County board to talk light districts
By Steve Herring
Published in News on December 14, 2014 1:50 AM
Wayne County commissioners Tuesday will hold a public hearing on levying an assessment for street lights in the Ashby Hills Street Light District.
The hearing will be held at 9:15 a.m. in the commissioners' meeting room on the fourth floor of the Wayne County Courthouse Annex.
The public hearing is not required under state law, but commissioners said they wanted to hold one to be fair to everyone in the district.
Tuesday's meeting will start with an agenda briefing at 8 a.m., followed by the formal session at 9 a.m. in the commissioners' meeting room.
State law allows commissioners to create special districts, similar to fire districts, and levy an assessment to pay for a service -- in this case, street lighting.
Commissioners voted Oct. 21 to create six such districts.
The districts are in the de-annexed areas of the county just north of Goldsboro. After the areas were de-annexed, the street lights were turned off by Duke Energy since it no longer had an entity to contract with for the service.
The light districts will allow Duke to bill the county for the lights. The county would then use the revenue from the assessment to pay the bill.
The annual assessment against each lot in the district will be at the base rate of $49.80 annually, but the assessment rate could change if the rates from the power company are changed.
Before the assessment can be levied to pay for the lights, at least 67 percent of the property owners in each district must sign a petition agreeing to the arrangement.
During the board's Dec. 2 meeting, County Manager George Wood said that 88 percent of the property owners in the Ashby Hills Street Light District had signed the petition asking for the lights.
Wood told commissioners that they could vote after the public hearing to levy the assessment on those properties.
If approved, the county tax office would send out a special bill.
In other business Tuesday, a public hearing associated with a rezoning will also be held.
The county has been asked to rezone 10 parcels of land bordered by N.C. 111 South and Old N.C. 111 from Residential-Agriculture 20 and Inner Horizontal to Community Shopping.
Owner Amando Torres wants to open a roofing supplies and materials business, but current zoning does not allow commercial activity.
The Wayne County Planning Board has recommended approval.
The four items on the consent agenda deal with tax requests and include applications for property tax exclusion, elderly or disabled tax exclusion, disabled veteran tax exclusion and one for present use value.
Public comments will be taken at 10 a.m. People will have four minutes to speak on their topic of choice.