ALERT: Neighborhood Conservation Overlays -- Raleigh
March 18

From the Raleigh Planning Department website:
Status:
A special joint City Council and Planning Commission public hearing will be held on March 18th at 6:30pm to receive public input on proposed revisions to the process of establishing Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Districts (NCODs). The hearing will be held in the Council Chamber, Room 201, 222 West Hargett Street, Avery C. Upchurch Government Complex.

NCODs provide a rezoning process for individual neighborhoods to customize zoning regulations such as setbacks, height, lot size and parking location to reflect the built character of the neighborhood. The proposal will shorten the process for requesting this overlay district by eliminating the lengthy requirement of the drafting of a Neighborhood Plan and the subsequent adoption of the approved Neighborhood Plan into the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Other changes address the process for Council’s adoption of the regulations associated with a proposed NCOD. A final draft and summary of the proposed ordinance will be available on or before March 4, 2008.

NCOD Amendents here.

 

ACTION ALERT: Respect 4 Raleigh Campaign
1/25/2008

Raleigh is not alone, battles about teardowns are being waged in towns and cities across the country. This trend toward replacing older stable neighborhoods with newly developed streets of oversized homes will continue unfettered unless action is taken.

Neighborhood changes that are driven by private residents can enhance the community. The future of the inner neighborhoods, and the beauty of Raleigh itself, will suffer as long as speculative market forces are driving the changes. The property rights of ALL residents are equally important. If you are a concerned resident, please lend your voice to the debate by visiting and participating in this petition.

Respect4Raleigh online petition

 

ACTION NEEDED: INTERIM Infill Standards

 

The Raleigh CIty Council will meet January 22, 2008 at 1 pm to hear the recommendation of the Comprehensive Planning Committee to set up an Infill Study Group.

Please join us in our campaign for INTERIM Infill Standards by supporting this process. The City needs the support of concerned residents in order to come up with the best plan. You may use this letter template or email as an attachment. You must provide your name / address / phone in order for the City to count your submission. 

Please encourage every concerned neighbor to act NOW. We hope these templates will help you act quickly and spread the word. If you CC communityscale@gmail.com we can include your letter in the paper copies we present at the 1:00 meeting on Tuesday.

Action Alert for January 8 meeting

The Raleigh City Council will meet January 8, 2008 at 1 pm and 7 pm.

Please join us in our campaign for INTERIM Infill Standards. The City needs the support of concerned residents in order to come up with the best plan. You may use this letter template or email the PDF as an attachment. You must provide your name / address / phone in order for the City to count your submission. 

Please encourage every concerned neighbor to act NOW. We hope these templates will help you act quickly and spread the word.

Paper format: WORD DOCUMENT HERE

E-mail format: PDF DOCUMENT HERE


If you would like to be on our email list, please sign up here.


Good VS Bad Infill

This is taken from an email circulating within the development community:

Despite the actions of the Raleigh Planning Commission in December, our City Council is getting ready to force something on every property owner in the City of Raleigh. If you care at all about the value of your home and property, PLEASE let your voice be heard. At the meeting of the Planning Commission in December, there may have been 50 or 60 supporters of our property rights.

... Forward this message to everyone in your address book. The internet is the only way to get people who care about this to stand up and defend our rights as property owners. They have NO BUSINESS telling people what size addition to put on their homes.

... Currently the City of Raleigh has CAC's or Citizen Action Committees to review proposed changes in established neighborhoods. However, the City chooses not to utilize this option, as it is too hard to enforce. Instead, they'd rather create new laws and rules to wrap around the ones they already won't enforce. I for one am sick and tired of having someone who doesn't even live in my neighborhood trying to control my home and my neighborhood.

This effort by Councilmen Thomas Crowder and Russ Stephenson is part of an overall anti-growth message that just a few people want to send to the business community. That message is that growth is bad for Raleigh and that new homes and/or cleaning up and rebuilding old neighborhoods is bad business. This all comes just days after Wake County doubled the value of your property for tax purposes. It will take eight years for them to revalue your homes again, all the while the market value will be declining because people who want to remodel, add-on or tear-down will move to a place where adding on to or replacing old homes is welcome.

PLEASE look into this, write your city council representative, and attend the meeting on Tuesday at 1pm. Your retirement nest egg will definitely be adversely affected.

ALSO, FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

. . .

Community SCALE, in association with other neighborhoods across Raleigh, promotes a different point of view. We believe in equitable property rights for ALL citizens. We believe the city MUST act to set these standards before it is too late. We believe the character of the city itself could be harmed by inappropriate infill development -- that which does not respect the character or residents of the community. We believe that good infill should "develop seamlessly within an existing urban fabric, balancing, completing, and/or repairing the surrounding sectors." (see "infill" definition in left column). We believe we can do better AND become a better city.

If you would like to be on our email list, please sign up here.