INDY Week May 15, 2024

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill May 15, 2024

BY LENA GELLER, P. 8

A LEGACY IN LIMBO

The Reverend Lorenzo Lynch Sr. was the patriarch of a prominent local family, his daughter Loretta the former attorney general of the United States. Now, following his death, tenants of Lorenzo Sr.,s derelict East Durham properties are mired in a legal dispute with his son Leonzo, one of the heirs to his estate.

Raleigh

6 Parents decry conditions at aging Durham elementary schools. BY STOREY WERTHEIMER

8 Tenants of derelict properties in East Durham are mired in a legal dispute with the son of the patriarch of a prominent local family. BY LENA GELLER

13 Development forces and higher taxes are threatening to displace homeowners in Southeast Raleigh. BY GREG CHILDRESS

CULTURE

15 As inflation stalls, high prices are affecting local restaurant owners. BY ALEXANDRIA DEROSSET

18 On All Infinite, Raleigh rap crew Kooley High tears its classic production style down to the studs. BY RYAN COCCA

THE REGULARS

3 Backtalk 5 Voices 20 Culture calendar

COVER Cathy Panzarella, 61, of Durham, poses for a portrait on her front porch. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

W E M A D E T H I S

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A breaker box in Deborah Nash’s kitchen. (See story, page 8.) PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

B AC K TA L K

From reader CHRIS PERELSTEIN, who was interviewed for the story:

I found [NC Department of Transportation district engineer] John Sandor’s comments quite troubling and before I got to even send this email, we had yet another pedestrian death Sunday May 5th on Roxboro St. I don’t see any acknowledgement of the problems folks encounter every day due to the design speed being so much higher than the posted speed limit, nor any suggestions on what sort of solutions NCDOT is looking at or proposing for this corridor, just staking out an adversarial position against the city. We need NCDOT to be a good faith partner in building better streets through our communities. I’m concerned we aren’t going to get that. To address some of John Sandor’s specific comments in the article I’d like to provide the following:

“How many cars use this road every day? You’re creating congestion, which is going to make it very challenging to handle that same amount of cars. Where are those cars going to go?”

Ironically just after the article published we had an ongoing lane closure begin one block from me and I’ve recorded similar volumes with less than half the reckless speeders going 15+ over the limit.

“Has it been done successfully?”

Yes, and even right here in Durham! Main and Chapel Hill are great examples.

“Whereas if I’m a pedestrian on a oneway street, all I have to do is look one way, right?”

While this sounds good, a frequent problem is the lack of visibility drivers

For the web two weeks ago, we republished a story from our partners at the 9th Street Journal about planned improvements for Roxboro Street in downtown Durham. We got a lot of responses from Durham readers about the story.

have when going the same direction. Cars in the nearest lane may yield properly but the next lane of traffic will continue at a high rate of speed in violation of the law. This is likely due to pedestrians being obscured by stopped vehicles. Two way allows both lanes better visibility of pedestrians and crossing traffic.

From reader JOHN TALLMADGE, the executive director of Bike Durham:

Residents from neighborhoods across Durham, whether in northeast central Durham or southwest Durham, we all want and deserve streets that are safe for walking, biking, and driving. That means streets designed for slower speeds, with sidewalks, safe crossings, protected bike lanes, and access to transit. In the April 26th article “Reckless Roxboro May Get a Revamp if Locals Can Persuade NCDOT”, Esmé Fox reports on the residents organizing for safer two-way designs of Roxboro and Mangum Streets. The City Council adopted this change in their 2020 Move Durham Study, and staff has hired an engineering consultant to analyze the impacts before developing a design. However, the district engineer dismisses this direction set by our elected and staff leadership, “We have a bigger responsibility than just those citizens that live down in that corridor.” Since these are NCDOT-maintained streets, the district engineer also needs to be convinced to become a partner in making this change.

Just last week at the NC Traffic Safety Conference, the City of Durham Transportation Department, the Southside Neighborhood Association, and Bike Durham were recognized with the 2024 Collaboration of the Year Award by the Governor’s

Highway Safety Program. This award was for the collective effort to engage the residents about their desires for slower speed traffic where they lived, to co-design solutions that the City evaluated, approved, and implemented.

We call on NCDOT engineers to embrace this model of collaboration so that they become full partners with the City and community residents in addressing concerns about speeding traffic that too often leads to tragedy. Our streets belong to all of us and they should be designed so that everyone can thrive whether walking, biking, riding transit, or in a car.

From reader LESLIE GRIFFITH:

NCDOT District Engineer John Sandor’s skepticism of reverting Roxboro and Mangum to two-way streets is out of touch with the reality of this corridor.

First, Sandor wrongly suggests that oneway streets are safer because pedestrians only need to look one way. I don’t mind looking both ways to cross a street—I was taught that as a kid, as I assume every NCDOT engineer was. I mind drivers going 40+ mph. Converting roads back to two-way helps keep traffic flowing at a safe speed.

But it’s clear NCDOT’s real priority is convenience for car drivers, specifically commuters.

Sandor’s concern ignores that corridor traffic is down 20 percent since the East End Connector opened, as the article states, and that converting the roads wouldn’t necessarily decrease total lanes in either direction. It also ignores other important priorities, like accessing businesses or avoiding injury and death. But

even accepting NCDOT’s narrow focus, these roads need to change.

Driving Roxboro and Mangum—which I do through downtown almost every day— is no picnic. You’ve got to constantly check your mirrors for speeding drivers swerving between lanes. The number of lanes on Roxboro varies block to block, adding another level of stress and collision risk. And then drivers must navigate the blind corner, racetrack-style curves, and confusing traffic patterns where both Roxboro and Mangum intersect with Markham. This area causes both speeding and abrupt stops and slowdowns—a perfect recipe for car-to-car collisions. I’ve witnessed dozens of fender-benders in this corridor and multiple more serious crashes. The resulting accident responses routinely snarl up traffic. That’s no fun for anyone’s commute.

From reader BRIAN HAWKINS, who is the chair of Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission:

It’s possible that Mr. Sandor gives away more than he intends by saying, “We have a bigger responsibility than just those citizens that live down in that corridor.”

By “we” I assume he means the NCDOT, or perhaps the profession of traffic engineering. And that the “bigger” responsibility to which he refers is rather the different “responsibility” to move as many cars as possible. It isn’t Mr. Sandor’s fault that he thinks this way; “level of service” has been the core doctrine of traffic engineering for decades. We have a long legacy of pedestrian- and cyclist-killing infrastructure to show for it.

The NCDOT’s own mission statement

puts safety front and center. Safety is the first of its listed organizational values. They should consider living up to that.

From reader JOHN FAULCONER:

Getting around Durham can sometimes be dangerous, no matter which mode of transport you pick. There are certain areas that are more dangerous than others though, and most of the time it’s roads owned and operated by NCDOT.

The City of Durham has plans to address the safety of these streets, with a detailed plan that has already gone through public engagement and been approved by the City Council. It includes turning several one-way only streets back to two-way streets (they were originally two-way streets several decades ago before the period of “Urban Renewal”). Other streets in Durham that were formerly one-way streets have been converted to two-way successfully, so this is just a continuation of a proven solution. The plan also includes sheltered bus stops, bus only lanes, protected bike lanes, and sidewalk improvements. It is all designed in an effort to improve the safety and accessibility for all road users, even if you are in a car.

So what’s holding us back? Most of the major roadways, even in downtown, are completely owned and operated by NCDOT. So they have to approve these plans. Right now, based on comments made by a NCDOT employee in the April 26th article “Reckless Roxboro May Get a Revamp if Locals Can Persuade NCDOT”, it does not seem likely that they will approve the plans as the community and City of Durham wants them.

We have to persuade NCDOT to make sure that the safety improvements we all want get approved. To NCDOT, we ask that you listen to all the North Carolina communities that you serve. Our lives are in your hands.

15 MINUTES

Serena Kaylor

Author and physician’s assistant from southeastern North Carolina. Her second novel, The Calculation of You and Me, will be released on June 18.

BY SAM OVERTON backtalk@indyweek.com

What’s the new book about?

This neurodiverse high schooler—her name is Marlon Meadows. She’s going into her senior year of high school. Right before summer break, her boyfriend of two years broke up with her and she feels even more lost. She built her high school identity around the guy, and his main complaint was that he didn’t think she was romantic enough. She’s autistic, so that resonated with her in a terrible way.

Marlon decides that she’s going to teach herself through romance novels. She conscripts this golf guy who works at a romance bookstore in her town to help her, and along the way, she realizes what romance means to her.

Did you pull anything from your personal life into the book?

It’s based on my own journey—I’m autistic. In high school, I would date but always felt like people fell in love faster than I did. I didn’t understand the rules of it or what I was supposed to be looking for. To understand if I was in love, I read a lot of romance novels to get a sense of what I was supposed to be doing.

Are there any tie-backs to your Southern upbringing?

I set the book in a fictional, extremely Southern small town in Georgia, a reflection of where I grew up. There were two stoplights, and everybody knew and dated each other. I never felt that I fit in very well, and I put a lot of that into the novel.

Your first novel came out a few years ago. What was that experience like?

I have two business degrees, and I’m a PA—I didn’t study a lot of English in college. I don’t have a technical background, but I’ve been a voracious reader my whole life. I know what I like in a book, but I didn’t have a whole lot of training in plot structure and craft.

I wrote Long Story Short over the course of five years, and finally finished after I told myself I had to either commit or stop talking about it. The first draft was a dumpster fire—there were characters that didn’t make it through the whole book and character arcs all over the place.

There was this Twitter mentorship program where they paired me with an already-published author in my genre,

Sophie Gonzales. She helped me figure out what I was trying to say. We revised it again, and again—amazingly, a literary agency picked it up pretty quickly. It was a very long, somewhat painful process.

With The Calculation of You and Me, my publishing team bought it on pitch— they were like, can you write this in eight months?

Wow. How was the accelerated writing process?

Very, very stressful. I’m violently neurodiverse and I have ADD—sitting still and doing quiet, introspective things are hard for me.

I figured out a schedule that worked with my brain to get words on the page, but the last two months were hairy. I wasn’t even halfway through the book at that point, so I had to double down. It taught me a lot about writing on deadline. I feel like book three will be easier—and then, hopefully, all the books to come.

So there’s a book three already in the works?

Yes, it’s my little secret. W

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Triangle

PHOTO BY LAURA WRIGHT

A Community and a Tribe

How a powwow in Raleigh honors my roots in Hollister, NC

BY TREY ROBERTS backtalk@indyweek.com

My hometown of Hollister will again be on my mind when the annual Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow rolls out on May 18-19 in Raleigh. As one of the organizers, I work closely with Native American communities and others to make the event happen. And through all the hubbub, it always brings me back to my proud roots and what I learned there.

Hollister is a small rural town in Halifax County on the edge of Warren County. When I lived there, we didn’t have stoplights; we had caution lights that blinked to warn you that you should probably look both ways at the intersection. Major news event of my day included a transformer blowing and setting fire to most of the wooded areas. The opening of the Dollar General also caused a stir. In Hollister, your house could be tucked away atop a hill in the woods, on a farm, or cozily next door to your relatives on land you inherited from your “granddaddy.”

While it was country in terms of what city folks would call “country” and had a roughness to it that you really don’t understand until you’re older, the poverty levels placed us in the category of one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. But growing up, it didn’t feel like it. Maybe it’s because I never felt the brunt of poverty, as my family tried their best to hide it from me.

Truthfully, Hollister—while small enough to be plagued with town gossip and infighting because someone simply didn’t “like” someone else—was our home. It was the home of my tribe, the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe. As a tribe, we watched out for each other, even though we might side-eye someone’s new girlfriend, refuse to eat their collards, or not trust them

(hide your jewelry and don’t leave money behind because you know he’ll steal). Even with those prejudices, our doors were open, and our tables had an extra chair for our uncle who was alone in his house during a snow day.

We were a community and a tribe. Every year, on the third weekend of April, we gathered at the powwow grounds. If we were lucky, which most of the time we were, we’d get the perfect weather—a cool 70-degree, sunny day. The smell of sage and sweetgrass mixed with the naturally growing honeysuckles that grew off the sides of the woods filled the air. It was a homecoming because you got to see cousins your age that lived in other cities up north and the aunt who rarely left the comfort of her own home. It was a moment to come out in your best outfits, your hair done up, a fresh cut, and new shoes that would end up dusty from the lack of grass. We were to be seen, and our culture was to be celebrated. Looking back at these things, now older, I do so with fondness. At the time, being younger, I also sought a place beyond the pine trees that enveloped Hollister.

My desire for more made me resent it as a youth, not knowing that the moment I left the comfort of my tribe would be unmatched in Raleigh. Raleigh has offered me many opportunities and, while being a city still in its adolescence, has given me a sense of community that’s rare to find in cities across the country. While it welcomed and embraced me, I also felt this sense of being an outlier. The connections I made are deep and true but can’t be interpreted the same way as the ones I get when I see or meet another Native American or the time I spent growing up

in Hollister. There’s an alignment that’s close but just not quite there. I had to figure a lot of stuff out myself and had to open myself up to people who didn’t quite understand my upbringing or why I spoke or did something a certain way.

I was always surrounded by my culture and people who were excited about any progress I made in my life. In Hollister, we had winter powwows, the annual powwows, culture classes, monthly lessons on Native American history, and excitement about new regalia. A sense of community that went beyond the transactional, that was about laying all our cards on the table, never hiding a hand. Outside the yearly Native American Heritage Celebration hosted by the Museum of History, there was no other opportunity for us to be celebrated.

In my eyes, Raleigh looked at Native American people through sepia-toned photos of the past. It was only history, bows and arrows, and feathers. In Hollister, it was vibrant and in action. When we approached the idea of the Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow and our duty to

carry the legacy of the land of Dix Park, we evaluated our responsibility. We had to honor what was before by telling the history that all of Raleigh was land inhabited by Native Americans and that we had to say that this was a living contemporary culture. Our traditions didn’t die with our ancestors but lived and evolved with our modern lens.

The Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow, with the help of groups like Triangle Native American Society, was an opportunity to bring a piece of home back to my new home. We can watch it all as a mix of the senses I had growing up. The legacy of it, I hope, remains a memory to every non-Native visitor as alive and breathing and to every Native American who participates or spectates as a celebration of our resiliency. W

Trey Roberts is the manager of community engagement at Dix Park Conservancy and creator of the Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow, which brings the Native American community together to celebrate its history on park land as well as its living culture.

Trey Roberts PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT

Durham

Hierarchy of Needs

Parents decry conditions at aging Durham elementary schools.

BY STOREY WERTHEIMER backtalk@indyweek.com

When Theresa Dowell Blackinton enrolled her kindergartener at Club Boulevard Elementary, she worried about the maintenance of the school’s nearly 75-year-old campus. School administration assured her that renovations would begin within the year, she says.

“I wasn’t looking for anything cosmetic. I just wanted the school to be functional,” she says.

Next year, Dowell Blackinton’s daughter will graduate from Club Boulevard. It’s been five years, and HVAC fixes, electrical repairs, and other renovations still aren’t complete.

Dowell Blackinton says the plumbing in the bathrooms is constantly broken, and water pressure in the school water fountains is so low that students can’t fill water bottles. “If they forget their bottles, they’re out of luck,” she says.

But these are hardly Dowell Blackinton’s biggest concerns.

“My daughter in fourth grade, her classroom was never under 80 degrees this entire school year,” she says. “They’d invite parents in for a school activity and it was unbearable.” To cool down classrooms, Dowell Blackinton says the school installed box fans, but the fans were so loud that teachers began teaching into microphones and speakers.

“They can’t learn if they’re so hot and uncomfortable,” she says. “You’ve just got your hierarchy of basic needs. If you’re not meeting those bottom-level needs, you can’t expect kids to perform at their best.”

Club Boulevard Elementary is not the only Durham school awaiting overdue renovations. Parents at aging elementary schools across the district are growing frustrated with a lack of maintenance.

And at some schools, inspections have found evidence of mold, and parents worry that the district is moving too slowly to eliminate it.

In 2022, Durham voters approved a $423.5 million bond referendum for construction and renovations of Durham Public Schools (DPS) buildings.

That money was supposed to cover construction and renovation at eight Durham schools. However, the construction of two new public schools proved far more expen-

15, 2024 INDYweek.com

sive than originally planned. The district spent nearly $91 million to build Murray-Massenburg Elementary School. The budget for construction of a new Durham School of the Arts campus, meanwhile, has nearly doubled, to $241 million.

As a result, renovations at four Durham elementary schools—Club Elementary, Morehead Elementary, Bethesda Elementary, and Mangum Elementary—have been postponed. Meanwhile, the timeline is unclear for renovating other aging Durham elementary schools that are listed on the district’s 10-year Capital Improvement Plan.

Bettina Umstead, chair of the Board of Education, says the new campuses are necessary to address overcrowding. Murray-Massenburg has won various awards, and Fredrick Davis, the school system’s senior executive director of building services, has called the campus “the Cadillac of schools.”

But parents at some of the district’s aging elementaries say their schools have been abandoned.

Lauren Sartain, the mother of two students at E. K. Powe Elementary School, says their school has been dealing with roof leaks, dilapidated outdoor equipment, and broken air conditioning. Powe is included in the district’s 10-year Capital Improvement Plan, but the district has not shared a timeline for renovation.

Last April, Sartain’s son tripped on the school’s torn-up astroturf and knocked out his two front teeth. When the accident happened, Sartain says she had been asking for playground repairs for five years and had been assured that renovations were forthcoming. “When you have 60 first graders on the small playground with torn-up turf, it’s a

safety issue,” Sartain says.

She has contacted school board members multiple times and spoken at board meetings, but she feels her activism has fallen on deaf ears.

In a March 7 DPS work session, Davis delivered a status report on recent renovations. Afterward, board member Jessica Carda-Auten had a question.

“What are the implications of not completing the renovations in the next few years to the deferred schools?” she said. “Are we looking at unsafe or inadequate learning conditions?”

“Our maintenance and facilities department has done an excellent job of maintaining buildings that have fully exceeded their life expectancy,” Davis replied.

But Sartain questions Davis’s claim. “It seems like they will tell people what they want to hear, but then nothing ever ends up happening,” Sartain says. “It’s gotten exhausting, like we’re screaming into a void.”

“We’re not patching the roof. We’re not fixing the HVAC. we’re not doing this basic day-to-day stuff,” she says.

Umstead, the school board chair, acknowledges that parents are upset. “I know there’s been a lot of frustration around building conditions, and we are working really diligently on those issues,” she says.

Umstead says the issue boils down to underfunding.

“We’ve tried to make the most of the capital dollars we’ve received from the county,” she says. “Durham Public Schools is working to do our best, and we know we don’t have enough to manage every single building in the way we probably should.”

It’s not just playgrounds and broken water fountains that

Morehead Montessori Magnet Elementary School PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

worry parents—at E. K. Powe, parents fear that leaks and high temperatures are contributing to mold growth. Mold is exacerbated by high temperatures, elevated humidity, and water leaks. Sartain says water is constantly leaking into Powe classrooms.

“Leaking is a kind way to describe it,” she says. “The custodial staff has to go in multiple times a day to mop the classrooms.”

According to Sartain, the HVAC system at E. K. Powe has been broken for nearly a month and temperatures in many classrooms have neared 90 degrees.

She says she was told that the system will only be repaired in classrooms where students are taking end-of-grade tests.

A limited mold assessment at Powe in July 2023 conducted by S&ME, an engineering consulting firm, observed water damage on the ceiling, bubbling paint, and visible water intrusion. The report found trace amounts of mold with “allergenic potential” and “mycotoxin potential” in hallways and classrooms, findings the report called “significant.”

The report recommended that Powe remove discolored tiles, repair the leaking roof, and have a qualified mold remediation contractor remove drywall in various classrooms.

The Durham County Department of Public Health also conducted an annual inspection at the school in October 2023 that found water damage and roof leaks. The department, however, has little enforcement authority and does not issue fines or penalties.

“All we do is take this report, and we send it to the school principal,” says Laura Lerch, the general inspections supervisor. “Then it’s in their hands to work with the school system to get these repairs.”

E. K. Powe administration did not respond to requests for comment. Parents report that the roof is still leaking.

Chris Heavener, the parent of a first grader and a rising kindergartener at E. K. Powe, contacted DPS board members and the Durham County Board of Commissioners with concerns, requesting a mold remediation plan and timeline.

“I’m requesting that you address this urgent issue,” he wrote in an email. “The wellbeing of our children and staff necessitates transparency.”

He said he received no reply.

Anna Simmonds, mother of a second grader at E. K. Powe, is also worried about mold and says that her daughter’s preexisting health conditions have been worsened by building conditions. She has contacted the school principal, the PTA, the Durham County Department of Public Health, the DPS interim superintendent, the Board of

Education, and the Durham County Board of Commissioners, requesting an in-depth investigation and remediation plan.

“They keep saying ‘We have quotes,’ but when are you going to do it?” Simmonds says. “I’m a taxpayer. I’m a voter, and I want a timeline and a full investigation. All kids and educators and everyone in that building should be able to go into a healthy environment.”

Simmonds and Sartain feel that the burden of advocacy has fallen into their hands, but most parents have busy schedules and little time to spare. “Teachers and other parents don’t have the bandwidth to do this, and honestly, none of us should have to do this,” Sartain says.

In a statement, Clifton Williams, facilities and operations director, and Davis, the senior executive director of building services, said the school district monitors school air quality and is working to improve it.

“Over the last two years, the district has spent more than $15 million dollars on IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) improvements,” the statement said. “Our efforts will continue to help reduce sick days, remove mold risk, mitigate asthma and allergy triggers, reduce energy costs, and even improve test scores.”

Meanwhile, Heavener worries about the example of the Alamance-Burlington school district, where last August, mold was discovered in at least 30 of 36 schools. Toxigenic mold was found in 16 of these schools, which inspectors say was a result of invasive water damage over time. Alamance-Burlington was forced to delay their schools’ start date by two weeks and spent $25 million to remediate buildings, triggering a budget crisis.

“This is years and years of underfunding for certain projects,” Les Atkins, the former public information officer for the Alamance-Burlington school district, said in an interview. “What we found was that some small things that maybe had been left unattended to were big things …. That little bit of water intrusion that we were alerted to at some point … now it’s turned into toxigenic mold behind the wall.”

At DPS board meetings, parents have repeatedly spoken about their run-down elementary schools.

The school board recently approved hiring a consulting firm, Turner & Townsend Heery, to assess building deficiencies. The $1.7 million contract includes $540,769 in community engagement workshops.

In a joint meeting with DPS and Durham County Board of Commissioners on March 14, Davis also described a school system subcommittee that recommends how to

allocate renovation funds. When asked if parents are included in the advisory committee, Davis replied no.

“I’m inundated with parents that say, ‘My school next, my school next.’ We’re trying to make sure that we’re equitable and equal,” he says.

To Sartain, this comment was “a slap in the face.”

“I’m not asking for nice things or a new building, I’m just asking not to have water pouring into classrooms,” she says.

Dowell Blackinton agrees. She says she’s not looking for extra bells and whistles.

“I just want my kid to fill a water bottle and have a bathroom and a classroom at a reasonable temperature.

“You see in the paper the new opening of Murray-Massenburg and all these schools that are just beautiful,” she says. “I wish every school could be like that.”

“It’s hard to swallow, especially because the district’s favorite word is ‘equity,’” she says. “And that seems highly inequitable.”

Statement from Clifton Williams, facilities and operations director, and Fredrick Davis, senior executive director of building services:

Durham Public Schools continues to monitor indoor air quality in schools and have added CO2 sensors in facilities for further monitoring. We are also using ESSER funding to improve HVAC systems districtwide. We have a process in place that will alert our DPS (Durham Public Schools) Building Services team when negative indoor air quality is present, and we consistently deploy testing and mitigation services. In a 2019 Facility Conditions Assessment, it was determined that DPS had more than $700 million mechanical needs. Over the last two years, the district has spent more than $15 million dollars on IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) improvements. Our efforts will continue to help reduce sick days, remove mold risk, mitigate asthma and allergy triggers, reduce energy costs, and even improve test scores. Additionally, DPS will undergo a new 2024 Facility Conditions assessment that will determine our priorities in indoor air quality and other capital improvements. W

This story was published through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is produced by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.

A Legacy in Limbo

The Reverend Lorenzo Lynch Sr. was the patriarch of a prominent local family, his daughter Loretta the former attorney general of the United States. Now, following his death, tenants of Lorenzo Sr.’s derelict East Durham properties are mired in a legal dispute with his son Leonzo, one of the heirs to his estate.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

The foundations are crumbling. The floors are sinking. There’s no air conditioning. There’s no heat. The windows don’t shut. The pipes are broken. Rats, mice, and cockroaches are nesting in open cavities in the walls and ceilings.

People living in four East Durham properties that Leonzo and Loretta Lynch inherited from the Reverend Lorenzo Lynch Sr. in 2023 say their homes have been in disrepair for years.

That’s why, when the tenants were sued last summer by Leonzo for staying past the terms of month-to-month leases they’d signed with his deceased father, they filed counterclaims, asking the court for damages.

A Durham County magistrate ruled last fall that the tenants deserve compensation. Magistrate Judge Marlon Howard awarded $2,500 in damages to one tenant

and $10,000—the maximum that can be awarded in small claims court in North Carolina—to four others on November 29.

But the tenants haven’t received any money yet. Deborah Nash, who was awarded $2,500, appealed her judgment to district court; the amount was too low for her, she says. And Leonzo, as an executor of his father’s estate, appealed the higher judgments.

Now, Legal Aid of North Carolina, the nonprofit firm representing the tenants pro bono, is gearing up for a fight against the Cary-based law firm that Leonzo retained after the small claims trial didn’t go his way. The trials are scheduled to start in mid-July.

Most of the tenants haven’t paid rent on the homes in more than a year, and Leonzo isn’t asking for backpay as part of the suit: he’s just asking them to leave. But tenants

say they can’t afford to relocate. So they’re still living— squatting, technically—in the four houses.

Tenants each have certain areas of their homes they’re careful to avoid. For Deborah Nash, it’s her kitchen, where cords jerry-rigged from an uncovered breaker box hang like vines over her cooktop. For Cathy Panzarella, it’s her living room, where, three years ago, her roof caved in on top of her while she was asleep, she says, breaking her arm. Panzarella, 61, and her husband, Tommy, live off their Social Security checks. So does Nash, 66. Joseph Davis, 63, worked for Durham’s street cleaning division for three decades and is raising two teenage sons on a modest pension. Kimberly Smith, 34, who has three kids, relies on unemployment; it’s hard to get a job without transit, she says. Pamela Page, 42, is a single mom of two and gets by on a patchwork of income from child advocacy work.

Duplex houses on Potter Street PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

The tenants started renting the homes between four and six years ago. Until the Lynch family patriarch died in January 2023, tenants paid him between $500 and $1,200 a month in rent, according to court records. Over the course of their tenancies, they paid between $16,000 to $40,000 in rent on homes that they allege were in disrepair the entire time.

The tenants say they also paid for rodent traps, paint, space heaters, and window air-conditioning units to make the homes livable. Some hired their own contractors to repair gutters, windows, and plumbing fixtures. Two tenants say they have run themselves dry paying astronomical water bills caused by leaky pipes.

The counterclaims tenants filed in response to Leonzo’s initial suits specify that they are requesting “monetary damages in the form of retroactive rent abatement for each month” of their tenancies in amounts equal to “the difference between the fair rental value of the premises had they been in fit and habitable condition” and the value tenants actually received. Tenants are also asking for “incidental and consequential damages resulting from” their landlord’s “acts or failures to act,” according to court records.

At the upcoming trial, tenants could

potentially be awarded even more than $10,000 each because district court doesn’t have the cap that small claims court does. Or they could leave empty-handed.

Eviction cases aren’t rare in Durham.

The eviction docket at the Durham County courthouse typically has between 150 to 200 cases per week. But these five cases are perhaps a bit more charged because of who the plaintiff’s family is. Lorenzo Sr. pastored one of Durham’s most prominent Black churches for decades. Leonzo pastors a large church in Charlotte. And Loretta served as the attorney general of the United States under President Barack Obama.

When Lorenzo Sr. died at age 90 last January, he left everything to Leonzo and Loretta, including 18 properties in North Carolina worth an assessed value of $1,099,315. According to property records, Lorenzo Sr. acquired the properties over the course of three decades beginning in 1970.

Loretta’s role in determining the fate of the East Durham properties where tenants have lived is unclear. In a case report regarding one of the properties, code enforecement officer Laurin Milton wrote in an entry last January that he “spoke with son, Leon [sic], who stated … He and sister will be settling the estate in the coming weeks and making decisions as to properties owned.”

Two months later, Milton wrote in a subsequent entry that Leonzo “plans to meet with his sister and a potential property manager to determine next steps for each property.” But Loretta does not appear to be in direct communication with the city about the properties and is not named in the lawsuits.

Neither Leonzo Lynch nor representatives from Brownlee, Whitlow & Praet, the law firm he retained, responded to multiple emailed requests for comment. Loretta Lynch did not respond to requests for comment that the INDY delivered via voice mail, email, and fax.

Lorenzo Lynch Sr. always collected the rent from his tenants in person, even at age 90.

He’d sometimes chat with them about his long-term vision for his properties. Page says Lorenzo Sr. told her that he wanted his kids “to refurbish these houses and make sure they were for low-income families.”

“Him buying all these homes was about building the Lynch legacy,” Page says.

Most tenants weren’t aware of how large the Lynch legacy already loomed. Lorenzo Sr., a fourth-generation Baptist minister from Eastern North Carolina, came to regional renown during his first few decades

in the ministry. In the summer of 1960, he invited college students who were organizing the Greensboro sit-ins to use the church that he pastored at the time, Providence Baptist, as a planning space, per his obituary, and continued to model an approach to faith that straddled civic engagement and civil rights over the course of his career.

In Durham, where he moved in 1965, Lorenzo Sr. was best known for pastoring White Rock Baptist Church. The church had evolved in tandem with Durham’s historic Hayti community and faced the same existential threat the community did when the Durham Freeway was constructed in the late 1960s. Lorenzo Sr. led the process of securing White Rock a new building on Fayetteville Street, where it still stands today.

He was also a fixture in local civic circles, serving as the economic development chair for the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, and mounted an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 1973.

Lorenzo Sr. and his wife, Lorine, a librarian who died in 2019, raised their kids in Durham. Their eldest son, Lorenzo Jr., who died in 2009, was a Navy SEAL. Leonzo, the youngest, followed his father’s footsteps into the ministry. After attending UNC Greensboro and earning a master’s degree

Pamela Page with her daughter, Phoenix Rose PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

Deborah Nash PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

in divinity from Duke University and a doctorate from the United Theological Seminary, Leonzo went on to pastor at churches around the state. He joined Charlotte’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1997 and is now the senior pastor.

After graduating as valedictorian from Durham High School (now Durham School of the Arts) in 1977, Loretta attended college and law school at Harvard University and worked as a federal prosecutor before she became the first Black woman appointed U.S. attorney general in 2015. Now she’s a partner at a multinational law firm based in New York City. Earlier this month, she returned to Durham to deliver the commencement speech at the North Carolina Central University School of Law.

Tenants say they knew Lorenzo Sr. had a notable presence in Durham, and that his kids were off doing big things. Lorenzo Sr. had a striking gift for connecting with people, his tenants say.

“He was a good man,” Page says. “Very knowledgeable … never disrespectful. He was always sharing home remedies and bits of wisdom.”

“When my son died, he brought me sodas,” Panzarella says.

But the Lynch family’s prominence never figured into their day-to-day reality, tenants say, which was that their landlord was old and in failing health and that no one seemed to be coming to pick up the slack.

Tenants say they thought Lorenzo Sr.’s memory was starting to slip in the later years. They also say that when they told him they needed repairs, he sometimes hired people to come by who weren’t professionals and often left their homes in the same condition, if not worse. Tile was placed in Davis’s kitchen that now “cracks and shifts underfoot,” according to court records. (During Lorenzo Sr.’s memorial service in February 2023, which was livestreamed on YouTube, Loretta noted that her father “would pick up [men] from the homeless shelter to have work on his real estate,” saying he spoke to them with the same respect he did President Obama. “He truly did walk with kings, but never lost the common touch,” she said.)

Two tenants tried going to the city for help. In November 2020, Smith called in a complaint to Durham Neighborhood Inspection Services (NIS) about the duplex she lives in on Potter Street. Panzarella, who lives in the other half, phoned Durham One Call seven months later to complain that “her roof fell in” and “that she has made complaints and concerns to her landlord many times and he has yet to address this issue.”

Both sides of the duplex failed NIS inspections, so the department sent notices to Lorenzo Sr. ordering him to correct specific code violations, according to NIS reports. Lorenzo Sr. didn’t comply, reports show. The NIS conducted more inspections and sent more notices over the next two years. Lorenzo Sr. ignored those, too. Finally, in November 2022 Lorenzo Sr. contacted the city to say that he would soon be making repairs to the duplex, according to an NIS report.

Two months later, he died. Panzarella and Smith say that aside from a paint touch-up, the repairs never happened.

No one told the tenants Lorenzo Sr. was dead. When he didn’t show up to collect the February rent, they put two and two together and waited for his heirs to contact them.

In April 2023, a letter from his son arrived at the three-bedroom house where Page lives. It was addressed to “Tenant” and stated that starting in May, the house would be managed by H-Co, a Chapel Hill–based property management company. This seemed like a good sign. An H-Co representative came by a few weeks later and showed Page how to start paying rent through a portal on the company’s website. (H-Co did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

But Nash, Panzarella, and Smith say no one contacted them until June, when they were served summary ejectment complaints—the equivalent of eviction notices in North Carolina. Court summons were attached.

Leonzo, as an executor of his father’s estate, was demanding “immediate possession” of their homes. They were being sued for staying over the terms of their leases.

Or, someone was being sued. The complaints and summonses that Nash, Panzarella, and Smith received were addressed to “Unknown Occupant/Tenant,” according to records the INDY reviewed.

The next month, Davis got the same materials, addressed to “John Smith.” Page did, too.

Nash, Panzarella, and Smith, went to the Durham County Courthouse for initial hearings on June 23. Panzarella had heard of Legal Aid and tracked down one of the nonprofit’s attorneys, Robbie Breitweiser, at the courthouse clinic. Breitweiser agreed to represent Panzarella and her neighbors.

Page and Davis went to the courthouse for initial hearings in late July. Davis, who’s friends with the Potter Street tenants, had been advised to seek out Breitweiser. Page

From top: A breaker box and cooktop in Deborah Nash’s kitchen; Kimberly Smith’s kitchen; a light bulb emerging from Deborah Nash’s ceiling PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

says she went in with no plan but encountered a reporter who asked if she needed help and, after hearing about the case, advised that she go to the Legal Aid clinic.

Tenants say Breitweiser spent the next several months trying to negotiate settlements with Leonzo’s attorneys but that the most they were offered was $2,500. The tenants passed.

When Magistrate Judge Howard awarded four of them four times that much last November, they were glad to have rejected the initial settlement offering. And Nash, who isn’t sure why she was awarded $2,500 while the others won $10,000, felt hopeful that a higher court would bring her up to par.

Leonzo’s appeals caught them off guard. The Lynch family has the money, the tenants say. They point to the stature of the plaintiff’s sister, as well as the law firm that Leonzo brought on for the appeal as case in point. The attorneys at Brownlee, Whitlow & Praet charge between $265 and $500 an hour for their services, according to a client intake specialist.

Panzarella says she knows Loretta isn’t officially involved in the legal dispute but feels as though she’s a relevant player because she also inherited the properties.

“Why didn’t she and her brother help

Mr. Lynch fix our houses?,” Panzarella says. “Why didn’t they even know our names? What are they gonna do with the money they get from selling these properties? I want to know what kind of trips they’re going to take with that money.”

Tenants aren’t sure what to expect for the upcoming trial.

It shouldn’t pose a problem for them that Leonzo himself isn’t the one who leased them the homes.

“A landlord’s death doesn’t extinguish the legal rights of his or her tenants, nor does it generally preclude liability for acts or omissions that occurred when the landlord was alive,” Breitweiser wrote in a statement to the INDY. “The Rules of Professional Conduct require attorneys to advocate zealously on behalf of their clients, regardless of who the opposing party is.”

Still, North Carolina law doesn’t do much to defend tenants’ rights. Two months ago, the state Supreme Court ruled 5–2 that a tenant who was maimed by a gas explosion in a Durham rental home could not sue his landlord for negligence because there wasn’t evidence that the tenant had previously communicated a need for repairs.

That ruling could bode poorly for Nash, Davis, and Page. Unlike Smith and Panzarella—whose complaints to the city in 2020

and 2021 resulted in prompt NIS inspections and issuances of orders for repair to Lorenzo Sr.—the other three tenants did not make complaints to the city while Lorenzo Sr. was alive. The NIS didn’t inspect their homes until last summer, after the legal dispute began. While those inspections found dozens of code violations that clearly stem from years of neglect, the duration of the disrepair may end up mattering less in court than the evidence, or lack thereof, that Lorenzo Sr. was made aware of it.

Regardless of how the trial concludes, though, the fact that all four of the homes are standing, occupied, and up to date on inspections is coming with its own costs for the plaintiff and his sister.

For example, the city of Durham condemned the duplex where Nash lives on Potter Street in October, but because the residence is still standing and in use, the city did maintenance work on it two months ago and placed a $556 lien on the property that Lorenzo Sr.’s heirs will have to pay off.

The city is also preparing to restore heating facilities in the house where Page lives on Bryant Street, according to a December ordinance that states that Leonzo and Loretta “failed or refused to comply with” a previous order to render the home “fit for human habitation.”

The first quote for the installation came in at $16,000, according to Robb Damman, an NIS contract services manager the INDY bumped into while visiting Page in April. That’s also money that the city will front as a lien and the owners will need to pay back.

“We’re looking at all new ductwork, all new heat pump systems—state of the art,” Damman says.

Damman admitted it’s a bit surprising to do $16,000 of work on a house built in 1940 that has substandard heating equipment—one of 20 violations in an open code enforcement case—and is likely to be torn down.

“The code states that the property needs to be able to maintain a heat to 68 degrees, measured within the middle of the room,” Damman says. “Currently this structure can’t meet that standard. So we have to move forward with our process.”

Panzarella is sitting on her front porch on Potter Street. Next door, Nash is, too. Smith is away, but her 19-year-old daughter just popped over to Nash’s duplex to brave the precarious cooktop and make everyone some food.

“We don’t like living here,” Panzarella says. She points at her front door, which is covered in mildew.

Cathy and Tommy Panzarella PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

Durham Properties Inherited by Leonzo and Loretta Lynch

DURHAM PROPERTIES INHERITED BY LEONZO AND LORETTA LYNCH

Raleigh in 1997 deemed “unfit for human habitation.” When the INDY stopped by in April, three men at the door said they don’t know the Lynch family and that it’s none of the INDY’s business who they pay their rent to.

DURHAM

727 Justice St.

1210 Colfax St.

1214 Colfax St.

1212 Colfax St.

2533 Atlantic St.

2537 Atlantic St.

2539 Atlantic St.

2541 Atlantic St.

Potter St. duplex where Smith and Panzarella live Potter St. duplex where Nash lives

Bryant St. house where Page lives

LEGEND

Currently-inhabited property

One is in downtown Hillsborough: a falling-apart house in an affluent neighborhood that the town of Hillsborough similarly declared “unfit for human habitation” in 2017. A neighbor told the INDY that the house hasn’t been occupied in at least a decade.

The other 12 are in Durham. Of those, four are the homes where Nash, Panzarella, Davis, Smith, and Page currently live. One is an undeveloped parcel on Justice Street in North Durham. The final seven are clustered on two streets in East Durham, Atlantic Street and Colfax Street.

On Atlantic Street, Lorenzo Sr. left his children three houses and a vacant parcel. On Colfax Street, he left them two houses and a vacant land parcel. All of the properties except one have histories of code violations, ordinances for repair, and liens.

Robinwood Rd. house where Davis lives

nodding at her neighbors.

Panzarella, Nash, and Smith all spent chunks of their childhood living on Potter Street. Smith is Nash’s niece. Panzarella and Nash call each other sisters even though they’re not actually related.

The street is short, just one block, and ends in a dirt cul-de-sac. Up the hill and through some trees, cars are whooshing by on the Durham Freeway.

“I watched them dig out the highway,” Panzarella says. “We would cross over the big pile of dirt to go trick-or-treating in the other neighborhoods.”

In a geographic sense, all of the tenants like where they live. Resources for their children are within walking distance. Their streets are quiet and relatively safe: “No one bothers you here,” multiple tenants say.

After the trial, they’re hoping to relocate nearby.

But even if they’re each awarded damages, they’re not sure if that will be feasible. The pickings are slim, literally: Those skinny new builds with “For Sale” signs in the front yard with QR codes that lead to websites that say things like “Modern and sleek” and “A minimalist’s dream come true” are everywhere. Two of them on Bry-

Properties that have been torn down since the inheritance

Vacant land parcel

than 1,300 square feet.

“It’s still a good community,” Page says. “But they strong-armed some folks up outta here, didn’t they, T?”

T is Page’s neighbor, a lifelong resident of Bryant Street who happens to be strolling by at this moment. She squints and nods, then keeps walking.

Page looks at the skinny houses down the street. She’s been wondering about other properties Lorenzo Sr. owned in the area.

“There’s a lot that I didn’t know before this,” Page says. “Who knew that your landlord was supposed to provide heat? I didn’t know that was a part of the landlord-tenant relationship.”

“I’m a fighter,” she says. “We’re gonna do this in a cordial way and we’re gonna move forward. But what about the people who aren’t fighters? What about the people who are scared to say no?”

The INDY visited all 14 properties that Lorenzo Sr. left his children in the Triangle.

One property is in Southeast Raleigh: a one-story brick house that looks reasonably well maintained but that the City of

According to court records, around the same time that Nash, Panzarella, Davis, Smith, and Page got sued last summer, tenants on Atlantic and Colfax Streets did, too.

Two summary ejectment complaints were issued to unnamed occupants at 2537 and 2533 Atlantic Street. A third was issued to a named tenant, Alvaro Herndandez, at 1210 Colfax Street.

Upon visiting the properties in April of this year, the INDY found empty lots. On Atlantic Street, grass has started to fill in the rectangular dirt plots where the houses stood. Toward the back of the site, there’s a pile of wood fragments with personal belongings mixed in, including a floral pillowcase, two striped shirts, a broken lampshade, and a Charles Mingus poster that’s still attached to a piece of a wall. A neighbor on his way to work told the INDY that the houses were torn down about six months ago, but were occupied as of a few years ago.

On Colfax Street, there’s a similar scene: dirt plot, grass, furniture, and children’s toys.

When the INDY knocked on the door of a skinny new build around the block, a woman answered and asked, “Are you staying in an Airbnb, too?”

A Colfax Street resident had more information. Through a crack in her screen door, she said that the house at 1210 had been demolished two or three months ago. She said a Hispanic family had lived there before, but she didn’t know them.

“One day,” she says, “they were just gone.” W

for human stopped by said they that it’s they pay

Hillsborough: a fallneighborHillsborough simihabitation” INDY that in at least

Of those, Panzarella, live. One Justice Street seven are Durham, Sr. left his vacant parcel. two houses the propof code and liens. around the Panzarella, Davis, summer, tenStreets did, too. complaints were 2537 and was issued Herndandez, at April of lots. started to where the the site, with perincluding a floa broken Mingus poster a wall. A the INDY about six of a few similar scene: children’s the door block, a you stay-

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N E W S Raleigh

Under Pressure

Development forces and higher taxes are threatening to displace homeowners in Southeast Raleigh.

BY GREG CHILDRESS backtalk@indyweek.com

On a near-perfect spring afternoon, a crowd of mostly Black retirees and senior citizens poured into Martin Street Baptist Church in Southeast Raleigh to learn about strategies to lower property taxes through Wake County’s appeals process. In their neighborhoods, higher property values have brought higher property taxes. That, in turn, has made it difficult for residents on fixed incomes to make ends meet.

Lemuel Sherman traveled across town from the city’s west side with wife, Barbara. “To see if there’s an opportunity for a property tax reduction,” Sherman says, when asked what brought him to the church.

“The fact that they [taxes] go up every four years, regardless—for seniors and nonworking people there’s no moratorium or way to stop that every-four-year increase.”

The Shermans were typical of the residents who attended the workshop led by the Wake County Property Tax Working Group, which called the meeting to offer residents an opportunity to appeal property taxes they believe are unfair. The workshop came just weeks before the May 15 deadline to appeal tax appraisals in North Carolina.

The Working Group is made up of community members and organizations that include Men of Southeast Raleigh, Raleigh Village East, and the Biltmore Hills Neighborhood Association with support from the Housing Coalition.

It was widely reported in January that Wake County property values increased by 56 percent between 2020 and 2024, which is the county’s most recent four-year revaluation cycle. It was the largest such increase ever recorded.

Pressures mount for residents of historically Black neighborhoods

Higher valuation and the ensuing higher taxes in Raleigh’s historically Black neighborhoods, particularly those near downtown facing development pressure from investors, are raising tough questions about what some residents believe is a systemically flawed method to value property.

In some cases, longtime residents in smaller homes pay more in taxes because their property carries a higher value than nearby new and larger homes, which sell for more.

And what’s happening in Raleigh is not unusual. Across the country, homes in Black neighborhoods are often underappraised for sale or refinancing, but overassessed for property tax purposes.

“What often happens is the older homes, and especially the smaller homes, get overvalued, they get pushed up, and so they end up being overassessed and paying more of the burden of property taxes,” says Hudson Vaughan, who works for the North Carolina Housing Coalition’s Community Justice Collaborative, a project that supports historically Black communities in fights against displacement and gentrification.

Racism is often cited as the cause when homes in Black neighborhoods are underappraised for sale or refinancing.

“Nationwide, when you have your home appraised for bank purposes, or to get a loan, there’s been so much documentation of Black people whose appraisal comes back and the home is way underappraised,” Vaughan says. “If they take down the pic-

tures in their house and make it a white family to pose, then they get a higher appraisal value.”

A 2022 report by the Brookings Institution using Federal Housing Finance Agency data found that Black neighborhoods are valued 21 percent to 23 percent below what their valuations would be in nonBlack neighborhoods. It estimates that the cost of devaluation across the 113 metro areas in the United States with at least one majority-Black neighborhood is approximately $162 billion.

Tax inequities have big impact

Vaughan, who is white, knows about the inequities rendered by the property valuation process. In the historically Black Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill, where Vaughan lives, his advocacy work uncovered substantial tax inequities between long-term Black residents and wealthy investors who were developing large student rental properties in the neighborhood.

The homes of Northside’s 100 longest-term Black residents had been so severely overassessed that successful appeals reduced their property taxes by $500,000 collectively, Vaughan says.

Meanwhile, he says, investors nearby had been significantly underassessed, so much so that when he appealed their property valuations, the investors began to see $1,000 and $2,000 increases in property valuations.

Vaughan brought receipts from Chapel Hill, sharing information with residents that showed a Black-owned 2,200-squarefoot, three-bedroom home built in 1945 being appraised for tax value at $425,800 while a 3,400-square-foot, six-bedroom investor-owned student rental in the same neighborhood was appraised at $418,100.

Similar inequities are occurring in Raleigh and across the state, Vaughan says.

“There were definitely some folks who we suggested don’t have a strong case based on comparable sales, but there are a lot of folks planning to proceed with appeals,” Vaughan says, referring to workshop participants.

Vaughan cited another “strong example” of tax inequity on East Hargett Street in Raleigh where a 1,700-square-foot home is assessed at $750,000, even though the comparable sales of newer homes around it sold in the $500,000–$600,000 range.

“In fact, the only homes that sold for over $700,000 were right across the street, and they were three-story modern houses that all sold for $800,000 but were valued

New construction like this in Southeast Raleigh has helped cause property values and taxes to soar for many long-term residents. PHOTO BY ANTHONY POPE, MEN OF SOUTHEAST RALEIGH

in the $700s just like hers [the owner’s],” Vaughan says, “so her house, based on comparable sales, is $200,000 to $250,000 overvalued.”

In addition, a house down the street from the East Hargett Street home is valued at $600,000, Vaughan says, but sold for $650,000. It’s been completely renovated and is larger but was appraised for $100,000 less, he says.

Vaughan acknowledged the East Hargett Street valuation is not typical. What is more typical in neighborhoods such as the city’s South Park, College Park, and others near downtown, he says, is the overvaluation of smaller, older homes by $50,000 to $100,000. The amount depends on the condition of the homes, land inflation, and other factors, Vaughan says.

Anthony Pope, who leads the Men of Southeast Raleigh, lives in a small, stonefront house on South Swain Street that his mother purchased for about $48,000 in the mid-1980s.

Pope says his mother paid about $400 in property taxes in 1986. Taxes have steadily increased, Pope says, since he moved into the house in 2010 after his mother’s death. He is now paying nearly $4,000 per year in taxes.

“I haven’t done anything to it [the house] since I renovated the inside back in 2010,” Pope says.

The tax increases are the “direct result” of several expensive, new housing developments that have sprouted up around him, he says, which include several town houses with asking prices of more than $1 million.

“That’s happening not only on my street but all over Southeast Raleigh,” Pope says. “These developers are coming in, buying up property, and we’re being forced out or taxed out because the taxes have gotten so high that people can’t afford to pay them.”

Identifying causes and possible solutions

Vaughan concluded in a recent study entitled “Are North Carolina Property Taxes Fair and Equitable?” that the property valuations in the Northside community, where he lives, were not the result of “purposeful discrimination, individual mistake, or assessment malpractice but a systemic error following an approach to mass assessment common across the country that lends itself to inequity.”

“The county had, in fact, met basic sales ratio requirements and matched neighborhood averages to qualified comparable sales,” he wrote. “But things had still somehow gone awry.”

There was not one easily identified problem, Vaughan said, but several issues came to light in the process:

• Attention hadn’t been paid to the variations of the neighborhood’s zoning restrictions and limitations.

• Houses built in the 1920s without major renovations were being compared to much bigger homes built or renovated in the last 20 years.

• Neighborhood delineations, which help determine land values, combined disparate property ages and types and yet divided the community in ways that separated off relevant sales that showed the range of the housing market. As a result, land values had been set for properties at higher amounts than some of the neighborhood home sales, even those in which the property value was clearly more than just the land itself.

• Data on many homes was inaccurate, especially on investor homes featuring work completed without permits.

• Averages and medians had been overutilized, squeezing assessed values to the middle. There were fewer appeals from residents of low-wealth historically Black neighborhoods, which might have contributed to the lack of recognition to the detailed differences within the community.

Property tax inequities can be traced to the systems used to place values on property, Vaughan says.

“It’s absolutely a problem with the tools itself, and I think that’s really been clear,” Vaughan says. “It’s not like a bad actor in the system. I mean, there probably are people who do it more deliberately, but in my experience, especially in counties like Wake, they actually do a lot that’s progressive in how they try to do the assessment well.” Vaughan recommends that the state increase the Department of Revenue’s ability to conduct oversight and accountability over county property taxation and to reduce the number of years between revaluations. Some counties conduct them every eight years.

“The housing market changes a lot over the course of eight years, even in rural counties,” Vaughan wrote in his study. “Infrequent reassessments tend to benefit property owners with rapidly rising values, as their market values rise each year while their assessed value remains the same until a reassessment year. Meanwhile, property owners with more stagnant values end up carrying the heavier burden of taxes. It should not be a surprise that this heavier burden most often falls on lower-income and minority communities.” W

This story originally published online at NC Newsline.

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Counting the Cost

As inflation stalls, high prices are affecting local restaurant owners.

BY ALEXANDRIA DEROSSET arts@indyweek.com

Restaurant owners in Chapel Hill are feeling the strain as they grapple with higher prices on food and supplies in the wake of a high-inflation period. Despite efforts by the Federal Reserve Bank, inflation has been slow to drop to pre-pandemic levels.

For Vimala Rajendran, owner of Vimala’s Curryblossom Café, higher costs are making it harder to operate her restaurant.

“As a result of the economic downturn at this time, we are not making a profit. We’re having a hard time making all our payments and bills,” Rajendran says.

Despite low unemployment rates, high job creation, and wage growth, a recent period of high inflation spurred by the pandemic has left prices higher than consumers would like.

“Even though inflation is slowing, which means that the rate of change is slowing, prices are still a lot higher

than they were four years ago,” says Gerald Cohen, chief economist at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. The Kenan Institute looks for solutions to economic issues and promotes private enterprise.

Inflation is a reaction to changes in supply and demand. It happens when goods and services become more expensive. In a healthy economy, a little bit of inflation is normal. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York tries to keep inflation around 2 percent each year.

“Inflation is the change in prices,” Cohen says.

Inflation peaked in June 2022, at 7.1 percent, according to a well-known measure of inflation called the personal consumption expenditures price index. Since then, inflation has declined and is holding steady at about 3 percent.

Unlike gas prices, which move up and down rapidly, lower inflation rates don’t necessarily mean that prices will go back down on most consumer goods. Instead,

lower inflation means prices will continue to rise but at a slower rate, Cohen says.

Rising costs of food and supplies, like takeout containers, mean that restaurant owners are making less money. To offset higher costs, owners like John Toogood are raising prices.

“[Basic commodities] came down a dollar or two, but they didn’t come down $10, and that’s when you say, ‘I gotta raise prices,’” Toogood says. Toogood is the owner of the Bread Shop in Pittsboro and Merritt’s Grill in Chapel Hill.

Toogood supplied Merritt’s, an iconic Chapel Hill restaurant known for its BLTs, with bread from his bakery for over 10 years before buying the sandwich restaurant in 2022.

Since 2022, Toogood has seen prices on bacon, bread, and eggs increase drastically. Prices on bags of flour increased from about $13 per bag in 2022 to around $25 per bag in 2024, he said. To compensate, he raised the price of loaves by $1 each.

“They’re only $3 or $4 per loaf, so you add $1 to that …” Toogood says.

Restaurant owners like Toogood are trying to find a balance between raising prices enough to make a profit without losing customers. At Merritt’s, Toogood is trying to provide better customer service to keep people coming back.

“If we give them more service and they have a better experience, then [customers] will be willing to pay a little bit more so that we can make that profit,” Toogood says.

But consumers are finding their paychecks cover less than they did two years ago.

“I try not to eat out as much as I used to, I try to buy less at the grocery store for the week. It’s really how I budget,” says Alyssa Custer, a 22-year-old living in Chapel Hill.

Custer, who is a student at Wake Technical Community College and a server at Carolina Brewery, says she worries about making enough to cover her costs of living.

“It’s really hard just serving and paying rent [and for] college,” Custer says. “That’s what makes me nervous [about] being able to afford things.”

Ideally, wages will rise alongside inflation so employees can afford to keep their jobs, Cohen, the economist, says.

Some employers, like Rajendran at Vimala’s, have

Vimala Rajendran, owner of Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe.

PHOTO BY JENNIFER TRAN

raised their employees’ wages to keep up with inflation.

“We have increased the wages of all the workers. So our payroll is higher, and our cost of goods is higher,” Rajendran says.

She pays her workers $18 to $20 per hour, plus tips. In Orange County, where Chapel Hill is located, the living wage is $17.65 per hour as of January. In 2023, it was $16.60 per hour. The living wage is calculated by the nonprofit Orange County Living Wage, which recognizes employers who pay a living wage.

“Before COVID, they were at $10, $11 [per hour], but now, just to get people in the door, it’s moved up to minimum $13 [per hour] up to $22–$25 per hour,” Toogood says.

One of the main ways to measure the health of the American economy is through consumer spending.

“If consumers stop spending, our economic health will fall,” says Michelle LaRoche, a business journalism professor at UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Consumers haven’t stopped spending, but they’re putting more on their credit cards, according to recent data from the Fed. Between the end of the year in 2022 and the end of the year in 2023, credit card debt increased by $143 billion to $1.13 trillion. Credit card debt has been on the rise since 2021. On its own, this isn’t necessarily a problem. Credit cards act as short-term loans, allowing customers to pay for their purchases at a later time.

For Rajendran, recent price spikes have forced her to start putting business expenses on a credit card and paying them off at a later date.

“We’ve incurred some debts along the way because our expenses have surpassed our income,” Rajendran said. “We have had to, on occasion, pay our rent with a credit card or buy goods at some suppliers with a credit card.”

Vimala’s opened in 2010. Since 2020, the restaurant’s business has dropped by about 50 percent. Prior to that, expenses like rent and sales tax were paid up front, Rajendran says.

“Typically, at some point, [people] run out of room to borrow, so they slow down their spending. But what’s not happening is the slowing down the spending part,” LaRoche says.

Instead of slowing down their spending, consumers are putting more onto credit cards.

More debt isn’t always a bad thing. In some cases, taking on more debt, like tak-

ing out a loan to buy a new car, is a sign of economic stability, Cohen says.

“Now the question is are people taking on too much debt? That’s a harder question to answer,” Cohen says.

When consumers cannot or do not pay their monthly credit card bills on time, the account becomes delinquent. The data from the Fed, which was released in February, shows credit card delinquencies are on the rise. Serious delinquencies, when a credit card bill is 90 days overdue, increased to 6.36 percent of all credit card debt in 2023. In 2022, 4.01 percent of credit card debt was because of serious delinquency, according to the report.

“Those delinquency ratios are a flashing yellow,” Cohen says.

Rising delinquency rates may indicate that people have taken on more debt than they can pay off and will have to cut or slow spending. When that happens, consumers cut back on expenses like going to the movies or going out to eat.

Younger consumers and low-income consumers are moving into serious delinquency at higher rates than middle-aged and middle- to upper-income consumers, according to the data.

Banks are also affected by higher delinquency rates because they do not receive the money they have loaned out to customers. When that happens, banks have less money available to give new loans to people who are starting businesses, looking to buy a house, or hire new employees.

“We’re starting to see delinquency rates at levels that kind of make me worried about a recession,” Cohen says.

Economists have been predicting a recession since 2023, after inflation spiked. But, as of now, the economic downturn has not come. Consumers have been feeling more positive about the economy since the end of 2023 and more people are planning to splurge in the coming months, according to data from McKinsey and Company.

Shifts in supply and demand that lead to price changes cause inflation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused factory closures and shipping delays that severely interrupted supply chains.

When this happened, companies in the United States, like retailers, paid manufacturers more to ensure they would receive the goods. To cover the extra costs, retailers started charging customers more.

“We saw some of the inflation happen later than people were expecting into 2021 and 2022 because there was a bit of a lag in the price competition that occurred because of the supply chain

problems,” LaRoche says.

Reduced supply during the pandemic was met with increased demand. Some consumers had extra cash to spend, as quarantine and remote work meant forgoing daily coffees, commutes, and dry cleaning costs, LaRoche says.

For restaurant owners, one product that became especially important was takeout containers.

“We were doing takeout and no dining in the place, which meant we were getting more containers,” Rajendran of Vimala’s says.

In the past four years the cost of paper takeout containers has more than doubled, Rajendran says. She added a 5 percent surcharge on takeout orders to cover the cost.

To bring supply and demand back into balance and manage inflation, the Fed has one option: change interest rates.

Interest rates are how much it costs to borrow money. When repaying a loan, customers must pay the cost of the loan plus the cost of the interest.

When interest rates are higher, it costs consumers more to repay loans they have taken out.

“The Fed [was] raising interest rates. They’re trying to slow demand by making [large purchases] less affordable,” Cohen, the economist, says.

When fewer people borrow money to buy houses or cars because of higher interest rates, demand slows down and the economy has a chance to level out.

If the Fed brings interest rates down too

soon, inflation will shoot back up. Interest rates have hovered around 5 percent since July, which is higher than they have been since 2007. The Fed said that it does not plan on cutting interest rates until inflation starts to decline, possibly later this year.

“I think it’s going to still take some time,” Cohen says.

In the meantime, restaurant owners are looking for different ways to increase profits and combat high costs. At Merritt’s, Toogood has been working on getting more people through the doors.

“The way we’ve [tried to] counteract inflation [is] to increase our volume so that there’s still a little bit of profit at the end,” Toogood said.

After taking over in 2022, he has prioritized getting sandwiches to customers faster and adding more seating and parking. Despite an increase in volume, Toogood anticipates having to raise prices again to keep up with inflation, he says.

“We probably haven’t raised prices enough. We may have to do that again, and I dread that,” Toogood says.

At Vimala’s, Rajendran is buying less to save money as business has slowed since the pandemic.

“For about four years, business has dropped,” she says. “It’s now slowly trying to come up.” W

This story was originally published by UNC Media Hub. Comment on it at arts@ indyweek.com.

John Toogood sits outside his restaurant, Merritt’s Grill, in Chapel Hill. The restaurant, among others, faces rising costs for food and services due to inflation. PHOTO BY JENNIFER TRAN

Flying High

On “All Infinite,” Kooley High leans into cosmic themes and reaches new altitudes.

BY RYAN COCCA music@indyweek.com

Alongside the peace and wisdom, it’s fair to wonder if the elevated, higher plane from which Kooley High approached their new album, All Infinite, might have brought a certain amount of clairvoyance, too.

How else to explain the precise historical moment in rap music that their spiritually minded sixth album was dropped into, one characterized (even more than usual) by the exact kind of childish antagonism and superficial clout-chasing that Kooley has long stood as an alternative to? In aligning their release with the Jerry Springer–esque cultural meltdown that followed Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” diss—one marked by debates about rappers’ parenting abilities and what cosmetic surgeries they may or may not have had—the longtime Raleigh rap crew couldn’t have conjured a better foil if they’d tried.

On the surface at least, the first LP from Kooley in five years isn’t a jarring departure from the smooth, relatable music that the group’s fans have come to expect. The usual echoes and sensibilities of lyrically minded, golden-era hip-hop are still there (as Phonte once said: “Dope beats, dope rhymes … this hip-hop ain’t really that hard, man”), as is the group’s preoccupation with air travel and heights. Where past albums like Heights and David Thompson called to mind flying through the air, All Infinite’s artwork locates the quintet in the dizzying altitudes of outer space.

And yet, Kooley has never sounded quite like this.

Whether sourcing beats from the likes

of Eric G., Khrysis, and Tecknowledgy, sharing verses with fellow North Carolinians like Rapsody, Mez, and Median, or even, as on 2018’s Never Come Down, getting executive production from 9th Wonder himself, Kooley High’s music has always been a communal affair—many hands making light work. On All Infinite, they invert the blueprint, tearing things down to the studs: no vocal features, no famous executive producer or Statik Selektah remixes, not even their own talented in-house producers Sinopsis and Foolery, with every beat on the album coming from Atlanta-based producer Tuamie.

That may sound more like the recipe for a halfhearted handout of loosies than a triumphant back-from-hiatus album, but miraculously, cosmically, the final product is among Kooley’s strongest to date. Much of the credit belongs to Tuamie, whose sonic foundation varies enough to keep things interesting, without straying from the album’s otherworldly tone, from the wistful notes of “Keep It Cool” to the eerie, somersaulting plucked strings on standout track “Get Up.”

Also helping the cause is All Infinite’s structure, which leans more overtly into a core set of themes than a Kooley album ever has, most notably through periodic interludes that guide the proceedings. In clips, comedians Norm Macdonald and Pete Holmes talk about the inevitability of death and the insanity of planetary life. Emcees Tab-One and Charlie Smarts pay tribute to fallen hip-hop legends, and reflect on the need to lean on others. Even

Tuamie is given room to speak, with solo instrumental moments like “The Color Red” and emotive outros on “Energy” and “Hot Outside.” It’s a subtle sleight of hand that makes Kooley’s least-crowded album still feel distinctly like the work of a team.

But where All Infinite most diverges from K-High albums before it—and even more so, from the rap music of the moment— is in the words and subject matter of Tab and Charlie, whose continued evolution is on full display. Weighty, universal topics stretch across multiple songs, from fatherhood and generational legacy (“The Freshest,” “Love Foreverer”) to mortality and endlessness (“Other Side,” “Energy”). Even on songs where some of the usual, lighter Kooley fare of boasting and lyrical showmanship carries the day, as on “Energy,” the album’s expansive, cosmic themes are never far from mind: “We don’t believe the lies, you know the vibes / You don’t wanna see me fly, then close ya eyes / It’s no wonder that ya blind, you close ya mind / I know even when you die, the soul survives.”

Although these are some of the most concise, businesslike songs in the group’s

catalog—despite 18 tracks, Infinite clocks in at a tidy 49 minutes—not every word is loaded with meaning. Some of the album’s brightest ideas are diffused by a lack of focus, with sharp hooks appearing next to meandering lines that seem more motivated by rhyming itself than conveying a particular idea: “Get the party kickin’, or crackin’ / rising out the ocean like a kraken / shining with a flow you couldn’t soak up with a napkin.” But even this occasional lighthearted doodling is a gift as much as a curse: if songs sometimes don’t feel explored to their fullest extent, they also aren’t overtaken by extended, off-theme digressions either.

The outside-producer experiment, the shedding of guest vocalists, the tonal shift in content—it could all sound like a group unsure, in 2024, of exactly who they are. But the identity of Kooley High has never been about a specific sound as much as a resolute commitment to change, growth, and ascension. On All Infinite, Kooley continues to defy gravity. Fifteen-plus years, one departed founding member, and six albums later, they still ain’t dropped yet. W

WED 5/15

MUSIC

Jazz Jam Session 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

Minor Moon / Emma Geiger / Riggings 9 p.m. The Cave, Chapel Hill.

Wage War & Nothing More 5:30 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

The Weeks 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

STAGE

Improv Showcase

7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

The Lion King May 15–June 9, various times. DPAC, Durham

PAGE

Kristin Harmel: The Paris Daughter 5 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Storytime on the Roof with Durham County Library 10:30 a.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

THURS 5/16

FRI 5/17

MUSIC

Al Strong Presents Jazz on the Roof 7 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

HUNXHO 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Whoop 6 p.m. Lake Raleigh, Raleigh.

STAGE

Carolina Ballet: Cinderella May 16-19, various times. Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh.

SCREEN

Stars and Bars and Hot Dogs 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

PAGE

Alison B. Hart: April May June July 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

MUSIC

Ariel Pocock & Evan Ringel Sextet 7:30 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Cheekface 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham

Freight Train Blues 6:30 p.m. Carrboro Town Commons, Carrboro.

Pecos & the Rooftops 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

R&B Money Tour: Tank and Keri Hilson 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Sawyer Hill / Raue 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

STAGE

Blue Box Theatre Co. Presents: Titan Arum 7 p.m. May 17-19, Moonlight Stage Company, Raleigh.

Comedy Night: Paul Farahvar and Paul Olinger 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

The ComedyWorx Show Fridays at 8 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Grand Horizons May 17–June 1, various times. TR Studios, Raleigh.

The Harry Show Fridays at 10 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

SCREEN

NCMA Loves Anime: Belle 8 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

PAGE

Harlan Coben: Think Twice 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Carolina Ballet presents Cinderella May 16-19.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLINA BALLET

SAT 5/18 SUN 5/19

MUSIC

A Beautiful Noise Spring Concert 3 p.m. Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Durham.

Crones of Anarchy 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

Durham Blues & Brews Festival 5 p.m. Durham Central Park, Durham.

Fortune Factory Presents: Taurus Dance Party 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Jim Ketch Swingtet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Kristin Chenoweth with the North Carolina Symphony 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Mel Melton & The Wicked Mojos 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Tar Heel Troubadours: Paige King Johnson 7 p.m. North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh.

Tea Cup Gin 9 p.m. Speakeasy, Carrboro.

STAGE

Peter Pan 3 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

SCREEN

HUMP! Film Festival 7:30 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

PAGE

Jane S. Gabin: The Shortest Guide to College Admissions 2 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Lee Smith: Silver Alert 11 a.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro.

MUSIC

Six Sundays in Spring:

Marcus Anderson 5:30 p.m. E. Carroll Joyner Park, Raleigh.

Soen / Trope 7:30pm. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Triangle Blues Society 4 p.m. Speakeasy, Carrboro.

Young Medicine / Danny Blu 7:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

STAGE

Davis Dance Company Spring Recital 2024 3:30 and 6 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Miguel Gutierrez 4 p.m. American Dance Festival Scripps Studios, Durham.

PAGE

Poetry Series: Jessica Jacobs and Gary Phillips 2:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

MON 5/20

TUES 5/21

MUSIC

Monsoon 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Wild Child 8pm. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

MUSIC

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

Julia Holter 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Paul Cauthen 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Tim Smith 5 p.m. Speakeasy, Carrboro.

STAGE

Dancing with the Carolina Stars 6 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Miguel Gutierrez appears at American Dance Festival on May 19. PHOTO COURTESY OF AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL

C U LT U R E CA L

TUES 5/21

PAGE

Karen Booth: Swap and Smell the Roses 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Karey Harwood: Wake 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

WED 5/22

MUSIC

MIKE / 454 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Our Last Night 6:30 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

World Goth Day All-Vinyl Dance Party 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

SCREEN

NCMA Loves Anime: Lu Over the Wall 6 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

NCMA Loves Anime: The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl 8:30 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

PAGE

Luis A. Miranda Jr.: Relentless 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

THURS 5/23 FRI 5/24

MUSIC

Gregory Porter with The Baylor Project 7 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Megayacht / Hypnic Jerks 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

MUSIC

Joyner Lucas 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Keith Waters/Jon Metzger Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Nashville Nights Band 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Reik: 2024 Panorama

Tour 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Skating Polly 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Tim Wells & Les Bons Temps: Cajun Dance Party 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

STAGE

The ComedyWorx Show Fridays at 8 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

The Harry Show Fridays at 10 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

PAGE

Tim Kaine: Walk Ride Paddle, a Life Outside 7 p.m. Meredith College Jones Auditorium, Raleigh.

Gregory Porter performs with The Baylor Project at NCMA on May 23.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NCMA

MUSIC

BOSTON 168 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Christian James 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

House of Black Dance Party. 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

MOSS 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Onyx Club Boys 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham

Summerfest Opening Night: Tchaikovsky Spectacular 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

SCREEN

Jaws Fest 2024 7 p.m. May 25-26. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

MUSIC

Beloved Innerworlds 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Joseph Silvers and Hunter McDermut 11 a.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.

Sam Evian 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Six Sundays in Spring: The Magnificents 5:30 p.m. E. Carroll Joyner Park, Raleigh.

STAGE

Tye Tribbett and Friends 7:30 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

PAGE

Ken Wetherington 4 p.m. Golden Fig Books, Carrboro.

MUSIC

OnlyUs Media Presents: The BANK 7 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Stabbing / Internal Suffering 7:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

MUSIC

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

PAGE

Pete Candler: A Deeper

South 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Sam Evian performs at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro on Sunday, May 26.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

SU | DO | KU

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above. Difficulty level:

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above. Difficulty level: MEDIUM If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page or scan this QR code for a link. Best of luck, and have fun!

| DO | KU

© Puzzles by Pappocom

C L A S S I F I E D S

EMPLOYMENT

Clinical Scientist

Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc. seeks a Clinical Scientist (CS-KS) in Raleigh, NC to author clinical documentation mainly the Clinical Eval Reports including clinical section of regulatory authority requests. Telecommuting permitted. Reqs MS+1. $144,102-$147,208/yr. Email resumes to Hien.Nguyen@intusurg.com. Must ref job title & code in subj line.

Consulting/Principal Software Engineer

Consulting/Principal Software Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to provide assistance /input to management. Develop/lead large multifunctional development activities. Minimum of Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or rltd + 7 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required.

Certifications in Oracle & AWS Certified Solutions Architect required. Employee reports to LexisNexis USA office Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates should apply via following link: https://relx.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/ LexisNexisLegal/job/Raleigh-NC/ Consulting-Principal-Software-Engineer_R77078.

IT Professionals

IT Professionals: Cloud Systems Administrators are needed for our Cary, NC Office. May req. travel. Pls send resume, Cvr Ltr., & Sal. Req. to S9 Solutions LLC- 120 Preston Executive Drive, Ste. 207, Cary, NC, 27513.

IT Sr. Technical Specialist

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (Labcorp) in Durham, NC seeks a IT Sr. Technical Specialist to provide administration & ongoing support of ITSM ServiceNow tool for maintenance of Configuration Management Database (CMDB) & corresponding ITSM processes. Can work remote. Reqs BS+5yrs exp.; To apply, send resume to: labcorphold@labcorp.com; Ref #240327.

Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to perform research, design, software development assignments within specific software functional area or product line. Minimum of Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or rltd + 5 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. Employee reports to LexisNexis USA office Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates should apply via following link: https://relx.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/ LexisNexisLegal/job/Raleigh-NC/ Senior-Software-Engineer_R77135.

Software Engineer III

Software Engineer III sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to perform moderately difficult software design, research & development activities, & provide direct input into software system development project plans, schedules, methodology, across multiple software systems. Minimum of Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems or rltd + 2 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. Employee reports to LexisNexis USA office Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates should apply via following link: https://relx.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/ LexisNexisLegal/job/Raleigh-NC/ Software-Engineer-III_R77073

5/1/24 CROSSWORD SOLUTION