The Clean Up Henderson Committee seized the initiative Wednesday in legislative lobbying on behalf of the city.
A unanimous committee voted to prepare a list of specific funding requests to carry to state Reps. Jim Crawford and Michael Wray, state Sen. Doug Berger, and other sympathetic legislators.
The committee acted less than 36 hours after Mayor Clem Seifert told City Council member Elissa Yount on Monday night that the city has no list of state legislative priorities comparable to the federal list created for the Ferguson Group, Henderson’s Washington lobbyist.
City leaders will visit Washington on March 1 and 2 to complete the federal list, for use in seeking grants and earmarks in congressional legislation, but has no such tool and no lobbying voice in Raleigh. The General Assembly has a deadline in March to introduce legislation aimed at particular localities, and it will try to pass a state budget before the fiscal year starts July 1. (The federal fiscal year, by contrast, starts Oct. 1, and Congress has been even less successful than the state legislature at meeting that budget deadline.)
When Yount asked Seifert why the city couldn’t send the federal list to the area’s representatives in Raleigh, the mayor said the two governments don’t offer the same programs and funding possibilities, so the list wouldn’t be applicable. He acknowledged the city should have such a list to compete with the demands of other towns in North Carolina.
Without mentioning the discussion Monday night at the council meeting, the cleanup committee responded to that challenge Wednesday morning.
Yount, a committee member, did not attend the meeting. But fellow council member Mary Emma Evans did, and she raised the issue of seeking money in Raleigh.
“If we would make an appeal, perhaps we could get some funds to help us,” Evans said.
Crawford and Wray have regularly asked what the city cleanup needs, committee Chairwoman Lynn Harper said.
“We don’t get anything sitting in a chair in Henderson,” committee Treasurer Jackie Jackson said, adding that going to Raleigh is the best thing the committee members can do to help Code Compliance Director Corey Williams do his job.
The cleanup committee will hold a work session Tuesday morning at the police station to craft its request list. Rockspring Street resident and activist Andrea Harris, a regular in Raleigh on community development issues, agreed to help the citizen committee compose its wish list and present it to the lawmakers.
Harris was one of at least seven city residents who attended as guests at the cleanup committee’s regular biweekly meeting Wednesday. Each brought his or her own concerns, but they were united by their interest in the committee’s work and its citywide impact. Harris and property manager Cliff Rogers were the most prominent of the guests, but others such as Warren Hare and Donald Green were just as talkative and full of ideas.
“I think we have a lot of representation from areas that have not been represented before,” Harper said.
That grass-roots interest reflected the continuing influence of the cleanup committee, created as an ad hoc measure nearly two years ago.
The guests and the committee members spent the better part of an hour brainstorming priorities for this year. (The junk-car hunt two weeks earlier completed one of the panel’s initial goals for 2005.)
The suggestions fit the committee’s increasing focus on abandoned homes, as opposed to street cleaning and lot clearing, and could signal a shift toward housing in general. Among the proposals:
* A program of landscaping for lots left empty after the city demolishes dilapidated structures.
* An adopt-a-lot program to beautify vacant lots.
* An interagency forum on poor housing.
* A written plan for ridding Henderson of abandoned structures and preventing other homes from falling into a dilapidated state. Rogers emphasized the need for such a document.
* An emphasis on public education about the importance of homeownership, along with counseling on how to become and remain a homeowner.
* An effort to reach out to banks to show them the city’s problems and seek investments in community development.
* A push to clear out overgrown areas along roadsides. Council member Lonnie Davis cited the area near the Beacon Light Apartments.