Elon’s town council was trooped down memory lane earlier this week in order to reconstruct a convoluted decision that its members reached in September about parking along several municipal streets.
Elon’s town clerk Kathleeen Patterson asked the town’s leaders to recall this welter on Tuesday so that she could unravel the Gordian Knot of a motion that summarized the council’s parking preferences for a residential byway called Courtland Drive.
Patterson went on to acknowledge that her own account of the motion didn’t quite mesh with the recollections of two other staff members.
“So, the three of us got together to see if we captured your motion correctly,” she added, “and if we don’t get the correct motion, you’ll end up with whatever has been recorded.”
Part of the confusion about Courtland Drive stemmed from the fact that Elon’s police chief Kelly Blackwelder hadn’t suggested any parking restrictions of her own along this roadway. Some members of the council nevertheless wanted to lengthen the “no parking” zones at Courtland’s intersection with Pinedale Drive. To this end, the council as a whole agreed to extend these zones from the town’s 20-foot standard to 50 feet at each of the intersection’s approaches.
Patterson recalled that, in addition to lengthening these zones, there were murmurs from the council about forbidding parking within either 100 or 200 feet of Courtland’s juncture with Forestview Drive. Someone also bruited about the idea of limiting on-street parking along another section of Courtland between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.
Amid all this crosstalk, Patterson admitted that neither she nor any other staff member could figure out exactly what was proposed after Elon’s mayor Emily Sharpe called for a motion about Courtland Drive.
“As you were requesting [the motion],” Patterson reminded Sharpe on Tuesday, “motions were being made, and conversations were being had.”
Councilman Randy Orwig confessed that he had no recollection of the aforementioned time-based restrictions. Meanwhile, other members of the council couldn’t say for certain what, if anything, they had resolved to do about the intersection with Forestview Drive.
It was ultimately left to councilman Michael Woods, who had articulated the motion in question, to scour his notes for any clues about the council’s intentions. The softspoken councilman admitted that he could only vouch for the 30-foot extensions of the “no parking” zones at Courtland’s intersection with Pinedale. The rest appeared to be purely apocryphal.
In the final analysis, the council concurred that the extension of the no-parking zones had been the only change along Courtland Drive. Its members went on to give Patterson the all-clear to enshrine this conclusion in her minutes.
