This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Dr. Michael Sanera, Research Director and Local Government Analyst for the John Locke Foundation.
Get ready, North Carolina, the Raleigh city council is setting a new standard for nanny state policies. It seems that some city council members want to use city policies to dictate where people live, what transportation they use, what restaurants they patronize, where they go for nightlife, where they get their entertainment, and what size homes they can live in.
Here are just three of many such examples. South Glenwood Street is booming on Friday and Saturday nights because people prefer its restaurants and nightlife. But the city council has decided to make Fayetteville Street the center for nighttime activities, and they have spent millions in street improvements. In addition, despite the fact that there are white tablecloth restaurants all over the city, the council wanted one on Fayetteville Street. The council has lots of money to get what it wants. So the city council spent $1 million to subsidize a white tablecloth restaurant on Fayetteville Street in a city-owned building.
Many people prefer larger homes inside the Interstate 440 Beltline. Close-in housing reduces commuting times, auto pollution, and traffic congestion. But since there is a shortage of large homes inside the Beltline, some homeowners want to replace small homes with larger ones. The council does not like this idea and is currently considering policies to prevent this practice because council members think larger homes destroy their idea of what a neighborhood should look like. Restrictive policies, if implemented, will rob many homeowners in these neighborhoods of their property values and — in some cases — the life savings tied up in their homes.
People who move to Raleigh select the area of town that best meets their personal desires and income levels. One councilman wants to substitute his desires for theirs. His proposal would create a graduated impact fee system. Higher impact fees would be required for new homes that upset his idea of what a “good” city should look like. In other words, very high-density housing in mixed-use developments near the never-to-be-built rail system would pay a very low impact fee. The vast majority of homebuyers desire the exact opposite type of housing. In a national poll, 83 percent of households said that they preferred a single-family detached home in a suburban area rather than a townhouse in an urban setting. But if this councilman has his way, it would be the official city policy to give people not what they want, but what he wants.
At the same time that the mayor and council are posing for photos at ribbon cuttings for their pet projects and holding press conferences to announce the next series of pet projects, the basic services that the city is supposed to provide languish.
Case in point: Police Chief Harry Dolan announced this week that the high turnover in the police force was largely related to low pay and skimpy benefits. Seventy-nine officers left the force last year (more than 10 percent), and the police force is currently short 58 officers. In other words, while the police force needs to hire 58 more officers to protect the lives and property of Raleigh citizens, the council is occupied with more important matters like arguing over the fake stucco on the city-subsidized Fayetteville Street hotel. This hotel, by the way, is the one that the council believes is absolutely necessary to make the millions spent on the new convention center and Fayetteville Street improvements worthwhile.
Second case in point: the city is facing a severe drought that started at least 9 months ago. The council responded to this crisis by pleading with residents to use less water and urging them to spy on and report their neighbors who are violating the city’s water rules. Any first-year economics student could have told the council that pleading would not work, and any first-year government student could have told them that creating a Soviet-style block-watch spying system is repulsive to our system of government.
People respond to incentives, and if water is cheap, they will use more. The answer that the council is finally coming around to is to encourage conservation of the dwindling supply by raising the price. But what was the council doing for the last nine months while Falls Lake was drying up? The council was considering getting into the entertainment business by building an outdoor amphitheater next to the convention center.
It seems that Raleigh’s sewer system is also a low priority. In 2007, Raleigh’s sewer system had 74 spills totaling nearly 4 million gallons of raw sewage flowing into the city’s creeks and rivers. The state issued 34 violations that could result in Raleigh paying $25,000 per violation per day. But as noted above, the council was too busy with more important matters like subsidizing white tablecloth restaurants, micromanaging housing patterns, criticizing fake stucco, and planning an amphitheater.
Let’s review. Instead of giving citizens what they want, the council is busy giving people what they don’t want. First and foremost, citizens want basic services: police and fire protection and water and sewer services. While council members ignore these basic needs, they give citizens restaurants in places they don’t want to go. They establish policies that prevent them from living in the type of housing they want and in places they want to live. And they might use a draconian impact-fee structure to move people into high-density, multi-family homes they don’t want.