A public comment session was held on Wednesday, November 12, 2025, to gather citizen testimony on various city matters. Mayor Carroll and Councilmember Silver were absent and excused. Twenty-six individuals signed up to speak, addressing issues ranging from the Big Branch Greenway project and zoning changes in Oakwood to affordable housing, employee welfare, and community safety initiatives.
Consent Calendar:
Opposition to Greenway Project (Big Branch/Anderson Forest):
Support for Oakwood Preservation:
Housing and Employee Welfare:
Community Support and Environment:
Good evening, thank you for joining us tonight for our public comment session. Uh it is Wednesday, November the twelfth. Uh Mayor Carroll and Councilmember Silver are absent and excused this evening. Um before we get started, we would like to acknowledge the uh Boy Scout Troop 104 that have joined us this evening for a civic engagement project. So thank you all for being here this evening. We have 26 people that signed up to speak tonight. Each speaker will have a total of three minutes. When it's your turn to speak, um I will call your name. Please come to the podium and speak into the microphone. If you have materials to be distributed to the council, please put them in the basket next to our clerk. Um a timer will be when you're three minutes are up. And uh as you can see on the right, there's a list of uh folks who signed up to speak so you can kind of track where you are on the list. Our first speaker tonight is Helen Kervin. Good evening. My husband and I built our home in 1993. The Raleigh Parks and Rec department is proposing to condemn at least one third of our property, as well as condemn a 39-year-old conservation easement that provides trail construct that prohibits trail construction to build a greenway less than fifty feet from our house and only twenty feet from the stream bank. For thirty-two years, we've seen what happens here after hurricanes or even just two inches of rain. And the flooding and erosion that worsened after the city removed seven trees and vegetation in our backyard for a sewer project. We urge you to listen to us who know this land firsthand, not to those who have only seen it on a map. Proponents of this route say greenways are routinely built in floodplains, but that misses the point. The city wants to build this greenway segment almost entirely within the 30-foot zone one reparian buffer, the area most critical to protecting water quality and stream bank stability. The North Carolina Division of Water Quality explains why this buffer matters. Quote repairing buffers protect water quality by filtering runoff, providing flood control, absorbing excess nutrients, moderating water temperature, controlling erosion, and stabilizing stream banks. Removing trees and root systems in zone one harms these functions. Please don't make a decision that will cause permanent harm to big branch, our neighborhood, and the city's credibility on environmental protection. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Kevin Guam. Hello everyone. Firstly, I want to express my concern on the undercover reporting approach by some media on the DEI issue in the city. We have thought this closing it in the video. So this is a very important matter because things have changed since February. The first thing I want to talk about is the new thing that you just released today in the media that about the 10,000 letters you're gonna send to Roddy Roddy's customers about the putting the one thousand dollar or four feet for the people one thousand dollars to be in the uh assembly in January and February. I think this is a good idea, but one thousand dollar on f on four forty hours. Do you need that much time to engage for the next comprehensive plan on transit only? This is a lot of time. And the second meta is that uh Radio duty customer is a good representative uh good representative, but you do not include people who ran their home from a public compasses. They are not Raleigh customers. So I think there's a real way for you to reach out of those people. Um I read the Raoul news an hour ago say you have one thousand that go to people with public s when we told those people need to think about who use the transit. Thank you very much. Thank you. Lisa Huggins. Good evening. I want to begin by expressing my deep disappointment with the public hearing for Z twelve twenty-five last month. My comments tonight are not directed towards Councilmembers Jones or Harrison. It was hard for me to process the complete lack of interest or support for the concerns repeatedly raised by residents. Countless emails, phone calls, meetings, and petitions were met with crickets. I'd like to know, did any of you actually visit the Glenwood neighborhood? Did you drive down Devereaux, Tilden, or Cleveland?