The Fractious Politics of Growth
by JON PRESTAGE
 

Will fractious politics continue to hinder economic growth in Carolina Beach? Will a leader emerge? These are questions that need to be addressed at Town Hall and by residents and businesses in the town.

In June, UNCW Political Science Professor, Mark T. Imperial, an expert in coastal community planning, told Snow’s Cut Monthly that over the next few years, “Carolina Beach will have to make difficult choices as to what it is and what it wants to be.”
“People need to be realistic,” he warned. “Property values will not go down. Traffic will only get worse. More people will come to the beach. The town and its residents need to come to grips with what they are going to do. As property values rise, developers will want to build higher and higher to maximize the returns on their investments.”
Dr. Imperial works as a consultant to coastal communities like Emerald Isle, Wrightsville Beach, and Carolina Beach. He also said in June that many towns like Carolina Beach never develop a comprehensive planning strategy, often because such efforts are terribly complex.
 

“These efforts require strong and courageous leadership and a willingness on the part of elected officials, landowners, and all stakeholders to enter a process whose outcomes may be unpredictable and may represent a compromise for everyone involved,” he said. The outcomes, however, can ultimately be a healthy and thriving community, the sort of community that nearly all leaders in this beach town talk about and say they envision.
 

Despite the political turmoil in Carolina Beach these days, it might be said that the hard work of building a master plan is just beginning, and, while all members of the town council and other community leaders seem to agree that a comprehensive development plan is a must, it’s getting harder for them to agree on just how to get there. The reasons are difficult to define, but Dr. Imperial’s words about strong leadership seem especially relevant and prophetic. He talks about the sort of leadership that can’t be described by “buzzwords” or “hot button” political issues.

Rewind to 2005
During the mayoral and town council election in 2005, one of the primary issues was the lack of height restrictions in the town’s central business district (CBD). Candidates Bill Clark, Alan Gilbert, and Jerry Johnson accused their opponents of coddling builders and creating a chaotic planning and growth environment in a town absent the guidance of a comprehensive planning strategy.
 

In fact, the candidates ran under a banner of “smart growth,” but ten months after taking office, the town still does not have a comprehensive master plan or a clear process in place as to how to achieve one any time soon. Confusion surrounding growth and planning appears to be actually increasing and creating an even more fractious situation than existed before the last election.
 

Since last winter, the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) has been regularly reviewing overlay maps submitted by the Council that put in place new height restrictions in certain residential areas and the CBD. In August, P&Z essentially asked the council to stop sending it height limitation recommendations for the CBD. Some commissioners say they are concerned that the maps are based on nothing more than the views of one or several council members and not on rationales developed by a comprehensive plan that might help to chart the town’s future, its character, and offer a roadmap on how to get there.
 

Ultimately the P&Z asked the council to hire outside help to develop such a comprehensive plan for the town.
 

“We don’t know what these proposed height limitations in the CBD are based on or how they came up with them, and nobody can tell us,” says P&Z Commissioner Dan Wilcox. “They just keep sending us overlays with different height options, with no explanations or rationale.”
 

Ironically these overlays were sent to P&Z in addition to RFP’s being sought from outside consultants to conduct a height study. As of this printing, the proposals received for such a study apparently proved to be unsatisfactory to the council. One consultant responded by urging the town to undertake a more comprehensive planning study than one for height alone.
 

The seven height overlays (which were different options to consider) were prepared by the Town’s Planning Department and presented to the P&Z at the direction of the
Town Council, according to Town Planning Director Steve Harrell. He agrees they’re not based on an overriding rationale. “We gleaned some of them from conversations we’ve heard,” he said.
 

Despite the P&Z’s insistence on a comprehensive plan that encompasses height, at a special meeting of the council on October 9th, the majority (Clark, Gilbert, and Johnson) voted to send an entirely new overlay map to the P&Z outlining height limitations in residential districts and the CBD. The overlay sets 140-foot height limitations in some parts of the CBD and lower heights in other areas of the district. It also sets 40-foot limitations in certain residential districts. The current residential limitation in those districts is 50 feet, according the 2005 Land Use Plan, which had been approved by the P&Z, chaired at the time by now Council member Johnson.
Council members Joel Macon and Pat Efird voted against sending this latest height limit overlay to the commission.
 

Macon commented, “I voted against this because the council needs to reach a consensus on height limitations and this is not the way to do it. We can do it with the development of a comprehensive master plan. How do we know these limitations are the right thing for our community without such a study?” he asks. Macon is frustrated by what he labels as the inaction of the current mayor and council to deal with these growth issues and has decided to run for mayor himself next year (Please note accompanying sidebar). Macon has been on the council for 11 years.
Also at the October 9th special meeting, Macon argued for a vote calling for the town to immediately seek a consultant to develop a comprehensive master plan. While the council ultimately did adopt the motion unanimously, it calls only for the town manager to gather information for the council to consider.
 

“I attended this meeting,” Wilcox says, “and the council voted for the town manager to look at it, to do some research. This is still not a commitment to a master plan.” He says that in this current economic environment, the town can’t afford to drag its feet on a master plan.
 

Nevertheless, Clark and Gilbert say they are committed to a comprehensive master plan. Johnson was unavailable for comment.

So, What’s the Hold Up?
When asked about the lack of momentum for a master planning process after 10 months, Gilbert says he is “finding the pace of government frustrating.”
“If you own your own business you can get things done quickly, but the speed of government with decisions by committees doesn’t always allow for a fast pace. The former council ran into these same problems. It is hard to get things through the P&Z. We have asked staff to help us meet these goals and they have a lot on their plates, so some priorities get set aside,” he says.
 

However, Wilcox responds, “If the council would let the process work through the professional staff and the P&Z and not try to force specific outcomes, things would work better. The processes do work. We have a professional planning staff with a lot of expertise, and we have a P&Z that tries to consider issues based on ordinances and professional planning approaches and not politics.”
 

Dr. Imperial and other professional planners interviewed previously by Snow’s Cut Monthly say that such limitations without a comprehensive plan are not a good idea because of the possibility of unintended consequences. Comprehensive master planning, they say, generally involves the hiring of outside consultants who implement a process involving elected officials, staff, merchants, builders, and residents with the goal of producing a consensus on the community’s character and future, and such an effort would include height limitations.
 

Another irony is that all the officials interviewed for this article agree that the town does need height limitations in the CBD, but the question still remains, how best to achieve them?
 

Mayor Clark and Gilbert say that the height limitations are needed now, even without a planning process, to establish clarity for builders, and besides, they say, it will take some time before a comprehensive master planning process is completed.
Macon says that just establishing height limitations immediately, even if they make sense and he essentially agrees with them—which he says he does—is not the way to go. “We need to put a vision out there for our town and get public input. We need a plan, and we need to implement it and stick to it,” he says.
Just how close Carolina Beach is to developing a comprehensive planning process remains to be seen, and just who will step forward to lead such a process also remains to be seen.

Macon Decides to Run for Mayor
After 11 years on the town council, Joel Macon told Snow’s Cut Monthly that he would run for mayor next year because, “the town needs someone to step up and take the reins and lead us to where we need to go next.”
 

Macon, an investigator for a building association, who looks into allegations of building violations for consumers, served as the building inspector in Carolina Beach for nine years before being elected to the council. He calls himself a plainspoken man who has always had a passion for public office. He grew up in Carolina Beach.
“I’d like to see the town be less divided. I’d like to see it grow in a positive way. I’d like a vibrant downtown with wider sidewalks, more landscaping, better lighting, more businesses and mixed-use projects. I believe we have been stuck in the mud for the last year with a lot of indecisiveness, with no one making things clear about where were are headed and where we want to be,” he says.
 

Current Town Mayor Bill Clark, contrary to rumors, says he is likely to run for re-election. Clark ran for a two-year term last year, which is up at the end of next year.
“We’re just getting started,” Clark says when asked whether he’d seek re-election. “I don’t plan on going anywhere until we meet our goals. We’ve got to get something accomplished.”
 

Macon is critical of the current council majority, including Mayor Clark, for not implementing a comprehensive planning process nearly a year after they took office, which was the cornerstone of their campaign. Macon is also critical of the previous majority, which he says also didn’t spark clarity with its policies, such as the lack of height limits in the Central Business District (CBD).
“We’ve got to do better than this,” he says.
 

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