Rodger's blog

Today I attended a 3 hour Law & Public Safety committee hearing on proposed taxi cab regulations. We'll hold one or two more. Many cab drivers and several taxi company owners/managers came out to speak. The two biggest issues seem unfair competition from unlicensed cabs and mandatory cameras that cost around $500. The Raleigh PD told us that places that mandate in-taxi cameras see a significant drop in taxi-related crimes.

Building affordably priced housing for people that provide important quality-of-life services is not a feel-good issue any longer. For example, this link (http://www.thompsondorfman.com/mediacenter.cfm?ID=53) talks about the fact that a school district in the Bay Area (N. Calif.) has to build teacher housing to avoid facing 40% attrition rates each year.

Clearly, Raleigh still has a way to go, but prices of homes inside the beltline are already pretty much out of range for someone earning, say, $40K per year.

For a while now I've been working with residents in the Quail Hollow neighborhood on protecting their backyards. Under state law the city of Raleigh is required to maintain sewer easements so in case of a spill or other emergency the city has reasonable access to sewers and other public utilities to quickly respond. The issue was how to interpret what "reasonable" meant.

from http://www.trianglemom2mom.com/content/erasing-doubt

Erasing Doubt

I’m mostly a stay at home mom. So most of my work is done in the home, for the benefit of the people that live in it. I do freelance work, but that too, is done from my home. In a chair, seated in front of my handy old computer. And when I need to venture out, I turn to my rolling home on wheels

I’ve been content with my home-based life. I haven’t felt as though I was missing out on the outside-the-home scene.

That is, until the day I got to go to the City Council committee meeting.

You see, over the summer, I had a little issue in my backyard. I spent most of the summer working with one of the city’s departments to reach a compromise. Unfortunately, by early fall, I’d hit a dead end.

Not ready to let it go, I went looking for help. And the help came in the form of a councilman. Councilman Rodger Koopman. With his help, my dead end turned into an open road. A road that led to a City Council committee meeting a few Thursdays ago.

Tonight I was the guest of honor at the North East CAC townhall meeting. I think about 50 people attended. It was a very good meeting with a lot of interest in neighborhood issues. With very few exceptions all the questions were about people's neighborhoods and what I could do to help protect them.

Bike Samaritans run afoul of city by NAUREEN KHAN - Staff Writer

Rodger recently tried to intervene on behalf of the charitable organization "1304 Bikes," an organization that provides free refurbished bicycles and bike repair services to the less fortunate among us.

The N&O story can be found at this link: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1600543.html

I recently discovered information related to military retiree benefits that took a Congressional inquiry through Congressman Brad Miller's office to uncover. It shouldn't be this difficult to find information about benefits you're entitled to. I have two master's degrees and a bunch of experience. My wife is a licensed veterinarian with a master's degree in Public Health. If the two of us can't figure this out then I can only imagine some of the trouble other veterans and military retirees may have.

Thanks to Matthew Eisley for his May 18 column on planning for Raleigh's water. He is right, we must plan. This is a complex issue deserving of careful consideration and the public is well served to have it brought to their attention. I do, however, want to correct any impression that I changed my position based on our City's drought condition. When you review my record you'll see I've been consistent on the water issue. Last year during the drought, Councilor Stephenson and I were the only Councilors to question staff's assumptions on future infrastructure.

Welcome to my new website. We've been working on this for a while. The website is now fully interactive. Beyond being able to contribute to my campaign--which I hope you'll do--you can sign up to participate in forums, comment on content, look at upcoming events, etc.