On June 7th, 2022, the Carrboro Town Council adopted the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan. The plan is the town’s first ever Comprehensive Plan, and came complete with an Implementation Chapter of strategies, policies and actions to advance plan priorities.
What’s notable about the top ten towns in the list is that most of them have some type of rare natural amenity – the beach, the mountains, a lake, etc. Only three towns in the list do not have such an amenity. Two of the towns are Marvin and Weddington, some of the most expensive suburbs south of Charlotte, where the median home is more than $1 million dollars.
The other beachless, mountainless, lakeless town with soaring prices – is Carrboro.
To state this plainly: our current policy environment is so unsuited to bringing smaller, denser, lower-cost per home multifamily housing into being that we’ve created the price escalation of resort communities WITHOUT needing a beach, mountains, island or lake to raise prices as if we had one of those amenities. (with gentle apologies to University Lake; we see you, but you’re not Lake Norman)
Meanwhile, on Tuesday evening, the Town Council received a presentation on the results of the 2024 Town Community Survey, the most valuable, scientific picture of community opinion data available to the town. The free response comments paint a vivid picture. In response to
Q29. What do you think are the MOST SIGNIFICANT issues facing Carrboro today?
This is what the free responses that begin with A look like :
Page 1 of 10 for answers to this question
Page 2 of 10
Page 3 of 10
This is what the free responses that begin with H look like :
Page 6 of 10
This is what the free responses that begin with L look like :
Page 8 of 10
Finally, there is a set of maps of town opinion by Census Tract. Most of them are blue and dark blue, signifying ratings of “Very Satisfied” or “Satisfied” for the Town. Here’s the map of opinions on affordability:
Basically the only neighborhoods that reach “Neutral” on housing affordability are the wealthiest neighborhoods in town with the highest home values. And even they’re not happy.
We know this already, don’t we? What’s the point of another affordability blog post?
Most residents in town are either concerned about the cost of their living situation or know one or more people who are worried about it. But sometimes the data starkly illustrates how much change is needed.
At the two year anniversary of adopting the Carrboro Connects plan, only one substantive land use policy change (the abolishing of residential parking requirements) has been brought to the Council table. In that time the size of a standard down payment for a home in Carrboro has risen by tens of thousands of dollars. Rents have also risen substantially.
Go BIG When Funding the Work of Replacing Carrboro’s Broken UDO
It’s clear that the current policy change isn’t going to happen without a surge of people and expertise. Fortunately, the Town Council is looking to hire a consulting firm to augment the Town Staff’s capacity.
What the data in the news report above and our neighbors’ 2024 survey comments tell us that is the risk of Carrboro underfunding the work of creating a new UDO is much greater than overfunding it.
The current budget has an initial number of $225,000 for this work in FY 25, with a note from the budget director that additional investment in the new UDO in FY 26 is also likely.
I encourage the Town Council to see if they can push that FY25 number to something closer to $350,000 to $400,000, to see if more work on replacing the UDO can happen in the next 12 months. If we do this and can figure out a way to advance the work with a different cadence than our current processes, I think we will likely spend a similar amount of funds on the work over 2 years, but we will do more to meet our housing challenge sooner by getting more work complete and getting to policy adoption faster.
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.
If you’re a parent of a child under age 18 in Carrboro like me, I have some weird news to share: Carrboro has a plan to make our kids move away. Nobody thinks of it that way, and I don’t think anybody really intended to make this the plan for our town, but make no mistake – this plan has existed for some time, and it is WORKING.
First: We Need to Have Empathy for Our Children as Young Adults
Think of your favorite pictures of your children. No matter their age, you likely have some pictures of them under age 10 that absolutely make you melt. The joy on their face the first time they ate an ice cream cone. A loving hug with a grandparent. Our kids will always be our babies, and it’s both fine and loving to think of them that way.
But now use your imagination a bit and try to picture them at ages 19, 20, 23, 26 and 28. What is their life like? What are their hopes and dreams? Do they have a job doing something that speaks to them? Where do they live? Do they live close enough that you see them as much as you’d like to?
That last question is going to be partly answered by this election. But let’s unpack the plan to make our kids move away first, and then talk about voting.
Carrboro Runs On A “Send The Kids Packing” Operating System
Maybe your phone is an Apple device with iOS. Or perhaps it’s an Android OS phone. Carrboro’s operating system for building homes and businesses is called the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). When you see the word UDO, think “BuildingOS.”
Here’s how it works: the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina, where we live, has been one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country for a long time. This creates a ton of demand for housing as new people move in and those already here have children who grow up and move out on their own.
Most of the UDOs communities in the Triangle, from big cities like Raleigh to small towns like Hillsborough and Clayton – have allowed a lot of housing to provide homes for newcomers, and importantly for parents – new households formed by those who grow up here. But not Carrboro.
2: Of the housing that has been built in Carrboro, 84% of it has been for the wealthy
In the last four years, the Town has allowed only two residential buildings that are NOT single family homes to be built. One is the CASA affordable housing building, which has 23 apartment homes in the Town Limits (most of the project is just over the town line in Chapel Hill); the other is a single duplex somewhere in town. 84% of all homes built were single family homes. From a building permits perspective, 98.5% of building permits were for single family homes.
With such limited buildings, housing prices in Carrboro rose by over $200,000 for a single family home in JUST THREE YEARS. Notice by how much less prices rose elsewhere in Wake and Durham counties, which built more housing. Even the non-Chapel Hill/Carrboro portions of Orange County had much smaller price increases.
And in the period where barely any apartments or duplex homes were built, look what happened to rents from 2019 to 2023. Up $327 per month:
When housing gets so expensive so quickly, who moves in and who does not?
In the past decade, while only 25% to 35% of growth came from retirement age residents in Wake, Durham, and Alamance counties, nearly two-thirds of all population growth in Orange County came from retirees.
This means that if our children want to try to live near us as young adults after high school or college, it’s going to be economically VERY DIFFICULT for them to do so. Look at the comparative resources of different age groups in our society:
The Carrboro UDO “BuildingOS” is Working Effectively to Move Young People Away
In addition to not building much housing, Carrboro has created very few job opportunities for young people in town, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Even while Orange County’s population has grown by nearly 15,000 residents in the past decade, we’ve lost 33% of our young workers under age 29 in that same time period.
So Our Town’s BuildingOS Stinks – Is There Anything We Can Do?
YES! The great news at this moment in Town history is that for the FIRST TIME ever, the Town has a comprehensive plan called Carrboro Connects that is designed to repair and replace our broken BuildingOS or UDO with new, improved and updated regulations that will make it possible for more people and jobs to call Carrboro “home,” INCLUDING OUR CHILDEN, if that is what they want to do.
How Will the Carrboro Connects Plan Help Our Kids Stay Local?
First, the Carrboro Connects plan aims to remove barriers to building housing in general, and promote a greater variety of smaller homes such as apartments, duplexes, triplexes, and other buildings that are most likely to be affordable to our children when they are in their 20s.
Second, the plan recommends things like removing parking requirements, which could make it easier for us to create new job opportunities downtown and in the parking lots at Carrboro Plaza and the Shoppes at Jones Ferry shopping center. Got a kid who’s interested in STEM? Wouldn’t it be great if there were STEM job opportunities in wet lab buildings in Carrboro, and not just in Durham and RTP?
These positive outcomes will become our more likely future when the Carrboro Town Council makes enough changes to the Carrboro UDO so that it promotes the goals of the plan, and not the trendlines in the charts above. We probably need to make at least 50 to 100 changes to the UDO to get the outcome we need. The current council has adopted the Carrboro Connects plan, gotten started, and made the first two UDO changes last week.
Okay, This Sounds Great! But It’s Election Season – Are There Candidates Running Who Support Implementing the Carrboro Connects Plan?
YES! Four candidates out of the six running for public office support the Carrboro Connects plan instead of sticking with the send-our-kids-packing status quo. Those candidates are:
For Mayor: Barbara Foushee
For Town Council:
Catherine Fray
Jason Merrill
Eliazar Posada
Each of them either directly participated in the development of the Carrboro Connects plan, voted to approve it, or supports its completion.
Each of these candidates understand that we have this fundamental choice in front of us:
Our status quo accepts changing the PEOPLE who live in town to be older, wealthier and whiter – to avoid adding new buildings in town.
The Carrboro Connects Plan accepts adding buildings in town, making them more numerous and varied – to avoid changing the PEOPLE who live and work in those buildings, allowing more people who already love Carrboro to stay here, and making it easier for our kids to stick around.
Barbara Foushee, Catherine Fray, Jason Merrill and Eliazar Posada have swept every endorsement of consequence because they understand this is our principle challenge as a community. I give them my unequivocal, most enthusiastic endorsement! See the other endorsements they have received below.
Meet the Carrboro Better Together slate!
Please support these excellent candidates by voting for them early ahead of Election Day! Information on early voting in Orange County can be found below. Remember – this year, for the first time, a photo ID is required to vote!
There are several positives here worth celebrating.
Most substantively in Carrboro, these arbitrary parking requirements deter potential housing projects in Town, and force developers to over-provide parking that they may not consider necessary simply to meet the ordinance code. When developers over-provide parking, they have less financial capacity in their projects to address more important public policy goals like including some percentage of affordable housing in a project. Carrboro has seen very little new multifamily housing in the past five years, and rents for a 2-bedroom apartment have soared by nearly $400 per months since January of 2020. (source:rentometer.com)
Removing residential parking requirements supports building denser on the same piece of land, which can create more small-size units that are more likely to be affordable to a wide range of individuals. Projects with higher Floor-to-Area Ratios (FAR) consume less land than lower-density housing on the edge of town, and house more individuals and families per acre, reducing each household’s carbon footprint, and building a market for locally-owned businesses.
Finally, Dr. Donald Shoup and others have documented that parking requirements are little more than pseudoscience, with most communities drawing on old, poorly executed studies in suburban Florida, in an environment very different from present-day Carrboro.
How Different Parking Reforms Represent Different Levels of Climate Action
Carrboro’s action last night represents a strong step forward past Climate neutrality to positive Climate Action by introducing parking maximums, which encourage developers to think about how to deliver projects with as little parking as needed while still being financially feasible. Both Shelton Station and the recent 203 N Greensboro Street project had developers asking to provide LESS parking than the presumptive standard. In their discussion, the Town Council and staff could not recall the last time a developer asked to provide MORE parking than the minimum in town. The table below helps delineate how much specific parking reforms advance Climate Action and Climate Change mitigation, and also how flexibility the approach affords developers.
Which Additional Reforms Are Still Needed?
While Carrboro did a great job with its residential parking reforms last night, the Council discussion made it clear that to meet its goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity, the Town Council will also need to reform commercial parking requirements as well.
The Town Staff were initially instructed to address residential text amendments only, and commercial text amendments could be brought to Council in early 2024.
Key Lesson Learned: We Can Make Policy Choices In a Four Month Timeframe
The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2021, and as of June 7th, 2022, no new policies had been adopted. However, this parking item first reached the Council table on May 16th, 2023, returned to Council on June 27th, 2023, and was approved on October 23rd. This a five month period from first policy draft to final approved policy. However, considering that the Town of Carrboro does not typically meet in July and August, one could say that this was closer to four-month process in terms of active Council meetings.
In that timeframe, the Town was able to share information on the proposed change at several public events, and circulate the proposal to each of the town advisory boards. This should be the working schedule for policy changes going forward – four months from first policy draft to a final vote.
The Carrboro Town Council Should Take a Victory Lap
In closing, I want to commend the full council: Mayor Damon Seils and Councilors Susan Romaine, Eliazar Posada, Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Barbara Foushee, Danny Nowell, and Sammy Slade for embracing this opportunity to act, and to plan for continued conversations about commercial parking requirements in January.
This is the leadership on housing, racial equity, and climate we have been waiting for, and it is is marvelous to see it in action.
Now that we’re several weeks into election season, we’re getting a clearer picture of the priorities of each of the Carrboro Town Council candidates.
What’s also clear is that while there are five candidates running, there are functionally two groups of candidates aligned around two different sets of priorities.
The first group includes incumbent Town Councilor Elizar Posada, former Planning Board chair Catherine Fray, and the former owner of Back Alley Bikes, Jason Merrill. Merrill also previously served on the Transportation Board when he lived in Chapel Hill. They have named their slate “Carrboro Better Together.”
The second group includes legal firm Client Relationship Executive and Triangle Red Cross Board Member April Mills and former UNC-Chapel Hill Systems Analyst and Meals on Wheels volunteer Stephanie Wade. While they have not named their slate (to my knowledge) they are campaigning together with joint advertising and canvassing. For this article, I will refer to them as “The Newcomers” since this appears to be their first time running or seeking to join a Town Board.
All of the candidates running are personally and professionally accomplished, and demonstrate a high level of engagement in the campaign.
How to Evaluate Candidates In a Campaign
The longer I follow politics at any level, the less interested I am in someone’s experience, and the more interested I am in how a candidate defines and understands various issues and ultimately, how they will vote on key issues before the community.
Fortunately, all the campaigns have provided a lot of information in this regard through published platforms, social media, and questions answered in public forums. We’ll get to that shortly. But first, what are the priorities of Carrboro residents?
The 2021 Carrboro Community Survey: What People All Over Town Want
Carrboro surveys its residents every few years using a telephone and mail survey, with scientific demographic sampling and follow-up designed to ensure that those responding to the survey are representative of the town, which is:
“Based on the sum of their top two choices, the transportation services that residents thought were most important were: 1) ease of walking in Carrboro, 2) availability of greenways/multi-use paths, and 3) ease of driving in Carrboro.”
“The most important aspect of housing to Carrboro residents was the availability of housing options by price.”
and, in the body of the full report:
“Today, community leaders have limited resources which need to be targeted to activities that are of the most benefit to their citizens. Two of the most important criteria for decision making are (1) to target resources toward services of the highest importance to citizens; and (2) to target resources toward those services where citizens are the least satisfied.”
Only 26% of Carrboro residents are satisfied with the price points of housing in Town. The survey recommends this be the #1 issue that the Town seeks to address.
The Candidates On Two Timely Topics In Town: Affordable Housing and the Bolin Creek Greenway
On housing, as on many issues, Catherine Fray brings their planning board experience to offer precise policy actions they would support: (from frayforcarrboro.com/platform/)
And at the NEXT/IFC/CEF/EMPOWERment candidate forum, a question was asked if candidates would support the 34 affordable housing units proposed for town-owned land on Pathway Drive. The forum was recorded (links go to YouTube comments of the candidates) and here is the summary portion of Fray’s detailed answer:
Let’s unpack this a bit. To recap, Fray, Posada, and Merrill support building affordable housing on the Pathway Site. All three of them are focused on the broad affordability challenge in the community, and how it makes it hard for people across the income spectrum to remain in Carrboro.
Mills would not commit to nor outright oppose affordable housing on the site, and says that the [storm]”water and how it impacts others is just as important.” There is no development plan for the Pathway Site yet; it is early in a screening process to see what the site can accommodate in terms of housing while also meeting environmental rules. It’s entirely possible that a site plan can be created that adds no net new stormwater to the neighborhoods beyond the site. Building taller and more densely on some of the land may leave more of the land available for drainage. But Mills also raises the prospect of aesthetic criteria, putting a taller building on less land strategy that could help on stormwater in conflict with her “match the neighborhood” criterion. While not saying an outright “no,” Mills is making it clear that her priority is the perceived concerns of the neighbors (stormwater, aesthetics) and that housing for low-income residents is important, but perhaps a lower priority. (as another indicator, see Mills’ door hanger below, which mentions stormwater but not affordability)
Stephanie Wade did not attend the forum above, but has made it clear through instagram that she opposes affordable housing on Pathway Drive, and perhaps any housing anywhere else in town.
There are several policy implications of this post. Wade stated:
“One of the things I am very passionate about is tackling the affordable housing problems in Carrboro that come from being an area that has high demand.”
Then:
“Adding homes, apartments and other dwellings isn’t the answer.”
Interestingly, Wade later edited the post and the italicized sentence was removed. Here’s the current post:
Even if one ignores the deleted “no adding homes” comment, Wade’s remaining prescriptions face potentially insurmountable challenges for legal, functional and financial reasons. Those reasons are:
Rent control is illegal in NC, and there is no legislative lever that the Town Council can pull on existing housing to prevent any landlord, corporate or local, from raising the rent by a certain amount.
Apartment construction is THE primary method that created MOST of the affordable housing built in the area, particularly in the last ten years. That includes non-profit development projects like Greenfield Commons in Chapel Hill and Perry Place on the Chapel Hill/Carrboro town line. It also includes Shelton Station, built by for-profit developer Belmont Sayre, which includes 20 affordable and 74 market rate apartments. Another for-profit developer built The Landing at Winmore, where Wade had just visited prior to posting. It’s going to be hard to build affordable housing for individuals below the Area Median Income (AMI) without building apartments.
3. Our Transit funds are fully committed for some time. Chapel Hill Transit, GoTriangle and Orange Public Transportation have all made investments in recent years. The planned Hillsborough Train Station has funding reserved in our county transit plan. Between these investments and construction funds reserved for the crucial North-South Bus Rapid Transit project in Chapel Hill, nearly every transit dollar in the county is already committed for the next several years, perhaps as far out as 2030. When Wade says that we must add more transit before adding any more housing, she is inherently implying either:
a)the Town should support a multi-year-long development moratorium on all housing until new bus service arrives, which could be as late as 2030 b)the Town should raise taxes to pay for more public transportation
As a final piece of information to assess how Mills and Wade prioritize affordable housing, I’ve taken a picture of their door hanger literature below. Neither mentions affordable housing in their priorities, despite it being the #1 issue in the Town Survey. Public transportation is also not mentioned on either door hanger.
The Candidates ON TRANSPORTATION & THE BOLIN CREEK GREENWAY
The NEXT/IFC/CEF/EMPOWERment Forum asked if the Town Council should complete the Bolin Creek greenway sections 3 and 4. Here are key excerpts of the answers of the candidates who attended. We’ll start with The Newcomers this time.
While Stephanie Wade did not attend this forum, she recently made the statement below on social media that mirrors Mills’ statement about greenways not being allowed in already-cleared-of-trees OWASA easements.
It’s possible that Mills and Wade have been given misinformation here, as MOST of the greenways in both Chapel Hill and Carrboro have been built in OWASA easements, which Ryan Byars has documented (with photos!) here.
Here’s what the Carrboro Better Together slate had to say on the issue.
The Crystallization of the Election in One Comment
While Merrill was only speaking about the greenway in the comment above, he touched upon the primary axis around which every other issue in the campaign revolves – should public policy decisions should be viewed primarily through the eyes of wealthy homeowners who live near proposed public investments, or should we take a broader view while also parsing those concerns?
Here’s a map showing the median income of the town, the proposed Bolin Creek Greenway Phases 3 and 4, and the proposed Pathway Drive affordable housing site. It’s impossible to miss how the greenway would connect lower-income parts of the community to the south to Chapel Hill High School, Smith Middle School, and Seawell Elementary at the north end of the greenway alignment.
On these two key issues, the Carrboro Better Together slate and the Newcomers slate have clearly different priorities.
The Carrboro Better Together candidates will support the completion of public investments in the Bolin Creek Greenway along the creekside alignment and affordable housing on town-owned land on Pathway Drive. Both will connect residents across the income spectrum to schools, parks, and each other.
The Newcomer candidates, while being less definitive on both projects, are more likely to oppose both the construction of affordable housing on Pathway Drive, and to oppose the creekside alignment while supporting other alignment plans that are promoted by anti-greenway groups such as the Friends of Bolin Creek. The Newcomers’ objection to both is couched in terms of stormwater and environmental management, even though there are plenty of local examples of technical best practies on both of these fronts. (Shelton Station apartments detains stormwater underground to prevent flooding; the Bolin Creek Greenway in Chapel Hill used multiple techniques that have stabilized the creekbed and prevented erosion.)
Does Where We Stand Ultimately Depend Upon Where We Sit?
As we consider these five candidates, it is also worth knowing that the Newcomer candidates both live in census tracts on the north side of town that both have median incomes over $100,000 per year, while the Carrboro Better Together candidates all live in the Census Tract that had a median income of $36,059 in the map above.
So it’s not surprising that the Carrboro Better Together candidates might hear more about housing cost challenges from their neighbors, and that the Newcomers might hear more from their neighbors about stormwater, since their financial basic needs are more likely to be met.
When any of these five candidates say “this is what I’m hearing,” we should taken them at their word.
What is most interesting about these two sets of platforms is that while it’s clear that the Newcomers’ platform is likely to block substantial priorities of the Carrboro Better Together slate, the reverse is not necessarily true. While the Newcomers are talking about stormwater as a problem, Catherine Fray from the Carrboro Better Together slate is as well, and has been identifying actionable strategies the Town can take to work on the stormwater issue, including using the stormwater utility that the Town established in 2017. Watch them break the issue down here in their closing statement from the forum:
The Town Survey, The Comprehensive Plan, The Candidates and The Future
In 2023, we have a very good idea of what is important to Carrboro residents at a large scale thanks to the 2021 Town Survey, and also the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan process, which involved over 1,600 residents in Town and won an award for inclusive engagement.
The Carrboro Connects plan declares its two foundational pillars to be Racial Equity and Climate Action. Addressing these issues in 2023 largely requires TAKING actions and building things to change the course of an inequitable and climate-change-accelerating status quo.
The Carrboro Better Together slate largely supports the direction set by Carrboro Connects plan, and would TAKE action to build low-to-zero-carbon transportation choices like the Bolin Creek Greenway, and TAKE racial equity steps forward like developing affordable housing on Town-owned land, including Pathway Drive.
The Newcomers are less precise in their policy preferences, and express skepticism or outright opposition to the completing the Bolin Creek Greenway or building affordable housing on Pathway Drive. On these issues, the primary policy approach of the Newcomers would be the PREVENTION of actions, particularly construction (of greenways or homes) in the wealthiest part of Carrboro, and perhaps other parts of town as well.
Carrboro’s future will hinge on which of these two directions the electorate chooses in November.
Yesterday evening, I attended the Carrboro Town Council meeting to ask Town Council to amend their list of projects submitted for state funding to DCHCMPO by June 27, 2023 in order to include the Bolin Creek Greenway (BCG) in the list.
The speaker made several statements about the importance of getting facts right, and then engaged in the exact behavior that the Mayor warned about – making wildly misleading statements about the potential project cost of the BCG. The remainder of this blog post unpacks those statements and addresses what the BCG is likely to cost.
The speaker cited an article from Maryland about a greenway that cost $82.5 because it had an underground tunnel under downtown Bethesda (pic below – doesn’t look much like Bolin Creek), which is some of the most valuable real estate on the East Coast and a labor market with much higher construction costs than Carrboro. A tunnel under these buildings for anything will require life safety measures, evacuation points and be very expensive.
Aerial of Downtown Bethesda Maryland, a suburban edge city located north of Washington DC in Montgomery County, Maryland
The speaker then stated that the Bolin Creek Greenway may have a similar cost to the Bethesda project, even though none of the BCG would be in a tunnel or be in an environment like this. The speaker then asserted, without any evidence, that the BCG would cost as least much as the library being built in Downtown Carrboro. Even if we ignore the ridiculous Bethesda comparison, given the price of the library, the speaker is therefore suggesting the BCG will cost (at minimum) over $41 million dollars.
THIS IS NOT A REMOTELY REASONABLE NUMBER. So let’s take a considered look at what BCG Phases 3 and 4 might actually cost.
But first, a disclaimer – this is a simple exercise using online data sources. This is not in any way a substitute for real engineering design and cost estimating work. However, this is an attempt to model how real cost estimates are developed and managed to help the community understand how these methods can support the Town in making informed decisions.
How Infrastructure Professionals Create Cost Estimates
When a city or town engineer, or engineering consultant puts together a cost estimate for a project, the best information comes from having a preliminary design that is specific to where the proposed infrastructure will be on the earth.
Sometimes technical professionals get asked to put together a cost estimate for something without a preliminary design. This is inherently a more uncertain proposition. Responsible analysis of this type involves identifying projects that have a similar physical nature to the proposed project, examining their cost estimates, and using per linear foot costs for facilities like greenways and streets, and then reporting not one number, but a range of potential cost outcomes.
Applying These Two Approaches to the Bolin Creek Greenway
Let’s start with the Bolin Creek Greenway Master Plan from 2009. It has a preliminary conceptual design with significant detail. Its cost estimate is specific to the land along Bolin Creek, described as follows:
“For conceptual planning purposes, budget estimates prepared for this plan assumed a primary trail surface of concrete in creekside/flood prone areas and asphalt for hillslopes and upland areas.”
Let’s take a look at what the 2009 study estimated for Phase 3 of the creekside alignment for the BCG. (page 86 in the Master Plan) This is the Carolina North Forest Section.
This estimate uses detailed cost components and has a total cost of roughly $1.3 million for 1.77 miles of greenway in Phase 3.
Here’s the Phase 4 cost estimate – which extends from the southern end of Phase 3 to roughly Estes Drive.
This estimate also uses detailed cost components and has a total cost of roughly $1.1 million for 1.26 miles of greenway in Phase 4.
But These Costs Are Fourteen Years Old! Can We Still Use Them?
It’s not ideal to work with old numbers. We can consider these numbers if we add some extra contingency for caution and account for inflation. Here’s how.
The note at the bottom of both cost estimates says that land acquisition and several other costs are not included. It’s hard to say exactly how much we would want to raise the overall presumed cost for each of these “does not include” items. However, a conservative approach to adding a contingency budget would add 45% to the base cost. The original BCG budget adds 15%.
Let’s quickly calculate two higher contingency costs. Here’s the math:
The base cost for Phase 3 is $1.12 million before adding contingency. Instead of 15%, if we add 30% and 45% contingency we get:
With 30% Contingency: $1.12m + $336,000 (30% of $1.12m) = $1,456,000 for Phase 3.
With 45% Contingency: $1.12m + $504,000 (45% of $1.12m) = $1,624,000 for Phase 3.
Now let’s do the same for Phase 4. Phase 4’s base cost is about $948,000 before adding contingency. If we add 30% and 45% contingency we get:
With 30% Contingency: $948,000 + $284,400 = $1,232,400 for Phase 4.
With 45% Contingency: $948,000 + $426,600 = $1,374,600 for Phase 4.
Now we sum the costs by contingency level. At 30% contingency, the total 2009 cost for BCG Phases 3 and 4 would be $2,688,400. Let’s round up and call it $2.7 million for 3.03 miles.
At 45% contingency we get $2,988,600. Let’s round up and call it an even $3.0 million in 2009 dollars.
Our 30% contingency estimate of $2.7 million in 2009 gets inflated to $3.8 million in 2023.
Our 45% contingency estimate of $3.0 million in 2009 gets inflated to $4.2 million in 2023.
We get a range of $3.8 million to $4.2 million in 2023 dollars for Phase 3 and Phase 4 of the BCG. If we wanted to work with rounder numbers, we might simply say $3.5 to $4.5 million for roughly 3 miles of trail. This is $1.2 to $1.5 million per mile.
Is $1.2 to $1.5 million per mile reasonable for the BCG in 2023? Let’s do Peer Review.
Instead of only working with this cost estimate, we can look at other greenway project cost estimates in the public domain that (this is really important) have similar phyiscal characteristics to the BCG.
Barwell Road Greenway: $7.4 m over 1.86 miles = $4 million per mile in 2025 dollars
Brier Creek Loop: $12.2m over 3.57 miles = $3.4 million per mile in 2025 dollars
Both of the above include significant boardwalk segments, which are 7 times more expensive than asphalt on earth, the primary surface in those cost estimates. Neither of the cost estimates above for BCG Phases 3 and 4 identify boardwalk construction. Only one bridge of $75,000 is anticipated for BCG. The BCG corridor is in a relatively flat easement using pavement while up to 1/3 of a mile of the two facilities above are built on boardwalk. So these Raleigh cost estimates are probably high. If we converted the boardwalk sections of these two projects above to trail asphalt, Barwell Rd drops to $5.6 million over 1.86 miles for $3 million per mile, and the Brier Creek Loop drops to $10m over 3.57 miles, or $2.8 million per mile in 2025 dollars.
If we assume 3% inflation between 2023 and 2025, then these projects would be $5.3 million ($2.8m per mile) and $9.4 million ($2.6m per mile) in 2023 dollars.
A closer to home cost estimate is the estimate for Phase 2 of the Morgan Creek Greenway in Carrboro. It estimates the 1.2-mile segment had a construction cost of $912,000 million in late 2022. Inflation would raise this slightly to $932,000 in 2023 dollars. This is just under $800,000 dollars per mile. Pretty inexpensive!
Reasonable Estimates Use Ranges: BCG Phases 3 and 4 Could Cost Between $3 millionand$9 million Dollars
If we take the per mile costs of these different sources in 2023 dollars we get a low of $800,000 per mile for Morgan Creek and a high of roughly $2.7 million per mile for two projects in Raleigh. For a 3.03-mile stretch of the BCG, that’s about $2.4 to $8.1 million dollars in total to build Phases 3 and 4 of the BCG.
What If Inflation Spikes Again?
It’s been a very unusual few years in financial markets. Will inflation increase, driving up material prices? Who knows? This is why you put contingencies on numbers. Want to try to add some extra contingency to account for this?
Let’s just bump both numbers up a little and finalize our numbers to say that the total cost to build Phases 3 and 4 of the BCGwill most likely be between $3 million and $9 million.
This is a wide range – because there are many unknowns about the project even though we have a reasonably detailed preliminary design. As design of the BCG advances, factors other than inflation could also be a factor. The cost could fluctuate if different materials were used, or if there were requests to make more connections from additional neighborhoods to the greenway, those additional pieces could add cost. As design advances, more implementation issues will be identified and favorably resolved, the alignment will be confirmed, and the cost will stabilize in a much narrower range than above. This is the nature of all linear transportation projects.
Nice Things Like Greenways Cost Money
I’m sure that as different people read this post, some will find $3 million to $9 million to be a great value for the Town of Carrboro, and others will find it a waste of money. Those are value judgments, not fiscal ones. The Town of Carrboro’s Capital Budget was $68 million over 5 years in the last Capital Improvement Plan, up from $58 million for the prior 5-year period.
If the cost of BCG Phases 3 and 4 do fit within the $3 to $9 million range, this is a cost that is within the regular scale of expenditures of the Town’s 5-Year capital plans, and is not going to significantly impact the amount of debt the town manages. It is also worth noting that there are federal funds that can help pay for the BCG, and this is typically how Carrboro constructs such facilities in town.
Hopefully this analysis is reassuring to those who have a good faith curiosity about how much it costs to build a greenway.
What To Do About Misinformation: Don’t Get Distracted and Keep Moving Forward
The assertions by yesterday’s speaker that the BCG will cost somewhere between $41 and $82 million are fundamentally inaccurate. The suggestion that the BCG poses a significant risk to town debt finances is uninformed at best. It’s disappointing that anti-greenway homeowners have decided to engage a community conversation in this way. But based on how many conversations proceed in our community, we can expect these inaccurate figures to continue to circulate. We need to refer back to primary source and other relevant documents, ignore the noise, and keep moving.
As a resident who enthusiastically wishes to see the BCG built, I will continue to do my best to share accurate information, cite sources, show my work as done above and explain my methods.
My hope is that sometime this fall, the Town will restart the project and we can get a refreshed BCG conceptual design and new, up-to-date, fully vetted capital costs by early 2024.
Thanks to everyone who read to the end!
Closing disclaimer – this is a simple exercise using online data sources. This is not in any way a substitute for real engineering design and cost estimating work. However, this is an attempt to model how real cost estimates are developed and managed to help the community understand how these methods can support the Town in making informed decisions.
On Tuesday, May 16th, the Town Council will discuss the potential of removing parking requirements in town for the first time.
The Short Story: All of the information the Town Council needs to make a decision about parking requirements is already in the public domain, and there is no additional research that can be undertaken to further illuminate the policy question. To take an affirmative, meaningful step towards the goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity that uphold the Carrboro Connects plan, THE TOWN COUNCIL SHOULD VOTE ON MAY 16TH TO CONVERT ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS TO MAXIMUM PARKING ALLOWANCES IN THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS:
Downtown Carrboro zoning districts
All non-residential parcels within ½ of mile of All-Day (J, CW, CM) and Express (JFX, 405) bus routes
AND ELIMINATE ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS IN THE REMAINDER OF THE TOWN, WHILE REFRAINING FROM ADDING PARKING MAXIMUMS ON RESIDENTIAL-ONLY PARCELS.
Any alternative policy that requires developer negotiation with staff or council to meet a parking number is a version of the failed status quo and should be considered dead on arrival at the Council table.
Before we get into the details, I want to make two key points. The first:
THE ELIMINATION OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT NEW DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS HAVE ZERO PARKING SPACES.
201 N Greensboro street recently got a permit that did not use the town’s minimum parking requirements – they simply proposed a number that made more in line with the actual use they anticipate. The removal of parking requirements allows developers to bring in proposals with a number of parking spaces they think makes sense while meeting other project goals like street trees, affordable housing, and high quality design. It saves time and helps get us good projects faster.
The second key point:
THE PRIMARY GOAL OF ELIMINATING PARKING REQUIREMENTS IS TO MAKE GOOD DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS (INCLUDING THOSE WITH AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPONENTS) CEASE TO BE FINANCIALLY INFEASIBLE DUE TO AN ARBITRARY NUMBER OF PARKING SPACES IN THE TOWN CODE THAT DRIVES UP CONSTRUCTION COSTS. REMOVING MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS STILL ALLOWS ANY DEVELOPER TO PROPOSE AS MUCH PARKING AS THEY WOULD LIKE.
The Details:
The Town Staff materials on the policy have several shortcomings we need to unpack to have a healthy community conversation about this. If you read the Staff Materials, you might have the following take-aways:
That we know nothing about how Carrboro residents travel today that could help us think about whether eliminating parking minimums has risks to the town.
That altering policy on parking requirements requires a certain level of transit service or it can’t be done.
That removing parking requirements raises the risk of a flood of automobiles into Carrboro city streets for on-street parking that will be so substantial that it will block fire trucks and first responders to reach emergencies, and these are potential outcomes even along semi-rural Rogers Rd.
That parking requirements have nothing to do with climate change, which is not mentioned in the document.
That it is not possible for Town Council will take an action any sooner than fall 2023.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly – it presumes that the status quo is less risky and more equitable than the potential policy change. Unrealistic risks that have not happened in other communities that have reformed parking are imagined in the staff memo, and the force that parking requirements apply to make mixed-use and mixed income housing projects financially infeasible – is only obliquely referenced.
The remainder of this blog post addresses each of these shortcomings in the staff materials.
ANALYSIS USING CARRBORO TRANSPORTATION COMMUTING BEHAVIOR DATA
If we care about slowing climate change, we must work to actively reduce the auto-dependency of our communities. However, the staff memo does the opposite, assumes a fully auto-dependent population, and assumes that for each new development, that every developer will underestimate the needs of their building, and that they will not provide enough spaces and produce spillover effects on town streets. But does every Carrboro resident drive everywhere? No. We have lots of data on this.
Nearly Half of Carrboro Commuters Carpool, Take the Bus, Bike, Walk or Telecommute
Here are the 5-Year Average Estimates for Carrboro commuting modes from the American Community Survey, the best publicly available data, for the years 2017-2021:
Drove Alone
Carpool
Transit
Bike / Walk / Telecommute
Total
55.3%
7.9%
10.9%
25.8%
100.0%
Method of commuting to work, Carrboro American Community Survey, 2017-2021
Prior to the pandemic, Carrboro was already one of the towns with the highest percentage of residents who DON’T drive alone to work in the Southeast. The work-from-home revolution has significantly contributed to the expansion of the Bike/Walk/Telecommute number above, and transit use in Carrboro remains at a level equal to or above that of suburbs of major US cities with mature rail systems.
What does this mean for parking use? It means being a two-worker, one car household in Carrboro is much easier than in other communities. It means that when I go downtown on good weather days, I’m much more likely to bike than drive. Our household of three has gone from being a two-car family to a one-car family for the past 18 months, and living in Carrboro makes it possible because we have transportation choices. As we permit new buildings, the new residents will have the same opportunities.
Carrboro literally welcomes new residents and helps them to drive less!
We don’t just see this in commuting data, though. We also see it in traffic counts.
TRAFFIC COUNTS HAVE FALLEN SIGNIFICANTLY IN CARRBORO OVER THE PAST TWENTY YEARS
The only place in town you see counts rising is on NC 54, because that is predominantly pass-through traffic in our growing region. Within town, our residents are driving less and biking, walking, and working from home more.
The final point I want to make here is that between 2000 and 2020, Carrboro also grew from 16,782 residents to 21,295! The town added almost 5,000 new residents and CAR TRAFFIC FELL ALL OVER TOWN.
WHY IS THIS DATA RELEVANT?
What we see in our commute data tells us that if we pick 20 Carrboro residents at random, 12 of them will drive to work alone, two of them will carpool, another two will ride the bus, and four will bike, walk or work from home.
But our ordinance in the staff memo (Attachment B, sections 1.100 through 1.300 of the Part I table) basically assigns one parking space per bedroom, or two parking spaces per unit. This is functionally requiring 20 parking spaces for the 20 random individuals above. We’re requiring too much, and making housing more expensive by requiring the unneeded parking.
THE LEVEL OF TRANSIT SERVICE IS LARGELY IRRELEVANT TO REMOVING PARKING REQUIREMENTS
If finding the “right” level of transit service to safely eliminate parking requirements was critical, we would see parking crises in towns with less bus service than Carrboro that have taken this action. However, towns in NC that have eliminated parking minimums include:
Graham (83% Drive Alone in 2017-2021 ACS)
Mebane (85% Drove Alone)
Albemarle (82% Drove Alone)
Mooresville (84% Drove Alone)
Gastonia (84% Drove Alone)
All of these places have significantly less transit service than Carrboro, and Graham and Mebane grow much faster than Carrboro does due to our restrictive zoning. Even during the bus operator shortage, the J bus still operates 15-minute service on Main Street and 20-minute frequency on the CW in the morning. The CM and JFX supplement with rush hour frequencies of 15 to 25 minutes, and GoTriangle 405 connects us to Durham every 30 minutes. These are excellent transit frequencies at peak times in any southeastern US city. Only the F bus, which only runs four daily roundtrips at this point, has a qualitatively different and noticeably low level of service. It is reasonable therefore to exclude the F but otherwise support parking policy reforms around the remaining All-Day (J,CM, CW) and Express (JFX,405) services.
If the towns above aren’t having parking nightmares with less transit and 30% more drive-alone commuters, why are we contemplating such outcomes in Carrboro? Surely if the votes to reform parking in these five other communities had created significant problems, we’d be able to find news of it. That doesn’t seem to be the case. From a qualitative point of view, if you haven’t been to downtown Graham recently, it’s jumping. Old buildings are full of new businesses and it’s an increasingly lively and pleasant place, and the elimination of parking requirements has been a key ingredient in activating old buildings with new businesses.
If these small towns with fewer transportation choices and greater auto-dependency can make these parking change without crisis, Carrboro, with its significantly larger transit, bike, and telecommuting mode shares, can likely do so without any noticeable impact on our streets, given our reduced traffic counts in recent years.
CLIMATE ACTION IS A PILLAR OF THE CARRBORO CONNECTS PLAN
It’s frustrating to see a document from the Town related to Carrboro Connects that is silent on climate change.
Councilor Slade has made repeated valiant efforts to bring climate action to the Council Table, and I believe that the Council is earnestly interested in taking action. Transportation is the largest source of GHG emissions in Orange County, and therefore is the biggest lever to push to move the needle locally to reduce GHG emissions. Requiring too much parking is fundamentally encouraging further auto use when we need to reduce it. Eliminating parking requirements doesn’t even discourage auto use, it merely stops over-promoting it. Developers can still choose to provide parking at a level that is out of touch with climate imperatives. Parking maximums, however, with their limits on ultimate parking supply, affirmatively discourage auto use, which is why I recommend it as the preferred policy at the beginning of this post.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Orange County by Sector
THE USE OF THE RACIAL EQUITY POCKET QUESTIONS IS INCOMPLETE
As a regular reader of Town Council packets, I observe that the Racial Equity Pocket Questions are primarily posed to consider the racial equity benefits and impacts of a proposed policy change, but not the racial equity dimensions of the status quo policy situation.
This is a problem as it assumes that the current state of affairs is inherently more equitable, even though the Carrboro Connects plan identifies many inequities in town that demand action more than additional study. The Racial Equity Pocket Questions are one of the best new practices in local governance, but they need to examine the status quo as vigorously as any proposed policy change for the best outcomes.
SOME OF THE ANALYSIS IS AT ODDS WITH CURRENT LOCAL TRENDS AND BEST PRACTICESIN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
While several of the answers in the Racial Equity Pocket Questions in the staff memo are well-considered, there is also a good deal of unrealistic speculation that is at odds with most transportation planning best practices and what we know about relative life safety risks in our community. For example, the memo states:
“Unintended consequences include the congestion of small streets that are unequipped for street parking (as residents who live or move into the area still have cars). Congested streets could make it difficult for emergency services to access residences, could make the streets more dangerous for walkers and cyclists…”
First – development in Carrboro is so slow and so difficult due to our development ordinances, that it is not going to be possible to develop quickly enough in most of the town for this to become a problem. Removing parking minimums is usually a necessary, but not sufficient step to unlocking new economic development opportunities, mixed-use buildings that drive tax revenue for equity goals, and new affordable housing concepts. Unfortunately, the town’s development ordinances have many other hurdles embedded in them that will also need to be overcome. But this situation also means it will be impossible for a parking problem to overtake the town with any speed, especially in residential neighborhoods.
Second, this paragraph is embedded with the assumption that ever more car use is inevitable, even as noted above, car traffic on many Carrboro streets has fallen by 50% over 20 years!
Regarding congestion, the Town of Chapel Hill just added parking protected bike lanes to Franklin Street, and car speeds are slower and people walking and on bike report feeling much safer even though motorists might consider the street more congested. Many Vision Zero strategies that municipalities are using to reduce traffic deaths and life-altering injuries intentionally deploy congestion as a tool to slow automobile speeds.
From an overall life safety perspective, many more residents in Carrboro are injured each year by traffic violence than by fires in homes or businesses. Making streets fast for first responders mostly makes them fast for all other drivers, which puts everyone in town at greater risk every day, even if it gets a fire truck to a house a few seconds earlier on a much less frequent basis.
A second excerpt states: “Spatial analysis…—indicates most of the parcels in Carrboro’s two qualified census tracts (QCTs) as well as historically Black neighborhoods near Rogers Road and Alabama Avenue would be impacted by changes identified in this project.”
Again, this statement seems to be embedded with the notion that removing parking requirements will lead developers simply not to provide parking, leading to congest the sides of streets like Rogers Rd with parking on the shoulder of the street. Whether they are private developers or mission-driven ones such as a church, both have self-interested incentives not to do this. Private developers have profit at risk, and want to meet consumer preferences. In places that have a semi-rural built environment, such as Rogers Rd, the expectation will very much be for off-street parking, and developers will likely cater to that expectation to sell or rent their homes. Similarly, if a church or other mission-driven organization like Habitat for Humanity proposes a development, they will likely propose parking locations that work for their stakeholders, not those that straddle the road right-of-way. This is a significant amount of discussion for a risk that is unlikely to materialize.
WHAT’S THE MOST PRO-CLIMATE ACTION AND PRO-RACIAL EQUITY POSITION POSSIBLE?
On climate, sustaining minimum parking requirements is 100% in conflict with all climate goals, and is Anti-Climate Action. This consensus spans all kinds of publications, from Bloomberg to Mother Jones, and international transit advocacy organizations:
Maintaining minimum parking requirements is the bad-for-the-climate status quo that Carrboro must move on from on Tuesday night.
As mentioned at the top of the post, eliminating parking requirements still allows a developer to propose as many parking spaces as they would like for a project, even if that number of spaces encourages auto dependency. So eliminating parking requirements is progress from a bad status quo but is still only climate-neutral.
With required parking maximums that cannot be exceeded, the Town is explicitly directing developers to take positive Climate Action to bring forth concepts that double down on Carrboro’s strong mode share performance for biking, walking and transit, and to de-emphasize car use as much as feasible while still bringing new jobs and economic development to Carrboro.
Relative alignment of Parking Requirement approaches with Climate Change Mitigation Action
Regarding racial equity, BIPOC homeowners, particularly black residents, have been negatively impacted by systemic racism that discouraged bank lending and wealth-building through homeownership in minority communities over many decades. While adopting maximum parking requirements is a stronger climate policy than simply eliminating minimum parking requirements, applying maximum parking requirements only to commercial properties in Downtown Carrboro and within ½-mile of all-day and express bus services allows commercial landowners to lead on parking supply innovation while ensuring that BIPOC homeowners (and all homeowners) have the freedom to build as much or as little parking on their land as suits their needs. Taking the climate neutral approach of Eliminating Parking Requirements on residential-only land in Town is therefore positive movement on climate while also being a pro-Racial Equity position that does not add regulatory burdens to homeowners, including BIPOC homeowners.
IN CLOSING: CARRBORO CONNECTS CAN BE A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OR A COMPREHENSIVE WISH
Most of the data in this blog post is old. We know a lot. A plan is something you do and we have enough information to give us the wisdom to act.
Adding density to land in town on transit routes in small units offers one of our best chances to expand the stock of small multifamily homes that will have some legally binding affordable units, and others that will be attainable to 1 and 2 person households near the median income. But our parking requirements are probably the #1 barrier to making this happen.
So the land use reform vs affordability debate is on the table again Tuesday night, as it has been at every Town Council meeting since the Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2022. The median home price has risen about 5% (~$21,000) since plan adoption. Waiting has consequences.
Carrboro Connects plan is a great document informed by the most inclusive planning process the town has ever done. But without policy action, it’s a comprehensive wish, not a plan.
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.
There are lots of great reasons to complete the Phase 3 and 4 segments of the Bolin Creek Greenway through Carrboro that include a wide variety of environmental benefits. But equally important are the equity benefits that the community will receive from completing the greenway.
Connecting Students to Public Schools
There are three Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools that are close to the proposed Phase 3 and 4 segments of the Bolin Creek Greenway: Seawell Elementary School, Smith Middle School, and Chapel Hill High School.
Really? Where?
The image below shows proximate the northern portion of the greenway would be to the three schools. Connecting the greenway to each of them would be easy to do as part of the Phase 3 and 4 project. The Chapel Hill High School-Homestead Rd path already connects neighborhoods north of Homestead Rd to Chapel Hill High School near the tennis courts.
Talking Equity: The Differences Between Household Income Along the Proposed Greenway and School Demographics at Seawell, Smith, and CHHS
The households living in the Census Block Groups immediately adjacent to the proposed phase 3 and phase 4 segments of the Bolin Creek Greenway have only 3% of residents living in poverty, and have median incomes over $123,000 per year. (well above the median income for Chapel Hill/Carrboro of roughly $77,000 per year) The map below shows the relative income of Census Block groups near Phase 3 and 4, labeled as “Bolin Creek Missing Greenway.”
However, data gathered by US News shows that the percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (strongly correlated with household poverty) at the three schools are notably higher:
Seawell Elementary: 26% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch
Smith Middle School: 23% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch
Chapel Hill High School: 16% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch
Here are individual median incomes identified for some of the Census Block Groups near the proposed Greenway. In each case, the median household income of the block group is identified in a green box.
South of Estes Drive and East of North Greensboro Street
The Census Block Group immediately south of Estes drive and East of North Greensboro Street has the lowest median household income near the proposed greenway. This area include the Estes Park apartments and the 605 Oak Avenue public housing community.
Immediately East of the University Railroad and West of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd in Chapel Hill
This Census Block Group has a median income of roughly $72,000 per year, which is closer to (but still below) the median income in the area.
North of Estes Drive and Surrounding the Proposed Greenway Alignment
The Census Block that largely surrounds the proposed greenway on both sides has a median income of over $123,000 per year.
The Attendance Zones for These Schools Serve Low-Income Neighborhoods in both Carrboro and Chapel Hill
Here are the Smith Middle School attendance zones laid on top of the income map and the proposed greenway alignment. What becomes pretty obvious is that the SCHOOLS are at the north end of proposed Bolin Creek Greenway and many of the neighborhoods with lower and middle income residents are at the south end.
Completing this portion of the greenway (and connecting the southern end to Umstead Park in Chapel Hill!) would really provide a safe, healthy, environmentally friendly transportation choice for students at all three schools, though particularly middle school and high school students, who are more likely to take a longer trip by foot or bike.
Given that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools are facing unprecedented challenges in hiring school bus drivers to bring children to school, and that low-income families are less likely to have a car available to drive a child to school if their bus doesn’t show up, completing the Bolin Creek Greenway is more than a way to create emission-free, environmentally-friendly trips between neighborhoods – it’s a way to help make access to education more equitable, resilient and reliable for everyone.
The Short Take: Carrboro Town Council passed the Carrboro Connects plan over 5 months ago. To date, no significant land use policy changes have come to the Council Table for action from the plan. Meanwhile, sites that could have held more diverse housing options continue to be converted to large homes that only millionaires can afford.
How Neighborhoods Can Support Different Stages of an Individual or a Family’s Life
Our family has lived in Central or West Carrboro for the last 21 years, despite moving several times. One of the things that has made this possible is that as our lives have changed, there have been different types of housing in the neighborhood available to suit our needs. I lived in a small apartment before getting married. DW and I bought a townhouse a few years later. As we became a family of three, we moved to a house.
Age and Size of Housing Stock and Affordability
Living here for twenty years, you can distill the neighborhood down to three kinds of housing choices and price points for each:
New and any size – expensive
Old and large – expensive
Old and small – more affordable
My apartment had one story, 2 small bedrooms, and about 600 square feet. It rented for $600/month in 2002. It was built in 1962, 60 years ago.
The townhouse, about 950 square feet, rented for about $780 in 2006, and was built in 1982. Our house was newer, a little larger, and nearly double the townhouse rent for the mortgage.
Every property in our neighborhood is getting older. But we haven’t built many small units in the neighborhood in a long time. What that means is that if we’re not building more small units today, even if they are new and more expensive now – we have fewer opportunities to have the “old + small = more affordable” units of the future.
A Significant Missed Opportunity on Gary Rd
Earlier this summer, our neighbor Cristobal Palmer published this great piece about how he thought a significant assemblage of land that had gone on the market would be a great place for a neighborhood coffee shop or bodega. His closing statement proved prescient. He said:
“I don’t have the capital or skill set to make my dream happen, but I hope there are folks who share this dream and will be loud about it. If we aren’t loud, developers will do what is fastest or easiest to finance and get approved: more single-family detached homes. Let’s dream bigger.“
Sadly, the most likely (and zoning-encouraged) future unfolded. There is no zoning that allows anything other than large lot single family housing to be easily built here, and the other day I saw this on a walk:
I popped over to Zillow and found Cristobal’s (and my own) fears confirmed.
That’s one household living in 3,150 square feet. Zillow estimates the monthly mortgage payment for the million-dollar house to be roughly $6,600 per month. To meet the standard that your mortgage payment must be no more than 30% of your income, this house is targeted at a household earning $264,000 per year. Only millionaire households will live there.
Go two blocks east up West Poplar Avenue and you’ll find four households living in 3,161 total square feet in a quadplex.
The going rent for 2 bedroom apartments in the area ranges from about $1200 to $1500 per month. At $1500 per month, an individual or couple making $60,000 per year can rent these quadplex homes at a reasonable percentage of their income.
The Quadplex Above: Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing at 80% Area Median Income
The median income for Orange County in the 2016 – 2020 American Community Survey was $74,800. A household earning $60,000 per year is at 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) and can spend 30% of their income on $1500/month rent. This level of affordability, approximately 80% to 100% of AMI, is the level of income that programs like the Community Home Trust target for buyers in their programs.
What this example shows is that despite all the challenges for housing here, especially for those at 60% AMI and below, which will require public subsidy to address, there is a portion of the below-median income market that may, in the long run, be served by older, smaller units without public subsidies — but only if we build it, and let it get old.
How Long Until the Next Missed Opportunity?
While we wait for policy changes, the real estate market moves along. Someone else will sell a significantly sized parcel, and if the only thing allowable is a large lot single family home that costs $1 million, that’s what we’ll get.
The Carrboro Connects plan can’t wait for years of study to take its next steps. We need two actions from the Council to begin moving as soon as possible. Those actions are:
We need to update our Single Family Zones to be Single Family + Missing Middle Housing Zones. On this one, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Chapel Hill has already done a significant amount of heavy lifting by drafting this model text to enable Missing Middle Housing. The Town Council should direct the Carrboro Planning staff to bring a draft version of this ordinance to the Council in this calendar year. It shouldn’t take that long to adapt this language for our town.
In taking these two actions, the Town will at least open the door to the possibility that the next building on a parcel like the one on Gary Road will house more people in smaller units, and help us prepare for a more affordable housing future.
So how can we get these things moving quickly?
Carrboro’s Pre-Carrboro Connects Public Input Process for Land Use and Zoning Changes Was Deeply Flawed
For many years, Carrboro planning decisions have been subject to the worst kind of public participation processes – those that privilege wealthy, older, whiter, retired homeowners who have the time to spend 3 hours sitting in a room to speak for 3 minutes at a podium on a weeknight. These engagement methods encourage a “pack the room” strategy that allows every person with an opinion to speak at a podium ALWAYS favors those who are retired and done working, those who work daytime hours, and those who are not responsible for caring for young children in the evening.
Two Better Ways to Take Public Input
The Town of Carrboro would do better to combine public engagement approaches from Chapel Hill and Durham to address and accelerate the timeline to vote on policy changes. For some of Chapel Hill’s recent initiatives, the town used its Public Input website to not only capture opinions, but also to get the demographic characteristics of those participating. Carrboro should use these techniques to gather online data from people who cannot attend public meetings, and should report the results in meetings where decisions are under consideration at Town Council.
In Durham, some council decisions allow for no more than five speakers to speak in favor AND no more than five speakers to speak against any policy change. Each speaker is given two minutes. Twenty minutes of verbal public testimony is combined with data from community surveys and larger, more intentionally inclusive initiatives like the Carrboro Connects process. Indeed, the Carrboro Connects plan recently won the prestigious Marvin Collins Planning Award – one of the highest honors a public plan can receive in North Carolina. The Daily Tar Heel reported in September:
Part of the criteria of the Marvin Collins Awards includes looking for transferability and applicability to other communities, as well as originality, Bynum Walter, a co-chair of the APA-NC awards committee, said. Carrboro Connects was particularly effective in its community outreach efforts, she added.
“We had an unprecedented amount of community engagement and development,” Carrboro Mayor Damon Seils said regarding the plan.
The Carrboro Connects team engaged with more than 1,600 individuals. The plan also recognizes over 4,000 touchpoints – instances of engagement within the community.
There’s no reason Carrboro should not offer a public comment opportunity on these policy initiatives, but it should be reasonably limited like Durham’s process, and recognize the breadth and depth of opinions generated by the much larger, more detailed, Carrboro Connects process, and the 2021 Carrboro Community survey.
Still Waiting for Action Five Months After Plan Adoption
In closing, it’s great that the Carrboro Connects plan reached 1,600 people in town with over 4,000 touchpoints. But if the policy recommendations don’t move forward, that public input is slowly and steadily devalued. The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2022 and as of this writing on November 11th, 2022, it is not clear when any policy actions from the plan will be considered on a Town Council agenda.
I am well aware that policy actions don’t always happen overnight, and that anything that comes to the Council table could take up to 6 to 8 weeks to reach a vote. But it’s important to get these processes started. I hope that we’ll see at least one policy proposal from the Carrboro Connects plan reach the Town Council agenda in January 2023. The two policy proposals above are great places to start. If you agree, consider sending an email to council@carrboronc.gov and letting them know you want to see eliminating parking requirements and expanding housing choices on a council agenda in the near future.
