Raleigh

Community-focused posts

There are 776 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 10 of 78).

Raleigh’s Bike Share is key to Raleigh’s growth

A Bike Share bike rack in downtown Boulder, CO.

A Bike Share bike rack in downtown Boulder, CO.


Raleigh City Council is considering sponsoring a bike share program. This was a project first begun a year or two ago, resulting in winning a federal grant. Now that grant is in danger of expiring next month if the city does not move forward.

I am reminded of the presentation former Raleigh City Planner Mitchell Silver gave a few years ago on our society’s changing demographics, an eye-opening look at today’s new workforce. Today’s new workforce does not want to drive anywhere (sorry, RTP). The new workforce wants their living, working, and playing all to be nearby. One need only see the massive investments recently made in upscale apartments clustered around downtown, N.C. State, Cameron Village, and other commercial areas. Durham’s American Tobacco Campus is the same way.
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Half my life in Raleigh

Downtown_Raleigh_at_night_Jan_2012-NCDOT-1800x1072
According to a geeky tool known as www.timeanddate.com, Friday was the date when I officially spent half of my life in Raleigh. I arrived on Sunday, 2 August 1992 to attend N.C. State and somehow never left. Prior to Raleigh, the longest I’d ever lived somewhere was 7 years in Columbia, SC, where I finished elementary school and started middle school.

August 2nd wasn’t my first look at Raleigh that year. I originally drove up from Columbia for the Jimmy Buffett concerts on 12-13 June 1992, staying at the Barton Place condo being rented by my high school buddy, Mike. My very first look at Raleigh was driving up for the State-Carolina game on 17 Oct 1987. I crashed at my friend Chris’s dorm room in Bragaw Hall. He gave me a tour of Raleigh’s then-desolate downtown.

Back then I never thought Raleigh would ever hold my interest. Fortunately, it has grown to suit me. I don’t know if my kids will decide to stay here, though. My daughter seems set on new horizons but one can never say never. For me, though, Raleigh’s been a wonderful place to live, work, and play and it gets a little better every day.

Calling all Time Warner customers to unite against its dreadful customer service | News & Observer

Time-Warner-Cable
Former Raleigh City Councilor Barlow Herget wrote to the N&O about his abysmal recent experience at the Time Warner Cable office.

Mr. Herget asks if the City Council could change the law to go back to local control of cable TV franchises. Local control went out the window in 2005 when a group of “business-friendly” Democrats in the state legislature successfully passed the “state franchise for cable television” bill into law for their friends at Time Warner Cable. This stripped control of cable franchises from city and county governments and placed it in the hands of the state. It’s easier to pay off state leaderss rather than local leaders, it seems.

I predicted this would happen back in 2006 and time has proven me correct. I just wish I could’ve convinced more state legislators at the time.

I recently had the dreadful occasion to visit Time Warner’s office in Raleigh. We needed a “box” for a new television. It was a hot 95 degrees outside, and inside the Atlantic Avenue office, there were 35 to 40 people waiting, including one crying baby.

The room was the size of a typical school class. We took a number and asked how long we should expect to wait. Thirty minutes. We luckily found two chairs together and sat down.My fellow subscribers were lined along the walls, a few standing, more coming in. Mostly patient, the steam was starting to rise in some of these customers. There was an inane game show on a big screen TV that a few were watching.

One lady came in carrying a big box, saw the crowd and asked how long she had to wait. Told 30 minutes, she declared she was on her lunch break and, after waiting 10 minutes, departed, muttering, “Some people have to work for a living,”

Source: Calling all Time Warner customers to unite against its dreadful customer service | News & Observer

Raleigh woman, part owner of Tir Na Nog, still shaken by mugging | WNCN

I feel sad for Ms. Nice and want these thugs serving some time for this. That said, some commenters on this story have said “well, if she was armed this wouldn’t have happened.”

The woman was hit over the head. I don’t think she was expecting to be hit on the head. I doubt she had much time to do anything at all other than collapse in a heap. In fact, if she had a weapon on her it’s quite possible that these dirtbags would’ve stolen it with her other stuff, too.

I hate crime as much as anyone but guns are not some magic cure-all. They just aren’t.

I hope they catch these punks.

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – A Raleigh woman was hit over the head, thrown to the ground and mugged – all just feet from where she lives.

“All you’ve taken away is my little bit of security,” said the victim, Annie Nice.

Nice is still shaken up talking about the mugging that sent her to the hospital. It happened at 8 p.m. Tuesday on East Davie Street in downtown Raleigh. Nice said she was just walking from her car at the time.

“It felt like a piano has fallen out of the sky and hit me over the head. You know it’s unbelievable,” Nice said.

Source: Raleigh woman, part owner of Tir Na Nog, still shaken by mugging | WNCN

Planting flags around Dix Park is so 17th century

Raleigh Planning Commission member Matt Tomasulo recently planted thousands of survey flags to lead people around the Dix Park property.

Dude, planting flags is sooooo 17th century. There are apps for this. Create a Google Map with landmarks at the sites worth seeing. Include links to photographs and, more importantly, open up comments for others to say why these sites are meaningful. I’m all for bringing people out to Dix but they should be out there seeing the beauty of the park and not thousands of plastic flags.

With help from thousands of pink survey flags, one city planning commission member is hoping to bring more people to the former Dix hospital site near downtown.

On Tuesday afternoon, Matt Tomasulo and five volunteers planted 4,399 pink survey flags throughout Dorothea Dix Park, creating small trails that will lead visitors around city-owned portions of the property. Tomasulo called it a simple gesture to say thanks to Mayor Nancy McFarlane and Gov. Pat McCrory for making possible Raleigh’s purchase of the former psychiatric hospital campus.

Source: Raleigh Planning Commission member installs hundreds of flags at Dix Park | News & Observer

Highlights of 2015: CERT lives again

Oakwood CERT members learn basic firefighting

Oakwood CERT members learn basic firefighting


I’ve blogged here before about how much fun I’ve had participating in the CERT program, the Community Emergency Response Team training. I think it is important to get people trained to help themselves when the need arises. In cases of trauma, every minute counts. Medical experts talk about the Golden Hour, when the odds of saving a victim of traumatic injury are greatest. One doesn’t have to be a doctor, but anything that can patch a person up until medical professionals can get there will go a long way towards saving them.

As you know, the first CERT program folded. I had heard rumblings of a new program being bootstrapped in the Oakwood neighborhood. A year passed and I wondered if the effort would succeed. Then in August I got an invite to the training class for the Oakwood CERT team – it was actually happening! About twenty of my neighbors took the training with me and we had great support from Samantha Royster from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS). Everyone left that weekend with some hands-on emergency training as well as a full CERT kit paid for through a generous federal grant.

What’s more, my classmates immediately elected me … president. While I wasn’t in the room, of course. Heh.

Fast forward to mid-December. My company’s foundation looks for non-profits that attract the passion of its employees and those employees are invited to submit grant requests. On the last day of the grant program, I put in a request to fund the Oakwood CERT team and was pleased to learn it was fully granted! It’s a modest grant but it’s one I hope to build on.
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Highlights of 2015: Dix Park, part II

Dix Park proponents at Council of State meeting. L-R, Mayor Nancy McFarlane, City Manager Ruffin Hall, Councilor Kay Crowder, Dix Visionaries member Jay Spain, Councilor Russ Stephenson

Dix Park proponents at May 2015 Council of State meeting. L-R, Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, City Manager Ruffin Hall, City Councilor Kay Crowder, Friends of Dix Park member Jay Spain, City Councilor Russ Stephenson


2015 was the year that the City of Raleigh finally got the prize it had long sought from the state: the deed to the Dorothea Dix property. In February, the city and state worked out a deal for Raleigh to purchase the property for $53 million dollars. This is far more than the original lease terms (under the first deal that was subsequently torn up by a spiteful General Assembly) and also far more than most state property that gets transferred to local entities. Apparently, Republican leaders in the Gereral Assembly have no problem with burdening people with taxes as long as the urban folk who have to pay.

Anyway, this time the deal got negotiated and signed behind the scenes. The group on whose board I sit, Friends of Dorothea Dix Park (FDDP), was largely kept in the dark about negotiations (though I knew talks were underway). It’s all the same now that the park has been secured, though. I did get to attend the following Council of State meeting on May 5th where the rest of state leaders signed off on the deal. This is my photo of city and Dix Visionaries leaders after the historic event.
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Highlights of 2015: Google Fiber

fiber_house
Also around February, Raleigh got the official word from Google that Google Fiber was coming to the Triangle.

This announcement was really exciting to me after doing what I could over the years to promote broadband competition in North Carolina. For years I maintained the “Bring Google Fiber to Raleigh” Facebook page, posting updates when I got them. I met with city and state officials to keep up with their broadband plans (NC NGN). I took time off of work to attend the Google Fiber announcement and schmoozed with Google Fiber executives at an invitation-only community meet-and-greet.

I was hoping to become a part of the Google Fiber team here but it was not to be. It would’ve been one hell of a gig, so to speak: promoting something I am passionate about and putting to use all the people and political skills I’ve honed over the years. Google had their own ideas of what they wanted, though, and I was super bummed to miss out on the opportunity. It’s probably for the better, in hindsight. I can honestly say that Google hit a home run with the hire of Tia MacLauren as its Raleigh Community Manager, and I am getting crankier in my old age and thus more apt to say what I’m thinking!

Google Fiber trucks haven’t begun rolling in earnest around Raleigh yet but they soon will. No matter what, though, broadband competition has finally come to North Carolina’s cities, and this in itself is a beautiful thing.

Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

Remember when I wrote about how the Confederate Memorial doesn’t belong on the State Capitol grounds? I suggested the memorial be moved to the Oakwood Cemetery, where it and the ideals behind it could be retired forever.

The only place racism belongs is in the cemetery. Racism deserves to be buried.

Sadly,  some misguilded individual doesn’t know the difference between a monument to racism celebrated with a position on public grounds and a monument on private grounds marking the graves of people who lived in those times.

This person has vandalized someone’s final resting place. This is shameful and disrespectful and off-limits. Let the racists rest in peace along with the misguided ideals by which they lived. Let everyone see that the legacy of racism ends in the cold damp earth of a cemetery.

Speak about out our contiuning to celebratie these legacies on public grounds while advocating that the proper place for these legacies is six feet under.

 

Vandals spray-painted anti-racist graffiti on nine monuments inside Raleigh’s Historic Oakwood Cemetery, mostly damaging the graves of high-ranking officers in the Confederate Army but also defacing the stone of North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, whose racial views in the early 1900s have found increasing criticism.

The attack caused roughly $20,000 in damage on Wednesday night and is thought to be the first of its kind on private property, said Robin Simonton, executive director at Oakwood. Cemetery officials reported the crime to Raleigh police during the weekend, hoping to spare further destruction during the holidays.

Source: Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

My ridealong with the Raleigh Police Department

Ready to roll with Officer Boyd

Ready to roll with Officer Boyd

In July of 2015, I decided it was time again to take another ridealong with the Raleigh Police Department (RPD). I last did a ridealong in 2007 and learned so much about my community that I never would have learned otherwise. It seemed like a refresher was in order, so I contacted my beat officer, Officer J.D. Boyd, and we set up a Friday night to make it happen.

There were a few key differences for this ridealong compared to the last time. First, I got door-to-door service from RPD whereas last time I had to start and end at the Southeast District station. I also was afforded the use of a bulletproof vest which was not offered last time. Finally, I am a greenway volunteer with RPD and so I am not your typical citizen. I’m sort of part of the department. This means I got to do more during this ridealong than my last ridealong, but more on that in a minute.

The ridealong experience started with some prep on my part. Knowing that I would likely be up most of the night, I took a two-hour nap after work. This got me rested and alert for the ridealong. Without the nap I would’ve been toast!

Officer Boyd rolled up to my home about 9 PM and handed me my bulletproof vest to put on. I took a cue from my last ridealong and dressed nicely with a blue button-down shirt and slacks. If I was going to be meeting the public and potentially be in their homes I wanted to look professional. The vest wasn’t all that bulky but I was aware how it might get heavy if I had to wear it all the time. Once suited up, I returned outside.

Getting the lowdown on the gear

Getting the lowdown on the gear

Boyd then gave me a quick rundown of safety stuff. He handed me a waiver to sign and then described where I could find his weapons and safety equipment, should I have to help him out. This was sobering! With a pic or two taken in front of his car, I waved goodbye to the family and we departed for our first call. It was a little disturbing how happy my son was to see his dad get whisked away in a police car!
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