"He said the center should have been built 10 years ago
and called it critical to the well being of local residents."
WRAL-TV - January 17, 2010
"It's prioritizing the city's needs,"
Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said.
Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said.
It's putting the most important thing first, which is the Lightner Center and then putting the other facilities later, when the economy improves and hopefully we can afford those, hopefully without any tax increases then."
"Street maintenance, sanitation division are outmoded and not anywhere as efficient as they need to be. But when you draw up priorities, you've got to put public safety first," Meeker said.
WTVD-TV - April 2, 2010
No, the "Lightner Public Safety Center" was not critical to the well being of residents. It was critical to Mayor Charles Meeker to dump hundreds of millions of dollars more of non-voter approved debt into downtown Raleigh to build yet another downtown edifice. Equating this with putting "putting safety first" was absurd. Raleigh had directed over $200 million to this project.
As many remember, the public art component of this building alone would have run over $705,000 due to a wasteful public art ordinance celebrated by Meeker and current Mayor McDowntown.
Yes, "street maintenance" and "sanitation" just didn't rank high enough according to Charles Meeker in comparison to yet another wasteful downtown project.
Now he wants to be the Labor Mayor and bring those same priorities across North Carolina and into your workplace.
