Jones Dairy taking its water fight to Raleigh’s council

After what was at times a raucous meeting Wednesday evening, Jan. 24, the homeowners in the Jones Dairy Farms subdivision plan to take their case to the Raleigh City Council on Tuesday, Feb. 6.

“We have 19 petitioners scheduled to exercise their right to speak to council on the water war issues,” Angela Humphries, one of the organizers, said. “We will have spokes-people to present information and we also have 100+ signatures from JDF residents, asking council for change with the City of Raleigh Public Utilities Department.”

She added, “We feel we helped form part of the water utility, and subsequently the town, and feel like we are being ignored by our elected officials. We will continue to press on.”

She also said state Rep. Chris Malone, who was at Wednesday’s meeting, and a representative from Asheville were “planning on communicating about what’s been in the news and legislature in Asheville, NC. The county [Wake} remains inactive on helping us, even though we are their constituents.”

A statement that was given to the people at Wednesday’s meeting said the goal is for the owners of homes in the Jones Dairy Farms and Willow Deer subdivisions on Jones Dairy Road to be charged in-town rates by Raleigh Public Utilities. “Our goal is fair and equitable water and sewer rates,” the statement also said.

The water and sewer bills for November-December for some homeowners were doubled since the previous bills. The Raleigh public utilities department said on the phone and in a letter hand delivered to the homes that people had been incorrectly charged for several years and that they would have to pay out-of-town rates in the future.

At issue is what those homeowners and the people who owned the houses in the two subdivisions in earlier years paid for water and sewer. The organizers say they should be paying in-town rates because they were charged in-town rates when Wake Forest owned the water and sewer system. The 1986 agreement between the Town of Wake Forest and Roy Ed Jones and Robert Jones, the brothers who converted their farm into subdivisions, said the homeowners in the two subdivisions would pay out-of-town rates.

The meeting Wednesday night revealed the owners are paying in-town, out-of-town and who knows what rates.

Raleigh public utilities staff had organized the meeting in the ground floor of the Wake Forest Town Hall, asked people to sign in with their street and e-mail addresses and gave everyone a hefty package that included four pages of frequently asked questions and answers; the 1986 agreement between the Jones brothers; the water and sewer merger agreement between Wake Forest and Raleigh and the amendment to the agreement; articles from the Wake Forest Gazette from 2004 about Robert Jones’s request for the town to annex his subdivisions and the water-sewer merger discussions; utility rates for Wake Forest customers since 2005 when merger went into effect; and sample average bills from 2005 to 2015 for inside and outside rates.

Rather than the usual arrangement with an audience and officials answering questions one at a time, Raleigh had placed four, later five, tables in the space with people taking their places at a table at random and rarely moving.

The table where Raleigh Public Utilities Director Robert Massengill was answering and listening had 10 to 12 people. Voices were continuously raised; one woman shot to her feet at least twice to yell that “it’s not fair.” At the very end, as people were beginning to filter out of the room, a man stood up from that table and yelled, “They’re not going to do a damned thing for you.”

The other tables were much quieter and the table where the Gazette editor sat was without rancor. The facilitator was Ed Buchan, the department’s environmental coordinator, who spoke quietly, said at least once, “You guys bring up reasonable arguments,” let other have their full say, and ended by handing out his cards and the department’s goodie bags.

The group at Buchan’s table reached a consensus within an hour and a half that the best recourse for the homeowners was to be annexed by Wake Forest. Bill, last name unknown, said that they would have to pay property taxes but those in Wake Forest include garbage and recycling pickup, yard waste pickup, oversized (refrigerators, couches) article pickup, street maintenance, police protection instead of the sheriff’s department, and fire protection by the Wake Forest Fire Department.

The rates those eight people at Buchan’s table were paying were all over the map. Kristen Krieger, a single mother raising two teen-aged boys on a tight budget, said she is paying $65 a month. If that is doubled to the out-of-town rate, “It means a kid not playing baseball.” Later it turned out that Krieger’s neighbor has a $2.50 rate for the first tier in the pricing and Krieger is paying $2.40. Jenny said her bill is about $50 and another woman said she pays $100 for what seems to be the same amount of water.

Buchan said the rates in the different accounts were “miscoded” when the city took over billing the Wake Forest customers in 2014. The merger agreement was that Wake Forest customers would continue to pay the town’s rate at the time of merger with the difference between those rates and the much lower (at the time) Raleigh rates would go toward paying off the $19 million merger debt because of the upgrades needed in the town systems.

In 2014 the debt was paid and all Wake Forest customers were switched to the Raleigh rates, which had been increased and restructured during the nine years since 2005.

The 1986 agreement says Jones Dairy Farm and Willow Deer will pay out-of-town rates

Although Wake Forest had agreed with the Jones brothers in 1986 that the town would annex the subdivisions when it became possible, the restrictive covenants placed in the original homeowners’ deeds had been left out of many subsequent deeds as the homes were sold again and again. That covenant said the original homeowners and their successors would agree to annexation.

No annexation, people said, because of that lack, but the town-Jones brothers agreement was in Raleigh’s package and it clearly said it was not an obstacle.

Item 2 says: “A restrictive covenant shall be placed by OWNER in each and every deed transferring any part of the property to third parties that such third parties, their successors and assigns, agree to annexation of their property into the Town of Wake Forest as such time as the TOWN, in its sole discretion, decides to annex such property. Further, a restrictive covenant to this effect will be placed on record in the Wake County Register of Deeds Office prior to the transfer of any part of the property to third parties and prior to any water allocations to said property. A copy of the recorded instrument shall be delivered to the TOWN as evidence of compliance with this paragraph of the Agreement.”

However, the Town of Wake Forest has said an annexation request would need to include agreement of all the subdivision’s homeowners.

One of the women at Buchan’s table, a realtor, said she would investigate to make sure the restrictive covenants were in that office.

Everyone at the table was also clear that the Jones brothers had paid all the applicable water and sewer fees for all the property and Robert Jones, who had bought out his brother, helped pay for the oversized sewer line – 18 inches instead of 10 – that now serves some of Heritage and all of Jones Dairy Farm, Willow Deer, Bowling Green, Austin Creek subdivisions with enough capacity to serve other developments farther east toward Averette Road.