By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Candidates, challengers and audience members sparred Tuesday about whether the City Council is doing enough to help Durham's inner-city neighborhoods, with complaints about recreation programs and street work taking center stage.

The exchange at an N.C. Central University forum produced a spirited defense of the city's work from Mayor Bill Bell, who said city foot-dragging about whether to build a new recreation center in the Walltown neighborhood ended on his watch.

It also saw Bell, Ward 1 incumbent Cora Cole-McFadden and Ward 3 incumbent Mike Woodard lock horns with former Councilwoman Jackie Wagstaff -- the mother of Ward 1 challenger Donald Hughes -- about why street and sidewalk repairs along Fayetteville Street aren't further along.

Wagstaff said conditions in the corridor are "nothing to be proud about" when compared to those in other Triangle college commercial districts like Ninth Street in Durham, Franklin Street in Chapel Hill and Hillsborough Street in Raleigh.

But Cole-McFadden said the council has been busy trying to fix "a lot of stuff that happened before" she and Bell took office in 2001. Cole-McFadden beat Wagstaff in that year's Ward 1 election.

Woodard added that the council convinced voters to pass big street bonds in the 2005 and 2007 elections, and is now using the money to catch up on paving work that was neglected in the late 1990s.

"What did the prior council do?" Cole-McFadden said, referring to the group Wagstaff served with.

"It never came before us," Wagstaff answered. "We were too busy trying to take care of the 'hood."

Bell, meanwhile, said the city is assembling plans for a larger renovation of the Fayetteville Street corridor's streetscape. He also took credit for recruiting, before he became mayor, the Food Lion grocery that serves the neighborhood.

He added that community rehabilitation efforts always have a long lead time, and that challengers have the luxury of crying doom and gloom.

"These guys will tell you anything, because they haven't been there, and they haven't done that," Bell said, making it clear he was taking in all three council challengers and mayoral candidate Steven Williams.

Hughes accused the council of do-nothingism. "A combined 45 years of experience, and all the mayor can say is we'll just wait and see," he said. "We need new leadership for Durham."

Williams, a Walltown native, said the city's former reluctance to build the recreation center probably cost lives. "I lost a lot of people in Walltown because we didn't have a community center, to crime, death and murder."

He also joined audience member Anita Keith-Foust in criticizing the council for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build the new skateboard park near Durham Central Park.

But Woodard and Ward 2 incumbent Howard Clement joined Cole-McFadden in noting that plans for the skateboard process grew out of lobbying by Durham youth. Woodard also joined Bell in saying the current council had stepped up on Walltown.

He noted he and other members of a citizen panel that shaped the city's 2005 bond package that included the Walltown center "over the objections" of many of their colleagues. They also earmarked money for the conversion of the former Holton Middle School, off Driver Street, into a combination vocational school, clinic and recreation center.

Ward 2 challenger Matt Drew and Ward 3 challenger Allan Polak had rough nights, mostly due to the audience.

Drew didn't answer to audience members' satisfaction when candidates were asked what they'd do to promote volunteerism by N.C. Central students. "Why are you waiting for the City Council to get you involved?" he asked. He added later that the council should scale back spending on non-essentials and focus its spending on core services like street paving.

The comments drew a rebuke from Keith-Foust. "That's not the right message for this audience," she told them. "You're saying the wrong stuff to us. We don't like it. Please stop it."

Polak as he has in a previous forum criticized Woodard for serving on the council while also working as an administrator at Duke University.