The Enquirer Journal (Monroe and Union County) ran an article today
explaining that the Mineral Springs Town Council is mad at the League
because it is recommending that towns must be able to provide two of
the following four services: police, fire, street maintenance, or solid
waste prior to being able to forcibly annex. See the article
(registration required). As I will describe below, this
recommendation is a smokescreen, as are all of the League’s
recommendations.
From the article: “Although Mineral Springs does
not offer any of those services, Becker [the mayor] said, it provides
something just as valuable: Zoning regulations.”
That’s right,
Mayor Becker and the town council think that forced annexation should
be fine because they will provide annexation victims the meaningful
service of zoning! How could we possibly live without a bunch of
“know-it-alls” running a paper town telling us how to live?
I hate to tell the Mayor this, but after the 2006 case Nolan v. Village
of Marvin, providing zoning alone wouldn’t be good enough to allow for
a forced annexation even under the state’s outdated and backwards
annexation law. The case clarified that meaningful and
significant services must be provided.
Now to the League’s recommendation:
“Proposal 14: Provide that to be eligible to annex, towns must provide
at least two of the four major municipal services listed in the statute
that are generally tax rather than rate-supported (police, fire, solid
waste, street maintenance). Clarify that towns providing a service by
contracting for it must be contracting for a higher level of service,
e.g. dedicated sheriff?s deputy or increased patrols.”
Don’t get lost in the smokescreen.
1) Water and sewer: The most important service is water and
sewer–convenient that they don’t include it. See also how they
make something completely irrelevant when it comes to what constitutes
meaningful services (tax v. rate supported services) seem like it
magically makes a difference. This is a great way to create
confusion, which is their goal.
2) By implication, they are saying that towns that have two of these
services (without contracting out) may duplicate those services in the
proposed annexed area. So if annexation victims have police and
fire, then a town that has police and fire can annex the area–no
matter what.
3) If a town doesn’t have two of those services, they can duplicate
existing services in the area so long as the service is a “higher level
of service.” Don’t confuse this with “better service.” If a
town adds one police officer to an area that has great police service
already, that would be good enough under their recommendation.
Does this seem like a meaningful service to you?
Now let’s actually address meaningful services with common sense as
opposed to insulting the intelligence of the 4.2 million North
Carolinians that live in unincorporated areas (all of whom could soon
be annexation victims):
1) Meaningful services should only be police, fire, and water and sewer. A town should be able to provide all of these services.
2) There is nothing meaningful about duplicating services.
3) One exception to the duplication issue: If the municipality can
prove one of the four meaningful services in the area is clearly
inadequate. If this can be shown, then this would allow a
city-initiated annexation to be voted upon.
Again, the purpose of the annexation law is to provide meaningful
services to areas that need the services–logically then, cities, when
they initiate an annexation, should be required to prove that need.
BTW: Besides not addressing meaningful services (in a legitimate
manner), the League fails to recommend any oversight over
municipalities or to provide a vote or approval process for the
annexation victims.
In other words, their reforms don’t address any significant reform issue.
Hopefully, the Joint Legislative Study Commission on Municipal
Annexation and the entire legislature will call out the League and
their supporters for their continued efforts to play political games at
the expense of millions of North Carolinians.
