As North Carolina deals with record unemployment, it’s easy to see evidence of the economic cocoon that is southern Orange County. Fed by tax receipts mainly mined from the 99 other counties in the state, the “local economy” is sheltered from the reality of double digit unemployment seen across the rest of the Piedmont.
In most of North Carolina, not raising the salaries of municipal employees with so many private employees unemployed is not seen as a “sacrifice” or a “partnering” with the unfortunate unemployed town residents. Municipal employee positions can be reduced just like private business employee positions.
Here in Orange County the thought of slashing municipal employee positions is to be considered in the same vein as slashing the fat pensions of those employees. Just don't even think about it.
At a recent Carrboro town meeting, Manager Steve Stewart remarked that last year and this year are two of the toughest he’s faced in 32 years of drafting budgets. Translation, he can’t give automatic pay increases for no increase in performance. He can’t just fund new programs on rampant unsustainable growth. “We’ll be lucky just to continue to do what we’ve been doing. I don’t see that there’s any room for new programs or expansion unless we cut somewhere else or we look at a tax increase being imposed.” (See Carrboro Citizen Love Story.)
Mr. Stewart said that paying for the opening and staffing of the new fire station on Homestead Road and a mandatory increase in the rate the town pays into the employee retirement fund are the biggest fiscal challenges. Mr. Stewart didn’t say that both of these eventualities were obvious to those managers with financial acumen.
In reality, the fire station operations “problem” is more than paid for by the over $500,000 in new taxes that came rolling into town coffers from the hundreds of households forced into the town of Carrboro through the progressive Northeast Carrboro Annexation five years ago. However, instead of saving any of that money for the purpose intended by state legislators (paying for the increased municipal service burdens from the new residents), Mr. Stewart has been spending that money on other programs. Why? His job is to hide the profligate ways of the town’s governance board.
The employee retirement fund “problem” reflects more than a downturn in above-average economic returns for the state pension fund during a boom. It also reflects an aging population of municipal employees and the unsustainable nature of the largesse of the pension awarded.
Think not? Ask yourself, how much would the average Chapelboro municipal employee have to be paid to put enough money into a 401(k) plan in order to yield the annual return represented by three quarters of their retiring salary? The answer is that you would be paying municipal employees on a pay scale of which equivalent private employees can only dream.
Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton displays his usual firm grasp of finances. “I feel like the town’s employees have been partners with the taxpayers in trying to deal with the recession. We need to find some way to make sure [the employees] are feeling the love.” (One can only assume that Mr. Chilton is referring to partnering with not only employed taxpayers but also unemployed taxpayers. By “unemployed”, the Pulp refers to those taxpayers not wishing to be unemployed, as opposed to the large body of willingly unemployed living in Carrboro.)
No word on whether or not Mr. Chilton and his fellow part-time elected officials will give up their Cadillac health care plans so as to benefit the employees they so love, not to mention foregoing their public servant salary for attending about thirty several hour meetings.
No word on whether or not Mr. Stewart will ever publish town employee salaries in amounts adjusted to reflect a 401(k) type retirement funding commonly forced on those dumb private business employees not on the municipal NCLM gravy train.
Imagine the following scenario.
A person builds a garage in a town with zoning ordinances and inspections. A permit is obtained for the garage. It’s built under the gaze of town inspectors. As part of the garage plan, an apartment with plumbing is built on a second floor. All is done with no hiding of any fact from the town staff. Only one problem, the zoning isn’t supposed to allow garage apartments.
Now consider that this error isn’t discovered for ten years. No one complains.
The reasonable solution is to allow the apartment to be legal, regulate it, tax it, and move on.
Not in southern Orange, land of the palocracy, where reasonable solutions are reserved for pals. Here the powerful sue the weak for the sins of the mighty.
On 2 October 2008, the Carrboro planning board will consider such a mess, compounded with the burden imposed by town staff that a helpless, non-pal, non-resident must sub-divide their watershed farm against their will. The local media remains silent.
The Odious Barn Apartment on a Farm
Carrboro’s Developer Service Department aka (town planners, zoners, or inspectors - PZI) has the ability to tell people who don’t live in Carrboro how to live their lives. It’s called extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ), a power to make second class citizens, approved by the General Assembly.
Unfortunately, Ms. Marilyn Kille owns a 19.47 acre operating farm at 219 Old Fayetteville Road that falls within the clutches of the Carrboro ETJ. According to her, in 1997 she had a 3,600 square foot barn built in which an auxiliary apartment was included. The barn is for animals, not cumbayah circles. The apartment is for an animal caretaker, not a trustafarian.
In her words, “Extensive photos, receipts and other documentation, and the testimony of contractors support that the apartment was constructed at the same time the overall barn was constructed; and thus existed throughout the five-month inspection process and at the time of the final inspection. Specifically, all plumbing and electrical installations were embedded in the concrete floor poured in October 1997 and, thereafter, were readily visible during weekly inspections.”
The Slowly Grinding Wheels of Misjustice
Ten years went by with no problems.
Then without explanation, in 2007 the Developer Service Department alleges that the barn apartment was completed after the final inspection in late December 1997. That’s a no-no.
Ms. Kille responds by alleging that the Town had a personnel problem in 1997. Her barn was the first ever inspected by Town staff. She believes they made errors, alternatively applying the Residential and Commercial Codes in lieu of the Farm Building Code.
Sympathetic Carrboro officials, such as Town Manager Steve Stewart, showed their compassion by suing Ms. Kille alleging willful violation of the urban Residential Code (by a rural property).
Bureaucrats don’t make mistakes in progressive Southern Orange County.
The Bureaucratic Flim-Flam
In December 2007 the Town’s Planning Administrator and Associate Counsel acknowledged that the barn apartment could comply with the Residential Code via the text amendment process. Ms. Kille was told this change would be “a routine procedure”.
Ms. Kille responded by submitting a text amendment application on 2 January 2008,
On 15 January 2008 the Town refused to consider a text amendment. (Ms. Kille is not an Hispanic immigrant, and thus, can’t receive the special treatment afforded lonchera operators, see Pulp Lonchera Safety Story.)
The local court, which almost invariably backs the local municipal jurisdictions, a smart move for a locally elected judge, ordered that a solution be found by 26 August 2008.
The town now imposed the bait and switch. Instead of a simple text amendment, Ms. Kille would have to submit a Conditional Use Permit, the most onerous and costly application possible and subdivide her property, even though she doesn’t want to do so.
The Infamous Carrboro Hypocrisy
Carrboro spends a lot of energy developing position papers. Not what the Town will do, but what it wants to say it’s doing. (For instance, claim your growth is environmentally friendly while clear cutting the last mature hardwood forest in town). One such paper is the 20/20 long-range plan. Part of that plan calls for preserving remaining farms within Carrboro’s jurisdiction. The reality is that Carrboro is forcing Ms. Kille to subdivide her farm unnecessarily which will raise her taxes, an interesting farm preservation technique.
Ms. Kille contends that the barn apartment surrounded by the smell of manure is “critical to providing security and safety for and maintaining the well-being of my farm’s livestock”. She doesn’t understand why other farms outside Carrboro can have such apartments but she can’t without subdividing her property.
All Illegal Apartments Aren’t Created Equal
Ms. Kille notes that town officials have acknowledged that “innumerable illegal apartments are known to exist throughout the Town’s jurisdiction.” One can hardly walk down any street in older Carrboro without running into an illegal apartment. Yet no official explanation has been given as to why these illegal apartments aren’t shut down or brought into compliance.
In one instance of note, an illegal garage apartment (off Poplar Avenue) was brought to the attention of town officials, the response was not to sue or to impose subdivision, but to suggest that offended neighbors should go to the local (you guessed it) tax exempt, spread-the-love, Carrboro mediation center to get quiet enjoyment of their homes.
