Wrightsville’s board is holding back-to-back public hearings Thursday night for public comment on increased paid parking on Harbor Island, as the town enters the handful of weeks leading up to its summer season. During the summer months Wrightsville will see thousands of daily beachgoers descend, most destined for sun and fun on the beach strand. This causes a ramp-up of tourism required services for the town, including continued designation of paid parking spaces.
With two aldermen, Elizabeth King and Darryl Mills, on excused absences, the remaining board will discuss and take comments on the two paid parking proposals then delay the matter to a later session for a full board decision.
Wrightsville, the island, is pretty well metered-up. At a cost off $2.50 per hour, beachgoers can park in one of 1,508 metered spaces or six paid parking lots. With the advent of smartphone paid parking, cell phones can be used to avoid carrying $10 rolls of quarters to feed the meters while taking the family to the beach.
Harbor Island, attached to Wrightsville by two fixed bridges over Banks Channel, is not metered. A previous effort to meter Old Causeway Drive failed four to five years ago.
One of the consequences of metering an area or street anywhere in the town that does not have paid parking is those seeking free parking are driven to new locations to find it. The town has long been mindful of this squeeze phenomenon: charge for parking on this street, shift cars to another location that still has free parking spaces.
Parking is the second-largest revenue stream of the town’s $13 million budget, after real property taxes.
Besides this critical revenue stream to pay sanitation workers to keep bathrooms and the beach strand presentable, police the vast crowds that swell the populace every summer, paid parking spaces create a turnover in availability of parking. The idea is to make access to the beach strand more accessible; no single space is tied up all day by just one vehicle without a hefty price tag attached.
Clever beachgoers are known to stick cars anywhere they can on South Harbor Island and as the town adds paid parking, drivers ferret out new options in free parking like the unmarked spaces on Harbor Island on the sides of North Channel Drive, likewise those along Coral Drive, a handful of spaces on Short, Keel and Marina streets as well as those on Old Causeway in front of the mini business district and post office.
The town hopes to bolster this business district and is very interested in the businesses on this strip making it, like the yet-to-be-opened Poe’s Tavern.
Before you get all warm and fuzzy, remember sales tax from commercial businesses is the town’s third-highest revenue stream, even though the GA under Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown, if he has his way, is about to slice and dice sales tax percentages to the determent of the town.
And then we have the municipal park that needs to retain its parking for those actually using the park for tennis, volleyball, basketball, intramural sports, the children’s playground. It is a common sight to see beach-bound visitors schlepping their beach gear along the Loop from the park and back.
Challenging the town’s annual summer headache is the infinite number of vehicles with boat trailers that overflow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Boat ramp, the only one within 20 miles. This is inarguably one of wildlife’s finest locations plus ramps, but the number of parking spaces is far outnumbered by those putting a boat in the water there. When full, often before daylight, shutout boat owners will stick vehicles with trailers anywhere they can find: on the shoulders of highways 74/76, under the Live Oak trees on Pelican Drive, in the field opposite the old fire station when someone leaves the chain down in and around Old Causeway and in front of the businesses and post office.
The first hearing is for paid parking on Pelican Drive. Pelican Drive is also highly desirable free parking choice for beachgoers to the Johnnie Mercer’s Pier area.
Although the Pelican parking plan will not generate a significant net effect in parking revenue, aldermen want to use to paid parking by smartphone without meters to control the glut of non-resident and vehicles with boat trailer parking on that street as soon as the weather warms up. Residents and business owners were previously allowed to express their opinions on this proposal in an April 8 public hearing.
The second public hearing of the night is to create paid parking in the area around Old Causeway Drive including Short, Keel and Marina streets. The conundrum in both plans is to adopt either plan, without further addressing parking in the municipal park, will just drive more to the park in search of free parking.
In the desire to avoid paying for parking, anyplace there is a lined or even unlined space that is free — determined drivers will find it, regardless of where it is. If the town adopts paid parking on Pelican Drive (and I suspect it will over the objections of residents on that street) without also implementing it on Old Causeway, the headache will shift there.
Like Wrightsville proper, until every available parking space on Harbor Island also has a price tag, visitors will fill up free spots first regardless of where they are located.
