An unexpected final year ends a decade of service for Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane

Nancy McFarlane’s last year in office didn’t go according to plan.

An unexpected back operation left her missing from public meetings and high-profile events for six months. During her long recovery, she learned what it meant to not go to City Hall every day, a routine she’d had going back a decade.

And one she decided she would end in December.

“I think actually the being sick, being out with my back issues in the spring, as much as it made me crazy, it made me very much realize that things can get done,” McFarlane said in a recent interview with The News & Observer. “And it also gave me that mental break from being there and doing everything, every day. I can honestly say this is the right decision.”

After 12 years in elected office, Monday is her last day as Raleigh’s mayor.

McFarlane moved to Raleigh nearly 40 years ago after growing up near Washington, D.C., and earning a degree in pharmacy from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Her first forays into community leadership were as a member of the local PTA and president of her neighborhood association in North Raleigh. In 2007, she ran for city council against incumbent Tommy Craven and won.

There were some hiccups in the early days. McFarlane jokes that one of the worst things she did was vote to ban home garbage disposals after the council was shown a jar of sludge that supposedly came from food scraps that city staff members said damaged sewer pipes.

The public outcry was immediate. She and the rest of the council changed their minds and votes, but there are still homes built then that don’t have disposals.

‘MORPHING’ INTO RALEIGH’S MAYOR

In her first council bid, McFarlane was described by many, including The News & Observer, as a neighborhood activist.

Developers were scared she’d enact strict building regulations, said Philip Isley, who served with McFarlane on the council over a decade ago.

“She ended up morphing into a different, business-friendly mayor that people would just not have expected based on her campaign in 2007,” he said. “You do grow into the job, and she grew very well into the job.”

McFarlane remembers a group fighting development in 2007 — “it was exactly the same as it is now,” she said — but that changed at the start of the 2008 recession.

“Whenever we are growing and things are getting built, it is neighborhoods versus developers, right?” she said. “People are worried about the city changing and (if) they are going to build something big next to my house. But then you have a recession and it’s all about jobs and all that goes away. And then you ramp up and it starts over.”

She still considers herself a neighborhood ally, but said the council must recognize thousands of people are moving to Raleigh each month — and they have to live somewhere. She was frequently criticized for her connections to developers and not doing enough to address housing affordability.

The council saw a shift toward self-described “pro-neighborhood” members during the 2017 election, though she beat attorney Charles Francis in a run-off election.

That shift, with its bickering among council members, pushed her toward not seeking a fifth term as mayor.

“We used to fight together for the things we cared about,” she said in announcing her decision not to run again. “Now it just seems like we fight with each other. The mean politics of Twitter and social media is painful when it’s about you or someone you love. ... Are you still working on the things that are important to you, and are you doing them in a way that makes your neighbor proud?”

The tensions peaked when council member Kay Crowder accused McFarlane’s husband of “verbally and physically” assaulting her by grabbing and shaking her at a community unveiling of the Dix Park Master Plan. The mayor apologized for the incident, saying her husband was stressed about her recent back surgery and upset she had not received credit that night, as other council members had, for her work on the park.

FINDING RALEIGH’S VISION

Transitioning from council member to mayor was a challenge, McFarlane said. Where her previous focus had been on representing North Raleigh, she now had to get eight people to agree on a common vision for the city.

“I am not a very good politician,” McFarlane said. “Maybe that’s why I am popular. I am not doing this because I want to run for senate. I am not doing this for glory. I would be fine going to the grocery store and having no one recognize me.”

A self-described introvert, McFarlane struggled with being thrust into the spotlight as the face of the city.

“It is exhausting, at the end of the day,” she said. “But on the other hand, it also (means) there are times I’d go to something and talk to people, and come away feeling really energized. It reminds you why you are doing this, and you’re swimming in ideas.”

Her friends, like Patty Briguglio, gently chastised her for not owning her accomplishments.

“There’s a difference between being a politician and a public servant,” Briguglio said. “And Nancy McFarlane is a public servant.”

“I used to tell her that her biggest problem was she didn’t care who got credit. Just that the work got done. And that what needed to be accomplished got accomplished,” said Briguglio, who met McFarlane when she was first running for office. “And I’d tell her, ‘But people who don’t take credit don’t get re-elected.’ And she just said, ‘I don’t care about that. I want to do the right thing.’ And I always admired that about her.”

Council contentiousness notwithstanding, McFarlane will be remembered for building on the work of her predecessor, Charles Meeker, raising the city’s national profile and for her focus on the arts, Dorothea Dix Park and the city’s quality of life.

“She has always been a steady hand,” Meeker said. “Always someone you could count on to make reasonable decisions, day in and day out. And on the bigger projects, even when working on Dix, she was always on the right side of those. And of course Nancy will be best known for having worked so hard on leasing Dix Park and buying it from the state. Which was really hard to do given the politics and personalities involved.”

One thing that struck McFarlane when she was elected was how little the city and council seemed to care for the arts.

“Art was like we’ll build such and such building and we’ll get an artist who can donate the art for free,” McFarlane said. “No. Are the drywallers going to donate for free? Are the plumbers going to donate for free? No, that’s their job.”

She was crucial in getting the city to update its public art policy, including setting aside 1% of a construction budget for public art.

Laura Raynor served on the city’s arts commission and met McFarlane when she was elected to the board. McFarlane was the council’s liaison to the commission.

McFarlane knew the contributions the arts make to the economy and wanted to convince the city to take it seriously, Raynor said.

“I think Nancy McFarlane is a great visionary and has wisdom and vision and could see our city beginning to grow exponentially, and she could understand on so many different levels,” Raynor said. “The business sector and the technical world, she understood working with the university, she understood about quality of life. She understood how to bring all these pieces together.”

McFarlane plans to remain active after she leaves the council, planning to continue her efforts with Dix Park and a state commission.

FINAL MEETING

McFarlane will remain mayor until former council member Mary-Ann Baldwin is sworn in at 6 p.m. Monday at Raleigh Union Station. The event is open to the public.

Her final public appearances were at the Raleigh Christmas Parade and Holiday Tree Lighting Celebration.

During her last meeting in November, McFarlane thanked the council and staff members, and her family for their sacrifice. Then she read a love letter to the city. Afterward the meeting continued in its routine way, until a guest joined those in the council chambers.

McFarlane’s granddaughter Maddie bounded up the small set of stairs to sit on her grandmother’s lap at the council table.

“I’m going to ask the deputy mayor to bang the gavel,” McFarlane said.

Maddie tapped the gavel six times while McFarlane wrapped her arms around her in a hug and applauded.

“We’re adjourned.”

BY ANNA JOHNSON. Source: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article237584559.html