What the mighty little minion up to this time is anybody’s guess. For the most part it appears it’s just designed to be a final F-You on his way out the door, but no one really knows for sure because… well, no one really knew anything before this morning when the tiny tyrant of Stanly County decided to bury his newest legislative inside the guts of a totally non-related bill like a little dog trying to bury his scat in the backyard.

Go to Authors Edit #3 (bottom of page) for newest update on this article.

What exactly is he doing?

Justin is basically deciding on his own to redraw town lines in Stanly County in his image. Maybe its fitting that they’re all small places? I’m not gonna judge. Anyway, he’s de-annexing pieces of three townships in Stanly County.

What does de-annexing mean?

Maybe you’re not up-to-date on govermnent lingo, so I’ll break it down Barney-style. Let’s say you live outside the town limits of somewhere. If you’re right outside of the city limits and that city annexes you, then voila… you’re now INSIDE the city limits. Make sense? De-annexing is the same thing. Three pieces of land were part of three townships in Stanly County. Now, if Justin has his way, these three chunks of land and their associated tax revenue no longer go to those townships. Instead all the money goes to the county, though I’m oversimplifying that a little. I’ll explain more later, but that’s the general crux of it. He’s trying to remove three chunks of land from their towns with the stroke of his pen.

Is this unheard of?

The act itself isn’t unheard of, no. But the process he’s using to do it is fairly suspect. You’d assume if someone was going to redraw the lines of a township, it would be in response to a request from the township or the county to do so. I mean that’s what legislators are for – to carry out the wishes of the counties and municipalities they serve. That’s why they get elected. But let’s cover each one individually to clarify.

First – let’s quote the source. document image to see the actual bill yourself. (This will open in a new window so you can keep reading).

Badin – De-annexing the Prison

So his ridiculously long-worded bill surrounding Badin’s property can be shortened to basically one sentence rather than the entire page of bullshit his bill quotes. He’s trying to remove the prison from Badin and therefore remove all its tax revenue from Badin as well. He’s taking 100 acres of land that takes up the prison space and re-allocating it to the county.

So who asked for this?

No one.

Surely SOMEONE asked him to do this. I mean what kind of vindictive little turd-monger would just blatantly screw over a town for no reason?

Nope. No one asked him to do this. In fact EVERYONE is against it.

Surely you don’t mean EVERYONE is against it?

No, I abso-freakin-lutely mean eveyrone. The town is against it. The police force is against it. EVERY OTHER POLICE DEPT in ALL of Stanly County is against it. The new Sheriff is against it. The board of commissioners is against it. (I know because I’ve talked to half of them tonight already). The Senate leadership is against it. The newly-elected House Rep that will replace him is against it. Absolutely every freaking person that anyone anywhere can find is totally against it. I talked to one state official tonight, one police chief, and the new sheriff and not a SINGLE person even knew this was coming and NONE of the people that do this for a living think it’s a good idea.

So why would he do it?

Because he’s a vindictive little ….. person…. that just got fired and this is his way of screwing with the county before he gets his ass kicked out the door.

What is the effect of de-annexing the prison and why?

Maybe you don’t care about Stanly County history, but its relevant here, so please indulge me while I give a brief and broad-stroked history lesson. About a decade ago we had a complex in Badin known as Alcoa. It provided a significant chunk of revenue in the form of taxes to the surrounding little township. It started to have problems and the writing was on the wall. Alcoa was going away. When it went away, the tax revenue the little town depended on would go away with it, severely impacting the community that had grown around it in the years since it was first started. The town of Badin met with the Stanly County commissioners at that time and had a pretty decent idea. Badin needs the revenue from Alcoa but Alcoa is going away. We cant’ change that. How about we let Badin annex (or take into itself) the prison and it’s property? Since we get tax revenue based on the number of people in our towns (a process known as per-capita taxation) we will increase our town size by X people if we include the inmates in that prison.  We’ll use the Badin police force to enforce law there, handle arrests, and provide the things law enforcement needs to do and thereby release the Stanly County sheriff’s department from that obligation. That’s the nuts and bolts of it. Badin liked the idea and took it to the county commissioners and mayor at the time. They all agreed it was a decent idea as well. From there it went to the state and they wrote up the bill, got it approved, and everyone has been happy ever since. For the last decade or so, things have been smooth. Badin is happy. The Stanly County Sheriff’s dept (at least the new Sheriff anyway) is happy with it, the county is happy with it, and no one wants it to change… except Justin Burr.

You might be wondering what would happen if the prison is de-annexed. So was I. I’ve spent the last five hours on the phone with everyone from the county manager to police chiefs, to the new Sheriff, and the board of commissioners to find out the nuts and bolts of it. So let’s break down the effect of this change, ok?

Badin currently realizes somewhere between 120,000 to 175,000 per year from the prison population. The figure isn’t exact because it’s 11 PM and that’s the best answer I could get tonight, but it’s somewhere within that spectrum. For the purposes of this conversation and so we can do some third-grade math, we’re going to go with the 120,000 per year figure, ok?

Where does that money come from? How is that figure determined?

Badin gets money just like all the other municipalities do, based on per-capita figures. The prison includes at this moment around 850 people. That $120,000 figure is based on that 850 inmates. To put it into perspective, Badin’s population is around 1,976 so when you add the other 850 from the prison, we’re talking about roughly taking away the tax base from 1/3 of the community. It’s like one third of your entire town got up and moved out overnight and you lose all the tax income from them. And by the way, no one told you they were going to do it, or even talked to anyone else about it. Some little dictator just decided to make it happen.

Where would the money go?

That’s another very important question. I’m so glad you asked! The 120K would get distributed basically as follows.

• 45,000 would go to Stanly County
• Of that 45,000, roughly 15,000 would be diverted straight away to the school system. The other 30,000 would be added to the county budget to be spent as we commissioners see fit.
• The remaining 75,000 would be distributed to the remaining municipalities in the county based on their percentage of the population.  To use really basic math, if township A had 10% of the county’s population they would receive around $7,000 a year in additional tax revenue.

Make sense? It’s pretty easy to follow. Keep in mind that I just told you that Stanly County would only realize about $30,000 of that because that’s important for what happens next.

Let’s assume Badin doesn’t choose to immediately inflate it’s tax rate 6% to cover the overnight damage Justin did to the county – because that would fly SO well with the residents of Badin, right? That money is basically going to come right out of the pocket of the Badin Police dept. It would basically shut down. The prison now becomes the responsibility of the Stanly County Sheriff’s department to handle. And before you incorrectly assume that the prison’s correctional officers could simply handle the job, let me assure you they can’t. They are prison guards. They’re amazing people that get paid to do a job I’d never ever want to do, but they aren’t police. They don’t have arrest powers. They don’t have the resources to launch investigations, etc. Right now, on average, Badin has between 3-5 felony investigations a week at that prison. Guess what? Now the overworked Stanly County Criminal Investigations Division has to handle that as well. They’re understaffed and overworked already, so that’s not going to go well.

Stanly County sheriff’s department would also need to hire a minimum of four new deputies to fill the role Badin already did locally AND they’d have a longer response time. Let’s think about that for a minute. When shit goes down at a prison that requires additional police presence, do you really want them to be 10 to 20 minutes further away then they are right now? No, you don’t.

So Sheriff Crisco is going to need to hire four deputies to fill this new responsibility. That would necessitate at least two new police cruisers. Anyone know what those cost? I don’t, but I feel like the answer is over $100,000 each for modern police interceptors. (Actually I got that figure from a google search on the cost of police cars)

What’s a deputy make? I don’t know the exact figure, but let’s assume around $32,000 a year. If you’re an employer (and I am) then you know you have to tack another 25% onto that salary for 941 taxes, medicaid, and other tax co-pays, plus around $550 a month for insurance per person. Let’s do all that math:

• Four officers at $32,000 a year = $128,000 per year for raw salary.
• Other federal and state taxes at 25% of that = $32,000 more.
• Insurance at $550/month x four people = $26,400 more per year.
• Total cost of four officers (and if anything I’m under, not over on my math here) = $186,000 per year even if we’re only paying them crap salaries and that only assumes 2 officers to cover Badin and the prison and that’s assuming those four guys work 365 a year doing 12-hour alternating shifts.

But remember, even if the county gave 100% of the newly realized $30,000 a year straight to the Sheriff’s office- something they’d never be able to do anyway with the current local politics – we (meaning YOU) would still need to figure out where we’re going to rob the other $156K per year from.

So follow that math all the way out. We take 120K a year from Badin to redistribute 15K a year to schools at an additional cost of another 156K a year we have to take from other programs across the county.

Seem like a good idea? No farking way.

Did ANY single human being related to government ask him to do this on their behalf? No!

Stanfield’s De-Annexing

Let’s look at Stanfield. Some of you know, and some of you probably don’t, that the county recently purchased 76 acres from Stanfield for an industrial park. It’s called Riverstone Industrial Complex or something similar. That property was zoned half residential and half industrial. We (the county) really wanted a lot of it to be re-zoned for the new industrial plans we have there, but that wasn’t part of the deal at the time. We COULD have forced the issue at the time of sale and probably made it happen, but we didn’t. That’s fine. Justin Burr just decided today to say “f*^k it. I wanna take this from Stanfield.” There’s a lot of other property I’ve been told that’s tied up in this deal, but I’m waiting on someone to ungarble this mess of legislation to be able to see what it is. Why? Because he decided to reference all the property in his bill regarding Stanfield via their Property Identification Number.  Unless you have a certain level of authorized access to the system, you can’t simply look up the property on a GIS map based solely on the PIN number. He could have simply listed the property in plain text like he did Badic, but instead I have to wait until someone at the tax-assessor’s office or some other reputable agency releases the exact information so I can see the entirety of the property affected, preferrably on a map.

The 33 parcels he’s selected for de-annexing also include some homes if I’ve been told correctly as well as two businesses. The land owned by the county from the industrial complex purchase doesn’t pay tax to Stanfield anyway. No county property pays property tax. Why would they bother writing a check from themselves to themselves? It makes sense. However, the estimated loss to Stanfield from those homes and businesses varies in my reporting but seems to be between 60,000 to 100,000 a year in taxes. Just like he robbed Badin of OVER $100,000, he also robbed Stanfield of their tax income by doing this.

Did ANY single human being related to government ask him to do this on their behalf? No!   Actually, YES!

UPDATE TO STANFIELD

I’ve received quite a few calls and texts today about Stanfield, and I appreciate them. Everyone involved disagreed with my description of the process, but every single one of them was respectful, which I appreciate. In the end, we had some good conversations. I’m putting this here in the middle because it’s relevant to this particular section only. Here is what I take away from those conversations:

Did anyone in Stanfield request this of Justin Burr?  Yes. I’m going to use the number I was given and say around 15 people were involved in requesting Justin Burr de-annex them from Stanfield. I don’t know all the names and I’m not going to assume who they are. I KNOW who two of them are, but the others are a mystery to me.

The short version is – Stanfield annexed some homes years back. I don’t know how many years back, but years ago for some reason unknown to me, Stanfield annexed a chunk of land that happened to contain some homes. According to the people I have hear from, none of them asked for that annexation back then and tried to refuse it but weren’t given the option. So, those people did what they believed was the right thing – they went to the legislator to ask to be de-annexed. Stanfield wants to change how some of them have to maintain their property. That much I know to be fact. Stanfield wants to maintain a certain level of beautification and they would lose control of that if the properties we de-annexed.

Now – semantics is semantics, but certain things are important to know, so let me be clear. Justin Burr is the legislator. He’s the only one that CAN de-annex those properties unless the town council were to choose to do it themselves voluntarily. The people involved (according to the small sampling I heard from) felt that simply going to the Stanfield Town Council and asking to be de-annexed would be shot down without even a serious discussion.

Were they right? I have no idea.  Their communications seemed to clearly say they “knew” it would be pointless.

Did they go to the County Commissioners to ask for their help? No. Why? I don’t know, but there isn’t anything the commissioners could do about it anyway. That’s not a function of our commissioners so we couldn’t legislate anything either way.

So did the people in Stanfield do anything wrong? Not in my personal opinion. Do I disagree with it? Maybe I do, but that’s really just personal bias talking if I’m honest about it. From a procedural standpoint, they were within their rights to do what they did in requesting Justin Burr de-annex their homes.

Now we get to the crux of my issue regarding Stanfield (and really probably Red Cross as well.)

Did Justin Burr do anything wrong? Yes. He absolutely did.

First – let’s quash the first argument that’s going to come up. Someone is going to say “there was only a week left in the legislative session and we HAD to do it right now.” Ok, that’s bullshit. It could have been done a month ago. It could have been done 8 months ago. It could have been done ANY time. If I’d been in Burr’s shoes, I think maybe my answer would have been something along the lines of “Great idea. Let’s talk about it, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot bringing this up at the 11th hour so we’ll have to take it up in next year’s assembly.” It could be done anytime and could HAVE been done anytime, so there’s no real reason I know of why it absolutely had to be done in the dark of night at the last minute if it was above board. With everyone already accusing Justin Burr of being an evildoer in the first place, you’d think he’d have frickin’ learned to stop legislating the county without the input from the….. wait for it… county itself!

Anyway, moving on.
Did Justin call the Stanfield Town Council and talk about ideas or suggestions or reasons why this may or may not have been a good idea? Nope. Did he solicit opinions from the county? Nope. Was their a public session held? Nope.

He simply picked up his pen and decided to legislate it himself.

That’s where the shit get too thick for it to smell like anything other than pure bullshit. Justin Burr is a representative, elected to represent our county, but he spends the majority of his time in Raleigh. That’s not some kind of insult. It’s probably just part of the job to be honest. But the point is – he’s not HERE in the thick of the county’s business on a day-to-day level to know what’s going on here.  We also have OTHER elected officials in this county. The town of Stanfield has them. The county has them too. There are at least three or four governing entities I could think would have valuable input into this discussion.

• Stanfield Town Council
• Stanly County Manager
• Stanly County Board of Commissioners
• Stanfield EDC
• Stanly County EDC
• Stanfield Planning and Zoning
• Stanly County Planning and Zoning

All of those departments might be affected by his legislation here, but none of them were solicited for their input. They are the boards that run and live in these areas every day. THEY are the ones that know the reasons why things might not be the way someone wants them to be. Maybe there are reasons the people don’t know about, in which case that needs to be made public. But either way – the elected officials of the town and county are the FIRST place this kind of legislation is supposed to start.

Whether the concerned citizens intended it or not, the moment Justin Burr picked up his pen and completely step over the rights and opinions of the county and town, he knowingly spit in the face of both the town government and county government.

Think about it for a moment. Let’s say 15 people are up in arms about this, and maybe they have a right to be. Did you know about it? Nope. Did I know about it? Nope. No one told us about it, just like no one told the county and town governments about it.

Of the 70,000 people in this county, approximately 15 of them knew the details? So you (and I’m speaking to both Justin and the citizen when I say this part) – you really expected the other 69,984 people to just sit back and say nothing when they found out?

He wasn’t riding in on a white horse saving 15 people.

He was taking a sword and cutting the knees out from under the town and county governments and leaving them with questions to answer when they didn’t even know the f-ing question!

There are literally only a very few ways to interpret that kind of action:

• He doesn’t care what the towns and county want – in which case his ass needs to get fired (too late!)
• He doesn’t think the towns and county are capable of doing their jobs – in which case he’s way too self-important and needs to go!
• He just wanted to show his ass and give the people that ousted him and all his ilk the finger on his way out the door.

There’s no other option where he just did it in good faith and couldn’t possibly have known the consequences of his actions. If that was the case, you’d have seen it on his Facebook page BEFORE he did it. Instead he was trying his damndest last night while I was writing this article to get is passed and out of committee last night before anyone else could stop him. Thankfully they told him no and made him wait until today.

Oh, did I forget to mention this other tidbit? So a few townspeople asked him to de-annex their homes. OK. Who do you think asked him to de-annex the county’s new property they bought? You think Stanfield did it? Nope. You think the county did it? Hell, to the no they didn’t. So while he’s at it, he just decided to literally stick his shiny little nose into the COUNTY’s business for absolutely no reason and de-annex their chunk of land as well.

Helluva thing to wake up this morning and find out that you just got your land de-annexed without anyone talking to either side of the concerned parties. This kind of little emperor-wannabe bullshit completely overshadows anything positive he could even have been trying to claim to have done for the “benefit of the little guy.”

What have we learned?

I certainly hope one lesson gets through people’s heads surrounding this Stanfield issue. Maybe there are crooked politicians out there. I’ve heard that claim all day long. Crooked this and crooked that and backroom dealings and trading favors, etc. If that’s the case – it’s YOUR TOWN.. vote them out. If they can’t be voted out, then it means that unfortunately for you – most of the township agrees with them and chooses to keep them elected because they’re looking out for the town’s best interests as they (the voters) see them.

Either way – whether anyone intended to or not, this didn’t come off as “trying to save the little guy.” I had this discussion via text with a fellow earlier today. He mentioned back door dealings with politicians and people doing things outside of the light of day, etc. I couldn’t help but comment back that it’s EXACTLY what the citizens did when they put together some secret ballot to send to Justin Burr to solicit his help in circumventing local policies and procedures.

This literally WAS an attempt at a backroom deal. The people involved just didn’t see it that way It certainly wasn’t intended that way I don’t believe. I just think it gained momentum before anyone bothered to stop and think “Hey, this is great for 15 of us, but what are the other sixty-plus thousand people going to think about it when they hear we did it in secret?”

And further – of all the people in the world to ask a favor of – to go to the representative that just overwhelmingly got his ass fired in the first place for doing crap like this before and for perpetually trying to do what he thinks is best no matter what the elected officials of these places think… that was a stupid move. No deal with Justin Burr at this point in his political career is good for the party attached to it. The people of Stanly County far and large literally think of his as equivalent to the devil – so just having him champion your cause basically makes the cause itself suspect and makes people wonder what kind of illicit dealings are involved with it.

END OF AUTHORS EDIT #1

Red Cross De-Annexing

This is one that can be viewed two ways, and I admit that I myself thought about it one way first, then did some digging and decided maybe I supported the other side of the argument. So let’s break this one down.

Author’s Note: I’ve put this information together from various sources, but I don’t have a way to vet all of the sources appropriately at this time. So I might wind up editing this section if new information becomes available.

Red Cross is a municipality here in Stanly County that has one particular property owner that wants to put a single-wide trailer on a piece of property she owns. The town said “No, you can’t put a single-wide on that piece of property.” What did the lady do? She went to her duly-elected representative and said “Hey, I wanna put my single-wide on this piece of property I own, but my town says no. Can you make me part of the county so I can get approval for my single-wide?” Justin Burr said “Sure” and took out his little pen and with his tiny little hands wrote a big “F-you” to the town of Red Cross in his newest piece of legislation.

This line-item, on the surface, simply moves the piece of property out of control of the township it resides in, and places it within the rules of the county instead. That in itself seems innocent enough, right? Let’s look at the other side of the coin.

The town of Red Cross has an ordinance (basically a law) that says you can’t put pre-manufactured homes down inside city limits in certain places. What is a pre-manufactured home? Consider it as any home that is on a chassis, has a title (like a car) and arrives on wheels. Make sense? The people that have elected to form together to create Red Cross have a vision for what they want their township to be and that doesn’t conform to it. At first it sounded kind of… asshole-ish to me. I mean who tells someone what they can and can’t put on their own property? Well, it turns out there’s more to it than that. By and large Red Cross wouldn’t care less if you showed up and dropped a 2018 single-wide trailer on a piece of property, but they can’t come out and say that. Modern single-wide homes are made to a certain standard, but that standard is STILL crappy and I can say that. I grew up in one, so I can totally relate to this ordinance! They CAN ban them outright however, and it’s my understanding that they do.

Don’t be confused between a double-wide trailer and a modular home. Modular homes are built in pieces, built to modern building code requirements, adhere to current fire retardant requirements, are built on 16″centers, and are built to commercial standards, and are assembled on-site in an entirely different manner. In short, they’re well built. They also don’t come with a title or arrive on wheels.

Do you know what happens to things that have a title instead of a deed? They immediately start to depreciate. Single-wide and double-wide home never ever ever ever appreciate in value. They only depreciate, just like the car you buy new at the dealership. It’s worth a huge chunk less the moment you drive it off the lot. In fact, on top of not being built to modern safety standards or building codes, most any pre-manufactured home over 10 years old is considered basically junk from a property tax standpoint. They literally have no value. Why would a small community want to approve the possibility for someone to drop a 1968 travel trailer onto a piece of highway-fronting property that contributes ZERO to the tax base of the municipality and at the same time can negatively affect property values for homes that would otherwise someday surround it? Modular homes, regular houses, etc – these things appreciate and depreciate with the times, but you have a pretty solid chance to get back your investment if you choose to sell down the road depending on the housing market that year. Mobile homes…. nope. They’re literally worthless in ten years, even though you may live in them until you replace the roof every other year. (Been there, done that.)

As a home-owner myself today, it totally makes sense. I’ll tell you a short back story. A few years back it came to my attention that the owner of the beautiful pasture land in front of my house was considering selling or leasing that land to a gas station company to build a Citgo on it. I freaked the hell out! I’ve got a brand new $250,000 home and land that could potentially be backed up to a chain-link fence two years down the road with the sounds of car horns and pedestrians 150 feet from my back door. I came home and told my wife about it as soon as I heard and I remembered the conversation that went something like “Oh, hell no! That will DESTROY our property value!” If they’d gone through with it, I’d have put this thing on the market so fast it would make your head spin – in the desperate hope I could sell it to some sucker before they broke ground on the new eyesore that would be butting up to it in two years time. So I admit – I get it. End of Backstory – *YAWN*

So, having all that in mind, I totally get why Red Cross chose to enact this ordinance.

Is there anything wrong with the lady going to her legislator to ask him to change the law for her? No. She’s an individual and she did what she hoped would work.

Is there anything wrong with Justin Burr blatantly telling the town of Red Cross to kiss his ass and violating their town ordinances in the process? In my opinion – absolutely. The town of Red Cross sent out a letter about a month ago in direct opposition to Justin Burr’s re-election campaign. A month later, with only eight days left in office, he basically sent the entire town a  “F-You” in the form of this legislation. Yep, this is the same representative we thankfully ejected from office. Good riddance. It’s just a damned shame he wants to burn every bridge he can on his way out of office.

Did ANY single human being related to government ask him to do this on their behalf? No!

What has been the response and what can you do?

The response from Justin Burr has been zero.
Edit: He did finally make a Facebook post about it later on this evening but I didn’t see it until this article was finished.
Remember all his bragging about his awesome achievements in days past? On this… nothing. He’s not talked about it on Facebook, or the net. He’s not solicited opinions from any of the representatives that have been elected to actually RUN the towns and county he’s screwing with. He simply went out, on his own, and decided to spit in the face of three municipalities as well as the county as a whole on his way out the door.

I’ve not been able to get a sold answer on the current status of this bill in the legislature. I’m not a Raleigh or DC Politician and I make no apologies for that, but I AM working on finding out the answers as to how long we have to fight this. If it HAS already gone through the GOP legislation (and I’m not sure it has) then the only hope is to stop it in the Senate. I’ve also heard that it’s still in committee in the House, which would mean there’s still time to stop it dead there, but again… I’m unsure at this point where it sits.

If it DOES go to the senate, we have Senator Tom McInnis on our side. He’s vowed to vehemently oppose it if it comes up for an up/down vote in the Senate and his weight as our representative for Stanly County should hopefully be enough to kill it. If it DOES get approved in the House, but fails in the Senate I believe it will go to committee. If it goes there, chances it will die because they only have a week left in session as well and they have more important crap to deal with in the limited time remaining in this session. However, my advice is not to wait and hope. Act!

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND DO IT SOON! (and by soon I literally mean as soon as you read this and it’s after 8:00 AM because this could be up for vote as early as June 15th – and that’s today!)

Here are the contact numbers:

State Senator – Tom McInnis – 919-733-5953 

State Rep (running for our next State Sen.) – Carl Ford – 919-733-5881

State Rep – Ken Goodman – 910-997-2712

 

Author’s Note: Some of you already know this about me, but I’ll spill it here again for those that don’t. This is a volatile subject and no one has been able to get a word out of the dirtbag that did it, so I personally am having to fill in the gaps and use supposition and commonsense. If you find any part of this to need further clarification or you can provide clarification (fact, not opinion) then feel free to comment below and I will modify the article as necessary. I’m not above printing a retraction, but I’ve yet to see this little evil midget tyrant do anything for the greater good since he lost the campaign for re-election. He’s proven, in my opinion, to be a horribly sore loser and doesn’t seem to have our county’s best interest at heart.

Have a good day y’all!

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AUTHOR’S EDIT #2: – Thanks

This article has been viewed somewhere over 500 times in the first 12 hours it was online. I got calls from a police chief today, a commissioner, a town mayor, and a few normal citizens thanking me for the article. I was also contacted by some in opposition to my view of the Stanfield issue. I appreciate ALL of them. I learned a lot throughout the process. They learned a few things too – some of them anyway. I had one person in staunch opposition to my view tell me they appreciated the insight and it gave them the ability to see it from the other side and now they understood why people were mad about it – even though it was well-meant on their part.

That’s literally all I can hope for with this website – to use it to bring some of these local issues to light where they can be discussed in exhaustive detail if necessary so people can fully understand both sides of something and can use that information to create a more informed opinion on a subject.

Thanks for all of you that shared the article.

PS: The legislation was shut down HARD today. Its dead and its not going to pass, according to my sources and I went all the way to Raleigh with my phone calls today to verify that.

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AUTHORS EDIT #3:

Edited 6:10PM Eastern on Friday June 15th, 2018:

It seems another update is in order. I heard on Thursday morning the bill was firmly shut out and not going anywhere. Apparently rampant disgust from literally everyone on the planet wasn’t enough to deter the little guy. Gotta give it to him points for determination, right?

Thanks to people contacting literally EVERY SINGLE NC House legislator and EVERY SINGLE NC Senate legislator and one of them even printing hard copies and placing it on the desks of every legislator going into session this morning – Justin somehow managed to come to the same conclusion as everyone else in the entire government and decided that he didn’t have the support to push the bill through, so he pulled it and sent it to caucus before it could be totally shot down in session.

Since then, he has decided to remove the Badin de-annexation portion from the amendment and try to put it back on the agenda for Monday – so he’s still going to try to push the Stanfield and Red Cross issues, but has learned that Badin is too big a fight and so he’s letting that one go. Hooray for Badin, but it still leaves the rest of the county government in a quandary as to why he’s putting his pudgy little hands in the Riverstone industrial complex issue when no one has asked him to.

As I sit and write this I believe the Stanfield Town Council is voting to draft a resolution to send to Raleigh as well asking legislators to vote against it. Justin feels pretty confident he’s got the votes to pull it off with the Badin prison issue removed.

If that does happen, the NC Senate has been pretty much clear on their statement that it’ll never get through them, if they even choose to hear it.

The issue was originally slate for to come up on Monday in the House, but apparently even the legislators are too tired to want to deal with his crap on Monday so they decided to put it on Tuesday’s agenda instead. As of now, the NC house legislation has had a 78-hour work week this week and simply wanted to start off Monday on a better foot without having to deal with his mess. (And yes, I got that quote from Raleigh.)

So, if you’ve been waiting to hear the latest updates – that’s all we know. Raleigh has called it a week and is taking a much deserved weekend off after a long long week. If I find out more, I’ll let you know. As always, please feel free to comment below and share!

Thanks y’all.