ORIENTATION FOR NEW CITY AND COUNTY MANAGERS
History and Overview
For a brief introduction see Chapter 2 - North Carolina Municipalities and Chapter 3 - North Carolina Counties in Local Government in North Carolina.
Additional information is available in Article 1: An Overview of Local Government of the School of Government’s publication, County and Municipal Government in North Carolina.
Article 1: An Overview of Local Government
In North Carolina, the dominant forms of local government are cities and counties. Both cities and counties are general-purpose local governments—their governing boards are elected by the qualified voters of the city’s or county’s geographic area; they have the power to levy taxes; they can regulate conduct through laws called ordinances (this ability is called the police power and is discussed in Article 4); and they are authorized and, especially with counties, sometimes required to provide a broad range of services to their citizens. While there are some other types of local governments in the state that have at least one of the listed characteristics (for example, sanitary district boards the boards of education that govern school administrative units are elected; boards of health can enact regulations related to health and airport authorities can enact rules governing conduct on airport property; and a wide range of entities from water and sewer districts to hospital authorities provide services), no other local governments are general purpose in the way that cities and counties are. City and county jurisdictions overlap in North Carolina.
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