Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Tuesday, August 9. She discussed the new Solarize the Triangle Initiative, Monday’s Board of Commissioners Meeting, a recent resident satisfaction award, and more. This is a transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity. Listen to the full interview here.
Andrew Stuckey: We are joined as we are every Tuesday by Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver. Jenn, how are you today?
Jenn Weaver: I am doing pretty well. Thank you. It’s good to be back.
Stuckey: I actually misspoke. We haven’t been joined by you for the last couple of Tuesdays, and one of the reasons that we weren’t joined by you is that you were in Colorado for a conference last week. Let’s start there with any takeaways that you had from that conference.
Weaver: This is my third time attending the national convening for an organization called Local Progress. It’s comprised of self-identified, progressive, locally elected public officials from across the country from jurisdictions of all sizes. There are places represented that are smaller than Hillsborough, all the way up to the biggest cities in the country. It’s a national convening where people come together and talk about issues and policy ideas in the interest of progressive governance. It’s just always a great event to be among other people who I am politically aligned with. We had a good group from the Triangle. There was representation from East Spencer, North Carolina, and Fayetteville as well. It was a good group.
Stuckey: Did you find any takeaways that were worth repeating?
Weaver: I think one of the major takeaways is that this group is really committed and the organization is very committed to centering equity — racial equity especially. It’s probably more than I can describe over the radio, but there are so many different people taking really innovative, creative and determined approaches to this across the country. It’s also true that local government in North Carolina is restricted in all kinds of ways. This comes up a lot in things like housing discussions. Things that are happening in other communities just aren’t possible here in the same way in North Carolina, but it’s a place to pick up ideas. Maybe if we can’t do something exactly the way somebody else does, it is still inspiration and gives ideas for what we might try in a different way here at home.
Stuckey: Speaking of the sort of things that we might try here at home, we had a pretty interesting thing come across the news desk last week that a lot of us ended up getting excited about, and that was this Go Solar Initiative.
Weaver: This …….