On Tuesday, Judges Edward Greene, Clarence Horton and Patricia Timmons-Goodson reversed a February 1998 decision by Superior Court Judge Jerry Cash Martin that upheld the city’s annexation of two large areas west and south of the current city limits.

“Salisbury’s a great city, but I don’t want to live there,” said Ann Graham, a Homestead Hills resident who headed the now successful effort by opponents to block the annexation.

Salisbury City Council adopted two annexation ordinances on Feb. 18, 1997, that would have added more than 2,800 new residents and close to 3,000 additional acres to the city. The areas include the Rowan County Airport, Rolling Hills Golf Course, Old Carolina Brick, some 30 other businesses and many residential subdivisions, including Summerfield, Homestead Hills, Kings Forest, Stonybrook, Westcliffe and Hendrix Estates.

As it turned out, county-owned land near the airport — and its actual use — proved to be a key factor in the appellate court’s decision to strike down the annexation.

“We are very disappointed,” Salisbury Mayor Susan Kluttz said. “We will continue with this, because we believe we were correct. ... I know we will take it on.”

Property owners opposing the 1997 annexations organized into the Good Neighbors of Rowan County Association, hired Asheville attorneys and challenged the city’s annexation ordinances in court. In the process, the opponents — the majority of whom live in Summerfield and Homestead Hills — raised some $77,000 for their legal fight.

“We knew we were right, and we felt we were right all along,” Ed Conley, a resident of Summerfield, said Wednesday night. “It’s been kind of a hardship, but we’ve come out in the real positive end of the thing. We’re just thankful the judges have seen it in our light.

“I’m just real happy with the decision, and it’s a great Christmas present for all of us in this area.”

Graham headed the Good Neighbors group and called the court victory “a community thing.”

“We all pulled together,” she said. “It was a lot of hours spent by a lot of people. Without everybody believing we could win, we couldn’t have done it. We’re especially happy for people on fixed income. That’s really who we were fighting for.”

Meanwhile, city officials are forced to regroup. City Attorney Rivers Lawther said the city’s lead attorney in the case, Rod Ligon of Winston-Salem, was surprised and disappointed by the appellate court’s ruling and still contends that the trial court was correct.

Lawther expects Ligon to recommend that the city file a petition to the N.C. Supreme Court for discretionary review. That procedure simply asks the Supreme Court to consider the case, even though with the 3-0 decision at the appellate level, it has no obligation to do so.

Lawther declined to speculate on the odds of the Supreme Court’s agreeing to a review. He noted that the Town of Spencer lost in a 3-0 decision at the appellate level on its annexation dispute with East Spencer, but saw the Supreme Court overturn that ruling.

If council agrees, Ligon also could file several motions to the same three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals seeking its further consideration of the annexation.

In a worst-case scenario for the city, if it fails to prevail in the courts, any annexation attempt would have to start over. The quickest any area could be annexed then would take another year, following the state procedures on involuntary annexation.

Timmons-Goodson wrote the opinion that reversed the city’s victory at the Superior Court level.

The petitioners (the Good Neighbors group) challenged the validity of the annexation ordinances on two fronts:

• They disputed whether four tracts of county-owned land in “Area I” near the airport were used for governmental purposes, as the city contended.
• They also disputed whether the boundaries of both Areas I and II followed natural topographic features or streets whenever practical.

The appellate judges basically ruled that the use of property, not its ownership, determines whether it can be involuntarily annexed. Just because the county owned the four tracts in question did not mean it could be considered in governmental use, the judges said.

Opponents to the annexation argued that the trial court improperly relied on the county’s “Airport Layout Plan” in classifying the four large tracts as governmental. The appellate judges agreed.

The lands owned by the county and shown on the layout plan included the airport and its runway, taxiways, parking facilities, airport-related buildings, radar facilities, a National Guard Armory with aircraft parking facilities, a road serving the Armory, an old animal shelter, three old landfills and a sewer easement.

“The above uses do not establish that the tracts within Area I were being use for a common purpose,” Timmons-Goodson wrote. “The majority of the stated uses did not take place on the four tracts in issue, and therefore, are not evidence that the four tracts were in governmental use or supported governmental use on other property within Area I.”

Nothing connected to the airport was located on Lots 12, 55, 187 or 24, the judge said.

“Past uses such as ‘an old animal shelter’ and ‘old landfills’ do not provide evidence that the tracts were supporting governmental use at the time of annexation,” Timmons-Goodson wrote.

They also challenged the city’s arguments that the tracts supported the goals and objectives of the county in other ways, such as serving as a buffer area, a former borrow pit for runway extensions, a former grassy landing strip for small planes and a drainage ditch for a runway.

“We are not convinced that the property within Area I serves or supports a governmental use merely because it is in proximity to the airport runway,” Timmons-Goodson wrote. “Property surrounding an airport can be developed for non-governmental use.”

For Area II, which the court also disqualified, petitioners said the city was wrong in following property lines and private rights of way to set the boundary south of U.S. 70 and west of Majolica Road. Instead, the petitioners argued and the court agreed,, the city should have followed natural topographic features or streets.

“I think they wasted a lot of money and time for the city,” Summerfield resident Tom Blackburn said of the city’s annexation attempt. “They should have researched this a lot more.”

Blackburn said the city should be looking toward bringing more industry to Salisbury, rather than trying to grow the city on the backs of residential property owners.

Through their court challenge, opponents raised $77,000 and effectively delayed the annexations. They saved themselves millions of dollars in city property taxes.

“Every year, we saved ourselves about 90 percent of our taxes,” said Paul Dziezyc, a Summerfield retiree.

Dziezyc sometimes went door to door and raised about $7,000 himself toward the legal fight.

“This is a landmark for any annexation,” Blackburn said. “That’s what you get when you get people to bond together.”

Even in victory, the opponents expressed surprise that all three appellate court judges sided with them.

“We were hoping to get one vote, anyway, to appeal it to the North Carolina Supreme Court,” Sue Conley said.

The Good Neighbors group also hoped that while the courts deliberated their challenge, the General Assembly would change the state annexation law.

“We were hoping the state legislature would change the rule and not permit the cities to annex anyone unless neighborhoods wanted it,” Sue Conley said.

Dave Lackey, fixed base operator at the Rowan County Airport, said he was elated at the news.

“My boss and I were talking last night,” he said. “It’s going to keep people here who were planning on leaving and bring a lot more tax base to the county.”

Lackey said he now plans to go ahead with construction of a half-million-dollar hangar.

For now members of the Good Neighbors association have a renewed faith in the system.