I think it is important to bring more focus and control to our local areas.

Localist – Whitney Hill discusses what it means to be one.

I would consider myself to be a localist. Being a localist is really about getting attention and power back down here to the state, county, and local city levels.

What is going on in the world is important to us. But we tend to spend most of our time looking at the shiny object called DC and not spending enough time looking at our city level to notice what is really going on.

We have a video blog that will show you how to be able to watch city council meetings online. You really need to be aware of what is going on at the city level, where the money is being spent, and how it is being spent.

Also, I am a big proponent of local businesses and owner-operated companies that are here in the Raleigh area. We need to support them. When we support them the money stays here, being operated by local business owners that many of us know.

Our Local Power

We need to use more of our political power locally. If I look at a list of city projects that are being done, they typically have federal money attached to them. We have to jump through hoops to get some of that money down here. We aren’t going to stop doing that as long as we’re sending money up to Washington because we want to get our share back.

I would really like to see in the long run that we keep more of our money in Raleigh where we can use it and have the power to use it the way we see fit.

We really do have more power down here but we just don’t use it. My goal in serving on the city council is to see that we support our folks down here more and get as much of the power and exercise as much of that power as we can locally for our community.