A crowd of about 30, including a chartered bus of 26 and four others who flew in from the Rowan County Airport, traveled to the N.C. Court of Appeals Tuesday to watch as a three-judge panel held a hearing Tuesday morning on Salisbury’s attempt to annex two large areas west and south of the present city limits.

The morning was short and, the annexation opponents hope, will prove to be sweet.

“I’m encouraged,” said John Holcomb, who flew his corporate airplane from Rowan to attend the hearing.

Passengers on the bus expressed the same optimism, although they agreed beforehand that they’d allow their attorneys to speak for them. Generally, the passengers stressed that they weren’t in the fight against the city just to delay their inevitable annexation. They said they have a chance of winning, while also making a serious point that N.C.’s involuntary annexation law is unfair.

City Manager David Treme and senior planner Heidi Galanti also made the trip to Raleigh Tuesday.

“I was just here to listen,” Treme said. He added that the law was in the city’s favor at the trial court level, and he thought the city also would prevail at the appeals level.

The city submitted the basis of information for its annexation, “and I guess they (opponents) had the burden of proof to overturn what we had done,” Treme said.

The opponents who rode the bus were mostly retirees from the Summerfield and Homestead Hills subdivisions, though others used a vacation day from work to make the trip. They departed the Office Depot parking lot in Salisbury at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, sat through two other hearings and then paid close attention to their own case, whose arguments took about an hour.

By noon, their bus was headed for home. Hopeful that their attendance might have an impact on the judges, the opponents carried nothing resembling a protest sign, but that didn’t hide the determination that most of them have shown over the past 30 months.

If successful in its Feb. 18, 1997 annexation, the city will add more than 2,800 new residents and almost 3,000 more acres to Salisbury. Opponents to the annexation organized into the Good Neighbors of Rowan County Association and filed a legal challenge.

Several weeks after hearing three days of testimony, Superior Court Judge Jerry Cash Martin upheld the city’s annexation in February 1998, prompting the Good Neighbors group to ask its Asheville attorneys, Martin Reidinger and Jerry Crow, to appeal. Judges Edward Greene, Patricia Timmons-Goodson and Clarence Horton heard the oral arguments Tuesday and will render a decision in a couple of months.

In all, the Good Neighbors group has spent about $77,000 on its annexation fight.

The group’s appeal came down to two issues: Did the city err when it qualified vacant, county-owned land near the airport as part of a single governmental use? Was the city wrong in not following natural topographic features and streets in selecting its boundaries for a portion of land off Majolica Road?

Reidinger said four specific parcels owned by the county were lumped in with other county-owned land at the airport and classified as under one government use. The four properties are empty and, if considered apart from the government use, the city could not meet the urbanization standard, Reidinger said.

The standard says that 60 percent of the vacant or residential lots in an annexation area be 5 acres or less. Reidinger claimed the city first considered the four parcels in question as separate lots but realized it had to use a different approach once the trial came.

Reidinger claimed the city is attempting to attribute other uses to these empty parcels, including the airport, the old landfill, the National Guard Armory and the former animal shelter. The city also is using a future airport layout plan as the basis for saying that the vacant parcels are under government use, Reidinger said. He stressed that “actual current use” must be considered in determining “actual urbanization.”

“Future uses are irrelevant,” he said, noting that County Manager Tim Russell testified in Superior Court that the airport layout was a planning document. Russell also testified that the lots in question have been offered for sale. The four parcels in question, Reidinger added, are not being used in connection with the airport or anything else.

Winston-Salem attorney Rod Ligon, accompanied by City Attorney Rivers Lawther, presented the city’s side and cited numerous court precedents in which lots and tracts under common ownership for a common purpose are considered as one tract.

The overall area, including the four parcels, advances the goals and objectives of Rowan County, Ligon said, adding that Russell testified to that in court. Ligon said Russell also testified that the parcels serve as a buffer between the airport and residences.

Ligon argued that one parcel in question is part of the old landfill and, because of that, under governmental use. The state still monitors and regulates that property, Ligon said. Another area in question was once the grass landing strip for small airplanes. The county used other areas as a borrow pit of land to extend the runway. The opponents also are asking the court to consider a public road to the National Guard Armory as a non-governmental use, Ligon said.

As for the land that used to house the old animal shelter, Ligon said it still must be considered a government use. If he moved out of his house, the house is still considered a residence, Ligon said.

Overall, the entire extent of county-owned property in the airport area is regulated by a governmental agency — the Federal Aviation Agency, Ligon said.

In his rebuttal, Reidinger said that all property within three miles of the airport is affected by FAA regulations on such things as building height. If the court used the city’s reasoning, a 6-mile-wide band across the airport would have to be considered in governmental use, Reidinger said.

“This permitting issue is a complete red herring,” Reidinger said.

As for not following natural topographic features and streets when possible, Ligon said the city used ridge lines, streams and streets “where practical,” as required by the state law. He disagreed with suggestions from Crow that that the city could not provide utility service to all annexation areas and said testimony refuted those claims.

“It (his plane) will disappear and go to another airport if the city wins,” Holcomb said after the hearing. He pays the county about $12,500 a year in taxes now for keeping his plane at the Rowan airport.

David Lackey, fixed-based operator of the Rowan Airport, said other small-plane owners will be forced to leave if faced with city property taxes. He said his operation is failing to attract new business because of the pending annexation.

Sue Robb keeps her private plane at the Rowan Airport.