After years of complaints and delays from a small group of homeowners who are wealthier and whiter than the town of Carrboro at large, in the Spring of 2023, the Town of Carrboro created a community outreach process to seek input in a more scientific way than who speaks at a podium in Town Hall.
76% of over 1,700 respondents say that creating more trails is “Very Important.”
93% of those taking the survey report using the Bolin Creek corridor
66% of Respondents prefer the Creekside Trail Alignment from the 2009 Master plan; only 34% support the other two alignments (at least one of which, the rail corridor- is completely unviable) combined
Here are some screenshots related to those points:
These findings largely track what has been found in the Town’s most scientific public opinion survey, its bi-annual Commnuity Survey, conducted most recently in 2021. Roughly 70% of the town in that survey lists expanding the greenway network as a top priority, including those in low-income and minority Census Tracts. Our Town has spent a lot of time talking about Racial Equity and Climate Action in the past year. Few things could be more relevant to addressing both than moving ahead with the trail design and construction along the Creekside Alignment.
Near Neighbors Support the Creekside Alignment
While greenway opponents would have you believe it’s not so, there are plenty of people who live near Bolin Creek who would celebrate having a greenway, and are already thinking about how they would use it. Given the vociferousness of anti-housing and anti-greenway groups in the area, it’s not surprising that some folks from that part of town would not engage their angry neighbors, but feel safer putting their comments in a survey. Here are just a few of those comments.
What Moving Forward Means – An Alignment and Funding
The Town is likely to hear lots of podium comments on Tuesday night. I fully expect them to include some angry voices and demographics that are highly unrepresentative of the Town at large.
However, given these results, it’s time to stop kowtowing to the loudest voices in town, and approve that the Creekside alignment be moved forward to final design as fast as possible, and that funding for consulting firms to do that work should be put in the FY 2025 budget if funding cannot be identified in the remainder of FY 2024, which ends on June 30, 2024.
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.
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?
The town of Carrboro has been working steadily for seven years to plan for the Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Multi-Use Path. The greenway would provide a safe way for hundreds of children to walk or bike to not one, not two, but THREE(!) different schools (Chapel Hill High, Smith Middle, Seawell Elementary) from the Claremont, Winmore and even Lake Hogan Farms neighborhoods. For so many reasons, which I will detail below, it needs to be built, and Carrboro residents need to let the aldermen know this is the case. You can email the Carrboro Board of Aldermen by clicking this link, right now.
The Recent Controversy
Up until last week, work crews were likely to break ground for construction of the Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Multi-Use Path on May 16, 2016, or soon thereafter. Concerns about impacts to the Chapel Hill High Cross-Country (X-C) trail led to lots of complaints to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen. I’m not going to recap the controversy any further, but here is a report from WCHL.
Benefits of the Homestead-Chapel Hill High Multi-Use Path
There are several benefits the construction of this greenway offers to the community:
A direct, safe route to multiple schools from neighborhoods that have almost 1,000 children who otherwise must cross a dangerous road with 40-45 mph traffic to get to school by bike or on foot today. (The 2014 American Community Survey reports nearly 500 children aged 6 to 11 and over 450 children aged 12 to 17 live in Census Block Group 1, Census Tract 112.02, just north of Homestead Rd)
Students can use it for daily transportation, and when they do, they get to hear birdsongs projecting from the canopy and the rustle of rodents on the forest floor, sensory experiences that are blocked by an enclosed automobile or a noisy bus. When they do, they get to be surrounded by trees rather than motor vehicles zooming by at speeds in excess of 35 or 40 mph. They get to pass under that road, hearing the rush of the creek, rather than nervously crossing at grade with a wary eye toward aggressive turning movements of hurried parent chauffeurs. They get to have daily fresh air and exercise as part of their trip.
A route for joggers, roller skaters, moms and dads pushing strollers, and people in wheelchairs.
A zero-emissions transportation option in an area where the barriers to such options are high.
Access to the natural beauty of Bolin Creek and the surrounding forest, including access for community members with disabilities who can’t physically go there today.
This is Not a “New” or “Surprise” Project- The Planning for This Greenway Has Been Going On For Years, With CBOA Oversight
After a Greenways Commission recommendation, the Board adopted the Concept Plan on December 8, 2009 (Supported by current CBOA members Gist, Haven-O’Donnell, Lavelle & Slade, votes on page 11 of 14) Dec-2009-CBOA-Meeting-Minutes(PDF)
Former Carrboro Transportation Planner Jeff Brubaker, who spent hundreds of hours working on this project up through 2014, stated today:
This direction was included in the adopting resolution: “Adopt the recommendation for Phase 1A and 1B (1B would not extend any further south than Jolly Branch), and Phase 2.” To follow the Board’s direction to stay north of Jolly Branch, the preferred route came to resemble what is shown as Alternative Route 3 (the “green route”) on p. 71 of the Concept Plan (Concept-Plan-BCG-Phase1b). The merits of the green route were much discussed at Greenways Commission and Board of Aldermen meetings. The route of the Homestead-CHHS Path closely resembles it, and so it has already gone through significant public vetting.
The CBOA unanimously approved an agreement with NCDOT to design the greenway on March 1, 2011. (Supported by current CBOA members Gist, Haven-O’Donnell, Lavelle & Slade, votes on page 3 of 14) March-1-2011-CBOA-Meeting-Minutes (PDF)
On June 9, 2015, in a motion made by Alderman Gist and seconded by Alderman Haven-O’Donnell, the CBOA authorized the Town Manager to sign a contract for Construction, Engineering and Inspection services to build the greenway. It passed 6-0 with all current board members in favor save Alderman Slade, who was absent. Minutes-CBOA-June-9-2015 (PDF)
On November 24, 2015, all board members attending the meeting voted together to approve a contract amendment for the project. (PDF) Minutes-CBOA-November-24-2015
The Price of Changing Projects at The Eleventh Hour
One of the challenges of transportation projects is that they take time- land must be assembled, engineering work and environmental work must be done, and then finally, construction drawings of a greenway like this one are ready. If you want to make changes to a project, the later you make them, the more expensive it is to make a change, and the harder it is to introduce a change without unraveling much of the work you have already completed because the engineers need to tear up some of their drawings and start over, and then depending on the extent of the changes, all the environmental work must also be redone.
For a project seven years in the making, delaying another year, or frankly, even three to six months – is simply unacceptable. Asking all the people who participated in prior public meetings, sat in Greenway Commission and CBOA meetings to discuss this project over those seven years, to wait further (or maybe forever) because of concerns brought forward when construction was about to begin, is to say that all the planning that came before matters little in the face of late-breaking complaints. This is a terrible way to make decisions.
Unless the Aldermen want to turn those seven years of public dialogue into a complete waste of time and call into question the validity of all other future public processes the town hosts, the construction of this game-changing project for people who walk and bike needs to get moving.
What The Carrboro Board of Aldermen Should Do
Given how close this project is to being able to be built, and to respect the time put in by ALL citizens who contributed to the development of this project, over the past seven years, and not just those expressing their concerns for the first time in these past few weeks, the first and primary option for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen to resolve the controversy should be to see if the cross-country trail can be modified as part of the construction process to eliminate the two crossings south of the westernmost tennis court.
If this cannot be accomplished without also adjusting the greenway design, the town of Carrboro and its taxpayers will certainly incur costs in time and money- the only uncertainty is how much. These costs should be minimized, and Chapel Hill High School should be asked to contribute to the cost of any changes.
The second and less desirable option is to come up with a design that minimizes impact to schedule and budget for the greenway while adjusting both the greenway and the cross-country trails slightly to eliminate two crossings. It probably looks something like this, where the blue dotted line would be the modified greenway path, and the pink dotted line would be the modified X-C trail. Engineers working for the town would get input from the cross-country coach about appropriate guidelines for the turn in the pink section, and follow best practices used along the remainder of the greenway design up until this point to provide the best geometry for bicycling given a slightly more northern passage. Working within a narrow portion of the already design project to explore solutions that meet the town’s goals and the cross-country team’s goals gives us the best chance to get a win-win without a massive hit to project cost and time loss to completion. (click to enlarge):
There is a proposal on the Facebook page of the Friends of Bolin Creek organization that suggests abandoning roughly half of the design and re-routing the trail towards the north side of the tennis courts, and it should not be considered as a way forward. This is one of those late-breaking changes that is likely to cost a lot more than either of the approaches discussed above, simply because a path so different from what has already been drawn up would contain significantly more re-work on the engineering side. Pursuing this approach is more likely to indefinitely delay the greenway or render it fiscally infeasible, which would be a tremendous failure on the town’s behalf.
In Closing: Carrboro Needs the Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Multi-Use Path
In a world where we hear daily about the challenge of climate change, see data showing rising childhood obesity, struggle with equity issues, and parents worry about “nature deficit disorder,” the Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Multi-Use Path is the rare public investment that can address four such issues at once. Kids get more exercise on their way to school, walking or riding through nature instead of being strapped into a five-point harness in the back of a car. More facilities like this one mean more trips that are emission-free, promoting public health through not only pollution prevented, but also through increased physical activity. Finally, there are lots of people with mobility impairments for whom a multi-use path allows an exploration of nature that a dirt or gravel surface will simply not allow.
