In a brief statement during the Tuesday night town board meeting, Assistant Town Manager Allison Snyder said the Town of Wake Forest has just purchased 47.3 acres on Forestville Road for a future park and the town’s facilities maintenance. The purchase price was $9,350,000, and the five commissioners approved the purchase unanimously.
They also approved all the items on the consent agenda, which included a contract with Berry Building Group to construct a public safety warehouse at 1412 Forestville Road for $2,681,000.
Toward the end of the meeting, Mayor Vivian Jones brought forward suggested guidelines for the public hearings, both those required by law and those the town feels are necessary. There were 13 guidelines, almost all the same guidelines the commissioners and mayor have been following.
But number 12 said: No digital presentations are allowed. Whoops! Digital presentations are short videos shown through the town’s display system, visible on the overhead screen which is viewed in the meeting room but is not available to those watching remotely.
Commissioner Nick Sliwinski and everyone else had an opinion or a memory. MCommissioner Ben Clapsaddle remembered a meeting last year during the discussions about Pride Fest when a father wanted to show a video but was going to take his children out of the room before it was shown. If it is offensive enough they do not want their children to see it, should the town broadcast it to all the town, he asked. Commissioner Keith Shackleford said he supported having digital opinion but thought there should be guidelines. Commissioners Adam Wright and Faith Cross agreed they wanted the videos. Finally Mayor Vivian Jones said it seemed “ . . . we need to keep talking about this for a while.”
Cross then suggested the town have an ordinance not allowing vaping stores near schools, and it was agreed the town should do a study about schools and vaping.
The commissioners agreed on the latest plan for the White Street Mixed Use plan for a four-story building with commercial uses on the first floor and apartments above. Planner Tim Richards said it has now been amended to require that the power lines be buried and the payment to the town be reduced from $20,000 to $5,000. Two members of the newly-built church across the street spoke favorably about the project. Cross objected to the plan because it lacked a recent traffic plan. She and Sliwinski voted against the project but it passed three to two.
The meeting began with a speech by Jim Thompson, the newly elected president of the Wake Forest Chamber of Commerce, replacing Liz Simpers who resigned last year with a nondisclosure agreement after it was discovered she had embezzled a still-undisclosed amount from the chamber. Investigations by the Wake Forest Police Department and the Wake County district attorney were apparently undertaken but there have been no public disclosures about their findings.
Thompson indicated the chamber is tightening its financial control procedures and wants to continue its very special relationship with the town. That currently includes an annual $20,000 donation from the town to the chamber.
Near the close of the meeting, Clapsaddle and Town Manager Kip Padgett both noted that donation and emphasized it is money paid by the town’s taxpayers. The unspoken notice was that the chamber needed much better financial control along with regular audits to avoid last year’s problems.
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4 Responses
If you go back & watch the clip of the guidelines section the commissioners clearly seemed to want to censor content. If anyone can explain to me their rationale on pictures of drag queens at Raleigh’s pride festival being too much for a town meeting I would love to hear it.
Most of them seem to be supportive of the WF Pride group having a pride festival. I don’t understand why they had a problem with the pictures the gentleman showed. I get WF Pride did not have drag queens at the festival this year but when I asked local pride members if they were considering having drag queen story time they said they may in the future. Do the commissioners have something against drag queens?
Most of the Commissioners made themselves look bad to the group of folks opposing the pride festival & to the WF pride group during that discussion. Their rationale makes no sense. Drag queen photos are too much for town board meetings but it’s ok for a festival to occur in town that may feature drag queen performances in the future.
Some Commissioners wanted to ban certain photos. Well that would be censoring content which would be a violation of the first amendment. The only reason Raleigh gets away with not showing photos is bc their meetings stream on YouTube & they have to abide by YouTube standards. WF meeting are streamed live on WFTV 10. WFTV 10 is owned & operated by the town of WF. Unless the board is going to start streaming our meetings to YouTube making any of the proposed changes during that discussion would violate either the first amendment or the open meeting law.
If I understand correctly, some are opposing digital presentations because they can’t be seen on the televised version of the town meeting? That is a ridiculous rationale! As anyone who has ever been on a zoom mtg knows, it is very simple to merge video of the speaker with the presentation material and show them both simultaneously on one screen. Also, town employees themselves have used digital presentations during meetings. So, would they also prohibit town staff from using PowerPoint at the same time as they prohibit residents from using it during public comment time? Makes no sense at all.
I don’t see Wake Forest addressing the road/ traffic problems that will continually worsen if not addressed. Growth is fine. It’s not thought out well if road growth / improvement doesn’t keep up with a growing city.
The whole Liz thing still blows my mind months later. JT’s gonna have to do some serious damage control for the Chamber to establish any credibility again, especially after former mgmt knuckled under to her NDA request. Reminds me of that scene in “Better Off Dead” where the two guys who learned to speak English from Howard Cosell are berating Lane Meyer’s drag racing acumen…
“Truly a sight to behold. A man beaten. The once great champ, now, a study in moppishness. No longer the victory hungry stallion we’ve raced so many times before, but a pathetic, washed up, aged ex-champion.”