please send your signal to do so. Following a few rounds of prepared questions, we will address audience questions you should have perceived. Well there’s index cars, um, where you can write your question again. Questions should be addressed to a district and not as a candidate. We will continue the same district rotation as prepared question for that. We reserve the right to group questions. If more than one person asked the question on the same topic. If you need more index cards, please raise your hand and they’ll come to you for the evening. At the conclusion of the questions here, the candidates will have one minute, they’re closing statement. We recognize that alternates will be able to address every question for every issue you may wish to use your closing statement to do so. Thank you. So our opening question and this is the two minutes you’re ready for a great. Um, so we’ll start with drake and work our way down. So please talk about the work you do in your professional advocacy life that propels you to run for office. And how does your area of expertise contribute to benefit all people in Raleigh and invest in one of my people. Come on. So my name is Ryan Pierce. I grew up in Raleigh north Carolina and south east Rally right next to seafood. Um, graduated from high school, went to live in middle school. I’m a small business owner of a landscape company um, during the pandemic. I went back to school and got my teaching license so I could help teach during the pandemic because of such, our teacher shortage. Um I also volunteer with multiple organizations like wide ministries which every week this year so far we’re bringing in 10 refugee families and they go throughout the entire state and country. I work with the north Carolina Foundation for public school Children. Um This year alone we raised over $20,000 for Southeast Rally for book backs. We brought 500 book backs and helping admission Southeast. I’ve built my small business from the ground up, started with $5 and is now over a million dollar year business. Every one of my employees makes over $20 an hour as a small business on it. What I bring to the table is I know Riley, I’m in my community, I know what my community needs. I’ve been working with people in our community for years during the pandemic. I also worked with multiple organizations to raise over $250,000 to help put over 400 families in hotels that were in transitional homes have nowhere to go. I also delivered a minimum of 200-200 different families a week. Food who did not want to leave. Um my district has changed a lot. It used to be a minority district. It was 54%. Minority rally was one of 15 places in the entire country that had to minority districts and I’ve been working with minority community my entire life. I plan to keep doing the same as your leader in District D. Thank you my name is Jacob. Um In my professional life I’m a principal consultant that wouldn’t be uncommon for a lot of Raleigh and you know, remote tech worker and Rolly, that non common profession. I’ve lived here for about 11 years. I moved my entire family here. I started out trying to find a rental home. I I spent weeks camping at Jordan Lake in an effort to try to find and propel my uh my path here until we got it. Um And so I’ve experienced pretty much every level of life in the north probably as I eventually purchased my home four years ago in District B. Um And through that cycle I’ve seen a wide variety of families and needs. Um And how it’s not a one size fits all solution for for everybody moved into an area and what might be required. I’ve also worked with other charity groups such as the World Central Kitchen’s uh for the last big storm and it was escaping me which storm, but um when that rolled through, we provided food, the coast through the area. And I’ve had my entire family, including my younger Children, were all given full status on that project um for their work. Um And uh I continue to think of beating people and helping people as a primary purpose and have, you know, personal feeling for um you know people who are maybe trying to move into an area less. Um And I would like to I would like to bring to the table and my ability to learn and continue to work on things as a as a consultant. I’ve always had to learn and adjust and hear what people are saying considering the options carefully. And I would like to bring that same problem solving aspect to the uh to the city council. Alright. Um Hi everyone. I’m Patton. I moved to Raleigh six years ago, right before my daughter was born. I just knew I actually moved here on my due date. I don’t recommend that part. Um But I knew that I wanted to put our rally rally our home because we knew that rally offered the promise of financial prosperity, community diversity, parks um and and all the rest of the school library. And in so many ways rally has delivered on that promise. Um and in so many ways that we don’t actively and boldly right now that promise it’s currently not true for all of our neighbors. It’s gonna slip away from more of our neighbors. And we need to get to work, we need to preserve that that promise for our current neighbors for the ones moving here and the ones who are gonna be here in seven generations from now. Um in my personal and professional life I have in my advocacy life. I have worked on my school P. T. A. And that’s where I started um and think that all politics are personal, they’re all local. Um the personal is political. And so I work on the PCH to improve the lives of students and staff at my daughter’s school. I work on our neighborhood H. O. A. Um volunteer to bring our community together and also make sure that things like our by laws are really representative of what our neighbors want. Um and also I’m a proud member of moms demand action. Um working hard on the long fight for gun safety in our country. Um I thought of the time I thought that. Um, but I also have worked professionally and across industries. I was a school teacher, but I also have tables man made. I was recently worked nights at a factory because childcare is astronomically expensive. Um as I moved up into management, I worked hard to improve working conditions for my employees by um getting them hazard pay during the pandemic. That’s my time. Hello everyone. Thank you. Wake up Wake County first off for having us here uh sports forum and also everyone here online or in person today. Uh First off a little bit about myself, My name is newly, I’m running for three council district. Uh I’m a first generation korean american. I’ve lived in this district for over 14 years now. Um I am a college student as well, studying political science at north Carolina State University. I’m in my last semester, I’m also a city employee elected, uh, commissioner for the civil service commission. Um, and I’m also a subject teacher for wake County public school system, and also a third vice chair of the north Carolina Democratic Parties, um, A. P. I. Caucus. Um, so you know, why am I running? I’m running because representation really matters school. Um, you know, as a young uh, asian american, I’m proud to say that if I am elected, you know, I would represent a voice that has never been seen before on the council. Uh, you know, we need someone who will represent our minority communities as well as, uh, you know, the future homeowners and renters of tomorrow, so that that’s precisely why I’m running today. Um, and if you look at all my experiences, if you look at all of what I’ve done uh, throughout my life, I think it sort of shows this sort of dedication to representation and helping my community and that’s exactly what I want to do today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for that. The first question that actually want to circle back to recognize and think that we have a diverse coalition of partners putting this event together over a dozen logos will be on the side here behind me. And I love the entrance and um, so forgive me for earlier, not reaching it was more than just makeup that brought it together. So thank you and the materials that are in these people’s. Um, so related to that district B is a very diverse set of communities. How do you plan to make sure the voices that make up the non white population district are heard at the council table, um, and people start at the news and go back to stick this time. That’s one. So, you know, I strongly believe that the voices of our minority communities are important and must be referred to. Consider making processes. Uh, the way we go about, you know, bringing them to the table is by improving our community engagement plan. I think, you know, what we need to do is I work for, uh, you know, a system that that reaches out to our community members, uh, you know, go go door knocking every time. There’s a retailing request in their neighborhoods and inform them of pagers what’s happening in your in your district, here’s what’s happening in your neighborhood. Um, you know, come out to these community events and learn all about it and with your opinions. And I think that’s exactly what we need to move forward. But also it’s about educating our communities about these issues. I mean, I’m strongly in favor of going out into our schools and teaching our youth that it’s important to to to, you know, follow along with city council, uh, at least happening and whatnot and show the importance of being involved in local politics, awesome. Um, yeah, so there’s a lot of ways that we can access all of our neighbors regard regardless of their demographic. We need to view that as incumbent and necessary and also measurable. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities. Um, one would be to reinstate neighborhood meetings of some sort whether we call them species or something else. Um, we can bring them down to the community center level and sort of have to make sure that those meetings are serving smaller groups of people and able to be responsive to timing hybrid models. Um, you know, all sorts of things so that we’re actually needing all people regardless of their schedule of their ability level, etcetera. We also need counselors who view it as a incumbent upon them to get into the community. We need counselors who are at the voting meetings themselves. Um, and we need counselors who are looking to organizations where people have already placed their trust like like wake up and where when a community has already placed their trust, then we can go to the leaders of that organization and use them um under representation of diversity. And historically always been a problem in every large city. As our city grows, we can allow our diverse population before from the corner and information as if everyone else has brought up as well. So we need to be able to get the information to people and hear back from them. A lot of ways that we are communicating. Currently are not reaching enough people. We should reinstate community secrets for people as a whole. Get together and are able to represent and uh voice super council, um how they feel about issues. Um and uh in addition we need to reach out to the existing groups for all minority and uh groups where people may already be uh forming opinions and make sure those opinions that are being grouped together are heard at council level. So one of the most important things about district is it was actually just gerrymandering. We used to be 54% minority is not 46% is still a high number, but it did change. We need people who are going to be in those communities and have already been in those communities working with groups like the N double A C P R W C A. And many others. Um right now we actually have seven welcome homes that are in district In the next few months, there were actually 12,000 renters who will be forced out of their apartments because of rent increases. There are programs from the federal government, we need to be really report for those groups of people, 75% of those groups of people are people of minority. Those are things that we’re going into this election that you need to know and have ready to make sure that your leaders know what they’re doing and are ready for that representation. Thank you Moving on to the next um Christian rally grew at about 20 people per day over 70,000 in the last decade with costs and a variety of other factors affecting larger cities. That number is expected to speed up over the next 10 years. What do you tell longtime residents that are concerned about their neighborhood character or changes on their street? And this time we’ll start um we’ll start with Jacob and lay down and one minute. Um so people are concerned at the level of the street. What do you tell longtime residents that are concerned about their neighborhood character or Children on their street with all the growth and things like that? Um We should always welcome in people regardless of uh diversity or our lack of diversity moving in which might be a greater topic. Um but at the same time we need to do that by by addressing the concerns of the people who have uh considerations about the their their current makeup. We need to get out and actually mingle and learn that we’re all people together and I think that is the strongest way to address that issue. Um We need more uh more community center involvement. Um more parts areas where people can get together and get to know one another a little bit and to break down some of those barriers. Yeah. I think um what what do we tell people who notice that Riley is changing things. Yes, it is absolutely is. Um I think there is a lot of thought that it is one, it’s sad that either our existing neighbors can drive or your neighbors can thrive, but I will tell my neighbors it’s a both and scenario that meeting councilors at the table will take a both and approach that we can absolutely protect our neighbors who are watching their property values skyrocket and and are worried that they’re gonna be displaced By those increases and we can develop in smart ways so that we create room for our new papers, we can plan for for putting critical infrastructure nearby where people live. So we don’t have to chain across the town that as our town pros you don’t have to drive 20 minutes to get to the nearest doctor or the nearest state care center. Um it’s a it’s a both and situation we can look out for for everyone right now and we can build a world that works with them. So first off, I think it’s great that Raleigh is growing at a rate. You know, we’re seeing so many people looking forward to Raleigh looking, you know, at the endless opportunities that we provide here in the city. But uh you know, I think it’s all about finding this nuanced balance between growth and development and ensuring that you know, we listen to our neighbors as well as listening to the future uh residents of Raleigh. Um And so you know, I think the way we go about that is through predictability. We need to you know develop in a way that is predictable along major transit corridors and wherever appropriate where density is appropriate. And so we need to work towards you know responsible dense development, risk possible development for its dense walkable neighborhoods on trend trailing corridors like capital boulevard and you know wherever else um is appropriate for density. So so that’s how we find this. We strike this nuanced balance. Um As many of them have said you want to make sure that there’s you have the people that live here and the new people coming in are taken care of. But those numbers are actually a little fall short of the numbers that say there’s about 20 a day or a little bit more are actually fall short. They don’t include N. C. State residents that don’t include tech residents that don’t include shaw or say all residents. Um N. C. State is projected to have 10,000 more students in the next 10 years. Um These are things that we have to bring to the table and know as we’re building a better infrastructure for everyone. And as we’re bringing everyone to the table we need to know the numbers that are actually coming in so that we can actually build for the teacher. Um Those numbers fall a little bit short. We can make sure that as we build we actually know what’s coming in to rally so that we can make a better future forever. Um I heard capital boulevard convention. So I’m gonna go to the transit question here in the next couple of years planning for bus rapid transit along capital boulevard going north, we’ll get started, what do you want to be part of that project and how we make sure your current constituent and benefit from it started playing and yeah, so the proposed the north line of BRT only will reach just the edge of this district. Um so in order to make sure that benefits my constituents in this district would like to see a robust looking ride service at the at the edge of the BRT line. Um I really want to make sure that we plan to protect the people who do live along that corridor already um and protect the affordability of their housing. Um and then I, you know, smart, smart analysis of the tv as it’s called um really district to make sure that we’re putting things in that area that people actually want to get to like job opportunities, medical services, um, grocery and childcare etcetera. We want to make sure that we’re putting things there that people actually want to get to and that we’re actually that we’re also taking care of anybody who might be displaced business might be displaced by development. So uh with bus rapid transit, I mean it’s going to help to alleviate much of the traffic that we see along the capital boulevard as I’m sure anyone bringing on that street can attest to. Um uh so I think that you know bringing bus rapid transit to capitol boulevard is a great thing um you know, but we come across this issue like Megan outlined recently about this last mile issue, you know, it stops at Triangle town center, but you have to get to your house somehow. So I think it’s about creating this connectivity system of connectivity connecting our greenways, ensuring that people have a way to walk by uh to that bus stop. I think that’s essential and that ties into um moving towards walkable neighborhoods along the capital boulevard. Right? So we want to make sure that we bring forward and include the neighborhoods that we are going to be going through in the E. R. T. It does stop short test of District B but as we expand on B. R. T. We need to make sure we can create small bus ups. There are 17 locations through um uh Food lion shopping centers and places where we can put a small hub where a bus visits and you can park and stay and then you go to another hug to join the R. T. Or anywhere else. There are 17 in our district that we can have a small hub for a small busses don’t have small busses that can go and visit back and forth to those things like they do in Cary and Apex and they have a small bus in apex as a shuttle that takes them to their big bus. Those are things that we can bring to this area to make sure that they’re connecting with the R. T. And we’re making sure we expand and include everyone in the neighborhoods. Absolutely. Um high speed transit. It is necessary and it’s important in a positive thing from where it stops um is going to be always an issue. We’re gonna need essentially capillary networks like frank was saying uh where busses but we’re also going to need the walkable neighborhoods and you’re gonna need some way to get to the bus. And if you’ve ever tried to walk along capital or across it, that’s somewhat of a difficult task. And they also talk about whitening capital to increase its speed and traffic, you can move through. Um I would also recommend some things like I’ve seen in some larger areas such as uh overpasses. If you need to get to the other side of the street, it’s expensive but it’s also a problem entirely safe way that guarantees pedestrian traffic flow um recommend uh, all that in combination will need some of each. Thank you. Our next question combining strands that we’re just talking about with climate change. Vehicle trips of three miles or less make up the largest amount of emissions in our city. Quite literally, it is quick run to historical mill for dropping off the kids at school or childcare that contribute the most to climate change if elected. How you propose we reduce carbon emissions to address this issue specifically wherever. So, I think this all goes back to, you know, expanding our public transit options, moving towards BRT routes, moving towards uh, you know, rail lines I think, and especially moving towards that’s walkable neighborhoods, you know, major trans forward. We need to do what we can to promote, uh, you know, this move the shift away for from being so hard dependent and towards being more community center. You know, I would not want nothing more than to be able to walk two blocks down to my house to the nearest grocery store, to the nearest library to the nearest school. And I’m sure that’s the same sentiment across the district across the city. So, you know, what we need to do is is increase our investments in public transit and work towards expanding that. And also we need to promote the development of these multiple neighborhoods. We need to work towards connecting our green ways to ensure that uh people uh can ride their bikes to work wherever. Um, so District B along with District C. Has a lot of food deserts. And that makes it very difficult for people to just to say we’re gonna walk to the store. And so we need to make sure that we’re making it so that there are not as many food deserts in District B. And you can have those walkable neighborhoods and things like that. You also have Oregon and northern California right now, working on with Uber to make sure that there are actually small shuttle busses and you can have coming to your neighborhood and you actually split the fare costs with the people that ride that shelters. Those are things that we can look to bring forward to our neighborhoods to use so that people can use those and not drive cars and they can travel to areas where they need to do. We need to alleviate our food deserts and district lee to help alleviate the problem. The uh the walkable neighborhoods alone aren’t actually a solution to this because it is very spotty. I’ve seen walking or cycling through the city, you will have a bike lane for a little bit and then you won’t have one more walking. And this also includes um you know, shorter things like dropping Children off at activity. Even if it’s a short distance, if you have to walk along the shoulder of a 45 mile per hour road, you don’t feel safe letting your child walk that business. We need to correct that so that we have sidewalks and consistent access through that. But in addition, we need to provide the easier access to the uh mass transit options that are available. We need to have more routes and smaller routes uh such as shuttles or shorter routes between major shopping areas. It’s absolutely required. Um, and then we need ways to uh, you know, encourage people to use those greenways and bicycle systems that we built. So I think that industry be specifically our opportunity to make impact on these small trips to the grocery store. Is to be to be asking when new development comes to the table, asking those developers to think with walk ability and find look at a neighborhood like 54 1 in District B and it’s a mix of housing types, but there’s a bank and a child care center and doctor’s office and they’re all right there and there’s school. And so these things are possible. You know, I think there is some friction between the idea that there’s, there’s only density or there’s only single family, but we can actually claim both with these things in mind. And so I think we can look to examples that already in the district to bring the things that people need all into one spot um can also make sure that that things even like school busses are coming to to where Children need so that they’re being well accessed and utilized. We can look to our partners across the county and the school system, um Relating to dimensions about bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The city of Raleigh spends over $50 million dollars annually on road related construction planning and maintenance. How much do you think should be prioritized towards public transportation and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure? The dollar amount for that would be difficult to serve. The problem that we have right now with our city councilors and our government is that we are not accessing all the federal funds that are out there. Um hug has a program for that specifically. It has $1.9 billion 2.8 is now 1.9 local governments and state governments are not using the money that is accessible to them to make sure that we can have those things. We can have those without increasing taxes without spending our own money on those things. And that’s something that we go forward. We need to go get that money and bring it to our table so that we can spend the money so we can have our bicycle lanes, we can have our walk ability, we can have those things because there’s this federal grants that we can be accessing at our level, drawing an exact dollar amount would be basically impossible without actually looking at the cost of individual projects and what needs to happen, uh, agree with that. But we do need to draw more money. And as we continue to grow, it’s very hard to add these factors later. So, wherever we draw the money from, to add a sustainable bicycle lane system, we need to do it now. Well, rewarding and building because adding it afterwards will easily triple cost by most figures to rip up existing infrastructure replanted after. Um, so find it uh, absolutely necessary to try to find those funds and to start planning with that in mind as we connect new developments and developments and as the roads get improved at the sidewalks where there isn’t one or add the. Yeah, so I agree. Um, planning for complete streets is essential for all news. Three projects. I think that we need to have equitable distribution across across the districts for the types of the movement and the mobility that are appropriate for this district. So there’s, there’s a lot of reason to put a lot of dollars downtown on things like bike pedestrian modalities out here in district. We need to make sure that we are also investing in cars. It’s gonna be a while before your team makes it out to us. So we need to make sure that we’re investing in in the ability to move our cars around, but we also need to link that to um, sustainability too. So we invest in the tree canopies, the streets are cool and asphalt not warming our climate. Um, so we can make a lot of investments in, um, you know, medians street canopy and other things like that that also protect our climate while we’re working toward a less hard environment. Yeah, so I’m gonna start off by saying, I don’t think there’s a specific dollar amount to this question, but I will say that we can’t simply build ourselves out of traffic. We can build ourselves out of, you know, uh infrastructure issues. What we have to do is move forwards, the, you know, away from being so hard dependent and expand our uh expand our uh funding in, you know, public transit opportunities so that we can move away from being dependent and towards a sustainable way of traveling throughout our city. Going back to the growth that we mentioned earlier, grand style homes are being torn down and replaced with huge single family homes priced at 4 to 5 times the original house, given the city. And voters emphasis on DNC, which we’ve mentioned an affordable helping. What could or should be done if anything by the city to change what is happening. Um We need to include in new development um Mixed side to quit, so I would include a mixed density for home, new development that’s going in. Um So if you are putting in the large homes in some sections, you’re gonna have to put in a section of grow houses as well. They don’t have to be next to each other, everyone can be happy um As far as property, we can complete affordable options and new development that’s going in and also preserve some of those older districts. Um as this process moves forward. Um We’re just gonna, we’re gonna course, everybody who does not make it a substantial income out of our city, all of the workers and uh valuable infrastructure employees where the city won’t actually be able to afford to live here at this. Um Yeah, so protecting um naturally occurring affordable housing is really important. It can be done in a few ways. There are ways to we can partner with their friends in the county um to implement tax refunds and tax relief for people whose property taxes are rising and that’s part of their displacement. Um making people can continue to afford their homes, allows them to stay in them and, you know, can break some of the cycle of tearing them down building much more into homes. Um We also, you know, there has been a missing middle types change, I think, bringing a lot of attention to that and modifying components of it that have been tough for our community to swallow. Um can help make sure that we’re building a variety of home types that are accessible to people across the income spectrum. We need to continue to build designated affordable housing for folks who are living, You’re 3% of the area median income. So there’s a lot of there’s a lot of strategies and we need to use them all at once so that we can keep housing. Yeah, so it’s upsetting that this is happening, you know, it, you know, tearing down these houses that takes away from the character of our city and and so it truly is an issue. Um so I would look into, you know, a possible text change that would examine putting uh certain restrictions. Or so a text change that would just look to prevent the tearing down and building mcmansions uh that are, you know, that go for millions and millions of dollars. Um but on top of that, I think it’s also important to sort of redefine this uh concept of home ownership, you know what this home ownership really mean today, and that’s all about, you know, owning your single family detached house. I think we need to work towards redefining that so that you can own your condo, you can own your townhouse. It’s okay. That’s that’s what we want and that ties into middle, missing middle housing. And that would promote affordability throughout our city. So most of your houses being torn down the management, so if it’s a regular person buying a house and that’s what they want to do with their house, and that’s perfectly fine. But 70% of the houses that this is happening to our actually Wall Street bankers in New York, and that can be stopped in a heartbeat. You can make sure that the house cannot be sold to a Wall Street banker to someone who is out of state. That can happen, it has to be a single person and not a group entity. Those are the people that are buying our properties, tearing down and building those houses. So those are the things that we were going forward. Those are the things that you’re looking at stopping that from happening to make sure that we’re protecting and we can have those affordable housing and things like that. But we have to put a change to make sure that it’s not the groups that it’s an individual that is their choice that they have a family. They want to build that. But we’ve got to stop the groups that are coming down from new york buying those and changing those properties. Okay. Since we’ve been giving her friends up here questions for about 30 minutes, I’m gonna provide a little bit of a transition here. If you would like a card to submit a question, they’ll have the card from the pen. So perhaps you can just raise your hand and she can bring them to. Um and I’ve got a question I’m going to give them and um you can hear that. Welcome back on our civil water and then we will continue. That also gives the opportunity to check and see if there’s anything on Twitter we want to pull from. Okay. All right. So this next question. You may have heard that there was a study committee regarding council terms pay and so on and so forth. How do you feel about the recommendations of the study committee regarding four year saturday terms. Um And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think it was great for the for the study speaking that did to modernize the council. I think four year staggered terms makes a lot of sense in terms of continuity of governance. Um you know, not turning over the council every single two years, most a lot more things get done. Um I also know that there was not universally liked by our constituents and that, so I think before we would make any changes to council terms, we need to make sure that there’s broad, sweeping community engagement and that not only areas understanding of why that might be useful, but that there is agreement that this is the right direction for council to move in. Um So community engagement is absolutely necessary before we make uh legislative challenge like that one. Yeah. So overall, uh you know, supportive of this concept of staggered for your terms for council, I think it will bring a lot of stability. And I think, you know, you can see that in numerous scholarly reports that have been written by uh experts in this field, but also, I think, you know, a common example to look back to is that the United States House of Representatives. I mean, we don’t have a staggered term for the House of Representatives. And you see how unstable it is, it goes back from republicans and democrats, republicans, and democrats and people, you know, whoever is in power will just uh reverse everything that the previous party did. So I think moving towards for your staggered terms is beneficial and it would, surely, uh, promote stability within our council and within our city. Um, so I believe that we do need four year terms and it’s, you have everything you said and Megan said, all of that has to go to the other. Um, One of the hardest things to do is actually run for public office, um, the amount of time that you have to commit to a campaign, there is no way that any counselor can actually run for a campaign office and do all the work that you have to do. It’s just not physically possible for hours in the day to do it between your meetings and everything else. Um, if you want to be able to actually have community engagement and things like that, you need to have those longer term staggered terms so that you can actually give service to community once you are elected. But if you’re having to run for office every year, because once you’re elected, if your case is two years later, you’re running for office for a year. So you’re in office for a year, then you’re running for a year during that entire year. You’re working to get elected again, not necessarily doing all the work you could be doing for the community. I agree that four year staggered terms, the overlap will build a certain amount of stability and I can see a lot of logic behind that. Um In addition I have to say that the duration of a two year term does make it difficult to accomplish anything to build a valuable base of knowledge and information and communication with the community and then be able to act on it in that same period of time. It is way too short. I think four years makes sense. And to stay here we will still allow for the same basic flow of elections that we have currently um psychological, but once again the overall the community and the voter base has to be in agreement with whatever changes. Thank you. So at this time I think we can take a two minute break. You can if that is feasible. So that gail and I can collect the card. I can look at them and group them as appropriate. So if you pour up here, I need to run in the bathroom, go out and get a breath of fresh air and get some water come back in two minutes and we can We’re gonna take a two minute 608. Okay. Mhm. Okay, thank you. Everything will be on your Yes, thank you. How are you? Good to see you got to lie to you. We had some technical difficulties. Were cameras that were doing it the old fashioned way. Technology is great. Yeah, I want Yeah. Really? Okay. Okay. Yes, yes, I thought about it. Okay. Personality right. There’s a all right. I think it started again here for a little um, and looking at these, we have quite a variety. So I’m just gonna shuffle them up here and then draw the random so it that way and then in the middle you can come ask your question. The majority of this job is understanding donating. What is your experience of that? So I don’t have extensive experience in early planning or you know, zoning requests and whatnot. I will say I the most I’ve got is that uh, taking an urban planning class last last year with how he used to be a city manager and throughout that whole class, you know, I learned so much about, you know, urban such such as new urbanism. Uh, this whole process of walking the neighborhoods spark road green design. So, you know, this is exactly what I want to see, coming to Raleigh and learning about the, it sort of struck a chord in me, open my eyes and you know, it made me realize this is what really needs in order to prosper in order to grow in a way that is right for everyone. Um, so that question stops a little bit short. I know a lot about something I’ve been working on it for years. I ran kind of commissions. These are things that I understand and I will, but it’s not short because it also deals with you need people who know how to write grants and people who know how to write policy. Um you can’t change zoning unless you write a policy for, You can’t have grants and money coming to us unless you know how to write grants and have grant writers who properly know how to write grants. Um grant writing takes hundreds of hours just to give them $1 million. You know what I did about 200 hours of grant writing just to get that million dollars. Those are things that we have to know as we’re going into city council to make sure that we’re actually gonna have an equitable place and all of these things that we want. Great you have to know those things as you’re going into the job. My my personal experience with something is not extensive. I’ve been studying the city council for request for to try and get a better understanding of what’s going on currently. Um as a child, I played a lot of simcity, but in addition, um I’ve also been paying a lot of attention to what I’ve seen in other cities across the country and how they balanced green space and parks to neighborhood. And I’ve seen a lot of interesting ideas that come out of that and I would like to have a lot of those ideas into it. And uh I’d like to see medium plans with native plants that would help with the pollinators and environmental issues. They also require less maintenance than there are a lot of considerations you can go on how you use on this and how you plan to really improve and preserve the character. I do not have a degree in urban planning um, says I think what we need from our counselors is not necessarily expertise in every single thing that could come across the council table. There’s no way we could accomplish that, but rather an ability to be self studied, hard working uh to collaborate with experts in their field. And that’s the thing that I promised to do. Um, I think we’ve been really benefited by the this year, the Internet, if you will. There’s a lot of information out there, not only about what’s happening in our city, but what’s happening across all cities. And there’s a lot of research and historical information to be learned about how living has impacted, like how it it has perpetuated and systematized racism in our cities. We need counselors who are willing to stay studied and keep working to understand those things. Next question from the crowd if elected, would you support an alternative mental health crisis unit separate from Early Police Department? I think we’re back straight. I would support that. Um, that is actually one of the budget items that I have hardly prepared for when I am elected is to bring that forward. We are actually short staffed right now were it says 150 officers, but that’s based on 2018. We’re actually about based on residency, $275. And then to be on top of that we need to add an alternative units so that they can go out and help in mental health cases because there are people that we need to show up with a gun and managed to scare that because of what you’ve done or anything. It’s just the stability that they are. Those are things that we need to make sure that we’re working with our police departments who have so that we can have our units go out and work together and make a difference in our communities. Mhm. I absolutely support that additional uh community involvement in policing. We also need additional training for our police officers and mental health cases in general. There are program called C. I. T. I. Personally with my family work with C. I. T. Officers and uh they’re very helpful. This is an excellent program. You can include this and percentage involve uh incentives for officers to get this training to help collaborate with separate health mental health unit. Um Public safety is the responsibility of everybody in our communities and everybody benefits. Um We need uh responsible policing um from individuals who are you know, carefully trained. Mhm. I absolutely support developing corresponding models that put mental health crises and other types of crisis response into the hands of people are specially trained to handle those situations. Um I don’t believe that every police officer is equipped to handle every mental health crisis, nor do they need to um there are before I commit fully to saying yes, how’s how’s this program outside of the police budget? I would like to see more analysis programs and things successful, but from using some of the, using more of their budget to house those corresponding units versus units that have um the house outside of the police with it. Um, so I’m committed to getting money and effort to corresponding. Um, I am not ready to commit fully yes within the police outside it. I would just echo that as well, you know, uh, don’t necessarily feel comfortable fully committing to it, but I think it’s a great uh, great opportunities to look into and examine. I think one of the first things that we have to consider is that, uh, you know, pertaining to, to the Raleigh Police Department never use of force. Their first step, there is of course continue their first step is their presence. And so that should not, you know, there’s no doubt that when a police officer attends a mental health prices call, you know, people are going to be spooked. So what we have to do is make sure that we, you know, find other options like this, uh, like this, um, you know, what was just posed um, and examine that and seeing the viability of it and the success rate in other areas and so, you know, but I think it goes beyond that. I think it also ties into improving the training that our police officers have here in the city to ensure that our Police department is the best in in the nation. District 66. I’m sorry B. District B. We’re not making a district here tonight about that District B is home to many immigrants. How would you make the services and programs mentioned accessible to people who may be undocumented or whose first language may not be english? Thank you. Sure. How would you make the services and programs mentioned accessible to people who may be undocumented or his language may not be english. Um, we need to look at the languages spoken within our communities and try to uh, improve outreach group. We have a mental health group. They need to speak the languages of the people who may be having mental health crisis is um, this is that you can’t just get people to instantly learn language overnight. I understand that, but we need to provide an incentive so that we have a ratio of bilingual people in these positions at least. Um, and then in addition, we need to make sure that, as we mentioned that there is a feeling of fear of persecution when you’re being deliberated mental health service, when someone is trying to help you. You shouldn’t have to hear them take you away. That jail or other forms of persecution would be a result of um, calling for help. I am going to take a broader interpretation of services, um, and say that we all of the cities that that should be operated at least spanish and english, which look to operate um, translation services for council meetings, committee meetings in this, um, meeting minutes, all of those things, literally the least we can do. Um, but also looking to again, organizations, communities already placed their trust. We know that that communities all over our have have either formalized or for informal networks of people that they trust who can um, communicate with them and give them the information that they need. And so it’s incumbent on our counselors to find and invest in the organizations where communities have already placed their trust and get out into them by the leaders of communities formal and informal and meet with them and make sure they’re sharing the news, the information that the changes that are coming to our city. So, in terms of city services, I believe that, you know, I agree with what said, um, you know, we need to expand the languages that we have available, uh, you know, at least spanish at least, uh, um, you know, having a translation option on the website, you know, city government website. Wish I believe we do, um, and having this sort of translation service available at community meetings like, like we do today if I’m not mistaken, but although this is a city city oriented, but uh, having these sorts of outlets available, I think it’s crucial to to involving are important speakers undocumented immigrants in these, um, in these processes, Um, as of right now, based on numbers, we actually have 47 different languages are spoken district. Um, we need to make sure I work with people in our community. Uh, right now, I’m bringing, helping bring in 10 refugee families a week with white ministries. They go all across the country, but some do stay here. We need to make sure that we’re working with these groups and services, and we bring everyone to the table to make sure that they have a voice at the table. We’re listening to them, we’re talking to them, and we have to make sure that they understand that one. We’re not going to turn them in, um, from being an illegal immigrants or anything like that. We’re here for them, and we make sure that we know all The languages that are coming in, I’m not gonna be able to speak 47, but we know which languages they are and who we can get in contact with, that. We can communicate with that person on their level and make sure that they understand how we feel about them and that we care about. Would you like me? Mm, Thank you. I believe the question um, was posed to mr pierce. And is that better? Okay, um, there was a question that was posed, uh, of course, as we discussed in affordable housing and as a real estate agent. That’s something that I struggle with on a daily basis because my base, our clients of affordable housing, and so I notice it’s quite, I believe that you say that this one had that question district. Not one thing I I believe the question was reference to stop the investors from purchasing the home. Well, what I’ve noticed as a real estate agent is that they’re starting to use, um, their representatives on the front end to go ahead inside it. So once you receive the contract that was submitted, it appears is though, that this is an individual person that’s purchasing your home and then Much down the road, you realize it’s an investor and or with investor, they’re putting down $40 or $50,000 over the asking price, which our average hourly individual can compete with. So how do we deal with that situation? How do we, you know, negotiate that? How do we how do we handle that moving forward and try to put the brakes on that, so to speak. Is there a way? Thank you. Yeah, really. Great question. Um, the city cannot do all of that on its own. We do need strong partners in this state. There are a lot of methods. Um, there’s one state legislator who’s working on a ability to limit due diligence units to 1%. So that actual regular person has a chance of receiving a bit on the home. Um so we need, we need help from our friends at sea. We need strong legislators there to um there’s also there there are ways we can put forward legislation to prevent um for this investment companies. So, um yeah, we’re in this for this one. I would say. We need to look to our partners in the state and make sure that our counselors are building bridges with our with our representatives of the state doing that and make sure that the thing to understand that’s important to our city and our residents. Mhm. Yeah. So I think the important thing is that north Carolina is a political state, which means that a lot of times, you know, this is up to the state legislature to sort of pass bills and give that power to municipalities so that we’re able to, you know, implement rules and regulations that concern landing policies and whatnot. Um so, uh, you know, like that, it does go back to the state legislature and we need to work with a partner with them to ensure that, you know, we work towards preventing investors coming into the city and buying up properties and selling them for outrageous prices, but in addition to that, you know, something that that I would want to examine is this sort of residency. Um you know, uh not necessarily requirement, but for lack of a better word requirement where, you know, people have to reside in the house that they own um in industry. Um So the first thing we have to do is actually we can actually put a stay on some of the homes period and they can all be reviewed. There. There is a state statewide that we can put on the, that we can put on two over now, most likely the state will lose. Important that is something that would happen. The leaders can sue you and take all that correct. Um And as they point out working with state legislators to get things done, but it’s who’s already been there working over the last year and a half. I had 175 dinners or lunches with republicans and democrats all across the state until bill burger to all the way down delegation to bring forward stuff to make sure that if they brought something forward from Wayne County, they were, well they had support from republicans or democrats across this and working with those people, most of our counselors don’t go down the valley, just talk to the N. C. B. A. Right. And right now just right now they’re out of session, Let’s say, you know, every day there’s about 27 legislative Italian all from the that you can go talk to or not talk to, but you can get things done for the city. Yeah, I think we need to look at how we can monitor that. I’m not sure exactly what the policy of determined that the individual was not representative of the. That’s a valid question. I would have to go back and do some homework on what what would be involved in limiting that particular process? Definitely the larger or stations, the the national coming into purchasing houses. You need to limit the amount that they can purchase or if they can. In addition, rental companies are another concern on this. This is actually happening on my own street. That as the house goes up for sale, it goes a lot of money. Um we need to limit it. Not entirely. Maybe. But what percentage of the neighborhood can be rental properties or could be used for short term rentals? That’s a growing concern as well as that’s happened in other cities. Um we need to look at how much of the stock is being purchased by who and how much can be. Um maybe not 100% stuff. But definitely uh look at what is a healthy percentage can be uh traded. Studies indicate that self selecting community engagement processes. We I’m sorry, Honey leaves such as. I’m not sure. Yeah. See A CS tend to favor older, wealthier white homeowners. How would you address engagement to achieve more diverse faces being heard? Voices being heard. I apologize. I’ll read it again a little more theory. Studies indicate themselves selecting cleaning processes like C. A. C. S tend to favor older 12 year white homeowners. How would you address engagement to achieve more diverse voices being heard? Yeah, absolutely. There’s no denying that. CSC’s essays before benefiting those with, you know, the time money and inclination to attend these CC being. So obviously what we have to do is um improve our community engagement plan. I think the opening of a, you know, community engagement, a group in the in the city of the government, I think that was a step forward, but we have to do better. I think it goes back to what I said previously about, you know, uh possibly having people go out into neighborhoods where there’s a resounding uh case and not found those awards and inform everybody, hey this is happening in your neighborhood. This is how it’s gonna impact you. Uh we’re gonna have a community uh meeting uh next week come along if you have the time. Um if not, you know, uh There are other ways that you can participate. Um In addition to that, it’s about also educating our younger generation. I think we need to go out into the schools and you know, just outline the importance of city government outlined the importance of engaging in policies. So one of the first things that we can do is have the one you need to have more meetings. Um there are people that work two jobs and tonight there are people who just work at night. You can’t tonight having meetings offered during the workday, having meetings offer tonight and also meetings that each community can come to when you go out into um out of increasing 1302, you can reach out to people who live in to figure out what is the best time for the people most people in that neighborhood to meet and you have meetings by precincts by neighborhoods and say, hey, how can we get 70% of you guys to show up to our meeting? What day of the week works for you and what time? Those are things that we can do with outreach and community involvement and making sure that it’s not just us and it’s not just a set time. It’s 11 a.m. And seven p.m. It’s, hey, let’s go. These communities ask what works for them and then we can change our schedules to do that. Yeah, we definitely need to separate into separate groups and campus opinions brought. There’s also an issue where um many people who should be attending this because they’re impacted um from uh decisions are not, they do not feel empowered to do not feel like their decision or their um their opinion will be taken or considered. We need to make sure that we have a voice for them in those community meetings. Um the people who already feel that they are important of course that get out there and make themselves heard. So we need to wait to try and also make sure that those meetings are meaningful. Um they short to the point. People who worked two jobs don’t necessarily want to sit there for two hours if only 15 minutes with something that they have a lot to say about. We need to make sure that this is uh, easily approachable uh format for the average person to interact with. Yeah, I agree that that the old model of CFCs did, you know, did amplify voices of people who can make it out at certain times and um, it was not representing whole communities. Um, as I mentioned before, bringing it down to a smaller group, having each community center represent a smaller map will mean that everyone is closer to the community they’re meant to be representing. So I think that’s one place to start. I also think that measurement is really essential. Um, you know, so I think it’s making sure that used to give the or what we call it something else that’s going to but and you know, and each neighborhood group has similar governance strategies, has the same rules and regs of sorts, but then also that we’re evaluating who’s there, who’s showing up? Who’s tuning in online for a hybrid session, who’s catching up on social media later. We need to understand who’s being accessed and if we find a group or a certain A certain neighborhood group is not meeting all their constituents means, then that’s when this city will be in the interview counselors of that district need to um to get their interview. I think this is a question. Have you read the 2016-weight trend plan as approved by voters? Yes. No. Yes. We have two left the job of voters. Of the whole elected officials accountable name, one specific policy program or thing. You want the people of Raleigh to hold you accountable for at the end of your term. Just one. I hope youll open accountable for a lot of things once affordable housing one is um increasing pay for our firefighters, police officers, better training, bringing those forward, making sure we have equity bility all across this um rally, making sure that we are planning for the future. Our infrastructure is increasing most of everyone watching this or in this room does not know. We actually will not have anywhere to put trash in 12 years. You don’t know about a year 2040, we will have a water price is the same as California predicted. Environmentalists get that based on our growth and things like that. So these are things that are coming along in the future that we have to start planning for now. And if we don’t start planning now, then we want to fail for the future. So I want you to hold me accountable for one thing. But for all of that because if we don’t the relevant fail and I don’t know all of that, I have saved. Making one thing. It does make it very difficult to think that the single most important thing I do think increasing basically that firefighters, most civil servants across the board, increase our staffing levels um and also making those positions more competitive would increase the overall quality of the services provided, but that’s not all. And I’d also like to see um you know, a better environmental policy and federal walk ability, ability, feeling general feeling of safety and security as people I’m coming to this race to, you know, I was motivated to step up because I wanted to make a better life for my daughter, but I also want to make a better life for the people who live in my neighborhood right now. And so the thing I would want to be held accountable for at the end of my term, is this is that true? Is that true in ways of of access? Is that true? In ways of sustainability? Is that true? And methods of citizen engagement, I promised I’m promising to bring you to the table and at the end of two years, did I bring you to the table let me know, I want to make sure that I did. That’s what I wanted. So yeah, I would like to be held accountable for, you know, much of what I said, you know, if I don’t at least attempt to do many of the things that I want to do for the city of Raleigh that will be accountable, so that I didn’t do it today, I didn’t try um you know, another thing that I want to outline is, you know, uh I want to make myself as accessible to this receipt as much as possible. You know, I want you guys to reach out and contact me whenever you guys have questions, concerns comments, and if I don’t do that, call me out on that, I think that’s where I kind of bill. Okay, this question relates back to what was discussed earlier with purchasing. Um and then we will move into closing statements for one minute. And so what legal concept is Raleigh City Council, the authority to dictate to buy property and take a week to go first. Well, um so I don’t think it’s entirely just absolutely counseled like it the way that question phrase, it makes it sound like, you know, we were deciding individually on whether a person converges or not. I don’t think that that’s really the case is what type of um can be made in the area, whether you’re going to try to uh try to knock something down or uh to build something new and different types of. Uh But I think ultimately it’s about uh broad strokes from the City council level uh on purchasing that we decide uh to uh implement policy that will restrict or not restrict based on a, you know, a perceived or documented. I do not believe the city has the legal authority to restrict who can buy private property. Um, Indeed, that’s part of why we’re using the housing crisis that we have, you know, when a private property goes up for sale and uh, you know, an equity firm can, can pay double or triple the amount for that home, then they can buy it. And the, you know, the individual property owner and definitely the city government has limited ability to Yeah, so, uh, it just goes back to us being a village will say, I don’t, I don’t think we have that. I’m the water line. So I don’t think we have that, uh, authority to restrict anybody’s right to purchase any sort of property here in the city of Raleigh. Uh, but it is a problem having, you know, these investors and corporations coming to the city fighting of our land and selling for for double triple quadruple the price. So we have to close these loopholes, but it doesn’t matter what can we do. And that’s worth examining. Um, and the way that starts is, that actually starts, um, at our state level, but it starts that most people actually do not know. You can actually write textural changes at the state level for local municipalities, local counties and everything. So we can make, we can work with our delegation senator dan blue some of the batch and get them to bring forward textual changes to just wait down or just rally or just carry, you can bring that forward and that can be voted at a general civil level. You can write policy for local levels. You just have to get them to bring it forward and working with them to get that done is something that we can do because these conversations I’ve had with them, they’re on the same page because they’re having the same issues because they represent the same thing. So one minute and start a pagan first. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for spending your time here with us, saturday night could be anywhere if it’s raining, you could be home cozy. Um, so I’m glad that you’re here and thanks to all the groups that this up. Um you’re doing incredible work in our communities. So thank you for that. Um I hope that you will vote for me in november because I think I’m the right person for the job. I have spent years working hard grinding, hustling, spending hours um to, to improve the lives of the people that I love. That’s been my family in my neighborhood. It’s been my employees and my school and now I’m ready to turn my focus to the people that I continue to love which are my neighbors here in district me, you know, I think I got Yeah, so again, thank you all for coming younger and then sending this forum and asking questions and and hearing our responses. Uh, I want to say that, you know, throughout this evening we, we talked about several issues bringing housing transit, our environment and I strongly believe that I’m the right candidate to, to get these policies across, get uh, you know, mitigate the issue and propose solutions that actually make a difference. Um you know, I also believe that, you know, looking at my experience, my, my uh, you know, helping my community being out there. Uh you know, my traits, my, my skills, I think it all comes together and shows that you know, I truly care about this community, I truly care about Raleigh, I want to do what’s best for Raleigh and so I hope you’ll vote for me come november newly Raleigh City council. Thank you. Yeah, We have some amazing candidates up here, um, all of them bringing a lot of stuff to the table. The difference between me and everyone else is no one will ever make work harder than me. I think this job is gonna require 18 hours a day, seven days a week for the next week. At least way Riley’s going, if we’re not spending that much time writing policy bringing grants for grain things forward for our community and it’s not going to change. People are being forced out of their rental properties. People being forced out of their homes. You have to take the time to spend time with those people in those communities, I deliver food, I go out and raise money for backpack drives. I do all these things in the community, have been doing it for years. I plan to keep doing it, but I want to make sure that I’m doing it for everybody in District B. And giving them the 18 hours that I give everyone else right now is gonna be just for District B. Because that’s what we need to make sure that Riley can progress forward and have due diligence and it needs and things to be done. And I would love to have your vote in november for repairs district D. I’d also like to thank everyone for showing up. I think all the other candidates also for their valuable insight, intelligence, perspective. Um I just like to say that I really inspired by all the issues brought forward and questions and uh I’m very excited to start uh
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