SOUTHERN CITY QUARTER 4 2021 24 opportunities, and she has a vision. “What if we could come out of COVID and be a city of equity?” Stewart said. “To me, what that looks like is neighborhoods that have diverse homes, diverse people living in them that support diverse schools,” leading to what she terms “the 15-minute city”—a neighborhood where schools, employment, and key services and businesses are all a short walk away. “Then that gets us to our climate goals, which gets to our equity goals, which gets to our housing goals.” It’s a wholesale, self-perpetuating vision, which Stewart pursues through a set of ideals. For example, as she describes, reliable water infrastructure should not be a point of contention with each new development, but rather a bare minimum citywide. It’s a practical approach to the day-to-day business of city governance, and yet still a noticeable change from the incrementalism that she first observed when joining council. “It’s more about how we get structural change into the code, rather than piecemeal one-byone rezoning,” Stewart said. Her viewpoint is one that is gaining traction on the Raleigh City Council. No longer the lone dissenter, Stewart is now able to put forth ideas and policies that are well-informed by the city itself, of which she and her family are an integral part. During 2020, when Les would come home to talk about the declining business and difficulty in hiring staff at Trophy Brewing, Stewart’s perspective on the impacts of the pandemic expanded. When certain city programs come up for funding consideration each budget cycle, Stewart can speak with firsthand familiarity to many of them, including the Weather Bound program through Raleigh’s Parks and Recreation Departments, which provides emergency childcare when schools are closed for the day. “She’ll speak from experience,” said Hinkle. “We haven’t seen that at the table in a while. It’s neat. And as a mom, it’s good to feel represented up there.” It’s yet another example of Stewart serving as the voice for a group and a cause. It’s an unmissable theme. She notes that it wasn’t exactly intentional in each instance, but rather began with a question: what if? “What if we start the Beehive Collective, and it becomes a force people recognize?” she said. “What if we ran for city council, and we’re able to carry that voice—to be the only young, working mom on council?” What if leaders created leaders to follow after? It’s a movement worth trying for Stewart. It’s working thus far. “She’s different,” Hinkle said. “In a good way.” continued from page 23 Nicole Stewart Cannot Stop Creating New Leaders
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