Raleigh ends Citizen Advisory Councils in a bold step to listen better

That howl you heard from Raleigh City Hall on Tuesday was the sound of a bandage being ripped off of a cantankerous creature known as the Citizen Advisory Councils.

After years of delicate but failed attempts to end the advisory groups, known as CACs, the newly elected City Council moved curtly and without notice to dissolve them by a 6 to 2 vote.

Council member David Cox, a CAC supporter, objected loudly. He said of the vote to disband the 18 community organizations that are supposed to provide feedback to the council: “This is a dark day for Raleigh.”

Actually it’s a day for letting in light, a day for opening the city’s doors to wide-ranging comment from ordinary citizens, not just local activists and homeowners mobilizing against commercial projects or multi-family housing. The CACs will be allowed to continue for another 45 days in order to comment on rezoning cases already in the pipeline. Then a consultant will help the city develop a new way of hearing and seeking citizen comment that’s broader and more effective than the CAC system.

First-year council member Saige Martin, who requested the vote, said in his motion, “We seek to revolutionize our civic engagement process to ensure an inclusionary participatory democracy, in which residents have multiple opportunities to engage as partners and co-creators of the future of our city.”

It’s ironic that the push to improve citizen engagement opened by taking down the CACs with virtually no public engagement. Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said a quick hit was the only way to do it after more than a decade of fruitless attempts at overhauling how the city hears from its people. There have been studies and a 2017 task force report that recommended changes, but nothing happened. Calling for another study or more council debate risked getting bogged down again, she said.

“We knew there would be an uproar if we did a study. And we knew there would be an uproar if we did it this way,” Baldwin said Wednesday. “We decided it’s time to rip off the Band-Aid and make changes and make it better and that’s what we’re going to do.”

The majority’s reasoning is understandable, but regrettable. The six council members did the right thing the wrong way. You can’t promote engagement by ducking it. Voters chose the new council because most wanted to see less quarreling and more action, but that wasn’t a vote for unannounced action. We hope this quick vote reflects eagerness, not arrogance.

Nonetheless, engagement does need to be revitalized in Raleigh. The CACs were established in 1974 to help secure federal grants by giving minority and low-income citizens greater access to the decision-making process. Four decades later, some of the groups are well run and representative, but overall they mostly focus on zoning fights and do little to expand public engagement with the city. Baldwin estimates that in a city of 475,000 people, maybe 1,000 people attend CAC meetings with any regularity. She said three former CAC chairs have told her the system is broken.

The CACs tend to draw older homeowners, while renters and young people generally don’t participate. The groups also don’t reflect the city’s rising Hispanic and immigrant populations. CACs were established before the internet and social media transformed the means by which people are informed and express themselves.

The CACs had their time and their time is up. The Band-Aid is off. It hurt, but perhaps the city’s divisions will heal better now.

This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 3:54 PM.