The Folklore of the Impossible

The List of Things We Don’t Talk About

The last two weeks, I’ve put the “rhinoceros skin” you grow in public office to good use while seeing many examples of what we’ve quietly decided is “impossible.” We have a long list. Parking structures are “not allowed.” Undergrounding utilities is “too hard.” We can’t build new hotels without ruining the town. Housing can’t exist without destroying our character. We can’t have an honest talk about our untenable parking situation. And it isn’t even open for discussion to develop a downtown master plan or a real business development function.None of these things are actually impossible. But in Carmel, repetition turns preference into folklore. And heavy lifts aren’t popular in a town mostly overseen by retired folks like me.

How Folklore Becomes Policy

Take parking structures. Last week a former City Administrator tried to insinuate that our General Plan doesn’t allow them in Carmel. It sounded authoritative. It also happens to be untrue. They are not prohibited by our General Plan. They are discouraged culturally, difficult politically, and complicated legally, but not forbidden. And our General Plan was approved 24 years ago, before state mandates dominated our discussions. We actually committed to building housing and related parking on Sunset Center a couple years ago. Over time, we’ve let “hard” become “illegal,” and “controversial” become “impossible.” 

The opposit is true as well. Those looking back on "old Carmel" forget that at one point the town was full of lumber stores, gas stations, a Sambo's, an Orange Julius, and that in the early days, there was a reason for all those things. We were basically a housing development being built around a pine forest. And, those cypress trees on Scenic weren't there.

Avoidance Has Consequences

That is convenient, because it means we never have to solve problems. Instead, we remove parking spaces, don’t want to re-evaluate it and pretend that enforcement and paid parking will make the problem go away. We propose hundreds of housing units without parking and ignore the ramifications. And now we raise taxes on hotels making major improvements that dramatically increase TOT (hotel tax) to the City. Meanwhile, our infrastructure ages quietly underneath us. This is how structural deficits are born: not from bad intentions, but from good intentions paired with avoidance.

Tourism Without Planning

We do the same thing with tourism. We market Carmel extensively as a destination, then act surprised when visitors arrive. We love the revenue, but don’t want to admit that being a destination requires destination-level services. Restrooms, trash services, good roads, and emergency response don’t come free just because we wish they did.Scenic IndecisionBeing fiscally responsible is not just about saying “no.” It is about choosing what kind of town we are designing for and paying for it honestly. We have mastered the art of “scenic indecision.”

We hold meeting after meeting. We have debated our design guidelines for four years. We write long letters about small things. We are all, apparently, traffic engineers and urban planners. I say that with affection, because it means people care. But caring without deciding is how towns drift into trouble while still arguing about philosophy.

The Question We Should Be Asking

So when you hear someone say something “isn’t allowed” in Carmel, ask a simple question: Is it actually prohibited, or have we just decided it’s uncomfortable? The problems in front of us, parking, housing, and deferred maintenance, are not going away. They will either be shaped deliberately, or they will shape us. Carmel has always prided itself on being different. The next test is whether we can be different in how we plan, not just in how we protest and approve a task list for staff.In the end, evaluating some “impossible” growth ideas may be the only real solution to our financial challenges rather than taxing our most productive revenue source. On Tuesday, several hotel owners showed how reinvestment can dramatically increase City revenue. They were rewarded with a 2% tax increase subject to a vote in the November election.

To hear a podcast generated from this column go to cli.re/impossible.

Dale Byrne, Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea dbyrne@cbts.us