Liveblogging (kind of) Durham work session

So, I'm taking a lunch break detour to the City Council's work session, specifically to hear about the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood's struggle to stop a couple of land transfers.  The Herald-Sun and News and Observer reporters are sitting over to my right, but hey, if you're reading this this afternoon, I get the rare opportunity to break some news.  (Mike Woodard just gave me a shout-out as a blogger in session -- oh, the responsibility!) 

Howard Clement just brought up the fact that Durham City government has been nominated as finalists for awards in excellence in municipal government in two categories.  The director of the communications department says that we're the only city in the nation nominated as a finalist in two categories.  Now, given my inexperience as a municipal reporter, I missed what categories that they were -- I'll have to wait for the press release.  That said, the news here is first that Durham's city government, while highly dysfunctional in a few key areas (road maintenance being a key one), is by and large a rather functional government. 

Clement, however, went on from there.  He noted that Durham city is, according to a survey, ranked poorly as far as confidence in government, whereas Durham county is rated highly.  Clement alleged that the reason for this disparity is that image of Durham city government is black, where as the image of Durham county government is white.  Now, I'm sympathetic to race as a driver of perception.  A fantastic study of crime and perception of disorder by Raudenbush and Sampson indicated that
independent, replicated measures of physical disorder did not in fact match up with perception of disorder, but that, in black as well as white populations, people perceive majority black neighborhoods as more disorderly, even when they were perfectly orderly.  However, I'm not sure that "city=black, county=white" is accurate.  Both governing boards are closely split, with yes, the county board being slightly majority white, and city council being slightly majority black.  It's also true that the managers roughly conform to this categorization. However, the county has plenty of black departmental directors, and the city plenty of white directors.

The perception differential, I would argue, stems from examples of difficulties the city has had in the past decade, while county government has been largely stable.  County manager Mike Ruffin has held a very steady ship since he came on board, whereas the city suffered through problematic management, first in small part from Lamont Ewell, but then from much more catastrophic leadership from well-meaning but overmatched Marcia Conner.  The main problems revolved around the small business loan scandal and the disastrous police chief search, but the city had several other stumbles out of the gate.

Patrick Baker's leadership hasn't been perfect, but I would say that government has increased dramatically in competence under his supervision.  There are several major challenges to the city's reputation, most pressingly,I would say, the road maintenance issue, but also certainly issues like the Cleveland-Holloway land giveaway, and the contract nepotism which surrounds, in particular, Clement himself.  However, if steady leadership continues, the perception will change.  Race will always be an issue -- to pretend otherwise is folly -- but competence is in the end the deciding factor.

Comments

[crc32]

How was liveblogging at the council meeting? Did they provide you with internet access in the council chamber?

[Michael Bacon]

I wasn't officially doing it, or anything. I just showed up at the work session with a laptop. There's already wireless in there, which I assume is at least partially for the H-S and N&O reporters who are always there.

Honestly, the work session was entertaining, if nothing else than because councilmembers are a lot looser at these than they are at the full evening meetings. Watching the rest of the councilmember rib Clement for his 30 minute ramble to start the meeting was pretty funny.

[Ray Gronberg]

The wireless is more for the cityfolk like Ted Voorhees sitting on the other side of the room with their own laptops. We reporters and bloggers are merely the lucky beneficiaries.