State Port Pilot, 08.07.24
There is a well-known rule in baseball: “Three strikes and you are out.” Unfortunately, the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners and/or our local representatives in the NC General Assembly have struck out in three areas that have affected BC citizens in a negative manner: Annexation, Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ), and Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA).
Several years ago, Southport leaders annexed land that extended the city limits in a sensible manner. Since a local House representative quickly sponsored a bill in Raleigh to rescind this annexation, the Southport map is “embedded” with unincorporated areas or developments within the city (Strike 1). The city not only lost funds for services inadvertently provided, but it recently lost its limited power on how these areas are developed - namely, the ETJ or Senate 911 Bill (Strike 2). If you check the map of Southport, you will see that this bill prohibits the city from regulating development on land outside its limits as well as a few small areas inside city limits.
Finally, the board has been indecisive this year about the issue in which a TIA report is required before the planning board approves a development. I am a retired scientist and a former member of the Brunswick County Planning Board. However, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the TIA report, if it exceeds a certain number of traffic trips, should be performed before a housing development is approved.
If the board wants to send a resolution to our local representatives in the NC General Assembly, I suggest that nonsensical annexation issues be addressed before ETJs are eliminated around other municipalities in the county. If future decisions are not made in favor of citizens rather than developers, then voters in November should mimic umpires in saying to politicians: YOU ARE OUT!
William Flythe
Southport
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