People live near one another for many reasons: to conduct business, to live near their work, and to enjoy the company of others, for example. There are many advantages to living in cities and towns, but living there also creates public problems—problems that affect the community at large.

One such problem is water supply. When houses are close together, individual wells for each house are likely to become contaminated unless there is a public sewer system or other provision for safe disposal of wastes. Moreover, private wells may not provide enough water for fighting fires. Fire threatens an entire community when houses are close enough so that fire can easily spread from one house to others. Similarly, noise becomes a public problem when people live close enough together to be bothered by the sounds others make.

Photo by the Cape Fear Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau

These houses in Wilmington were built when Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city. Like most houses in cities and towns, they were built close together.

Municipal governments have been established so that the people living in each place can deal with problems they face as a community. In North Carolina, municipal governments are called cities, towns, or (in a few cases) villages. In this state, these terms carry no special legal meaning. All three terms refer to a municipality created by the state and authorized to make decisions for a community and to carry out the policies and programs that have been approved. (In common usage, "towns" are often thought of as smaller than "cities," but that is not always true. The Town of Cary, for example, is now the seventh largest municipality in North Carolina. It had more than 94,000 residents in 2000. The city of North Topsail Beach had only 843 residents that same year.) North Carolina law establishes the powers and responsibilities for each municipality.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TOWNS AND CITIES IN NORTH CAROLINA

European settlers established the first municipal governments in North Carolina in the early 1700s. Although they encountered Native American villages and sometimes built their own towns on the same sites, the Europeans established municipal governments based on English models. Each town was an independent municipality authorized under English, and later North Carolina, law.

Early North Carolina towns maintained public wells, established volunteer fire departments, and set up town watches to keep the peace. For example, the commissioners of Newbern (as it was then spelled) detailed the duties of the town watch in 1794 as follows:

The gentlemen on watch are to use their best endeavors to prevent house breaking, and thieving, of every kind, and to seize and secure every person found committing, or attempting to commit any such offenses . . . .

The watch will take up all suspicious and disorderly persons, who may be found in or strolling about the streets, after nine o'clock at night . . . .

On discovering any danger by fire, one of the watch will immediately ring the church bell, one other of them will then inform the person, who has care of the water engine, and the others are to alarm the persons near where the greatest danger appears, and use their utmost endeavors, to assist those in distress.

By 1800 there were more than a dozen municipalities in North Carolina, but only four (Edenton, Fayetteville, New Bern, and Wilmington) had populations of 1,000 or more. North Carolina was a rural, agricultural state, and few people lived in cities or towns. The state remained largely rural throughout the nineteenth century. In 1850 Wilmington, the state's major port, was the only municipality in the state with more than 5,000 residents. Wilmington reached 10,000 in 1870. Asheville, Charlotte, and Raleigh each had more than 10,000 residents by 1880.

Photo courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Public Library, Asheville, NC

About 1880, the Eagle Hotel in Asheville welcomed travelers who arrived by stagecoach.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the North Carolina General Assembly (the state legislature) revised the laws regarding municipalities. Under an act passed in 1855, all municipalities were given the same powers. They could tax real estate, liquor dealers, tickets to shows, dogs, and freely roaming hogs, horses and cattle. They could appoint a town constable, regulate public markets, prevent public nuisances, protect public health, keep streets and bridges in repair, and regulate the quality and weight of loaves of bread baked for sale. As time passed, the General Assembly gave additional authority to individual municipalities and groups of municipalities. As a result, each North Carolina city or town may have a somewhat different set of powers and responsibilities.

Photo courtesy of the NC Division of Archives and History
Water supply to Raleigh residents improved with the construction of this water tower in 1887.

Population growth brought the need for new municipal powers and responsibilities. More people created new problems for municipal governments. For example, adequate supplies of safe drinking water became a problem as cities became larger and more densely populated. The General Assembly established the State Board of Health in 1877. One of its initial concerns was the threat of water-borne diseases in the state's cities and towns. (Intestinal diseases like typhoid are caused by bacteria that live in water. They are spread by water which has been contaminated with human wastes.)

To help prevent disease, Asheville built a system to supply filtered water to its residents in 1884. Water from the Swannanoa River was pumped four miles from the filtration plant to the city. The year after it was built, the State Board of Health reported that Asheville's new municipal water supply was the safest in the state and that there had been "a marked decrease in typhoid" in Asheville.

Not everyone in Asheville benefited from the new system, however. Although the city owned and operated the water-supply system, it charged twenty-five cents per thousand gallons of water. That was expensive for workers who supported their families on an average income of about $750 per year. Asheville city water was, therefore, "not in general use among the poorer classes," according to the Board of Health report.

In fact, Asheville's water rates were lower than those in many other cities. Unlike Asheville, most North Carolina city governments did not operate water systems. Instead private companies supplied water to city residents. In Charlotte, the private water company charged fifty cents per thousand gallons, and in Raleigh, the water company charged forty cents per thousand gallons. Many people could not afford to buy water at those rates. They continued to rely on unsanitary sources of water. Water supply, like many other services, did not become a municipal responsibility in many cities and towns until the twentieth century.

During the early years of the twentieth century, North Carolina towns and cities grew rapidly. By 1920, twenty percent of the state's 2.5 million people lived in municipalities. More cities and towns paved their streets as automobiles became common. They also set up full-time police and fire departments and adopted building codes to regulate construction and reduce hazards to health and safety. Cities and towns bought private water and sewer companies during this period or started their own systems to make these services more widely available to their residents. A number of cities even started their own electric utilities to bring electricity to their communities.

Photo courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Raleigh firefighters were unable to prevent the loss of this hotel in 1928, but they kept the fire from destroying the city's growing business district.

Urban growth continued throughout the twentieth century. Municipal services continued to expand to meet the needs of the state's growing urban population. By 2000 almost all cities and towns had public water and sewer systems, paved streets, and police and fire protection. Other services such as garbage collection, parks, and recreation programs became increasingly common in municipalities throughout the state.

By 2000, Charlotte had more than 540,000 residents, Raleigh had more than 275,000, Greensboro had more than 220,000 and Durham and Winston-Salem each had over 180,000. Most North Carolina cities and towns continue to be small places, however. As Table 2.1 shows, only sixty-two North Carolina cities and towns had 10,000 residents or more in 2000.

HOW MUNICIPALITIES ARE CREATED

State government establishes cities and towns as municipal corporations. Like private corporations, municipal corporations can own property, enter contracts, and be sued. The owners of a corporation give responsibility for running the corporation to a board. The board acts on behalf of the owners in deciding what the corporation should do. A municipality's "owners"— the citizens of the jurisdiction—elect a board which is responsible for running the municipality. Because a municipality is a corporation, a citizen's liability for municipal debts is limited to the amount of tax the citizen owes the municipality.

Municipal corporations differ from private corporations in important ways. For one thing, citizens become the "owners" of a municipal corporation simply by living within the municipality's jurisdiction. They do not buy the corporation's stock the way owners of a private, for-profit corporation do. Municipal corporations also have different powers than private corporations. Private corporations can engage in any legal activity they choose. North Carolina municipalities can engage only in those activities for which the General Assembly has given its permission, and the General Assembly may change municipal authority as it wishes. For example, the legislature might remove a city's authority to license taxi cabs or to operate swimming pools, and that city could then no longer carry out the activity. At the same time, unlike private corporations, municipal corporations are governments. Therefore, municipal corporations have authority to make and enforce laws and to levytaxes.

The creation of a new city or town is called incorporation. Cities and towns must be incorporated by act of the General Assembly. The General Assembly may require the approval of the voters of the new municipality, but it does not need to do so. Incorporation includes defining the geographic boundaries of the new municipality and approving its charter, the rules under which it conducts its business.

A new city or town is generally incorporated after the development of a settlement in the area. Some towns grew up around county courthouses and were then incorporated. Others—like Ahoskie, Carrboro, and Durham—developed around mills or railway stations. The town of Princeville was incorporated by the General Assembly in 1885, twenty years after it was settled as a freedmen's camp by former slaves at the end of the Civil War. People ask for incorporation because they want to have a local government. They want public services, a means for providing public order and improving the community, and the right to participate in making local decisions.

The extension of municipal boundaries is called annexation. When territory is annexed to a city or town, that territory comes within the municipality's jurisdiction and its residents become part of the town's population. Voters in the annexed territory automatically become eligible to vote in the municipality's elections, and the municipality must provide its services to the new residents. Cities and towns may annex territory through an act of the General Assembly, by petition of the owners of the property to be annexed, or by ordinance. Annexation by ordinance requires that the territory is adjacent to the municipality and that it has already reached a certain level of urban development. Also, the municipality has to show that it will provide its services to the annexed territory.

Editorial cartoon by Donna Ree

People sometimes disagree about urban development and annexation.

In addition to following its own charter, each North Carolina municipality must also obey state laws and regulations. Some laws apply to all cities or towns of a certain size. These general laws provide most of the authority to act for North Carolina municipalities. However, sometimes a city wants to do something not authorized by general law or by its charter. Often in such cases the city asks the General Assembly to approve a local act. By custom, the General Assembly approves local acts which are favored by all of the representatives to the General Assembly from the jurisdiction that requests the local act.

GOVERNING CITIES AND TOWNS

Each municipality has its own governing board, elected by citizens of the city or town. Like the state legislature, a local governing board represents the people of the jurisdiction and has the authority to act for them. In many North Carolina cities and towns, the governing board is called the council, although "board of commissioners" and "board of aldermen" are also names for municipal governing boards.

Regardless of whether they are called council members, commissioners, or aldermen, the members of the governing board make official decisions for the city. The governing board establishes local tax rates and adopts a budget which indicates how the city will spend its money. The governing board sets policies for municipal services, passes ordinances to regulate behavior, and enters into agreements on behalf of the municipality.

The voters also elect a mayor in most North Carolina cities and towns. In some places, however, the mayor is elected by the governing board. The mayor presides over the governing board and is typically the chief spokesperson for the municipality. In some other states, the mayor is also the chief administrator for the municipality, but this is not the case in North Carolina.

Except for some of the smaller towns, North Carolina municipalities hire a professional manager (or administrator) to serve as chief executive. Under the council-manager plan, the manager is responsible for carrying out the council's policies and for running city government. The city (or town) manager is responsible for hiring and firing municipal employees, for coordinating their work, for advising the council on policy issues, for proposing a municipal budget, and for reporting to the council on municipal activities. The manager "serves at the pleasure of the council." That means the council can fire the manager whenever a majority of the council decide they want a new manager. A manager must work closely with the council in developing policies for the city and with city employees in seeing that city policies are carried out.

Each municipality also has a clerk. In some cities and towns, the manager appoints the clerk. In others, the council appoints the clerk. Regardless of who makes the appointment, the municipal clerk reports directly to the governing board. The clerk keeps official records of the board's meetings and decisions. The clerk may also publish notices, keep other municipal records, conduct research for the governing board, and carry out a wide variety of other duties, as assigned by the board. The clerk is usually a key source of information for citizens about their municipal government.

Many small municipalities do not have a manager. Where there is no manager, the governing board directs administration of the town's business. The board hires and directs town employees and manages the town's affairs together, as a committee, or assigns day-to-day oversight responsibilities for different departments to different board members. In towns that have no manager, the clerk is often a key administrator in the town, and may "wear many hats," in effect holding several different jobs.

Municipal employees do much of the work of city and town governments. City personnel include police officers, firefighters, water treatment plant operators, recreation supervisors, or others who provide services directly to city residents. Their work is supported by other city personnel: accountants, clerks, engineers, lawyers, secretaries, and a variety of other staff. These personnel provide expert advice, train employees, pay bills, prepare reports, keep records, and do the many other things it takes to conduct a city's business.

City personnel are organized into departments. Each department specializes in a particular service, such as police work, fire protection, water supply, or recreation. Typically, the city manager selects department heads. They work with the city manager in planning and coordinating the activities of employees in their departments. In many cities, the manager relies on department heads and/or a personnel department to recruit applicants for city jobs, screen job candidates, and hire new employees. Department heads organize and supervise the employees in their departments.

Working for local government . . .
Photo by The News & Observer Russell Allen figures out the city's voice mail system. He has personalized his office with a miniature Harley.
Raleigh's manager takes office By Sarah Lindenfeld
Monday was Russell Allen's first official day as the city's new manager. But he has been working on city business since he took the job last month. Allen, 48, the former city manager of Rock Hill, SC, said he has gotten to know city department leaders over the phone. And he and Carolyn Carter, an assistant city manger who had served as interim manager, "huddled by phone" and started the process of looking for a new police chief, he said. Selecting a successor to former Police Chief Mitch Brown is among Allen's first tasks in Raleigh. Allen met Monday morning with Major John Knox, who has been serving as interim chief since Brown's retirement last year and who wants the job permanently. Major Ralph Strickland also is interested. Under the city charter, the city manager, attorney and clerk report to the council. The other department heads answer to the manager, who hires them. Several council members have said they want some influence over the selection.	Allen said he plans to talk with city officials, council members and the community about the hire. Today, Carter is to guide Allen through the regular City Council meeting at 1 p.m., when council members are to cover a 19-page agenda that includes issues such as zoning cases and parade routes. "My father had a saying that goes something like this: 'Words cannot express, no pen indicate…' and then you fill in whatever you want to fill in," Carter said Monday. "I would fill in: 'the happiness, excitement and enthusiasm I have that he is here. I have 100 percent confidence in his abilities. I have known him over 20 years, and I know him to be a consummate professional and wonderful human being.'" Allen spent much of Monday meeting city officials, a few council members and reporters sorting through the usual first-day-on-the-job tasks such as learning to use voice mail and signing up for benefits.	In the morning, staffers in the city manager's office presented Allen, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle fan, with a few welcome gifts including a Harley-Davidson wall clock and a "Harley Parking Only" sign. He had already displayed a couple of miniature versions of the motorcycle, including a Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic. Allen, who ended his 12-year-career in Rock Hill last week, said he will miss the colleagues he left behind. But he looks forward to getting to know the community in Raleigh. He already has a meeting scheduled with a neighborhood association Wednesday night. "I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity…" he said. "It's just a terrific community." —Excerpted by permission of The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina April 17, 2001

The people who live in a city or town also play an important role in providing municipal services. Volunteers help supervise recreation programs, organize recycling, and even fight fires. Citizen advisory committees, boards, and commissions help city councils and city employees review and plan programs. Individual citizens influence city policies through petitions, public hearings, and conversations with city officials. Residents also help carry out city programs. They sort their trash for recycling. They call police or fire departments to report dangerous situations. Many municipal services cannot be provided effectively without the active cooperation of residents.

Municipal governments help people make their communities better places to live. They provide services to make life safer, healthier, and happier for the people who live there. They offer incentives for improving the appearance and economy of their community. They make and enforce laws to deal with public problems.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

These questions ask about the city or town where you live. If you do not live in a municipality, answer the questions for a nearby city or town where you shop. To answer some of these questions, you will need to do some research.

1. Why do people move to your city or town?

• Why might they move away?

2. When was your city or town first settled?

• When was it incorporated?

• Why was it established?

3. Assume that the average family in Asheville used 500 gallons of city water per week in 1884. How much did they spend on city water each week?

• What percentage of an average family's income of $14 per week was spent for water?

• In 2002, city water in Asheville cost $3.32 per hundred cubic feet (ccf) for single-family homes. An average family used 1.5 ccf per week. How much did the average Asheville family spend for water per week in 2002?

• If an average family's income is $918 per week in 2002, how much of their income did they spend on water?

• How much does water cost per thousand gallons or per hundred cubic feet (ccf) in your city? How many gallons or ccf does your family use each week? Note: Your city's water rate may be based on thousands of gallons or hundreds of cubic feet of water. In order to compare your rates and consumption, use these formulas:

One hundred cubic feet (1 ccf) = 748 gallons
One thousand gallons = 1.34 ccf

4. What is your municipal governing board called?

• How many seats does it have?

5. Does your city or town use the council-manager plan of government?

• If so, who is the manager (or "administrator")?

6. How many personnel does your city or town have?

• How many departments are there?

• What is the largest department of your municipal government?

7. How have you or someone you know helped your city provide services or improve the community?

8. How does your city or town cooperate with other municipalities?

• With county government?

Local Government in North Carolina, Second Edition - Chapter 2, North Carolina Municipalities.
Copyright © 2003 by Gordon P. Whitaker and the North Carolina City and County Management Association.