1. Cary’s Message to Poor People: Keep Out!
For years, the Cary City Council has done everything in its power to keep poor people from living in the city. In the guise of "punishing" developers, the council has enacted highly restrictive land-use policies and impact fees that jack up housing prices, making Cary unaffordable for all but upper-income individuals and families.
The council’s efforts have been so successful at keeping poor people out that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cary’s median household income is nearly double the state median and that Cary has driven up housing prices so that median home values are 80 percent above the state median. I wish I could vote for a policy that would increase the value of my home and increase my net worth.
It is little wonder that only 6 percent of the city’s population is African-American, compared with almost 22 percent for the state.
Cary’s latest effort to "punish" developers for building housing that low-income families can afford is a proposal to charge impact fees to pay for open space and greenways for each new apartment built in the city. The city already has impact fees for single-family homes and townhouses.
One city council member is not bashful about using the impact fee to keep poor people out of the city. Councilmember Smith is quoted as stating: "With multi-family [housing], we’ve got both feet on the brakes and parachutes on out back and we’re still getting the damn things." Apparently, he does not want to rub elbows with poor people at the local Harris Teeter.
If Cary’s impact fee studies are anything like the studies used in Raleigh, they would be totally bogus because they would calculate only costs, not increased revenues created by growth.
Wake County commissioners exhibited a superior grasp of basic economics when they recently repealed the open-space impact fee in the county. They know that, for the most part, the impact fees are passed on to homebuyers, increasing home prices and making housing less affordable. Instead, Wake County will use a more transparent and just method to increase open space by letting voters vote on bond issues. This method has little impact on housing prices and ensures that all citizens who benefit from parks, open space, and greenways help pay for the benefits they receive. It’s too bad that other local government in the state don’t recognize the unfairness and injustice of impact fees.
2. Grassroots Tyranny in Southport
The city government in the charming seaside city of Southport wants downtown customers to sit in the sun, not the shade. Marianne and Ernest Long, owners of Bullfrog Corner Shoppe, provided benches under shade trees outside their store. City enforcement officers have fined the Longs because they refuse to move the benches against the building where the sun will bake the users. The Longs refuse to pay the fine and have started a petition drive to save the benches.
Ernest Long thinks the city’s ordinance is ridiculous, and so do his customers. "Over 3,000 people have signed a petition for us saying they think it’s ridiculous. The first thing they ask is ‘Oh, you must be kidding. This can’t be true.’"
In this down economy, don’t city officials have better things to do than to harass small businesses?
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