When I wrote my “Fundamentals of Carrboro” blog post, I shared this Barack Obama-ism to point out how most of the things we want to see happen in Carrboro are under the control of the Town Council, and that while there are state and federal programs and resources that can be leveraged, none of them are any use to us if we don’t take votes at the local government level, and then follow up with more action after key votes.
As Damon Seils’ service as Mayor comes to a close, I believe that he has understood this better than anyone in Town, and that we will look back on his final term and consider our current elected board to be “the Consequential Council.”
I had a conversation with Damon when he was transitioning from Town Councilor to Mayor and he told me something like this: “we spend a lot of time listening to and receiving reports. That’s useful, but our time as a group is valuable, and I want us to use more of that time to make decisions that move the town forward.”
Key Votes of the Consequential Council
The 2021 to 2023 Town Council is a testament to the decision-oriented governing style he envisioned, and the results include:
The vote to approve the final plan and funding to construct the 203 Project, successfully completing a 34-year old quest to build a library in Carrboro
The votes to review key drafts and ultimately adopt the final Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan, the town’s first ever holistic policy document for the Town’s future
The vote to adopt a strategy to build affordable housing on Town-owned land
The votes to re-open public engagement on the long-stalled Bolin Creek Greenway alignment and approve the Creekside alignment as the path to take into engineering design and construction
The votes to bring forth the first Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) amendments to eliminate residential parking requirements and adjust Planned Unit Development (PUD) regulations
Any two of these votes would be major decisions in a single council term, but on top of these, the Town Council also managed to process and reach resolution a community discussion about the future of the Fidelity Street cemetery.
Perhaps most importantly, Mayor Seils’ governing approach demonstrated that the Town Council could make decisions with transparent processes in four months or less for multiple policy actions that overlapped, with the Greenway and parking policy actions being the most recent example.
A Referendum Election on Consequential Election and Swift, Timely Governing
As the fall election season began, three candidates emerged that are aligned with Mayor Seils’ decision-oriented governing approach and policy agenda, including one candidate and incumbent Town Councilor who both had significant, direct involvement in the Carrboro Connects plan. All three candidates were clear and unequivocal supports of the Town’s affordable housing strategy, the completion of the greenway, and the use of the Carrboro Connects plan to update our land use rules.
Two other candidates emerged who expressed concerns about stormwater and skepticism of or outright opposition to the votes and policy agenda described above.
Last night’s election was a clarion call for continuing the success of the Consequential Council, with the Carrboro Better Together candidates receiving roughly 80% of the votes in the election. Mayor-Elect Barbara Foushee, who has been a strong supporter of the initiatives described above, ran unopposed and received 97% support from Town residents.
The Opportunity for More Consequential Councils
With these results, Mayor-Elect Barbara Foushee and the incoming 2023 – 2025 Council should be feel a strong wind at their backs to continue the policy agenda that the 2021 – 2023 Council has developed and supported, and even more importantly, to feel confident that they can move forward with the speed that that the current council has proven can work in town.
If our new council is successful, we will be able to remember the 2021 – 2023 Town Council as the FIRST of MANY Consequential Councils. May we be so fortunate.
One More Consequential Opportunity: Taking Administrative Action On BCG That Reflects Broad Consensus
As the current council completes its last few meetings in November, there is one more opportunity to do something small but meaningful that can act as the cherry on top of the big ice cream sundae of their accomplishments.
Now that the Town Council has adopted the Creekside alignment for the Bolin Creek Greenway, there is no reason to wait to update regional plans to reflect this. The DCHC-MPO’s long-range Metropolitan Transportation Plan currently omits the Bolin Creek Greenway due to the gag order on discussing the project that persisted in recent years.
The DCHC-MPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan instead contains one of the alternative alignments that we now know only reached the plan because our engagement processes prior to Carrboro Connects privileged the opinions of wealthy, mostly older white homeowners over everyone else. Getting the BCG into the DCHC-MPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan is crucial because it is the gateway to federal funds that can help us complete the greenway.
The Town Council should instruct Town staff to immediately reach out to DCHC-MPO staff and request that they initiate an Administrative Modification of the MTP to remove the alternative Seawell School Rd alignment and to put the BCG Creekside alignment in the MTP instead.
We have had a 2021 Town Survey, the BCG engagement process, and now an election with pro-greenway and anti-greenway candidates that have all showed 70% to 80% support. There’s no need to have lengthy discussion or additional public engagement to make this change. I hope we can see this as a consent agenda item before December 5th.
Congratulations to Mayor-Elect Foushee, Councilor Posada, Councilor-Elect Fray and Councilor-Elect Merrill. We have high hopes for you and are grateful for your willingness to serve.
Back on May 16th, at long last, the Carrboro Town Council held a discussion about whether to remove parking requirements in Carrboro. As the Town Council finished its discussion, the schedule for next steps included bringing a revised draft of a parking proposal to the Town Council on June 20th. This did not happen; there were no parking policy items on the June 20th agenda.
In an effort to move the community discussion forward at a faster rate, I and another community member with professional urban planning expertise made an attempt at drafting alternative text that would convert parking minimums to parking maximums in Carrboro.
This is a DRAFT and is surely imperfect. However, it does attempt to:
Convert all minimums in the parking table to maximums, for all uses in Carrboro. For all but two uses, we did not change any quantity of parking listed in the table. The two where it was hard to write a maximum without expressing a number have the comment “qualitative adjustment”
Use a 1/2-mile buffer around the Chapel Hill Transit Short Range Plan services that operate five days per week as the “Transit Parking Area” where the change can be activated
Leave space for zoning district-driven triggers for parking maximums. However, we left this section of the code empty, as it appears commercial parking changes may be handled through a different process.
Address the possibility of car-share services such as Zipcar being allocated spaces outside of the standard parking maximums.
My anonymous colleague and I hope these are useful to the Town.
On Friday, March 24th, the Town of Carrboro released a Scope of Work (Town Scope) for the Bolin Creek Greenway (BCG) Public Input Process that several Carrboro residents, myself included, believe significantly ignores not only the will of the community, but also the direction and guidance of the majority of the Town Council at their February 14th work session.
As quick examples, on February 14th, several Carrboro Town Council members:
stressed the importance of reaching out to renters in this process.
mentioned interest in using a lottery approach like Raleigh or other methods to get statistically valid data from diverse populations
There is no mention of renters in the Town Scope, nor is there mention of the 2021 Town Survey which has statistically significant response rates due to its rigorous sampling approach. For more coverage of what is NOT in the scope, please read this coverage at Triangle Blog Blog. While the Town Scope is disappointing for what it leaves out, several items in the Town Scope will not help the town reach its goals, and are more likely to produce delays.
The Town Scope states as its purpose: “The goal is to engage the community in determining its vision and expectations for consideration of Phases 3 and 4 of the Bolin Creek Greenway.”
That is not what the community nor, in our opinion, the Town Council wants to see out of this process.
The community is not looking to develop a vision, or “determine expectations to consider” something. We are looking for the Town Council to vote to select an alignment for the Bolin Creek Greenway, and to start the process of building it as expeditiously as possible.
Seeing this fundamental misunderstanding of what the public and Council majority is seeking based on the content of the February 14th work session, we do not have any suggested edits for the Town Scope. Instead, we have drafted an entirely new one. We recommend that this new Community Scope should be used as a replacement for the Town’s draft, or at least as a starting point for new edits before a Scope of Work is finalized.
The Town Scope was drafted over six weeks. This alternate Scope of Work (Community Scope) was drafted in approximately 8 hours on March 25th and 26th.
The Community Scope is built on the following principles:
That a clear schedule, and a project management structure that reflects urgency and focus is respectful of the public’s time. Studies that have no defined schedule and do not identify decision points are wasteful of the public’s time, favor the time-privileged, and are by their nature inequitable.
That the opinions of town residents at large, and not the priorities of the most “plugged-in” citizens is what should guide Town Council decision making. The Community Scope is designed to reach out to residents instead of waiting for them to opt in, and aims to have participation match town demographics. Self-selective public participation in Carrboro has proven time and again to attract participation from wealthy residents, older residents, white residents and homeowners out of proportion with their presence in the Town population.
That there is more than enough existing data, analysis and other technical information available about the BCG, greenways, creeks, and other facilities in Chapel Hill and Carrboro to make a decisionabout which alignment to select, and to make a decision to proceed with design.
Many of the items raised in the Town Scope that involve additional analyses, engaging property owners, and other technical activities are unusual for a public involvement exercise. Checking on the current use of the rail corridor isn’t helping us evaluate the three alternatives in the 2009 plan; all that does is re-open the alternatives process to delay a decision by trying to add new choices to the mix.
As for reviewing regulations to see if rules may prohibit old designs from proceeding, this is inappropriate. The whole point of final design of any facility is to complete the design WITHIN various regulatory frameworks, with the National Environmental Policy Act as a tool to help the design of the facility ADAPT as it moves towards construction to be in harmony with local, state and federal regulations. Reviewing regulations and regulatory change without having a design team on hand to attempt to adjust the design of a facility to meet any new regulatory requirements is stacking the deck in favor of project cancellation and against thoughtful mitigation of any impacts that may arise
Below are links that Town Council, staff and community members can use to view the proposed scope and a recommended schedule associated with the scope of work.
This Community Scope can surely be improved – it was written very quickly! That said, we believe it represents an accurate representation of the type of actions that residents are looking for the Town to undertake, and we offer it as a resource for discussion as the Town Council works to refine their scope of work and begin this process.
The Carrboro Linear Parks Project has brought significant attention to the need to complete the Bolin Creek Greenway (BCG) in recent months, and it appears that the Town Council may take up a process to re-start the design and engineering of the BCG in 2023.
Given this development, and that one of the founding pillars of the Carrboro Connects plan is Racial Equity, I spent two evenings this week re-watching the last two major public meetings about the BCG from 2016, when the Chapel Hill High School-Homestead Path portion of the BCG was a hot topic in town.
A recent study in greater Boston, where white residents make up 80% of the population, found that over 95% of speakers at public meetings were white. How representative of Carrboro were the speakers at the last two BCG meetings? While I had impressions of those meetings in my mind, as I attended and spoke at both, I wanted to get hard data.
A Target for Representative Input: Carrboro Town Profile Some quick Carrboro stats from the 2020 Decennial Census and 2021 American Community Survey 5-Year estimates for the Carrboro population:
Renting/Owning a Home ▪ 58% of Carrboro residents are renters ▪ 42% are homeowners
Race/Ethnicity ▪ 12.8% of Carrboro residents are Hispanic/Latino ▪ 10.0% of Carrboro residents are Black ▪ 62.2% of Carrboro residents are White ▪ 8.8% of Carrboro residents are Asian ▪ Approximately 6% of Carrboro residents are multi-racial
Income (Earnings in Last 12 Months, 2021) ▪ 6% of Carrboro residents earned less than $25,000 ▪ 37.2% earned $25,000 to $49,999 ▪ 19.2% earned $50,000 to $74,999 ▪ 13.2% earned $75,000 to $99,999 24.2% earned $100,000 or more
Age ▪ 21% of Carrboro residents are age 19 or younger ▪ 24.5% are age 20 to 29 ▪ 16.1% are age 30 to 39 ▪ 11.8% are age 40 to 49 ▪ 11.5% are age 50 to 59 ▪ 8% are age 60 to 69 ▪ 7.1% are 70 and up
Looking at these stats, a representative set of speakers at a Town Council podium would be mostly renters, about 4 out of 10 would be non-white, primarily under age 40, and 60% would earn less than $75,000. What did I find?
Like Boston, Public Commenters in the Last Two Carrboro BCG Meetings Were Almost Entirely Wealthy Older White People
Example 1: BCG Public Comment Stats from May 10th, 2016
▪ All 16 of the speakers were white. I was able to confirm that 14 of the 16 identified as Non-Hispanic or Latino White on their voter registration. ▪ Using Anywho.com and Spokeo.com, I was able to get ages for all but one speaker. The average age of the speakers was 54, the median age was 57, and other than one 17- year-old, the youngest speaker was 41. 10 of the 16 speakers were over age 50. ▪ Using voter address data and the Orange County Land Records system, I learned that 100% of speakers were homeowners, and none were renters. ▪ Using Zillow.com and home value as a proxy for income/wealth, I learned that the median home value in 2022 for speakers is $635,700. Assuming a household could afford a $63,500 down payment, they would then need an annual household income of over $154,000 to buy such a home. ▪ Video documentation of this meeting is available here – Carrboro Granicus 5-10-2016 Town Council Meeting
Example 2: BCG Public Comment Stats from May 17th, 2016
▪ 7 of the 8 speakers were white, one identified as Latino in their voter registration. ▪ The average age of the speakers was again 54, the median age was 52, and the youngest speaker was 42. ▪ Again, 100% of speakers were homeowners, and none were renters. ▪ The median home value in 2022 for these 8 speakers is $662,650. ▪ Video documentation of this meeting is available here – Carrboro Granicus 5-17-2016Town Council Meeting
Three Interesting Tidbits
TIDBIT 1: The most fascinating finding for me in this exercise was that in both meetings, the person who lived in the most expensive house took the most time speaking at the podium!
No, I’m not kidding. In the May 10th meeting, it was a homeowner in a house currently valued at $1.07 million who spoke the longest, and on May 17th, the longest speaker spoke at the podium for 19 painful minutes. They have since moved away, but the house they lived in is presently valued at $1.8 million.
TIDBIT 2: Like in NCAA sports, there is apparently a NIMBY Transfer Portal! The lengthiest anti-greenway speaker at the May 10th meeting apparently got a great NIL deal or something, and moved out to La Quinta, CA, where they promptly joined La Quinta Residents for Responsible Development and recently killed a proposed wave pool resort near their home.
TIDBIT 3: In both meetings, multiple members of a single household spoke. On May 10th, 2016, there were two sets of adults who lived in the same home who spoke, as well as one mother/son pair who spoke. On May 17th, there was another pair of adults living in the same home who spoke. These multi-household-member-with-similar-opinion comments further narrow an already limited demographic pool.
Carrboro Must Stop Holding Public Comment Sessions Like This For a town that says it is making Racial Equity a foundational element of its decisionmaking going forward, it’s hard to think of a reason that this type of engagement process should continue at all.
It took me about 8 hours to document these two meetings and research the characteristics of the participants. While I am sure a labor-intensive effort could turn up meetings prior to the very intentional Carrboro Connects process that had slightly more representative socio-demographic voices from the town speaking at a podium, the truth is what is documented above is much more the status quo norm than any unusual occurrence.
People shouldn’t have to sit in a specific room at a certain time of day, and wait for hours to speak for 1-2 minutes in order for their input to matter. This is unfair to parents who put small children to bed in the early evening, people who work second shift, and those who depend on transit services that shut off for the night before a lengthy meeting may end.
People shouldn’t have to be subjected to an intimidating environment and be heckled when they speak a view not shared by others in the audience. I was yelled at while speaking in both of my comments, which you can see in the videos. Others I know who supported the CHHS path did not attend the second meeting because of the environment in the first meeting. We can’t let that happen the next time we discuss the BCG.
A more equitable public input process going forward might include a time period (one week?) prior to a Town Council decision point for residents to submit their demographics and videos or voice recordings up to 1 minute in length from their mobile phones, and then allow town staff to curate a representative set of remarks that reflects the broader community, and not just a few voices with a lot of free time, and lasts no longer than 10 minutes in a meeting setting.
The staff would also spend time presenting opinion data from larger efforts with higher data validity, like the 2021 Carrboro Community survey and the Carrboro Connects planning process.
Sharing data and insights from events out in the community that were attended by Town staff would also be valuable.
Stopping Doing the Wrong Things Is Still Progress Even If The Right Thing Isn’t Entirely Clear Yet Recently our neighbor Chapel Hill has had some pretty good breakthroughs under the facilitation of Canadian planner Jennifer Keesmat. With that in mind, I’d like to share a slide from former Vancouver chief planner Brent Toderian that I like.
I am sure that the question of “what does equitable engagement that supports racial equity look like in Carrboro?” will not be easy to answer, and that there will be some trial and error along the way.
But we know public comment as currently practiced in Town Council meetings in Carrboro is broken and built for privilege, just as it is in most other communities that use podium comments to shape decisions. Before we open another public discussion on the BCG, or any other important community issue, let’s find a way to eliminate or minimize the importance of podium comments in Town Council meetings, and jump from item #1 to item #4 in the slide above.
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On Saturday, August 27th, Carrboro Town staff hosted a tour of what will be Phase 1 of the Carrboro portion of the Morgan Creek Greenway.
Morgan Creek Greenway Overview
The Morgan Creek Greenway is a regional greenway connection across southern Chapel Hill and Carrboro with many years of planning behind it. Our family has ridden on the existing portion of the greenway for years and it is delightful. Here is a “sights and sounds” video I made in 2016. Notice what a safe and low-stress riding environment it is for children. (and people of all ages and cycling abilities)
The map below shows the existing sections of the Morgan Creek Greenway, which connects to Merritt’s Pasture, and the Fan Branch Trail, which connects the Morgan Creek Greenway to Southern Village. The red box near Smith Level Rd indicates where Phase 1 of the Carrboro portion of the greenway will be built.
Existing Morgan Creek Greenway in Purple, Carrboro Phase 1 in Red Box
The Carrboro Portion of the Morgan Creek Greenway
The Town put together a Morgan Creek Greenway Conceptual Master Plan Report(PDF) in 2010 to outline the possibilities of what full implementation could look like. The original master plan alignment is shown below. Again, the red box indicates Phase 1.
Morgan Creek Greenway Master Plan, Phase 1 in Red Box
Current Phase 1 Design Features
The greenway is currently at 30% design. This is a portion of the engineering process when many major things have been figured out, but there is still an opportunity for some adjustments to be made to the path of the greenway.
The current design proposes the following:
A sidewalk from Smith Level Road and public works drive leading from the street down to the greenway
The greenway proceeding on town property outside of the Public Works facility fence along the north side of the creek
Greenway will run to the left of the fence outside of Carrboro Public Works
A sidewalk access into the cul-de-sac at the bottom of Abbey Lane by Canterbury townhomes and another access point further up on Abbey Lane directly across from Friar Lane
A bridge (in maroon, at right below) over the small creek that passes under Public Works Drive
A bridge (in maroon, at left below) crossing Morgan Creek to the south side of the creek and a turnaround where the future Phase 2 section of the greenway will begin
Carrboro Portion of Morgan Creek Greenway: Phase 1
Design Analysis and Recommendations for Improvement in the Next Design Milestone
Overall, there’s a lot to like about this design. A bridge under Smith Level Road to the Chapel Hill section ensures this will be a Level of Traffic Stress 1 facility, suitable for children and senior citizens. This is the gold standard of bicycling safety and comfort in terms of protection from motor vehicles. The two different access points to Abbey Lane ensure that nobody has to significantly backtrack out of the neighborhood to go east or west when the full trail is built out.
The most important opportunity for improvement in this design is to include lighting as part of the trail.
The Frances Shetley bikeway in Carrboro is heavily used and beloved by neighbors, and one of the key reasons is that it has excellent lighting that makes it useful after dark. (see left side of trail picture below) There are even new lighting types that reduce or completely eliminate upward light pollution by ensuring the light emitted only goes down. The International Dark Sky association maintains a list of compliant lights that can make the Morgan Creek Greenway as useful as possible while meeting dark sky goals.
For the 60% and final design of this greenway, the town should ask the engineering team to incorporate dark-sky compliant lighting for the trail into the design.
Shetley Greenway with Lights Near Carrboro Elementary School
Improving Public Process: Notify Everyone
Finally, one place where the Town continues to use an outdated practice is to notify near neighborhoods of a project meeting, but not the broader community. I only learned about this event because we own property within a certain number of feet of the project location. But this is supposed to be a REGIONAL bike-ped project that is part of a multi-town plan in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
There’s no reason this project and commenting on how to improve it should be a privilege of nearby neighbors, and not the whole town, and even our neighbors in Chapel Hill who might use it as well. Numerous studies have shown how notifying homeowners in near neighborhoods around projects ultimately biases processes towards favoring participation among older, wealthier and whiter participants. And frankly, while the crowd of nearly 50 who attended were largely enthusiastic about the trail, and that was great to see – they also largely fit the narrow demographics of this outdated notification method. Given that 33% to 38% of the population of the Census tracts that would be served by the trail are home to non-white residents, we probably could have done better at reaching those residents.
Let’s work to broaden the conversation from here on out, shall we?
This blog post is an overview of a community conversation going on in Carrboro, NC, about the town’s plan to build affordable housing on town-owned land.
The Big Picture: Our Housing Challenge
But first: how expensive is it to live in Carrboro? We need to put things in perspective. Before we grapple with this question, watch this 90 second video from the Raleigh News and Observer yesterday with the volume on. Take a listen to Monique Edwards, who is narrating the scene at a showing for a house that is being sold for $260,000 in Raleigh.
Now that we’ve set the scene, here are the median listing prices for homes in our area from realtor.com as of February 23, 2022:
Let it sink in- the median home for sale in Carrboro is priced 85% higher than the one in this video.
Carrboro’s Strategy to Build Affordable Housing on Town-Owned Land
Here’s what’s happening: on February 8th, 2022, the Carrboro Town Council approved a strategy to create affordable housing on Town-owned land. This approval represents the culmination of several years of work, including:
Town Council adopting Affordable Housing Goals and Strategies (June 2014)
Updating those strategy documents (March 2015)
Affirming via the Town Attorney that Carrboro has the authority to provide affordable housing in general, and on town-on land specifically (February 2018)
The most recent step has been for the Town to review land it owns to see which sites are most suitable for building affordable housing. Building affordable homes on publicly owned land is a common strategy for municipalities in North Carolina, which lacks the legislative support for tools like rent control and inclusionary zoning that are available in other states.
The Town reviewed 47 parcels, and narrowed the list down to three sites with the most potential after excluding other sites in the list of 47 that were any of the following categories:
1) Within a conservation easement 2) Inside a Long-Term Interest Areas (WASMPBA) 3) No water or sewer nearby 4) Within 100 year floodplain 5) Within dedicated right-of-way 6) Parcel completely developed 7) Inside Rural Buffer zoning
After the Chapelboro story, email lists around town began receiving invitations to a meeting scheduled by neighbors of the Pathway Drive site on Saturday, February 19th. As someone with a long interest and professional background in these topics, I attended the meeting. About 50 to 75 people gathered in a cul-de-sac near the proposed Pathway Drive site to share their thoughts and concerns about the proposal with each other, and Councilmember Randee Haven O’Donnell took questions.
While I’m not going to spend time detailing lots of comments, I think it is fair to say that the majority of those in attendance were first and foremost trying to learn what is going on. Beyond that, I think it is also fair to say that there were a few individuals who think that affordable housing at the Pathway site represents a significant opportunity for the community, and several more who have concerns.
But while this story may be new to Carrboro, it has all the ingredients of a disheartening local government controversy that we see time and again in communities that vote in very high percentages for Democratic candidates in national elections.
A Local Story In a National Moment
I was going to write a few paragraphs about this, but then I remembered that the New York Times did a fabulous video on this recently. Start at the 4 minute mark, and go to 7:15. This is a better primer than anything I could write.
This topic has also been addressed in Richard Reeves’ book Dream Hoarders, where he takes a look at how anti-development activism locks lower income children out of better school systems, and limits social mobility:
“…homes near good elementary schools are more expensive: about two and a half times as much as those near the poorer-performing schools, according to an analysis by Jonathan Rothwell. But the gap is much wider in metropolitan areas with more restrictive zoning. ‘A change in permitted zoning from the most restrictive to the least restrictive would close at least 50% of the observed gap between the most unequal metropolitan area and the least, in terms of neighborhood inequality,” Rothwell finds. Loosening zoning regulations would reduce the housing cost gap and by extension narrow educational inequalities.”
So…how similar is this conversation we’re having in Carrboro to the national trend?
I don’t need to review how Carrboro votes in national election. And I think everyone is aware we have one of the top-rated school systems in North Carolina, and that McDougle Elementary and Middle schools are well regarded. But let’s look at Census data. We have two sites up for discussion since the third one is already being built upon.
Here is a map of the Crest Street and Pathway Drive sites, overlaid on median income by census tract from the American Community Survey (ACS):
The Pathway site is in one of the highest income neighborhoods in Carrboro, with a median income over $130,000, which is approaching double the Orange County median household income of around $71,000.
And also percent white by census tract from the ACS tables on race and ethnicity:
The Pathway site is in a census tract that is 81% white, whereas Carrboro as a whole is 62% white. (2020 Census)
On my way home that evening, I counted seven Black Lives Matter yard signs on the way back to North Greensboro Street. It was also hard to miss this larger banner one block from where the meeting was held.So yes, while every college town development tussle has its own nuances, this is a conversation that could very easily end in dispiriting outcomes like Boulder residents opposing affordable housing to protect firefly habitats and limit “pet density.”
Can We Have A Better Conversation In Carrboro?
I sure hope so. With that in mind, I’ve got some suggestions for everybody.
Suggestions for the Town
For the town staff:
1. The clearest take-away from the meeting I attended near the Pathway site is that the process that got from 47 sites to 3 sites is a mystery to everyone. I don’t think the Town intended it to be that way, but I spent some time looking around the town website and digging through 2018 meeting minutes and I couldn’t find what I think a lot of people would like to see – a spreadsheet that lists all of the sites, which criteria they met and failed to meet, and so forth. I think it’s imperative to share that data with the community.
2. Future discussion of these projects needs to have some basic educational content about what is and what isn’t possible with affordable housing in North Carolina and Carrboro. Rent control? Illegal. Requiring affordable units in new development? Not allowed under standard zoning in NC. Can we negotiate with a for-profit developer? Yes, but density bonuses are tricky and when Durham offered 3 bonus market rate units for every 1 affordable unit supplied a few years back, not one developer took them up on it. These are some of the reasons why non-profit developers building on public-owned land are often how affordable housing gets delivered these days.
I’m a professional urban planner and these things are not common knowledge even in our circles. The public shouldn’t be expected to navigate the what-ifs without more background on why other things may not be possible. Please help the community understand why certain things are and are not on the table.
3. Share more information about how our Stormwater Utility (and the money it collects) are designed to help with addressing flooding issues. It’s clear there are legitimate flooding concerns already being dealt with by neighbors, and talking about how the town can address those on a parallel path to any new home construction will be valuable.
Suggestions for Those With Good Faith Concerns About the Pathway Project
4. Most importantly – go look at some multifamily home communities nearby. There are many that are quite beautiful and sought-after places to live. Take pictures of things you don’t like to share with town staff, but crucially, also take pictures of things you DO LIKE so that if something does get built, it is as informed by your goals as much as possible.
There are lots of ways to put 24 to 36 units on a small number of acres, and a sloping landline can sometimes help. Stacked townhomes with a one-floor condo on top of a two-story townhouse (or vice versa) create a three-story building type that makes it easier to build cost-efficiently while preserving more trees.
We have some interesting examples around here – the best may be Village West off of Estes Drive:
The two cohousing communities of Arcadia and Pacifica also offer some interesting, compact building techniques. I like how little land the parking at Pacifica takes up. That said, both of those communities were designed with solar access in mind, so they have very few trees amid the homes, with significant trees at the edge of their buildings. I wonder if some mix of the parking approach at Pacifica and the building type from Village West could meet the town’s goals while leaving more land undisturbed, which seems to be a goal of several neighbors.
5. Accept that while this may have felt like surprising news, the Town did not get to this point casually or without careful consideration. I hope the Town does share their list of 47 town-owned sites and the attributes of those that didn’t make the cut. But be prepared to find out that even after the data is released, that the Pathway site is still probably the best site that the town controls to build the most affordable housing at one time.
Suggestions for the Media
In this conversation, there will be misinformation brought up, and it can’t be put on an equal plane with real technical expertise. I’ve seen reporting in one local outlet that sounds too frequently like this: “The professional stormwater engineer certified that the design can detain all the runoff from a 125-year storm using its cistern and best management practices, but a person with a strongly held opinion said that it will flood just like all the other stuff in the neighborhood [that was built before modern stormwater rules] does.”
6. Don’t do this. If you believe that reporting on an assertion that isn’t supported by technical expertise is crucial to a story, use a truth sandwich when sharing it.
Suggestions for Affordable Housing Advocates
In every local government controversy, our elected officials are besieged with emails about what people are mad about, afraid of, and against, and they rarely get emails about what people are excited about, hopeful for, or supportive of.
7. If you think building affordable housing is important, don’t just watch this process, write in and tell the town council. You can write to council@townofcarrboro.org.
Suggestion For The Town Council: Help Us Pass This Character Test
Sometimes it’s easy to tell what the right thing to do is, and hard to follow through on it. Our town’s draft comprehensive plan is built on pillars of Racial Equity and Climate Action. How do those fare if we miss this opportunity? Well, if lower-income families who were going to live at the Pathway Drive site wind up living somewhere else, it’s probably most likely somewhere with lower housing costs outside of Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and Orange County. The medical staff who check people in at my doctor’s office in Carrboro drive in from Roxboro and Siler City, respectively. The emissions of commute trips that long are a climate issue. I’m sure they’d live closer if they could afford it. From a racial equity point of view, researchers have documented how much the zipcode you grow up in can influence your life trajectory. So many of us live here because we believe this is true in Carrboro for our children. Being generous with that opportunity in 27510 is one of the best contributions we can make to racial equity.
In closing, at the community meeting last Saturday, I was heartened to hear Council member Randee Haven O’Donnell say that we absolutely must avoid pitting affordable housing and environmental goals against each other, and that this project is an opportunity to build a new model for how a community can come together to build affordable housing, and share all that we love about Carrboro with others.
May it be so. I believe this Town Council can lead us there.
On September 17th, the Carrboro Connects committee and planning staff released its preliminary draft of the Carrboro Comprehensive plan. At 196 pages, it is a lot of material to absorb. I hope to take a closer look in the days and weeks to come and share more thoughts on detailed sections.
But there are two key things that I hope the Carrboro Connects committee, town and consultant staff, and elected officials will work to address before the final draft is released for a public hearing in November.
Must-Do #1: Describe Goals in Clear Language That Avoid The Need for Interpretation, and Confront Tradeoffs
What do I mean? On page 151, here is the Vision for the Land Use Chapter:
“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity, values, and character of the Town.”
Let’s unpack this. “Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources.” So far so good.
Next: “that promote the diversity, values…[of the town]” Good. Diversity’s meaning is clear.
Values? This could be open for lots of conflicting interpretations, but at the beginning of the document, the Plan makes itself abundantly clear about its values: “The plan is built on a foundation of race and equity and climate action.” (page 2, top left)
Finally: “…character of the town.” And now we have a problem.
What constitutes “the character of the town” may vary widely, depending upon who you talk to. The phrase is frequently used in public comments opposing the development of new buildings in town at public hearings, by asserting that the character of the town is best expressed in the heights of existing buildings. Others may find that the character of the town is found in the ability to live a life on foot here, a relative rarity in the United States, and particularly in North Carolina. Others may find the town’s character in its live music venues, or in the lively conversations that happen among groups of friends on the Weaver Street lawn/patio.
What if the working definition of “character of the town” assumed in the plan actually prevents the promotion of equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources? Does that mean we commit to inequitable and unsustainable use of land if we can’t satisfy this elusive “character” requirement?
“We must change almost everything in our current societies”
It’s not “…we must change almost everything in our current societies that promotes many elements of the status quo that we are used to…”
The Carrboro Comprehensive Plan will only live up to its full potential if it finds ways to evaluate tradeoffs in its Vision statements. Here’s a slightly different version of the land use vision that does more to affirm the plan’s foundational values at the top of the hierarchy of values:
“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity and values of the town, valuing outcomes that are informed by the character of the community, but not constrained by it.”
Must-Do #2: Practice Yoda Planning: Do Or Do Not. There Is No “Consider.”
On page 154, you can find strategy 2.2 : Preserve and promote the availability of affordable housing along key corridors and nodes that are transit-accessible, walkable and bikeable.
Good! Very clear. But then move down to the action step (a):
“Consider proactive rezoning for greater density near transit nodes and Park & Rides, consider the reduction of parking requirements and consider priority growth and redevelopment areas in accessible locations.”
This text is a recipe for not taking action. The Town is years, even decades- behind other progressive jurisdictions with less robust transit than Carrboro on reducing parking requirements. Most thriving places have simply eliminated them; this is a basic best practice at this point. The plan should say things like: “reduce and/or eliminate parking requirements within 1/2 mile of downtown Carrboro by 6 months from plan adoption.”
On “considering” priority growth areas in accessible locations, not affirmatively doing so is almost missing the point of doing a comprehensive plan. The Chapel Hill 2020 plan designated Future Focus areas. The Durham Planning department identified Compact Neighborhoods for development. We certainly should come out of this planning process with priority growth areas. In this case, the plan should make a statement like: “Identify priority areas for growth and update the Future Land Use Map upon adoption of the plan.”
Conclusion
Comprehensive Plans are for setting direction and priorities. The more tradeoffs we address and resolve in the plan, the more clearly decisions will be made later. The more equivocation and planning for future study we do, the slower we move towards the foundation of race equity and climate action that we claim is so important. Wherever possible, we should specify actions over considerations. I hope that when the next draft is almost ready, one of the final things the Carrboro Connects team will do is screen each strategy and sub-strategy to get these two things right.
Just a quick note to everyone this morning- the Town of Carrboro has been pushing the word out that there are not one but TWO meetings being held TODAY, August 4th, to collect public input on The 203 Project – which will be the future home to the Orange County Southern Library branch, Town Parks & Rec offices, WCOM Radio, offices for The ArtsCenter and more.
If you’re a parent, I’d particularly encourage you to come and bring kids. The first meeting we went to (scheduled during bedtime for most families) was largely age 50 and up, and Carrboro is a much younger town demographically.
Here are some of the things I’ll be sharing if I can make it to one of the meetings today:
The 203 Project needs to focus on the needs of the building program first, and how to get to the building by bike, bus, and foot second, and parking access third. Downtown Carrboro has over 2,000 empty parking spaces at any given time and this project cannot free up more of them; only town leadership at a downtown-wide level can do that.
We have a small downtown with limited land available for economic development. While there is a terrific set of uses proposed for this building, we should also be seeking economic development at this site. Making the building taller, up to 5 stories- would allow for small company startup space on the upper floors. Some of the Alderfolks have talked about having “Affordable office space” for micro-businesses in town, and this building is a great place to do it. I’d like to see if we could get at least 5,000 – 10,000 square feet of such space into the building.
The ground floor should have a strong orientation to the sidewalks on S Greensboro St and Roberson to embrace what we hope will be very lively pedestrian spaces.
