Mary-Ann Baldwin reflects on successes and regrets as Raleigh's mayor

"We've been successful," she told Axios from her office in city hall. "When a third of your permits are for missing middle housing that couldn't have been built previously, then it's like, okay, we're using land in a wiser way. We're building townhomes. We're building other types of homes, like cottage courts."

Between the lines: She also received plenty of pushback for her moves to disband Citizen Advisory Councils and efforts to change the housing code.

Driving the news: Baldwin recently sat down with Axios to reflect on her time as mayor.

• In April — after revealing a previously undisclosed breast cancer diagnosis and other family health concerns — Baldwin surprised many by deciding not to run for re-election in November.
• She says she will endorse and donate money to candidates before the election.

Zoom out: Baldwin's term was marked by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd — two events that she believes have had serious lingering effects on the city.

• She says a major regret is not calling a curfew on the first night of protests for Floyd, which turned violent and caused widespread damage across downtown Raleigh.
• She added that her staff told her it might not be enforceable and that her council wouldn't support it.
• "I think some of the negatives [from COVID-19 and the protests] were the way it impacted our small businesses, our retail, our restaurants and bars," she said.
• She says she hopes an increasing number of downtown apartments and investments into the convention center, Red Hat Amphitheater and adding more amenities like dog parks will help offset the decline in office workers and make the streets feel safer.

One regret she doesn't have, she noted, is her move in 2020 to disband citizen advisory councils, which were neighborhood groups that would vote to advise the council on topics like rezonings.

• CACs were recently re-instated by the new council, in a move that was done without her knowledge ahead of time.
• Baldwin said she believes most CACs were controlled by small groups of people and weren't representative. "They were roadblocks to development and redevelopment," Baldwin said. "Most of the time they fought against density."

State of play: On her efforts to reform the city's housing codes, Baldwin said she believes she entered into office with a mandate to create more housing in the city to combat rising costs.

• Her council, she says, did that by making it easier to build duplexes and townhouses by right, legalizing accessory dwelling units and pushing for an $80 million affordable housing bond.
• "Now we have a new council who's talking about rolling back some of these things. I don't support that," she said.
• "I know there's some people who don't want townhomes in their neighborhood," she said. But she believes they bring more choice. "Townhomes are usually somebody's entree into homeownership," she said, and can allow people to downsize and still stay in their same neighborhood.

Zoom in: On criticism around postponing the 2021 election to 2022 —  giving the council one more year in office — Baldwin said she would have rather had an election, but pandemic-era delays at the Census Bureau made it beyond her control.

• "We had to go through that [Census] process, and so that's how we ended up in even years," Baldwin said, which she notes has boosted the turnout rate for local elections.
• "Now, one of the challenges is, yes, we have greater voter turnout," she said. "However, we have a lot more uninformed voters, and it's like, how do we tackle that? That's the big question."

She also believes that moving to four-year terms for city council members starting in 2026 will lead to better governance in the city — because people currently can only govern for a year before they're thinking about the next election.

• "I heard one of our council members say, 'I can't vote for that. It's an election year,'" she said. "I'm like, that's our job. It's to vote. It's to govern and to do what we think is best."

Baldwin says she is disappointed that she will not get to keep working on the future of transit and molding how Dorothea Dix Park will look in the coming years.

• "I'm still waiting for the big idea" for Dix, she said, "an attraction that everyone comes to see," like the artwork in Chicago's Millennium Park.

What's next: Baldwin said she is hopeful that bus-rapid transit begins to make drastic changes for Raleigh (and the rest of the region) in the coming years.

• "I really think that building density around BRT is the key to our future growth," she said.

She also hopes that Raleigh can leverage sports for more economic development, pointing to the publicly financed upgrades coming to PNC Arena and the redevelopment it will trigger around the stadium.

• "What I hope we do by 2030 is start realizing the power of sports as an economic driver, she said. "It's a game changer. I would love to see MLB here. I would love to see a soccer stadium here."