By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
A bus will leave Salisbury this morning for Raleigh and what’s believed to be the next-to-last meeting of the Joint Legislative Commission on Municipal Annexation.
Good Neighbors of Rowan County, the group which successfully derailed a large involuntary annexation attempt by the city of Salisbury last year, is sponsoring the bus.
Carl Eagle, vice president for Good Neighbors of Rowan County, said it will be the joint commission’s last meeting before it votes on a recommendation to the General Assembly Jan. 22.
Eagle wrote a letter Dec. 31 to all the residents in the N.C. 150 corridor, which was the target of Salisbury’s annexation.
“Our continued presence at these meetings has had a profound effect and, for the first time in 50 years, we have a real opportunity to bring about meaningful reform in our state’s annexation laws,” Eagle wrote in the letter.
He said the Good Neighbors group has become a recognized leader in the state among citizens opposed to the state’s involuntary annexation laws.
Rowan Countians last attended the commission’s meeting Dec. 17.
“Even the (N.C.) League of Municipalities has started to feel the heat and, at the December meeting, offered 20 proposals for improving the annexation process,” Eagle said.
“Some of these proposals suggest changes the League would have fought bitterly even one year ago. However, these changes do not address all of our concerns, and we must keep up the pressure or the league might assume we have been placated.”
The cost of today’s bus was $26 per person.
The bus left at 6:30 a.m. from the Office Depot parking lot on East Innes Street for the 10 a.m. meeting.