Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
Orange County Board of Commissioners <br />Page 2 <br />July 21, 1999 <br />Article V, Section 2 of the North Carolina Constitution <br />requires that the power of taxation be exercised "for public <br />purposes only." Article V, Section 2 of the Constitution also <br />authorizes the General Assembly to enact laws whereby the State <br />or any local government may contract with and appropriate money <br />to any person, association or corporation "for the <br />accomplishment of public purposes only." I think the safest way <br />to think about public uses is that they are uses which serve <br />public purposes. Therefore any use of the portion of the Greene <br />Tract being transferred or disposed of for which tax money can <br />be spent or about which counties can contract and appropriate <br />money would be a public use. This makes the universe of uses <br />broad although not without limits. <br />My conversations with one or more commissioners about this <br />issue leads me to believe that the Board may be willing to <br />consider any public use as satisfying the requirement for the <br />special local government price for the Greene Tract. However, <br />there may be some such uses which would not be acceptable to <br />the Board. On the other hand, it is also my sense that there <br />are some public uses that you all would agree now would qualify <br />for the special price. An example of the latter includes <br />recreation or open space uses. It therefore seems to me that <br />the best way to leave this issue is for the Board to agree to <br />and for the agreement to state those public uses that would be <br />acceptable and to retain the notion that any other public uses <br />would require the agreement of the three Greene Tract owners. <br />This does not mean that the property transferred to a unit of <br />government could not be used for any public or private use. It <br />means only that the special local government price for the <br />property would require an agreed-upon public use. To illustrate <br />what I've described above, the first four lines of the <br />definition of reimbursement amount would read as follows: <br />Reimbursement amount means, (1) in the case of <br />disposition to a North Carolina local government that <br />is also a party, so long as that government devotes <br />the transferred portion to publicly owned recreation, <br />to ublicl owned o en s ace or to other public uses <br />that are agreed upon by the three Greene Tract Owners <br />prior to this disposition. . <br />Any other public use that the County Commissioners could agree <br />upon at this time could be added to the list of those that <br />