2016 NC Primary Voter Guide

William + Katie's 2016 NC Unaffiliated Primary Voter Guide

*Guide may also work for Republicans or Democrats?

Generally, we're pro-moderate, anti-incumbent; anti-negativity and pro-specific policy platforms and goals.  

POTUS:

D – Bernie Sanders

R – NOT TRUMP 

US SENATE:

D – Kevin Griffin (I really like this dude)

R – Paul Wright

NC GOVERNOR: 

D – [blank - no good candidates]

R – Patrick McCrory (yeah, the incumbent was less scary than the alternatives)

LT GOVERNOR:

D – [blank – no good candidates]

R – No Challangers

NC ATTORNEY GENERAL:

D – [blank – no good candidates]

R – Buck Newton  

NC COMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE

D – No Challangers

R – Andy Stevens

NC COMMISSIONER OF INSURANCE:

D – No Challagers

R – Mike Causey

NC COMMISSIONER OF LABOR

D – Charles Meeker 

R – No Challangers

NC SUPERINTENDANT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION:

D – Henrey Pankey

R – Mark Johnson

NC TREASURER:

D – Ron Elmer

R – No Challangers

ULI Panel "Rant"

The following are the notes prepared for my part on an April 2015 ULI panel in Raleigh to address the changing environment around marketing dwellings to Baby Boomers and Millennials:

Will Yadusky:

I was born 31 years ago, so I’m a full on Millennial.  

I do Acquisition and Development in the for-sale residential world.  I’ve been at Baker Residential for about a year and a half of about 8 years in the home biz.  We build sweet houses.  bakerresidential.com

I see my peers spending $225-375k depending on location but regardless of family status.  A few aim as low as $175-ish if they want to start with a lot of equity,  But mostly, it seems that the millennials who can’t afford $225k are content to stay renting and fairly few millennials can afford a down payment on a jumbo loan without Mommy and Daddy helping, yet.

I think kids are the deciding factor right now between whether folks younger than 36 are hot for the central business district vs aiming to buy in a more car-dependant location.  Most of my childless home-owning peers with whom i interact on the most regular basis live, like me, inside the beltline or within a mile or two of it...have to drive to work but are within walking distance of a grocery or drug store, and a pub or coffee shop.  Accordingly, I assume that I can’t really build new homes for millennials pre-kids anywhere but infill in Raleigh.  It’s incredibly tough to sell infill to a corporate land committee because it’s basically impossible to spread the overheads or justify the comps.  I could go into detail, but I’ll generally use the napkin math that most of the infill deals I’m looking at have the raw land cost so high that the profit margin is about 5% on a $600k house which means it’s a deal not worth doing at a price point millennials can’t afford, anyway.

BUT, builders can focus on Boomers who will “move down” to a $600k semi-custom master-down new home in an infill project and we childless millennials can buy one of the resales in Lakemont or Meredith Woods that our parents’ friends are leaving behind when we get them into a new 1.5 story.

At the same time, we builders can try to place the classic family buyer in the greenfield-ish projects that they seem to have flocked to since W.W.II.  

Family-Buyer Millennials offer some nuances that I think have been unseen in the family buyer for a while.  Here are four:  

1) A new type of location sensitive.  Some families are choosing to live just outside downtown (like the Tryon, Edward Mill, or Lynn Rd corridors), walk to groceries and coffee and drive 10 minutes to North Hills or Downtown, Other families are identifying exurban nuclei like Fuquay, Wake Forest, or Chapel Hill (even “old” Cary) to raise a family if they can still walk to a gym, drug store, pub or coffee shop.  It’s weird for a lot of us to think of infill projects in Clayton or Youngsville without laughing.  But only 15 years ago, when the last millennials were just being born, many of us would have laughed at the idea that by this time, literally thousands of houses at jumbo loan prices would be occupied along Kelly Rd/Green Level Road from Apex to RTP.

2) Unlike the Boomer generation that fostered the explosion of golf course communities that openly marked the economic success of a family unit, my generation is choosing to spend its housing allowance on engagement in and identification with social good.  There’s a lot of us 29 year old jackasses with multiple degrees wearing Tom’s shoes, driving our bio-deisel ‘80’s Mercedes to the Whole Foods for fair trade coffee with our adopted children on the way from our jobs at SAS to the non-profit we run on the side.  I don’t know if you’ve ever gone shopping for fair-trade, local, hybrid, organic children to adopt, but they’re not cheap.  If my fellow builders want us whipper-snappers to shell out for a 4 bedroom in souless suburbia, it better have some colloquial architecture, sweet trail access, untouched trees, historical sites, and topography, locally sourced sustainable building materials, and probably some solar in there somewhere.  An on-site farm would be a brilliant idea for our consciences and our kids’ upbringing.

3) Everybody is realizing that no matter how nice the smell of cut grass and fresh paint, that life is short and we have better things to do than winning “yard of the month”.  The preference for non-involvement in home care was once relegated to bachelorettes and retirees.  But Boomers, and Gen-Y both seem determined to spend money on pursuing consumables and experiences more exotic than replacing no-name air conditioners every 5 years, power washing vinyl every 6 months, re-caulking sink bowls to laminate vanities every year, replacing stained carpet in their first floor traffic areas every couple years, or adding french drains on their flat, compacted lot to keep water from standing against their slab  by their un-piped gutters.  Groups like packpurchase.com are making it easier to outsource maintenance if you want someone else to mow your half acre and clean your gutters.  But builders can “quit building shit” in the first place and eliminate a lot of the squeaky wheels or doors or drawers (as the case may be) by building durably and thoughtfully. We can also create HOA’s which include or offer exterior maintenance. It’s literally a copy and paste job to make any new community a maintenance-included community at this point.

4) Though, on the whole, most Gen X-ers seem content in production homes with mostly surficial options, every boomer I know who doesn’t live in a Del Web community already, and nearly all my millennial peers are hunting for uniquity and non-conformity in their housing.  Some are shopping for resale that was a tract house 50 years ago but has been or can be upfit or added onto.  A few are chasing the one of a kind lot-specific full-custom tear-down new construction or gutted remodel.  For us builders, the architectural challenge is immense.  How can we purchase and construct efficiently AND leave any room for much architectural variety?  The answer, I think, is in self-imposed anti-monotony standards, underbuilding the building envelope on one or more sides to allow for after-market plan revisions in the future, and podding out projects into less than 50-unit clusters of any single product offering.  Builders, like Baker, who employ those three practices are rewarded with above-market total prices and prices per square foot.

A quick note on Entitlments

                   

1) Municipalities have got to make “Low Impact Development” and per-lot stormwater devices easier to get approved…and to “bond over”.  I could go on.  But, if it was feasible, who wouldn’t rather have a plat note about maintaining a rain garden versus paying for an HOA that maintains a another trash-collecting lump and dump stormwater pit - I mean pond?

Those of us in Acq and Dev have to be sensitive to the fact that, because of stormwater regs, pretty much anything we plat in the Raleigh area anymore will have to have an HOA to maintain BMP’s indefinitely.  This means that what we entitle and/or build will have a multi-generational life span.  We MUST take this responsibility seriously.  

2) *In real life, (And Jonathan can attest to this), infill land is coming out of the subdivision factory with some quality control problems.  A site might come fresh out of the packaging with a champion tree where a fire hydrant ought to go, a parking space that’s a foot too narrow and a back deck that encroaches in a street yard buffer.  Raleigh, bless their hearts, is leading the pack on handling issues by offering approval paths for innovative land uses / re-uses that don’t quite fit into the pretty LDU / UDO box – more or less an established route for variances at a staff level.  Every jurisdiction needs staff to have some wiggle room without a quasi-judicial showdown.

Thanks.

Epic Mac and Cheese

To be epic with your mac and cheese, you will need at least:

13*9 glass Baking dish

6 qt Sauce pot (or larger)

1 hour of your life

*16oz Pasta (dry)

*3-4 cups Milk  + 2 sticks Butter + 1 tsp Salt

*1 tsp Dijon Mustard + 1 tsp Cayenne Pepper

*1 quart Half & Half + 1 stick Butter + 8 tsp Flour + 2 tsp Salt + 2 tsp Black Pepper

*5-6 cups Cheddar

*1.5-2 cups Bread Crumbs (seasoned)

Riffing on this recipe is good.  Eggs?  Might be nice.  More Flour?  Ok.  Weird Noodles?  Cool.  Bourbon BBQ Sauce?  Why Not.  Bacon?  Please.  Curry and Paprika?  Bring it on over.

To be epic with your mac and cheese, you will do something like this::

1. Preheat oven to 400°
2. Add Pasta, 3 cups Milk, 2 sticks Butter, 1 tsp Salt to Sauce pot.
1. Bring to simmer then turn to low
2. Cook 20-25 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Add some or all of the last cup of Milk if pasta becomes too thick before at least al-dente
4. When pasta is done, stir in 1 tsp Dijon and 1 tsp Cayenne Pepper and set to side in a bowl and keep warm.  
1. The pasta will be fairly delish as-is at this point - it will seem to be in a very thick/tacky alfredo sauce
3. Butter a 13*9 glass baking dish
4. In the pot, melt 1 stick Butter.  Thoroughly whisk in 2 tsp Salt, 2 tsp Black Pepper, 8 tsp Flour, 1 quart Half & Half.
1. Bring to boil for 2 minutes
2. Reduce to low, stirring steadily, for 10 minutes
3. Stir in 4 cups Cheese.
5. Combine Pasta and Cheese Sauce in the Sauce pot
6. Spread out the mix in the glass Baking dish and spread evenly.
1. Cover completely with 1-2 cups of the remaining Cheddar.
2. Top with 1-2 cups of Bread Crumbs as needed to create a 95% solid layer.
7. Bake 20 minutes or until top is toasted golden-brown.
8. Enjoy
1. Try to let it cool first.
2. Try to save some for the people you invited over.

Epic Banana Pudding

Did you volunteer to bring dessert to the church potluck?  The fire department BBQ?  Your new neighborhood's Friendsgiving meal?  Sweet!  Are you ready to party?  Sweet!  You are going to make this insane dish that's basically the gloriously twisted spawn of cheese cake, creme brulee, pudding, flan, whip-its, liquid lunch, and the loving intimacy of nursing a farm animal.  Credits to Kraft Foods and Paula Deen for believing in the combination of Whipped Cream and Cream Cheese.  Credits to the man who first looked at a cow and thought “Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples”.

Legal Disclaimer: If you are allergic to dairy, continued reading of this recipe can cause a reaction. You will likely become so impassioned that you will eat the paper.  Which you shouldn't because that’s gross.  So stop reading.  If you are going to a party where a fellow guest is remotely dairy sensitive - get them uninvited so the rest of the guests can still appreciate this!

NOTE: In the event that you thinking about taking this to a party where the attendees are a little more "Lamborghini" than they are "Carhart" you need to pay attention to the last paragraph called "Highbrow".

How many does this serve?  ≈15 polite party goers, ≈7 teenage boys,  ≈1 pregnant woman.

Here's what you need to party:

A -variable speed- Stand Mixer with Paddles or a Hand Mixer with Whisks (and a bowl).  

Three Rubber Spatulas

13*9 Cake or Baking Pan/Dish (if you have one with a lid, use that one.)

9*9 Cake or Baking Pan/Dish (if you have one with a lid, use that one.)

A GINORMOUS Measuring Cup.  Or a normal one if you also have a large mixing bowl.

5-10 bananas - to taste

2 * 14oz  cans of sweetened condensed milk + 2 * 8oz packs cream cheese

4 cups of milk

3 * 3.4 oz boxes of french vanilla pudding

Two of the Big Tubs of Cool Whip 

Two boxes of Nilla Wafers.  You could probably get away with one.  But you need a snack, so get two.

Here's what you do to party:

1. Let the Cool Whip and Cream Cheese sit out for a while.  Get it out of the fridge, put it on the counter, then go binge watch some TV for a while.  You are ready to roll when the cream cheese is room temperature. 

2. Line or encrust the bottom of the two pans/dishes with Nilla Wafers or Wafer crumble.  
1. If you want to get all artisan, you can try Graham Cracker or Oreo crumbles.  
3. Slice the bananas and layer them uniformly across the bottom of at least the the 13*9 pan.
1. Dice or smash the bananas if you want.  It’s about the flavor.
2. The second pan/dish is for you to eat out of the day after the party - if you have bananas left after the main dish is endowed, use them in the second dish.  If not, no worries.  You’ll still have an awesome pudding dish to keep all to yourself.
4. Pour/spatula the cans of sweetened condensed milk into your mixer’s bowl.
1. Afterward, lick the spatula or swirl it in your coffee or both - you’ve got to spatula two cans.
2. Set the mixer to the lowest or second lowest speed.
3. Add the room temperature cream cheese by the tablespoon-full
1. Adjust the mixers speed until any clumps of cream cheese are as small or smaller than peppercorns or dippin’ dots.
1. (<3mm if you are metric-savvy)
2. Lick the Spatula.
1. Post a selfie of that on instagram.
3. Reset the mixer to the slowest setting - keep it stirring.
5. In your ginormous measuring cup or other mixing bowl, pour in the 4 cups of milk.
1. Whip out your whisk.
1. Just your whisk.
2. Nope, just your actual whisk.  For whisking.
2. Empty all your pudding mix into the milk.
3. Whisk the mix until there are no clumps of note.
1. Put your hand upon your whisk.  When I whisk, you whisk, we whisk.
1. Just your whisk.
2. Nope, just your actual whisk.  For whisking.
6. Use your second rubber spatula to slowly empty the pudding mix bowl into the stirring condensed milk/cream cheese mix.
1. Lick the Spatula.
1. Post a selfie of that on instagram, also.
7. Pause the stirring and lift or set aside the mixer.
8. Spoon one of the tubs of Cool Whip into the nearly-epic mix in the mixing bowl.
1. Do a quality-control taste test on the whipped cream.  Aaah.  Just like whipits but without the buzz.
2. Mix and/or stir the new meta-mixture until it’s uniform in color.
9. Pause the stirring and lift or set aside the mixer.
10. Spoon ½ of the second tub of Cool Whip into the meta-mix in the mixing bowl.
1. Again, do a quality-control taste test on the whipped cream.  Leave some in your mustache for later.
2. Again, mix and/or stir the meta-mixture until it’s uniform in color.
11. Using the third rubber spatula, pour the meta-mix into the larger pan/dish with the cookies and bananas.  
1. Level the surface with the spatula.
2. Put the lid on it and put it in the fridge.
12. With the same spatula, empty the extra meta-mixture into the other pan/dish.
1. Level the surface with the spatula.
2. Put the lid on it and put it in the fridge.
13. Lick the Spatula.
1. Do not take any photos of this moment.  
1. Your apparent pleasure may not be appropriate for public viewing
1. This is a moment for epic banana pudding eaters only.

Highbrow: It happens.  You come from decent folk who like cream of mushroom in their casseroles and prefer their vegetables fried.  But then you up and went off to college with a bunch of people who discuss their european ski vacations and poo-poo Dostoyevski as “too accessible”.  Now you’re going to a party where there will be tipsy conversations about monetary policy and reviews of Chinese language boarding-pre-schools in Darjeeling and Tangiers.
You have to step up your game. You will have to transition your party pudding from Epic to Highbrow.  Don’t worry.  It’s not too hard if you have a few more minutes and a few more bucks - which you do thanks to your ivy league degree in medieval poetry.

1. This is now, officially, a recipe that’s been handed down from your royal european ancestry and served to several specific lower dignitaries like ambassadors and inventors who credit it with assuaging war mongers during the Renaissance and providing a blueprint for the development of antimalarial drugs.
2. You MUST use a gorgeous trifle bowl instead of a cake pan.
1. Heirloom gets Extra Points
2. Cut glass or Crystal beat plain glass.
3. Organic everything.
1. Except the pudding.
1. But don’t mention that.
4. No Nilla Wafers.  That way it’s gluten free and Vegetarian.
1. Sorry if you’re vegan.  
5. Make your own whipped cream.  Here’s how:
1. First off, do this in between steps 7 and 8 of the main recipe.
2. You’ll need to use your biggest mixing bowl - like the one in which you whipped up the pudding mix.
1. If you use that bowl, you don’t even have to wash it first.
3. You need 3 cups of heavy cream as cold as you can get it without it starting to ice up.
1. Pour the cream in the bowl and whisk it until it looks like whipped cream.
1. You can use the same whisk as used for the pudding mix
1. All prior whisk guidelines are still in effect.
2. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of granulated or confectioners’ sugar over the soft cream peaks.
1. Whisk to mix uniformly and until you can create a scale model of Everest.
3. Add 3 ounces of Grand Marnier.
1. You bought four mini-bottles but you get to drink the 4th one.
2. Whisk to mix uniformly.
3. Use a spoon to taste it.
1. If it needs more sugar or liquor, repeat steps “ii” or “iii”.
2. If it’s perfect, whisk in your rage.  ‘cause you love Dostoyevski and hate skiing.
6. Layer it.
1. 1” whipped cream bed
2. 1” banana dices
3. 1” pudding
4. 1” banana dices
5. 1” pudding
6. 1” whipped cream

ENJOY!  This is part of a complete breakfast, party, or pregnancy.  Refrigerate until you have to serve or leave for the party.
Don’t forget: You made enough so you have some extra for later!