Electric plans cause financial crises

100 years of history

By Carol W. Pelosi

Last week we learned how the Town of Wake Forest sprang full-grown from the old Town of Wake Forest College in 1909 so the town could sell bonds to build an electric plant. The town’s voters, all white males who paid their poll taxes, voted overwhelmingly on April 12, 1909, for the $15,000 bond issue. B. Parker Rucker of Charlotte was hired to build the plant.

That plant is still standing on East Elm Avenue and is now owned by the Bright Funeral Home. When they remodeled the building, the Bright family kept all the essential architectural details of the building, including the faded lettering: “WATER LIGHTS.”

Mayor Sol J. Allen and the commissioners went ahead and advertised $12,000 of the bonds for 30 years at 6 percent. There was no mention of why the full amount was not advertised or sold.

Moses Fort, who had a planing mill across the tracks from the future electric plant, also wanted a railroad spur to his business, so the town and Fort cooperated to build the spur.

Still in April, the board voted to buy a Westinghouse generator, the boiler and engine to power it and other equipment for the plant at a little over $5,000.

The minutes show there was another election in May of that year, just two months after three new commissioners were sworn in. It appears the earlier Town of Wake Forest College consisted of only a mayor and three commissioners, but that the new charter called for five commissioners.

Anyway, in May of 1909, the town’s voters elected J.C. Caddell as mayor and W.B. Dunn Jr. as a commissioner. The other four commissioners were Charles E. Brewer, C.E. Gill, F.W. Dickson and Z.V. Peed.

That new board had to set the tax rate for 1909 and 1910 and did so at 20 cents for each $100 value of property. The poll tax was set at 60 cents and a “like amount for interest on the bonds and sinking funds for same.”

Things rocked along until June, when the Chicago firm handling the sale of the bonds said additional money was needed for two interest payments. Brewer, who was the board secretary, wrote that the board voted to send letters to the manufacturing firms, holding up delivery of the boiler, generator and engine for the time being.

In their need for immediate cash, the town board turned to the college, specifically toward the so-called Denmark Loan Fund, rightly called the Wake Forest College Students’ Aid Fund. In 1930, Royall Cotton Mill’s directors turned to the loan fund when they were trying to shore up the debt-ridden mill and borrowed $10,000, secured by a first mortgage on the mill’s town property that had not been mortgaged earlier.

In 1909, the town commissioners were much more modest and only borrowed $500, although they would return in the future when there were other cash shortages.

Apparently the $500 was not enough. There was a hastily called meeting on July 28 in which the board made several decisions that would not be possible today.

First, they found the money for the two interest payments in the tax revenue raised from the 1908 levy.

Although they had just set the tax rate for 1909 and 1910 at 20 cents, they doubled that to 40 cents for 1910 to raise an additional $1,200. It was called a “direct, especial annual tax” and it was cut back in 1911 to 30 cents to bring in $600.

You realize we are still in 1909 in the action but the board was fast-forwarding its revenue anticipation which they were able to realize in some fashion because the building went ahead. There were apparently still some shortfalls because in 1910 Mrs. J.H. Gorrell had to loan the town $1,000 to finish installing the equipment.

The board purchased the land for the new plant from Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Brewer, the commissioner and his wife, for $750. They sent out letters saying to send the equipment. They decided the building should also include an office for the mayor and a one-room jail. They even went ahead and hired W.I. Lay as the plant’s engineer.

They will turn on the lights next week.

###

Looking back 21 years

In the July 9, 2003 edition of The Wake Forest Gazette, the lead story was the local filing for three town board seats in November, and Stephen Barrington, the town’s first economic developer was at the door of town hall at 7:55. Town Clerk Joyce Wilson made him wait five minutes before she let him in.

Current Commissioners Velma Boyd and David Camacho had said they would file, and Commissioner Thomas Walters, appointed after Commissioner Kim Marshall resigned and went to a new job in Florida, said he was considering running.

A group of North Main Street neighbors were appealing the Wake Forest Historic Preservation Commission’s April 9 decision to grant a certificate of appropriateness to allow the Wake Forest College Birthplace Museum to build a 10,000-square-foot addition behind the Dr. Calvin Jones House.

The appeal will go to the Wake Forest Board of Adjustment, and one of the questions will be the tape recording of an informal meeting the previous Tuesday with the historic commission and town attorney Roger Knight. There is a significant gap in the tape, Planner Agnew Wanman agreed, and at one point on the tape former Mayor George Mackie can be heard at a meeting several years before. The informal meeting included several neighbors.

Developer Andy Ammons and Chuck Flink, who developed the town’s open space and greenway plans, were talking to the planning board about Ammons’ vision of a conservation subdivision. There would be smaller lot sizes, longer cul-de-sac streets, no curbs but swales and walking trails in place of sidewalks.

The conservation model would have 183 acres of open space with the 297 homes built on 237 acres. Stream buffers would be 150 to 300 feet wide.

In another zoning matter, a long-delayed request by John R. Bennett III to rezone the five acres where Crenshaw Hall stands to neighborhood business was delayed again by the Wake Forest Planning Board. The reason was the new neighboring homes, despite two public hearings in 1999. Among other things the planning board had considered conditions to preserve the historic home if it should fall into disrepair. Bennett is a Crenshaw descendant.

The planning board looked at the plans for the Thornrose subdivision and the new branch of the State Employees Credit Union, which is in the Horse Creek/Falls Lake watershed. Planner Steve Neuschafer said the special intensity allocation here to allow for more impervious surface in the Falls Lake watershed essentially eats up the town’s allocation. Less than half an acre remains.

The building was sited, Neuschafer said, to preserve the tract’s large specimen trees including oaks, a Norway spruce and a magnolia. Some of the rainwater runoff will be diverted to a vegetated swale, which will allow the runoff detention pond to be smaller.

###