Nikolai Mather: Alright Ben — so, when the newsroom got this email from the Wrightsville Beach Surf Mamas talking about their petition for free parking on weekday evenings, we had pretty different reactions. I've only lived here for about 2 years, and I was like, "Finally, someone's talking about parking." Whereas your reaction was a little more muted. Why is that?
Ben Schachtman: It’s honestly been one of the longest-running conversations I’ve heard since I’ve been covering this area. And in part that’s motivated by just how much money Wrightsville Beach brings in — last fiscal year, they brought in $8 million dollars, that’s half of the town’s revenue. And because of a statutory carve-out passed in the 90s, the town is allowed to put a lot of that money into it’s general fund. Ordinarily, towns can only use parking revenue to pay for the actual cost of running the parking program, maintenance, meter readers, etc. But Wrightsville Beach has used the carve-out to push down their property taxes.
NM: Right, other beach towns like Carolina and Kure can also do this, but Wrightsville Beach really leans into it. They’ve decreased their property taxes to one of the lowest in the state. North Carolina's median is around 82 cents per $100 dollars of property, Wilmington's is 42 cents, Carolina Beach's is about 24 cents, and Wrightsville Beach's is just 9 cents.
BS: Exactly, without the carve out, they’d be capped at raising the roughly $1.5 million it costs to run their parking program — less than 20% of what they’re bringing in. So, we did some back-of-the-napkin math, and that would make their hourly rates about a dollar, not five.
NM: Yeesh. Well, to play devil's advocate here, Wrightsville Beach does have a lot of tourists, right? The population goes from 3,000ish to 30,000ish in the summertime. That's a lot of out-of-towners using the public facilities, using emergency services – if they've had one too many at the Palm Room, maybe getting the cops called on them. And a lot of them don't pay property tax. Shouldn't they be funding these services somehow?
BS: That's fair. I think that’s probably the argument behind the carve-out. Take law enforcement, if you look at the per-capita costs for the police department for Wrightsville and compare it to, say, Burgaw, which is about the same size, and Wrightsville’s is double – because, as you said, the town population increases tenfold in the summer. And while those people pay sales and room occupancy tax, that gets divided up for a bunch of uses, including beach renourishment.
NM: That’s another point I’ve heard while looking into this – a lot of federal money goes into beach renourishment, so basically taxpayers across the country are paying into keeping Wrightville’s beach beautiful.
BS: Yeah, exactly. Congressman David Rouzer makes the argument every time he goes out for more renourishment appropriation — that the beach is for everyone, across the country — to justify spending federal money. So, feeling like Wrightsville Beach is gatekeeping that natural resource with high parking fees rubs some people the wrong way.
NM: Ok, so you were saying in the newsroom, it’s not just optics or vibes — people actually have a right to enjoy the beach. What’s going on there?
BS: Right, not every state is set up this way, by North Carolina’s constitution embraces the public trust doctrine, basically saying every North Carolinian has a right to freely access our coastline and our waterways. So, it’s not just that the beach is nice – it’s a constitutionally protected space.
There’s a lot of legal wrangling about this and we could do a whole show on it. I’m not an attorney, but as it’s been explained to me over the years, even on a private island like Figure Eight, you could legally kayak out there and enjoy their beach, from the high-tide line down to the ocean. So, again, technically, Wrightsville isn’t blocking you from that — you can pay to park, but you could walk or bike to their beach, or land on the beach! But you can see why it would irritate some folks, especially those who don’t have the $5 dollars an hour for parking, but do have the same constitutional rights.
NM: Yes… taxation without representation, even… there's more I wanna talk about – rate increases, premium spots, beach buses, et cetera et cetera et cetera – but I think this is gonna need a part two. For now, thank you, Ben, for the background info.
BS: You're welcome!
Read more:
- WHQR: Residents ask Wrightsville Beach to implement free parking on weeknights
- Coastal Review: Public Trust Doctrine: Who Owns the Beach?
- The Dive: Life's a Beach
