Mary
Belle,
I
sent this out last evening and will get some information back on Sunday. We are
truly about to become a city of lawyers and “just us” is about to become very
expensive. The disconnect between the people and their elected leaders is
immense and seems to be growing faster than the deficit. ;-)
Bill
------------------
Dan
& Carrie … Could you take a look at this and let me know if I am in the
right Universe. If this does what I think it does, from a ‘Raleigh perspective’
the brain trust of our community has been rendered impotent. But before I send
this out, I would like someone to explain what these folks were trying to
accomplish. This bill passed unanimously! Perhaps that is why I am skeptical.
====================
After
Mitch Silver’s (Director of Planning) announcement to the RCAC this evening who
touched on this, I got the email below. The legislative bill was instigated by
Ellie Kinnaird – generally a trusted source. But the bottom line here is that
citizens will not have access to professional engineers. Speaking from the
Coker Towers experience, we defeated Coker Towers by the traffic study that we
as citizens were allowed to present to council. I was in the center of that
exercise – the initial data presented to City Council was publically declared
‘a lie’ in a Council meeting by Ed Johnson, the City of Raleigh’s head of
traffic. Pretty humbling when the work of citizens was classified not just as
garbage but as fabricated lies. I like Ed and understand his humanity, respect
his knowledge and believe his condemnation of our data/analysis was based on
his honest ‘belief’ system. But after further analysis of our traffic data –
the city ‘by active observation’ verified the data and in time an apology
was issued. The entire Coker Tower issue hinged on traffic – and I will not go
into the longer lasting results … Meeker, Cowell … Reeves … Cowell … Stein,
Janet – Treasurer of the State. Not a bad record for the plebeians.
Our
experience on Traffic engineering was novice and when we tried to approach
legit traffic engineering companies, we were quickly rejected. They had a
company to run and employees that depended on the success of their business. As
a onetime customer, neighborhood groups trying to get legit traffic analysis
had little financial longevity when compared to the development community that
paid their way day after day. We were up against Kimberly Horne and there was
not any ‘professionals’ for hire to present the community. We even went to NCSU
for assistance, but the reality check was that their graduates would be seeking
employment from KH and the bottom line was that assisting a neighborhood
organization in traffic studies was not in the interest of the University or
their students. We all should understand the practicality of economics.
So
we actually started from scratch and learned … a trip was a one way destination
… like from home to shop, and from home to shop to home would be 2 trips. Can’t
get any more basic than that. But in several week we were analyzing complex DOT
traffic analysis, running the logarithmic calculations and able to present
traffic analysis in real time as the developers changed their building
densities before Committees – an analysis that took several weeks in the
commercial world. Some of our analysis practices became part of the teaching
curricula in Civic Engineering.
Kiss
those days good-bye. From my analysis … the new Kinnaird model is that
neighborhoods will need to come up with $thousands of dollars to preserve
status quo (read -$K for no profit and assuming that there is a professional
like a traffic engineering company that would be available to the development
community) verse the developers that have $100K if not millions in potential
profit at stake. Investing several thousand for a good chance of turning
millions, is a no-brainer; investing thousands for ‘status quo’ is a hard sell.
Can
someone explain what the legislature was thinking? Surely I am missing
something since this passed unanimously … but the consequence is that in quasi
legal system – money wins and common folks will lose and lose big.
I
could use some ‘expert’ enlightenment. ;-)
Thanks,
Bill
Sent: Wednesday, November
18, 2009 10:42 AM
Subject: Senate Bill 44 Appeals of Quasi-Judicial Decisions of Decision
making Boards
Of
interest to the land development community is Senate Bill 44. (See the link
below.)
This
was brought to our attention by Mitchell Silver, AICP, Planning Director for
the City of Raleigh at our NCSS Triangle Chapter meeting.
The
interpretation which he provided was that if citizens have concerns about
traffic and proposed land use, they may only use a professional engineer to
submit the evidence to a planning commission. Mitchell reported that proposed
legislation is under review by local officials and authorities.
http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2009&BillID=SB+44
Richard
J. Homovec, PLS
Survey
Section
919-996-4119
(W)
919-278-6485
(Cell)
Richard.Homovec@ci.raleigh.nc.us
From: rcac-bounces@eastraleigh.org
[mailto:rcac-bounces@eastraleigh.org] On Behalf Of Southralcap@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 6:06 PM
To: rcac@eastraleigh.org
Subject: [RCAC] Check out
http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2009/Bills/Senate/PDF/S44v7.pdf
Here is Senate Bill 44 (in its final form) that Mitchell and Ken
were talking about last night - thanks to Richard J. Homovec sending it out to
the DDNA today.
Mary Belle