City Mice, your County Cousins (who live outside the city limits and can’t vote) sincerely hope you all will vote to change the majority on the Durham City Council. You have today, Friday and Saturday left of early voting. Then, the official election day is Tuesday, November 4th. All polls are open from 6:30 AM until 7:30 PM. If you are at your polling place and in line by 7:30 PM, you will be allowed to vote.
Bottom line first: To change the majority, please vote for DeDreana Freeman, Shanetta Burris, Chelsea Cook, and Anjanee Bell.
The pattern of voting on massive developments, annexations and rezoning over the last four years (since I’ve been paying attention) has been a majority of four pro-development council members almost always (maybe 95 – 98 percent of the time) vote YES. Those four, including Williams and Middleton, simply disregard all public input, including expert testimony regarding the damage to the environment, pollution of waterways, and unmitigated traffic.
The explanation for Williams and Middleton’s unwavering support for any development the council votes on is simple. $$$$$ The Indy (10/27) reported on where Durham’s municipal election candidates are getting their money.
https://indyweek.com/news/durham/digging-through-durham-candidates-campaign-finance-reports/
No surprises. Wealthy developer/real estate interests are the major donors to Williams, Middleton, and Medoff (who started out with dark money from a shady PAC which wouldn’t even identify its leaders). Use your common sense, the development community isn’t a charity – developers expect approvals in exchange for their “donations.”
A puzzling note is that Williams received his largest donation from controversial (as in: accused of threatening to have one of his employees killed) billionaire, Bobby Kotick, who has no apparent ties to North Carolina, let alone Durham. Why is he funding Williams’ campaign? I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out the hard way.
I have to add that Anjanee Bell also receive a sizeable contribution from real estate investors out of Greensboro. I don’t know Bell, and I don’t know her connection to the Greensboro donors. My recommendation to vote for Bell is based on her promise to listen to the public and the fact that she couldn’t be worse on development issues than Williams has been. At least, there’s a reasonable hope she will be better.
Save Durham 