longer around.

Partisan? Where do we start?

“With this partisan decision, the board has now guaranteed that there will be far fewer great schools in Wake County,” board member Debra Goldman said. “I grieve for our children, our teachers and our staff. There will certainly not be the security and stability that the citizens of Wake County want.”

Yeah, Goldman grieves sooooo much that she’s canceling her political bid for State Auditor to focus on the Wake County school chirren.

What’s that? You say Goldman is only using the Wake Board of Education as a stepping stone to higher political office? Surely you jest! I’m sure John Tedesco is so outraged that he’ll drop his bid to become State Superintendent of Education, too, just so he can stay and set the Wake school board right. I mean, it’s not about him, it’s about the kids, right?

Someone please wake me when all the cheap political grandstanding is over.

via Ousting of Wake schools chief could jeopardize funding :: WRAL.com.

Tata’s culture of fear

Tony Tata


I’ve heard rumors from sources inside the school system that superintendent Tony Tata had created a “culture of fear” among teachers and staff. They say that people were afraid to speak out when something concerned them and those who stuck to their guns when they felt strongly about something were dismissed.

That’s no way to run a school system, or even an army brigade for that matter. I trust that we’ll here more of the reasoning as things progress.

School assignment madness

Two miles or two hundred feet?

You want to know how messed up the proposed 2013-2014 Wake County school assignments are? Above is a photo of our kids’ school, Conn Elementary. Highlighted in red is the long-time home of Mrs. Williams at 300 Plainview Avenue in the Belvidere Park neighborhood.

As you can see, Mrs. Williams’s property is actually adjacent to Conn Elementary. The neighborhood crosswalk for Conn runs right in front of her property. From her back porch she could honestly throw a rock and hit the school (provided of course that Principal Richburg isn’t around).
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Time for Gen. Tata to fall on his sword

Some friends and I were recently discussing the Wake school bus fiasco. Some thought that through his resignation, Don Haydon, Wake’s long-time operations and facilities manager, might be accepting responsibility for the debacle. And he is. It has been his job for 12 years to get the buses where they need to go. I wondered, though: how could a seasoned administrator with over a decade of experience foul things up so badly?

Then I recalled the military bureaucracy I once served in and got an idea of what most likely happened. Haydon was almost certainly given an impossible task to move more kids with fewer buses. I can imagine that his boss wasn’t too keen to hear that a train wreck was imminent and Haydon had no choice but to step down.
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Raleigh Union Station

Raleigh’s Union Station, circa 1940s. Photo by John F. Gilbert.


This morning, federal, state, and local officials gathered in the Dillon Supply Viaduct building to announce that Raleigh’s proposed new Union Station is now fully-funded. The chance of Raleigh getting a new train station anytime this decade looked remote until Raleigh won a $21 million federal grant. The Feds are kicking in $15 million of stimulus money and the state is kicking in an additional $6 million. Raleigh is funding $3 million from its earlier transportation bond and Triangle Transit is contributing the $1.3 million property.

Above is a circa 1940s photo of Raleigh’s former Union Station, which still stands at the corner of Dawson and Martin streets facing Nash Square. Raleigh’s station was an “end-station” with stub-end tracks, meaning trains stopping at Raleigh had to back either in or out of the station.

Backing up trains takes a lot of time, so when the Seaboard station and Southern station (both through-stations) opened up it spelled the doom of Union Station. Now the building houses offices. I believe the station’s tracks are still embedded beneath the surrounding roads.

RCAC unplugged

After my post last night, I thought of one other highlight of the evening. After the meeting adjourned later than scheduled, I looked around the room and no one was leaving! The CAC chairs were all happily chatting with each other well after the meeting was over. Ten minutes later I think only 10% of members had left (and we had over 21 there).

I marveled for a moment at the sight of these interactions. I seldom saw this kind of cooperation and collaboration when I first became chair. It tells that I was right about the value of the RCAC, that the chance to work together is what its all about.

I see the RCAC as kind of a support group for CAC chairs. It’s proving to be a good call.

RCAC recognition

We were having what seemed like a typical RCAC meeting tonight, with a few long-winded discussions about neighborhood events and Raleigh’s UDO. We were already running past our usual adjournment time when Dwayne Patterson of Community Services made a wonderful comment.
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