When Wayne Abraham decided to run for city council, he always knew it would be at large. After six and a half years serving on the human relations commission, including two as chair, Abraham has come in contact with issues that are city wide in nature.
Abraham has been involved in a number of community-oriented projects since moving to Greensboro in 1977, including the Triad Health Project. A graduate of UNCG, he is currently the majority owner and executive director of Personal Care Inc., a home health care company that serves residents throughout the Triad.
To Abraham, running for city council seemed like a natural next step.
“I’ve been committed, since the mid 80s, to making Greensboro a better place,” he said at the outset of our conversation at the Green Bean. “For me this was one more way I could serve our community and make it better.”
Particularly after his tenure on the human relations commission, which works closely with council but is often tasked with following the council’s directives, Abraham decided he could have more impact as one of the policy makers rather than just working on implementation.
Like most challengers this election cycle, Abraham often found himself differing with the council about how to move forward. As a commissioner he was able to find ways to work through this, but feels it’s time to make more significant changes.
“I disagreed with their vision of what Greensboro should be like,” he said. “I don’t think they’re looking long term. They created the controversy we’re living with.”
In particular, Abraham takes issue with the council pushing issues like the landfill that citizens aren’t clamoring for action on. He also expressed concern that talented and capable city staff have resigned, saying some were leaving because they couldn’t handle the current council.
As a candidate, Abraham’s primary objective is economic development, and he’s not short on ideas for how to create it. Two key approaches that he said would be relatively simple would entail enacting the city’s sustainability plan, which he said has not been implemented, and initiating a buy local campaign. The sustainability plan offers a variety of proposals that could increase investment, including incentivizing green building techniques.
During the current council’s tenure, Abraham said funding to the Greensboro Partnership was cut by 10 percent, a move he sees as detrimental to attracting businesses.
When asked how he would balance increased funding for certain projects with the city’s budget, Abraham said, “I would have to hear what the city manager has to say about areas where we could save.”
Consulting the experts was a recurring theme in his explanation for how he would approach being a councilmember, whether it be listening to planners about the proposed increase in bus fares or consulting the human relations commission.
Many residents have publicly expressed that they will only vote for candidates who oppose reopening Phase III of the White Street Landfill, and Abraham spoke at length about his opposition to the proposal as well as the way the process has been carried out.
“I don’t understand why they’ve done anything they’ve done,” he said in response to a question about why he thought Gate City Waste Services was preliminarily selected over other companies bidding to run the landfill.
In general, city council members have showed a lack of respect for residents who have raised concerns with them, particularly about the landfill but around other issues too. Abraham said it takes courage to speak at a council meeting, and that not only should those residents’ input be respected, but also valued. To that end, he supports moving the speakers from the floor portion of the regular meetings back to the beginning in correspondence with what it appears most residents want.
Many residents have stated that council members and candidates only show up in their neighborhoods during election time, and while he said he wouldn’t have time to be at everything he was invited to, Abraham said that as a council member he would do his best to be out in the neighborhoods and attending what meetings he could.
“This is a very serious responsibility and I am going to take it seriously,” he said. “I owe them that much.”
Through greater community engagement, Abraham said people would start to see it more as their government and not as someone else’s.
Our conversation focused mostly around economic development and the landfill because Abraham explained that those are the two main issues people tell him they are concerned about. After talking to more people, however, Abraham said he will outline more of his positions on different issues.
Abraham serves as the 6th congressional district chairman for the Democratic Party, giving him connections to state legislators that he said he could leverage to help advocated for Greensboro in Raleigh.
When he’s not busy with work or service, Abraham can be found throughout the city, walking in the city’s parks with his partner, working out at the Central YMCA three times a week or attending church at St. Mary’s House.
And when he’s not reading something political, Abraham enjoys reading science fiction. He can’t remember the exact name of the book he’s reading now, maybe it’s Dance with Dragons, but he knows George R. R. Martin is the author.
When asked about his favorite restaurants in town, he names a few Italian places and Phoenix Asian Cuisine, but said his real love is chocolate.
“I love going to Maxie B’s,” he said. “That’s my weakness.”
At this point the campaign’s website is up, voteabraham.com, and he has a core team of six people as well as around 15 volunteers. Voters can get a better sense of his positions as outlined on Facebook, where Abraham said he tries to write updates at least every Friday and where people can contact him with questions or comments.
