LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES
for low-interest loans for our affordablehousing developers to be able to move quickly. That money would be housed there, and then all you would have to vet was the project. You wouldn’t have to vet the organization. They would be pre-vetted. I don’t know exactly the amount that we will be able to hit at the beginning, but I’m very hopeful we’ll be able to, in the next year or so, have a trust fund with money in the bank and able to act.
Among the priorities the city council conveyed to Durham’s legislative delegates is a change to a state law shielding police bodycamera footage from the public. Schewel said the current law leaves the decision to release footage “all in the hands of the police chief.” We asked him about his thoughts as a former journalist on that law, as well as the city’s other legislative priorities.
EVICTIONS Last year, nearly ten thousand evictions were filed in Durham County, down from about fifteen thousand during the recession. We asked what the city’s role should be in addressing evictions. We should provide legal assistance. The county should be providing the emergency rental assistance, because the county does it already. They already do a lot of that, and there’s some more needed. It’s not what we do. And, you know, one of the things is that the county needs to help step up on these things as well. We need to be in this, fighting these evictions together. There are more eviction filings per day than there are people moving to Durham per day. I’ve heard this called an eviction crisis. I almost never use the word crisis, because I think very few things really are a crisis. But I would say that, when you have that level of eviction, crisis is appropriate. I am convinced that we can change that. There are places that have changed it, and I think providing emergency rental assistance and more lawyers to represent these people in eviction court can make an enormous difference.
THE POLICE-EXCHANGE RESOLUTION Last month, the city council passed a resolution opposing “international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training” that included a quote from Chief Davis stating her agency is not and will specifically not participate in such exchanges with Israel. The resolution was prompted by a petition from a group called Demilitarize from Durham2Palestine, which wanted the city’s police force to disassociate itself from Israeli security forces. Council members—including Schewel, who is Jewish— have been criticized for the vote and called anti-Semitic. We asked Schewel how the resolution came together and whether it 8 | 5.23.18 | INDYweek.com
Schewel at his election-night victory party at Pompieri Pizza was worth the controversy, considering the fact that the exchanges aren’t actually happening. Just today I’ve had a meeting with members of the Jewish community who were feeling vulnerable and concerned about the vote and feeling like the anti-Semitic posters that have come up in town again have contributed to that. I’m acutely aware of the fact that this was very controversial and that it stirred up a lot of emotions. I get that. There was a petition during the election. All of my colleagues except for myself signed the petition. So there was a lot of impetus to act on that. The groups who had circulated the petition came to us. [City manager Tom Bonfield] said, ‘I’ll talk to the chief. And what I think would be good is, let the chief issue a statement, and you all can respond.’ That’s what we did. [Chief Davis] issued a statement. We responded. So I think the impetus is really more around, from the council’s point of view, the kind of policing that we want. I don’t expect this level of vitriol very often, but I also know it can happen. I try to figure out how to do the right thing and not worry too much about that. But we certainly could’ve taken a path that was less controversial.
LIGHT RAIL Last month, the INDY reported that state funding for the Durham-Orange Light Rail line could fall $63 million short of what GoTriangle had requested. While that
PHOTO BY JENNY WARBURG
number has been questioned and is within what the agency budgeted for contingency, any gap would come on top of another $102.5 million a public-private partnership is trying to raise. We asked Schewel how funding for the project is shaping up. Think of a pie, you know, a two-point-fivebillion-dollar pie. Half of it is federal money that comes at the end of the rainbow. Between us and Orange County, and mostly Durham—by far, mostly Durham— we are doing around nine hundred and fifty million in local sales tax, which you’ve already passed. Then the other big pieces of that pie that we need are—two hundred and forty-eight million is the maximum state money, and about one hundred and two million in private funds or other donated funds. Not all private. So those are the two big pieces. I think about forty or fifty million of that will come in right-of-way donations. So we’ve got to raise another fifty million. We have a wonderful group of people who are working on raising that. It’s in the beginning stages, and that needs to happen by the end of the year. One of the ways you can fill that hole is value engineering, as it’s known. You can reduce the cost of the line. But that means making the line less attractive to ride. And so we don’t want to do that if we can help it. We’ve got a really tight deadline because we want to get the full funding grant in 2019 now. So this is crunch time, and I’m hopeful. I mean, it’s far from a done deal, but I think we can get it done.
My understanding is that there is some sentiment in both parties—definitely among the Democrats, but also among some Republicans in the legislature—that city managers and city councils ought to have the ability to view and release that body-camera footage. Now you can do it, but you have to go to Superior Court. And that’s a really high barrier. That’s a bad policy. I hope we can make some progress on the body-camera part of that and the dashcam footage, but I don’t know that we can. We discussed a piece of local legislation that I think is really—it’s very small and minor. It won’t be controversial, but I think it’s important. And that is the ability for Durham Public Schools to transfer land to CASA, our nonprofit housing developer, to [develop] teacher housing at the corner of [N.C. Highways 54 and 55]. The second thing that we talked about was net neutrality. [State Senator] Mike Woodard is actually working on it with another senator. They feel like there’s a lot of potential for an alliance with rural people, because net neutrality is actually as big an issue in rural areas as it is in urban.
ON BEING COVERED BY THE PAPER HE FOUNDED Schewel founded the INDY in 1983 and sold it in 2012, and even though no one on the current editorial staff worked here while he owned the paper, the fact that he did can make covering him a little awkward. We wondered if he felt the same way. It is strange. Because, you know, I’m so attached to the paper. Always will be. I have so many hopes and dreams for the INDY. I read it every week. I don’t read every single story, but I read it every week. And I’m very supportive of what you all are trying to do. [But] it can feel a little odd at times. swillets@indyweek.com