AUTRYVILLE — Relinquishing lawn maintenance along Highway 24 to the North Carolina Department of Transportation indefinitely, an update on the redirection of 75 percent of the stormwater runoff that gathers in the town, and a $50,000 grant awarded to Autryville for the 2026-27 fiscal year were discussed during the town’s Board of Commissioners meeting earlier this week.
The board has been debating since last month’s meeting whether responsibility for lawn maintenance along Highway 24 should continue to fall upon the town, or if the commissioners will choose to sign a contract which would hand the responsibility over to the state.
Town Commissioner Tommy Honeycutt brought up at last month’s meeting that it needed to be looked into about whether or not an expiration date exists for the contract.
Honeycutt insisted this past Tuesday that the Board of Commissioners’ attorney should review the contract.
“It won’t take them five or 10 minutes to read it over and between the lines to tell us yea or nay, ” Honeycutt justified.
“To me, you don’t ever need to have a contract that doesn’t have a term limit on it. … This really could go on forever,” noted Mayor Grayson Spell.
Spell asked the board if members wished to allow more time for the attorney to review the contract. Mayor Pro Tempore Debra Baxley answered yes, and Spell agreed to set aside the contract again for now.
Stormwater runoff
improvements
Seventy-five percent of the stormwater runoff inside the city limits of Autryville goes to one place.
“All of that runoff ran across a creek that’s on private property,” Spell explained, noting that was before a stormwater improvement project began with the main intent to divert the runoff off of the personal property and onto the town’s property and all the way down to the river.
“It’s going really well,” Spell remarked in an update on the project Tuesday evening.
The mayor recalled that the project began around three or four years ago, and noted that the project is now almost complete.
Public Works has a “little punch list” of final tasks, including pulling up Road Closed signs, and after that, “they should be done,” he surmised.
New $50,000 grant
plus plans for a park
Spell revealed to the board at the end of the meeting Tuesday night that $50,000 has been provided to the Town of Autryville through a direct grant by the North Carolina General Assembly for the 2026-27 fiscal year.
Spell gave credit to state Rep.William D. Brisson, Brisson’s legislative assistant, Caroline Stirling, and state Sen. Brent Jackson for helping make the grant possible.
The grant is usable for any public purpose. Spell spoke to the board about how he could envision the grant going towards creating a park behind Autryville Town Hall.
“What I’ve always envisioned is having a really nice, big playground right back here (behind the town hall building), and then getting my dad — who owns the land on the (South) river – to donate two or three acres back…where we can have a really nice walking trail all the way back…all the way down to the river and back up.”
Spell said his goal is “keeping it simple. … Nothing fancy; just walking around in a circle.”
He added that thoughts for the park also include erecting a playground set in the big field behind town hall.
Spell implored the board to think about the idea of the park outside of the meeting, and clarified further that he was not asking for any decisions regarding the $50,000 grant that evening.
“We’ll take our time with this, and in the next couple of months, we’ll reach out to some contractors and get them to give us proposals and see what we can get the most bang for our buck with.”