Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell delivers first State of the City address
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell delivered her first State of the City address Wednesday night.
"I am very proud to be mayor of this great city," said Cowell.
Her presentation focused on four key topics: affordable housing, public safety, transportation, and Quality of Place and Resilience.
"(Raleigh) has grown from a sleepy government town to a vibrant and economically diverse as well as socially diverse city. Just weeks into my tenure, we were ranked as the number one performing economic city by The Milken Institute," said Cowell.
According to the US Census Bureau, Raleigh's population grew by about 20% between 2010 and 2023, now approaching half a million residents. While the population boom has coincided with new businesses and greater economic development, it's also exacerbated issues regarding housing affordability.
Data cited by Cowell found the median rent in the city increased 56% between 2017 and 2022, as it grapples with limited supply of housing options. To that end, she highlighted 13 housing projects which have been approved by City Council thus far which have the potential to add more than 3,000 units; five of the projects have an element of affordable housing.
"We're also working on the Raleigh Housing Authority, getting bonding capacity so they can be even more proactive at building more units, redeveloping Heritage Park, doing mixed income (housing). They're also looking at modular housing and how we can reduce the rate of the cost of housing. Land's not going to get any cheaper, so the only thing we can do is reduce the business cost through permitting and experiment with new ways of modular prefabricated housing and things like that," said Cowell.
"Our downtown is built on small business, and small businesses have a lot of service workers so (housing is) really important. We have housing options in the downtown area, and we have good transportation from other parts of the region that also have housing. What we've seen over the last couple of years is we've added so much housing in downtown rent has actually gone down, which is great. But when you don't add housing, it goes back up. If the construction cycle slows, you'll see it go back up," noted Bill King, the President and CEO of Downtown Raleigh Alliance.
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Another focus of downtown: improving public safety.
"Enhancing the safety everywhere, even on public transit, because in my opinion, public transit is not going to be utilized to its fullest until people feel safe," said Rusty Sutton, an entrepreneur.
Sutton owned The Green Monkey, a retail shop and bar on South Wilmington Street, before closing the location earlier this month. Despite that, he plans to hold pop up events in the area and is supportive of stronger pay for police and firefighters, both of which Cowell noted were part of ongoing budget negotiations.
Further, Cowell explained the city is making marked progress in filling Raleigh Police Department vacancies, now at their lowest level since 2020.
"We have another (Raleigh Police Department) Academy in training and if we can hold on to folks, we'll actually have zero vacancies," said Cowell.
"We have had some recruiting and retention challenges that can be addressed, by and large, by increased pay and recognize that we could use beyond just staffing to our current staffing model, an increase in the budget of headcount to ensure that we're all safe and secure," said John Cerquiera, who serves as Executive Director of Citizens for a Safe and Secure Raleigh, during an interview prior to the address.
Cowell added the city has seen crime decreases through Feb. 23 across several categories, including sexual offenses, assaults, shots fired into a building or vehicle, residential burglaries, thefts from a vehicle, and stolen vehicles.
While Cowell centered the address on Raleigh, she discussed the impact of federal funding, particularly on transportation projects.
"We are going to be lobbying the federal government to try and keep our money. I am working with the other mayors in Wake County to write letters to the whole delegation. In fact, the Mayor of Holly Springs (Sean Mayefskie) is up in DC right now delivering those letters, but trying to keep the money for the Bus Rapid Transit, highway dollars, S-line dollars, all those funds that help us keep moving," Cowell said.
In a follow-up media availability, ABC11 asked Cowell to expand on what guidance she's received regarding the future of federal funding at this point.
"We've heard that if contracts have been signed, they will be honored, which is helpful. Of course, a lot of the New Bern corridor has been committed, so we're hopeful that these funds will continue but we've definitely heard roads and bridges are the biggest priority. We're anticipating that some of the things more on pedestrian, EV (electric vehicles), some of those dollars (could be in jeopardy). In fact, I mean, we had $2.5 million in EV dollars that I think has already been rescinded. I think working together with the Wake County mayors for me is key because it's a very diverse bipartisan group and then working across the entire delegation, that to me is the most effective way to lobby," said Cowell.
She added funding from the Bloomberg Foundation will provide 80 additional e-bikes.
A city staffer tells ABC11 the budget presentation is set for mid-May, in which a fuller picture of priorities will be revealed. Sutton, who was in attendance Wednesday, wants to see plans turn into action.
"We need to work on getting some of these nice plans that we have, the studies we've done that show these nice pictures, getting them out of all the bureaucracy, red tape, and let's get it moving," said Sutton.
