By Virgil Misenheimer

Our small town, a somewhat quaint and relaxed country atmosphere, is about to forever vanish despite how the residents feel. What’s bringing the change? Hordes of new construction projects: Miller Road residential development, Macy’s distribution warehouse, Altec expansion, Webb Road warehouse and IDI warehouses.

Additionally, two huge Mt. Hope Church Road residential projects have applied for voluntary spot annexation with China Grove. The first, a 288 unit, multifacility 4-story apartment complex at Hope Lane. The second, a 270 individual home project at Menius Road on 125 acres with  three houses per acre. These neighborhoods would be located within a mile of each other. The three-to-five-bedroom housing project, as it’s currently accepted, has a limited means of egress: only one way in, one way out!

The traffic impact alone would be comparable to sand through the bottleneck of an hourglass. Can you imagine the morning and evening commutes? I guess adding several more roundabouts from I-85 to Menius Road along Highway 152 would get the job done.

Over the last several months our surrounding neighbors have held several meetings to openly discuss our many concerns. There have also been three standing room only board meetings at China Grove’s town hall. One from planning and two by the town council hearing concerns in public forum regarding the two residential projects, plus other matters. First, the China Grove planning board, despite strong opposition by a host of residents, myself included, voted to move forward for further review by town council. The planning committee chair even stated, during this initial phase, “The infrastructure [water, sewer, etc.] may be lacking; however, once issues are identified we can play catch-up.”

This raised yet another real concern. At whose expense will the town play catch-up? The following two meetings were before the China Grove town council, and despite another strong opposition, passed by a vote of 4-1. In fact, the only person to speak in favor of the housing project, ironically, happens to be the representative of Ellis development group. All other citizens spoke strongly in opposition.

Council member Steve Stroud was the single vote in opposition. In summary, he spoke to each Council member individually expressing his concerns that matched concerns of our community.

“It didn’t make sense,” he said.

He wasn’t in favor of the stress it would impose on current resources that are already overwhelmed, such as fire service, police, EMS, water/sewer and other civil support. As for the Council members approving the project, motion was made by Rodney Phillips, seconded by Don Bringle, with Arthur Higgins and Cheryl Phillips also voting in favor. Unlike Mr. Stroud who provided justification for his vote, not one of the other members presented any reasoning for why they voted against the voice of the people.

As a fellow taxpayer and longtime resident, I’m sure I speak for the entire community by suggesting that an explanation for their vote was most certainly warranted. In truth, their silence has spoken loudly!

Sadly, I suspect the Council to be greedy and living in fear that Salisbury could potentially reach out and service this tax base of citizens if China Grove doesn’t grab it first. I fully understand spot annexation is a means for growing a town; however, the tax revenue generated from this annexation will unlikely be sufficient to cover all basic support needs and soon to be identified hidden debts such as water/sewer, DOT modifications, new school(s), new fire station(s), new town support staffing salaries with related support equipment costs, and/or related new construction.

Local policy and voting action such as this only echoes our nation’s $31 trillion deficit. Perhaps the developers of these residential neighborhoods will ante-up to satisfy the bill, but I truly doubt it.

Don’t look any further than the four folks that voted for this to correct and fix our issues. One public forum remark concludes these matters perfectly: “At this rate of expansion, you’ll soon need to change the name Farmers Day to something else as there will be no farmers or farms left.”

Virgil Misenheimer lives  on Mt. Hope Church Road.