Marvin, NC and North Carolina’s “forced annexation”

This commentary is reproduced and authorized by the author as submitted by Oscar Y. Harward

By Bob Stack, 1719 Walden Pond Lane

I am a proud resident of Union County, NC and have lived in the Walden Pond Subdivision for 17 years and North Carolina for 28 years. I am supported here with residents from 8 other neighborhoods from what some consider the west side of Union County. What I will speak of is not a Walden Pond issue… it is an issue of right and wrong.

I am here to support the resolution in favor of banning forced annexation. In North Carolina, one of only four states that allow “forced” annexations, state law requires that an area must be in need of “meaningful” and “significant” services and that the city must be in a position to provide them before they are annexed. Municipalities in North Carolina are stretching, abusing and violating the annexation statutes.

The Village of Marvin is a perfect example of the abuse of the state statutes. Marvin has no public works department and provides no water or sewer. Marvin does not maintain roads, or street lights, or street signs. There is no police, fire, rescue, post office, library, trash collection or animal control. Renting a County Sheriff’s law-enforcement officer 40 hours per week and providing administrative/planning services is not conferring significant benefits on the annexed property owners. These “shadow” services are a duplicate of what we are getting now from Union County; they are included with the taxes we currently pay. Why would anyone pay for the same services twice? Because the annexation laws are being abused by unethical government officials!!

Another example of how flawed our annexation laws are: If a neighborhood were to seek voluntary annexation they would have to gather 100% support of the affected property owners. If the same neighborhood were being annexed involuntarily then there would be no support needed since the city, town or village could force the annexation against their will. This is backwards.

There are a lot of things wrong with how are annexation laws are written. This resolution is a good place to start.