The Bottom-Up Revolution Is...Advocating for Clean Water and Flood Prevention at the State Level
In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed is joined by Ellie Riggs and Ryan Carter from Catawba Riverkeeper, a grassroots organization that preserves the waters of the Catawba-Wateree River basin in North Carolina.
They discuss stormwater’s effect on the environment, how it’s connected to parking reform and developers, and a new stormwater management bill that Riggs and Carter are introducing to the North Carolina state legislature in a few weeks. They also discuss Riggs and Carter’s experience with advocacy at the state level.
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Tiffany Owens Reed 0:06
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the bottom up Revolution podcast. I'm your host. Tiffany Owens, read I'm a writer at strong towns, and I have the honor of hosting this show where I have conversations with ordinary people who are helping make their communities stronger, more resilient, more beautiful, safer places to live through a variety of bottom up, grassroots efforts. Today I am joined by two guests. I'm joined by Ellie Riggs. She's a graduate of Davidson College with a major in environmental studies and a minor in economics as the field organizer and analyst at Catawba River Keeper. Ellie works to inspire members of the public to engage in Catawba River keepers advocacy efforts. I'm also joined by her colleague, Ryan Carter. He is the policy director at Catawba River Keeper. He is responsible for developing and executing efforts to address legislative barriers to the well being of the basin at the local, state and federal levels. So Ryan works with members of the public, civic leaders and elected officials to create systems change to protect and enhance their waters. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. We have not had anyone speaking to the storm water, just water side of things. It's very important in our communities, and I am really excited to bring their perspective also as individuals who are working on the policy side, especially seeing that they are working at the state level. So I think they'll bring a really interesting perspective to what that looks like. Ellie and Ryan, welcome to the show. Welcome to the bottom of revolution. Thanks Awesome. Thanks for having us. I'm just relieved at this point that I got through the pronunciation of Catawba like five times in a row, so feeling relieved that that is over. But let's go ahead and jump in. Ellie, I would like to start with you. So this is just a really basic question, partly for my own education, but also for you know, our listeners who maybe are not quite in the storm water orbit. Can you just give like, an overview of like, what is storm water? And you know, what is the challenge that it presents to our cities?
Ellie Riggs 2:12
Absolutely. So before we talk about storm water, we have to take a step back and talk about the phrase impervious surface. So if you think about the neighborhood or the city that you live in. Some of that is park with green grass and trees, and some of it is homes, and some of it is pavement where there are roads or parking lots and the areas that are paved or where there's a roof and there's not green grass, that's impervious surface. So it might be a parking lot, might be an office building, it might be a tennis court or a highway. And what impervious surfaces do is they prevent the rain water or snow melt or any sort of precipitation from seeking seeping back into the groundwater. So the fact that we like to reference is that on one acre of impervious surface, when one inch of rain falls that causes 27,000 gallons of storm water runoff, which is that water that's running off, hence the phrase, into nearby streams and waterways. And all of that runoff carries trash, fertilizer, bacteria, motor oil, any sort of pollutant that you might find on a roadway or a parking lot into our streams. So it's really harmful to both the water quality and aquatic ecosystems. But also, think about the 27 gallons of water. That's water that's not typically running into the streams, so it's a lot of water running very fast through these little, tiny urban streams or streams in rural communities, and it's stripping away all of the vegetation and soil off of the stream banks, so that causes enormous amounts of flooding, which can damage, you know, private property or parks that you might Have any sort of property along those stream banks, and it also increases the amount of sediment runoff that's going into the streams, which further decreases the quality of that water. Thank you.
Tiffany Owens Reed 4:12
That was a really helpful overview. I feel very educated now. So yeah, thank you forget for just helping me understand, understand. You know, I was I looked at storm water. I was like, How complicated can it be? Well, there was definitely more there than I thought. So Ryan, I'd like to ask you a little bit more at about your work, the work that you all do. So you all both work at Catawba River Keeper. I'd love if you could tell us a little bit about this organization, the organization that you work for. And then I would love if you could tell us a little bit about this, the policy side, specifically this bill that you are introducing into the North Carolina legislator in just a few weeks. So two questions for you, kind of three, because I'd love for you to just tell us what's in the bill and what and what are you hoping to accomplish?
Ryan Carter 4:57
Yeah, for sure. So, Tiffany, you. Listeners might be thinking, Well, wait, I have, I have a River Keeper in my community, or I have a bay keeper, or I have a water keeper, and they're probably right. Catawba River Keeper is a part of a broader movement called the water Keeper Alliance. Very fortunate to have colleagues across the the world. Honestly, our organization, Catawba River Keeper is the voice and champion for the waters of the Catawba and watery basin. So starting in that the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then flowing through Charlotte, that's the big urban kind of, I guess I think of it as the elbow, because it's right kind of, in the bend in the river, and then flows down into South Carolina, past congregate National Park. So that's our organization. We do a lot of restoration work, cleanups, picking up trash, and then the cool work that Ellie and I do in the advocacy world, because we know a lot of these systemic problems require systemic solutions that often trace back to policy and law change. So that's kind of our organization in a nutshell. And I often tell people, if you've talked to one River Keeper, then you've talked to one River Keeper. So I encourage folks to go out and get to know their local water keeper as well. So kind of diving into the bill we've been working on. We're really fortunate to have a diverse group of legislators that understand the impact of stormwater that Ellie impacted, that it's not just this, this nuisance, something that's, you know, cost of doing business, but it really is about flood reduction, and if we want to have the long term sustainability of our communities, then we have to have storm water under control, out of out of control. Storm water or unregulated storm water equals flood waters. So in our conversations with other interest groups, other legislators, we just asked the question point blank. You know, what do you hate about storm water? Why do you hate it so much? Because this bill really kind of gets to an issue that came up in 2019 so prior to 2019 local governments had the authority to require storm water on a redevelopment project. So thinking of redevelopment is an old building made new. We're not doing green field. We're not doing, you know, clear cuts. This is taking an old mill turning it into apartments, or an old strip mall and turning it into apartments. I don't know, everything in our area seems to be turning into apartments. This
Tiffany Owens Reed 7:37
is strong towns. We're very housing friendly, so it's okay if everything it's turned into.
Ryan Carter 7:43
So a local government can say, you've got to update your store your fire suppressant and do lead paint and asbestos mitigation and update your electrical and they used to be able to say and you got to put in some stormwater controls. We didn't really understand this concept of storm water until probably the early 80s. That was our first we did some research. That was the first time we could find any documentation or guidance from state or local government in North Carolina on what to do with storm water. And it was a D O T article pamphlet that was how to quickly get the water off the road. So not great for your receiving body of water. But in 2019 The story goes that there was a provision snuck into an education technical corrections bill. So it's one of those long bills that has, you know, pe curriculum and what science textbook you should use. And then there also happened to be a provision that was snuck in there that said local governments can't require storm water on redevelopment sites. Case study was that there was a K Mart in the city of Wilmington. The developer didn't want to put in stormwater controls, so he doesn't have to now. But true story that K Mart is still vacant, so they even do anything with it, and we're all suffering for it. So what this bill does at its core, we ran legislation last session that kind of started to work on it, but we needed to insulate it more, because it's not just about storm water. It's talking to developers and saying, Okay, well, why? Why are your storm? Why do you hate these large retention ponds so much? And they said, Well, we're required to put in all this impervious surface that we don't want to by means of parking minimums. So I know y'all strong towns, world is familiar with parking
Tiffany Owens Reed 9:38
minimums. Yeah. Number two on your bingo cards, you said housing Now you said parking minimums.
Ryan Carter 9:45
So there's that, then there's these things called parking width minimums that we learned from the hand Builders Association are burdensome because they're saying you must have all spaces must be x feet wide. And as someone who's perpetually. Eight and drives a pickup truck. You know them compact car spots and always compact. So that's the we want to right size our parking. The third provision that's really a bit would be a huge win for the broader conservation environmental world is this provision about coal tar sealants or poly aromatic hydrocarbons. Polycyclic
Ellie Riggs 10:25
aromatic hydrocarbons. Oh,
Tiffany Owens Reed 10:27
I do not. I should not complain at all about having to pronounce Catawba at this point. Seeing that you guys had to just pronounce a couple of
Ellie Riggs 10:34
weeks to learn how to
Ryan Carter 10:35
I still haven't gotten it. So these are really, really bad chemicals that we use to patch and seal our parking lots, they'll give you known, known giver of cancer, awful for aquatic communities, which means it's awful for everybody else, since everybody drinks water. And the reason that we use them is because we've always used them, and no one has really taken a step back and asked why. So we know that several other states on our East Coast, East Coast, shout out to Atlantic Seaboard states, Maine, Maryland and Virginia, have all banned it, and we think it's time that we joined those ranks so we've right sized our parking we're not using these nasty chemicals, and now for that storm water part is knowing that we went from the all to the nothing, and there's got to be a happy medium. So providing some guidance, guidance for what local stormwater ordinances on these redevelopments can look like. So offering incentives having different sort of requirements, that sort of thing.
Tiffany Owens Reed 11:40
Okay, thank you. Help. That's helpful. Um, so it sounded like, it sounded like what you were, what you were getting at as part of your answer, Ryan, was this like tension for developers, with having to supply a certain amount of parking and then, and then having to deal with the consequence of all that parking, which is all the storm water. So can you talk a little bit more about sort of, the parking reform side of this? How did that become part of the initiative? And I'm just curious for you guys individually, like, Was this something you already kind of knew about, like, the conversation around parking minimums and, like, parking reform, and how did, kind of, how did you find yourself merging the two of like, stormwater mitigation and then seeing parking reform as a way to achieve that, or maybe as another meaningful goal to pursue as well?
Ryan Carter 12:33
Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll start off and kick it off to Ellie. But I mean, the best way to reduce your impervious surface and and your stormwater calculation is, don't have a parking lot in our world, and when a development happens, there's the final site calculation for how much impervious surface there is, and that's how big your stormwater feature has to be. So anything we can reduce do to reduce that impervious surface reduces that storm water calculation, which means there's less runoff, there's there's less of a burden, because now you've got, you know, it's not just the parking that you're having to maintain, but the massive retention pond or the massive rain garden. So if you have less impervious surface, then there's less storm water that you're responsible for as well. So that's kind of how I see that correlation. And by reducing one you can and incentivizing the other, then everybody is able to win. So
Tiffany Owens Reed 13:30
just so I'm clear, developers are still responsible for storm water, they just don't have to manage it like just to understand the implications of that little sneaky rule that you mentioned being that was, like, situated between rules about PE that's just such a funny it's a funny story. But that so that rule wasn't saying you're no longer responsible for it. It was just, was it just not putting, like, specific rules about how you were responsible for it? You just clarify that for me,
Ryan Carter 13:58
sure. Yeah. So it's, it's in the redevelopment process right now. So if, if you buy an old mill that was built in the, you know, early 1900s that didn't have storm water on it, there's no way we can require, or even talk to you about putting in stormwater controls now. So essentially, at some point, we've got to stop passing the buck and start making taking the steps to ensure that we can have our not preserve our natural resources for the future. So your bill
Tiffany Owens Reed 14:30
will basically ask we developers to step up a little bit more and like have plans in place for managing that storm water. Mostly
Ryan Carter 14:36
it provides guidance for local governments on how they can, what policies, what they can put in their policies, their local ordinances around stormwater, on redevelopment, Okay,
Tiffany Owens Reed 14:51
are there specific like mitigation, besides parking reduction? Are there specific like mitigation policies that you all favor and. Killer. I
Ryan Carter 15:01
don't know if there's one off the top of my head. I think a great example of what we're talking about is here in our offices in Gaston County, North Carolina, there's a great project underway to do restoration on a creek, do hearts Creek, that's being done by the county, couple million dollars. It's a big investment. But the problem there is that the entire headwaters sits under, I think I don't know how many acres of there's a giant mall that has no stormwater controls on it. That is the entire headwaters. So unless you reduce the volume and velocity of water that's coming off of that parking lot. We're worried about the investment being done on on restoration downstream, and the continued degradation of water quality downstream for downstream neighbors, and also the loss of property for those who live along that creek because of high volume, high velocity that that eats away property.
Tiffany Owens Reed 16:04
Okay, so an example there of like, what your bill would, what would be like, an ideal outcome, like, for for that kind of situation,
Ryan Carter 16:15
yeah, so, so for that case, in particular, looking at this, this mall that you know, could use some redevelopment. We see redevelopment happen. We see apartments. We see retail. I love a good craft brewery, so let's throw a brewery in there. So we're seeing this land disturbing activity happen. We're seeing redevelopment coming in, and all the while, as that redevelopment happens, that that community can incentivize and find ways to reduce the the volume and velocity of the stormwater coming off of that site by putting in stormwater protections, stormwater best management practices, stormwater features during that redevelopment process. So what that looked
Tiffany Owens Reed 16:59
like? I know you had mentioned like, ponds and gardens. Are those, like, examples of what you're like, what some of those solutions might be.
Ryan Carter 17:06
Yeah, those are, those are the best examples. Okay, those are the easiest ones. There's underwater cisterns and all that fun stuff. But rain gardens are our favorites for sure.
Tiffany Owens Reed 17:16
Yeah, I feel like I'd be down for more gardens in our cities. Oh, yeah, Ellie, I'd like to ask you a little bit more about the parking side, if you'd like to add anything. But yeah, I just want to, I'm curious to know a little bit more about how you all kind of came across the concept of parking minimum reform. And then I'd love to hear from you, because I know you're more like public facing in your work. What has it been like talking to people about some of those parking parking related policies? I know parking can be very contentious. People have really strong opinions about it, and I and it sounds like y'all are working across like, the spectrum of like, urban to rural. So yeah, what has that been like for you? Kind of bringing some of these concepts to the public awareness? Public awareness and navigating those conversations
Ellie Riggs 18:06
absolutely so I walked in on the first day of work having no idea what parking minimums were. I started a couple months ago, and Ryan said, here's this big bill that we're working on, and you're going to be involved in it. Go learn about parking minimums, and that led to hours and hour I should have counted all the hours I've spent on local municipal code, hours scrolling through different towns or cities or counties parking minimums. And it is really once you spend a little bit of time, it's really easy to see that it's an issue. I was familiar with storm water and impervious surface through my college studies, but really digging into the code has been a neat experience. And I guess talking to the public, when you sort of start to explain the nuts and bolts of it, people get it. I mean, we felt that people are really responsive to the work that we're doing. Obviously, we acknowledge that finding a parking spot can sometimes be a very stressful experience. So we're not denying that we hate driving through Charlotte, you know, for dinner on a Friday night and looking for a parking spot that's often not a good experience for anyone, but when you clarify that we're not trying to take away parking spots, we're just trying to remove all of the rules that require businesses to have a certain number and remind people that, hey, this could be A market driven decision that's good for businesses, good for the livability of your community, good for our waterways. People really understand and kind of buy into that. I think one of the most important things that we've found when talking to the public about it is the number of angles that you can go with it. You. Whether that's talking about restoring a rural downtown community from a main street that's full of empty shops to one that has new restaurants and places to live, or whether you're talking to someone who really cares about the water quality in their communities so that they can go swim in the lake, really easy to hook someone in when there are so many ways to do that, but I think most important for us is that conservation. Most people care about conservation, regardless of their political leanings or their personal interests. People like to see that the streams and lakes and rivers and their communities are clean and offer spots for recreation or fishing or just knowing that their drinking water is being taken care of.
Tiffany Owens Reed 20:52
So you mentioned a phrase, market driven decision. Can you unpack that a little bit around the parking side of things
Ellie Riggs 20:57
totally so when we say market driven decision, what we mean is that a business knows its product best, and they know how many customers, or they can predict maybe they don't know, or they can estimate how many customers will show up to their shop based on the day or the time of day or the time of the year, whether that's a clothing store or a restaurant or a brewery or a hotel or an apartment building, they're the best people to know how many parking spots that they need. And when you bring in a local government who's trying to say, no, no, you need this many parking spots, that's not a market driven decision. So really, that decision should be left to the people who know their product best.
Ryan Carter 21:42
We have one of the great case study of a community in our area, in our basin, mark that we're really proud of is city Gastonia. We want their planning director, and you know, they're rewriting their their code. And he asked the question of, where did we get these numbers from? And no one knew, and they looked at like the publication date, and it had been copy and pasted for decades. And so looking at that and understanding that we don't really need this, that we have an abundance of parking, that we're trying to do this, this restoration work on, on our creeks, let's, let's just do away with this. They've been really reaping the benefits of it, for sure, as they've seen a lot of downtown revitalization.
Tiffany Owens Reed 22:25
I almost wonder if, like, another part of the parking minimum conversation is some kind of, like, ordinance around parking, like adaptive reuse for that land, you know, so like, if you see something like, oh, at one point we needed this much parking, but consumer trends have shifted, like with what happened with COVID, with more people doing like, just delivery straight to their house or just, like picking up and go. I don't know if y'all have come across anything like that, but like, as much as like letting them set their own, not like letting them decide how much parking they need, but I feel like a flip side of that could be letting them do something with the land, if they realize they don't need that much instead of just forcing it to sit there underutilized.
Ryan Carter 23:05
Yeah, we have a board member who is a general contractor, who His specialty is bank branches, and he had a great, you know, example, that people aren't getting their paycheck from the four men and going to the bank branch to deposit it another week. So why on earth am I having to put in 40 parking spots that are never going to get used? So I thought that was a great example. And now there is a a bank branch right down the street from me that is just sitting there and waiting to be redeveloped, but it has all these parking spots on it that in my mind, translates to stormwater and goes into Briar Creek, which goes into the Sugar Creek, which then goes into the Catawba River. So that's It's spot on, you know, Ryan,
Tiffany Owens Reed 23:50
I feel like this is an opportunity for a truly micro, micro brewery, a micro brewery inside an old bank building.
Ryan Carter 23:56
You know, sounds cool to me. I'd go,
Tiffany Owens Reed 24:00
um, I remember pulling up our parking codes for the town where I live in the middle of a debate with my husband, and reading them off. And they were so arbitrary, like, it's, it's hilarious. I wish I had pulled it up for this conversation or remembered some of them, but
Ryan Carter 24:15
Ellie dove into it. I mean, what are some of the crazy things you saw? I've seen.
Ellie Riggs 24:19
I mean, some of them, some of them are based on the number of employees that you have, which is odd, because then if the number of employees that you have changes, in theory, you'd have to change the number of parking spots you have, which is really difficult. Others I've seen have decimals. So if you have a mall, you need 3.33 parking spots in this too, yeah, three. 1000 square feet of your mall. I've seen parking minimums for fortune teller offices, for driving ranges at the golf course. I mean, you name it, and there's some town or city in North Carolina that has a parking. Them important, and there
Ryan Carter 25:01
are some that just like, flat out sexist, that say, like, hair salons need more parking spaces and barber shops like, how? Why? So there's no math, no logic, no reason. And at Catawba River Keeper, we Ellie and I always try and support data driven policy decisions, and supporting minimums is the absolute opposite of what we shoot for.
Tiffany Owens Reed 25:25
And I feel like parking minimums, they really fail to capture the dynamic, like the dynamic nature of businesses and how parking functions as an incentive to certain behaviors. Right? So people might think automatically, businesses should have as much parking as they want, but something like a coffee shop in a college town, might say, no, actually, that creates a really unhealthy dynamic for us, because then we get flooded with people looking for places to sit, and there's no seats for them. But if we're providing all this parking, you know, can create this illusion that there's more availability inside than there isn't, or people will say, for really long periods of time, because of this perception that we're the coffee the coffee shop with easy parking, and a lot of coffee shops don't want people to stay for like, four and five and six hours, right? So I feel like really putting it in the hands of the business owner allows them to, like, look at all the nuances and complexities and trade offs of their operation, and use parking in a way to kind of reward the type of behavior that allows them to be sustainable and actually profitable, rather than just, you know, feeding the machine of like, people should have easy parking, and it should be free, and it should be everywhere, and it should be generous. Yeah, you know,
Ryan Carter 26:33
I've Ellie and I have done a lot of reading on this cost. I'm doing air quotes, and no one can see it because you're listening. But free parking, you know, we think the default is cost to maintain that parking lot, but you also have storm water fees that are administered by your local governments. So there is, I was talking to a town planner who has just gotten off the phone with the school board superintendent, who said, Why are my stormwater fees so high for the local high school. And he said, Well, you've got all these parking spots. And the superintendent's reply was, Well, you told me to put it, yeah, exactly. So it's this just, you know, revolving door of everyone being upset about storm water and not taking out the one thing that is continuing the American realm of insanity.
Ellie Riggs 27:18
And it's a really expensive revolving door. The number that we found, which is from strong towns. So for anybody listening who hasn't read some of your other articles, the cost of one parking spot on just a flat surface lot is five to $10,000 and then when you start building vertical into a parking garage, each individual spot costs 25 to $50,000
Tiffany Owens Reed 27:45
it's just mind blowing. I feel like this is such a big this points to like, one of the biggest problems in our cities, which is the the fact that so many ordinary people are just shielded from the real cost of things. So they're like, operating in a world governed more by perception than by fact, especially when it comes to, like, the cost of driving and parking everywhere. And this, this is just one of those moments where you kind of have to wrestle with, like, I know it might seem this way, but here's actually the real cost of this, on our city, on our town, you know, on our quality of life. Okay, so Ryan, I'd like to ask you, you know, someone might be listening to this and be thinking, Well, you guys are smart, but why are you? Why are you focusing so much on state level policy that doesn't seem very bottom up approach to me. So I'd like for you to talk about that. Why are you talking about this from this? Why are you tackling this from the state level? Why are you tackling this through through policy specifically? Can you? Can you share your your thoughts on that? Yeah,
Ryan Carter 28:42
for sure. So it's, there's, I mean, so it's, it's, it's a this thing called Dylan's role, and your state may have it, or your state may have local local role, local control. It's, it's just a philosophy of state government. South Carolina has a very proud tradition of local control. North Carolina has a very long, proud tradition of Dylan's rule so in short, what Dylan's rule theory is is that the state legislature holds total control, so they can go in and tweak a municipal code. They can dissolve a city. North Carolina is is a really unique place in that we have some of the fastest growing communities in the country, but we also have some of the fastest disappearing communities, and that's a sad reality, but the only one entity that can step in and ensure continuity and kind of uniform approach across the state is the state legislature. So in our case, theoretically, yeah, we could go to the last time I lost interest in trying to count how many municipalities are in the Catawba basin, it was around 80. So we could either go to each council individually and. Try and change that code. Or we can go to the state legislature and say, Can you tweak this one thing, this two thing, this three thing, and then issue these parameters. And then we can see system systemic change right off the bat. So it is, you know, yes, we had an amazing effort of some very dedicated volunteers who near about crash Google Maps server mapping out all the parking lots in North Carolina. And we'll be putting that on our website.org If folks want to look at that. So there are the local narratives, but it's, a better use of our time to just go to the state legislature. And an unfortunate reality in North Carolina is that you've got some local governments that are reticent to try new things for fear of state legislature. So it's it's easy as just to go get very clear, very direct guidance from the state legislature just kind of helps everybody locally know what to do next.
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:05
That's really helpful. Ellie, would you? Would you add anything to that? I
Ellie Riggs 31:08
don't think so. I would just add a little bit more background, maybe that the US Constitution, through the amendments, gives specific powers to or, sorry, it gives specific powers to the federal government, and then says everything else belongs to the state and to the people, but then it says nothing about local governments. So where the Dylan's rule and Home Rule come from is that states get to decide how much authority they give to the local governments in their state. And every state does a little bit different. Some states do a mix of Dylan's rule and Home Rule, and others are more strict towards one or the other.
Ryan Carter 31:41
I sent the kind of the bill overview to our counterparts in South Carolina, and realized that, with their strong history of local control, that this bill really isn't even applicable to them. So two states that have a similar name but very different political dynamics. Yeah.
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:59
So this is the first time that I've had a lobbyist on the show, and I so I think, yeah, I think people have interesting associations about lobbyists, maybe some positive, maybe some negative. But I thought it'd be fun for you guys just to tell me a little bit about what your job is actually like. So, you know, can Ryan? I'll start with you. But what, what does your job involve? Maybe you can kind of talk to us about a day in the life.
Ryan Carter 32:30
Yeah. Well, first and foremost, the OG George Washington said that democracy doesn't work without special interest groups. And I will tell all your listeners that whether whatever their profession is, whatever their favorite hobbies are, there's probably at least a dozen lobbyists working on their behalf. So we'll go get our hands dirty so so that y'all can stay, stay nice and nice and clean, but neither here nor there. You know, I think it's, it's really interesting. It's a lot of it is about building trust, and particularly being a nonprofit lobbying, you know, voice, you know, we don't employ hundreds of constituents. We don't generate tax revenue. Probably a burden on your tax revenue locally, and we don't do campaign contributions. So the only thing that we have of value is truth and knowledge and expertise and assistance. So a lot of what I do is just just building relationships with our legislators, understanding what they care about being a resource for when they have constituents that are having problems that our organization might be able to react to faster. So a lot of meetings, a lot of touch bases. As we get into the legislative season, it's we say that lobbying is just strategic gossip. So it's a lot of getting coffee, getting tea, grabbing a beer at our brewery in the in the bank branch. There you go, and just sharing knowledge. So your legislators, especially at the state legislature in North Carolina, they make $14,000 a year. They are very part time, and they have a staff of one, so you can't expect your legislators to be experts on everything. So that's where, where we come in, and we can help be a resource. Yeah,
Tiffany Owens Reed 34:33
Ali, I know this is, this is new for you. So you finished college not too long ago, and have jumped, jumped right in. What has been, what has this role been like for you? Maybe you have some fun stories you can share.
Ellie Riggs 34:43
Yeah, I'll be honest, I was a little nervous to work for a lobbyist. Wasn't sure,
Tiffany Owens Reed 34:52
but the day to day has filling the beans on bottom
Ellie Riggs 34:57
of Like Ryan said, it's a lot of i. Yeah. Well, he does most of the relationship building. I've been doing a lot of the background research and becoming the expert and sharing this information in a way that's easy to understand for a legislator who has a million other things going on in their brain and 100 other people to talk to that day. What's been really fun is going to with Ryan to some of these meetings. Last was it last week or two weeks ago? It's all a blur. It is all the last month has been a blur. We went to Raleigh for the North Carolina General Assembly swearing in day, and we had all of our papers and things as organized as we possibly could, and it still ended up being chaos running. I mean, we were running through the halls of the North Carolina legislative office buildings, passing out papers to people and knocking on doors to see if legislators that we wanted to talk to were there, or if maybe they were going to come back because they were busy. So it's fun. There aren't steak dinners involved. Did learn that?
Ryan Carter 36:02
Yeah, especially for us a slowly nonprofit, I think what's really important, though, is is that that Ellie and I's work complements each other, and we talk about, you know, grassroots advocacy and grass ops advocacy, and you really can't do one without the other. We tried that last session, we got a great bill on urban storm water. Those are two words you should never put in a bill text, by the way, urban storm water, but, but that was kind of a wonky concept that no one in the public understood. So if you send out a call, you know, call your legislator a call to action, and no one understands what you're talking about, then there's, there's nothing to contact about. So Ellie has done a great job of taking our wonky policy work, our you know, multi step parking reform bill that I'm guarantee half your listeners stop listening to halfway through my explanation and making it more relevant and interesting to everyday folks. Yeah,
Tiffany Owens Reed 37:04
yeah, the two definitely go hand in hand. And I feel like there are definitely, I feel like, so I'm in Texas, and I feel like the issue that comes to mind that kind of demonstrates the need for this sort of collaboration between the bottom up local level and even, like, the state level would probably be transportation. Like, there are a lot of battles over, like highway expansions, or like investing in multi, you know, multi modal transportation, or like public transportation. And I have started to see recently how, like, I think some people shy away from more of the legislative or more of the state level stuff, because it feels too political or too complicated. But I think from talking to you guys, and then also seeing some work that other people are doing, I'm starting to see like, maybe we should look at this more as like a collaboration. Like, there's a lot you can do on the local level and more of this bottom up way. But if you really understand the local context of your city and your community, you know it's good to notice when there are areas where it's like, Okay, we have to make the jump to like, state now, you know, we have to take this conversation to the state level. And sometimes that's a jump that just needs to be made in order for change to happen. Yeah,
Ryan Carter 38:06
we often say it just the importance of localizing your narrative and talking about the local examples. And that's how you can really depoliticize things quite quickly. You know, we're not talking about, you know, this, this crazy liberal or crazy conservative agenda. I'm just talking about, you got a giant parking lot in your district that is eroding your constituents backyard. Ellie's done a great job of helping us localize that narrative. And you know that we can go out and take pictures, and it's really cool that that, you know, I have a purple kayak, and legislators know that if I send them a picture and there's a purple boat in it, then that means I took that picture myself. So I'm not, this isn't a stock photo. This is, no, I was in your your district, and this is a real problem for your local community, so I know it's just critical of taking the local narrative.
Tiffany Owens Reed 39:02
Yeah. So to wrap things up here, I'd actually like to Ryan, you kind of start to hint at this, but I like to give you guys a chance to sort of talk about, like, your your personal, like motivation here behind all of this, Ryan, I'll start with you. I know from you know conversations earlier that you have referred to yourself as a policy nerd, but also a lover of the outdoors. So it's obvious that the work you're doing is a combination of those worlds. But can you share a little bit about how you came to see sort of the the value of policy and thinking about policy and advocating for change and from that perspective, sure.
Ryan Carter 39:39
Yeah. So I went to college on a community service scholarship, and so I was looking working for the local United Way in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Shout out to United Way the Piedmont. And I was a political science major. I had highlighted all the courses in the catalog that sounded cool, and it. I guess, said, Well, I guess I'll be a poli sci major. And they had United Way day at the legislature, and I was told that I was going to go because, well, I was a poli sci major, and, well, frankly, no one else wanted to go. And I went and had a blast, and I came back and said, I think I'd rather do this than volunteer coordination. So I've been doing nonprofit lobbying since I was 19, which is increasingly longer and longer ago. And I'll, I'll say it's been over a decade, and leave it at that fair enough, but it's been really cool to take those, those social issues that are facing. When I say social issues, I mean issues facing society, finding ways to make them relevant to different people, and then try and make a difference. So that's and then once you get into policy, you can't unsee it, and it's just everywhere. So,
Tiffany Owens Reed 40:49
like, it's kind of like design, like, once you start thinking about like urban design, or different like, like lane with stuff like that, you know when someone explains to you, like the concept of lane with, or the concept of like strodes, or the concept of like these, these ideas that we talk a lot about at strong towns, which I guess is another point on our bingo card, we figured out how to get strodes into this podcast, yeah, lobbyist world.
Ryan Carter 41:12
That's called trauma. So,
Tiffany Owens Reed 41:18
um, yeah, but so it says same idea of like you just can't stop seeing it. And I'm, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Policy does shape our life in so many real ways. Ellie, what about you? Can you share a little bit about kind of how you got pulled into this world? And, yeah, maybe a little bit about your backstory, yeah.
Ellie Riggs 41:35
So in college, I studied environmental science. I started with environmental science and really loved it. Kind of went into college knowing that that's what I wanted to study. I was fortunate to have a family who valued time outside growing up and had access to those kinds of spaces. And I started to realize in my environmental science classes that my peers had all these awesome solutions that maybe didn't feel super relevant or realistic. And I ended up taking an economics class because my dad told me, Hey, you should really take this. It's important. And realized after one class that I really loved it. I thought it offered a perspective of how to make these cool solutions that my peers were coming up with more realistic, or more grounded in a policy that could actually happen or actually appeal to everybody. So that's kind of what I was thinking about in college. And I think all of that kind of culminated to me really valuing common ground and getting back to a space where we can all agree on something, and conservation, I think, is a topic where Common Ground is abundant. So that's kind of how I ended up here, and what is driving me recently,
Tiffany Owens Reed 42:53
yeah, and you're originally from Florida, right? I am. Yeah, awesome. All right. Well, we're, we've reached the end of, end of the list of questions I had for you guys, except for the last one, which is always so fun, um, but I would love for you guys to tell me a little bit about the city where you're based. Um, what do you enjoy about your city? And you guys can each give me one or two local spots you love to recommend to people who are coming through your town, um, Ellie, I'll start with you. Okay, Ryan
Ellie Riggs 43:23
will probably have a better answer, because he's lived here much longer than I have, but I've been there in the area for a couple of years. So we're, we are based in in and outside of Charlotte. I went to Davidson College, which is just north of Charlotte. Our office is just west of Charlotte. And we both live in the Charlotte area. I think my recommendation would just be to go walk around. There are beautiful neighborhoods to walk through, really awesome parks, to see lots of breweries. Yeah. So my favorite thing to do is just kind of wander.
Tiffany Owens Reed 43:59
Do you have a favorite brewery or
Ellie Riggs 44:02
favorite coffee shop? I'm still, I'm still shopping around a little bit right now, the ones that are close to my apartment are my favorites because I can walk there. So Legion brewing is right nearby me. Also Birdsong, okay,
Tiffany Owens Reed 44:16
Ryan, it's your moment to shine like a local.
Ryan Carter 44:20
To be a Charlotte native is to know an existence of sadness and despair, because so many of our beloved institutions have have gone, gone away, unfortunately. But in that vein, the tried true diamond restaurant and Plaza Midwood a great example. Yes, take notes all that's that's a classic. And then, in terms of of brewery, since, since Ellie went with with beer, I'll go with wine and spirits. McGill Rose Garden is a an absolute oasis in the middle of an industrial area. Great wine, great atmosphere. Um. Then Great Wagon Road distillery, also historical reference there in the name, but great local spirits and really great community and place. So Excellent. Well,
Tiffany Owens Reed 45:12
Ellie and Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on the bottom up revolution. It's been enlightening and educational and a lot of fun to hear about what you all are doing to make your town stronger in a very real and tangible way. So
Ryan Carter 45:25
exciting thing, Tiffany is, while we've been recording this, I just got the bill draft for the full parking lot Bill. So very exciting. So I hope your listeners will take a look and stay stay up to date with what's going on, and if they live in North Carolina to reach out to us and contact your legislators in support of parking lot reform,
Tiffany Owens Reed 45:46
amazing. We'll definitely put links to all of that in the show notes, so that'll that'll all be very exciting to continue to watch if you're listening to this. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode. We'll be back next week with another conversation. If there's someone in your community who you think would make a great fit for this show, please let us know using the suggested guest forum in the show notes, we'll put links to a lot of what we talked about today in the show notes as well the recommendations, information about the bill, information about the taba River Keeper. Thank you, Ryan and Ellie. I'll be back soon another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
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Tiffany Owens Reed is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.