Raleigh

Community-focused posts

There are 773 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 21 of 78).

Activate Good responds

Activate Good

Activate Good


The director of Activate Good, Amber Smith, reached out to me almost immediately after my Color Run post, having been alerted by a mutual friend. We chatted some this afternoon about the run and the aftermath.

It seems Activate Good was given the same deal that most other charities get from Color Run. That is, they got a donation based on the number of volunteers they provided. Activate Good contributed over 180 volunteers and performed a lot of the heavy lifting for the run, including the “color toss.” Amber says their volunteers were not involved in the clean up as that was done by others.
Continue reading →

Flare flare are you tonight

Ok, so the title is a reference to a staple of the old Hee Haw show.

After speculating that the flares I saw Saturday night might have been launched by the Raleigh Fire Department to gauge the wind currents before the Wide Open Bluegrass fireworks that night, I reached out to department officials this morning to learn if the FD did this sort of thing.

I got a call back this afternoon from the official who approved the city’s fireworks permit and we had a good chat. He told me they don’t normally launch anything to gauge the wind but rely on observed conditions and the weather forecast. He said that the location I guessed the flares were coming from would’ve been too far away from the fireworks site to be useful, anyway.

The bottom line is that the mystery flares are not the work of the fire department, after all. Now I’m really going to have to work to track this thing further.

Silence and sound

I’ve mentioned this before, but lately it’s been delightfully quiet around the neighborhood. This is the time of year when indoor and outdoor temperatures match up, meaning the constant drone of air conditioners is pleasingly absent.

You don’t tend to notice the noise until it’s gone. Our world is full of so much constant noise that it can be a shock when it’s suddenly quiet again. I wonder how all this racket affects one’s health.

Color Run sees green, leaves Raleigh seeing red

Color Run in Seattle By Scooter Lowrimore (from Flickr)

Color Run in Seattle By Scooter Lowrimore (from Flickr)


A number of residents of Raleigh’s Historic Oakwood neighborhood were not happy to find their cars were missing from the street Saturday morning. The Color Run, a for-profit road run featuring dyed corn starch packets, had set up for its run through the neighborhood. Unlike most road races, organizers insisted that all the cars be removed from the street, most likely because of the colossal mess the corn starch packets make.

Raleigh Police posted “no parking” notices with as little as 13 hours notice, leaving many residents unprepared. Tow trucks hauled off their cars and stuck them with bills upwards of $150 to get them back. This in addition to the godawfully sticky corn starch that trashed their streets and homes.

Needless to say, residents were livid at their cars being taken and their neighborhood trashed. Council members were summoned and the city has agreed to reimburse residents for their towing charges.

I watched after the run as contractors worked to clear the starchy muck off of Wilmington Street near Polk Street. The contractor used a bleach mixture for this work, pouring this chemical-laden broth into our storm drains for eventual draining into the Neuse River. Nice move. I made a call to the city’s stormwater department when I saw this and begged someone to check it out. The city responded that this was just one of many issues they are collecting about the run.

Several runners question the motives of a for-profit company closing down city streets and using city resources. I watched at the end as a decal-laden Color Run car was loaded onto a tractor trailer that already held about 8 other shiny company vehicles. Apparently business is good!
Continue reading →

Flares over Raleigh

Saturday night at 9:45 PM, Kelly and I were up on the grassy lawn at Red Hat Amphitheater watching Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers play. Kelly pointed over to the northwest sky, above Dawson Street. Floating through the sky were a half-dozen flickering little balls of amber light. I blinked a few times before deciding they were flares. As the concert went on, the flares continued to march slowly south across the sky. There were well over a dozen of them. I’m sure the 911 center got more than one report of UFOs.

After the concert ended, Raleigh started up its fireworks show from the parking deck behind us. I wondered if the flares had been launched to gauge the air currents, as the flares seemed to have been launched from the direction of Fire Station #1 at Martin and Dawson Streets. I’m not sure why they would need to launch over a dozen of them to do this, though. Why wouldn’t one or two be sufficient? And why launch them well over an hour before the fireworks began?

I think I’ll reach out to my (few) contacts at the fire department to see how the whole process of setting up for fireworks, well … works.

Update 2 Oct 5:53 PM: Raleigh Fire Department says the flares aren’t theirs.

Bringing the jobs of yesterday to Raleigh

Mary_Ann-Jobs_of_Tomorrow-small

This made me laugh. I got this campaign postcard in the mail from my city councilor friend, Mary-Ann. It says she’s “bringing the jobs of tomorrow to Raleigh today.”

Well, not quite. While Mary-Ann has certainly worked hard to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in Raleigh, these jobs won’t be “computer programmer” jobs because that job title fell out of favor about two decades ago. Nowadays the wizards who do this work are called “software developers” or, even more commonly, “software engineers.” And good luck trying to find even these titles in a newspaper’s help wanted section, because no one puts job listings in newspapers anymore. Geeks go to LinkedIn, Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed, or Craigslist to find jobs now.

Aside from these quibbles, though, I do applaud Mary-Ann for her work in helping increase the geek population in Raleigh. Geeks make everything better!

N&O endorsements

Today’s N&O listed its endorsements for city council. While I agree with most of them, I have to wonder how the N&O could fail to endorse incumbent councilor Randy Stagner.

Randy has worked very hard as a councilor. He may be the one most likely to show up at a meeting, whether it be a community meeting or otherwise. As the Parks board liaison for the past two years, Randy has showed up more frequently to Parks board meetings than any other city council liaison I can recall since I began serving. He takes his work very seriously.

One of his passions is transportation issues, passion for which we are in desperate need of here. He is a cyclist who frequents our greenways. He also spearheaded the creation of the Greenway Volunteers program, putting over 70 citizen volunteers to work monitoring our greenways. This program was his initiative, and it has helped Raleigh avoid the kind of crime that sometimes occurs on Durham’s American Tobacco Trail.

Randy also took up the issue of Sandy Forks Road, a District A street that’s long been in truly abysmal shape. Through his efforts, bond money is being secured to give this road the attention it has long needed.

Randy’s not beholden to special interests. He’s a retired Army colonel who has a lifetime of public service experience. Has he made a few rookie mistakes? Certainly, but overall he’s done a fine job and deserves another term.

On the other hand, Randy’s opponent is an attorney for real estate developers. He has a poor grasp of the issues, whether it be the city’s Unified Development Ordinance, how the parks system works, and other issues. His service on the council while working his day job would almost certainly be a conflict of interest. In short, he would be a train wreck. How the paper’s editorial board could give him the nod is beyond me. I worry that Colin Campbells’ less-than-stellar reporting has tainted their judgment.

Election? What election?

On my way to work this morning, I was startled to see election signs along Wade Avenue, signs urging passage of the transportation bond. There’s no reason I should’ve been startled, since Raleigh’s municipal election is less than two weeks away, not to mention our family went to a political fundraiser for the mayor last night. But I was startled, and it occurred to me that the reason I was startled is that I’ve seen precious few political signs this election cycle.

Is it voter apathy? Is it because so many incumbents are returning to city council? Is there no drama in this election? You can certainly find signs in the yards of all the true believer, hard-core followers of politics but the other 90% of people don’t seem to be flying the political flag this year. At least for the municipal elections.

I don’t think I can recall a city election that’s been this quiet in all the years I’ve lived in Raleigh. It’s odd.

The homeless and Moore Square

The past few weeks have had a number of stories, many unflattering, about Raleigh’s treatment of groups feeding the homeless in Moore Square. It seems most of the coverage has been one-sided in favor of the groups, often stretching the truth in some cases. I am not privy to the decisions that went into the city’s controversial policy – those are made at a level much higher than mine – but I do have some thoughts about the situation.

  • No one should go hungry. I think everyone agrees on this.
  • Moore Square is a public park.
  • A lot of homeless people hang around the park.
  • Everyone is welcome to use the park during the day.
  • The park is frequently full of trash.
  • There have been a number of violent incidents in the park.
  • Anyone with a history of violence should not be welcome in the park.
  • There are better places to feed the hungry.
  • A meal is only a small fraction (though important, nonetheless) of what these people need.

Continue reading →

Police: Man wanted in Raleigh museum break-in surrenders :: WRAL.com

Some dude broke into our favorite state museum early Sunday morning and made a mess. Fortunately for him, he turned himself in before I could find him. You do not mess with the Turners’ favorite museum.

One question I have about this incident is where was the State Capitol Police? Shouldn’t they be regularly patrolling this and other multi-million-dollar state resources? Would it be too much to ask that our cheapskate Republican legislature properly fund its state police resources so they can fulfill their obligations?

These are state resources. Why does it seem that Raleigh Police always has to bail out the state?

Raleigh, N.C. — A man caught on security video breaking into the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences early Sunday has turned himself in, State Capitol Police said.Police Chief Glen Allen said Joshua Matt Pace, 23, of Raleigh, turned himself late Sunday in after photographs from the security video were widely shown by the media.

via Police: Man wanted in Raleigh museum break-in surrenders :: WRAL.com.