Remarks by Nate Baker
38 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
- Play at 40:40
“That is true. That covered everything. Council Member Kobach, congratulations. Thank you for that. I'd like to associate myself with those comments. Thank you all for being here. Thank you to all who are watching at home for your participation in your local government here at the City of Durham, our Monday night meeting. Also want to give a shout out as well to the amazing organizing around Durham Pride this weekend and prior. I saw many of my colleagues out having fun. There was rain, but it didn't deter people, many people out in the streets and it was beautiful. A beautiful way of…”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:20:46
“Yeah, thank you. This is one where I appreciate hearing the comments and the dialogue from my colleagues. I agree. I think this is a very difficult one to quantify. I feel like the federal government lobbyist is a little bit easier to quantify because the nature of their work is different. and can be different, especially potentially next year could be different as it was two years ago, it's different. So those relationships are different and the way that they operate are different and the way that we can quantify and measure their success is different. I do think that there's a lot of gray…”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:37:04
“One question for you. You mentioned that there cannot be development plans in direct translational zoning cases. Why is that?”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:37:33
“And that's all it is. But if they wanted to add a development plan, they couldn't?”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:37:51
“Okay. Because that's our mechanism for being able to ensure greater accountability to the comprehensive plan.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:38:01
“And without the development plan, we can't ask them if they'd like to do anything.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:40:12
“Yeah, I'm just gonna make one comment. Just a general comment, not specific to this one. We've gotten a decent number of these direct translational rezoning cases with annexations over the past several months. And it really hamstrings our ability to ensure greater accountability and consistency with the comprehensive plan.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:40:41
“This is a direct translational rezoning case. Yeah, and so my hope moving forward is that when applicants like this one come and submit an application for a direct translational rezoning case that they are encouraged to include a development plan with it because I think that that's a really, really critical tool for us to be able to ensure greater accountability to the public and better development. That's all.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:42:43
“Thank you. May I respond? Yeah, I agree. If it's one or two small property owners, I completely agree. Translational rezoning, just an annexation. If we are talking about some of the large ones, we had a 30-acre case. I think that that is a critical opportunity for us to encourage use of the development plan. Thank you.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:28:55
“I actually had a long list of questions, and thanks to my colleagues, many of them have been either answered or addressed. I also had similar questions around the green building. One question left to staff is, will this be able to meet the block length and connectivity requirements in the UDO?”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:29:26
“Okay, even with the graphic development plan, we think you can meet? Correct.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:29:34
“Okay, awesome. I recently saw an analysis that showed that I was the most no voting council member on zoning cases. And ironically, I'm a land use planner. I do that as my day job and I love urban development and I've lived internationally in cities where if you could get up high, as far as you could see, you would see tall buildings. And I loved living in those cities because there was activity and there were, small connected blocks and great spaces. And when you walk down the street, you were really just inspired by what you were passing by and the frequency of transit and the great parks…”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:33:06
“Two years. So two years, and you've gone through this process, and you've gone to planning commission, and you've spoken with staff, and you've looked at the regulation. And on your side, you're also doing things, right? It's not just city government getting in the way. You're also doing things on your side and going back and forth. Your case is getting better. And then you come here, and as you work your way through that process, you're doing the financials, you're doing the pro formas, all of that, the Overton window is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. The things that we can…”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:54:42
“Mr. Mayor, you suggested someone was being performative.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 13:30
“Good afternoon, Council. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you all for joining us today. Colleagues, just wanted to raise two issues. I'm not introducing anything today, but I will be coming to speak with you about two different items. One is an encampment policy. that I've been working on with a group of people that I'd like to talk to you about. And the second item is about vacant properties and vacancies in Durham and putting in a request to staff to do a study of vacant properties in our city. Again, I'm not introducing anything today. Just wanted to put that on your radar screen so that…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 36:19
“Number 22, construction- I want to pull both these.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:10:35
“Yeah, so we operate within a very broken, larger system. I think lobbying is important. The apartment association has lobbyists, the home builders association has lobbyists, the bankers have lobbyists, local government should have lobbyists too. So I'm curious, just a few questions here. So the payments, so we pay about $10,000. The contract amount that we have in front of us is based on $10,000 at the state level, $7,000 a month.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:11:41
“They don't have much work one month. We're still paying them. If they have a lot of work the next month, it's the same amount.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:11:57
“Okay. And then... I'm curious kind of where the roles and responsibilities begin and end between our lobbyists and our local delegation at the state and federal level, organizations like legal municipalities. Are they supporting one another? Are lobbyists serving a critical role that those other entities and organizations are not able to serve?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:13:18
“Are we kind of tracking what we're spending versus kind of what we're getting, like our ROI? I think that's probably really challenging to calculate, but do we have some sort of way of keeping that accountable and tracking that?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:40:32
“Yeah, thank you. Um, there's a 24. Yeah, my monitor water.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:59:49
“Thanks for sticking around, I appreciate it. My question is, these are big, really big projects. Question about just mitigation of construction impacts. Can you just walk us through kind of, if I'm a resident who lives on one of these streets or in the general area, what am I going to see when this gets underway?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:01:12
“And then most of this is construction within the public right-of-way, so is a lot of this tearing up existing street pavement and then rebuilding?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:01:23
“Okay. And then when we think about opportunities here, are we digging up parts of the curb as well, kind of curb and gutter? Correct. Okay.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:01:56
“Absolutely. And are we working closely with transportation to make sure that when we dig up a street, when we dig up curb and gutter, that this is a really unique opportunity? It's very expensive, infrastructure changes at a glacial pace for improving the public right-of-way for pedestrians and bikes, making sure there's traffic calming, all that stuff?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026