Annexation Laws: Report to the 1983 General Assembly of North Carolina

This is the latter of two formal studies of the annexation law during the 1980s. This study was done in 1982 by a committee of the Legislative Research Commission (LRC), which submitted its report to the 1983 General Assembly.  That report recommended a number of minor procedural amendments to the statute (including the two included in the report from the joint committee of the League and Association) and the following major recommendations:

1. Several counties had been excluded from the involuntary annexation statutes, and those exclusions should be repealed.
2. Cities should be required to enter into service contracts with volunteer fire departments affected by an annexation, to pay a portion of volunteer fire department debt when the department was affected by an annexation, and to offer a job to any full-time employee of a volunteer fire department whose job was lost because of an annexation.
3. The resolution of consideration should be added to the annexation procedure.
4. Property owners within an annexation area for a city of 5,000 or more should have the right to demand extension of utility lines to their property within two years after the effective date of annexation, as long as the extensions were made pursuant to the city’s existing extension policies.