July, August, September: Raleigh City Council meetings summary
Happy Fall! Personally, my favorite season. Below is a summary of our end-of-summer City Council meetings. We were on break for most of July and August, but we’re back now!
We’re making progress on our Raleigh CARES program (crisis alternative response for empathy and support). The program is designed to diversify how we respond to 911 calls, by sending social workers and mental health professionals for certain calls for service. This program is something I initiated when I was first elected, in early 2020. We have already established 3 of 4 parts of the program: care navigation (mental health professionals and peer support), a co-response team (police and mental health professionals responding to calls together), and crisis call diversion (mental health professionals in our 911 call center to screen calls). The final part of the program is a community response team (mental health professionals that will respond to certain calls without police). This part requires coordination with Wake County and other community partners, because under State law Raleigh doesn’t have a health department, so we don’t have ambulances and EMS. However, we have finally confirmed agreements with those necessary partners, and you’ll see the community response teams responding to calls soon!
We finalized terms with Omni Hotels and Resorts to build a new conventional center hotel. The new hotel will have 600 rooms, a rooftop pool, and several new restaurants and bars. It will be built on one of the vacant parking lots in front of the Performing Arts Center (it will not obstruct the view from the Capitol Building). It’s part one part of a larger development plan that also includes expanding the Convention Center onto the existing Red Hat Amphitheater space and relocating Red Hat Amphitheater one block (and building a nicer, more permanent facility). You will see all of these projects under active construction in the next several months!
We extended the contract for private security downtown and at parks. In recent years, the City and our partners have collaborated with the Raleigh Police Department to provide supplemental support to address crime and safety downtown. The initial contract for private security was implemented in 2023, and the impact was immediate, with a 43% reduction in violent crime in the downtown business core. Calls for service are also down 6%. We authorized new contracts for parking safety ambassadors, Moore Square security services, and security at Gipson Play Plaza at Dix Park.
We approved a text change to improve pedestrian safety and walkability in the city. We’ve made great strides in improving pedestrian and bicycle safety over the past few years, including creating a Vision Zero Program and funding a program coordinator. These new text changes continue that work; the changes include: rules to incentivize new pedestrian infrastructure by allowing them instead of streets in more cases, requiring narrower intersections with curb bulb-outs, and updates to our Street Design Manual to improve required pedestrian designs.
We started the process to allow a social district at Seaboard Station. Created by State law, a social district allows to-go alcoholic beverages in certain areas. We created, and then expanded, our first social district downtown, and results have been overwhelmingly positive (from residents, visitors, and business owners), and there have been no noteworthy issues with crime associated with the social district. Seaboard Station has been redeveloped into a thriving downtown neighborhood with a hotel, hundreds of new apartments, and many new (and coming soon) retail establishments, and they have requested a new social district in that area. We voted to initiate the process, and the final vote will occur sometime soon.
Thank you for reading these summaries! Our next regular City Council meetings are Tuesday, October 7 at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.
