The residents in the 100-block of West Sycamore – five homes in all plus one house at the corner on South Main who park on Sycamore – sought relief Tuesday night from the Wake Forest Town Board.
Sycamore is one-way street in that first block, and the Wake Forest Elementary School is on the other side of the street with two parking lots for teachers and staff. For years the residents have used the “no parking” parking slots with yellow striping as their parking places or have used the school lots.
Since the parking places have been repainted, the residents said in a petition signed by all six homeowners, “. . . we have – nowhere – to park. Why should the teachers and staff park on the street and the homeowners park in the school lot???” Some of the homes have no driveways; some have short, ungraded, unpaved or unusable driveways.
“We NEED to be able to park on the street in front of our homes,” the petition said.
Scott Miles, the town’s public infrastructure engineer, laid out some options. One would allow parking on both sides of the street, and it was immediately shot down by Commissioner Brian Pate, who pointed out when a school bus or a car breaks down in that one lane it leads to traffic chaos.
Another option would be to designate all parking on the south side of the street for residents; another would be to designate a number (two or three) of parking spaces for residents. There will be 20 spaces when one homeowner finishes building a driveway; two other homes have driveways.
The commissioners and mayor appeared to settle on designated parking spaces with signs and striping as well as placards for their vehicles with a two-hour limit on parking in the other spaces. They will make a final decision on April 16.
And then they turned to golf carts because some more residents in the Del Webb section of Traditions want to be able to use golf carts to go to the amenity center and visit each other. Readers will remember this came up before, both for Del Webb and for Heritage where a handicapped veteran wanted to have permission to use a golf cart. Both requests were turned down.
“I personally think it would be a good thing to allow golf carts in that subdivision . . . in their neighborhood,” Mayor Vivian Jones said.
Commissioner Bridget Wall-Lennon asked “what position would that put us in in regard to other communities?”
Pate pointed out the request from the veteran two years ago and said saying yes to one and no to others “would put ourselves in a difficult position.”
Police Chief Jeff Leonard, as he did before, suggested the town allow low-speed vehicles which are similar to golf carts but are legal to drive on state streets that have a 35 mph speed limit. The carts have to pass an inspection, be electric, have professionally installed seat belts, lights, windshields and a VIN number. It is all laid out in state law, the chief said.
Commissioner Greg Harrington, the former police chief, objected and said he would hate to see the town go overboard. “They are just driving in the neighborhood.” He added the low-speed vehicles would be very expensive.
Leonard replied that as soon as they could drive in their neighborhood someone or several would drive up to the Heritage subdivision. The Villages, a community in Florida, allows golf carts and has had 19 golf cart accidents with fatalities since 2008.
“I think we can have different rules in different areas of town,” Jones said, and Commissioner Anne Reeve replied, “Then every other community is going to want the same thing.” She went on to say it may be an age-restricted neighborhood, but then the grandson comes to visit and while the grandparents are otherwise occupied takes the cart out for a joy ride. She recalled the incident in St. Ives about two years ago when there were four teens on a golf cart in an accident where one went through the front of the cart (where a windshield would be) and was in critical care for two monhts.
“I’m not for golf carts but I am for low speed vehicles,” Commissioner Liz Simpers said.
Finally, Jones looked around at the five board members and said there seemed to be not enough support for golf carts on town streets.
The board heard from John Pelosi, chairman of the town’s public art commission, about the 2016 greenway and parks master plan for public art and asked them to approve the plan.
They also approved Chief Financial Officer Aileen Staples as acting town manager when Town Manager Kip Padgett is out of town or indisposed.
