Whether or not to incorporate the Greater Seven Lakes area has become an increasingly urgent question following the legal conclusion to the forced annexation of Pinewild and the recently signed annexation agreement between the Villages of Foxfire and Pinehurst.
    During the recent Seven Lakes Landowners Association Candidates’ Night Forum, a question about incorporation opened the  floodgates for a torrent of misinformed statements based on the wrongheaded notion that incorporation would require removing the gates from private communities in the area.
    That’s just not the case. Moore County is already home to a number of private, gated communities that lie within incorporated municipalities, including Country Club of North Carolina, Fairwoods on Seven, National Golf Club, and, very soon, Pinewild Country Club of Pinehurst, among others.
    Incorporated towns and villages receive various streams of tax revenue from the state. Such public revenues generally cannot be used for expenditures on private holdings — which would include all roads, parks, dams, and other common areas within a gated community.
    Thus, if the citizens of the Greater Seven Lakes area did opt to incorporate, each gated community would have to make an individual decision whether to retain or remove their gates.
    Keeping the gates in place is a viable option, but it would mean that homeowners would pay both city taxes, for amenities and services within the corporate limits, and landowners dues, to fund the internal amenities of their association, including pools, lakes and dams, and roads.
    An incorporated municipality is typically governed by a mayor and town council and may employ a municipal police department that enforces state law — including speeding violations — on public and some private roads; however, only private security officers or community staff could enforce association-based rules and regulations.
    For more information, The Times recommends a review of the UNC-School of Government publication “Incorporation of a North Carolina Town” which states, in part, “Citizens who are considering incorporation for their community must weigh the advantages and disadvantages as they apply to the particular circumstances of that community. How serious is the need for new services? How much will those services cost? Are there alternative ways of getting those services? Will zoning be a protection against bad choices by neighbors or an undesirable restriction on property rights? How likely is annexation by a nearby city in the future?”

     Click here for a copy of the UNC School of Government's primer on incorporation.