The Fannin County Board of Commissioners, in a meeting Tuesday, March 10, voted to publicly oppose The City of Blue Ridge’s plan to annex sections of Highway 5 and Highway 515.
Chairman Stan Helton expressed his concern that the annexation could cause city ordinances to supersede county ordinances currently in place such as alcohol ordinances, noise ordinances, light ordinances, billboard ordinances, speed limits and more.
“This is a huge issue because the people in the county, I mean we’ve not had any input in this, and more importantly, the people living in the county hasn’t had any input,” Helton said. “If they start seeing alcohol in places that they’ve not seen before and they didn’t get a chance to vote on it, that’s gonna be a big problem.”
Post One Commissioner Earl Johnson, and others on the board, said he had not heard of the potential annexation until he read about it in The News Observer.
“Is this a normal process to be able, for the city to just be able, to ask that and then all of a sudden it be presented with no input from the county,” Johnson asked County Attorney Lynn Doss.
Doss responded by referencing a piece of property that had been annexed by the city last year. In that instance, Doss received “a big packet of information about it.”
She said, “Last year it came from the city attorney. This year, we’ve gotten nothing.”
Johnson explained that a lot of things could be affected by the potential annexation.
“A lot of things are at stake when you start annexing that much property, and you talk about major highways,” he said. “I don’t know if the county was just supposed to go along or … I mean I don’t know, and that’s what I’m asking. I think everyone in the county needs to wonder, where was the county’s input in this at any point whatsoever.
“I don’t know how any of our state representatives can just say, ‘Oh, I think that’s the best,’ and pass that.”
Doss discussed the potential impact the annexation could have on Local Options Sales Tax distribution, stating, “Eight years ago … We had a knockdown donnybrook with the City of Blue Ridge as to the distribution of the Local Options Sales Tax. That will come up for renegotiation in two years. One of the city’s arguments at that point in time was that area, the tourism and what they contributed to the pie. Well if their area is larger, they’re going to ask for a larger share of the pie. That means the pie hasn’t gotten any larger, but then, they get a larger share of the pie. So we have to come back and renegotiation the Service Delivery Strategy, because they’ve got more money than the county does out of it, yet the county still has to provide fire service.”
Doss also said that McCaysville or the county could be negatively impacted by Blue Ridge receiving a larger share of the tax.
Doss confirmed that a House Bill regarding the annexation had not been assigned in the legislature as of Thursday, March 12.