Mayor Pro Tem Elizabeth Morey filed her candidacy for mayor of Southern Shores yesterday, the first day of the Dare County Board of Elections’ two-week candidate filing period for the November municipal elections.
The four-year terms of two Southern Shores Town Council members are expiring this year: those of Mayor Tom Bennett and Town Councilman Jim Conners. Mr. Bennett has served two terms as mayor, first being elected in 2013.
All positions on the Town Council, as well as the election, are nonpartisan.
Ms. Morey, who lives on Ginguite Trail, was elected to the Town Council in 2019 and chosen by her Council peers to be the mayor pro tem.
When The Beacon interviewed Ms. Morey in 2018, she told us she was self-employed as a political campaign manager and counselor.
Ms. Morey’s biography on the Town of Southern Shores website indicates only that she “owns and manages a home-based business.”
The mayoral candidate has been active in local Democratic Party politics. Ms. Morey’s husband, Tommy Fulcher, ran unsuccessfully last year for the N.C. House of Representatives, losing to Bobby Hanig (R).
In the event Ms. Morey is elected mayor in November, N.C. municipal law specifies that her seat on the Town Council will be filled by appointment until such time as the next town election is held.
Previously, Ms. Morey served two three-year terms as a regular member of the Town Planning Board and two years as a Planning Board alternate.
At the time of her election to the Council, she was in the fifth month of a third three-year term and serving as the Board’s chairperson, a position she held first on an interim basis upon the death of Glenn Wyder in November 2018.
In our June 29, 2018 interview, Ms. Morey told The Beacon that she retired from the Dare County health department in 2014 and previously worked in Raleigh for a division of the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality. She started her political consulting business in 2016.
Ms. Morey is originally from Fulton County, Georgia.
Anyone wishing to run for one of the two expiring Southern Shores Town Council offices has until noon on July 16 to file his or her candidacy with the Board of Elections.
LONGER NO-LEFT-TURN HOURS, MORE ROAD CLOSURES THIS WEEKEND
Motorists will be prohibited from turning left from U.S. Hwy. 158 on to South Dogwood Trail today from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. and tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to the Town of Southern Shores newsletter published yesterday.
The Town also announced in the newsletter the addition of three more “no local traffic” northbound road barriers, bringing the total number of such closures along the cut-thru route to eight: the original four at Hickory Trail, Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail, off of East Dogwood Trail; three additional at Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail, off of Hickory Trail; and the eighth at Hillcrest Drive and Sea Oats Trail.
According to the newsletter, the Town also “has been able to work with the travel app, Waze, to have [these] eight road closures indicated on their travel routes.”
People using the Waze app will not be directed through these closures. (Hooray!)
Please feel free to comment on The Beacon blog and Facebook page about the cut-thru traffic you witness during this height-of-the-season, holiday weekend.
“Local traffic only” motorists back up on Hickory Trail at the Duck Road stop sign at 3:45 p.m. today. Cut-thru traffic on South Dogwood Trail to East Dogwood Trail to Hickory Trail has been continuous today, but lighter than it is without the left-turn ban. By 5 p.m., homeowners on Sea Oats Trail were reporting that the area of that road that is under construction (and closed) was solid with vehicles backing up from the Duck Road-Sea Oats intersection. (Photo courtesy of a homeowner on Wax Myrtle Trail.)
As of today, you can add Wednesday to the days when summer vacationer traffic cuts through Southern Shores on South Dogwood Trail.
Yes, that was cut-thru traffic that you saw all afternoon streaming up South Dogwood Trail, running the stop sign at East Dogwood Trail, turning left on Hickory Trail, and then making another left on Hillcrest Drive.
Homeowners in the 200 block of Wax Myrtle Trail also reported watching a steady flow of cut-thru traffic on their street during the afternoon. They traced it to traffic turning off of a backed-up Duck Road at Porpoise Run and Dolphin Run.
I also saw “jump-off” traffic on Ocean Boulevard north of the Duck Road split, as I came and went several times today from the Southern Shores woods to the beach.
Bob Woodard , chairperson of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, recorded a videotaped message last Friday in which he asked Dare residents to “be respectful” and “patient with those around us,” as we experience “record-high visitation numbers at Dare County beaches and attractions” this summer.
The cut-thru traffic in Southern Shores yesterday and Monday was noticeably greater than it usually is on a week day during the summer, but it did not reach the volume of traffic heading north on our roads today.
At different times, northbound traffic on N.C. Hwy. 12 backed up to Chicahauk Trail.
Mr. Woodard advised us in his message that we are going to be confronting “some challenges” this summer, “particularly in the amount of traffic” on the roads.
He told us to “expect some delays and traffic jams on [our] way to work and to visit [our] friends and family,” as well as “longer lines and wait times” at restaurants and at shops.
He told us to be “prepared” for these challenges and to make allowances, as he once again held aloft King Midas’s golden cup of vacationers’ money, calling our out-of-town visitors “the lifeblood of Dare County.”
You may recall that we heard that same refrain last summer when the tourist hordes arrived in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Woodard told us then: “Be respectful. Be patient.” Nice words. I don’t disagree.
At no time in his four-minute video, however, did Mr. Woodard ever mention what Dare County would do to help to alleviate the congestion, the crowds, the unsafe conditions, the sheer misery in what the Chairman called “our little slice of Outer Banks paradise.”
Government unquestionably played a role in creating the “challenges.” So where is government now? Backing up to a laissez-faire stance, taping messages about respect.
I know tourism makes resort areas go round. No surprise there.
I also know how resort areas are ruined by over-developing land with high-occupancy “structures” like those you see on the Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head oceanfronts, one after another, where modest cottages and family motels once stood, and by constructing over-sized houses in remote places that are not served by adequate infrastructure.
Sorry, Mr. Woodard, telling me to be patient just doesn’t cut it.
It took me an hour and 15 minutes to travel round-trip today from the intersection of East and South Dogwood trails to the Outer Banks Hospital–an essential errand–and I considered that good time.
It was the middle of the day; the sun was shining brightly; and people were on the U.S. Hwy. 158 bypass, jamming it up, as if a mandatory evacuation were in effect.
I took Woods Road to Kitty Hawk Road to the bypass and stayed on it until I reached the Dare Centre. At that point, I saw no future in driving on the highway and diverted to the beach road. I returned to the bypass at Dowdy’s Park, near the YMCA, and took it past the Nags Head Woods Preserve and Jockey’s Ridge, and on to the hospital.
Thank goodness for the nature preserves and parks. If only the Outer Banks had more.
I’m going to give you better advice than the Chairman of the Dare County Commission gave you: Avoid N.C. 12 in Southern Shores and take the beach road if you have to drive anywhere south of the Kitty Hawk Post Office.
I also encourage restaurant owners and other businesspeople to remember their local clientele by offering us special incentives (discounts, hours, nights) for coming out. We don’t want to avoid you, but patience can only get us so far.
This photo was posted yesterday on Next Door by a Hillcrest Drive resident. The traffic is backed up well beyond the SSCA tennis courts to an area in the road known decades ago as Lookout Point, before the trees grew to obscure the ocean-to-sound views there.
Residents of Hillcrest Drive seem to have borne the brunt of the cut-thru traffic in Southern Shores yesterday when both a left-turn ban from U.S. Hwy 158 on to South Dogwood Trail and “local-traffic-only” road closures were in effect, according to reports received by The Beacon from homeowners as well as comments posted on our Facebook page that were mixed, but mostly favorable.
(In a background story on 6/18/21 about this weekend’s traffic mitigation, we called the addition of road closures to the left-turn ban at the 158 intersection “Plan B.” The Town Council authorized Town Manager Cliff Ogburn to implement the Plan B local-traffic-only barriers if, in his sole discretion, he thought they were warranted.)
Homeowners in the 300 block of Wax Myrtle Trail, where traffic—including a commercial-size bus—came to a standstill on Memorial Day weekend for hours, emailed The Beacon that “Whatever the town did today 100 percent solved our problem at this end of town. . . . [There was] absolutely no backup or cut-through traffic of any type” yesterday. The couple described the change as “Absolutely wonderful.”
“Without question, the Local Traffic Only signs were a success!” emailed another homeowner in the 200 block of Wax Myrtle Trail.
The reason for the traffic backup on Hillcrest Drive, which extended westward from Duck Road (N.C. Hwy. 12) up the hill well past the SSCA tennis courts, was obvious to any observer of the South Dogwood Trail-to-East Dogwood Trail cut-thru traffic flow: Despite a local-traffic-only barrier on Hickory Trail, out-of-towners were routinely turning left there and then taking a left on Hillcrest Drive.
With Sea Oats Trail closed because of road construction, most motorists reached N.C. Hwy. 12 via Hillcrest Drive, not Sea Oats.
Mary Ann Hurd, who lives in the closed 300 block of Sea Oats Trail, which is generally jammed with cut-thru traffic on a summer Saturday, said it was “relatively quiet” on her street yesterday. Traffic seemed to have increased today, Mrs. Hurd reported, noting, “I can hear them crunching by” on the gravel pavement.
Homeowners who live on Sea Oats Trail between Hickory Trail and Hillcrest Drive also told The Beacon that yesterday’s traffic was “relatively quiet, but we did see several cars race by quite quickly.”
Hickory Trail homeowner David Watson said he watched through traffic making illegal turns on to his street yesterday whenever he went out to walk his dog. Motorists with out-of-state license plates only obeyed the barrier, Mr. Watson said, when a police officer was on the scene. As soon as the officer left, they resumed turning illegally on to Hickory Trail.
Mr. Watson also noted that the heaviest cut-thru traffic flow on Hickory Trail occurs between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., a time when there typically is no police coverage.
While one homeowner who lives on East Dogwood Trail near Holly Trail commented that “there seemed to be more than normal traffic on East Dogwood” yesterday, it would appear that Hickory Trail, the westernmost of the four cut-thru streets restricted by the Town yesterday and today, experienced the heaviest flow of scofflaw motorists, while the other roads were largely spared.
This same homeowner said he had no trouble driving to the Hillcrest Beach in the morning, but on his way home around 2 p.m., he saw a backup of about a dozen vehicles waiting at the Hillcrest Drive-Duck Road intersection.
The Beacon heard from only one oceanfront/oceanside homeowner, who reported in the late afternoon yesterday that the “traffic wasn’t that bad on Ocean Boulevard before the [Duck Road] split and pretty non-existent on the split,” meaning on Ocean Boulevard between the cell tower park and Hickory Trail.
Remaining on Ocean Boulevard past the cell tower has been a way that northbound vacationers have tried to get around the congestion on Duck Road.
No one from Chicahauk contacted The Beacon yesterday to weigh in on road conditions there.
The Beacon looks forward to a comprehensive assessment from the Town about the effectiveness of Plan B on the weekend cut-thru traffic.
We also welcome comments from all Southern Shores residents about their experiences this weekend with traffic. We especially would like to hear from people who went through the U.S. 158-South Dogwood Trail intersection. Police presence there appears to have made a difference in the volume of traffic on South Dogwood Trail.
“Local-traffic-only” barriers with signage are in place already today at the entrances to four residential roads off of East Dogwood Trail that are part of Southern Shores’ notorious weekend cut-thru traffic route.
The barriers will block northbound through traffic tonight and this weekend at East Dogwood Trail’s intersections with Hickory Trail, Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail.
The road closures are part of a “Plan B” that the Southern Shores Town Council authorized Town Manager Cliff Ogburn earlier this month to invoke in conjunction with a weekend left-turn ban at the intersection of U.S. Hwy. 158 and South Dogwood Trail.
Unlike last weekend’s left-turn ban, which proved especially unsuccessful on Saturday, Mr. Ogburn told “The Outer Banks Voice” this week that the June 19-20 ban will be enforced by the Southern Shores Police Dept.
He also said that the left-turn signal off of U.S. 158, which is controlled by the N.C. Dept. of Transportation, will be red at all times. Last weekend the light went through its green-yellow-red rotation, appearing to be operational.
We have driven legally by a local-traffic-only barrier three times this afternoon. The first time, we were the only travelers on the road. The second time, another vehicle with a North Carolina—but not an OBX—license plate passed through in front of us, and an SUV with New Jersey plates that was jammed with beach vacationer equipment passed through behind us.
The third time we observed the driver of a pick-up truck with Virginia plates in front of us hesitate and then drive straight on East Dogwood Trail, instead of turning left on to Hickory Trail at the local-traffic-only barrier.
The left-turn ban at U.S. 158 and South Dogwood Trail will be in effect Saturday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon until 6 p.m., according to the Town of Southern Shores newsletter, which was published online today.
Please post your comments about the effectiveness of Plan B tomorrow and Sunday below today’s Beacon blog and Facebook posts. Thank you.
I have been in the hospital the past four days, sitting bedside with my mother, who became so sick last week that I had to call for emergency assistance. An ambulance transported her home yesterday around 5:15 p.m., and I followed in my car.
While sitting at the traffic light at Woods Road and U.S. Hwy. 158—waiting to cross over to South Dogwood Trail—I observed five vehicles turn right from 158 on to Woods Road and then turn around in the middle of the road. I saw more doing the same after the light turned green, and I passed through the intersection.
I observed no police presence at the intersection.
I drove as slowly as I could on South Dogwood Trail until the traffic came to a standstill, somewhere between Tall Pine Lane and Yaupon Trail.
From my brief encounter with the cut-thru traffic yesterday, I would say that the left-turn ban was a failure. I have received text messages from friends in Southern Shores who confirm that assessment.
It is time for the Town Council to step up and “gate” South Dogwood Trail and Juniper Trail on summer weekends, so only locals can use those roads, and close all of the “jump”-off roads from N.C. Hwy. 12 into the residential areas, including Ocean Boulevard at the Duck Road split, Porpoise Run, Dolphin Run, Hickory Trail, Hillcrest Drive, and Eleventh Avenue.
East Dogwood Trail must remain open, but the arteries off of it—Wax Myrtle Trail, Sea Oats Trail, Hillcrest Drive, and Hickory Trail—should be open only to local traffic.
Desperate times call for (long-overdue) desperate measures. The cut-thru traffic in Southern Shores is no longer just a matter of diminished quality of life and inconvenience. It is a threat to the well-being of all residents, an obvious safety hazard. The Town Council cannot just look away and pretend it does not exist and does not demand preventive action.
I will say more when I can. In the meantime, please record your comments on the Beacon blog and Facebook pages. Thank you.
The bus stops with the Southern Shores Town Council, which last night voted to move the start of no-left-turn weekends up by two weeks.
The Southern Shores Town Council voted unanimously last night to start the no-left turn weekend program on June 12, instead of June 26, as originally planned, in light of the crush of cut-thru traffic that jammed residential roads for hours over the Memorial Day weekend.
The Council also gave Town Manager Cliff Ogburn authority to initiate road closures to try to further mitigate the traffic problems created by vacationer traffic entering Southern Shores at South Dogwood Trail, traveling to East Dogwood Trail and Hickory Trail, and then coming to a standstill on Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail.
The dates when eastbound motorists will be prevented from legally turning left on to South Dogwood Trail from U.S. Hwy. 158 are as follows:
June 12, but not Sunday, June 13, as of yet;
June 19-20
June 26-27
July 3-4
July 10-11
July 17-18
July 24-25
July 31-Aug. 1
Aug. 7-8
Aug. 14-15
As Councilman Matt Neal explained—and the Town Council finally made clear—the Council’s intent is to evaluate the effect that prohibiting the left turn at South Dogwood Trail-U.S. Hwy. 158 has on the volume of residential cut-thru traffic before deciding to close roads.
The Council is well aware of where vacationers “jump the line” on Duck Road by turning into the residential area and would like to see traffic counts on these roads, as well as on South Dogwood and Hickory trails, when the no-left-turn is in effect.
Mr. Ogburn was delegated the authority to restrict entry to Hickory Trail, Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail at their intersections with East Dogwood Trail to “local traffic only,” a measure that would force all other traffic to join N.C. Hwy. 12 at the East Dogwood Trail intersection.
Although the Council did not discuss enforcement measures, in the event that these roads are closed, it indicated an awareness that police presence is necessary.
The Town Council also discussed closing Ocean Boulevard to through traffic at the Duck Road split/cell tower park. Diverting off of N.C. Hwy. 12 on to the section once known as the “low traffic area” of Ocean Boulevard and then rejoining Hwy. 12 at Hickory Trail has become increasingly popular among vacationers headed to the northern beaches.
According to Mr. Ogburn, week-day closures of the section of Sea Oats Trail now under construction are scheduled to start today.
The Town Council further directed that Sea Oats Trail be closed to through traffic on the weekends, during the duration of the road project, preferably at its intersection with Hillcrest Drive, but it did not take a formal vote to authorize such a closure. Presumably this closure, too, is within the discretion of the Town Manager to execute.
BEACH NOURISHMENT TAX RATES SET
In other action last night, the Town Council approved the fiscal year 2021-22 town budget with the following tax rates to fund the 2022 beach nourishment project:
Properties in municipal service district (“MSD”) 1 (oceanfront): 7.15 cents per $100 of property value
Properties in municipal service district 2: 3.0 cents
Remaining properties townwide: 4.0 cents
These rates compute to cumulative totals for each property category as follows:
MSD-1: 14.15 cents for every $100 of property value, for a total tax in FY 21-22 of 33.73 cents (14.15 cents plus the general tax of 19.58 cents)
MSD-2: 7 cents, for a total tax of 26.58 cents
Townwide: 4 cents, for a total tax of 23.58 cents
These rates are only in effect for the next fiscal year and may be changed by the Town Council in subsequent years of the five-year debt cycle for the project.
The Town’s annual debt for the project is about $1.4 million, of which the Town will pay $200,000 from its undesignated fund balance.
According to Mr. Ogburn’s figures, the tax rates approved by the Town Council mean that of the remaining $1.2 million, MSD-1 property owners will pay 20 percent; MSD-2 owners will pay 17 percent; and the remaining property owners in town will pay 63 percent.
While last night’s meeting was unusually sluggish and the Council adjourned after 3 ½ hours without finishing its agenda, The Beacon appreciates and commends members for the decisions they made.
PLEASE NOTE: Mayor Tom Bennett announced that the Council will no longer accept written public comments transmitted to the Town Clerk and read aloud at meetings. Henceforth, the Council will observe its customary pre-pandemic policy of receiving only in-person verbal public comments, which are limited to three minutes.
The Council will not meet again until July 6, so I will have ample time to attend to the demands of my real life and put The Beacon on the back burner.
Yes, I lied about not reporting on the meeting, but I just couldn’t leave you in the dark, especially about the cut-thru traffic.
A 45-foot-long, exhaust-spewing, gray Prevost touring bus made an unscheduled hourlong stop in the 300 block of Wax Myrtle Trail yesterday, according to a homeowner on the residential street who submitted the above photograph to The Beacon.
Traffic on the northern end of Wax Myrtle Trail was “at a standstill on both Saturday and Sunday,” reports the homeowner, who took the photo at 4:50 p.m. yesterday.
The Beacon published a photograph on Saturday that Wax Myrtle Trail resident Susan Ferretti posted on Next Door, depicting similar stoppage in this block from what we called a “bird’s eye view.” It, too, was a picture worth a 1,000 words.
“Yesterday was the worst traffic on a Sunday that I’ve ever seen,” said Tommy Karole, who has lived for more than 20 years on East Dogwood Trail near its intersection with South Dogwood Trail and was the chairperson of the citizens’ committee to explore cut-thru traffic in Southern Shores.
“It was unbelievable yesterday,” he said. “I sat there [watching from home] in amazement.”
Mr. Karole, whose committee has submitted a final report to the Town Council with recommendations for action, checked yesterday on the traffic on nearby roads. He confirmed the backup on Wax Myrtle Trail and said that the traffic on the Hillcrest Drive-to-Sea Oats Trail-to Duck Road route was “jammed up,” especially at the SSCA tennis courts.
Residents who live on the stretch of Sea Oats Trail that is under construction told The Beacon that the construction did not deter northbound vacationers from using their road: The rough road conditions only made the drive and the backup worse.
We were able to zoom in on the lettering on the side of the wayward tour bus–or is it someone’s idea of a motorhome?–on Wax Myrtle and pick up “Security Coach [Lincoln or Lines] Ltd.” The third word definitely begins with Li, but we cannot be certain of the other letters.
The lettering on the back of the bus clearly spells out Prevost.
If you can provide more identification about this vehicle, please contact The Beacon at ssbeaconeditor@gmail.com.
Vicky Green of Hillcrest Drive also complained yesterday on Next Door about a tour bus inching along her street. She then corrected herself and called the invader a recreational vehicle.
Could there have been two such montrosities painfully coursing the narrow streets of Southern Shores yesterday?
While residents on South Dogwood Trail, East Dogwood Trail, Hickory Trail, Hillcrest Drive, and Sea Oats Trail have tolerated bumper-to-bumper standstill traffic on summer weekends for going on 10 years now, residents on Wax Myrtle Trail are relatively new to the phenomenon.
In our recollection, it is only within the past few years that the cut-thru traffic standstill has spilled over on to Wax Myrtle Trail, the easternmost road of the three roads in the Southern Shores dunes that run north-south, parallel to Duck Road.
The drivers who contribute to this hazardous, as well as grossly inconvenient and dispiriting, congestion typically divert to Wax Myrtle from Duck Road by turning left on Porpoise Run, Dolphin Run, East Dogwood Trail, and even Hickory Trail.
Rather than being aided by the no-left-turn weekends that the Town Council has planned this summer as its sole effort to prevent cut-thru traffic, residents on Wax Myrtle Trail are potentially disadvantaged by it—unless the Town blocks traffic flow on the diversion streets.
TOWN COUNCIL MEETINGTOMORROW
We remind residents that the Town Council meets tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center. There will be two public-comment periods during the meeting, as well as a public hearing on the proposed $8.8 million FY 2021-22 budget, which allocates only $30,400 to seasonal cut-thru traffic control efforts.
(See The Beacon, 5/29/21.)
In lieu of speaking in person at the meeting, you may submit written comments, which will be read aloud by a Town Council member, to Town Clerk Sheila Kane at skane@southernshores-nc.gov.
ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I would like to reiterate that I am still on hiatus from The Beacon and do not plan to report on tomorrow’s meeting. My sense of outrage over injustice, however, drew me back in on Saturday.
I am reminded of Michael Corleone’s famous and deliciously wonderful quote from “The Godfather Part III”: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
I could not resist responding to the outrageous circumstances that occurred on Memorial Day weekend (!) on our residential streets, and I empathize with everyone who had to put up with the traffic scourge.
If a tour bus, or whatever the beached whale was, had been stopped in front of my house, I would have sought a conversation with the driver. I also would have taken note of any names on the side of the bus and written down the license plate number.
We do have a vehicular weight limit on our roads, and tour buses, by any name, are definitely verboten.
I have moved off of the cut-thru route, but I still consider it my problem and will as long as it exists. It contributes to the progressive degradation of a place I have loved for more than 50 years, and I seek to protect this special place, as well as the people who choose to live here.
A quick story . . . I recently flew to BWI airport in Baltimore from Jacksonville, Fla., as the first leg of a two-leg trip to Norfolk and then home.
I had helped a family member drive back with her pets to Florida, after a month-long visit in Southern Shores, and hopped a plane as soon as we arrived.
I was exhausted when I slid into my middle seat on the packed Southwest airliner and just wanted to sleep, but the passenger to my right was chatty, so I obliged for a while.
It turned out my flight companion and I were from the same hometown and had gone to rival high schools, graduating in the same year! The more we talked, the more “it’s a small world” overlaps in our lives became apparent, including long-term relationships with the Outer Banks.
My family started vacationing in Kill Devil Hills in the mid-1960s, and settled on Southern Shores in 1969, while hers continued to go to Ocean City, Md. But for some time now, my new friend said, she, her husband, and other family members had traveled yearly to Duck for a vacation.
“I hate to tell you this,” she said, sheepishly, “but we cut through your neighborhood to get there. I really feel bad about it because I know how much the residents must object.”
“Believe me,” I told her, “I am well aware of the cut-thru traffic.”
The next time you cut through, I added, “I hope you will think of me.”
And then I nodded off.
Today, Memorial Day, we remember and thank our veterans and pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. It’s a good day for calm reflection—far removed from the roads.
Susan Ferretti of 296 Wax Myrtle Trail posted on Next Door today: 1) the top photograph of traffic on Wax Myrtle heading north to Hillcrest Drive; and 2) the cell-phone depiction of traffic jam-ups in Southern Shores, courtesy of the navigator app, WAZE.
Please see The Beacon’s previous posting today for an accompanying article.
Bumper-to-bumper traffic heads north this afternoon on Hillcrest Drive near the SSCA tennis courts.
I see some of you are posting today on Next Door about the oppressive cut-thru vacationer traffic that started flowing steadily this morning and grew into the usual summertime backup in the Southern Shores dunes this afternoon.
According to Dan and Pat Hardy of 172 South Dogwood Trail: “The traffic is worse than ever.” They also complain about someone in a “jacked-up truck” with Virginia plates “trying to run us over” yesterday.
Writes Vicky Green, of 317 Hillcrest Drive, who formerly served on the citizens’ committee to explore cut-through traffic: “Here we go!!! ALL THE WAY DOWN HILLCREST!” Ms. Green submitted the photograph above.
(You cannot count on the citizens’ committee any more. As far as the Town Council is concerned, it has completed its work and no longer has a purpose.)
One person on Next Door asks about prohibiting the left turn onto South Dogwood Trail from U.S. Hwy. 158 in order to deter the cut-thru traffic.
It is a lack of understanding by residents about when that deterrence technique will be employed this summer that compels me to interrupt my hiatus.
Despite all of the efforts made during the past year to study the obvious and already thoroughly studied cut-thru traffic problem and to receive and consider solutions to prevent it, neither the Town Council nor the Town Manager has openly and honestly informed the public about what will be done this summer about it.
You will recall that the Town Council allocated spending $7500—funding for two no-left-turn weekends—on a professional traffic study. Its five members timely received that report from their expert consultants in February, and never even discussed the report’s recommendations in a public meeting.
Oh, but they did agree to buy more roadside traffic counters to analyze the problem some more.
FACT: There will be no-left-turn weekends this summer, starting June 26-27, but no details about the hours that the turn prohibition will be in effect and whether or not police enforcement will occur have been announced by the Town.
Apparently the Town has not heard that the single-most important issue to residents in Southern Shores is traffic. It is not beach nourishment.
And I say that as someone who co-owns oceanfront property, solely owns property in the MSD-2 district, and solely owns property in a part of town outside of the municipal service districts and will be fleeced by Town taxation to fund beach nourishment I do not support for at least the next five years, if not much longer.
If only the Town Council cared as much about the quality of life, the health, and the safety of people who live in Southern Shores NOW as it does about what the beach may look like in 30 years.
All that has been released by the Town to the public is the fact that the fiscal year 2021-22 Southern Shores budget contains a line item of $30,400 budgeted for “seasonal cut-thru traffic.”
And you only know about this item if you read the Town Manager’s message that accompanies the recommended budget, which was first proposed May 4.
The $30,400 expense represents .0034 of the overall FY 2021-22 budget of $8,867,588—the largest budget in Southern Shores history. Only one-third of 1 percent of the revenue supporting this engorged budget is being spent on cut-thru traffic control. It’s jaw-droppingly inadequate.
Nearly half of the revenue for next year’s budget—$4,332,526—comes from our property and vehicle taxes, including increased ad valorem taxes to pay the Town’s debt on the beach nourishment project. And what do we get for our tax investment during the summertime weekends that we, too, would like to enjoy?
If you look in the budget itself, you will find a line item of $30,400 in the Public Works Dept. budgetary expenses, labeled “Contracted Service.” Presumably, this is the cost for setting up and taking down the barriers used to block the left-turn lane on U.S. Hwy. 158.
In the Town Council’s consent agenda for its meeting next Tuesday, at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center, is a budget amendment for the current fiscal year that appropriates $3800 from the Town’s occupancy tax reserve to pay for “Seasonal Cut-Thru Traffic Measures (No Left Turn Weekend, June 26 & 27).”
The actual expenditure, according to Budget Amendment No. 28, is for “PW Contracted Services.”
This is how I know that the first no-left-turn weekend will occur at the end of June, after a month of resident aggravation and safety threats by out-of-towners who abuse residential streets for their own convenient thoroughfare to the northern beaches.
There is still time to urge the Town Council to appropriate monies for no-left-turn weekends on June 5-6, June 12-13, and June 19-20. The amount needed is apparently a measly $11,400, or one-tenth of 1 percent of next year’s budget.
Last summer hordes of COVID-19 refugees, eager to find sanctuary in the Outer Banks, arrived here well before the end of June, swarming Southern Shores’ residential roads and causing backups to the Wright Memorial Bridge. The gridlock was unprecedented in Southern Shores, as desperate vacationers even circled around Circle Drive trying to find a shortcut to Corolla.
The Town Council took emergency—albeit late—action then to protect residents from this vehicular scourge by implementing some unplanned no-left turn weekends. This summer the Town Council should know the hordes are coming again—everyone else does—this weekend and continuing next week and the week after and the week after that.
I encourage you to go to the Town Council meeting on Tuesday and demand action. You can speak during an early three-minute public comment period and/or you can speak during the public hearing on the FY 2021-22 budget.
There is no place in Southern Shores for the kind of “let them eat cake” attitude that our Town officials have evinced by their inadequate response–after a YEAR of planning time–to the cut-thru traffic “problem.”
The Southern Shores Beacon 