By Don Frantz
Cary, N. C. - The Triangle Transit Authority’s plans for regional and light rail, along with increased bus service have merit, and further planning for additional transit options so that our region is well positioned to handle the expected growth over the next 10-20 years makes sense. Increased rail service in Cary will help to spur reinvestment and redevelopment in Cary’s downtown, and in other areas along the rail corridor. (more…)
Cary, NC – With all the complaints about people not getting to play in what happens around them, government-wise, I love the idea that our Town Government is asking our opinion. It was really one of the main planks of Mayor Harold Weinbrecht’s winning platform in 2007. And it is refreshing to see our town officials come through with actions that reflect promises.
The Mayor’s own homepage of his blog states that it is his desire to “open the governmental process to our citizens.”
The Biennial 2010 Survey
So, beginning Saturday, January 23, consultants working for the Town of Cary will start randomly contacting more than 400 Cary residents asking them to state their opinions on how well their government works for them.
Topics will include solid waste, taxes, safety, quality of life, customer service, communications, street repair, and recreation programs. The scientific poll will be conducted via telephone through February 28, with citizens being asked to spend about 25 minutes answering about 60 questions.
Take the Time to Respond
“We hope that those who are called will take the time to give us the feedback we need by participating fully in the survey,” said Town of Cary Public Information Officer Susan Moran. “We continue to learn a great deal about how we’re doing and what’s important to our citizens with our surveys, and we’re looking forward to hearing from citizens again this year.”
Moran added that few other governments—local, state or federal–have a regular program of gathering citizen opinion in a scientifically valid manner. The Town of Cary has been conducting its citizen satisfaction survey every other year since 1998.
This is the seventh Town-sponsored citizen satisfaction survey focusing on the operations and services handled each day by the Town government. As with previous surveys, Biennial 2010 has three parts:
How It Works
Following a national request for proposals, Cary has contracted with BKL Research of Salem, VA to conduct the study and related focus groups at a cost of $28,665. The survey report is expected in late March followed by a focus group report in late April.
All responses to the survey will be anonymous, and demographic information will only be used in the aggregate. However, respondents will be given the opportunity to give their identifying information if they are interested in participating in one of several focus groups that the Town’s consultants will conduct in March as part of the study based on the survey findings.
Results from Cary’s previous biennial surveys are available online in the Research section of the Town website.
My Vox
I, for one, welcome this. And I trust the feedback will be acted upon.
Vox Populi, Latin for “Voice of the People.” If you have something to say (about Cary, that is), contact Matt with your story idea.
In August, Hal Goodtree reported on David Bowden’s complaint against the Town of Cary.
Here’s the video from his Fox News interview this month.
Vox Populi – Latin for voice of the people. In this installment, Liz Adams explains the Walker Street Extension in downtown Cary. The plan calls for the extension of Walker Street 1,200 feet from its current end at Cedar Street northwards to Chapel Hill Road. The project includes an underpass beneath the railroad tracks that cross the extension ~ Editor
Walker Street Extension Public Meeting
by Liz Adams
Cary held a public information exchange on Tuesday for the Walker Street Extension, railroad underpass, and traffic circle.
The project will receive $2.1 million in Federal funding for grade separated crossings for the High Speed Railroad project, $980,000 in 2008 Federal Budget, 1.104 million in Federal Railroad Administration Funding, and $14 million from the Town of Cary.
The current site plan features straight 20’-25’ foot walls adjacent to the sidewalk. While the wall heights decline to about 12’, they hug the sidewalks for nearly 500’. Screening and green buffers are eliminated in this plan; the median is brick (see artist’s illustration above).
Rough map of the project by CaryCitizen. Please refer to the Town website for official information.
I walked away from the meeting concerned about impacts to the stream that runs behind the Town Hall Parking Deck and how downstream neighbors will be impacted by the additional storm water runoff.
The artist Vicki Scuri had some good ideas about integrating green street design elements to help reduce the negative impacts of runoff from this project to the Black Creek and Lake Crabtree Watershed. The Town has hired Ms. Scuri for her expertise in greening, public art planning and adding public spaces and amenities to develop designs that will be fully integrated into the project infrastructure.
The Town also has the opportunity to work collaboratively with downstream neighbors through the Black Creek Watershed Association to integrate storm water management into the road project, to minimize downstream impacts.
I am also concerned about the location chosen for the underpass and how this will raise barriers to supporting safe, convenient and interesting experiences for pedestrians and bicyclists in accessing downtown and the future high speed rail transit station. Perhaps the high retaining walls could provide extra space for rock climbing enthusiasts! Seriously, those of us who are seeking infrastructure support for a more active lifestyle need to take a look at this plan and provide feedback to the Town.
The deadline for feedback is Nov 20th, 2009. For more information visit the Walker Street Extension info page on the Town website or contact Eric Simpson, the project engineer.
Do you have a story for CaryCitizen? Get in touch. No guarantees, but we rely on concerned Citizens for more than 25% of our content and growing daily.
In response to our story on pedestrian safety in Cary, Town Councilman Don Frantz (District B) sent us a fact sheet from the Town of Cary staff.
Here are Don’s comments ~
After reading the story posted on CaryCitizen about Raleigh/Cary’s ranking in TFA’s pedestrian safety study I was very concerned and inquired with staff as to the data for Cary alone. I have attached what I was sent by our town staff as I thought you might be interested.
The Town of Cary takes public safety very seriously and any loss of life is unacceptable. We can do better, and we strive to do better. Keep up the good work on the website.
Our thanks to Don Franz and to all the Town staff and officials for striving to make Cary a safer, better place.
TOC PEDESTRIAN FACT SHEET ———————————————
The Raleigh metropolitan area, which includes Cary, was ranked as the sixth most dangerous metropolitan area for pedestrians in the U.S. according to a report issued by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership and Transportation for America. The report looked at the top 52 metro areas (those with at least one million residents as of 2008) and used data from 2007 and 2008 to come up with the ranking based on factors such as:
Fatalities
During 2007-08, the Raleigh-metro area had 43 pedestrian deaths. While every death is a terrible tragedy, only one of those deaths was in Cary; a second occurred just outside Town limits in Cary’s urban service area on NC 55. Neither of the Cary deaths appear to have been work-related.
Pedestrian-Friendly Improvements
Infrastructure Investment
Photo by fauxto_digit via Creative Commons license on Flickr.
Guest Columnist Winston Hooker, Sr.
Littering of our streets continues to increase and reflects negatively on our town. It will likely decline only if there are consequences.
There are anti-littering laws on the books but there is little punishment of offenders. The police cannot catch every offender, but increased enforcement should deter others if consequences are severe and are known.
If our town council, the police and local judges will collaborate and promise appropriate punishment, then law officers would only need to catch a few who are subsequently prosecuted and the process publicized to deter others.
Hot spots of littering are known due to littering cleanup records. Police do have lots of other duties and can commit only limited time to this. If they will stake out a known hot spot for a short time each week, catch just one offender a week, the offender is prosecuted, and the punishment published, the program should be productive.
Judges must commit not to let offenders off easy or it won’t be effective. Community service and/or fines could be appropriate. Remember: the two critical components are: 1) no soft treatment by judges, and 2) publishing the punishment.
What do you think? Is littering a sign of declining civic virtue or just an annoyance? Have you ever donned an orange vest and picked up roadside trash? Leave us a comment here or on Facebook.
Photo by fauxto_digit via Creative Commons license on Flickr.
Vox Populi – Latin for “Voice of the People.”
Photo credit: Town of Cary
by Brent Miller
“Go put your creed into your deed” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign” – Five Man Electrical Band
These oddly juxtaposed quotes sum up my feelings about one particular aspect of Cary’s sign ordinance: the exemption that our government grants to itself that allows the Town of Cary to put up signs that are illegal for others.
I was reminded of this by two of the stories featured in the August 8 CaryCitizen Editors Journal.
Pictures from the CaryCitizen archive
Mr. David Bowden, of the “Screwed by the Town Cary” house-painting fame, is being fined daily by the Town of Cary for violating Cary’s sign ordinance (that message on his house, apparently, is on the wrong side of Cary’s sign law, even though the ACLU has threatened to sue Cary if they continue to enforce this law).
The opening of the Walnut Street Park is a celebration for Cary. The Editor’s Journal features a photo of the sign for the new park. Did you know that the Town’s sign ordinance specifically exempts the Town itself from having to follow its own sign laws? In particular, the Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources division is allowed to put up signs that would be illegal at private businesses.
The Town’s sign ordinance (see Chapter 9 of the Code of Ordinances accessible from http://www.amlegal.com/library/nc/cary.shtml) specifically exempts “signs erected on behalf of a governmental or quasi-governmental agency” from regulation. That’s right, the government is not required to follow its own law.
In 2007, Cary’s Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources division developed a comprehensive sign plan for our public parks. It is an excellent plan that leads to some very effective and attractive signs. Unfortunately, that plan violated several portions of Cary’s sign ordinance, so your Town Council simply said that it is OK for parks signs to be larger, taller and have more colors than businesses signs in town. I expect that many businesses would like to have the same sign privileges that government grants to itself, because it would allow businesses to attract attention with the same effectiveness and attractiveness that is permitted for parks.
Photo by Brent Miller
Another instance of this same phenomenon is “pole signs”, defined as a “sign which is mounted on a freestanding pole or poles, or other support structure such that the bottom edge of the sign face is 42 inches or more above the adjacent grade or roadway crown height”. The photos both here and above show pole signs. The difference is that the photo on the left was at a private business and was deemed illegal by the Town of Cary. The Town forced the owner to tear down the sign or face hefty fines.
The sign above was put up by the Town government and is exempt from the law that would otherwise make it illegal.
Something seems wrong when a government decides that it should be exempt from the laws that it enforces for everyone else. Town officials have offered various explanations and rationalizations about why it’s OK for the Town of Cary to have a double standard when it comes to signs.
But I don’t buy any of those explanations. If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander. And having two sets of rules, one for government and one for citizens, is just plain wrong.
“It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.” – William Shakespeare
This edition of Vox Populi was written by Brent Miller, a self-described citizen of Cary and a member of the town Planning & Zoning Commission. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own and do not reflect the official position of P&Z or the town. ~ Editor
Vox Populi – Latin for “Voice of the People.” With this article, we inaugurate a new series featuring diverse voices from around the town. – the Editor
by Michael Pelz-Sherman
Last month marked 3 years since my wife and I returned to Cary after 6 years in the Bay Area. Well, technically we lived in Apex before the California adventure, but close enough.
This, plus the possibility of a cross-post on this outstanding new web site about Cary created by my bandmate, neighbor, and friend Hal Goodtree, inspired me to post some reflections about how things have changed, or not, since we lived here in 1998-2000.
The contrast between life in Cary vs. the Bay Area can be summed up in one word: FAMILY. Life in Cary is all about raising kids. Those years in California showed us how important domestic SPACE was to us. As one of my musician friends remarked while rehearsing among the toys, books, games, puppets, costumes, etc. in the one large room that served as both playroom and music studio, “dude, you need another house just for your toys!”.
When it comes to sheer square-foot-per-dollar value within driving distance of a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and decent Thai food (the bare necessities), you really can’t beat Cary.
Here, when you talk about your kids at the office, nobody looks at you like you’re some kind of alien. The public schools here, while certainly far from perfect, put those in California to shame.
Even so, it must be said that Cary hasn’t changed all that much in terms of the basic nature of the town. The old saw about C.A.R.Y. = “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees” still rings true. There are very few signs of Southern culture here – or any culture in particular, for that matter. We were sad to see that one of our favorite local pizza restaraunts, Pie Works, had closed. They used to serve rattlesnake and alligator pizza. The suburban sprawl of American homogeneity is threatening to completely engulf surrounding towns like Morrisville; the old tobacco farms and dilapidated shacks are being torn down and replaced with strip malls with Wal-Marts and Starbucks. Mind you, I happen to like Starbucks, but some of those old farmhouses were really beautiful. They had a charm that came from the fact that somebody built them by hand in order to live in them; they weren’t designed in some corporate office and pieced together by underpaid imported contractors. I used to really enjoy driving past them on my way to RTP.
My daughter, who was born here but only spent the first 8 months of life here, nonetheless seemed to pick up the warm southern accent. Hints of it came through as she spoke her first words – “Mommy, I wanna go to ba-yud.” Sadly, only one of our neighbors actually has that charming accent now. The increased international diversity we’ve noticed here is wonderful – any given morning in our neighborhood you’re likely to see women in Sari’s strolling past old Chinese folks doing Tai Chi, and there are some amazing Indian restaurants here that did not exist in 1998 – but even less remains of the local flavor and history of the place.
Cary is certainly not unique in this respect, but it has been interesting to see the process in this sporadic fashion. As all parents who travel for business know, when you leave your children for a week, or a month – when you return, you notice their changes much more acutely than if you had been with them all along.
Most of us were drawn to Cary in pursuit of a simulacrum; a fantasy of a “village of kings”, where the phrase “a man’s home is his castle” takes literal form. Cary has delivered on that promise; but in doing so, it has paid a price, and so have we. Like most American suburbs built up too quickly around the dying cores of small towns, economies of scale tend to overwhelm the local culture. An important challenge for Cary will be to retain the last vestiges of local flavor while providing modern, mobile families with the affordable “creature comforts” that brought us here in the first place, and keep bringing us back.
Michael Pelz-Sherman has a PhD in Computer Music. When he’s not authoring web apps, he plays in the eponymous MPS Trio and A Fifth of Blues. His post appeared earlier this week in his blog.
Staff photo: Hal Goodtree
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Do you have something to say? Send your idea for Vox Populi to the editor at Cary Citizen.
