Update on Annexation Committee Meetings

ALERT: Public Hearings before the House Select Committee on Municipal Annexation are currently scheduled as follows:

March 19, in Ferguson Hall at AB Tech in Asheville, NC. The hearing will begin at 5:00 p.m.
If you live in the Buncombe County area and plan to speak out or attend, please contact Ann Jordan goforthla@ncleg.net or Rosa Kelley thomasla@ncleg.net

April 9th in the Legislative Building Auditorium


I hope that most of you have viewed the videos of the City Advocates giving their presentations to the Select Committee. If you need any incentive to write to the Legislators and express your position on reforming forced annexation, hearing the Director of the League of Municipalities "draw the line in the sand" as to what they will allow or not allow the GA to change should do it for you.

You can also view the Charlotte City attorney make his case at this link:
Charlotte Attorney address to NC House Select Committe on Municipal Annexation

Charlotte has been forcibly annexing regularly for so many years that there isn't much left of unincorporated Mecklenburg County. Because of this, and in spite of the City Attorney's intent to defend forced annexation, he actually helps to prove that one of the key arguments FOR forced annexation that the advocates repeat over and over is the load of hot air that it is.

He admits that the City of Charlotte will soon have nowhere left to go to continue to expand geographically. He then assures the Legislators that Charlotte will continue to be fine and dandy because they will focus on internal growth instead. The bottom line is that he admits that cities don't NEED to expand outward taking in more taxpayers by force in order to stay fiscally healthy.

In his "Ain't Charlotte Wonderful" speech, he admits that Charlotte has initiated 30 forced annexations since 1993 with no challenges to any of them. When he later admits that Charlotte has a stable of 60 lawyers at their disposal, it is little wonder that no victim has challenged any of them.

60 LAWYERS???!!! To pit the citizens of North Carolina against this army of taxpayer funded lawyers is outrageous! Should city revenue be spent on litigation aimed at defeating the will and the natural rights of North Carolina citizens?

The cities have declared war on the citizens around them across North Carolina in an attempt to wear them down and defeat them in Raleigh at the General Assembly.
From North to South and West to East, cities all over NC are initiating forced annexations.
Active battles against the citizens are underway in Wilmington, Pinehurst, Goldsboro, Lexington, Salisbury, Tryon, Rocky Mount, Asheville, to name some with many others recently undertaken around the State.

As the House Legislators study needed reform of annexation, they should be paying particular attention to uncovering the truth or the lie to the claims of the municipal advocates, and looking for ways to give the citizens some avenue of standing that will hold the municipalities accountable to SOMEONE in regard to this power to usurp the approbation of landowners in the decision to become part of a municipal incorporation.

In the Committee report to the Legislature submitted in May as the session starts, Number 1 on the list of recommendations should be an immediate moratorium on forced annexations, included those that are currently being challenged or incomplete.

Please plan to attend the Public Hearings.

The next scheduled meeting of the Study Committee is a closed session at the end of April to formulate the recommendations to the Legislature.
It looks like the Public Hearings are going to be the last opportunity for any input to the recommendations the committee comes up with.