A resident who has property outside of the town of Roseboro is going through the steps needed to be annexed into the town.
Boris Melton, along with his wife, Dawn, came to the May 12 town board meeting in hopes Roseboro’s Town Board of Commissions would be willing to annex their property into the town so they could receive water and sewer services for their two property lots.
“They have petitioned for annexation,” Roseboro Mayor Alice Butler explained to the town board. “If you look on your maps, they have two lots that they would like to have annexed, and they understand that there’s water that runs almost to the lot. I’ve talked to Bill Poole (Public Works and Utilities director). He said extending the water should not be a problem at all; the water is easy. Unfortunately, the sewer is not. The sewer runs from North Pine Street, intersects at Myrtle Road and goes to the right. You can see on the map that Tammy Faircloth (deputy Utility and Zoning clerk) marked for you the town limits. So the sewer is a mile away. Bill was saying that since it’s a mile away, sewer is not possible at this time to have them there. But they’re interested in being annexed in and realize they would have water and trash pick up services” but no town sewer.
Melton asked Butler what the cost would be to have the tap on the land they’re trying to have annexed.
“It would $1,100 in town for water, each,” she told Melton. “Then, you will have the expenses for the annexation.”
Town Clerk Janet Dunn also informed Melton that if there were some things that could cause additional cost, depending on what needs to be done to have a tap installed, the price might be more. What the mayor cited was the base fee.
As the discussion went on, Town Attorney Sandy Sanderson informed Melton and his wife that they would need to file an official petition for annexation to start the process.
“You’ll need to have a survey done, if you don’t already have a survey,” Sanderson explained. “I need to see the map and if the survey has the town limits on it, then that’s all we would need. If it’s a survey that does not, you could probably go back to whoever did the survey, pay a little bit of money, and they could add the town limits on it. This is going to be a contiguous annexation to show that your land abuts (touches) the town limits already.”
Sanderson doubled down on the fact that it is not an official petition.
“Until he’s got a survey and does that, because on the official petition, we have to know the metes and bounds of what we’re annexing in,” he said. “So without a survey, we’re not even getting to that point. Then, we also, from my perspective, have to do a title search. We have to make sure that they’re the true and lawful owners and only owners, because all the owners have to sign. There’s a whole bunch of steps that we have to get through. This is the first step.”
Since he understands that sewer through the town isn’t possible at this time for the lots, he asked to see if they had to wait for the annexation to be done (if approved) to get septic tanks down. Mayor Butler clarified that the septic would come from the county.
Commissioner Ray Clark Fisher then advised Melton.
“To be honest with you, I would want to do that first,” he told Melton about starting with the septic tank process. “Because if they’re not going to let you put septic tanks down there, those lots ain’t worth it. I’d try to make sure the county would let me put septic tanks there first, then I would go with this to get the water on. That’s what I would do.”
Following the meeting, in an interview, Melton explained that if the lots were approved for annexation and the county allows for a septic tank to be placed on the property, they would seek to get a tap to put on for water.