City councilors put the brakes on the city-initiated annexation program for residential properties Tuesday. They will still consider annexations that involve commercial areas and other properties that don\u2019t require assessment fees.<\/p>\n
During a work session last week councilors agreed that assessment fees charged when new residential units are connected to the city\u2019s sewer and water systems are too high given the current state of the economy. Councilors are in the beginning stages of reviewing assessment fees and whether they put too high a burden on property owners who don\u2019t ask the city for the annexation.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s annual annexation program expands Raleigh\u2019s boundaries and tries to fill \u201cdonut holes\u201d in the city limits. City Manager Russell Allen asked council to give him some direction on the plan this year, so he can \u201cstop the staff effort and save us some time\u201d as they work out the annual annexations.<\/p>\n
Commercial properties and areas that won\u2019t require assessment fees will be back before the council at their November 19 meeting.<\/p>\n
Floodprone area regs get a no<\/strong><\/p>\n A controversial text change to limit development in flood-prone areas received a unanimous no vote from city councilors Tuesday. More than 50 people showed up for this week\u2019s meeting wearing red to show their opposition to the proposed rules.<\/p>\n The change would have tightened regulations for areas that are considered within the 100-year floodplain, in other words they have a 1-percent chance of flooding for any given year. The restrictions would have only allowed parking lots, farming and recreational uses such as golf courses or parks in the areas. The rules would have also eliminated the exception for lots smaller than half an acre.<\/p>\n Planning Director Mitch Silver told the council he thought the rules were \u201cpremature\u201d because the city did not have enough data to make a good map of the 100-year floodplain. But, Silver said, the council would need to act on similar rules sometime in the future because \u201cthis could put future properties at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n State law meets contract realities<\/strong><\/p>\n File this under The Continuing Lightner Center Saga, and it\u2019ll likely be the oddest item in that file.<\/p>\n Councilors voted 5-3 Tuesday to follow state contract law. This particular piece of the saga goes back to the end of last year when the city manager gave the design team working on the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center the go-ahead to continue working on the design without having a contract amendment approved by city council.<\/p>\n During a council committee meeting a couple weeks ago, at-large councilor Russ Stephenson and District D\u2019s Thomas Crowder took Allen to task for moving forward with the work without their approval.<\/p>\n Allen argued that at that point the Lightner project was moving forward quickly and waiting for a contract to be written up and signed would have delayed the design. He said he had clear instructions from the council at that time to keep the project on track.<\/p>\n In that same meeting, City Attorney Tom McCormick said that under North Carolina law governing municipal contracts the city should have had a signed and approved contract before allowing the designers to move forward. He also said that if there is no contract, than the designer and the city official who approved the work were the ones ultimately at risk if the city didn\u2019t want to pay the bill.<\/p>\n City councilors did decide to pay the $140,000 bill, but two weeks ago Crowder moved for \u201cthe city to follow state law.\u201d<\/p>\n Allen told the council this week that the city does have policy to follow state law, but \u201cthere are occasions, such as when council has approved a course of work\u201d that he has moved forward without a contract.<\/p>\n District E\u2019s Bonner Gaylor countered Allen, he said, \u201cHaving a policy we follow unless we don\u2019t is not having a policy.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the vote, Allen said, \u201cIf you pass that motion I will take that to mean that I should never take that risk, even if I think it hurts the city.\u201d<\/p>\n The motion passed 5-3, with Mayor Charles Meeker, at-large councilor Mary-Ann Badwin and District C\u2019s Eugene Weeks voting against.<\/p>\n Solar roof for the convention center<\/strong><\/p>\n Councilors gave approval for a new practical use for the roof of the convention center. The city will lease the roof to FLS Energy and PowerWorks Electric so they can install an array of solar panels to general electricity to sell back to Progress Energy.<\/p>\n The roof-top array will generate about 500 kilowatts of electricity by using 60 percent of the roof, with an annual total in the area of 725,000-kilowatt hours. That will be enough energy to power 100 homes for a year.<\/p>\n The city already has one solar array operating at the E.M. Johnson Water Treatment Plant and another one at the Neuse River Waste Water Treatment Plant expected to come online in coming months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" City councilors put the bakes on new residential annexations at their Tuesday meeting. They also voted down a new set of rules for the 100-year floodplain and approved a solar array for the convention center roof. In one of the odder motions in recent council memory, they also voted 5-3 to follow state contract law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}