Paul Fitts shares why he's running for Raleigh mayor

Paul Fitz

Welcome to Wrel

Thank you

I appreciate it affordable housing

Huge issue in Raleigh

We've seen some drips of progress over the years but

there's still so much to tackle

What's your plan to address this Uh It's a it's

a two fold plan actually

Uh number one I wanna use state owned property

Uh the city of Raleigh has 100 and 61 state

owned properties

They don't contribute any property tax to the city

Uh Again when I discussed that before they said well

you you can't change the laws

I'm not trying to change the laws

I need the state to give us property so we

can turn that into housing and we need to because

of our economic downturn especially in downtown Raleigh

So if there's no landing acquisition cost for the developer

therefore you can make housing cheaper more affordable and make

it more available

At the same time

On your website you talk about wanting to move the

prisons from downtown Raleigh and talk about that as it

pertains to affordable housing

Well again uh the state of North Carolina over the

last five years has decommissioned three prisons you know why

they left two prisons in the most expensive real estate

in the entire state just boggles my mind

Uh both prisons are outdated

Uh Central prison came into effect sometime in the late

18 hundreds

Uh I believe both facilities could easily be removed and

allowing housing to take place in those areas

And again it's a non taxable space

If we have housing if we have owner occupied housing

on those spaces that land becomes taxable that those properties

start to contribute to the city of Raleigh

Let's talk now about downtown revitalization

Um We know that there are pockets of really interesting

energetic places across downtown Raleigh but they're often woven together

with a lot of uninteresting places that some might say

lack character

And as a result makes the fabric of Raleigh can

have a bit of an unidentified character

That's what some might say

So what's your plan to change that to to build

a greater sense of character and more continuous energy and

vibrancy throughout the city Well and it and it kind

of goes back to the underutilized spaces that we have

Now you know the city of Raleigh has about a

million square feet that's completely under utilized as far as

commercial uh property is concerned

But going back to the state owned properties we have

to make downtown more livable now to make the city

more vibrant

Uh If you go back to 2017 when I ran

for mayor then I the hot topic at the time

was light rail and I said I was against light

rail

It was 1/19 century technology and we're a 21st century

workforce

And what I meant by that was we were building

a telecommuting workforce

Well when we've done that we vacated uh 20 to

25% of our workforce in downtown Raleigh

They're now remote

Since they're remote they're building their communities they're building Clayton

they're building Wake Forest they're building all the other towns

around us

Nobody's coming into downtown Raleigh anymore

So since the economy has shifted we have to shift

our game plan with it which we have not taken

any steps to do that

Uh I know we're building apartments downtown which require services

You know businesses will flourish but we need more owner

occupied properties

We have to step off the 10 year lease and

we need to focus on the 30 year fixed

If you make it owner occupied people invest in their

communities more that way

What's your position on land trust acquisitions Like where the

the homeowner owns the home But the city or the

state owns the property Yeah I don't like it

I mean again as a mortgage lender it also makes

it a little bit more difficult and you have to

be uh you have to come up with different ideas

for financing those properties

And the truth is the people who buy those properties

are not getting the same amount of equity back

If they're gonna put the if they're gonna put their

investment into that area they need to be rewarded if

they sell that property

But you have to realize now that taxes have increased

on a lot of people

Uh you can consider AAA worker who worked for the

city of Raleigh for 30 years and he's paid off

his property

He lived in it for 30 years

Well now his property taxes are doubled

If he's on a fixed income he gets a little

bit of social security a little bit of a pension

Now he can't afford to live in the house

He paid off years ago

I mean we have to think about these things that

diversify our tax base to public safety

Now um you talk about wanting to support our officers

in fact by adding 400 of them how do you

recruit and retain 400 officers at a time when it's

very difficult to recruit and we already have vacancies

So uh the last Republican I'm a Republican obviously the

only Republican candidate in the race

The last Republican to be mayor of this city was

Paul Kell

And at his time in 2001 there were a baseline

of 800 police officers

We're still using that same baseline

23 years later our population has doubled

Our area has grown

We need to get away from that baseline and understand

that the matrix has changed a little bit now recruiting

and retention

It's been very difficult to say that it's been a

focus on the city of Raleigh to recruit police officers

They focus more on parks and a few other projects

I don't think they've really had their focus on bringing

police officers in

Um You've got a lot of cities throughout the entire

nation who have decided to defund their police departments

And then so police officers are leaving those police departments

I think it can be an incentive for them to

come here as long as they know that we can

pay them to be here and work for us

How complicated and difficult will it be to try to

rally the council to make that kind of significant financial

investment Everything is complicated but it it shouldn't be uh

again you know if it was easy for the council

to say hey we could put a bond on the

ballot for for parks for a half a billion dollars

but we can't invest in our public safety

I I think if we change our focus and understand

that these are kitchen table issues these are people who

want to be protected and they're paying double their taxes

Now I I think they wanna invest into it but

I think they wanna invest in the right reasons

I think the council is coming more around to a

public safety mentality

Now there are five candidates for Raleigh mayor in this

race

Most of the issues that all candidates talk about on

their platforms are the same affordable housing public safety transportation

et cetera

You you have a proposal in your platform that is

different than any other candidate and that is that you

want to build a casino in Raleigh

Why And how do you do this So um gaming

is coming whether we want it or not

Uh I can just tell you that if you go

west of the state the Cherokee have two casinos uh

west of I 26 down in uh King's Mountain which

is uh west of I 85

It's just on the west side of I 85

The Catawba tribe is just now uh started their two

Kings facility

And uh the Cherokee tribe also has a um facility

in Danville Virginia

Now gaming is all is all around us

If you go to the Danville facility there's hardly any

Virginia license plates in that parking lot

They are they are North Carolina license plates through and

through our workforce and our population has diversified our workforce

and our population they came from areas where they were

just around whatever city they lived in

If they were New York they were Atlantic City or

if they were in Philadelphia they were close to Atlantic

City but a lot of these major cities now have

those facilities already in place

Um It's not difficult to bring one here

The only difference between myself and what the general assembly

was trying to do

They wanna tax the casinos for 22%

I wanna tax them for 22%

But I want all of that money to go into

public safety

We don't have a problem talking about the education lottery

We shouldn't have a problem talking about the public safety

gaming that we can gain and I'll further it you

know we have a lot of illegal facilities here in

in Wake County now

Uh it is up to the D A

It is up to the Sheriff's Department to shut those

down

But if you drive four miles from my house I

can show you a dozen of them that exists

I mean if we have these things going on now

I'd rather shut those down and have a taxable facility

where we'd have better shopping better dining arts and entertainment

I would like to see the casino entertainment side take

away shows from D pack and leave them here in

Raleigh

I think it would be better for us and we

wouldn't have to drive to Durham to spend our money

on shows

Ok

You're elected day one

What's your first priority First priority is police

I will talk to Estelle and I will you know

ask her what she really needs

I believe our police force is completely underworked

I think they're under uh overworked they're underpaid

Uh I feel like they need some help

Uh and I know everybody says that the studies show

that we only need 100 we only need 100

But uh the and when you look at the exponentials

in in our city's growth they they can't make all

the calls that they get every day

It's it's almost impossible for them to do what they

do

Police are the number one issue for me

Ok

Well thank you so much for

Thank you

My pleasure

Thank you Ashley