The City of Fayetteville had a big involuntary annexation fight a while back. An entire region was annexed against the will of the residents, who at the time, lived in the unincorporated area of the county. They received no city services or benefits of being incorporated. However, they ended up paying the price of taxation simply to be called Fayetteville residents.
The town on Selma is looking to annex a bunch of acreage into the city limits. I have absolutely no problem with annexation that is agreeable to the affected property owners. When it is done under protest, I have a big problem with it.
There is one instance in which I do support involuntary annexation, however. If the property or properties in question are surrounded by annexed property and the properties are deriving benefits from the town. By that I mean if they property owners benefit from improved water, sewer, garbage removal, utilities, property value, streets, etc. as a result of being contiguous to the town limits, then I find it appropriate to annex such a property into the town. Selma recently had such a case here in town on Ricks Road.
The entire idea behind annexation of additional properties into the corporate limits of a town is for growth and planning control, but more importantly, the property tax revenue. Building the tax base is a popular reason, probably the only real reason, for involuntary annexation. It is all about the money...period.
For this reason, a bill has been introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly to stop this action by municipalities. Here is the article from WMPM's web site.
Rep. Langdon Co-Sponsors Bill Banning Involuntary Annexations - Representative J.H. Langdon of Johnston County has co-sponsored a bill introduced in the NC House on Tuesday calling for a ban on involuntary annexations by municipalities statewide. House Bill 32 would suspend all involuntary annexations until 2009, and create a 10-member Legislative Study Commission to study the issue. The Commission would report back to lawmakers during the 2009 session, making their recommendations. At issue is whether property owners rights are protected when they are involuntarily annexed by municipalities, and whether remedies are available to those property owners. "Annexation should be a voluntary solution to the wants of taxpayers. Annexation becomes a big problem when it becomes involuntary and goes against the people’s wishes that are being annexed," Rep. Langdon told WMPM. Rep. Larry Brown (District 73) introduced the legislation Tuesday. Brown is the mayor of Kernersville. Jackson Stancil, Legislative Aide to Representative Langdon, said many people have no desire to be annexed but often have no choice in the matter. Recently, when Fayetteville involuntarily annexed an unincorporated area into their city limits, some residents were forced to pay out as much as $3,000 annually in additional fees and taxes, even though they gained few, if any, services from the city. The legislation does not cover voluntary annexation.
Here is a web site opposing forced annexation in North Carolina.
2 comments:
Troy… wanted to give my thoughts on the annexation issue being discussed…not only in Selma…but also throughout all of Johnston County.
My question to leaders is “what does the municipal tax paying citizens get from the taxes they pay to the County?”
Several years ago, I was fortunate to participate in “Leadership Johnston.” The objective of our class was to study “Smart Growth” for Johnston County. Interstate 40 had only been open for eight years and there was a mounting concern that current development patterns were dominated by what some call "sprawl." In my opinion, it seems that today, County Leaders are not interested in the long-term interest of our cities, small towns, rural communities, or green space areas. I feel they are abandoning the infrastructure already in place in the municipalities, and this is costing us greatly.
I would like to suggest to citizens to take a serious look at how the County and local municipal governments are set up and what services they provide. Many services are duplicated and not cost effective…especially those of us citizens paying both County and City taxes.
The County allowing the recent beer vote referendum in the Cleveland Township, is a continuation of areas not needing annexation.
I believe that if County Government continues down the path of competing with municipal government, then there needs to be a serious discussion about merging or ending this duplication of services. We need to begin to seriously look at combining municipal responsibilities, or having them fall under the umbrella of the County. Will this ever occur? With over 70% of the citizens living outside of a town, will the political climate allow it?
There would be one police department, one rescue squad, one fire department, one planning department, one Mayor and one Council.
I feel that incorporating the entire county will enable them to keep their taxes low and maintain a unified planning and zoning code throughout the county.
They would also have municipal authority when it comes to building and maintaining streets and roads, as well as the ability to get state and federal funding for street construction.
The big question for Johnston County is: What type of government do we want?
The County is already in the business of covering the cost of educating our children, setting up water districts outside municipalities, providing a court system, building inspections, planning and zoning for most of the county, collecting the taxes for the town’s (for a fee), sheriff’s department, and just recently taking over the 911 coverage for the Town of Selma.
Other towns and counties across the US have begun combining all services under one governmental umbrella. Is it not possible for Johnston to do the same?
Chris Johnson
Thanks for the commentary, Chris. I am all for elimination of duplication of effort and services by governmental agencies. That is one reason why I was a huge supporter of using the county 911 system.
Other than education, court system, and sheriff's department, I see little that the county has that is beneficial to us taxpayers. I see no reason why we duplicate the sheriff's department along with some municipal police departments, especially in very rural, small towns.
I can see maintaining a town constabulary force and fire service. I have no problem with that, since I prefer local control to a more centralized control.
The downside to your commentary is to extrapolate and go to the concept of duplication of services between the county and state. Why not go all the way and have everything adminstered at the state level? Well, for obvious reasons of control, freedom, and efficiency, we break down the responsibilities the way we do.
I am baffled as to why the counties and state have so much to do with education, though. More efficient education is done via towns running their own school districts, in my observation. Instead of all the money that we fork out to the federal, state, and county governments, I would rather see the money be going to smaller school districts so that we can have tighter, local control over quality, employment, and efficiency. I have seen it work fine elsewhere.
The school system needs a total reform. Charter schools get the same per student funding from the state and county as government run schools WITHOUT any funds for facilities. Yet many charter schools can still build multi-million dollar buildings for their schools. That tells me that we don't need the gigantic bonds that counties are trying to pass on to us taxpayers. There must be a great deal of inefficiency in the system.
I want to take the services duplication one step further. If we can find the service in a phone book yellow pages and it can be done cheaper by the private sector, why are we paying for a governmental agency to administer many of the services they provide?
Combining town and county services on some things is about as far as I am willing to consider consolidation. The larger the government, the larger the waste, graft, and fraud. Also, the less interpersonal contact and service.
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