Name: Full interview: Outgoing Durham mayor reflects on accomplishments, challenges facing city
Uploaded: 2021-12-03T15:09:48-0500
Duration: 904813
Description: Outgoing Durham Mayor Steve Schewel discusses the highs and lows of his time in office, as well as his future plans.

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Outgoing Durham Mayor Steve Schewel discusses the highs and lows of his time in office, as well as his future plans.

I know you only have a few days left in office. How are you feeling as this winds down? Well, I've been in public office for 14 years, I've been mayor for four years, and so I have a lot of feelings. Um on the one hand, I'm very excited because I'm only 70. I have a lot of things I want to do in my life and I'm gonna get to do. Some of them have a grandchild, new granddaughter, josephine, who lives just a few minutes away. Uh and I'll be able to spend time with my family with both of my sons and my daughter in law and my wife, who I love very much and all that's going to be great, and I want to figure out some new things to do. So that all sounds to me exciting. I'm looking forward to a different life. On the other hand, I really loved being in public service. It's been an incredible privilege. I mean, what a city Durham is, what an amazing city. And to be able to to be mayor of the city has just been, it's a it's a privilege beyond imagining. And so I'll miss some of that. I'll definitely miss working with our amazing city staff. We have a fabulous city staff and I will miss them tremendously. Uh and I'll miss uh trying to, you know, dr change from the position of being the mayor. That that is something that has been again, a real privilege to be able to do that and I'll certainly miss it, but overall I'm excited about making the transition, I'm excited about mary O'neill I've been working with her meeting with her and she's going to be great and yeah, it's all good. So you're still feeling at peace with your decision to retire? Totally, totally. It's totally the right time uh for many reasons. And yeah, I feel definitely the right decision. Is there anything you want to accomplish still in your final days as mayor? I actually have a couple of meetings on the amount of office on monday night at 10 after seven or something, but I have two meetings on monday one around some affordable housing work. Yeah, and the other around some workforce development kinds of things. So yeah, I'm working up to the last day, but the phenomenon of being a lame duck is real, once the election happened other, you know, the communities, I've obviously at that point looking to the new mayor and the new council for their leadership and at that point I've really been in kind of a holding pattern working with our administration to keep things going that we need to keep going. But the new initiatives need to come from the new folks and they will and they'll be great. And when you reflect back on your time as mayor, what do you see as some of the greatest accomplishments in your mind? Well, we've had some real, uh we've had some real disappointments and we've had some real accomplishments and that's just the nature of the beast. Uh But I think that you know, who knew that I was going to be called upon to be mayor during a global pandemic. And I am very proud of the way Durham has negotiated that. And I think that I've been called upon to play a role that I never knew that I would and I had to rise to the occasion and I did my best every day to try to keep our community healthy and safe. And Durham has done very very well. I saw the C. D. C. Uh Numbers are we? I believe it's now 94% of our residents over 12 years of age have at least one vaccine. That's fantastic and it's taken a huge amount of effort. It's got to keep going. We gotta get everybody fully vaccinated. But even though, you know, we've lost a lot of residents but our death rate has been far below the national average. And Durham has just done very well. And so I'm real proud of that. The affordable housing work. I the existential threat to Durham's to who Durham is a city for everybody, A city for all, a place that really embraces all people. The existential threat to that is of housing affordability. We're not gonna be a city for all unless we have affordable housing. And we have a huge affordable housing program underway. We will be housing over the next five years will be um Housing uh permanently affordable housing. Either preserving current affordable housing or building new housing for 15,000 residents. Many of them are most vulnerable. And so this is, we're already well underway. We've got a lot of housing going up. We've got a lot coming out of the ground. So that's something I'm also very proud of. There's a lot of other things I'm proud of. I'm proud of the fact that we've made the bus is free, you ride our busses now, no matter what your age, no matter who you are, you ride for free on our bus service. There are a lot of other things too. But those are some of the things at the top of my list, any regrets, looking back things you would have done differently. A lot of regrets, I think that's natural. Um you know, the, the, the, the failure of the light rail uh is something that is just left us a region, not just Durham, but our region in a really behind and we we've got to have a good system of regional public transit and we don't, and most regions of the country are ahead of us and think of the environmental and climate consequences of not having good a rail system and bus rapid transit, all those things that We'll keep cars off the road 20 years from now, we're going to have that or you're not gonna be able to move on and on. I, 40, we've got to have good regional transit and we don't, and that's a regret. The failure of the light rail was really hard. It was very expensive. Uh and and that's something that I continue to be disappointed in. Um the rising gun violence in the last couple of years has been terrible and it's been a nationwide phenomenon during the pandemic and it's been really, really terrible for many families here in Durham. I hope we've had a lot of people who have been murdered. We have even more people who have been shot and this is just, we can't tolerate that, you know, we can't have that. And so we've got to do everything we can to fight gun violence. I know the new mayor and the city council, our current council is very focused on that, but uh that's something that we've, we've really got to do better on. And so those are a couple of things at the top of my mind that um are, you know, some of the really significant challenges we still have to meet. Is there anything you feel like you have learned during your time as mayor that you think maybe people who live in Durham don't really understand or maybe commonly have a misunderstanding of any common misconceptions or anything like that. I don't know that this is a misconception, but I don't think people have a full appreciation of the Amazing people that we have that worked for the city of Durham, we have 2700 employees and they're amazing Wallet, hub rates the performance of city government? They just raided during the 7th best run city in America. I'm really proud of that and it's not because of me, it's because of our city manager of our city staff. We we hired a wonderful city manager want to pay. She's absolutely superb. There's so many things that people take for granted and city government that just runs so well. You know, your garbage gets picked up and recycling gets picked up. It's timely. It's done well. We have uh our our water system. You know, I think something I may have talked to you about before Sarah, we spend more money on water and sewer Every year then on anything else we do by far we're spending $100 million dollars a year and we have a great water and sewer system. We have, We have reserves. We use $25 million 40 million gallons a day. We're adding different reservoirs to that as well to plan for the future. These are the kinds of basic functions of city government that people don't know and don't understand very well but that I am so proud of the way Durham does. The reason people don't know about them is because they function really well endure. Um And again that's not because of me. It's because we have wonderful city staff that do a great job every day. What do you think will be the biggest challenges facing the new mayor and the new council. I think that the the new challenge, the biggest challenges facing the new mayor and council will be the ones that I've mentioned before. Uh You know, there's a lot of immediate focus on gun violence as there should be. We have a lot of vacancies in our police department. The sheriff has a lot of vacancies in the Sheriff's department. Um This is again a nationwide phenomenon and I've talked to mayors all over north Carolina. We're having the metro mayors of north Carolina meet here over the next two days. All the the mayors of the other cities are coming to Durham for the next couple of days. I'm hosting that. We'll be talking about that. We have vacancies in, we have a lot of vacancies in city government and all in all operational apartments and we've, especially in law enforcement. And so that's really an important challenge that we have to meet the city manager is bringing a pay increase for our incoming officers are, you know, we really are, we have now fallen behind some of our other localities in terms of what we're paying incoming officers. She's bringing in january increase in pay that the new council will be approving. So that will help. But it's really more than that there's a nationwide reluctance of people to be in law enforcement. And so we've got to help solve that problem. So that's a big challenge. Um I think that the housing affordability, you know, we've got a great program, but making sure that program is fully enacted, uh it's funded, we funded it, The $95 million 76% of the voters supported, which is great. But that's a big lift to get all that done. It will be done, but it will be hard. Um I think the challenge of figuring out this regional transit conundrum with with our other localities is going to be a difficult one. Um Yeah, I think that, I think those are the major challenges that face us. I think that I guess the the other one I think is we have established a program called Built to Last which were funding to try to create to raise a uh an equity fund to support our small businesses, especially our black and brown owned businesses and women owned businesses. So we really need to support those businesses because they're critical to who Durham is. Uh those businesses are actually absolutely essential. And so having that fund work well to be able to raise the money and have it worked well as a big challenge. We've got a lot of challenges, but you know, I'm doing 152 years old were an amazing city. Durham is the best place to live in the country right now, that's why so many young people are pouring in here, not just young people, people my age who are retiring here, pouring into Durham and it creates problems with housing affordability, but it also shows you the quality of life we have, There's no place better for a young person to be right now and in the next 20 years in the city of Durham North Carolina and fortunately people know that, and I know when you ran for mayor, your campaign slogan was let's Make the City We love a city for all. Do you feel like you have done that? I feel like um that that's not just my vision, that that's our community's vision, that that's what Durham wants. We want our city to be a city for all. And I would say that I will say that I hope that I have been able to articulate that in as many possible ways as I can, that I have tried to make make it as clear as I can that Durham loves and embraces all people um if you're a refugee from Afghanistan, if you're documented or you're undocumented, if you're a transgender kid who's just trying to figure it out, we want you in Durham and I think that that welcoming ethic is something I've tried to convey and I think our city conveys it. I do think the challenge to it is housing affordability, we can't be embracing of all people. If people can't afford to live here? And so that's going to continue to be, that's going to be the challenge to that ethic, but I do feel like Durham has embraced us, embrace that ethic that we are a city that uh that loves and rebels in our diversity. And what is your hope for the city of Durham, as you watch? Maybe not totally from the sidelines now, but more from the sidelines um that we can live out this dream of being a city for all um you know, this sarah because you see this all the time, people do love to be endured. They loved her. Um people from Durham loved her. Um you know, the number of people with Durham shirts and flags and coffee mugs and socks made out of the city flag and you know, just if you go, you ask people in Durham, how do they like it here? They love it here, They love it. And so that is ah and that means that they they understand who we are and they support who we are and they want to be a part of it and so ah can we continue to make that real? I think that we can, but you know, it's like all of these, it's like everything that's that's that's big, it takes work, it takes cooperation takes people being uh you know, thoughtful and working together and I think it will happen And I know you mentioned that you have more things you want to do. Can you talk about what any of those are. Do you have any concrete plans? Well, I'm 70 years old. I've worked for 50 years. I'd like to take a few months and not work. And I'm planning to do that. I'm planning to read great books. I read a lot. I love to read good fiction in history and um, I run when I'm not injured, so I'll be running uh I ride my bike all the time, you know, so I'll be doing all those kinds of fun things. I want to hang out with my wife. Want to travel some if when as covid lets me travel and I want to enjoy my family. So, those things I'll be doing. And then after that I've got some thoughts about some projects I'm not really ready to talk about yet. They're just kind of forming in my head, but I want to figure out ways to be of service in Durham, not, not politically not an elected office, but in other ways. And uh and to continue to work with the young people that energized me. Um that's what I enjoy. That's been wonderful part of city government. Uh And so yeah, those are my plans. So no ambitions for higher office, no ambitions for higher office. Any ambitions to return to Duke as a professor, maybe. I mean, I've thought about that. Yeah, I'm still on the list over there. I'm still, you know, I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna do, but for a while I'm I'm gonna chill.

Sarah Krueger

Vinnie Boccanfuso

Matthew Burns

Full interview: Outgoing Durham mayor reflects on accomplishments, challenges facing city

Durham Mayor Steve Schewel

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WRAL Late News 

Get the latest WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast whenever you need it, including the DUALDoppler5000 and the 7-Day Forecast.

Hello, everyone. I'm meteorologist, Mike Mays in the WRL severe weather center. With your forecast update for this Friday night, we have about a 20% chance of a shower through the evening and for most of the night, so don't be surprised if you're out for dinner and you run into an isolated shower. That's the possibility toward daybreak. As you can see, rain, chances do increase just a bit. Now for the day tomorrow, it will be a warm one but not hot. Like today, we had 90 out at RDU lunch tomorrow at 75. Our forecast high 82 partly to mostly cloudy skies. It's the abundant amount of cloud cover that should reduce the heat. Now, if we tend to have a little bit more sunshine, it could slip past that. 82 but it shouldn't be as hot as what we had today. And tomorrow's hit and miss showers and storms. 30 to 40% chance in the morning, 40 to 50% in the afternoon, 60% actually as we head into tomorrow night. So we have needed rain ahead. It's been very dry over the past month or so. There is rain in the forecast, it's not going to be a washout weekend. There will be hit and miss showers and storms and the nature of the way rain is this time of year and into the summer, it's more hit and miss. So you may see rain at your house, but your neighbor a mile down the road may not see anything. So we have 50% chance of rain tomorrow. That doesn't mean you're going to see rain. At least there's a 50% chance there is going to be rain in your neighborhood. 60% Saturday night, 50% on Sunday, I think Monday is going to be the day. We have the greatest likelihood, especially Monday night with a 70% chance for showers and storms down to 30 on Tuesday, 40% chance for showers and thunderstorms on Wednesday. So here is the rainfall potential at least through Tuesday, both the American model and the European model show about a three quarter inch of rainfall potential during Saturday, Sunday, Monday and through Tuesday night at 11 o'clock. So it's a pretty good chance that we'll have some decent rain. So tomorrow, anywhere from 82 at Rocky Mountain, Raleigh, 84 in Fayetteville, cooler at Boone 67 there, 81 at Wilmington for Sunday, we expect our highs to be in the low eighties locally still in the sixties at Boone, about 80 in Asheville, 81 at Wilmington, 73 at NAGS head and then on Monday, our highs will be in the low to mid eighties. Still showers and storms in the area. So our forecast tonight isolated a shower this evening, light showers and a possible storm at daybreak lows will be in the low to mid sixties. Our highs tomorrow will be in the eighties. Although our northern counties may stay in the seventies again. Showers and storms are in the forecast, some in the morning, some in the afternoon as well. Seven day forecast, check it out over the next four days. We stay in the eighties. But by the time we get to Wednesday and Thursday, we could be back in the nineties. Could be quite toasty on Wednesday with a high at 94. That's our forecast update for this Friday night. Have a wonderful weekend. I'll see you on Monday.

WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast

Nightly N.C. Education Lottery drawings during the 11 p.m. News.

Happy Friday. I'm Tina selling cash with tonight's lottery drawings for May 3rd, 2024. Here we go with the Carolina pick 39 is our first winning number. Second pick 38, 3rd winning number tonight. Another eight in our pick three, fireball number is nine. Joining me for tonight's drawing is our auditor from mcconnell Jones L LP. Now it's time for the Carolina pick for so check your tickets. Good luck for winning. Zero. Second pick 49. 3rd winning number four. Fourth pick for tonight is one and our pick four. Fireball number is five. Let's turn now to the Carolina cash five. If no one matches all five numbers to win the jackpot tonight, tomorrow's top prize is an estimated $256,000. Good luck. First winning cash five tonight. 27. Second winning number 30. Our third cash five is 36. 4th winning number is 10 and good luck. Our final winning cash five number tonight is 29. The North Carolina Education Lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education. Thanks for your support and get the winning numbers every night right here. Thanks for playing and have a good night.

Evening Pick 3 Pick 4 and Cash 5

Tuesday and Friday Mega Millions Drawing.

>> ACROSS AMERICA WITH MEGA JACKPOTS, IT'S MEGA MILLIONS. >> GOOD EVENING. A MAJOR WOFFORD IS FRIDAY MAY 3RD AND TONIGHT'S MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOT IS AN ESTIMATED AT NEAR TICE 284 MILLION DOLLARS TO WIN THE JACKPOT. YOU MUST MATCH ALL 5 WHITE PLUS THE GOLD MEGA BALL. SO GET YOUR TICKETS. OUR FIRST NUMBER TONIGHT IS 13 AFTER THAT. YOU HAVE 53. THAT'S ALL MY 15 UP NEXT IS 56. AND FINALLY, 6 ENOUGH YOU'RE MAKING. YOU'RE MAKING ALL NUMBER IS 11 OR 13. 53 15, 56 6. AND THE MEGA BALL IS 11 NOW FEELING MATCHES ALL 6 NUMBERS. TUESDAY'S JACKPOT COULD BE MORE

Mega Millions Drawing

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 drawings are held at 3 p.m. daily. They can be seen as live or on-demand video.

Good afternoon. I'm Grace Holland. Welcome to this afternoon's drawings for Friday. May 3rd 2024. Let's get started with the Carolina pick three. The first pick three number is zero then eight three and your pick three. Fireball is seven. Joining me for this afternoon's drawing is our auditor for mcconnell and Jones L LP. Now let's move to the Carolina pick four. The first pick four number is taking its time. A two followed by five three, four. And your pick for Fireball is three. The North Carolina education lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education. Thank you for your support.

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 Drawing

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department holds a processional and memorial service for fallen officer Joshua Eyer. 

Watch live: Processional and memorial service for fallen officer Joshua Eyer

Emergency responders in Cary a rescue woman trapped on her front porch after the porch collapsed. 

Cary crews rescue woman trapped on front porch

Protesters marched around UNC on Friday morning. Their nearly-two mile loop stopped traffic and interrupted students daily activities.

Barricades like these are usually put up during moments of unrest during protests, but they were unnecessary today. As a group of pro Palestinian protesters made their way through campus peacefully albeit loudly to get their message carrying signs of support for the Palestinian people impacted by the Israel Hamas war. Roughly 100 protesters made their way through unc's campus. They want the university to pull out any investments in Israeli businesses. It's unknown if us $5.2 billion endowment invests in any companies associated with Israel. It's what led to unrest on UN CS campus. Earlier this week, law enforcement and protesters clashed at an encampment. We're not here to destroy anything. We're here to get a message out. We're here to pressure people. We're here to make a change. Eri Mitchell is yet to see happen, but he feels this group is making an impact. I believe that seeing Palestinian Children holding up signs saying please continue is a green light for us to keep showing solidarity, to keep showing that we're out here. Friday's protests brought the group through U C's campus, stopping traffic and peacefully interrupting daily activities for students taking graduation photos near the old well, which did draw some support from those passing by. You hear other cars honking? Of course not. I do think that we're at some inflection point. This UN C student wanted to remain anonymous. He's at odds internally battling against the school. He'll get a diploma from in a couple of years. I don't know. I think I'm proud to be a student here. I think the students are showing up, but I can't say that I'm proud, I'm definitely not proud of UN C and the system and what they're doing and they say they won't stop until they see change. Sean Gallagher Wral News. Chapel Hill. That appreciate me one solution.

Full interview: Outgoing Durham mayor reflects on accomplishments, challenges facing city

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