In our continuing efforts to bring more sunshine to Raleigh city government, this is our second annual edition of what we’ll now call the Expense Report. Below you will find the full documents of the expense reports, credit card statements and requests for reimbursements from city department heads, the mayor and city council members.

Below this short blog post you’ll be able to read through how the city spends your tax dollars on conferences, trainings, lots of batteries, snacks for the tireless city employees, carwashes and a number of other, occasionally odd, things.

Find anything interesting? Please leave a comment below.

Our request last year did not return nearly as much as this year, which likely means that we’re getting much better at asking about what we’re looking for. As always, the city’s public affairs department was very responsive to our request and we got this batch of documents within a matter of a few short weeks. Not bad for a request of this nature.

We did redact two credit card numbers that were left in the material given to the Record.

Trainings and workshops top the list of expenditures, topping out at more than $20,000. The convention center spent several hundred dollars on batteries. There’s a handful of carwashes billed to the city and a healthy dose of donuts.  For the record, none of those donut expenditures came from Raleigh Police Chief Harry Dolan. And two department heads bought about $300 worth of books from Barnes & Nobles, including such titles as Thank God it’s Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love, Mastering Communication (two copies), and Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion.

Fy09-10 Council Members

Fy09-10 Perry James

Fy09-10 Thomas Mccormick

Fy09-10 Russell Allen

Fy09-10 Julian Prosser

Fy09-10 Lawrence Wray

Fy09-10 Roger Krupa

Fy09-10 Mitch Silver

Fy09-10 Michele Grant

fy09-10 kristen rosselli

Fy09-10 John Carman

Fy09-10 Harry Dolan

Fy09-10 Federick Battle

fy09-10 diane sauer

Fy09-10 Carl Dawson

Fy09-10 Barry Furey

Fy09 10 Valorie Lykes Lockehart

The Raleigh Public Record is experiencing difficulty obtaining all of the documents encompassed in a public records request that we made to the Wake County Public School System in March.

Our request returned 1,700 initial pages of email, most of which are published in full text at the bottom of this post. We culled the majority of emails which board members did not respond to. Due to the vast amount of emails we are asking our readers and any to help us in studying the emails and notifying us of any thing they find of interest. Use the Contact page to get in touch or leave comments below on anything you find.

The Record requested all board member emails (personal and county accounts) regarding the diversity policy and the community assignment plan from Oct. 6, 2009 until the date our request was fulfilled.

On May 20, Micheal Evans, Wake County Public School System chief communications officer, informed us that our request was processed and that we might come in to examine the documents. Our examination returned strange findings, not about specific emails, but what we didn’t get.

Our request returned emails ranging only from January 1, 2010 to mid-March, close to the time we made our initial request, rather than mid-May when our request was fulfilled. Evans told us, after our request was fulfilled, that the WCPSS database can only store emails from the past 60 days, accounting for the lack of return on the front-end of our request, and that his department is currently working to fulfill the latter end, dating March to May.

Perhaps stranger, our request returned no emails to or from board members Ron Margiotta, John Tedesco, Deborah Goldman, and Kevin Hill for the entire month of February. Board member Keith Sutton said, he does “not think it is possible that the four board members did not send or receive any emails regarding the diversity policy or the community assignment plan during the month of February.”

Given the large volume of emails the other board members received during the same period, he is likely correct.

In response to the irregularities in information, Evans said, his department presented us “with all the information the communications department’s search returned,” but that he will perform another search on the board members emails in question for February. Board member Dr. Anne McLaurin also said she thinks it is “unlikely” that the four board members did not receive or respond to any emails addressing diversity during February.

Board members personal email accounts are subject to public records requests and in our initial request we asked WCPSS for any board member emails regarding community assignment to or from personal accounts. However, our request returned no such emails.

Evans said that he is currently asking the board of education members for personal account emails regarding diversity, but that as of yet none say they received or sent any from personal accounts.

Board members McLaurin and Carolyn Morrison told the Record they do not remember if they received or sent any emails from their personal accounts.

We are unsure whether our request should produce any personal account emails, but we are anxious to understand why our request did not return any emails from certain board members for the month February and to see any emails regarding diversity written between March and April.

The documents below are organized by month and by board member. We also created one document for emails sent to multiple board members during January. For a search function, click on the file name above the document.

Jan – Group

Jan – Prickett

Jan – Morrison

Jan – McLaurin

Jan – Sutton

Jan – Malone

Jan – Margiotta

Jan – Hill

Jan – Goldman

Jan – Tedesco

Feb – Prickett

Feb – Morrison

Feb – McLaurin

Feb – Sutton

Feb – Malone

March – Sutton

March – Morrison

March – McLaurin

March – Malone

March – Tedesco

Read the full-text proposal for the downtown transit station below. Raleigh planning director Mitch Silver has kept this proposal under wraps until unveiling it a couple days ago. The plan calls for a multi-modal transit center covering several blocks on the western side of downtown and serve bus and rail passengers.

Union Station-Public Review Draft

Reader John Morris, the editor over at Goodnight, Raleigh! blog asked RPR via Twitter a couple weeks ago how cyclists were supposed to be able to get through the new roundabouts on Hillsborough Street and how that would work with the bike lane proposal for the street. Our off-the-cuff answer was along the lines of “wear a helmet and take the lane.” It turns out that we weren’t too far off the mark.

We put the question to Eric Lamb, manager of the transportation services division in the city’s public works department. Here’s his email reply:

There are no specific markings for cyclists in roundabouts. Cyclists are expected to center themselves in the lane and operate just like a car in these situations. Since the operation is pretty low-speed, I find that it tends to be pretty easy when I ride through them. Hillsborough/Pullen will be eastern NC’s first two-lane roundabout.

Here’s a decent online resource regarding bikes and peds versus roundabouts: http://www.walkinginfo.org/faqs/answer.cfm?id=3454

The letter details why current census methodology used to count deployed service members penalizes states with a large military presence, like North Carolina, and proposes a new method for the 2010 Census. Several other states with high military populations have requested similar changes.

If adopted, the change would increase North Carolina’s recorded population in the 2010 Census. Bob Coates, North Carolina’s Census liaison in the Office of State Management and Budget, explained, “Your home of record may be your birthplace, which could be California, even if you lived in North Carolina for 15 years. If you are deployed you would be counted in California’s count then. We do have folks in the military who use North Carolina as their ‘home of record’ but these counts would be assigned to the state, not a given county or municipality. This is only true of service members, not their families. If they live in North Carolina, they receive a Census form and if they fill it out, they are counted in the county or city where they reside. Deployed personnel do not receive a form, instead they use their records, which is why this is so important.”

Coats stated it would be, “December or sometime by the first quarter” before North Carolina learns if its proposed recommendation is adopted.

CongressionalLetter[1]

Members of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board passed a new set of recommendations to prevent incidents like the explosion at the ConAgra Slim Jim plan last September. Board investigators found that a contractor purged a natural gas line into the building without ventilation.

The recommendations say that under most circumstances contractors need to ventilate gas with a hose or pipe when clearing a line of air. When contractors think they can’t ventilate the gas outside, the recommendations say they need to approve the plan with the local fire marshal or building inspectors.

The recommendations will go to the National Fire Protection Association and the American Gas Association for futher consideration before being incorporated into the two organizations’ rules.

The board voted 2-1 to approve the recommendations. William Wright, the one no vote, said he opposed the recommendations because they were too specific. Wright said the recommendations tell the associations “please insert this language.”

Wright argues that the board in the past has normally said, “You have a gap in your document” and the associations would take up filling that gap.

ConAgra Urgent Recommendation Final to Board 2-1-10 (3)

TC-01-10 Development Plan Review Process

The planning department’s description of TC-2-10, which could change the conditions the planning commission can use in approving rezoning petitions.

TC-02-10 Rezoning Process Summary

The text amendments for TC-2-10.

TC-02-10 Conditional Use District Rezoning

The Wake County Sheriff’s Department signed a new agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month under what is known as the 287(g) program. The agreement allows sheriff’s deputies in the Wake County jail to be trained to screen people for their immigration status after they’re arrested. People found to be in the country illegally are handed over to federal authorities for deportation after being tried and potentially serving sentences for what they were arrested for.

Rebecca Headen with the North Carolina chapter of the ACLU has analyzed the agreement and told the Raleigh Public Record that there isn’t much change with the new agreement. She said changes that are in the new agreement include attempts to limit public access to information and statistics about the program, which Headen called “highly problematic.”

Headen says the changes to the contract include “aspirational” suggestions, including priority levels for arrest. She said that the agreement gives guidelines that people should not be arrested for minor violations such as traffic tickets. “But in actuality, there is no mandate,” Headen said. She said there had been a number of incidents in Wake and other counties across North Carolina of people being arrested on what’s called “low priority offenses” such as not stopping completely at a stop sign.

She said the new agreement “does not prevent or even discourage arrests for low-priority offenses.” Headen went on to say that Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison has said that his department will continue to arrest people for minor violations.

In an interview Tuesday afternoon, Harrison said that his department’s policy is to arrest people who they do not think will show up for court. “It’s up to the officer in the field,” Harrison said, “If you don’t have proper documentation or you can’t prove who you are, we’re going to probably bring you downtown.”

“ICE can’t tell us who to arrest and who not to arrest,” Harrison said.

Wake County has been involved in the 287(g) since July 2008. Harrison said his department has processed more than 3,000 people for deportation under the program.

Wake SO-ICE MOA Signed_Final _101509

In a letter recently sent from RPD Chief Harry Dolan to City Manager Russell Allen, Dolan says the department will open its new downtown office this month. Dolan also says the department is adding more neighborhood police beats.

The downtown move is necessary as the city prepares to demolish the existing downtown police building to make way for the new Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center.

While the new public safety center is under construction, police administration will move to Six Forks Road and the downtown district station will move into a building on Cabarrus Street.

The last page of this report is very large, please zoom in to see the first five pages.

Neighborhood Beat Expansion Report

The report, below, says three officers shot at the man, and one bullet hit him, after he pointed his gun at the officers.

Thomas Five-Day Report