4 finalists for vacant Durham City Council seat ‘run the gauntlet’ ahead of Thursday pick
Note: Watch supporters speak for the four finalists for the vacant Durham City Council seat beginning at 6 pm Tuesday, May 3, here.
One is Bull City born and bred.
Another had never voted in North Carolina before last Thursday.
One’s law enforcement roots run deep.
And another wants the city to intervene in the future of the former public housing property known as Fayette Place.
The four finalists to fill the Durham City Council’s vacant seat are Nate Baker, Schnequa Nicole Diggs, Monique Holsey-Hyman and Henry C. McKoy Jr.
They all ran “the gauntlet,” as Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton said during public interviews for the open seat Monday afternoon.
Each candidate got 50 minutes to answers questions from each sitting council member.
The term for the vacant at large seat formerly held by Charlie Reece runs through December 2023.
The selected appointee will be sworn in during the council’s work session Thursday afternoon.
You can watch Monday’s entire council meeting online, but here are some of the highlights:
Nate Baker
Baker, a Durham native, touted his experience as an urban planner, expertise he said has become crucial as the area has grown.
Baker ran for county commissioner in 2020 and has served on the city’s planning commission for four years.
He suggested fully rewriting the Unified Development Ordinance, which lays out the rules for property development within the city.
When asked for the city’s top three challenges, Baker talked about youth deaths from gun violence; traffic accidents, including distracted and impaired driving; and the city’s rapid growth which he called “both a challenge and an opportunity.”
Middleton asked Baker whether he would ever vote to defund the Durham Police Department.
Baker said changes to policing should be made, especially in cases involving people with mental illness, but that he was not in favor of defunding the police.
In his application, Baker stated he has a full time job with Texas-based company Quantum Consultants. He “would not be able to afford to leave (his) job” to serve on the council, but would reduce his hours.
Read Baker’s full application here.
Schnequa Nicole Diggs
An N.C. Central University alumna and assistant professor of public administration, Diggs detailed her lengthy academic resume and experience as a public administration expert.
She moved to Durham in the late 1990s for college and then lived in Virginia, Florida and California for her graduate and doctoral degrees. She moved back to Durham in 2019.
Diggs said this partly explained her scant voting record in North Carolina, when council member DeDreana Freeman asked about it.
“My first time voting in North Carolina was actually Thursday,” Diggs said. “My first time (ever) voting was for former President Barack Obama.”
Policing, local government-citizen relations and trust, and inequity are the city’s top three challenges, she said.
Diggs believes her biggest asset is her affordable housing expertise. She works with Durham’s Affordable Housing Implementation Committee and the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit.
Read Diggs’ full application here.
Monique Holsey-Hyman
Originally from New York, Holsey-Hyman has lived in Durham since 2006 when she joined the faculty at Shaw University, North Carolina’s first historically Black college or university in Raleigh. She also teaches courses at NCCU and Walden University.
Holsey-Hyman said she has social services experience and a knack for civic engagement that stems from her mother, who was active in her South Bronx neighborhood.
“Along with my mother I attended council meetings, education and community action rallies,” she told the council. “This is where my love for public service began.”
She described organizing students to walk to the polls from Shaw’s campus saying she wanted “to get them also active in becoming ... citizens who really care about what’s going on.”
As a board member of the Durham County Department of Social Services and a social work professor, she is excited about the city’s Community Safety Department hiring more social workers to handle “the issues that police sometimes may not be trained to do.”
Council member Jillian Johnson asked Holsey-Hyman, whose husband is a parole officer and sister is a bureau chief in the New York department of corrections, about her views on alternatives to policing.
“We’ve got to think of collaborative resources and innovative methods,” she said. “People are suffering and they need change. And so my background as a social worker and a community advocate, I think would give a different perspective.”
Read Holsey-Hyman’s full application here.
Henry C. McKoy, Jr.
Henry C. McKoy Jr. is an NCCU business professor leading the Hayti Reborn initiative in Durham’s historic Hayti neighborhood.
Originally from Fayetteville, McKoy has lived in Durham for over two decades. But he has had “a lifelong connection to Durham” as he visited family often when he was young.
McKoy focused on how using land to bring equity and upward mobility to Durham’s most vulnerable will be key if he is selected. He also talked about making sure that all Durham residents are part of the city’s rapid economic development.
Middleton asked McKoy whether his involvement in Hayti Reborn would become a conflict of interest if he were selected.
McKoy and his team lost the bid for redeveloping the Fayette Place property in the heart of Hayti, owned by the Durham Housing Authority.
The Hayti Reborn team protested their rejection and lack of an interview earlier this year. After appealing twice, McKoy asked the City Council to intervene. The council hasn’t responded yet.
“Just for transparency, I have no economic interest in the Hayti Reborn effort,” McKoy told the council members. “I have never been paid out of that. My work with (the Hayti) community has been on behalf of the community.”
Read McKoy’s full application here.
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 4:21 PM.
