Rolesville Mayor Frank Eagles recently sent a letter to the Wake Forest Town Board saying the Town of Rolesville wanted to include five lots along Jones Dairy Road, one of them the site of Jones Dairy Elementary School, inside the town’s urban service area. The reasons Eagles gave were to provide better town services and to allow for more town identification with the school, which draws from both Rolesville and Wake Forest areas. It is used as the voting location for one Rolesville area precinct.
Tuesday night the Wake Forest board almost forgot about the letter – it was not on the agenda for the work session – and would have adjourned except that Commissioner Greg Harrington mentioned it because he had spoken with Eagles recently. Harrington said it seemed to him that Rolesville wants to annex the school. “When I talked with him I didn’t have a problem with that.”
Wake County is carved up into towns with their extra-territorial jurisdictions immediately outside the town limits and urban service area farther out where the towns are expected to extend services in the future. Rolesville’s and Wake Forest’s urban service areas are contiguous (touching) all along the interface between the towns.
Planning Director Chip Russell immediately gave Harrington reasons why the request was a problem, citing several instances where Rolesville’s board has been unwilling to agree to a request from Wake Forest. “We’ve been asking them to move boundaries” and Rolesville has refused. One instance is a small area in Heritage where 10 lots in part of the subdivision are in Rolesville but the rest of it is in Wake Forest. “These guys aren’t giving us any more urban service area in Wake County.”
Russell also reminded the board that to build Jones Dairy Elementary the county school system had to turn to Wake Forest for the water. Wake Forest was already providing water but not sewer to the Jones Dairy subdivision. He also noted that it is a county school and all Wake County schools “operate the same regardless of which town it’s in.” The letter had indicated Rolesville wanted programs or other activities at the school.
“What would it hurt to let them have that property?” Harrington asked, and Russell said, “Why should we?” He argued for keeping the boundaries between the towns “rational,” in this case along Jones Dairy Road.
“I’m not inclined to do it,” Mayor Vivian Jones said and was echoed by Commissioners Anne Reeve, Jim Thompson and others. Jones will write a letter to Eagles saying the town is not interested in the change.
Some highly anticipated reports were not on this week’s agenda, and Finance Director Aileen Staples said the electric rate study and the fire impact fee study are not complete but should be ready for the commissioners’ consideration in May.
Senior Planner Michelle Michael presented information about the Historic Preservation Commission, which oversees the town’s historic district along North Main Street and the six local historic properties around town. Its major fundraiser is the Historic Home Christmas tour held every other year, and this year it will be on Saturday, Dec. 3, the weekend after Thanksgiving, from 1 to 7 p.m. The 2014 tour was held in pouring rain, she reminded the commissioners, but 1,800 tickets were sold.
The HPC’s major project is the rehabilitation and eventual renovation of the Ailey Young House, built about 1875 as housing for African-American working families on the east side of the railroad tracks by Wake Forest College Professor William Gaston.
The house, which was rediscovered in 2008 during a survey funded by the town, may be the oldest African-American building in town, as the town’s website says. “It is most certainly a rare example of Reconstruction Era post-Civil War housing for the African American working class. According to local restoration carpenter, Patrick Schell, ‘There’s just nothing like this left. The fancier houses tend to survive, but something like this, the housing for regular folks, especially African-Americans, is extremely rare!’”
The house is also significant because the Ailey Young family – she bought the house – became notable through Ailey’s oldest son, Allen Young, and later through Allen’s daughter, Ailey Mae Young.
Allen Young founded, with others, the Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School and the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, and operated the school from 1905 until his death in 1957. He was the educator for black children and youth for decades. His daughter Ailey Mae Young was a teacher who became the first black and second woman town commissioner.
The HPC has a grant plus local funds to begin the rehabilitation which includes work on the floor and walls on the first floor, and work will be done this year.
