Nancy Louise McFarlane
District A incumbent
Age: 52
Address: 8016 Selfridge Court
Hometown: Born in Washington DC, grew up in Falls Church and in Arlington, Virginia.
How long Have you lived in Raleigh?
Twenty-five years
What brought you to Raleigh?
A job change. Actually, my husband was changing jobs. He was transferred. We had the options of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Raleigh – that was a pretty easy choice. We went and looked. We really looked at Baltimore because I was from in the DC area, but we came down here and just really liked it.
In two to three sentences, please share something that you believe the City of Raleigh does well.
One of the things I always am complimented on is that how a good a job we do of saving trees and trying to make this a very kind of livable area. In fact, I was driving down Glenwood yesterday and, down the median, looking at all the trees, and all the crepe myrtles were blooming and just thinking about how different it would be if just that were gone. Even the median on Creedmoor. I think a lot of people take it for granted, but we work really, really hard to ensure that we keep the tree buffer and we keep that tree canopy.
In two to three sentences, please share one thing that you believe the City of Raleigh could improve upon or change.
I think that we need to take a hard look at our public transportation system. We need to expand our bus service and we also need to start looking at this as a region – Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.
In two to three sentences, please share your position regarding public transit in the City of Raleigh.
Public transit is very, very important, certainly. We’re supposed to grow at about 150 thousand people. And even if you don’t think you want to use public transportation, you certainly need everyone that can to use it, because you’re not going to be able to drive your car. It’s going to be a driver for our Comprehensive Plan, as we look at where we want to concentrate areas of more intense development for people to live. We’re going to have to have a transportation system that will link them.
In two to three sentences, please share your position regarding growth management in the City of Raleigh.
Growth management is very important, it’s very important that we have a solid infrastructure: water, sewer and police, fire, all of that solid infrastructure to handle the growth. And that we don’t let the growth outpace all the services that we need to support it.
In two to three sentences, please share your position regarding crime control in the City of Raleigh.
Well crime control obviously is very, very important and it affects everyone. There are certainly some areas of the city that experience more crime than others, but it’s really a problem for everyone. I’ve heard somebody say once that Raleigh is only as strong as its weakest neighborhood. I think it’s important for people even in low crime areas to realize that it does affect all of us. It’s something that we’re looking at, working in the school system, with after-school programs and support systems for kids that don’t have places to go. Obviously it’s a much more complicated thing than just that, but we are trying to look at lots of different ways to target that problem.
Now, we would like to hear your position on two issues that were not previously mentioned, but that you think are important to the voters in the City of Raleigh. You tell us the issue and then give us two to three sentences about your position on the issue.
One of our biggest issues is going to be the protection of Falls Lake and our water supply. We do have watershed rules in place right now but they only are enforced in city limits or in Wake County. We have Durham County that touches the lake on the other side. The lake’s already starting to suffer some damage and problems with nitrogen loads, problems with siltation. It makes it more difficult, more expensive to clean the water and I think that’s something that we really need to step up, or ask in the legislature to hurry up and try to enforce the Falls Lake rules, to protect that watershed.
The comprehensive plan is probably the biggest thing we have right now. We’ve had many public hearings on it. The planning commission is looking at right now coming to the city council, probably in mid-July. We’d like to have a couple more public hearings. It’s big, it’s complicated, and it going to guide our growth patterns for the next 20 years, so I think it’s very important to get as much citizen input as we can before we vote on a final plan.
What would you say is your guilty pleasure?
My daughter, my middle daughter and I, we used to love to – every year we went to the beach – we always got the Weekly World News, which is just really a rag, but that was like our annual thing. Every time we went to the beach, we always made sure we could catch up on Bat Boy and read the Weekly World News.
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