Don’t be put off by the headline. There is a reason why the title is the title. Anybody that has paid the least bit of attention to politics in Cary, and downtown redevelopment issues in particular, is keenly aware of the stormwater flooding issues that arise almost every time there is a big rain event.  Aging infrastructure is slowly forcing Cary’s hand and the inevitable huge expense to fix the drainage and sewer issue cannot be put off forever.  A price tag somewhere north of $100M may be required but the longer Cary waits, the more expensive it will be.

Downtown flooding must be addressed before serious redevelopment can occur and it should be prioritized ahead of a few homes that happen to be on a street where one council member happens to live.

I bring this up because in the Mayor’s most recent blog entry (kudo’s for writing it btw), he writes:

Thursday I, along with council member Adcock and several staff members, met with residents that live on Cedarpost Drive about flooding issues and to walk the properties. Their flooding issues have been getting worse and they want the town to fix the problem.

Usually flooding problems in town come from developments that were approved long ago with looser regulations. There are also cases where DOT builds or widens a road, like US 1, in which they don’t have to provide any mitigation for runoff resulting in flooding issues.

So a few years ago the town created a policy to address the many problems in town. The criteria for this policy states that a home must first have damage. Damage can be defined as water in the crawl space, as it is in this case, or worse. If the home has damage then the town will pay half the cost of the repairs.

We will meet with the residents of Cedarpost Drive again to go over options.

I’m sure they do want the town to fix the problem.  Every resident wants ‘the town’ to fix their problems, except of course when they want ‘the town’ to stay the hell away.  What makes this situation unique is that councilwoman Adcock lives on Cedarpost Drive.  It’s her neighbors that want the flooding issue fixed.  Any and all funds the town has to fix flooding issues should be used to fix downtown issues ahead of any others.  After all, downtown flooding has been getting worse for decades.