Category: suburban sprawl

Highway tales from the crypt

It was like a quick, surprise trip to the mindset of the 1980s. Or maybe like one of those horror movies when something you thought was dead turns out to be twitching in the grave, still alive.

I dropped in on a group of regional elected officials and other civic-leader types who’d gathered Monday afternoon to talk about “next steps” for the worthy-but-unsexy goal of regional transportation planning, with the Centralina Council of Governments moderating a series of conversations by a study group.

It’s one of those under-the-radar issues, boring but important if you think a metro region should act like, well, a metro region and not a bunch of unrelated local governments, especially when it’s dealing with something as important – and as costly to the taxpayers – as transportation. As I’ve mentioned previously (some might even say ad nauseam), the Charlotte metro region has possibly the most fragmented transportation planning of any metro area in the country. Gaston County isn’t in the same transportation planning group as Charlotte. Cabarrus County isn’t either. Ditto York County, S.C., and ditto the whole Lake Norman area.

It was as the group was talking about the need to articulate a vision for the whole region, that the zombie idea arose from the crypt. Gaston County commissioner Joe Carpenter started talking about how it felt like, as Yogi Berra used to say, “deja vu all over again.” He recalled the era from 1988 to 1992, when a regional coalition, the Carolinas Transportation Compact, pushed for – if you said mass transit, or farmland preservation you lose – for an outer-outerbelt highway around Charlotte.

Carpenter then unfurled a large map of the route of this mythical highway, long lusted after by suburban land developers.

Because why have only one outerbelt if you can have two? Haven’t we all seen how well Charlotte’s first outerbelt has relieved congestion, led to smoothly flowing traffic, trimmed the region’s carbon footprint, helped create walkable neighborhoods and made transit easier to implement? Imagine the wonders if we could spread our Pineville- and Ballantyne-style development all over the region’s farmland?

Then-state Sen. Jerry Blackmon had conceived of the idea of a 13-county outer-outerbelt, 30 to 50 miles from Charlotte, in the mid-1980s. Planning continued throughout the 1980s, out of the public eye although land speculators such as Robert Pittenger, later a state senator, bought land along its route. In 1993 its cost was estimated at $2 billion.

Although the Carolinas Transportation Compact backed it, there was a Carolinas Urban Coalition of nearby cities which opposed it, foreseeing that the sprawl it would engender would empty their struggling downtowns. “I find the idea inconceivable,” said then-Charlotte City Council member Lynn Wheeler. “You could take gasoline and pour it on the city of Charlotte and the other cities and light a match. It would have the same effect.”

The newly elected Gov. Jim Hunt was not a fan. “The outer-outerloop strikes me as just being a little farfetched,” he said in early 1993. “I’d be very concerned about spending money on that.” And after that, Observer articles on the outer-outerbelt dwindled. And in the intervening two decades thinking about urban transportation has changed dramatically. Highways have been shown not to relieve congestion, as hoped, but to create it. Willy-nilly suburban growth has been shown to be, in many cases, a net loss for local government revenues rather than the hoped-for boost.

As Carpenter (who’s also a big backer of the dubious Garden Parkway through rural southern Gaston County) spoke, I noticed that the meeting’s chair, Dennis Rash – a former N.C. transportation board member and a one-time key lieutenant to ex-Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl Jr. – wasn’t saying much. I asked him later about the outer-outerbelt idea. Is that what we are to see from a group looking for regional transportation planning? He noted, drily, that the old outer-outerbelt idea had been conceived during a time when the federal government was paying for 90 percent of the cost of highway projects. Those days are gone, probably for good.

And that should be the fate, as well, of yet another outerbelt highway through the Piedmont around Charlotte. Please, no more rising from the crypt for this one.

Renewing the old urban-suburban battle

Professional contrarian Joel Kotkin had a piece last week in the Wall Street Journal, “The Myth of the Back-To-The-City Migration,” that’s gotten folks stirred up. (That link doesn’t require a WSJ subscription). Here’s his thesis in a nutshell: “The great migration back to the city hasn’t occurred. Over the past decade the percentage of Americans living in suburbs and single-family homes has increased.”

His thesis flies in the face of other analyses that show a decided uptick, compared with recent decades, in the proportion of people wanting to live in urban areas. As is always the case, some people take issue with either Kotkin’s facts or his conclusions. Or both.

Here, for instance, is a two-part blog riposte that Bill Fulton wrote in 2007, in “It’s Time to De-Kotkinize the Planning Debate.” Fulton, a planner, publishes of the respected California Planning & Development Report, and is mayor of Ventura, Calif. He’s quite complimentary of Kotkin’s research for his books, but thinks the speeches play fast and loose with data.

And Sam Newberg (a.k.a. Joe Urban) offers this rejoinder, “Joel Kotkin Takes On Urbanists.” In an e-mail to me, Newberg adds, ” I like Joel Kotkin and most of his work. In this article – http://joe-urban.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/suburban-snapshots.pdf – I even found that he and Peter Calthorpe agree on the fundamental shape of regions, even if they disagree on the built form on the ground. The problem I have is that Joel Kotkin does us all a disservice by lumping the very widespread preference for mixed-use, walkable places with those who want a downtown high-rise condo – a big difference. We have not provided enough quality urban housing choices in this country – supply has not met demand. Federal policy, siloed decision-making, city zoning laws, lending practices, NIMBYs, and mechanisms for financing transportation and affordable housing are all to blame.”

And if you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested in Christopher B. Leinberger’s blog posting, “Walking – Not Just for Cities Anymore,” written after he debated Kotkin last week in New York. Leinberger is a developer and a visiting fellow at Brookings, who also writes for The Atlantic. He finds a surprising convergence in some of their thinking.

Leinberger and Newberg both finger one of the reasons that make me think Kotkin paints with too broad a brush. What’s “urban”? What’s “suburban”? That answer varies widely depending on geography, government and history. It’s all in the eye of the beholder and means a lot of the statistical stuff being tossed around today is, in my eyes, squishy.

For instance, what parts of Charlotte are “urban”? I could give you a good argument that almost nothing in Charlotte is urban – not even uptown – if you envision urban as containing streets and where you can walk a few blocks down a sidewalk lined with storefronts and find dozens of stores selling goods you need for daily life (as well as interesting specialty stores), offices, apartments, nightlife, small industry, a variety of transportation options, schools and other public institutions. Dilworth, by that definition, is primarily suburban. In fact, it was designed as a turn-of-the-century streetcar suburb. It’s within a mile of downtown, and it’s slowly densifying, but is still predominantly single-family housing with reasonably big lawns. So is Dilworth “urban”? “Suburban”?

Is Davidson urban or suburban? What about Piper Glen? Davidson is not part of the city limits of Charlotte. But its older areas are denser, more walkable and have more urban fabric than the large-lot, single-family golf-course-focused subdivision of Piper Glen, which is within the city limits and therefore, in some definitions, urban instead of suburban.

Leinberger makes a good distinction. He writes, “Unfortunately, the concept of dividing the world into city versus suburbs is no longer so relevant. I have been dividing metropolitan places as either ‘drivable sub-urban,’ meaning low density, modular, and dependent upon the car/truck for most trips; or ‘walkable urban,’ meaning at least five times more dense and integrated and dependent upon many transportation modes (transit, biking, and, yes, cars and trucks).”

I think Kotkin is right in his generalized position that many people still prefer suburban-style living. But by that does he mean half-acre lots? Cul-de-sacs? Eastover and Myers Park, which are considered in-town but which have huge lots and a sprinkiling of cul-de-sacs? White picket fences and that fabulous federal subsidy we get for taking on a mortgage? Terms must be better defined. And just because plenty of people still prefer that way of life, does that mean other people who want another way of life shouldn’t be offered it, especially if the other way of life takes a lot fewer tax dollars to support?

I’ve seen enough studies from people who make their living analyzing real estate markets to be convinced there remains an unmet market for more urban-style living – by which I mean walkable neighborhoods where you don’t have to drive so far for everything, where single-family houses and shops are rigidly kept apart from apartments and condos – basically, the kinds of places where you never see a “berm” or a buffer. ( And everything I just wrote should be read with the proviso “When the real estate market comes back.”)

Renewing the old urban-suburban battle

Professional contrarian Joel Kotkin had a piece last week in the Wall Street Journal, “The Myth of the Back-To-The-City Migration,” that’s gotten folks stirred up. (That link doesn’t require a WSJ subscription). Here’s his thesis in a nutshell: “The great migration back to the city hasn’t occurred. Over the past decade the percentage of Americans living in suburbs and single-family homes has increased.”

His thesis flies in the face of other analyses that show a decided uptick, compared with recent decades, in the proportion of people wanting to live in urban areas. As is always the case, some people take issue with either Kotkin’s facts or his conclusions. Or both.

Here, for instance, is a two-part blog riposte that Bill Fulton wrote in 2007, in “It’s Time to De-Kotkinize the Planning Debate.” Fulton, a planner, publishes of the respected California Planning & Development Report, and is mayor of Ventura, Calif. He’s quite complimentary of Kotkin’s research for his books, but thinks the speeches play fast and loose with data.

And Sam Newberg (a.k.a. Joe Urban) offers this rejoinder, “Joel Kotkin Takes On Urbanists.” In an e-mail to me, Newberg adds, ” I like Joel Kotkin and most of his work. In this article – http://joe-urban.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/suburban-snapshots.pdf – I even found that he and Peter Calthorpe agree on the fundamental shape of regions, even if they disagree on the built form on the ground. The problem I have is that Joel Kotkin does us all a disservice by lumping the very widespread preference for mixed-use, walkable places with those who want a downtown high-rise condo – a big difference. We have not provided enough quality urban housing choices in this country – supply has not met demand. Federal policy, siloed decision-making, city zoning laws, lending practices, NIMBYs, and mechanisms for financing transportation and affordable housing are all to blame.”

And if you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested in Christopher B. Leinberger’s blog posting, “Walking – Not Just for Cities Anymore,” written after he debated Kotkin last week in New York. Leinberger is a developer and a visiting fellow at Brookings, who also writes for The Atlantic. He finds a surprising convergence in some of their thinking.

Leinberger and Newberg both finger one of the reasons that make me think Kotkin paints with too broad a brush. What’s “urban”? What’s “suburban”? That answer varies widely depending on geography, government and history. It’s all in the eye of the beholder and means a lot of the statistical stuff being tossed around today is, in my eyes, squishy.

For instance, what parts of Charlotte are “urban”? I could give you a good argument that almost nothing in Charlotte is urban – not even uptown – if you envision urban as containing streets and where you can walk a few blocks down a sidewalk lined with storefronts and find dozens of stores selling goods you need for daily life (as well as interesting specialty stores), offices, apartments, nightlife, small industry, a variety of transportation options, schools and other public institutions. Dilworth, by that definition, is primarily suburban. In fact, it was designed as a turn-of-the-century streetcar suburb. It’s within a mile of downtown, and it’s slowly densifying, but is still predominantly single-family housing with reasonably big lawns. So is Dilworth “urban”? “Suburban”?

Is Davidson urban or suburban? What about Piper Glen? Davidson is not part of the city limits of Charlotte. But its older areas are denser, more walkable and have more urban fabric than the large-lot, single-family golf-course-focused subdivision of Piper Glen, which is within the city limits and therefore, in some definitions, urban instead of suburban.

Leinberger makes a good distinction. He writes, “Unfortunately, the concept of dividing the world into city versus suburbs is no longer so relevant. I have been dividing metropolitan places as either ‘drivable sub-urban,’ meaning low density, modular, and dependent upon the car/truck for most trips; or ‘walkable urban,’ meaning at least five times more dense and integrated and dependent upon many transportation modes (transit, biking, and, yes, cars and trucks).”

I think Kotkin is right in his generalized position that many people still prefer suburban-style living. But by that does he mean half-acre lots? Cul-de-sacs? Eastover and Myers Park, which are considered in-town but which have huge lots and a sprinkiling of cul-de-sacs? White picket fences and that fabulous federal subsidy we get for taking on a mortgage? Terms must be better defined. And just because plenty of people still prefer that way of life, does that mean other people who want another way of life shouldn’t be offered it, especially if the other way of life takes a lot fewer tax dollars to support?

I’ve seen enough studies from people who make their living analyzing real estate markets to be convinced there remains an unmet market for more urban-style living – by which I mean walkable neighborhoods where you don’t have to drive so far for everything, where single-family houses and shops are rigidly kept apart from apartments and condos – basically, the kinds of places where you never see a “berm” or a buffer. ( And everything I just wrote should be read with the proviso “When the real estate market comes back.”)

Eeek! Sprawlanta oozes this way!

Yikes! Should Charlotte be worried that Atlanta’s sprawl will ooze over it like a slime mold in the damp woods? Or more to the point, ooze over it the way Charlotte sprawled over Derita, Newell, Thrift, Sharon and other once rural hamlets?

Here’s a clever video about “Sprawlanta” which notes that if you add together all the miles driven in the Atlanta region daily, you could drive to the sun and back. And note the great visuals of some very courageous pedestrians trying to cross sprawl thoroughfares. As the video counts the number of pedestrian deaths in the region, it notes that iconic Atlanta author Margaret Mitchell died when she was struck while crossing the street.

The last section does seem a bit like a commercial for the Glenwood Park development, however lovely and worthwhile that development does look to be. Note developer Charles Brewer’s remarks at the end, pointing out he just wants government to get out of the way so he can develop in a way he believes people want. If you’re thinking this is of interest only to big-government commie pinko types, you might want to rethink that piece of it.

BofA-sponsored report raps sprawl

A new article in Harvard Business Review “Back to the City” predicts a major cultural and demographic shift away from suburbia and back toward central cities.
It cites United Air Lines’ plan to move its operational center to downtown Chicago from the suburb of Elk Grove, and Walgreens buying New York drugstore chain Duane Reade, “signaling a deliberate decision to improve its capabilities in urban settings.”

Interestingly, it says:

“A recent report sponsored by Bank of America, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Low Income Housing Fund examines the inefficiencies of the current “geographical mismatch between workers and jobs.” Focusing on California, it says that sprawl “reduc[es] the quality of life,” “increase[s] the attractiveness of neighboring states,” and yields “higher direct business costs and taxes to offset the side-effects of sprawl”— which include transportation, health care, and environmental costs.”

“To put it simply,” the HBR article says, “the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars—that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. “

Sprawl’s dipping into your pocketbook

People just don’t realize how much extra tax money must be spent because of the sprawling development patterns, not just in Charlotte and North Carolina, but around the country. Consider connected streets, and their role in easing expenditures for roads and for emergency services.
It’s clear that connecting streets – whether with a rigid grid or more curving street patterns such as Charlotte’s John Nolen-designed Myers Park neighborhood – relieves thoroughfares of some portion of their traffic. Yes, each neighborhood street gets a bit more traffic. But if they’re well-designed, narrow enough to discourage speeding, have adequate sidewalks, bike lanes and/or on-street parking (or all of the above) traffic moves slowly and poses little burden for residents.
Meanwhile, thoroughfares need not carry as much traffic (or be widened or resurfaced as often). When there’s an accident or other problem on a thoroughfare, motorists have plenty of options for alternate routes.
Yes, it costs developers a bit more to build a street grid than a cul-de-sac subdivision, and the extra streets reduce the number of lots and buildings a developer can squeeze onto the land. But for taxpayers, it ought to be a no-brainer.
But connecting streets can have some other, unexpected benefits for municipal coffers. Here’s an intriguing study from Charlotte’s transportation and fire department staff that finds fire station costs sharply lower in parts of town where streets connect.
The study analyzed eight stations and found those in connected neighborhoods can serve more square miles because they can reach more homes within acceptable response times. The Dilworth station can serve 14 square miles. The station in the cul-de-sac-laden Highland Creek area can cover only 8 square miles.
The study found the annualized per-household life cycle cost of the Dilworth station to be $159. The equivalent cost for the station in the Highland Creek area was $740 – almost five times more.
Charlotte Department of Transportation staff who worked on the study included Matt Magnasco, Steven Castongia and Katie Templeton. Fire Department staff included Benny Warwick and Rachel Pillar. Magnasco tells me it hasn’t yet been published or peer-reviewed, but they’re working to get it into shape for that. The PowerPoint presentation linked to above was for a Congress for the New Urbanism transportation conference in Charlotte last last year.

What ails cities and suburbs — and more

News from around:

Bull City Blues: Architect, engineer and planner Tony Sease raps Durham for how it’s NOT making streets more comfortable for pedestrians in some new streetscaping projects.

Obama the City Dude: Alec McGillis writes in the WashPost that Barack Obama is the first candidate in decades who has spent almost all his life living in large cities, and speculates on what that might mean if he wins election. To make his point McGillis dismisses Dukakis as being from Brookline, not Boston, and Kerry as being more of Nantucket than Boston. That’s a bit of a stretch.

Curing Urban-itis: Americans have a love-hate relationship with cities, writes author William Finley in a column on planetizen.com. The problems of cities and of suburbs are inextricably linked, he says, but usually they’re dealt with as if totally separate Problems he lists include traffic congestion, lack of affordable housing, blighted inner city neighborhoods and sprawl. He fingers the federal government — among others — for lack of leadership.

Here’s his take on traffic congestion: “Traffic Congestion is caused by one-person cars, auto and oil lobbies, subsidized parking, low gas taxes, political opposition to rapid transit, Federal and State failures to assist metro areas and the lack of regional leadership. It is always the other fellow’s fault.”

Beauty Out of Season: Maybe Momma Nature decided the campaign muck was just too dreary and wanted to cheer us all up. Whatever the reason, some of the Rocky Shoals spider lilies are blooming out of season in the Catawba River near Great Falls, S.C. Lindsay Pettus sent along some photos from Bill Stokes. (one above, another below. )

The spider lilies are an endangered species that grow in the middle of the river. The colony in the Catawba is one of the largest known — and when they bloom in the spring they’re spectacular.

Quaint (??!!) Pineville

I came across this article about Pineville, by two planners: Kevin Icard, city planning director, and planner Travis Morgan.

“Pineville is a historic city filled with landmarks, rustic antique shops and bustling downtown district reminiscent of the 1950s,” they write. Well, true that, if you’re talking about downtown Pineville. The town is right to try to protect it. But what they have done — requiring new buildings to have brick facades — won’t protect the cozy turn-of-the-century downtown at all.

Even more significant, compared to the rest of Pineville, its downtown is like a b-b rolling around a six-lane highway. The rest of Pineville is the worst of suburban retail sprawl: strip centers, power centers, a enclosed regional mall, big box stores clear to the horizon — all of it unwalkable, all of it a traffic nightmare at virtually all times of day. Pineville is famed throughout the metro Charlotte region as the worst possible example of unplanned retail development — not that that has stopped other places (Concord Mills in Concord, University City, Albemarle Road, etc.) from trying to steal that designation.

It is famous in local circles, also, for refusing to let Charlotte’s newly opened light rail line into town. The wildly successful transit line now ends at the Pineville city limits.

I will give Pineville kudos for saying no to a Wal-Mart supercenter a few years back, and I will give its planners kudos for trying to save downtown Pineville. But I’m pretty sure that an ordinance requiring every new building to have a brick facade isn’t the way to do it, however.

The Central Avenue challenge

Wonderful discussion about retrofitting suburbia. If you haven’t read the comments, I recommend them.

Retrofitting can be expensive for taxpayers, when a city has to build sidewalks, add storm drains and so on. The city’s changes in recent years — requiring sidewalks, better street designs, etc. — help with new construction only. Even the city’s admirable, if slow-moving, sidewalk-building gets at only part of the problem.

Most of the potential retrofitting happens as part of the natural economic evolution of a city: A business closes, another business buys the building and renovates it, or tears it down and build again. Or a business expands its building.

The city’s passivity is hurting those small-scale opportunities all over town. Here are two examples, both a couple of years old, are the Bank of America branch at Kings Drive and Charlottetowne Avenue (a.k.a. the old Independence Boulevard), and the Bojangles at Third Street and Charlottetowne. Plenty of other examples abound all over the city, especially along the so-called International corridor of Central Avenue, between Eastway Drive and Eastland Mall.

That branch bank and the Bojangles are welcome businesses. I just spent a year in Massachusetts, suffering withdrawal from good fried chicken and biscuits, so believe me, I value Bojangles. The bank replaced one that was demolished for the Little Sugar Creek Greenway and was needed in the neighborhood.

BUT … The two buildings — not the businesses within, but the buildings and lot designs — are awful for the location. They’re suburban in design — one-story buildings with deep setbacks from the street and huge parking lots out front. They’re unsuitable for an in-town location, especially an area where other developers are trying to build more urban patterns. Those two small buildings should have helped with the urban retrofit of Midtown area, yet they didn’t. Why not?

The city’s old-fashioned zoning codes are to blame. Although I often praise the city’s planners for devising a variety of urban codes in the past 10 or 15 years (MUDD, PED, TOD, etc.) those standards apply only to property that holds that zoning. If your property has the older, suburban-style business zoning (B-1 or B-2) you can build suburbia with no trouble from the city. You’re virtually required to, in fact, because of the required setbacks and buffers. You have an economic incentive as well, because going through a rezoning costs money. Keeping your old zoning doesn’t.

Plenty of other examples abound along Central Avenue. Small owners, small buildings, and old zoning codes add up to lost opportunities for small retrofitting steps over time.

If you’re one of the hundreds of people deeply wishing to see a Central Avenue revitalization, you should push the city to change its B-1 zoning standards. I’m getting tired of visionary plans that don’t address this issue. Central Avenue still looks like bedraggled suburbia because the underlying rules that govern building designs haven’t changed under the old zoning that exists along Central Avenue. To change the way things look, change the rules that govern how things look.

(UPDATE as of 7:30 p.m.: Got an e-mail this afternoon that said the city had adopted a PED overlay for Central Avenue. If that’s the case it would do exactly what I’m hoping for — require more urban-style development. But I can’t find it listed on the planning department’s web page. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but means I can’t, tonight, confirm or deny it.)

And before you go off about how the city shouldn’t set design standards, let me just open your eyes to the reality that B-1 zoning, which requires deep setbacks, is less favorable to property owners than a zoning that would allow them to build closer to the property line and cover more of the land with buildings and less with setbacks and buffers. If you’re required to keep 35 feet of property vacant in front, you can’t build as much income-producing square-footage as if you’re required to keep only 15 feet of property vacant in front. I’m not proposing ADDING a lot of design controls, only altering the ones that already exist.

Charlotte pols lack guts?

It’s obvious Charlotte-Mecklenburg isn’t the only place slammed by growth that’s outpacing its ability — or at least its willingness to raise property taxes enough — to pay for building the schools needed for all the newcomers.

A total of 46 — FORTY SIX — bills in the General Assembly would give local governments across the state new authority to levy taxes beyond property taxes. Other places want permission to enact land transfer taxes, which adds a fee to real estate transactions. Or they want permission to levy impact fees on new residential construction. Or they want permission to raise sales taxes to help pay for building schools.

WakeUp Wake County, a group that advocates more limits on growth, recently hired a well-known lobbyist to push a fee of up to 1 percent on real estate transfers. At least three Wake County legislators have sponsored bills to let Wake enact some new taxes, if voters approve.

What’s Mecklenburg County asking for? Nada. Zip. Zilcheroonie. (OK, to be fair, I think they passed a resolution supporting an N.C. Association of County Commissioners’ attempt to get broad permission for all counties. But that bill’s going nowhere, and other counties have been far more assertive about asking the Leg for what they need.)

What’s Charlotte asking for? Nada. (Nope, the city doesn’t pay for schools. It does pay for road and street improvements made necessary by new development. Why not ask for an impact fee for street improvements?)

Here’s a roundup story from the Raleigh News & Observer. It mentions the massive campaign being sponsored by the N.C. Association of Realtors, to “Stop the N.C. Home Tax.”

How disingenuous. Let’s see. Right now, school construction is paid for mostly through bonds or other debt, which is repaid with, hmmmm, let me get this right — property taxes. So a real estate transfer tax — which would apply to every transaction, not just homes — is a “Home Tax.” And the tax you pay because you own your home is NOT a “Home Tax”?

The thing is, when you ask representatives of the N.C. Association of Realtors, “Well, how do you propose that counties find money to build schools? Shall we infer that this means you support raising property taxes?” they just hem and haw.

Or, they say, governments should trim their budgets. Oh, for pity’s sakes. That’s like saying Americans should exercise more and watch less TV and parents should teach their kids better manners. In other words, yes they should, but they haven’t done it yet and are most unlikely to do it in the future, because there’s no way to make them.

Furthermore, I don’t think county governments can cut enough to find the billions needed to build the schools they need. What are they going to do, stop paying for social services that they’re legally required to provide? Stop running public health departments? People who say “just cut the budget” either don’t know much about local government budgets or are among the tiny minority who believe that virtually no government services are really needed. And the majority of voters don’t agree with them. Which is why it’s hard for elected officials to cut services enough to find the money to build schools.

Why are Mecklenburg’s local officials so much more passive about proposing impact fees or land transfer taxes than those in Wake? Any ideas?