Raleigh’s planning commission, the all-volunteer body that makes recommendations to the city council about zoning, development, and growth, has two new members—and it lost two members who were eligible for reappointment and wanted to continue serving.
It happened quickly during the city council’s Tuesday meeting: the deputy city clerk told the council members that freshman planning commissioners Reeves Peeler and La Tanta McCrimmon were each seeking reappointment for a second term, and that Mayor Janet Cowell had nominated Mark Shelburne and Nick Neptune to replace them.
Council member Jane Harrison made a motion to reappoint Peeler, a community organizer who works in affordable housing tax credit financing. Council member Christina Jones seconded it. The members voted by a show of hands: Harrison, Jones, and Megan Patton were ayes and the other five—Cowell, Stormie Forte, Jonathan Lambert-Melton, Mitchell Silver, and Corey Branch—were nays. The motion failed.
Cowell then moved to appoint Mark Shelburne, a housing policy consultant with a background in law and planning. The motion passed with only Harrison and Jones voting in opposition. Cowell made a second motion to appoint Nick Neptune, her former colleague at the Dix Park Conservancy and the outgoing chair of the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission. This time, the vote was unanimously in favor.
It was all over in 90 seconds and without any discussion. Shelburne and Neptune are in, and Peeler and McCrimmon are out—at least they will be when their terms officially end in June.
It doesn’t come as a huge surprise that the city council chose not to reappoint McCrimmon, a lobbyist and political strategist, for a second term. Of the planning commission’s 36 meetings over the last two years, she was only present for 18. When city staff asked McCrimmon to explain her absences, she cited work conflicts. (Earlier in the meeting, Forte nominated her to the Centennial Authority, which oversees the Lenovo Center. McCrimmon and Forte did not respond to INDY’s requests for comment.)
The reasons for Peeler’s removal are less clear. He showed up to meetings—29 out of 36—which historically has been the main condition for reappointment.
INDY looked back at years of planning commission rosters and found that it is rare for the city council to remove a sitting commissioner. Before this week, only two other commissioners had been removed since 2017 (the first year the rosters are publicly available). Another 17 commissioners either served until they hit the three-term limit, resigned, or did not seek reappointment.
Peeler tells INDY he can’t speculate about why the city council voted to remove him, because none of them communicated with him about it, either before or after the vote.
“Never at any point in the last two years have I gotten any outreach from any of them about what I do [on the planning commission],” he says. “I think I’m doing the correct thing. I’m following the [Comprehensive Plan]. I’m pushing for things that Raleigh needs. And I’ve never gotten negative feedback.”
Peeler says that earlier this spring, as the end of his term approached, he reached out to all eight council members to let them know he was seeking reappointment but initially heard back from only Harrison, Jones, and Patton, who said they’d vote for him.
Then, on the eve of the vote, Cowell emailed to let him know she’d be nominating Shelburne.
“I’ve worked with [Shelburne] since I was [state] Treasurer and would really like [to] have his expertise on the planning commission and the connections he brings as an adjunct at UNC Chapel Hill,” Cowell wrote in an email to Peeler that INDY viewed.
Lambert-Melton also emailed Peeler that night.
“Just a heads up,” Lambert-Melton wrote in an email INDY viewed. “With Mary Black no longer on the Council I’m not sure if you’re going to have 5 votes after the mayor’s nomination.”
Black, a former city council member, nominated Peeler to the planning commission in 2023. He was appointed with votes from Black, Forte, Harrison, Jones, Lambert-Melton, and Patton. (Branch and then-mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin voted for a different nominee.) Silver has since replaced Black as the council member for District A.
On a commission made up mostly of architects and planners, Peeler’s background in organizing and affordable housing underwriting was unique. Last year, he ran for city council promising to create more affordable housing in Raleigh, expand protections for renters, and invest in bike and pedestrian infrastructure and public transit. (He placed fourth in a field of seven at-large candidates.) As a planning commissioner, he tended to vote in favor of rezoning cases that followed the Comprehensive Plan, the city’s blueprint for future growth and density. He tended to oppose projects that increased the city’s outward sprawl or, in his view, didn’t do enough to promote affordability and transit-oriented development.
“I always harped on the city improving—but also developers coming forward voluntarily with—inclusionary options, because that’s how we should be growing as a city,” Peeler says. “We shouldn’t be excluding people. We shouldn’t be segregating people by wealth and income. We hear them talk all the time at the council table about the need to get rid of exclusionary zoning and the need for more inclusive neighborhoods. So I would like to know why they don’t want to actually do it in practice.”
Peeler was sometimes in the minority among his planning commission colleagues, but he only remembers one instance when he cast a deciding vote: last September, when the commission voted 5–4 not to authorize the closure of one block of South Street to make room for the relocation of Red Hat Amphitheater.
“I stand by that fully,” he says. “Closing South Street was and is a horrible idea. City grids in downtown should not be closed off for any reason. And there were plenty of other architectural options for an amphitheater down there that didn’t close the street.”
Even then, the planning commission’s nonbinding advisory vote didn’t really matter. The city council had already voted in favor of the South Street closure.
As for Shelburne and Neptune, they both say they’re excited to get to work.
Shelburne tells INDY he’ll focus on “allow[ing] housing to get built.” In his application, he wrote that “failure to do so will accelerate the affordability crisis, exacerbate displacement, and worsen homelessness.”
Neptune told INDY via email that he’s interested in “thoughtfully guiding the growth, development, and preservation of our City so that every resident and neighborhood enjoys a balanced mix of housing affordability, parks and green spaces to play in, business districts to gather and work in, and a multitude of active and public transportation options … all while being particularly mindful of our legacy and long-term residents … and the stitching and fabric of our neighborhoods that are culturally rich, yet historically underserved.”
Lambert-Melton and Silver told INDY that their votes on Tuesday had everything to do with Neptune’s and Shelburne’s qualifications and nothing to do with Peeler and McCrimmon.
“Mark Shelburne is widely regarded as an expert in the area of affordable housing development, specifically low-income housing tax credit projects,” Lambert-Melton wrote in a text message to the INDY. “Nick Neptune … has a great deal of knowledge about how to provide safe, accessible multimodal options throughout the city, and that’s a critical focus for new developments …. I felt that both of these applicants brought much-needed skills to the current board.”
Silver says this personnel shake-up is part of a bigger conversation the city council is having about how its boards and commissions should function. Although commissioners have come to expect that they’ll be reappointed until they hit their term limit, that may not be the case going forward, he says.
“This council [wants] to start to look very carefully at who gets nominated and how they get nominated,” Silver says.
Cowell, Branch, and Forte, who also voted not to reappoint Peeler, did not respond to requests for comment.
Harrison, Patton, and Jones, who supported Peeler’s reappointment, told INDY they appreciated his unique perspective.
“On rezoning cases, he often presents opportunities for improvement with regard to affordable housing, environmental protection, and quality of life for Raleigh residents,” Harrison wrote in an email.
Jones said there was “no pre-discussion” among the council members ahead of Tuesday’s vote, but she suspects the council majority’s pro-growth, pro-density vision for Raleigh—which sometimes aligns them with the powerful developer interests Peeler has criticized—played a role.
“There [is] a big development [influence] in the city, so my gut would say that that might be an issue. I can’t say that with certainty, and I think that’s the point,” she says. “The point is for no one to know, so that nothing could be held against anyone.”
“I think the public thinks that we [the city council] have these conversations and we all tell each other everything, and we don’t,” Jones adds. “It feels like a trophy issue of putting people in places to get what one wants. It’s messy, and it’s not my favorite thing about the job.”
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Chloe Courtney Bohl is a corps member for Report for America. Reach her at chloe@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.