Introduction

The Great Seal of the State of North Carolina, bearing its motto, Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather Than (merely) to Seem.

The Town of Cary ranks in the top five of North Carolina cities for buying a used car; in the top five for real-estate markets nationwide; as the fifth-best town to raise families in North Carolina; as the lowest for cost-burdened homes in the country; and in the top-20 in safe-driving towns nationwide. Cary is first in North Carolina in income equality; it is the second safest town in North Carolina; and ranks high for livable mid-sized towns nationwide. We learned recently that Cary is the fifth safest city in the nation for trick-or-treating. [Editor's note: Unfortunately, the links in this paragraph are no longer active. Each link is to an article in the Cary Citizen, which, also unfortunately, is no longer active.]

A fuller listing of the Town's many awards and accomplishments can be found here.

Some of these accolades are actually important, and those responsible for achieving them should be recognized. But the fact that we live in a much-acclaimed jurisdiction must not overshadow the very real problems that we have. If we don't admit and address these problems, we will never fix them.

The pages on this site deal primarily, but not exclusively, with environmental problems that currently harm Cary. We touch on some other problems as well, and also make some respectful suggestions for official action. As always, we never point to a problem without suggesting a solution.

In the late 1950s, the United States (led by President Eisenhower) and the Soviet Union (headed by Nikita Khrushchev) were engaged in a nuclear arms race, with each country conducting atmospheric tests of atomic bombs, and later, hydrogen bombs. The fallout from these bombs inundated the atmosphere, and within a day of each successive test, its fallout was over the entire planet.

The fallout was Strontium-90, a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission. It circulated in the atmosphere and settled onto the earth where it fell on grass consumed by cows. The milk the cows produced was radioactive poison. My mother forbade 10-year-old me and my seven-year-old brother to drink milk. When we went to school, my mother pinned a note to my brother’s shirts that said, “This child DOES NOT drink milk.”

My mother did the unthinkable -- she renounced membership in the Republican Party (Eisenhower’s party, in which her family had been members since it was formed in 1854) and joined the Democratic Party. She held meetings in our house in Baltimore, attended by mothers who, like her, were outraged by our government’s poisoning of their babies’ bodies. She dragged me with her as she went door-to-door in our neighborhood, talking with mothers of young children and asking them to vote for the Democratic candidate.

Kennedy won the election, and negotiated a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. The atmospheric testing was halted.

I look around today, and see only a smattering of resistance to the destruction of our forests. The atmosphere becomes increasingly rotten, with carbon dioxide levels skyrocketing since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Wildfires in the West spew smoke and particulate matter eastward, and it inundates us, all the more so with a disappearing tree canopy to absorb the pollutants. Cary’s vehicle population increases by eight cars per day, and will not slow down that increase until 2050.

As a loser in two campaigns for a seat on Town Council, I've been through the wars. I've been on the forum circuit, and marvel at its futility. We candidates on stage are asked questions such as, "Cary has a serious affordable-housing problem. If elected, how would you solve it?" – And then are limited to 90 seconds to answer.

The absurdity of this exercise is exceeded only by the fact that this is just about the only way the 7% to 12% of the citizens who do vote in odd-year elections get the information they need to evaluate candidates.

I've reviewed extensively the websites of the three incumbents and the three challengers. In none do I read any sort of clear and cohesive statement of any of the problems Cary has, and of course no concrete plans of action to address them. I read only bland assertions of the most mundane intentions.

Verbs such as support, build, empower, maintain, share, advocate, work with, commit, spearhead, evaluate, focus, shape, advance, mitigate, encourage, champion, prioritize, ensure, deliver, envision, foster, devote, require, balance, and many similar words are aspirational at best, and don't show any specific and focused effort to work with colleagues to admit, address, and fix particular problems.

We offer this website as a basis for principled and effective discussion over how those who seek our votes intend to serve our interests.

2025 Campaign Websites
District A	Brittany Richards	Jennifer Bryson Robinson
District C	Bella Huang	Renee Miller
At-Large	Marjorie K. Eastman	Carissa Kohn-Johnson
Find Your Council District

This website is published with high hopes of raising the level of public discourse on critically important issues to Cary voters and their children.

~Respectfully submitted,

George McDowell
Citizen of Cary
George@BeautifyCary.org