North Carolina's annexation laws — good or bad?

Great Debates
1

For reference, here is North Carolina General Statue, Chapter 160A:

http://www.ncleg.net/Statutes/GeneralStatutes/HTML/ByChapter/Chapter_160A.html

In the 1950s, the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the controversial statute, and summarized its intent by the following observation: if an area is urban, it shall be municipal. Of special interest is Article 4A, “Extension of Corporate Limits”. Notice that certain sections were repealed in the 1980s, but these aren’t really pertinent to our discussion here. See 160A-33, “Declaration of Policy”.

Basically, the idea is this: a city may annex an area by ordinance so long as the land under consideration is adjacent to already established city limits and 60% of it is either residentially, commercially, industrially, or governmentally developed. (Note that the last one theoretically gives government the ability to tip the scale by putting up something ostensibly for government purposes but actually for purposes of annexation.)

No vote by residents and businesses is required. They may protest their annexation by following the statute’s procedures, but seldom have such protests been successful. Annexations by cities like Charlotte are so routine that they occur practically daily, and sometimes entail populations in the thousands and tens of thousands. In effect, the city council merely informs you that you’re now a part of the city, begins immediately to move in its police and fire protection, and launches the installation of certain infrastructure improvements like street lights and sidewalks which it must complete in a given amount of time. And of course, sends you a tax bill.

Now, the advantages for North Carolina cities are pretty obvious. One thing that cities like Atlanta, in Georgia, have complained about is that developers have tended to build just outside the city limits, sparing their clients higher city taxes while giving them access to city amenities like museums, professional sports, and nightlife. As a result, city centers have sometimes suffered because although the resources on cities have been taxed, not all of those who use them have. But if you build a development on the outskirts of Charlotte, its annexation is practically guaranteed. As a result, the city increases its tax base to compensate for providing its amenities to its newest residents. And Charlotte is a very healthy city indeed:

http://www.city-data.com/city/Charlotte-North-Carolina.html

Obviously, from the perspective of my own political philosophy, this is practically the definition of tyranny. The local Lord claims ownership of all the land and will provide you protection and streetlights if you pay him hommage. What happens when the land runs out? To the north, Concord is annexing south while Charlotte is of course annexing north. When their city limits meet, neither can press forward in those directions. Certain cities, like Matthews, are already completely enveloped by the ever-expanding behemoth such that they cannot annex a single parcel of land. (Nothing non-municipal can possibly be adjacent.) The result is that cities lie within cities. The entire chain of cities on I-85 stretching from Charlotte to Raleigh constitutes one gigantic megalopolis such that there is barely a stretch of rural highway remaining. There are exits practically every mile or two the entire way.

Is this the unintended consequence of the statute? A glut of medium sized me-too cities, each not quite big enough to qualify for substantial SMSA funds and yet too large to qualify for rural assistance? The north-south I-85 corridor I mentioned is bookended by two cities each with SMSA populations of more than a million, and each with plenty of elbow room to expand east and west, but what about the cities in between? Unless they court developers with tax breaks, thus defeating the whole purpose of liberal annexation laws, how will they draw new residents? They can’t offer professional sports or top-tier entertainment, and their chances of expanding their populations decrease as the two bully cities encroach closer and closer.

In the end, whatever the short and medium term gains and advantages, I do not see how this differs from the concept of taxation without representation. True, the statute itself was drawn up by representatives elected by majorities voting, but isn’t it rather like making a national law that says Congress may do whatever it pleases despite whatever the Constitution says? Since majorities have elected Congressmen, Congress is doing the people’s will by definition, even if it invades the sovereignty of foreigners. After all, people on the outskirts of Charlotte are not Charlotteans, at least not by choice.

2

You raise a most interesting question, Lib, which probably needs to be discussed at length. I know that there are argreements between Raleigh, Knightdale, Wake Forest, Garner, Cary, Durham, and other Triangle-area cities and towns as to what the “line of annexation” between them ought to be. For example, Raleigh can, in general, annex up to the Neuse River eastwards, and Knightdale can annex up to it westwards. (Each has one or more points where they reach the river, but with unannexed land between them save at one short length of the river – about 200 yards – where they border each other across the Neuse.)

New York, however, provides the counterpoint to this. In New York, towns are not municipalities smaller than cities as they are in North Carolina (such entities are “villages”) but rather space-filling entities like North Carolina townships, but with local governments elected over them. And for a city or village to annex a given tract of land, there must be either (1)(a) a favorable majority vote of landowners in the tract proposed for annexation, (b) consent by the municipal board of the annexing municipality, and © consent by the municipal board of the body in which the land lies prior to annexation; or (2) if any of the above consents are not present, a finding by the State Supreme Court that the annexation is in the best interests of all affected. (Villages, by the way, lie within towns – or, occasionally, athwart town boundaries – in much the way that outside Virginia any city lies within a county; cities, with one exception, are not within towns.)

The result of this is that annexation is an extremely rare event in New York. To take my home town, over half the people with Watertown zip codes live outside the Watertown city limits, the majority of them with public water and sewer provided through the city, municipal fire and police service, municipal roads, etc., but in towns with “improvement districts” created and administered by the Town Boards.

It occurs to me that there is a happy medium between these two states of affairs, and that each fails to provide the benefits that the other does. It is not, to me, a case of individual vs. government, but rather of competing governments and whether government-as-service-provider is duly representing those to whom it provides services. (A debate on whether government ought to be a service provider would hijack the general thesis you present, IMO – in point of fact, municipal entities are generally the provider of highway maintenance, water and sewer to people living in a “developed” area, as opposed to rurally, and the question boils down to whether they should be incorporated within the bounds of their service provider’s representational, as opposed to service, area. And I see a question of representative government underlying that issue.