Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Carolina Beach decreases price of residential parking pass

Parking has changed again in Carolina Beach for passholders. (Port City Daily/File)

CAROLINA BEACH — After three months of debates and revisions to its paid parking program, Carolina Beach has set a new path forward for the 2025-2026 season.

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Council voted 3-2 at staff’s recommendation to allow the price of residential passes to decrease from $40 to $30, while low-speed vehicles and golf cart drivers can access passes for $100. As well, residential re-entry passes will be utilized to allow for parking in undesignated residential rights-of-way (free through March 1 before becoming $20), and employers can purchase an annual $100 parking permit for their employees for the Central Business District only. Weekly visitor passes are $100.

Carolina Beach had to adjust its parking program after the United States Army Corps of Engineers assessed the fine print of its beach renourishment contracts, meaning there are fewer spaces for resident beachfront parking than in previous years. Since parking is included in its terms, the agency has a say as it oversees federal funding for the program— $32.9 million, with CB matching $15 million.

USACE noted last fall a reinterpretation of the contract included spaces located a quarter-mile from the renourishment area had to be equitable to everyone — meaning residents and visitors alike had to pay the same pricing. If not, funding could be pulled.

Council voted in October to restrict resident passes from being used in some beachfront lots, since it was deemed unequal. But after meeting with the USACE, CB staff learned it could swap some onstreet parking spaces for spaces in beach-front lots. Thus, it opened 767 parking spaces within a quarter mile of the ocean for residential passholders again.

The new plan shows in total, 335 lot spaces and 365 on-street spaces will accept the parking pass; a parking pass is not valid in 611 lot spaces and 61 areas of on-street parking. As well there is free parking for all, some time-limited, in roughly 50 lot spaces and 45 on-street spaces. 

The town has added two lots to accept the resident pass as well. (See the parking map here.)

It all adds up to the 767 spaces required by USACE.

The staff took the council’s suggestions from December to come up with options for them to vote on tweaking the paid parking program. The majority Tuesday wanted option one: $30 residential passes valid in 767 spaces.

This was in line with staff recommendation, as Town Manager Bruce Oakley said they favored it due to it benefitting residents, minimizing revenue impacts on the town and its businesses, and meeting USACE’s standards to maximize parking.

Mike Hoffer and Joe Benson desired option two, which included a residential only pass for 767 spaces for $40 or a $200 “unlimited” pass. This unlimited pass would be open to both residents and off-islanders (limited to 3,000 passes sold overall), so these pass holders can park anywhere since they pay the same price. The $200 would double if purchased after March 1. 

Hoffer believed anyone who wanted to spend more or less money on a parking pass should be able to choose for themselves which works best for them. He also thought it was simpler to navigate.

“This thing of [option one] — park here, here it’s free and here it’s not free,” he explained, “my crystal ball tells me people will be getting parking tickets and be upset about this.”

Benson agreed and added the town never experienced problems with the USACE when it offered non-residential passes. He didn’t see a problem returning to it.

Mayor Lynn Barbee and council members Deb LeCompte and Jay Healy were not in favor of giving off-islanders pass access beyond the weekly offer. Healy said last month he was against increased pass prices for residents, much less $200, but thought instead they should be reduced.

He added Tuesday that three councils have voted down off-islander pass access before and recalled when it stopped in 2021, a lot of hubbub was created.

“You would have thought the world would end,” Healy said, explaining there was a fear no one would come to the island and the businesses would suffer. “But business was better than ever and we had more visitors — and, more importantly, we didn’t raise our taxes.”

Budget and taxes remained at the core of the parking conversation and Healy said revenue from paid parking has increased annually; budget documents indicate it went from $1.9 million in the 2021-2022 fiscal year to more than $3 million projected this year. Healy didn’t want to alter the paid parking program any more than necessary and run the risk of funds declining. 

“We have two controls: our taxes and parking,” Healy said. “Council can only control those two levels. It’s been working for three years now, maybe four years, so why would we put ourselves at risk of selling OTB passes?” 

Healy conceded CB did raise taxes last year — by 9% — due to increases in costs of living but said the taxes would have been higher if the parking program wasn’t there. 

LeCompte didn’t support the unlimited pass option either because she said her first line of responsibility is to the constituents of CB. Property taxes and insurance costs on the island are higher, she said, than areas on the other side of Snow’s Cut Bridge, so she thought residents should enjoy some benefits of living on the island. Thus, LeCompte wasn’t in favor of “giving away” parking to off-islanders.

“I would love to give you a $200 pass to park anywhere you wanted to, but that means I have to give it to everyone else. And where is the fairness to you?” she asked. “You’re shouldering all of the burden.”

She also questioned what would happen to some private-owned lots the town leases for parking once they’re developed. LeCompte listed Harbor Master, Surfside East and West, and Hewett (though, those four are not included in the 767-space count). 

“Those lots are going to go away at some point and time,” she said. “And then we are going back to square one. Do we go backward or go forward to what works?”

Benson said that was more of a reason to go with the unlimited passes for residents and non-residents. 

“Whether the lots come or go, you’ve got a clean program in place,” he said, adding non-resident passes provided money for years to the town and imagined it still would.

The mayor didn’t budge in his support. Barbee said the town walked a fine line to balance costs covered by residents versus visitors. 

“Selling passes to day-trippers is shifting the burden to residents” for the majority of services, he said. Barbee explained a business owner told him they had trouble selling even a bottle of water to many who visit CB because most only travel there to go to the beach. 

The mayor also worried about the town’s revenue reserve, which he said clawed its way back up after a few tax and parking rate increases since he was elected in 2019. 

“It has been painful,” Barbee said. “I can’t support any option that would dramatically change the revenue stream that we’ve agreed to in this year’s budget.”

The town budgeted $3.2 million in parking revenue for 2024-2025. According to staff documents from the meeting, so far it’s grossed $3.1 million in 2024 and netted $2.3 million. This was due to 6,870 residential passes sold, along with more than 1,700 passes for golf carts and LSVs, 525 business district passes and 175 weekly passes.

When the season opens on March 1, the town will have four months to make up the rest of its projected funds.

“If three of you want option one, so be it,” Hoffer said. “We’ll vote on it and we’ll all still go home and be friends.”

It passed with Hoffer and Benson dissenting.

The parking rates for visitors remain the same this season, March 1 through Oct. 1: $6 per hour or $25 per day for regular parking lots and $7 per hour or $30 per day for premium lots, closer to the beach.


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Shea Carver
Shea Carver
Shea Carver is the editor in chief at Port City Daily. A UNCW alumna, Shea worked in the print media business in Wilmington for 22 years before joining the PCD team in October 2020. She specializes in arts coverage — music, film, literature, theatre — the dining scene, and can often be tapped on where to go, what to do and who to see in Wilmington. When she isn’t hanging with her pup, Shadow Wolf, tending the garden or spinning vinyl, she’s attending concerts and live theater.

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