ORD-2009-018-Zoning Ordinance Amendment Establishing Regulations for Drive Thru Facilities

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8 99 there is a lot of asthma and we have a couple of schools close to the highway. It's an education and 100 community outreach but it's not a regulation so I think it's compatible with yours Jeff. 101 102 Jeff Schmitt: I think that's an excellent suggestion. As I read through here, option one is to prohibit it, 103 option two some of this stuff is over the top in the midst of what we're trying to do to get some of these folks 104 to do this. I think this suggestion is a very reasonable common sense approach to take in the midst of this. 105 Let's see if we can't do something on a voluntary basis with signs, placards, whatever doing it at schools 106 before we put another regulation in place. We have enough regulations in this County to begin with and I 107 think this is just another one. While it is not enforceable and we're not going to have the idle police out 108 there, I think it does make a lot of sense that we're trying to trust the responsibility, the integrity, and the 109 concern all of the atizens of the County probably have for pollution when we are sitting in long lines. One 110 other point I'd like to make is that the business model that a lot of restaurants and other businesses are 111 based upon being able to drive through so as the County expands what we are in essence doing is putting 112 a significant amount of limitations on them and/or telling them not to come to begin with because of this 113 regulation. 114 115 Larry Wright: First of all, l thing the OUTBoard has taken up this issue and I think that discussion would be 116 important to the Commissioners. I've thought about this a lot and I thought about the turning off of the 117 engines and as much I do not like exhaust pumping out into the atmosphere, it is almost impossible to get 118 by Cameron Park around 2:30-3:00 and you can't expect these parents to turn off a car when it is very cold 119 or very hot outside. I think it's a little unrealistic in some circumstances to ask them to turn off their cars. 120 see some problems here. Then I think as far as the businesses not coming in, Carrboro has proven that 121 wrong. They will come in. I think the rationale is flawed. I would like to know if the OUTBoard has 122 discussed this and what the outcome of those discussions were. 123 124 Mark Marcoplos: I agree with Larry on this lobbyist organization's study. I studied it for awhile and they are 125 talking about when a car stops gases emit from the engine. In the study they are only talking about what 126 happens in the parking lot, that's narrow. They are really stretching it there. If you look at some other 127 information, I did some research on this, we know that idling wastes fuel, we know it releases pollutants 128 that would not be released if the car were turned off, we know that if your car is idling for more than 10 129 seconds it's cost effective and resource effective to turn it off, 6-10 seconds is now understood to be the 130 amount of fuel it takes to start your car. Every hour you idle you waste 7/10 of a gallon of gas. This is 131 some information from Sierra Magazine, in a given year U.S. cars burn some 1.4 billion gallons of fuel just = 132 idling. Idling trucks waste 1.5 billions gallons. Collectively we emit about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide 133 while we are essentially doing nothing just waiting and idling. It puts a little strain on the business to have 134 this kind of regulation but what is really at stake? We know global warming is real. We know we're 135 stressing our environment. We know people are getting sick so at a certain point you have to say do we 136 rise to the challenge or do we fall back into what we used to think 15, 20, 30 years ago that we can go on 137 pretty much as we have been living and expect things to just solve themselves. I really feel like we're not 138 doing a whole lot of damage to important businesses in our community if we require people to park to go 139 into a restaurant. All my favorite restaurants, they don't have drive-thrus the ones that keep money into 140 the community anyway, serve healthy food. It's where the mothers and children ought to be going anyway. 141 It's not my decision; I just throw that out as an observation. As far as the handicapped if people can get in 142 their cars they can get out of their cars. I think doing nothing as an option not only does it not get the 143 reductions in emissions that we need but it misses a great educational opportunity. It sends the message 144 that it doesn't really matter to us. It doesn't make the point that this is something we are really serious 145 about and understand the need to do. Maybe we don't all understand the need to do it yet. The business 146 limitation if that's the only litmus test we'll never get much done. As we team about our impact on the 3