Wrightsville Beach Mayor Bill Blair knew expanding the town’s paid parking would be unpopular, but the extra meters and regulations serve two purposes: forcing turnover in the island’s limited parking spots and bringing in revenue for beach renourishment so the anticipated multi-million dollar bill doesn’t drastically affect residents’ property taxes.
Wrightsville Beach’s parking program generated about $2.5 million in 2015. $437,000 went to the town’s back-up sand fund, a stash of money to pay the town’s share of beach renourishment when federal or state funding runs out. About $500,000 paid for parking enforcement. The rest, town manager Tim Owens said, funded services like police vehicles, extra summertime police presence, beach strand trash collection vehicles and employees and general maintenance of bathhouses, lifeguard stands and beach accesses.
“It’s all the different things that go along with having visitors,” he said, “just general services for visitors.”
But an increasing urgency to save for beach renourishment is the main reason the town needs more parking revenue, Blair said. Every four years, sand is pumped onto Wrightsville’s beach strand to prevent long-term erosion. Currently, the state and federal governments fund most of the $10 million projects, with a local match from New Hanover County room tax collections.
But it appears federal and state support will soon disappear, leaving local governments scrambling to find their own funding solutions. If that occurs, an interlocal agreement between Wrightsville Beach and New Hanover County would require the county to pay 82.5 percent if Wrightsville Beach picks up the rest. The remaining 17.5 percent still equates to roughly $2 million, a fifth of the town’s annual budget.
Blair said finding that kind of money presents “the single biggest problem we’ve had laid at our doorstep.”
Wrightsville Beach has two potential revenue sources for that cost — parking and property tax — and town leaders chose parking because it presents less of a burden to residents. Wrightsville’s leaders have managed to keep property taxes steady for years while continually expanding their parking program.
Now, Wrightsville Beach residents not only pay the lowest property taxes in New Hanover County, but Owens said they pay “the lowest property rate in the state, as far as coastal communities go.”
That doesn’t mean property tax revenue won’t be needed eventually to supplement the parking revenue, with beach renourishment costs rising, Owens added. Wrightsville Beach Chamber of Commerce member Sue Bulluck echoed that point during the Feb. 11 public hearing on parking increases.
“The [parking revenue] will not be enough,” she said. “While parking is a good revenue source for us, I want everyone in this room to understand that it is a Band-Aid.”
Since the mounting pressure to save for sand stems from uncertainty over continued federal and state support, New Hanover County has lobbyists working in Raleigh and Washington to convince those leaders that the shared benefit of beach renourishment is worth sharing in the cost.
At the state level, lobbyist Tom Fetzer is emphasizing the importance of coastal tourism to the state’s economy. Even inland counties get overflow revenue from people traveling to the beach, he said. Eastern North Carolina’s economy is driven by turkey farms, hog farms and coastal tourism, he added, “and we don’t pollute the environment.”
A slight surplus in the state’s budget might help the beach towns’ case, Fetzer told Wrightsville, Carolina and Kure Beach leaders, but that positive report was accompanied by a warning to local leaders. Even if state support were secured, Fetzer said, the local governments would have to contribute as much as 33.3 percent.
“You, as elected officials, have to lead this process, he said. “You have to go back to your communities and, somehow, find that 33.3 percent, because you’re going to be held accountable for it.”
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