State budget housing provision angers Dare municipal officials

By Mark Jurkowitz | Outer Banks Voice on September 20, 2023

Measure would restrict towns’ authority to regulate housing projects

Manteo Town Manager Melissa Dickerson discusses the budget provision at the Sept. 20 meeting. (Credit Mark Jurkowitz/OBV)

Update: Dare County Manager Bobby Outten tells the Voice that the county had no knowledge of, nor any role in the insertion of the Dare County housing provision in the budget.

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Meeting on the evening of Sept. 20, the Manteo Board of Commissioners approved a resolution opposing a provision in the pending state budget that would curtail Dare County municipalities’ authority to regulate affordable housing developments funded by $35 million the state gave the county for that purpose.

The decision by the Manteo Commissioners came only two weeks after they rejected the county’s request to hook up the town wastewater treatment system to a 46-unit housing project proposed by developer Woda Cooper. And for some on the Manteo Board, the section in the budget was seen an effort to override that local decision.

“I think it’s politics at its saddest,” declared Manteo Commissioner Tod Clissold of the budget provision, which only applied to Dare County. Referring to the county’s failure to get the town’s permission for the wastewater hookup, he added that, “To not get their way and figure out a way to do it [anyway], it basically takes the power away from the board.”

With the state budget expected to be voted on as early as this week, the housing item clearly surprised local officials.

“Everyone I’ve engaged with on this matter was caught off guard,” said Manteo Town Manger Melissa Dickerson during the meeting. It was Dickerson who alerted people to the Dare County affordable housing item via a Sept. 19 email identifying that provision in the “latest version of the 2023 Appropriations Act.”

At the Sept. 20 meeting, Commissioner Sherry Wickstrom added that the budget item “takes people’s voices away. I don’t believe it’s legal.” And while the board went into closed session to discuss options with Town Attorney Ben Gallop, he did say in open meeting that there are “potentially some areas for challenging the adoption of the [budget] provision.”

The Manteo resolution, addressed to state legislative leadership, members of Dare County’s statehouse delegation and Dare County Commissioner Chaiman Bob Woodard, declared that the “Enactment of Sec. 24.8 (a) & (b) by the North Carolina General Assembly will disrupt the general health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the Town by allowing housing units to be built outside the jurisdiction of the Town that will consume the utilities designated for the health, safety and welfare of the Citizen’s of the Town.”

Manteo’s opposition may be an opening salvo in what could become a major confrontation between Dare County’s local municipalities, the state legislature, and perhaps Dare County officials. On Sept. 20, Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon weighed in, writing a letter to state legislators as well as Dare Chairman Woodard. Other Dare County towns are also reportedly preparing their own resolutions and statements reacting to the budget provision.

“At this point, it is unknown how and why this provision was written into the State budget,” Cahoon stated in his letter. But its impact is clear. The State will strip our towns of their ability to govern their own fates and their ability to protect the communities…We urgently ask that the legislature strike the section in its entirety.”

Early in 2023, the Nags Head Board of Commissioners, responding to significant community opposition, opted to rezone an area that would have potentially housed a 54-unit Woda Cooper housing development, effectively ending the project.

Cahoon attended the Sept. 20 Manteo Commissioners meeting, after afterward he told the Voice that, “I’m sure there’s going to be a legal challenge” to the state budget provision. “There has to be.”

In its quest to build needed workforce or essential housing, Dare County has partnered with two entities. One of them is Woda Cooper, which now has a pot of $12 million in county money—the last $1.5 million of which was approved a special Sept. 19 Dare Commissioners meeting to help the company build a 57-unit housing development on an unspecified site.

The $35 million pot of affordable housing money that came from the state was earmarked for the newly created Coastal Affordable Housing LLC, which includes among others, Jordan Hennessy, a well-known figure in local political circles and a one-time aide to former State Senator Bill Cook.

Affordable Coastal Housing also suffered a setback in its efforts when a plan to rezone the 44-acre Baum Tract to pave the way for its multifamily housing development was defeated last year by the Kill Devil Hills Commissioners.

During the Sept. 20 Manteo Board meeting, Commissioner Wickstrom expressed some of her frustration with county officials, stating that “We have a number of good partnerships with the county. This is why this feels a little underhanded, to say the least.”

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