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Board looks at parking, commercial growth at retreat

Posted on January 30, 2008 by Staff

Town leaders and key town staffers met for two days at the OWASA community room last weekend at the annual retreat for the mayor and board of aldermen. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

After spending the first day of their annual retreat discussing the type of town they’d like to see Carrboro become (or remain), their personal values and how they apply that to their work, members of the board of aldermen waded into the thorny issues of parking and economic development in hopes of crafting a strategy to move forward on those issues in the year ahead.

Although the board took no action, its review underscored the urgency felt by many members to get a long-term parking plan in place.

Board member Jacquie Gist said she wants to make sure that as new developments come on line, they do not have a negative impact on existing businesses. Having a plan for parking is an important part of that, she said.

Gist also said the town needs to consider residential-only parking for downtown streets since new development will likely lead to more people relying on parking along residential streets.

Alderman John Hererra said he thinks Carrboro’s traditional free-parking policy should be maintained.

Board members also expressed concern that they prioritize economic-development efforts to make sure that the goal of reducing the tax burden on homeowners by the growing commercial square footage be met.

Board member Joal Hall Broun said while it might be a nice idea to review policies and enhance opportunities for home businesses, the end result — likely a small increase in privilege license fees — won’t have a significant impact on the town budget. Increasing the take from commercial property taxes by adding new businesses and development and preventing leakage of retail sales taxes to other counties should be the focus, she said.

2 thoughts on “Board looks at parking, commercial growth at retreat”

  1. Tom Roche says:
    February 2, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    Carrboro has a car problem, about which it is in denial, leading to some serious hypocrisy and greenwashing. Carrboro *does not* have a parking problem. The truth is,

    1 No one (specifically no business) is dependent on parking–they’re actually dependent on smogmobiling. You can have all the parking you want, but if someone can’t afford to drive, and if s/he must drive to reach a destination, then s/he can’t afford to go there, no matter how free the parking is. Similarly, if folks were really walking, biking, and using mass transit as much as a lotta Carrboritos want to believe, those spaces would not be full.

    2 The Town can, should it choose to, get into the business of providing free parking. But the Town cannot get into the business of providing the cheap fuel and free pollution on which smogmobiling currently depends, and will continue to depend for the foreseeable future. So if the Town provides free parking, and subsequently there’s an oil price shock, or the price of gas just keeps going up, or there’s a serious carbon tax, or whatever, those spaces will go empty. (Unless, of course, at the same time that the price of driving goes up, the incomes of the prospective drivers also goes up. Good luck with that.)

    3 Free parking subsidizes car use. That’s empirically pretty well established: when parking is made more expensive, people substitute other modes (though demand is relatively inelastic for nominal charges, e.g. meters).

    4 Free parking decreases density. That’s almost tautological, except for places where people live in their cars, which I’m presuming is not what Carrboro is looking for :-) Otherwise, parking takes space that could be used for other purposes.

    5 Density encourages bike, ped, and transit. Also what “studies show,” esp in areas where density “crowds out” parking.

    So providing free parking is in fact to *enable* car addiction, and to bet that it can continue. It’s to provide space for cars instead of increasing density and providing amenities for sustainable modes of transport, like biking, walking, and mass transit. As public policy, that’s just dumb–it is simply not within the power of the Town of Carrboro to ensure the continuing economic viability of transportation by private automobile. As moral policy, given the reality of climate change, enabling the most polluting form of transportation per passenger mile is just wrong.

    What should our policy be? Sustainability.

    We need a downtown which people are encouraged, enabled, and, if necessary, *compelled* to access via lower cost, less polluting means, like bike, ped, and transit. (And, yes, I do mean “compelled”: the same way we’re compelling Iraqis to accept our occupation–not that we’re there except to “promote democracy”–and the same way we’re compelling the rest of the world to accept our carbon in their atmosphere.) And one way to break the smogmobile habit is to do what Mark Chilton advocated–for UNC–at the Focus-the-Nation kickoff @ UNC Great Hall Wednesday night (30 Jan 08), where he congratulated UNC for creating an environment where it’s “less desirable to drive because there’s nowhere to park.” Of course, he won’t advocate that for nice “progressive” Carrboro, probably because he suspects, as do I, that Carrboritos talk a lot greener than we walk. Because we don’t actually walk (despite our touted walkability), or bike, or take transit nearly as much as we drive.

    We should prepare *actively* for the post-automobile future. Instead, Carrboro politicians, and this paper

    http://www.carrborocitizen.com/main/2008/01/23/for-the-record-012408/

    are advocating business as usual on climate change and transportation.

  2. PjP says:
    February 3, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Tom, I agree with what you advocate and I feel your inferences about local politicians are correct.

    There is nothing we can do to change this system from the inside. Governments were created to protect business and property, in other words, to protect mans’ interests.

    So keep writing these editorials because they are very good and an inspiration to the people. And it is the people who we need to work on. Because it is not the politicians who change the world, but it is the people who overthrow the politicians who change the world.

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