Maggie Valley residents look to de-annex from town
Phillip Wight (left) and Mark Pless (right) listen to Linda Taylor speak during Pless’ press conference at Wight’s motel in June, 2023. Kyle Perrotti photo
A small group of property owners in Maggie Valley are taking advantage of Rep. Mark Pless’ offer to de-annex them from the town, with at least one citing development restrictions and others saying they’re not getting what they’re paying for.
“I think that’s what drives most of this is the fact that people just don’t want to pay for something that they’re not getting, or they don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth,” Pless told The Smoky Mountain News March 10.
The bill, filed in the North Carolina General Assembly by Pless on March 6, is the latest chapter in a story of bad blood between Pless and most of Maggie Valley’s elected governing board that goes back more than two years.
Linda Taylor, a realtor and former member of the Maggie Valley Board of Aldermen who with her husband owns three of the eight parcels set for removal from town corporate limits if the bill makes it through the General Assembly, purchased a 3.8-acre parcel on Moody Farm Road nearly two decades ago.
“Here we have paid town taxes since 2006. We had the parcel annexed for water and sewer service specifically to put in an RV park,” Taylor told The Smoky Mountain News March 7.
That never happened. Taylor said she had a contract with Frankie Wood, a South Carolina developer who made headlines trying to redevelop the languishing Ghost Town in the Sky mountaintop amusement park along with other ventures around town.
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They envisioned an upscale RV park for the parcel, but a January 2022 moratorium on RV park developments, RV planned unit developments and RV storage facilities quashed their vision. Wood has since passed away, and the moratorium expired in July 2022. Meanwhile, Taylor’s property on Moody Farm Road was downzoned, preventing her from utilizing it in the way she had hoped.
“This was our retirement plan,” Taylor said.
In July 2023, Pless held a small press conference at the Clarketon Inn, owned by longtime Maggie Valley Alderman Phillip Wight and wife Tammy, who was also an alderman at the time.
Pless decried what he called a lack of accountability on the part of Maggie Valley officials, while Wight expressed concern about his own property.
“I can rent a room to who I want for the rest of my life, but I can’t create a [planned unit development] and have a nice high-end RV park that sells timeshares,” said Phillip Wight during the press conference. The Wights’ property is not part of Pless’ deannexation bill, but five other properties with four other owners are.
Taylor said she wasn’t part of any “coalition” and that she doesn’t know any of the other property owners or their reasons for seeking deannexation.
In Haywood County, being part of a municipality has its upsides and downsides.
Usually, municipalities offer services like law enforcement, water and sewer hookups and trash pickup. But that comes at a cost. In addition to paying county property taxes, property owners also pay town property taxes. Maggie Valley, one of the lowest-tax municipalities in the state, currently charges 40 cents per $100 in assessed property value on top of the county’s 55 cents per $100. As in most municipalities across the country, the property tax revenue collected by Maggie Valley is the largest single revenue stream and pays for town facilities along with the staff who perform the services.
Not being part of a municipality means no municipal property taxes — only county property taxes — but fewer services. Properties not within a municipality are served by the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, not a local police department. Water and sewer services are sometimes available, but at a higher rate than for municipal customers. Household trash must be taken to one of the county’s several service centers.
However, the most important difference between properties in municipalities and properties in the county is that the county has no zoning ordinance, leaving property owners to do as they please — sometimes to the dismay of neighbors.
The other properties that could be removed from Maggie Valley town limits include two more owned by the Taylors on Summit Drive, two owned by Billy Case on Windswept Drive, one owned by Freddie Wayne Grasty and Henry Grasty on Johnson Branch, one owned by William and Jane Meadows on Hailey Drive and one owned by Betty and Halley Grant on Dellwood Road.
Pless said the owners have diverse reasons for deannexation.
“A couple of them are vacant land and there’s nothing on them. One of them is split, there’s one parcel with no structures that is in the town, and everything else he’s got is outside the town. He just wanted to make his property whole. He didn’t want to pay property tax on that piece of property,” Pless said. “There’s another one that is a farm, and those folks, they just contacted me and said, ‘Hey, can you take this piece of farmland off on Johnson Branch?’”
Together, the parcels total 14.8 acres, $1.32 million in valuation and about $5,300 in annual property tax payments.
Maggie Valley’s current budget includes a $3.8 million general fund, of which just over $2 million comes from property taxes, but the town is also dealing with about $4 million in damage from Hurricane Helene. Without the property tax revenue from the parcels proposed for deannexation, the town would see its annual property tax collections decrease by about a quarter of a percent.
Maggie Valley Mayor Mike Eveland said that if the parcels are removed from the town, the 46 other properties near the parcels would have no protection against potential of high-impact developments popping up overnight.
“If he’s allowed to deannex these properties, next year he’ll be back for more in Waynesville or wherever,” Eveland said. “I just don’t know where this leads. It’s sad, really.”
In 2022, Pless stripped Maggie Valley of its ability to exercise powers over the town’s extraterritorial jurisdiction — land not in the town limits, but nearby; property owners in ETJs don’t pay town taxes, but are subject to town zoning ordinances.
More recently, last month Pless filed a bill that would prevent Haywood County’s Tourism Development Authority from collecting the 4% room occupancy tax allowed by state law, effectively disbanding the TDA. Although the TDA bill would also affect the Haywood County communities of Canton, Clyde, Lake Junaluska and Waynesville, Maggie Valley has traditionally been the largest collector of room occupancy taxes due to its status as a tourism juggernaut.
While two-thirds of the TDA’s revenue after expenses is spent on marketing to ensure a steady stream of visitors to the county, one-third of TDA revenues are spent on capital projects meant to draw visitors as well as serve locals, including in Maggie Valley, where TDA revenue helped pay for an auxiliary parking lot across from the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds.
Eveland said that Maggie Valley’s governing board would consider passing a resolution declaring the town’s opposition to Pless’ bill on March 11, after The Smoky Mountain News went to print.
