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 5-17-2016 Town 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.
Meeting our ambitious Racial Equity goals demands nothing less.
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