Short version: we're streamlining. Wake Forest Matters has been running the newsletter and the memberships in two places at once — here on Substack, and over on wakeforestmatters.com — and keeping both in sync has turned into its own part-time job. Every story published twice, every subscriber list reconciled by hand, every membership tracked across two billing systems. That's time that should be going into covering this town, not maintaining duplicate infrastructure.

So we're consolidating. For good this time. Everything — the newsletter, the archive, memberships, all of it — now runs from our own domain and our own website. One platform, one place to manage it, one less thing standing between the reporting and the people who read it.

If you're a Substack subscriber, you're already covered

You don't have to do anything. Your subscription has already been moved over to the website's mailing list — you're on it now. The weekly roundup will keep landing in your inbox, just from wakeforestmatters.com instead of this Substack.

Starting this week, that roundup goes out every Saturday morning at 7am, straight to your inbox, every story from the week before in one send.

If you want to double-check your subscription, update your email, or sign up fresh, you can do that anytime at wakeforestmatters.com/subscribe. It's a one-field form — email in, confirm once, done — and the full newsletter archive lives on that same page now.

Supporting the work now happens on the site too

If you've been a paid supporter here, thank you — genuinely. That support is exactly what's let this go from a passion project to something closer to a real newsroom. Reader support has never bought access to the journalism and it never will; every story is free, for everyone, always. What it funds is the time: sitting through the meetings, filing the records requests, checking the facts, writing it up.

Going forward, that support runs through the same wakeforestmatters.com/subscribe page as the newsletter, with two ways to pitch in on an ongoing basis:

Paid Member — $6/month. A recurring vote of confidence that local coverage is worth funding.

Founding Member — $100/year. For readers who want to go further.

Prefer something one-time instead? Tip options are on that same page, no account needed either way.

If you're currently a paying subscriber here on Substack, hang tight — I'm sorting out the fairest way to carry that over and will follow up with you directly rather than just switching your card on you.

Why bother, again

I know this is the second time I've said "we're moving, for real this time." That's on me, not you. The honest answer for why it's happening again: running two platforms sounded fine in theory and turned into real overhead in practice, and the whole point of owning our own website was to stop paying that tax. Consolidating onto it — instead of splitting attention between two systems — is what actually lets us do that.

This is still the same operation: independent, reader-funded, built to cover Wake Forest the way a small town actually deserves to be covered. Just running out of one home instead of two.

Thanks for reading, for subscribing, for putting up with the platform shuffle. Come find us at wakeforestmatters.com — and if you know a neighbor who'd want the Saturday roundup in their inbox, send them this.

Spread the word.

— Tom Baker IV
Founder, Publisher & Principal Investigator, Wake Forest Matters

Traffic Alert: South Avenue Closed Monday–Friday for Water Main Work

June 26, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

WAKE FOREST, NC — During the week of June 29, Park Construction of NC will close a portion of South Avenue from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily to install new water and sewer lines as part of the Wake Forest Water Main Replacement & Repair Project.

The closure covers South Avenue from South Wingate Street to the South Main Street/US 1A roundabout. A signed detour will be in place. Delays are expected — motorists should plan alternate routes.

For more information, contact Raleigh Water’s Blake Bartholomew at blake.bartholomew@raleighnc.gov.

View current road closures on the Town’s interactive Traffic Alerts Map.

Source: Town of Wake Forest

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Traffic Alert: South Franklin Street Down to One Lane Monday Morning

June 26, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

WAKE FOREST, NC — South Franklin Street will be reduced to one lane with intermittent two-way traffic on Monday, June 29, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The lane closure covers South Franklin Street from Annabelle Blue Drive to Icarus Lane in Holding Village. Contractor L&A Pavement Marking, LLC needs the closure to modify existing turn lane markings as part of the South Franklin Street Widening Project.

Flaggers and signage will be in place to direct traffic. Delays are expected — plan accordingly or use an alternate route.

The South Franklin Street Widening Project is scheduled for completion this summer. For project details, visit bit.ly/SFranklinWideningProject or email CIP Manager Steve Meyer at smeyer@wakeforestnc.gov.

View current road closures on the Town’s interactive Traffic Alerts Map.

Source: Town of Wake Forest

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Public Meeting Updates — June 25, 2026

June 25, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

New public-meeting postings across the Wake Forest area for June 25, 2026. Agendas, minutes, and meeting videos as local governments post them — so you can follow along and show up.

Agendas posted

• Wake Forest: Board of Commissioners Work Session — Jun 23, 2026

Meeting videos

• Wake Forest: Board of Commissioners Work Session — Jun 23, 2026 (watch on demand)

See every upcoming meeting on our Public Meetings page, and read our recaps under Town Government.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Most Fireworks Are Illegal in NC. Here’s What You Need to Know Before July 4.

June 24, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

By Wake Forest Matters

Before you head to South Carolina to stock up for the Fourth, here’s the thing: what’s legal to buy there is still illegal to set off here.

Wake Forest Police Chief Julius Jefferson and Fire Chief Ron Early are reminding residents that North Carolina law prohibits the possession or discharge of any fireworks that explode, spin, fly, jump in the air, or leave the ground (NC General Statutes 14-410 and 14-414). That covers firecrackers, ground spinners, Roman candles, bottle rockets, mortars — most of what you’d find at a roadside fireworks stand across the state line.

Getting caught is a Class 2 Misdemeanor: up to $500 in fines and 30 days to six months in jail. If the fireworks cause injury or property damage, prosecutors can enhance the charges and the maximum jumps to six months.

What is legal in NC: items marked 1.4G, and novelty items like sparklers, cap guns, and snake/glow worm ash pellets. Even these can cause injury and should be kept away from children and pets.

This year, Chiefs Jefferson and Early say current conditions make the usual risks worse.

“In addition to being against the law, illegal fireworks can cause serious injuries or even death. Considering our current hot and dry conditions, the use of illegal fireworks also puts an unnecessary call burden on our first responders due to the elevated risk of fires and damages to property.”

The safest option, they say: attend a professional display.

Wake Forest’s annual Fireworks Spectacular is Friday, July 3, at Heritage High School (Husky Stadium), 1150 Forestville Road. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. and the fireworks show starts around 9:30 p.m. Full details at bit.ly/WFIndependenceDay.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Public Meeting Updates — June 23, 2026

June 23, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

New public-meeting postings across the area for June 23, 2026. Agendas, minutes, and meeting videos as local governments post them — so you can follow along and show up.

Announcements

• Franklin County: Special Called Meeting — June 15, 2026

• Granville County: Overview of the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget

See every upcoming meeting on our Public Meetings page, and read our recaps under Town Government.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

What’s Happening This Week in Wake Forest and Beyond — June 25–July 5, 2026

June 26, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

This is the big one: America turns 250 this Fourth of July, and our corner of North Carolina is marking the Semiquincentennial with its biggest Independence Day weekend in years. Wake Forest’s two-day celebration anchors it — fireworks Friday, a children’s parade and art in the park Saturday — with more shows lighting up Franklin and Granville. Here’s everything happening through next Sunday.

The big one: America’s 250th

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration, the region is folding the milestone into nearly every Independence Day event — from Wake Forest’s commemorative “250” T-shirts and a Renaissance Centre art show to Franklin County branding its whole celebration “America’s 250th.” For the local history behind the milestone and our full holiday rundown, see our guide to the Fourth of July & America 250 in the Wake Forest area. Below, the week’s best, area by area.

Wake Forest & Northern Wake

• Wake Forest Fireworks Spectacular — Friday, July 3, gates 5:30 p.m., Husky Stadium on the Heritage High School campus (1150 Forestville Road). The town’s flagship show draws more than 15,000 people. The program starts just after 6 p.m. with beach-music legends the Swingin’ Medallions taking the stage at 6:20; at the 7:30 p.m. intermission the Wake Forest Fire Department Honor Guard presents the colors, Casey Eaton sings the National Anthem, and veterans lead the Pledge of Allegiance before fireworks cap the night after dark. Food trucks on site; free admission. Come early to park, and grab a commemorative America 250 T-shirt ($24.40) if you want to wear the milestone. Details

• Children’s Independence Day Parade — Saturday, July 4, line up at 10 a.m., steps off 10:30, at North Main Street & West Juniper Avenue near the Wake Forest Historical Museum. A kids’ walking parade — bring a decorated bike or wagon, no registration, helmets encouraged. Free. Info

• Art & More in the Park — Saturday, July 4, 11 a.m.–1 p.m., Holding Park (133 W. Owen Ave.). The celebration wraps with free patriotic crafts and cupcake decorating at the Community House and free hot dogs from the Wake Forest Fire Department. Free. Info

• America 250 Art Exhibition — through Friday, July 17, Wake Forest Renaissance Centre (405 S. Brooks St.). A gallery of selected works answering “What does America mean to you?” — an easy, free stop downtown all week. Free. Info

• America’s Sweethearts — Wednesday, July 1, 7:30 p.m., Wake Forest Renaissance Centre. A vintage vocal trio runs through swing, jazz and Broadway favorites in an America 250 tribute — a warm, all-ages way to open the holiday week. Part of the Summer at the Centre series; reserved tickets. Info

• Wake Forest Farmers Market — Saturdays, 8 a.m.–noon, 235 S. Taylor Street (behind Town Hall). Local produce, eggs, baked goods and makers downtown — an easy stop before the holiday cookout. Info

Franklin County

• Franklinton Fourth of July Fireworks — Saturday, June 27, 6–9:30 p.m., Franklinton Middle School football field (224 Rams Way). The region’s earliest show of the season: food trucks, live music and games, with fireworks around 9:30 p.m. Free. Info

• “America’s 250th” — Franklin County Fourth of July Celebration — Saturday, July 4, gates 5 p.m., Old Football Field on the Louisburg High School campus (201 Allen Lane, Louisburg). The county’s marquee event, branded for the Semiquincentennial — food trucks, inflatables, games and music ahead of fireworks around 9:15 p.m. Free; note the clear-bag-only security policy. Info

Granville County

• Lake Holt Independence Day Fireworks — Friday, July 3, gates 6 p.m., Lake Holt (1200 Lake Holt Road, Butner). The area’s big regional show, co-hosted by Butner, Creedmoor, Granville County and the State, with a DJ, concessions and fireworks after dark. Free; no alcohol or pets, and bring a flashlight for the walk back. No rain date. Info

Before you go

Almost everything this week is free and family-friendly, but the big fireworks shows fill up and close their gates early — arrive with time to park, pack a chair or blanket, and leave pets at home (the booms are rough on them). In downtown Wake Forest, expect rolling North Main Street closures during the July 4 Children’s Parade. And because a few town times can still shift, it’s worth a quick confirm with organizers the day of.

Hosting something? Add it to our events calendar — it’s free. See everything on the Wake Forest Matters Events Calendar, find more local life in Community, and dig into our neighbors at the Franklin County and Granville County hubs.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Fourth of July & America 250 in the Wake Forest Area: Fireworks, Parades & Local History (2026)

June 26, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

This Fourth of July is the big one — America’s 250th birthday. Here’s the local history behind it, what the America 250 milestone means in our backyard, and where to celebrate across Wake Forest, Northern Wake, Franklin and Granville counties — fireworks, parades and all.

We’ll keep this guide updated as towns finalize their plans. Spot something missing? Send it to us.

250 years — and our corner of the story

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred and fifty years later, the nation marks its Semiquincentennial — the “America 250” anniversary.

North Carolina’s fingerprints are on that founding. Months before Philadelphia, delegates meeting at Halifax adopted the Halifax Resolves on April 12, 1776 — the first time an entire colony formally authorized its representatives to vote for independence. It’s why “First in Freedom” rides on our license plates.

The Revolution is even written into our maps. When patriots dissolved Bute County in 1779 — it had been named for a British nobleman — they split it and named the new pieces for heroes of the cause: Franklin County for Benjamin Franklin, and neighboring Warren County for Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill. Franklin’s county seat, Louisburg, honors King Louis XVI of France, the ally whose help turned the war. Franklinton carries Franklin’s name too. Even the older names around us — Granville County (for the Earl Granville) and Wake County (for Margaret Wake, a royal governor’s wife) — trace straight back to the colonial world the Declaration broke from.

What “America 250” means locally

The Semiquincentennial isn’t just a bigger fireworks show — towns and counties across the region are folding the milestone into this year’s Independence Day events. Franklin County has gone furthest, branding its July 4 celebration at Louisburg the “America’s 250th” fireworks, and county libraries in Louisburg and Youngsville are running 250th-themed children’s programming the week before. In Wake Forest, the town’s annual Fireworks Spectacular is selling a commemorative T-shirt (wear it to the show and you can snag a Torchy’s Tacos free-queso coupon). For our region’s Revolutionary roots and the rest of our holiday coverage, watch the Franklin County and Granville County hubs.

Wake Forest & Northern Wake

• Fireworks Spectacular — Friday, July 3. Wake Forest’s big show is inside Husky Stadium on the campus of Heritage High School (1150 Forestville Road). Gates open at 5:30 p.m. and the program begins just after 6 p.m., with the Swingin’ Medallions taking the stage at 6:20 p.m.; the fireworks cap the night after dark. Free admission. (Town of Wake Forest)

• Children’s Parade — Saturday, July 4. Hosted by the Wake Forest Community Partners, the kids’ “walking parade” lines up at 10 a.m. at North Main Street and West Juniper Avenue, near the Wake Forest Historical Museum (414 N. Main St.), and steps off at 10:30 a.m. Bring a bike or a wagon; free, no registration, helmets encouraged. (details)

• Art & More in the Park — Saturday, July 4, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. The celebration wraps at Holding Park (133 W. Owen Ave.), where the Wake Forest Woman’s Club offers free patriotic arts, crafts and cupcake decorating inside the Wake Forest Community House, and the Wake Forest Fire Department serves up free hot dogs, chips and water. (Town of Wake Forest)

Franklin County

• Franklinton Fourth of July Fireworks — Saturday, June 27, 6–10 p.m. The county kicks off the season early at the Franklinton Middle School football field (224 Rams Way, Franklinton), with fireworks around 9:30 p.m. (Franklin County calendar)

• “America’s 250th” — Franklin County Fourth of July Celebration — Saturday, July 4. The county’s big show is at the Old Football Field on the Louisburg High School campus (201 Allen Lane, Louisburg). Gates open at 5 p.m.; food trucks, inflatables, games and music lead up to fireworks at dark, around 9:15 p.m. Note the security rules: clear bags only, security wands at the gates, and no weapons, pets, alcohol, glass, tents or shade structures on campus. (Franklin County)

Granville County

• Lake Holt Fireworks (regional) — Friday, July 3. Creedmoor, Butner, Oxford, Stem and Granville County jointly host the area’s big show at Lake Holt (Old Highway 75, Butner). Gates are expected to open at 6 p.m. with a DJ and concessions, and fireworks go up after dark, around 9 p.m. Everyone must be through the gates by 8:45 p.m. — there’s no late admittance — so arrive early. Bring lawn chairs, blankets and a flashlight; no alcohol, and leave pets at home. Free. Butner, Creedmoor and Granville County had not yet posted final 2026 details at our deadline; the July 3 date follows the City of Creedmoor’s announcement and the show’s usual Friday-before-the-Fourth slot — confirm before you head out. (Town of Butner · City of Creedmoor)

Before you go

Most shows are free and family-friendly, but the big ones fill up and close their gates early — arrive with time to park, pack a chair or blanket, and leave pets at home (the booms are rough on them). In Wake Forest, expect rolling North Main Street closures during the July 4 Children’s Parade. And because some town dates and times can still shift, confirm with organizers the week of the Fourth.

A note from the publisher

I won’t pretend the 250th is abstract for me. I’m a twelfth-generation North Carolinian, and my own family helped build the two counties this paper covers most closely.

In what was then Bute County — the land that became Franklin County in 1779 — my Baker and Harris forebears served on the local Committee of Safety, the citizen body that enforced the boycott of British goods and helped run the Crown’s authority out of North Carolina. A county over, in Granville, my Burton ancestors were in the thick of it: Col. Robert Burton commanded in the Granville County Regiment and served as a quartermaster supplying the militia and the Continental Army, then represented North Carolina in the Continental Congress and sat for years on the young state’s Council of State.

So this isn’t someone else’s history to me — it’s Franklin and Granville counties’ history, and it’s family. It’s also why Wake Forest Matters takes local government and local history seriously: the institutions our ancestors risked everything to build are the same ones we still cover every week. Happy 250th, neighbors.

— Tom Baker IV, founder and publisher

More local happenings are on our events calendar and in Community. Hosting a Fourth of July or America 250 event? Add it here.

Wake Forest Matters is the area’s independent local newsroom. Event details compiled from the Town of Wake Forest, Town of Butner, City of Creedmoor, and Franklin and Granville county sources; some 2026 dates and times were still being finalized at publication — confirm with organizers before heading out. See our corrections policy.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

This Week in Wake Forest-Area Sports — June 25, 2026

June 24, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

Your weekly look at sports and recreation across Wake Forest, Rolesville, Franklin and Granville — summer races nearby, fall sign-up season opens, and area high schools head into preseason.

Races & runs this weekend

No local 5Ks are on the Wake Forest-area calendar this week, but a pair of fun runs in Raleigh make for an easy summer evening outing for area families. Both are confirmed on RunSignup.

• Pajama Fun Run — Saturday, June 27, Raleigh. Come in your pajamas for a family-friendly run. Register and details

• Pajama Night Run — Sunday, June 28, Raleigh. The nighttime edition of the pajama run series. Register and details

Looking further out: the Eagle 5K & 10K is set for Saturday, July 11, in Raleigh. Details and registration.

Sign up now — summer & fall rec seasons

Late June and July is when fall league registrations typically open across the area — youth soccer, flag football, volleyball and more. Check your local Parks & Recreation directly for current openings, deadlines and fees:

• Wake Forest Parks & Recreation — wakeforestnc.gov (search “Parks & Recreation” or visit the TeamSideline registration portal linked from the site)

• Rolesville Parks & Recreation — rolesvillenc.gov/parks-recreation

• Franklin County Parks & Recreation — franklincountync.gov

• South Granville Athletic Association — youth leagues for Granville County families; check their registration portal at PlayMetrics

Running a summer camp, league or clinic in our area? Submit it to our events calendar and we’ll include it in the roundup.

High school sports — summer break

Area schools are on summer break. NCHSAA fall sports — football, volleyball, cross country, swimming — don’t kick off until August. Watch this space for fall season previews for Wake Forest, Wakefield, Rolesville, South Granville and Franklin County high schools as preseason approaches.

Have a student-athlete story to share? Let us know.

See the full Wake Forest Matters events calendar for more things happening around the area, and check our Community and Parks & Recreation categories for rec coverage.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Watch ‘Elemental’ in the Pool This Saturday at Holding Park

June 24, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

By Wake Forest Matters

Wake Forest Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources is hosting a Dive-In Movie this Saturday, June 27, at Holding Park Aquatic Center — and yes, you can watch from the water.

The featured film is Pixar’s Elemental, projected on a large inflatable screen on the pool deck. Gates open at 8 p.m. and showtime is 8:30 p.m.

Tickets are $7 per person (all ages) and must be purchased in advance at wakeforestnc.recdesk.com — search “Dive.” The event is capped at 100 people, so don’t wait. Every attendee needs to check in with the pool attendant and get a wristband before entering.

You’re welcome to watch from the pool or from the deck. Swimming is allowed during the movie, but the slide and water features will be off. Deck seating is limited, so bring a blanket or your own chair.

Concessions — chips, popcorn, popsicles, soft drinks, water — will be available at the stand. No alcohol.

If it rains, the event may be canceled. Check the town website, Facebook page, or Nextdoor for updates, or enable push notifications in the Town of Wake Forest app.

Questions? Contact Athletics Program Coordinator Erica Shingleton at 919-435-9457 or eshingleton@wakeforestnc.gov.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

I Can’t Legally Ride My Bike to Lidl, and the Fix Is One Sentence

June 26, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

By Steve Pinkham | Wake Forest Matters Community Contributor

Lidl is less than half a mile from my house, but I can’t legally ride my bike there. There’s an easy fix, and it brings us in line with our neighbors.

The Town of Wake Forest recently took a real step forward for bikes and other micromobility. The Board of Commissioners recently amended our ordinances to do two things. It expanded where e-bikes, e-scooters, and similar devices may legally go, including shared streets, greenways, parks, multi-use paths, and bike lanes. It also gave the Town better tools to deal with the illegal mopeds and motorcycles styled as bikes that have been causing problems for residents. That is real progress. However, the rules as written leave only about 58 percent of the town’s streets reachable by bike. One more change would push that to about 85 percent.

Two reasonable rules that collide

Two rules, each sensible on its own, add up to a wall.

The first is that you can’t ride a bike on a sidewalk in Wake Forest. Downtown, that rule makes sense. It keeps people walking on Main Street safe from bikes weaving past them.

The second is that you can’t ride a bike or scooter on any road posted over 25 mph. That rule is about safety too, and the numbers behind it are grim. A person struck at 20 mph survives about 90 percent of the time. By 30 mph the odds fall below half, and by 40 mph to roughly one in three. A cyclist’s chance of being killed doubles at 30 mph. The big multi-lane roads are the single most common place cyclists die, about 37 percent of fatal bike crashes, usually when a faster vehicle overtakes the rider. Keeping bikes out of 35 and 45 mph travel lanes is the right call.

Put the two rules together, though, and you get a trap. On a fast road with no bike lane, a rider has no option that is both legal and safe. They can’t ride the road, and they can’t ride the sidewalk. The choice becomes break the law in traffic or stay home. These fast roads turn into walls that cut neighborhoods off from the stores, schools, and greenways on the other side.

A half-mile errand, the long way around

My shortest legal route to Lidl — about 1.1 miles for a 0.46-mile errand. Green is where I can ride; red is the South Main sidewalk I have to walk my bike.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Town of Wake Forest · NCDOT · NC OneMap · © CARTO

Here is what that looks like from my driveway. Lidl sits 0.46 miles away in a straight line, a three-minute ride. To get there legally on a bike today, I have to thread between Dr. Calvin Jones Highway (NC-98) and South Main Street. Both are posted at 35 mph, and neither has a bike lane.

I mapped the shortest route I can legally ride, and there isn’t a short one. The direct links from my neighborhood to South Main are either gated 35 mph roads or a private drive posted “no thru traffic,” so the shortest legal public route runs about 1.1 miles, nearly two and a half times the straight-line distance. And the last third of a mile, I still have to get off and walk my bike down the South Main sidewalk, which I’m not allowed to ride.

Lidl even put a bike rack out front. There is no legal way to ride to it.

The same wall, all over town

This pattern repeats everywhere. By my count, about 97 of the town’s 328 miles of neighborhood streets, close to one in three, are cut off from the connected network, stranded behind a fast road with no legal way across on two wheels.

It produces some odd results. Take the greenway access off Rogers Road, a good connection to the trail network that is now close to useless, because you can’t legally ride the roads or the sidewalks around it, and it sits too far from anything to reach on foot. We built the trail and then wrote a rule that puts it out of reach.

The map below shows the whole town, today on the left and after the one-sentence fix on the right. Every red street is one you cannot legally reach by bike, a road posted over 25 mph or a neighborhood stranded behind one. (The gray lines are the limited-access highways, US-1 and NC-98, which are not streets and are not counted.) Today only about 58 percent of the town’s streets are reachable; with the fix, almost all of that red turns green and 85 percent become reachable. You can explore the interactive map and zoom to your own street.

Left: today’s rules leave 58% of Wake Forest streets reachable by bike. Right: one ordinance change — letting bikes use the sidewalk on roads over 25 mph where no bike lane exists — pushes that to 85%. You can explore the interactive map and zoom to your own street.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Town of Wake Forest · NCDOT · NC OneMap · © CARTO

Why the fix makes everyone safer

Letting bikes use the sidewalks along those fast roads does not trade away safety. It adds it.

The Federal Highway Administration recommends a separated path or sidewalk-style facility for bikes on roads over 30 mph, precisely because riding in the travel lane there is so dangerous. Towns with separated bike facilities see about 44 percent fewer traffic deaths for everyone on the road, not just cyclists. Moving a rider out of a 45 mph travel lane and onto the sidewalk next to it is the separation the safety research asks for.

It protects people on foot, too. The sidewalks along our high-speed roads carry very few pedestrians. They run past parking lots and highway shoulders, not the cafes of downtown. Allowing bikes there, at low speed, with a clear duty to yield, is nothing like allowing them on a crowded Main Street sidewalk. The downtown ban can stay exactly as it is.

To make the pedestrian priority plain, the Town should post “Bikes Yield to Pedestrians” signs (the standard MUTCD R9-6) along these corridors, even under a blanket rule rather than only on a signed subset. Pedestrians always have the right of way. The signs just say so out loud. One detail is worth getting right. Where a sidewalk runs on both sides of a road, open both, so riders can travel with traffic on the near-side sidewalk instead of against it. Riding against traffic at driveways and intersections is the most crash-prone way to use a sidewalk.

Other North Carolina towns already do this

We would not be inventing anything. Letting bikes and similar devices use sidewalks, with a duty to yield to pedestrians, is the norm in the towns around us, and several have already written close to the exact rule Wake Forest needs.

Holly Springs is the closest parallel. This year, facing the same complaints about fast and reckless e-bike riding that prompted Wake Forest to act, its Town Council passed a micromobility ordinance that takes effect June 1, 2026. Rather than ban the sidewalks, Holly Springs kept e-bikes and other low-speed electric devices on sidewalks, side-paths, and greenways, with three conditions: yield to pedestrians at all times, keep speeds down (under 15 mph on greenways and side-paths), and signal before passing. Machines powerful enough to count as mopeds or motorcycles are barred from those spaces, and repeat violators face escalating fines and impoundment. Same problem, same season, opposite choice on the sidewalk.

Apex writes the model into its code. Under Sec. 20-143, a person may ride a bicycle, scooter, or skateboard on any public sidewalk, with due caution, yielding to all pedestrians, at no more than ten miles per hour on narrow sidewalks and at crossings. The only exception is a few named blocks in the walkable heart of downtown. Bikes and scooters on the sidewalk everywhere, except where foot traffic is heaviest: that is the balance Wake Forest should strike.

Cary keeps it simplest (Sec. 34-250): ride a bicycle on any sidewalk in town, with due caution, yielding to pedestrians. Raleigh allows bicyclists on sidewalks, greenways, and multi-use paths citywide, requiring them to yield and to stop before crossing a street (Sec. 11-3004 and 11-3005), though it keeps stand-up motorized scooters off the sidewalk. Chapel Hill allows sidewalk riding at a walking pace.

The common thread is what Wake Forest needs: bikes and micromobility off the sidewalk where people are walking in numbers, on the sidewalk where the only other choice is a high-speed road, always at low speed and always yielding to pedestrians.

Two ways to do it

There are two ways to do this.

The simple version, and the one I would pick: “Bicycles and micromobility devices may use the sidewalk along any street posted over 25 mph where no bike lane is provided, yielding to pedestrians at all times.” One sentence. It connects the whole town, and leaves the downtown sidewalk ban alone.

The targeted version posts signs on a specific list of sidewalks where bikes may share the walk, with the yield reminders that are standard in towns that do this. My mapping shows that a carefully chosen 8.8 miles of sidewalk, roughly 100 signposts, would reconnect the town with sensible routes. As little as 4.9 miles reconnects every stranded pocket, if barely. This works, but any limited list leaves some homes and businesses out by definition. The blanket rule does not.

Cheaper to run, better for your health

Connecting the network pays off beyond convenience. A typical car gets around 25 MPG, which at roughly $3.50 a gallon in June 2026 costs about 14 cents a mile. An e-bike costs about 1/4 of a cent a mile of electricity, roughly 50 times cheaper to run. And even an electric car, a great improvement over a gas vehicle, still costs about 15 times more per mile than the e-bike. Ten miles of errands costs about $1.40 in a gas car, about 40 cents in an electric one, or about three cents on the e-bike. The electricity to match a single tank of gas would carry an e-bike around 13,000 miles. My round trip to Lidl half a mile away costs a fraction of a cent to bike and 25 cents or more to drive.

It is also good for us. Even with the motor helping, e-biking counts as moderate to vigorous exercise. Studies find real gains in fitness, including 8 to 10 percent improvements in peak oxygen uptake among less-fit riders, along with lower blood pressure, and it opens cycling to older and less-fit people who could not manage a regular bike up our hills. A town where a half-mile grocery run is a pleasant ride instead of a car trip is a healthier and cheaper place to live.

The ask

Wake Forest already did the hard part. This is the easy part. Add one sentence letting bikes use the sidewalk on roads over 25 mph that have no bike lane, with pedestrians always given the right of way. It keeps fast roads safe, keeps downtown sidewalks for walkers, and finally lets me, and about a third of the town, ride a bike to a store half a mile away.

The interactive map is at highprofilesite.com/wfmicromobility. The open data, code, and full methodology behind this analysis are at github.com/spinkham/wake_forest_micromobility.

Steve Pinkham is a Wake Forest resident who built the open-source map and analysis behind this piece. He’d like to ride his bike to the grocery store without breaking the law.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

This Week in Franklin & Granville Counties — June 26, 2026

June 26, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

Your weekly look at what’s happening across Franklin and Granville counties — government, growth, public safety, schools, and events for the week of June 23, 2026.

At the meetings

Granville County Commissioners approved a $92.9 million budget. At their June 15 regular meeting, the Granville County Board of Commissioners adopted the fiscal year 2026–2027 operating budget. The general fund totals $92,946,976 — a 2.1% increase over the prior year — while the Fire District budget rises 1.4% to $3,497,441. The board held the county tax rate flat at $0.631 per $100 valuation and the fire district rate at $0.06. Education consumes the largest share: Granville County Public Schools and associated charter schools will receive $20.6 million for operations ($2,563 per pupil, up 7.8% from last year), plus $2.2 million in capital funding and $3.1 million in debt service. The Sheriff’s Office and Detention Center is funded at $12.4 million; Granville Health System’s EMS at $3.8 million; Granville-Vance Public Health at $1.27 million. New positions added in the budget include an Assistant Tax Administrator, a courthouse janitorial position, a full-time library community outreach role (converted from part-time), a fleet management position, and a program coordinator for the Granville County Senior Center in Oxford starting January 2027. The new fiscal year begins July 1.

Granville County Commissioners also acted on industrial development and solid waste in June. At their June 1 regular meeting, commissioners approved a task order with Kittleson and Associates — one of the county’s on-call engineering firms — to conduct due diligence on a proposed industrial site in Butner. The work is funded by a grant from the NC Railroad Company. Commissioners directed the county attorney to draft a solid waste franchise ordinance for residential collection in unincorporated Granville County and moved the contract award for convenience site operations to the June 15 meeting. Brenda Williamson was appointed to the Vance-Granville Community College Board of Trustees; James Garrett was appointed to the Granville County Social Services Board.

Granville County Board of Elections restructured early voting. At a special meeting June 16, the Board of Elections voted on a set of changes to the county’s voting infrastructure. The agenda included relocating the Wilton precinct Election Day polling place from Wilton Elementary School — which has permanently closed — to Tar River Elementary School at 2642 Philo White Road, Franklinton. Commissioners also considered adding an early voting site in northern Granville County and, conditioned on that approval, closing the existing Creedmoor Early Voting Site at South Branch Library (1550 S. Campus Drive, Creedmoor). A separate proposal would move Oxford Early Voting from the Public Works Building at 127 Penn Avenue to the Granville County Convention and Expo Center.

Franklin County Commissioners held a public hearing on cell towers. The Franklin County Board of Commissioners met in a special-called session June 15 at the Franklin Plaza Senior Center, 279 South Bickett Boulevard, Louisburg, to receive public comment on proposed telecommunications towers on two county-owned parcels: tax parcel 043947 on Dick Baker Road and parcel 004030 on Strickland Road. The meeting began at 6 p.m.

Louisburg Town Council held a special-called meeting June 23. The council convened for a special session; agenda documents were posted to the town’s website but a full agenda packet was not publicly available for text extraction at press time. Check townoflouisburg.org for details.

Public safety

Granville County 911 is launching a new responder platform July 1. Granville County Emergency Communications will activate the I Am Responding (IAR) system on July 1, 2026. The platform sends real-time incident information — including GPS-based caller location, enhanced mapping, and dispatch audio — directly to first responders’ mobile devices. It covers law enforcement, fire, EMS, rescue, and emergency management agencies across the county. “For the first time, our public safety responders will be able to receive GPS-based caller location information directly on their mobile devices,” said Stacy Hicks, Director of Granville County Emergency Communications. “When every second counts, having more accurate location information can make a real difference.” The system is funded through North Carolina’s Emergency Telephone System Fund; no local tax dollars are being spent.

Development & growth

Industrial site due diligence is underway in Butner. Engineering firm Kittleson and Associates is conducting due diligence on a proposed industrial site in Butner following a Granville County Board of Commissioners vote June 1. The project is grant-funded by the NC Railroad Company. No site address or acreage was disclosed in the public notice.

Granville County is moving toward a solid waste franchise. Commissioners directed the county attorney to draft a contract and franchise ordinance for residential solid waste collection in unincorporated Granville County. A contract award for convenience site operations was also on the table at the June 15 meeting. Both items signal the county is formalizing its approach to waste management outside town limits.

Schools

Granville County Public Schools sees a 7.8% per-pupil funding increase. The adopted FY 2026–2027 county budget increases per-pupil local funding to $2,563, up from the prior year. GCPS and associated charter schools will receive a combined $20.6 million for operations. The county also allocated $2.2 million in capital funding for schools and is carrying $3.1 million in debt service for prior capital projects. Granville County funds 25% of Vance-Granville Community College’s main campus and 100% of its South Campus. Brenda Williamson was appointed to the VGCC Board of Trustees at the June 1 meeting.

Out & about

GAP Spray Park closed indefinitely due to drought. As of June 15, Granville County has closed the spray park at Granville Athletic Park due to extreme and exceptional drought conditions — the most severe categories tracked by NOAA. The county will monitor conditions and reopen when they improve. Anyone who pre-paid a spray park reservation is eligible for a full refund; contact the GAP Reservations office at 919-693-3716.

July 4: Declaration of Independence read on the Oxford courthouse steps. Mark Pace will lead a public reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Granville County Courthouse on Saturday, July 4. Time was not listed in the county’s announcement.

Granville County Tourism TDA public hearing: June 30. The Granville County Tourism Development Authority will hold a public meeting and public hearing on its proposed FY 2026–2027 budget on Tuesday, June 30, at 2 p.m. at Days Inn & Suites, 913 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave, Oxford. A Microsoft Teams option is available. Those wishing to attend or participate virtually must register with Tourism Director Angela Allen by June 29.

Soil and Water Conservation District filing closes July 6. Candidates seeking the Granville County Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor seat have until 5 p.m. on July 6 to file. The filing period opened June 8.

More county coverage: Franklin County · Granville County. Have a tip? Send it here.

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Wake Forest Bought Shady 80 for a Public Park. It Never Built One — and Now It’s Closing It.

June 25, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

The deed and the Wake County Open Space grant the town itself points to show the 80 acres known as “Shady 80” were bought two decades ago for public passive recreation — walking trails, picnic areas, a parking lot. Wake Forest never built any of it. Now the town is closing the land to everyone.

When the Town of Wake Forest posted “No Trespassing” signs across Shady 80 on June 19, it told residents the wooded tract behind Heritage High School had never been open to the public and could only ever be used for “passive recreation.” As Wake Forest Matters first reported, the closure swept in not just the electric dirt bikes and six-foot jumps the town was worried about, but hikers and dog-walkers too.

Public records tell a fuller story. The 80.45-acre tract was not ordinary surplus land. Wake Forest acquired it in 2005 with the help of a Wake County Open Space grant and a conveyance from The Trust for Public Land, the national land-conservation nonprofit — bought, in the words of the grant agreement, for “property acquisition and conservation.” The same agreement the town now cites to justify the closure also describes what the land was approved to become: a public park.

The paper trail: how Wake Forest got Shady 80

A special warranty deed recorded in the Wake County Register of Deeds (Book 11599, Page 1033) shows The Trust for Public Land conveyed the 80.45-acre tract — “Tract A,” which the deed indexes under Old Crawford Road — to the Town of Wake Forest in September 2005 for $2,232,500, according to county property records. The land had belonged to two families, the Ammonses and the Lucases, who sold it to the conservation group in 2004; it passed to the town a year later. Wake County’s 2024 revaluation now assesses the tract at $2,568,302. The parcel is zoned Open Space, holds no buildings, and — because the town owns it — has been fully tax-exempt since 2006: 69.56 acres of woodland and 10.89 acres of Smith Creek floodplain.

Paired with the deed is the document the town has leaned on all along: a grant agreement between Wake County and the Town of Wake Forest. The county’s Board of Commissioners, the agreement recites, “approved the Grant Recipient’s application for Open Space Funding,” committing up to $1,116,243.75 toward the purchase — roughly half the price. Its stated purpose is “property acquisition and conservation.” In plain terms: more than $1.1 million in public conservation money helped Wake Forest buy Shady 80.

What the grant actually says

The town has repeatedly pointed to one provision — section 6.3(b) — as the reason the land is limited to “passive recreation.” That section does restrict the property. But it does not say keep the public out. It lists what the grant approved the land for:

“picnic sites (formal and informal), formal walking and jogging trails, informal Open Play areas, comfort station and parking.”

That is the blueprint for a public passive-recreation park — trails to walk, places to picnic, a lot to park in. The same section warns that if the town “utilizes land purchased with County Open Space Grant funding for any reason not approved herein,” it “agrees to return any funds received to the County.”

Other provisions point the same way. Section 6.3(d) says property opened for public use under the grant “shall be open to entry and use equally by all persons.” Section 7.6 states flatly that “there is legal public access to the Property from a public roadway.” And the agreement makes using the property “in a manner materially inconsistent with the purposes of this Grant Agreement” an event of default — one that lets Wake County demand its money back.

The town’s case

Town officials say the records cut their way, not against them. In the June 19 statement announcing the signs, Communications & Public Affairs Director Bill Crabtree wrote that crews had put up “No Trespassing” signage “on numerous occasions, only to have the signs removed or destroyed,” and that officials had found “well over 60” electric bikes on the property on at least one occasion, along with “several jumps – some as tall as six feet.” The destruction of trees and vegetation, the statement said, was itself “a violation of the 2005 grant agreement between Wake County and Wake Forest that requires the property to be maintained as open space and used predominantly for passive recreation.”

Asked whether the closure was permanent and why the entire tract had to close, Crabtree told Wake Forest Matters in writing on June 25 that the land “was never open for public use” and “was never designated, authorized, or maintained as a public recreation area or part of the Town’s public trail system.” He framed it as a liability problem: “Should someone get hurt jumping their bike on earthen ramps as high as six feet tall, the Town would be legally responsible.” Erosion and damage, he added, made it impractical to close “just the damaged spots.”

On enforcement, Crabtree said officers had issued “seven verbal warnings and no citations,” and that the town was “not aware of any reported injuries.” The town has “scheduled a meeting to discuss the full extent of the damage, remediation options, and possible next steps,” he said, but has no “specific timeline” for any future public access.

“Nothing’s been done”

For residents who have used the woods for years, the town’s never-open-to-the-public line is the part that rankles — because the public did use it, and because the park the grant envisioned never arrived.

Mary Jo De Laere has hiked Shady 80 with her dog for nearly a decade. “My dog and I have been hiking Shady 80 for over nine years,” she told Wake Forest Matters. “It is a wonderful area and yes, we participated in what the town wanted to know what to do with Shady 80. But nothing’s been done and nothing’s been proposed. It’s disappointing that this town feel it is necessary to close the area to hikers.”

Her account squares with the town’s own. Crabtree said Wake Forest “hosted public input meetings in 2018 with the intention of developing a master plan,” but “once we learned that the property could only be used for ‘passive recreation,’ we chose not to proceed.” The agreement that spelled out the passive-recreation limit, though, is the one the town signed in 2005 — thirteen years before that 2018 meeting.

Andy, a Wake Forest mountain biker of 40 years who also works as a licensed engineer, told the newsroom he does not dispute the safety concern. “I understand the Town’s decision to remove the jumps at Shady 80 due to legitimate safety concerns, particularly regarding the increasing use of throttle-powered electric motorcycles,” he wrote. (He asked that his last name not be used.) But Andy said he offered to help maintain the trails and emailed the mayor and two commissioners at their town addresses — and got, in his words, “zero response.”

The town’s own parks chief has sounded less final than its press releases. In an email exchange a resident shared with Wake Forest Matters, Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources Director Ruben Wall indicated the town would look at reopening the property for passive recreation once the damage was assessed and addressed — a softer posture than Crabtree’s “no specific timeline,” and his pointed note that the town would weigh “opening (not reopening)” the land.

The questions the records raise

None of this means the town is wrong about the dirt jumps. Six-foot earthen ramps and throttle-powered e-bikes are nowhere on the grant’s approved-use list, they carry real liability, and the erosion they caused is exactly what an open-space grant is meant to prevent. On that narrow point, the records back the town.

The harder questions are the ones the same records raise:

• Where is the park? The grant approved walking and jogging trails, picnic areas, open play areas, a comfort station and parking. Twenty years on, the town’s own June 19 statement calls Shady 80 “80 acres of undeveloped land.” None of the approved facilities were ever built.

• Does “passive recreation only” mean “no public at all”? Walking and hiking are passive recreation. The grant requires public land bought with its funds to be “open to entry and use equally by all persons.” The town is now barring entry entirely.

• What does Wake County say? The county can demand repayment of its $1.1 million if open-space land is used outside the grant. Whether the county was consulted about a full public closure — and whether it views the closure, or the two undeveloped decades, as consistent with the agreement — is unresolved.

• Why was 2018 a surprise? The town says it dropped a master plan in 2018 after learning the land was limited to passive recreation. That limit is written into the 2005 agreement the town signed.

What’s next

The town says a staff meeting on the damage and “remediation options” is scheduled, with no public timeline attached. As an alternative for riders, Wake Forest continues to point to its first skate park and pump track, planned near E. Carroll Joyner Park; the board accepted more than $4 million in hospitality-tax funding toward it in June, though no groundbreaking date has been set. The closure also lands in the middle of a wider town fight over electric bikes.

The Town of Wake Forest answered Wake Forest Matters’ questions about the closure in detail, through Crabtree; those answers appear throughout this story. The questions the grant raises for Wake County — whether the county that put up the money was consulted, and how it views two decades with no park and a full public closure — are the subject of continued reporting. The paved Smith Creek/Sanford Creek Greenway alongside Shady 80 remains open.

Live near Shady 80, or know the history of this land? Send us a tip. Wake Forest Matters covers Wake Forest and Northern Wake and how the town governs itself.

Editor’s note: This follow-up draws on the recorded 2005 deed conveying the tract from The Trust for Public Land to the Town of Wake Forest and on the Wake County Open Space grant agreement the town provided to Wake Forest Matters. The Town of Wake Forest responded through Communications & Public Affairs Director Bill Crabtree, whose statements are quoted above. Residents quoted by name or first name consented to the use of their words; one mountain biker asked that his last name be withheld. Questions for Wake County, which provided the Open Space grant, are the focus of continued reporting.

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Mayor Clapsaddle Breaks 2-2 Tie to Appoint Daniel Hupp to Wake Forest Board of Commissioners

June 24, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

After three deadlocked rounds, a nomination motion, and a second 2-2 tie, the mayor who set this entire chain in motion cast the deciding vote — and told both finalists he expects to see one of them sworn in again in December 2027.

WAKE FOREST, NC — It took four rounds of voting, a deliberation between commissioners unlike anything the town’s appointment process had yet produced, and a tie-breaking vote by Mayor Ben Clapsaddle to put Daniel Hupp on the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners Tuesday night.

“I know both individuals, both personally and professionally,” Clapsaddle said before casting the deciding vote. “Both of you are just outstanding people. The way I look at it, it’s not today, but it’s when you will be sworn in as a commissioner. It’s either today or it’s going to be December of 2027.”

Then he voted for Hupp.

Clapsaddle’s vote was not just a procedural detail. It was the closing of a circle.

When Clapsaddle won the mayoral race in November 2025, he vacated a commissioner seat — the vacancy that launched the open, public appointment process Commissioner Haseeb Fatmi introduced on his first night in office. That process was used to fill Clapsaddle’s seat in February. When Fatmi then resigned to join the NC State Senate, the same process was used again to fill his. And when four commissioners deadlocked 2-2 for three straight rounds Tuesday night, unable to break toward either Hupp or finalist Joan Falvey, the charter required the mayor to step in.

The man who started the chain ended it.

The Vote

The board split cleanly and held there. Commissioners Faith Cross and Nicolas Sliwinski voted for Hupp; Commissioners Keith Shackleford and Adam Wright voted for Falvey. The same 2-2 result, three times.

After round two, Town Clerk Evelyn Wright announced another tie. Clapsaddle then asked the question no one had said out loud: “I don’t know where we’re at on that. We need to find one more vote for one of these people. What are y’all seeing as the path forward?”

What followed was thirty minutes of commissioners explaining themselves on the record — a transparency that the town’s voluntary process made possible and that no law required.

What the Board Said

Wright went first. He had voted for Falvey twice. His number two was Hupp, he said, but there was one thing that put her over.

“I’ll just put it out there,” Wright said. “I think I would appreciate another female voice on the board. We get called the boys club way too much for my comfort.” He also cited Falvey’s investment in downtown Wake Forest — she and her husband had taken a historic building on White Street and built Broadsides, a social gathering space — and her background in large-scale event production as relevant to the town’s coming performing arts theater.

Shackleford, who had voted for Hupp both times, pushed back. He had served as board liaison to the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Advisory Board and had watched Hupp work up close — through a master plan, through two iterations of a skate park dispute over location, through the mechanics of running a volunteer advisory board.

“He came in with a 90-day plan, knowing exactly what he was going to do to start that process,” Shackleford said. “That was a bit of forethought there.” He flagged one moment in particular. When Hupp was asked about the UDO — Wake Forest’s Unified Development Ordinance — his framing was this: it’s the citizens’ plan.

“That’s something that took me a while to figure out,” Shackleford said. “These plans are not ours. They are not the board’s. We vote on them, but these are the citizens’ plans. That just went a little deeper.”

Cross had also voted for Hupp. She laid it out methodically: the 90-day plan, the housing affordability discussion and an ADU proposal he raised, six years on Parks and Rec culminating in a chairmanship, a Red Cross disaster services background she said she hadn’t known about.

“Those are major issues for the town,” Cross said of housing and affordability. “Yes, it’s important to be an inclusive and caring community. That is important. But it also comes down to things like: are we an affordable community? Those are the important pieces. The actual structure and function.”

Neither Wright nor Shackleford moved.

They voted a third time. 2-2 again.

The Motion That Sent It to the Mayor

After three deadlocked rounds, the nomination-and-ballot process was exhausted. Under the procedures the board had approved at the meeting’s start, two paths remained: schedule a new round of interviews at a future meeting, or move to motion and vote — the traditional method where a tie goes to the mayor.

Town Attorney Nathan McKinney explained the distinction on the record. Under nomination and ballot, the mayor doesn’t vote; it’s a ballot, not an up-or-down question. Under motion and vote, a tie goes to the mayor.

Sliwinski made the motion. “Mayor, I’d like to make a motion to appoint Daniel Hupp to the vacant commissioner seat.”

Cross seconded.

There was a brief exchange about whether the person named in the motion had a structural advantage. Clapsaddle addressed it directly: if he voted against, the motion would fail and a new motion could be made. No automatic edge. But he was clear he didn’t want to push the decision six weeks to August.

“Part of me wants to absolutely get this done, because I don’t want to put people through six weeks of having to wonder.”

The vote: Cross and Sliwinski for, Shackleford and Wright opposed. 2-2, a fourth time.

Under Section 3.2 of the Town of Wake Forest Charter, the mayor votes when commissioners are equally divided. Clapsaddle talked about both candidates one more time. He said he’d see one of them at this dais regardless.

Then: “I vote in favor of the motion, and my vote is in favor of Danny Hupp being the next appointed commissioner of Wake Forest.”

Motion carries.

Hupp Under the Lights

Hupp was the third candidate interviewed Tuesday night, after Abigail Black and Joan Falvey. He opened warmly — a shout-out to his wife Debra, who was in New York, a nod to his daughter Catherine in the audience — and sat down for questions.

The first one flattened him.

Padgett asked about the council-manager form of government and the respective roles of the board and the town manager. It is the expected question. Hupp did not have an answer.

“From the very beginning, you’re stumping me,” he said. “I’m not really sure of the respective answer for that question.” He paused, asked for a moment, then told Padgett to move on. “I’ll be very honest with you.”

He didn’t recover that question. But he didn’t try to fake his way through it either. What came next showed why commissioners had ranked him high enough to make the finals twice.

By the social media question — well into the session — he had settled. “From the beginning, those questions were really stumping me. Now I’m liking these questions. I’m just being honest.” He told the board not to judge him by the stumbles alone. “Take to heart everything that I provide.”

He knew the commissioners personally. He told Wright he liked that Wright used AI. He mentioned seeing Cross at the Active Aging Center recently. He cited Parks and Rec collaborations with Sliwinski. He told a story about keeping the Thorn Road community pool open during COVID as HOA president — working with the health department, setting rules, getting buy-in from homeowners — and threaded it to the question about divided community opinions.

He proposed accessory dwelling units as a housing tool worth exploring. He flagged Raleigh’s growth ranking and its downstream effects on Wake Forest population. He mentioned a Red Cross disaster services background.

He opened his closing with a personal detail: a hearing disability he’s navigated his whole life. He closed with Hemingway: “When people talk, listen completely.”

He had 25 seconds left. He yielded the floor.

The Finalists, and How the Pool Shifted

The final slate of five was not the group the town originally announced.

After the June 3–17 application period closed, 13 residents submitted applications: Abigail Noelle Black, Jonathan Clayton, Joan Falvey, Norma Harris-Allen, Daniel Hupp, Michael Infinger, Michele Joyner-Dinwiddie, Hassan Kingsberry, Joseph Longoria, Andrew MacDougall, Gregory McDaniel, L. Dallas Spruill, and Ricardo Yudi.

Each commissioner scored their top seven and submitted rankings to Town Clerk Evelyn Wright. The scoring produced a tie for fifth place — so the town planned to interview six candidates. Two withdrew before the session: Infinger and Spruill. That opened the fifth finalist spot to the next highest-ranked applicant, Gregory McDaniel. Clapsaddle announced the change from the dais before the first interview began.

The five who appeared Tuesday night were Black, Falvey, Hupp, Joseph Longoria, and McDaniel.

The Legal Framework

McKinney, after the vote, noted that the board had more than satisfied its legal obligations. Under Section 3.3(c) of the 1973 Town Charter — enacted by the NC General Assembly as Chapter 273, House Bill 748 — and NC General Statute 160A-63, the board was required only to appoint a qualified person by majority vote. The open application window, public scoring, extra meeting, and interviews were all voluntary.

The board chose to do them anyway. Town Manager Kip Padgett made the point explicit, after Hupp was sworn in.

“The last seven minutes or so are what is required by law to fill this seat,” Padgett said. “Which means that all three and a half hours tonight, all the weekend time spent going over applications, all the time spent reviewing, all the time spent reading my convoluted emails — those were efforts that this board made to do right by this. And they didn’t have to do the vast majority of it. But they did it.”

Who Hupp Is

Hupp was not unknown to this process. He applied for the first vacancy too — the seat Clapsaddle left behind. He was selected as a finalist in February, interviewed publicly, and received Cross’s vote through all three rounds. He lost when Fatmi joined Shackleford and Wright to give Sliwinski the majority on the third ballot.

He came back.

His deepest prior role in Wake Forest town government: chair of the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Advisory Board, which he has held since at least 2020 and is currently serving in his second term — an appointment made by the same Board of Commissioners that elevated him Tuesday. His advisory board term runs through December 2027, but his BOC seat runs through December 2029. He will need to vacate the chair, creating an advisory board opening the BOC will need to fill.

Commissioner Wright flagged it before the meeting adjourned: “I want to apologize to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board for needing a new chair. But it’s par for the course.”

The FY27 budget adopted by the board June 16 includes $4.6 million in parks funding. Hupp arrives at the dais with more direct institutional knowledge of that investment than any other commissioner.

Clapsaddle noted, between voting rounds, that this appointment had felt different in weight from the February one. “This one to me has felt a little different because it is three and a half years, and the seat we’re replacing was a recent election seat.”

The Irony That Runs Through All of It

Sliwinski’s fingerprints are on nearly every turn of this story. He competed in February for Clapsaddle’s seat, won through the process Fatmi built, and was sworn in to a board that included Fatmi. When Fatmi left for the Senate, Sliwinski became a voting member on the body that would choose his replacement. Tuesday night, he voted for Hupp in every round — then made the motion that sent the tie to the mayor.

Fatmi, for his part, did not rank Hupp in his top five applicants in February. He backed Falvey in the first two rounds, then flipped to Sliwinski on the third ballot. The seat he vacated is now held by the man he passed over. Fatmi told WFM earlier this month that his five months on the board were among the most meaningful of his public life.

And the process that determined all of it — the open application, the public interviews, the on-the-record vote — was the one Fatmi introduced on his first night as a commissioner, before anyone knew he would need it applied to his own chair.

The Swearing-In

Hupp was sworn in immediately following the vote. Town Clerk Evelyn Wright administered the oath. His daughter Catherine watched from the audience. His wife Debra was in New York.

Clapsaddle offered a second, ceremonial swearing-in on August 4 with Debra present. Then Hupp took a seat at the dais.

Commissioner Sliwinski moved over to make room.

His term expires December 2029.

What’s Next

Hupp joins a board navigating an active agenda: the new parks funding, ongoing road planning, and development decisions that will define Wake Forest for years. He is the second commissioner appointed rather than elected to the current board in six months.

The Board of Commissioners meets next on the first Tuesday of July at 6 p.m. in the Board Chambers, second floor of Town Hall, 301 S. Brooks St. Meetings are available via the town’s public meetings portal and on WFTV 10.

View this story on wakeforestmatters.com →

Granville and Wake County Are Moving Early-Voting Sites for November — What It Means for Voters

June 23, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

Where you vote early this November is changing across the Wake Forest Matters region — and in Granville County, the decision split the elections board straight down party lines, sending the final call to the state.

In the span of four days this month, two local elections boards reshaped their early-voting maps: Wake County dropped a long-running site at N.C. State, and Granville County voted to close one site near Creedmoor, open one in its rural north, and pull another out of downtown Oxford. Here’s what changed, who decided it, and what’s still unsettled.

What happened

Granville County: a party-line overhaul

At a special meeting Tuesday, June 16, at the Granville County Convention & Expo Center, the county Board of Elections voted along party lines — the board’s two Democrats opposed — to remake the county’s early-voting lineup, according to WUNC. The plan would eliminate the early-voting site at the South Branch Library in the Creedmoor area, add a site in Stovall in the county’s rural north, and move Oxford’s early-voting site from the downtown public works building to the Expo Center, about five miles south of town.

Because the vote was not unanimous, it does not take effect on its own: under state law, a divided county plan goes to the State Board of Elections, which will make the final decision for November. The board also took up relocating the Wilton precinct’s Election Day site to Tar River Elementary on Philo White Road after the permanent closure of Wilton Elementary School, per the county’s meeting notice.

Wake County: N.C. State’s Talley Center dropped

Four days earlier, on Friday, June 12, the Wake County Board of Elections set its own general-election sites, dropping the Talley Student Center at N.C. State — an early-voting location in the 2012, 2018, 2020 and 2024 general elections — in favor of the university’s Business Services Building about a mile away, NC Newsline reported. A motion by Democratic board member Gerry Cohen to keep Talley failed 3-2; the board then approved the plan without Talley unanimously, which kept the county’s map out of the state board’s hands. Wake’s plan still includes Sunday hours across its sites, and statewide, early voting runs Oct. 15-31.

That plan also settles where Wake Forest votes early this fall. For November, the county’s approved lineup lists the town’s early-voting site as the Joyner Park Community Center, 701 Harris Road — one of 18 early-voting sites Wake County will open countywide for the general election, according to the Board of Elections. That is a different location than the town used in this spring’s March primary, when Wake Forest’s early voting was held at the Northern Regional Center at 350 E. Holding Avenue. The Northern Regional Center is not among the county’s 18 general-election early-voting sites.

How we got here

Both votes flow from a 2024 state law that stripped the governor of the power to appoint elections boards and handed it to the state auditor, Republican Dave Boliek — a shift that gave Republicans majorities on the State Board and county boards alike, as NC Newsline and Carolina Public Press have reported. Every county board must submit its early-voting plan to the State Board by July 24; where a county board doesn’t agree unanimously, the State Board chooses among the competing plans, likely in August.

Granville and Wake are not alone. Carolina Public Press reports that boards in Jackson County (over a Western Carolina University site), Guilford County (N.C. A&T and UNC-Greensboro) and Columbus County have all fought over campus and access sites this cycle — a near-repeat of the disputes that sent students to court before the spring primary, a case a federal judge dismissed.

The debate

In Granville, board chair Larue Ulshafer, a Republican, framed the new map as advancing a goal of free and equal voting across the north, south and center of the county, which he attributed to Auditor Boliek, according to WUNC. The board’s Republican majority said it wanted to keep the Creedmoor-area site but couldn’t afford both it and the new Stovall location, and pointed to the county commission for not adding money.

Democrat Teresa Gilreath, who voted no, argued that a county board shouldn’t take its direction from state leaders, WUNC reported. Residents pushed back at a tense hearing: Butner’s Kristen Hefner noted that the two sites being moved sit in areas with large Black populations, and Creedmoor’s Gary Munn argued the South Branch Library site matters because it sits next to a community college campus. WUNC reported that the Stovall area voted heavily for President Donald Trump in 2024, while precincts in Butner, Creedmoor and Oxford backed Democrat Kamala Harris.

In Wake, Republican board member Donna Williams said the Business Services Building is easier for parking, while Cohen argued against making voting harder for the tens of thousands who live, study and work at N.C. State, per NC Newsline. Board chair Keith Weatherly said he had spoken with Dallas Woodhouse — a former GOP operative hired by the auditor’s office to work with county boards — but described it as a general discussion with no directive, NC Newsline reported. Several speakers at both meetings said they believed the auditor’s office was steering local site decisions; the auditor’s office has said those decisions rest with local boards and the state.

What it means and what’s next

For voters in the WFM region, the practical stakes are concrete. In Granville — which covers Butner, Creedmoor, Oxford and Stem — the early-voting map now hinges on the State Board of Elections, expected to settle split county plans in August, before early voting opens Oct. 15. In Wake County, the plan is set because it passed unanimously, and the county has now posted its general-election sites — Wake Forest’s is the Joyner Park Community Center on Harris Road.

Anyone who wants to weigh in can submit comment to their county board before the plans are finalized, and the State Board’s August decisions on divided counties — Granville among them — will be public. We’ll track both.

Related: WFM News · Granville County · This Week in Franklin & Granville Counties · Wake Forest Government Guide.

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This Week in Franklin & Granville Counties — June 22, 2026

June 22, 2026 • Read on wakeforestmatters.com →

Granville County adopted a $92.9 million budget and held the tax rate flat — then, a day later, its elections board voted along party lines to redraw the county’s early-voting map. Franklin County took public comment on two new cell towers, and Louisburg heads into a packed budget night this week.

Here’s your Monday read on the week that was — and the week ahead — across Franklin and Granville counties. Every item traces to the public record.

At the meetings

• Granville adopted its FY2026–27 budget. At their June 15 regular meeting at the Granville County Convention & Expo Center in Oxford, commissioners approved a $92,946,976 general fund budget — up 2.1% — and kept the county tax rate flat at $0.631 per $100 of valuation (the fire-district rate stays at $0.06). The same night, they adopted the new fee schedule and pay plan and took up appointments to the library, planning, and animal-control boards (budget overview). Details below.

• Granville’s elections board redrew the early-voting map — on a party-line vote. A day after the budget, on Tuesday, June 16, the Granville County Board of Elections voted along party lines — its two Democrats opposed — to eliminate the early-voting site at the South Branch Library in the Creedmoor area, add one in Stovall in the county’s rural north, and move Oxford’s early-voting site from the downtown public works building to the Expo Center about five miles south. Because the vote wasn’t unanimous, the State Board of Elections will have the final say for November. The changes are part of a wave of early-voting revisions across North Carolina since Republicans gained majorities on county election boards under a 2024 law shifting appointment power to the Republican state auditor; at a tense hearing, residents argued the moves cut access near the community college in Creedmoor and in downtown Oxford, while the board’s majority cited cost and said it couldn’t fund both the Creedmoor site and the new one in Stovall (WUNC; county notice).

• Franklin County weighed two cell towers. The Franklin County Board of Commissioners met in special session Monday, June 15, at 6 p.m. in the Franklin Plaza Senior Center for a single purpose: a public hearing on proposed telecommunications towers on parcels off Dick Baker Road and Strickland Road (meeting notice).

• Louisburg worked through its budget. The Louisburg Town Council held its regular meeting June 9 — taking up the Tar River regional hazard-mitigation plan among other business — after a string of budget sessions (May 21, May 28, and June 4). The big night is still ahead: a June 23 special meeting to adopt the FY2026–27 budget (more in What’s Next).

Development & growth

• Backyard homes and subdivision rules, in Granville. Alongside the budget, commissioners held public hearings June 15 on two Land Development Code amendments. One would allow detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — backyard cottages — on lots that already have a main house, with standards to match. The other would reshape open-space rules for new major subdivisions, splitting the requirement into a minimum 5% active and 5% passive recreation (it’s now a flat 10% active) and adding streetscape buffers along state-maintained roads (hearing notice).

• One hauler for unincorporated Granville? Also on the June 15 agenda: a first reading of an exclusive residential solid-waste franchise that would go to GFL Environmental for the county’s unincorporated areas, plus a vendor decision on convenience-site operations. Under state law a county franchise needs a second reading before it’s final, so watch for that next step (county agendas).

• Towers, here too. Franklin County’s hearing centered on cell towers off Dick Baker and Strickland roads — and Louisburg’s June 23 agenda includes a cell-tower amendment of its own (705 Retail Way), the kind of infrastructure call that tends to draw the neighbors who’d see it.

Public safety

• Where Granville’s safety dollars go. The new budget funds the Sheriff’s Office and Detention Center at $12.4 million — covering patrols, the jail, school resource officers, and courthouse security — and puts $3.8 million toward the EMS system run by Granville Health System. Granville-Vance Public Health gets $1.27 million (budget overview).

• “Exceptional” drought. Granville County reports the entire county is in extreme-to-exceptional drought — the most severe level NOAA uses — and on June 15 closed the spray park at the Granville Athletic Park until conditions ease, with refunds for anyone who’d reserved it (GAP Reservations, 919-693-3716) (county notice).

• Two retiring K-9s. Granville commissioners signed off on the medical retirement and transfer of a Sheriff’s Office K-9 on June 15, and Louisburg’s council will consider surplusing a police K-9 on June 23 — the paperwork end of police work, on both sides of the county line.

Schools

• Education is the biggest line in Granville’s budget. Schools and colleges take about $27.3 million — 23% of the operating budget. Granville County Public Schools and the charters its students attend get $20.6 million in operating money, which the county pegs at $2,563 per pupil, up 7.8%, plus $2.2 million in capital and $3.1 million in debt service. The county also covers a quarter of Vance-Granville Community College’s main campus and all of its south campus.

• A school closure is moving a voting precinct. Because Wilton Elementary School has permanently closed, the elections board’s plan also relocates the Wilton precinct’s Election Day site to the Tar River Elementary gym on Philo White Road, near Franklinton — both inside the Wilton precinct (elections notice).

Out & about

• Spray park closed; bigger park upgrades funded. The Granville Athletic Park spray pad is offline until the drought eases, but the new budget sets money aside to refresh GAP itself — new playground equipment in the older section, footbridge repairs, repaved lots, and a resurfaced sports-pavilion floor.

• Tourism budget hearing, June 30. The Granville County Tourism Development Authority meets Tuesday, June 30, at 2 p.m. at the Days Inn & Suites in Oxford for a public hearing on its proposed FY2026–27 budget; to join by Teams, register with Tourism Director Angela Allen by June 29 (hearing notice).

What’s Next

• Louisburg, Tuesday, June 23, 5:15 p.m. (Karl T. Pernell Public Safety Complex, 104 Wade Ave.): a public hearing and vote on the FY2026–27 budget, a cell-tower amendment to the Louisburg Plaza Master Plan (705 Retail Way), a rezoning on Sandalwood Avenue, ordinance changes on parking fines and firearms, and the surplus police K-9.

• Granville tourism budget hearing — Tuesday, June 30, 2 p.m., Oxford.

• The early-voting plan now heads to the State Board of Elections, which settles split decisions from county boards ahead of November.

More local government, every week: Franklin County · Granville County · all WFM news. See something we should cover? Send us a tip.

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That’s the week. We’ll see you next Sunday.
— Wake Forest Matters

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Shady 80 is closing. The unofficial mountain-bike and walking trails in the woods behind Heritage High School are being shut to the public, the Town of Wake Forest confirmed this week, and “No Trespassing” signs go up Friday, June 19. After that, anyone who steps onto the property can be charged with trespassing.

The basics

• What: Wake Forest is closing Shady 80, the unofficial mountain-bike and walking trails behind Heritage High School.

• When: “No Trespassing” signs go up Friday, June 19. Trespassing charges are possible after that.

• Who it affects: All users — bikers, hikers and walkers. The Smith Creek/Sanford Creek Greenway nearby stays open.

• Why: Heavy electric-dirt-bike use and dirt jumps up to six feet tall. The town calls it a safety and liability decision, not an environmental one.

• What’s next: The town points to a planned skate park and pump track near Joyner Park. The board just accepted hospitality-tax money toward it, but there’s no groundbreaking date.

“The property is closed to the public,” Bill Crabtree, the town’s communications and public affairs director, told Wake Forest Matters. The soft trail back there, he said, is “not part of that designated public trail system and is not open to the public.” And it isn’t just bikes. The closure covers “all unauthorized users and activities, including biking, walking, hiking, motorized/electric bike use, and use of any unapproved dirt-jump features.”

That’s wider than most riders expected. Hikers and walkers are shut out too. The paved Smith Creek/Sanford Creek Greenway running alongside the property stays open.

Why Wake Forest Is Closing Shady 80

Crabtree said the town learned earlier this year that electric bikes were getting heavy use on the property. When officials went out to look, they found jumps “some as tall as six feet” — enough, he said, to raise “significant safety and liability concerns.”

Officers started running people off in late May, telling cyclists to stop riding and to leave the vegetation alone, and filing field contact reports on the people they talked to. Public Works installs the signs Friday. Enforcement after that falls to the police department.

No, the EPA Didn’t Force the Closure

Riders had been trading a different explanation: that the jumps sat too close to Smith Creek and that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had gotten wind of it. Not so, the town says. Officials “initially believed there could be environmental regulatory issues involved but no longer believe that to be the case,” Crabtree said.

What Wake Forest Riders Are Saying

Word spread first on the Wake Forest Mountain Biking Facebook group, and the reaction there was part resignation, part anger. A lot of riders saw it coming. They blamed the kids ripping around on electric dirt bikes, and a smaller crew that kept rebuilding the jumps after the town had already told them to stop. One rider put it plainly: if people just rode the trails instead of constantly digging and reshaping them, nobody would have noticed. Another remembered the backlash when the jumps first went up in 2020, and the trash that came with them, and figured a crackdown this close to a high school was only a matter of time.

Plenty of others think the town overreacted. They point to the crashes at Heritage and Rogers and at NC 98 — far more dangerous, they argue, than a dirt jump — and note the town hasn’t fixed those. Some suspected the environmental line was a convenient excuse, the kind they say always surfaces when a mountain-bike trail gets closed. The town’s own answer, that this was never an environmental case, cuts the legs out from under that one.

The real worry is displacement. Close Shady 80, riders say, and the dirt bikes just move — to the streets, the parking lots, the greenway, maybe the reservoir trails next. People floated a petition, a paid trail ranger, showing up at Town Hall, and pushing for an actual bike park.

A New Skate Park and Pump Track in the Works

Asked what riders get instead, Crabtree pointed to a project already in design: Wake Forest’s first skate park and pump track, planned for 8.3 acres next to Devon Square and E. Carroll Joyner Park at 701 Harris Avenue. The plans include a skate track, a pump track, basketball and fitness courts, a pavilion, restrooms, parking, lighting, and a new road into the Joyner Park Community Center.

The money is starting to come together. At its June 16 meeting, the board voted to accept more than $4 million in Raleigh/Wake hospitality-tax funding that Commissioner Cross said would help pay for the skate park and pump track, along with a second phase at Flaherty Park. Even so, the full project carries an estimated $7.9 million price tag in the town’s capital plan, where it’s listed as PRCR-12, and the town hasn’t said when it expects to break ground. A pump track is built for bikes, but it’s not the dirt-jump line riders made at Shady 80.

Part of a Bigger Wake Forest E-Bike Fight

None of this is happening in a vacuum. As we reported in March, the town spent the winter tightening its e-bike rules — a January ordinance that banned motorized scooters and e-bikes from sidewalks, capped greenway speeds at 10 mph, and required helmets for riders under 16. Then came the March 7 “ride-out”: 20 to 30 kids, some as young as 11, snarling traffic on roads posted at 35 and 45. Police Chief Julius Jefferson warned that violators could be cited, arrested, and have their bikes impounded.

The pressure hasn’t let up. At the June 16 meeting, the board passed two more e-bike measures on its consent agenda — one letting the town impound e-bikes and other micromobility devices, the other adding civil penalties to the scooter and e-bike rules. No one raised the Shady 80 closure during the meeting’s public comment.

The Town Once Asked the Public About This Land

Here’s the part that stings for the people who ride out there. Wake County records show the town has owned the tract — 80.45 acres off Forestville Road, now assessed at about $2.6 million — since 2005. Back in May 2018, the town’s Recreation Advisory Board went looking for public input on what to do with the land, asking residents what “outdoor recreational activities” they wanted to see. Mountain bikers answered with shovels. Whatever grew out there in the years since, the town says, was never part of its official trail system. On Friday, the signs make it official.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Shady 80 closed?

Yes. The Town of Wake Forest confirmed the trails are closed to the public, with “No Trespassing” signs going up Friday, June 19.

Where is Shady 80?

It’s the unofficial trail network in the woods off Forestville Road and Foundation Drive, behind Heritage High School in Wake Forest.

Can you still hike or walk at Shady 80?

No. The closure applies to all users, including walking and hiking. The nearby Smith Creek/Sanford Creek Greenway stays open.

Why did Wake Forest close Shady 80?

The town cites heavy electric-dirt-bike use and dirt jumps up to six feet tall, calling it a safety and liability issue. Officials say it is not an environmental case.

Is the reservoir (“the Rez”) closing too?

There’s no word of that. Some riders fear it’s next, but the town has so far addressed only Shady 80.

Where can riders go instead?

The town points to a planned skate park and pump track near E. Carroll Joyner Park. In June the board accepted more than $4 million in hospitality-tax funding toward it (shared with a Flaherty Park project), though it hasn’t set a construction date.

Editor’s Note: Wake Forest Matters requested comment from the Town of Wake Forest for this story, and Communications & Public Affairs Director Bill Crabtree responded in writing; his answers are quoted above. This article also draws on the town’s FY2026–31 Capital Improvement Plan and proposed FY2026–27 budget, the June 16 Board of Commissioners agenda, the town’s January e-bike ordinance, Wake County property records, and discussion in the Wake Forest Mountain Biking Facebook group. We chose not to name individual commenters. If you ride Shady 80 or have information about the closure, kindly drop us a tip at tips@wakeforestmatters.com.

Eleven years ago today, on the evening of June 17, 2015, nine people gathered for their Wednesday Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Their faith asks them to welcome the stranger as they would welcome Christ, and they did, opening their doors to a young man none of them knew. The nine who opened those doors were Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson, the Emanuel Nine.

Then the stranger turned on them. He was twenty-one and white. For nearly an hour he sat inside the welcome they had given him, and then he stood and began shooting. He left behind a manifesto and photographs of himself draped in the flags of Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, and the Confederacy. He was not deranged but radicalized, schooled in a hatred far older than he was. What happened in that church was no aberration; it was a long inheritance.

He had not chosen Mother Emanuel at random. Denmark Vesey co-founded the church, and in 1822 he planned an uprising of the enslaved modeled on the Haitian Revolution. When the plot was betrayed, Charleston hanged Vesey and thirty-four others and burned his church to the ground. For two centuries, Black freedom in America has had an address, and white terror has always known where to find it.

The day before, on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump had ridden a golden escalator down to announce that he would make America great again, warning that the country was being overrun by people from somewhere else. I am not saying the one caused the other. I am saying they rhymed, that the gunman and the candidate were drawing from the same well, a well that had been poisoned long before either of them was born.

Reconstruction, and its undoing

That well has a history, and we’ve spent a century and a half refusing to face it. Reconstruction was the country’s first attempt to become a multiracial democracy, and it was not so much defeated as strangled, by politicians. No one did more to strangle it in the cradle than a son of Raleigh. Andrew Johnson, born in 1808 in a gambrel-roofed kitchen house that still stands as a historic site at Raleigh’s Mordecai Historic Park, became president when Lincoln was assassinated and set about betraying the peace Lincoln had died to win.

He pardoned ex-Confederates by the thousand, handed their state governments back to them, and fought the Fourteenth Amendment, the very promise of equal citizenship, openly urging Southern states to refuse it. Congress impeached him, the first president ever so charged; he escaped removal by a single vote, and historians still rank him among the worst men ever to hold the office. Reconstruction’s executioner was not a mob in a hood. It was the Raleigh-born occupant of the White House.

What Johnson began, others sealed. The devil’s bargain we call the Compromise of 1877 made Rutherford B. Hayes president in exchange for withdrawing the last federal troops from the South. When the soldiers left, so did the only shield between Black citizens and the men who called themselves Redeemers. They took power back through the rifle and the rope, most brazenly in the 1898 coup at Wilmington, where an armed white mob overthrew an elected biracial government right here in North Carolina, in what remains the only successful coup d’état in the nation’s history. Out of that violence rose Jim Crow, and over it the South laid a beautiful lie. The end of Reconstruction wasn’t an event. It was a political project, run from statehouses and the White House, with terror as its enforcement arm.

The end of Reconstruction wasn’t an event. It was a political project.

The men this state chose to honor

And the men who did it were not punished. They were honored. Charles Aycock, who spearheaded the white-supremacy campaign of 1898, was elected governor of North Carolina two years later on a vow to strip Black men of the vote. For generations, this state carved his name into its schoolhouses. William Rand Kenan, who commanded the rapid-fire gun that cut down Black residents in the streets of Wilmington, lent his name to the football stadium at the University of North Carolina, where it stands to this day. When a reporter finally surfaced his role in the massacre, the university did not take the name down; it quietly reassigned the honor to his son and moved on. That is how the forgetting works, and how the truth stays buried.

Historians call it the Lost Cause: the pseudo-history that recast treason in defense of slavery as a noble fight for “states’ rights,” and the enslaved as contented. It was not mere nostalgia; it was infrastructure. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and their allies raised monuments in two great waves, first as Jim Crow hardened around 1900, and again in the 1950s and ’60s as the civil rights movement advanced. Those statues were not for remembrance. They were warnings, cast in bronze.

From the rope to the ballot box

The same logic, laundered for the ballot box, became what the political scientist Angie Maxwell and her co-author Todd Shields call the Long Southern Strategy, not the brief, Nixon-era trick of the textbooks, but a decades-long project to rebrand a party in “these elements of Southern whiteness” and then, in Maxwell’s word, to “nationalize that.” In a candid 1981 interview, the Republican operative Lee Atwater described the mechanism: you start with the slur, and when you can no longer say it aloud, “you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff… you’re getting so abstract.”

The cruelty becomes policy; the policy hides behind economics. For forty years, the appeal stayed coded. Then, as Maxwell told the magazine Facing South, “Trump really uncoded it,” saying out loud what the dog whistle only implied and drawing in “whole other crowds.” This is not the work of a handful of extremists. It runs through statehouses and Sunday sermons, through cable networks and the feeds of influencers who have grown rich teaching white audiences to fear their neighbors.

That fear-mongering has a name. Researchers call it stochastic terrorism: the public demonization of a group until violence against it becomes statistically certain, even though no one can predict which isolated man will pull the trigger. The broadcaster never has to name a target or a date. He simply keeps the kindling dry and waits for the lightning.

The lightning

Two years after Charleston, the marchers at Charlottesville carried torches in August 2017 and chanted “Jews will not replace us”; one of them drove his car into a crowd and killed Heather Heyer, and President Donald Trump discovered “very fine people on both sides.”

The same replacement myth that animated the Charleston gunman then traveled the country: the synagogue in Pittsburgh, eleven dead; the Walmart in El Paso, twenty-three dead, the killer raving about a “Hispanic invasion”; the supermarket in Buffalo, ten Black shoppers murdered by an eighteen-year-old who had copied his manifesto almost word for word from the men before him. They picture themselves as lone wolves. They are nothing of the kind. They are echoes through history.

This is what we are living through: not a string of unrelated tragedies but the resurrection of white terror, generations after we assured ourselves that the collapse of Reconstruction was settled history. “Mob violence,” Maxwell reminds us, “is nothing new in the South,” the governors in the schoolhouse doorways, the beatings on the Alabama bridge, the dogs, the assassinations. It returns because we never told the truth about why it left, never confessed that this nation was built on stolen land and stolen people, and that the Lost Cause won the peace it had lost the war to keep.

And it is no longer coming only for Black Americans. The terror loosed at Mother Emanuel has widened its aim to everyone who would build a country out of difference: our immigrant neighbors, hunted in their workplaces and their homes; our LGBTQ+ neighbors, written out of the law and beaten in the street; our Jewish neighbors and our Muslim neighbors, menaced in the very places where they pray. And it is coming for anyone, of any color or creed, who insists that all of them belong here. It was always a war on the very idea of a shared country, and it has not laid down its arms.

Until we tell that truth, in our textbooks and our monuments, our politics and our pulpits, the blood will go on flowing, because a country that cannot name its disease can never be cured of it. So let us remember the nine of Mother Emanuel not as the victims of one deranged young man, but as the latest of the fallen in a war that never truly ended.

I do not write as a stranger

And that war is mine to help finish. I do not write as a stranger to this history. My own people first came to these shores in 1631; they owned other human beings; they wore the gray. My great-great-grandfather left a leg at Gettysburg, and his brothers never came home from Petersburg. In Franklin County, antebellum mansions still stand that carry my family’s name and the names of allied clans; one of them is now a wedding venue. I am a descendant of the men who built and defended the order this essay indicts. And I am a veteran of the United States military, the grandson of two men who served in the U.S. Army during WWII to break the back of tyranny abroad. I have inherited both the wound and the duty.

Nor do I write as a stranger to this place. The town I was born in, Wake Forest, began as a plantation. A New England physician named Calvin Jones worked these acres with enslaved people. Two of them, Grace and Penny, are among the first Black residents this community ever recorded, and Jones is the man who named the “Forest of Wake.” In 1832 he sold the plantation to the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, which two years later opened the school that became Wake Forest College. The school’s founder and every antebellum president owned human beings. As many as sixteen enslaved people, given to the college, were sold to fund it. And from Baptist pulpits, men defended all of it with the Bible, chapter and verse. The college was built by enslaved people, and the town that grew up around it was built on their backs.

The college left for Winston-Salem in 1956, carried there by the Reynolds tobacco fortune, a fortune rooted in the Virginia plantation where R. J. Reynolds’s father had enslaved scores of men, women, and children to grow and cure his tobacco. For most of two centuries, no one said any of this out loud. I grew up here, and no one ever taught me the history of the Forest of Wake, not in a public-school classroom, not anywhere in this town. Only in 2020 did Wake Forest University, through its Slavery, Race and Memory Project, finally apologize for having been, in its own words, “a full participant in the slave economy.” That apology is not the end of anything. It is simply what telling the truth looks like when a community decides to begin.

But the people this town held in bondage did not disappear into its silence. Tom Jeffries, who laid the stone wall that still rings the Seminary campus and planted its magnolias, had been born enslaved in Virginia. Out of bondage, the enslaved and their descendants built communities of their own. In the historic Northeast neighborhood, they founded Olive Branch Baptist in 1865, when Black worshippers broke from the white congregation on the college grounds. Older still is Friendship Chapel Baptist, which traces its roots to the bush harbor where the enslaved had gathered to pray in secret years before emancipation. They made their own freedom, and they made it long before this town was willing to say their names. The least the rest of us owe them now is to finish telling the truth.

This is the history of the ground we share, and it is on all of us to keep it. The Wake Forest Historical Museum has done the patient work of recovering it, so that it cannot be buried again; the rest of us have to make sure it is learned.

Wake Forest is no longer the small town I was born in. It has grown fast, and many who live here now were not born and raised here, as I was. But this place belongs to everyone who calls it home, and so does its unfinished work. Newcomer and native alike, we owe this town the truth of how it was made, and we owe one another the kind of community where everyone is in and no one is out. Our safety and our freedom are bound together, whether we like it or not. None of us is free until all of us are.

It falls to us

What was begun in 1865 was never finished. The war did not truly end at Appomattox; it slipped underground and changed its uniform. I am a millennial, and the truth is that finishing it falls to us. The generations before us brought us this far, through their courage and their blood, but they could not carry us over, and too many white Americans among them stayed captive to the Lost Cause and its comforts to even try. That excuse is spent. It is on us now to pick up the fight and carry it to its conclusion: to complete the Reconstruction that our great-great-grandfathers’ generation drowned in blood, to win at last the battle for a multiracial, pluralist democracy, to give back not one step, and to cross over into the promised land.

The labor ahead has a name: Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. It belongs to all of us. But the truth-telling, the confession, falls first to white Americans like me: the descendants of the men who fought for the wrong cause and the children who inherited their silence. Our ancestors refused to say it. We will not. We cannot let the forgetting begin anew.

We owe the nine of Mother Emanuel, and the unnumbered fallen before them, the truth our family withheld, and the future that only the truth can make. The telling begins with them. And the truth, finally told, is the only thing that will set us free of this cycle.

That story was true. It is now a liability.

In 1993, the last time anyone meaningfully touched the bones of how this town governs itself, roughly 7,500 people lived here. Today we are closing in on 65,000, with the town’s own projections putting us near 119,000 by 2040. We have grown more than eightfold. We are, by population, one of the twenty largest municipalities in North Carolina.

And the machine we use to govern all of it is, in every structural respect, the same machine we used when the part of Ligon Mill Road that I grew up on was still dirt and gravel.

That is not a complaint about any individual. It is an engineering problem.

The load has changed. The capacity has not.

Consider what we are actually asking of our local government now. A budget that runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars. A development pipeline reshaping entire corridors. A water and sewer system straining to keep pace with rooftops. And looming over all of it, the single largest public investment in this town’s history: a $1.09 billion federal grant to bring the S-Line passenger rail corridor through downtown Wake Forest, with service projected by the early 2030s. That project will remake our downtown, our property values, our traffic, and our tax base for the next fifty years.

Now consider who we ask to steward that. Five commissioners and a mayor, serving part-time, for token pay, meeting a couple of times a month, supported by a staff that has never grown in proportion to the town it serves, and advised, almost entirely, by the very administration they are supposed to be holding accountable.

This is not a knock on the people in those seats. It is a recognition of physics. You cannot exercise meaningful oversight of a billion-dollar transformation in your spare time. A part-time board, no matter how dedicated, cannot independently analyze a complex rezoning, a bond issuance, a transit-oriented development plan, and a public safety budget between a day job and a Tuesday night meeting. So they don’t. They rely on the staff’s read. The staff, also stretched thin and answerable to a single manager, gives them the read it has time to produce. And decisions worth tens of millions of dollars get made on the strength of a memo nobody had the capacity to challenge.

That is the Mayberry mindset, not as an insult, but as a diagnosis. It is the assumption, baked into our 1973-era charter, that this is a small place where small-scale, informal, part-time, trust-based governance is enough. It was. It isn’t anymore. And clinging to it while a billion dollars of rail and tens of thousands of new neighbors arrive is not charming. It is negligent.

Professionalize, before the stakes professionalize us

The fix is not to find better individuals to plug into a broken structure. The structure is the problem, and the structure is what a new charter changes.

Professionalize the board. A town this size needs commissioners who can treat the work as the serious job it has become — full-time, competitively compensated, able to attract qualified people from every walk of life and not just those wealthy enough to volunteer. Pay should be set by an independent citizen commission, not by politicians voting their own raises, so the question is depoliticized and honest.

Give the board its own staff. Right now, the people charged with overseeing the town manager depend almost entirely on that same manager’s staff for their information. That is not oversight; it is supervision in name only. A modern charter creates an independent legislative staff — a Commission Director and analysts who answer to the board, not the administration — so elected officials can ask hard questions and get answers that haven’t been pre-filtered by the department being questioned.

Modernize representation. At-large seats made sense when the whole town was one neighborhood. A community of 65,000 spread across districts with very different needs deserves district-based representation, so no corner of Wake Forest is governed by people who never have to answer to it.

Build in real fiscal and ethical guardrails. Independent audits reporting to the board, not the manager. Mandatory oversight committees for mega-projects like the S-Line. Financial disclosure, lobbyist registration, and genuine digital transparency. The tools a town uses to keep a billion-dollar program honest cannot be the tools it designed for a budget a fraction of that size.

And require us to keep up. A charter written in 1993 is the reason we are in this position. The next one should mandate review every ten years and automatically trigger a governance study when the population crosses 100,000 — so we are never again caught running a city with a small town’s rulebook.

This is a choice, and the window is now

None of this happens by accident, and none of it happens quickly. Rewriting a municipal charter in North Carolina requires a local act of the General Assembly. It requires the Board of Commissioners to formally request it, public hearings to shape it, and members of our legislative delegation to carry it. That is a deliberate, public, months long process — which is exactly why we cannot afford to start it the year the rail money lands and the cranes go up.

We are about to spend a decade making decisions whose consequences will outlast everyone making them. The only real question is whether we make those decisions with a government built for the town we have become, or one built for a town that stopped existing thirty years ago.

Wake Forest outgrew its government. It is time the government caught up.

At 12:22 a.m. on June 11, I filed a public records request with the Town of Wake Forest. B&W Hardware’s announcement that it would close during Friday Night on White prompted the filing. The store’s statement cited years of property damage, shoplifting, and unruly customers. The owners also said that since May, law enforcement had been placing officers with long guns on the building’s roof during the event. The subject of my request was Friday Night on White police deployments — and what they are costing this community. It went in about seventeen hours before the Town issued its first public statement.

In the days that followed, three downtown businesses closed or restricted access during FNOW events. The Town confirmed armed officers on downtown rooftops. WRAL and ABC11 sent crews. A sitting town commissioner also committed publicly to reviewing the records if they contradict what officials told him. The Town’s own television sponsor broadcast live from the concert while a longtime hardware store sat dark.

A second, supplemental public records request — covering emails, texts, and internal communications behind the event — was filed June 14, 2026. Both are pending.

Key Facts On the Record as of Publication

• Three downtown businesses have announced closures or restrictions during FNOW: B&W Hardware (closed all future events), The Yellow Butterfly (closed at 5 p.m.), and The Makery (members and registered students only).

• The Town of Wake Forest confirmed WFPD officers have been positioned on downtown rooftops with rifles — not less-lethal pepperballs — since at least May 8, 2026.

• Wake Forest Downtown, Inc., the nonprofit publicly associated with FNOW, has filed IRS Form 990-N (gross receipts ≤ $50,000) every year from 2020 to 2024.

• Friday Night on White runs through the Town’s General Fund under the Downtown Development department, which carries a $185,000 Sponsorship/Events Revenue line for FY27.

• Commissioner Adam Wright (D) is the only Town Commissioner to have commented publicly. He committed to reviewing records and hosting a downtown summit. He is up for reelection next year.

• The Board of Commissioners votes on the FY2027 budget — which funds FNOW — on Tuesday, June 16 at 6 p.m.

• Wake Forest Matters filed two public records requests under N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 132-1 et seq. (June 11 and June 14, 2026). Both are pending.

In this report:

1. A Downtown Institution Draws the Line

2. A Coalition Forms

3. The Town Confirms Deployments — and the Community Responds

4. Regional Media Arrives — and a Commissioner Steps Forward

5. The Commissioner’s Claims — and Why They Are Now Testable

6. The Town’s Media Partner, and Two Versions of the Same Night

7. Who Actually Runs — and Funds — Friday Night on White?

8. What “Rifles” Actually Means

9. The Records Requests

10. The Vote Is Tuesday

A Downtown Institution Draws the Line

B&W Hardware has been on White Street since 1949 — through urban renewal, recessions, and every downtown trend that has come and gone since.

This month, B&W Hardware announced it will close during all future Friday Night on White events. The owners cited years of property damage, shoplifting, and unruly customers. They also said Town staff responded with only a hotline number and a suggestion to be grateful for the crowds.

Their full statement:

After careful consideration, we will be closed during all future “Friday Night on White” events.

While we have supported this event for many years, it has increasingly brought challenges that outweigh any benefit to our business. The event is no longer geared to provide meaningful value for Downtown businesses that do not sell alcohol or food.

Previous events have resulted in property damage and shoplifting — as well as repeated issues with unruly and intoxicated customers. Town of Wake Forest staff only provide a “hotline” to call if we encounter problems, and have told us that we should be “thankful” they’re bringing so many people Downtown.

Starting in May, law enforcement began stationing officers with long guns that fire pepper balls on top of our building to respond to potential crowd control incidents. If an event requires that level of monitoring and policing, perhaps it’s time to consider a different approach to the event altogether.

We remain committed to serving our customers — as we have done from this location since 1949 — while also supporting a safe, thriving Downtown. We appreciate your understanding and continued support!

— B&W Hardware, Wake Forest, NC

A Coalition Forms

On the same day B&W Hardware’s announcement circulated, other businesses went public with their own. Business owners’ comments made clear that business owners had raised these same concerns privately for years without result.

The Yellow Butterfly boutique announced it would close at 5 p.m. during the June 12 FNOW event. The boutique cited solidarity with businesses that faced “ongoing challenges surrounding the planning and management of this event.” Their statement went further:

Many downtown businesses have been vocalizing concerns for years, yet our voices are continually dismissed. We will continue to stand aligned with those businesses, owners, operators, and customers that want more for our downtown and aren’t being heard — us included. We understand that a community isn’t about one solitary business or event — it’s about what’s in the best interest of our community as a whole. A rising tide raises all boats.

— The Yellow Butterfly Boutique, Wake Forest, NC

Three closures, no food or alcohol among them

Third to announce was The Makery, a creative arts studio that offers classes and memberships. Its statement, addressed to members and students, announced closure to the general public at 5:00 PM during all FNOW events. Members and registered students may still enter, but will need to knock.

Their full statement:

We want to ensure our members and students feel safe and comfortable while creating at The Makery. During the Town of Wake Forest’s Friday Night on White events, we have made the difficult decision to close to the general public at 5:00 PM.

All scheduled classes, members, and registered students are welcome as usual. While our doors will be locked, we are happy to welcome you into your creative respite for the evening. We will do our best to keep parking available in our private lot so you can safely arrive and enjoy your time at the studio.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping us keep The Makery a welcoming and safe place for our creative community.

— The Makery WF, Wake Forest, NC

Notably, “safe” appears three times in The Makery’s short statement.

All three are closing — a hardware store, a boutique, and an arts studio. Not one of them sells food or alcohol.

Other businesses and broader impact

Others came up in the comment threads. The downtown coffee shop reportedly closed for FNOW events. Shorty’s sustained documented interior damage. CVS, one commenter said, closes early on FNOW nights because of teen theft. Businesses that issued public statements aren’t the only ones affected.

The Yellow Butterfly addressed the “it’s only six days a year” question directly:

6 days may seem insignificant, but they are 6 Fridays; one of the busiest retail days of the week. To many small businesses, those kind of losses can be detrimental to overall monthly sales. We were such an avid supporter of the event early on. We were optimistic about all of the events and couldn’t understand why so many took issue with it. But being on the other side of it changed our perspective.

— The Yellow Butterfly Boutique, comment thread

They also confirmed making “numerous efforts to suggest alternative mapping for the event” through official channels. Those efforts, they said, have produced no change.

Why the timing matters: a 1 p.m. street closure for a 6 p.m. show

Street closures start at 2:00 p.m. according to the Town’s own Know Before You Go page, though the Town’s communications director told ABC11 the closures begin “about five hours” before the concert — which would place them at 1:00 p.m. The Town’s published timeline runs well beyond the concert itself: streets close at 2:00 p.m., attendees may not place chairs in the road until after 4:30 p.m., beer sales open at 5:00 p.m., the concert runs 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., and streets are not cleared until typically 11:00 to 11:30 p.m. That is a nine-and-a-half-hour closure on each event day.

A downtown hair salon owner described it in the comment threads: clients have nowhere to park by early afternoon, so she loses hours of booked appointments. Jill Mason, co-owner of The Yellow Butterfly, told ABC11 the same thing. Customers “purposely stayed away” because they couldn’t reach parking. In total, these businesses lose most of a Friday — one of the busiest retail days of the week — not just an evening. Six times a year.

Residents who described themselves as longtime locals asked the same question repeatedly in the threads: when did FNOW stop being for the people who live here? Several tied the change to when the event began drawing heavily from the broader Raleigh metro. The Town’s media partnership is part of that story, addressed below.

The Town Confirms Friday Night on White Police Deployments — and the Community Responds

My records request was already on file before the Town addressed any of this publicly. About seventeen hours after filing, the Town posted its first public statement. B&W Hardware’s announcement had been circulating for a full day by then. Their full statement:

Just as they were during last month’s Friday Night on White (FNOW), Wake Forest Police officers will again be perched on the rooftops of a few downtown businesses during Friday’s concert.

The Wake Forest Police Department (WFPD) has requested and received permission from the property owners to position officers atop their businesses with rifles that do not “fire pepper balls.”

As we noted prior to the May 8 FNOW, the WFPD utilizes elevated positions to help ensure the safety of the thousands of people who choose every month to attend this downtown event.

This approach to public safety isn’t unique to FNOW, nor is it exclusive to WFPD. Law enforcement agencies around the world position officers atop buildings to secure high-ground advantage for surveillance, crowd management, and protection during popular events.

We’re proud that FNOW — which started in 2016 — is still going strong. In fact, judging by the attendance in April and May — it’s never been more popular!

That’s why after every concert, Town staff from every department that has a role in producing FNOW meet to discuss what went well and what can be improved. We also send out event surveys to attendees, sponsors, and merchants requesting their feedback on their FNOW experience.

During all that time one thing that hasn’t changed is the WFPD’s commitment to ensuring your safety. So, thank you WFPD! We appreciate you and all you do.

— Town of Wake Forest, NC, official Facebook page, June 11, 2026

The community pushed back — hard

Response was immediate.

Residents asked the same question in comments: “So if the rifles do not fire pepper balls, are they just plain rifles?” “What they fire? Lead?” “Is that just a way to say ‘rifles’?” That weapon-type question comes up again below.

Arthur Schwartz, a former law enforcement officer from Michigan, said his own department had used rooftops for surveillance and crowd control. However, they had “never ever kept rifles” up there, he wrote. He called the WFPD posture overkill.

Another resident raised a point the Town didn’t answer. WFPD deployed officers at the May 8 event. If stores closed again at the June 12 event despite that deployment, what did it accomplish?

One resident called the Town’s post “tone deaf” and “responding without responding,” arguing that big crowds are “a misleading metric” for whether a community event is working. She described households that “love our downtown but avoid this event” for exactly the reasons businesses named. Another wondered aloud whether the town has “outgrown FNOW.” A third compared FNOW to the Town’s Christmas parade — discontinued and not revived — while the FNOW series has continued and grown.

That comparison appeared in more than one thread.

Within a day, regional media was on the story.

Regional Media Arrives — and a Commissioner Steps Forward

By Friday, WRAL, ABC11, and Triangle radio stations had covered the story. Regional coverage put names and numbers on the merchants’ accounts. It also produced an on-the-record response from Town leadership.

A commissioner steps forward

Commissioner Adam Wright (D) wrote publicly that the situation highlights the need for direct conversation between Town leaders and downtown businesses. “A big crowd does not automatically mean every business benefits,” Wright wrote. “It means we should be willing to listen and improve.” He announced plans to host a downtown summit. The summit would gather feedback from owners. It would also explore changes to parking, street closures, event layout, and ways to better connect attendees with the businesses they walk past.

Wright is the only Town Commissioner to have commented publicly on the closures or the rooftop deployment. He is up for reelection next year.

Wright served as MC of the May 8 FNOW event — the same evening WFPD first deployed officers in elevated positions. He has served as MC in past seasons, calling the event “one of the coolest events for the town to do” and citing the draw of ten to fifteen thousand people downtown as “a great economic-development tool.” He said he continues to support the event but committed to a formal review process.

Other elected officials comment

Wake County Board of Education member Cheryl Caulfield (R, District 1) is up for reelection this fall. She described FNOW as “one of the best events we have in WF.” She said she had not personally observed the behaviors businesses described, and proposed that shops require adult supervision for minors to enter.

Bill Crabtree, the Town’s communications director, defended the event and policing posture to ABC11. He said the early street closure is necessary for setup. He expressed hope that the crowds help businesses “in the long run.” On security, Crabtree said the department used mutual aid agreements to bring in officers from neighboring communities. He confirmed rooftop positioning for what he called “a bird’s eye view.”

Mutual aid means officers from outside Wake Forest police a Town event. Who pays for that — Wake Forest taxpayers, the neighboring agencies, or the event itself — is what the financial records filed June 11 should show.

TV coverage also answered a question residents had been asking all week. WRAL confirmed that in 2024, Town officials floated a curfew for unaccompanied minors. Town officials debated it and declined to adopt it.

Merchants: a range of views

Not every merchant shares the same experience with FNOW. Johanna Trotter, owner of Consignment Boutique, told WRAL the event “brought in so many people that probably wouldn’t have known about us.” Her shop now enforces an 18-and-up policy during the event, asking unaccompanied minors to return with a parent or guardian. Downtown owner Dolores Childers Riggins also said the event works for her business. Attendees interviewed by ABC11 described FNOW warmly, as a beloved tradition.

The two televised reports differed on one factual point. WRAL identified the Yellow Butterfly owner as Dana Ayala; ABC11 quoted Jill Mason as co-owner. The boutique appears to have more than one owner, which accounts for the difference. Both cited theft, crowds, and early closures as impacts on business.

ABC11’s coverage drew substantial public response. In the comment thread of ABC11’s Facebook post about the story, Beth Dean, a Wake Forest resident of more than 20 years, wrote that she was speaking “from firsthand experience rather than speculation.” Dean said the problems extend beyond unsupervised teenagers. She described parents who attend the event but pay little attention to their children while they run through downtown and into businesses, leaving owners to deal with the consequences. She also cited insurance claims as a documented cost for affected businesses. Dean called on local leaders “to seriously re-evaluate whether it should be relocated to a venue better equipped to handle the crowds and activities, or whether significant changes need to be made.”

The Commissioner’s Claims — and Why They Are Now Testable

In a public comment thread, Wright made several specific factual claims that the records requests are designed to document. He disputed the premise that the Town had ignored the issue or only learned of concerns from a single Facebook post.

Wright said the Town became aware last year that youth behavior had become a concern. Officials discussed a curfew as a possible response, he said. The Town instead increased police presence, which, in his words, “largely addressed the issue.” Additionally, Wright said he speaks regularly with the Downtown Development Director and downtown businesses. The feedback he received, he wrote, reflects “relatively few ongoing issues reported through the Town.”

“If your records request shows something different”

“If your records request shows something different,” Wright wrote, “I am happy to review the specific records and concerns.”

Wright committed publicly to reviewing records that speak to those claims. Specifically, a sitting commissioner stated that the Town has received relatively few issue reports through official channels, and that increased policing largely solved the youth problem. He agreed to review records testing those accounts.

Incident and offense reports, calls-for-service data, hotline logs, and after-action reports will either support the “relatively few issues” account or complicate it.

A documented complaint from May 8

Wright’s own post-event recap from May 8 offers a specific data point. The morning after serving as MC, Wright published a celebratory graphic on his personal Facebook page — labeled “MC Wright,” holding a microphone, under the banner “ANOTHER AMAZING FRIDAY NIGHT ON WHITE! THANK YOU, WAKE FOREST!” — asking followers to name their favorite bands and food trucks from the event. In the comments of that post, a constituent, Abbey Rosenfeld Friedman, replied with a photo of a dump truck parked in front of a downtown business entrance and the comment “Mr Wright..... this is wrong....” Wright, identified as Author, replied directly: “already addressed it with the town and it won’t happen again.”

That exchange is documented and public. On the morning after celebrating “another amazing” event, Wright personally received and resolved a business-impact complaint. The complaint reached Wright through his personal Facebook page rather than the Town’s official business hotline. Whether it appears in the hotline records — one of the six items in the June 11 records request — is one of the things the documents will show.

The cost claim, and a quieter tell

Wright made a second checkable claim on cost. He wrote that the event is “predominantly funded by sponsorships.” His understanding is that the local share runs about “75%,” and that “sponsorships pay for FNOW.” He added that the local-share figure “is tough to accurately measure.”

Sponsorships fund a portion of the event’s production costs — the Town’s own event page confirms 2026 FNOW sponsorships are sold out. However, production costs are a separate question from what the Town spends on police services. That includes mutual-aid officers from other jurisdictions, whose cost the sponsorships may or may not offset. As the corporate and tax filings below establish, the entity that holds those sponsorships has an annual budget of $50,000 or less.

Wright stayed in the thread, returning to the same proposal. He called for getting business owners, residents, public safety, and Town staff into one room to work through specific fixes. He floated concrete ideas: revisiting street-closure timing, parking, vendor placement, and event layout. He also raised an earlier proposal for an amphitheater behind the future food hall, funded by redirecting the Town’s current stage costs.

Public communications on costs and supervision

A town spokesperson told the Wake Weekly the Town is “grateful for all our downtown merchants” and “fully support[s] their right to determine what’s best for themselves and their customers.” The spokesperson continued: “By drawing thousands of people to our ‘quaint but cool’ downtown through popular events, including Friday Night on White, we endeavor to support their long-term prosperity by encouraging residents and visitors alike to experience all our charming and vibrant downtown has to offer.”

In addition, the Town’s own FNOW event page carries a direct appeal to parents. It states that “a vast majority” of young people behave responsibly, but “a small percentage” are disruptive. It asks parents and caregivers to supervise their children to “preserve the FNOW experience for our downtown merchants and visitors.”

The Town’s Media Partner, and Two Versions of the Same Night

CBS 17 is an official sponsor of Friday Night on White — listed on the Town’s own event page as Media Sponsor. White Street Brewing, which sells beer tokens redeemable at the event, is listed as Grand Sponsor. Norse Brewing also sells tickets redeemable for event beer. Both breweries operate under special events permits within the FNOW footprint. In its own 2026-season coverage, CBS 17 wrote that it “is once again a sponsor of the monthly series this year.” Anchors and reporters broadcast live from downtown Wake Forest at every event. On the morning of the June 12 concert, the Town’s official account promoted the partnership directly. It announced that CBS 17’s Bill Young and meteorologist Rachel Duensing, along with My Carolina hosts, would broadcast live at 4 p.m. Viewers were invited to “tune in” and then come out.

Under that post, one resident asked the live-broadcast team whether they would be “sharing shots of the police snipers on the roof.”

Residents in comment threads said the same thing in different ways: the event isn’t what it was. A live-broadcast partnership with a Raleigh network draws metro-area audiences into a six-block downtown. The Town has cited attendance “from across our community, region, and state” as a measure of the event’s success. Several longtime residents traced the crowd dynamic directly to that regional pull.

The regional question

One resident, Michael Burger, pushed back on that framing. In a public comment, Burger argued that FNOW’s value “isn’t necessarily measured in sales that evening.” For him, the value lies in exposure. Thousands of people become familiar with downtown businesses and return later. He cautioned that painting FNOW as a dangerous event filled with unruly teenagers and intoxicated adults “does a disservice to our town.” Such incidents are “the exception — not the rule,” Burger wrote. He also noted that these social-media threads are read far beyond Wake Forest and shape outside perceptions of the whole town.

Johanna Trotter of Consignment Boutique made a similar case to WRAL, crediting the event with bringing in customers who wouldn’t otherwise have found her shop.

Two versions of the same night

On the day after issuing a statement about rooftop rifles — and the same day three businesses confirmed closures — the Town posted an event recap. It opened “It was HOT tonight Wake Forest, but y’all showed up!” and promoted the July 10 date. The recap mentioned the bands and the heat. It did not mention the closures, the businesses, the policing controversy, or the records requests. Three more Friday Night on White events remain on the 2026 calendar: July 10, August 14, and September 11.

Under that post, residents kept asking the questions the Town’s main channels were not answering. One asked whether any pepperballs were deployed. Another noted that CVS had closed its front doors at 5:30 p.m., leaving only the pharmacy drive-through open: “what’s that tell you.”

The June 12 event didn’t go entirely to plan. Attendees reported that the headlining band cut its set short. The drummer suffered a heat-related medical emergency, leaving long stretches of the evening to a DJ. The heat index sat near or above 100 degrees. Attendees connected the incident in comment threads to ongoing questions about whether the event has grown past the Town’s ability to manage it.

Who Actually Runs — and Funds — Friday Night on White?

When a commissioner says “sponsorships pay for FNOW,” the questions that follow are: paid to whom, held by whom, and spent by whom? Corporate filings, federal tax records, and the Town’s own adopted budget each have part of the answer.

Start with the nonprofit the Town points to. Wake Forest Downtown, Inc. was incorporated in 1985 as the Wake Forest Downtown Revitalization Corporation and renamed itself in 2013. In 2012, at the request of its own board, the Town absorbed the nonprofit’s executive director function as the Downtown Development Department. As a result, the board continues as a 501(c)(3). Its staff work, however, has been a Town operation for over a decade.

Its founding charter, filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State, contains the following clause. Upon dissolution, after paying its debts, the remaining assets transfer to “the Town of Wake Forest, North Carolina.” The charter specifies that the organization has no members and a board governs it solely.

A $50,000 nonprofit cannot run a 15,000-person event

Every year from 2020 through 2024, Wake Forest Downtown filed a Form 990-N “e-Postcard” with the IRS — the filing reserved for the smallest tax-exempt organizations. Under IRS rules, an organization may use the 990-N only if its gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less. Consequently, the federal record establishes that the nonprofit’s entire annual budget has stayed under $50,000 for at least five consecutive years.

Set that against the event. Friday Night on White draws ten to fifteen thousand people to White Street on the second Friday of each month from April through September — six events a year. It involves a main stage, professional bands, dozens of vendors, and road closures across the historic district. The policing operation draws mutual-aid officers from neighboring jurisdictions and puts rifle-equipped officers on rooftops. An event of that scale cannot run for a fraction of $50,000 a year.

Public records establish that Friday Night on White does not run financially through Wake Forest Downtown, Inc. That is consistent with the Town’s own language — “we produce the series.” It also aligns with the nonprofit’s own website, which lists its three signature events as Forest Fest, Spirits of Wake Forest, and the Lighting of Wake Forest. FNOW is not on the list.

Follow the budget: it runs through the General Fund

Town budget documents show where the money actually lives. The proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget assigns Friday Night on White to the Downtown Development department. Presented in May and scheduled for adoption on June 16, the budget places the department under the General Fund at roughly $591,000 for the year. The strategic-plan section lists FNOW, alongside Six Sundays in Spring, as a Town-run community event.

However, the nonprofit does have a separate public funding stream. Wake Forest Downtown, Inc. is the marketing and programming arm of the Downtown Municipal Service District. The Town created that district in 1988 and still levies it at thirteen cents per $100 of value on downtown parcels. For FY27, that district’s entire $213,000 earmarks for two things: downtown façade improvements and a Downtown Transportation Study. There is no FNOW line in it.

So when sponsors pay to support FNOW, where does that money go? Not to the $50,000 nonprofit. Instead, the Town’s General Fund carries a dedicated “Sponsorship/Events Revenue” line — $185,000 for FY27, booked as Town revenue and administered by Town staff.

The funding picture at a glance

Fund / Revenue SourceFY27 AmountAdministered ByFNOW Line?General Fund — Sponsorship/Events Revenue$185,000Town of Wake ForestYesDowntown Development Dept. (General Fund)~$591,000Town of Wake ForestYes — includes FNOW productionDowntown MSD Special Revenue Fund$213,000Town / WFD Inc.No — façade & transportation studyWake Forest Downtown, Inc. (nonprofit)≤ $50,000WFD Inc. boardNo — FNOW not on nonprofit site

Sources: Town of Wake Forest proposed FY2026–2027 budget; IRS Form 990-N filings, Wake Forest Downtown, Inc., tax years 2020–2024.

IRS filings list the nonprofit’s principal officer as Stephanie Brown for tax years 2020 through 2022, and Jennifer Herbert for 2023 and 2024. Herbert is also the Town’s salaried Downtown Development Director — the department that runs FNOW. She is also the official Commissioner Wright cited as his source for the assurance that businesses have reported “relatively few ongoing issues.” The nonprofit’s principal office is listed at 301 South Brooks Street: Wake Forest Town Hall.

None of this is, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing. Towns routinely structure a downtown nonprofit alongside municipal staff and a service-district tax; that arrangement is common. However, it does dispose of one claim. The Town runs FNOW out of a General Fund department, and the General Fund books its sponsorship revenue. That means “sponsorships pay for FNOW” cannot also mean no tax dollars are at stake.

In fact, the real public cost is not the $185,000 in sponsorships. It is what the Town spends above that to produce and police the event. For scale, the Town’s FY27 Police budget is just under $19.8 million. Rooftop deployments also draw in mutual-aid officers from other jurisdictions whose cost has to be carried somewhere. Whether $185,000 in sponsorships meaningfully offsets six nights of that operation is what the financial records will show.

What “Rifles” Actually Means

The Town confirmed that WFPD positioned officers on downtown buildings since at least May 8. The Town gave advance notice before that event; to whom and in what form, the post does not say.

One line in the statement corrects the record on what, specifically, officers were carrying: “rifles that do not ‘fire pepper balls.’”

B&W Hardware described the weapons as pepperball launchers; the Town’s statement corrects that characterization. Pepperballs are a less-lethal crowd-control munition. In standard law enforcement usage, “rifles” refers to standard patrol rifles — lethal-force weapons.

Were officers carrying lethal-force weapons, not less-lethal munitions? The public records request should answer that question and more

No further specification followed. The Town has not said what type of rifles officers carried or what tactical role they served. Residents asked for clarification in comment threads and did not receive it.

One resident put it this way: calling armed rooftop positioning over a crowded concert “standard safety,” the commenter wrote, “just reframes surveillance as celebration.”

Missing from the Town’s statement: any mention of property damage, shoplifting, the 1 p.m. street closures, the treatment of business concerns described by B&W Hardware, or the survey feedback The Yellow Butterfly says the Town has continually dismissed. Instead, it notes that attendance is at record highs and thanks the food truck vendors and WFPD.

The Records Requests

Public records requests are the mechanism under North Carolina law for obtaining documentation of public business. Wake Forest Matters filed two requests under the North Carolina Public Records Law, N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 132-1 et seq.

The first request (filed June 11): costs, deployments, and incidents

Filed at 12:22 a.m. on June 11 — roughly seventeen hours before the Town’s first public statement — this request covers six independent items:

• Financial and cost records — what FNOW costs in police services, and whether any organizers or sponsors reimburse the Town for law enforcement.

• Officer deployment classification records — whether officers are on-duty at taxpayer expense or on secondary employment paid by the event.

• Incident and offense reports — all reported crimes and incidents on White Street during every FNOW event from 2024 through the date of the request.

• Written policies governing the rooftop deployment — the policy basis for positioning officers with firearms at FNOW, and when that policy was established.

• After-action reports — the post-event reviews WFPD generates after each FNOW.

• Business hotline records — logs and communications from the hotline the Town provides for downtown businesses to report problems, including merchant survey responses.

The second request (filed June 14): the emails and texts behind the decisions

A supplemental request filed June 14 covers the communications behind the event. Specifically, it seeks emails, texts, and internal correspondence among Town staff and officials, and between the Town and outside parties. Under North Carolina law, any message about public business is a public record, regardless of the device or account it was sent from. That request covers, among other things:

• The deployment decision — internal correspondence on how the rooftop and rifle posture was proposed, questioned, and approved, and who signed off.

• The public messaging — drafts, edits, and approvals behind the Town’s social-media statements about rooftop officers, including what officials said internally while those posts were being written.

• The business impact — communications between the Town and affected merchants, and the Town’s internal discussion of the closures.

• The 2024 curfew — who proposed the minors measure that didn’t advance past a second reading, and who decided to let it go.

• The money and the partners — communications with Wake Forest Downtown, Inc. and with the event’s sponsors and broadcast partner about funding, sponsorship, and promotion.

Wright has agreed to review records if they show something different from what officials told him. Wright has a downtown summit planned for next month, and a merchants’ meeting is reportedly set for late June. Both records requests remain pending as of publication.

The Vote Is Tuesday

Board of Commissioners members meet Tuesday, June 16, at 6 p.m. at Town Hall, 301 S. Brooks Street. They are scheduled to adopt the Fiscal Year 2026–2027 budget. Once adopted, the spending described in this report is set for the year.

That budget funds Friday Night on White. The Downtown Development department produces the event; police services secure it. Both are General Fund line items — paid for with public money. Sponsorships the Town points to do not cover the staff time or the policing.

How to participate Tuesday

Residents can address the Board during the public comment period at the start of the meeting. Each speaker gets three minutes. Sign up through the Town’s Public Meetings Portal by 3 p.m. Tuesday. The meeting airs live on Wake Forest TV 10 (WFTV 10) and the Town’s Public Meetings Portal.

About this report

This is the first installment of an ongoing records-based series. It lays out what is documented as of publication. That includes the closures, the confirmed rooftop deployment, the funding structure, and the specific claims Town officials have made. The next installment will report on what the records show when the Town produces them, measured against what officials have said publicly.

Documents reviewed for this report: Wake Forest Downtown Revitalization Corporation Articles of Incorporation (NC Secretary of State, filed 1985); Articles of Amendment renaming the entity Wake Forest Downtown, Inc. (filed 2013); the nonprofit’s IRS Form 990-N filings for tax years 2020–2024; the Town of Wake Forest’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026–2027 budget; the Town’s official Friday Night on White event page, Know Before You Go page, and Wake Forest Downtown, Inc. page; CBS 17 sponsorship and broadcast coverage; WRAL and ABC11 reporting; the Wake Weekly (June 12, 2026; covers B&W Hardware and The Yellow Butterfly — published before The Makery’s announcement); ABC11’s Facebook post and public comment thread; and the public Facebook statements of B&W Hardware, The Yellow Butterfly, The Makery, the Town of Wake Forest, and Commissioner Adam Wright. Two public records requests are pending with the Town under N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 132-1 et seq.

Tom Baker IV is the publisher of Wake Forest Matters, a civic accountability and journalism project focused on Wake Forest, NC. He is a 12th-generation North Carolinian with family roots in Wake Forest dating to 1730. Wake Forest Matters will publish a follow-up report when the Town produces the records. Public records requests may be submitted to the Town of Wake Forest at wakeforestnc.gov.

This is a note on what’s new at Wake Forest Matters, including new ways to support Wake Forest Matters as a reader or as a local business — alongside the Substack relaunch and the push to make this independent local newsroom self-sustaining.

When I started Wake Forest Matters, I didn’t have a plan. I had a frustration: too much of what happens in this town — board meetings, school board decisions, the quiet bureaucratic moves that shape where we live — wasn’t getting covered. Or it was getting covered late, or sideways, or buried under syndicated wire copy that knew nothing about Wake Forest.

So I started writing what I wished someone else would write.

That was a passion project. It still is. But it has grown into something more than that — a community news and information hub that covers town government, schools, restaurants, parks, things to do, neighbors, obituaries, and the occasional small kindness or wild absurdity that makes Wake Forest, Wake Forest.

It’s clearer than ever that this needs to be sustainable. Hosting bills, insurance, public-records request fees (haven’t incurred yet, but might in the future), legal support, email tools, reporting time all add up. So I’m making four changes you should know about.

1. Three new ways to support Wake Forest Matters

If you’ve been reading and you want to support Wake Forest Matters, there’s now a Support page. Three options:

• Tip once — $5, $25, or $100, no account needed.

• Become a paid member — $6 per month. A monthly sustaining membership for the newsroom. Same access to the journalism — your support keeps it free for everyone.

• Become a Founding Member — $100 per year. For readers who want to go above and beyond to keep this work going. Same access to the journalism — bigger thanks from me.

To be clear: news coverage stays free for everyone. Always. The town doesn’t work if civic information is only available to subscribers. What members fund is the time and tools it takes to do the work — not access to the work itself.

2. Local businesses can sponsor the work

For local businesses, there’s now a Sponsors page with two newsletter pricing tiers — $75/month for a single newsletter sponsor slot, $150/month for newsletter plus sitewide placement — and a $25/month featured listing in any of our area guides.

Editorial coverage is independent of sponsorship. Sponsors don’t get favorable coverage and they don’t get protected from criticism if criticism is what the story calls for. But if your business wants to reach Wake Forest readers, this is a clean, clearly labeled way to do it. The full editorial policy is on the Sponsors page.

3. The Substack newsletter is reopening

A few of you have told me you find the Substack format easier to read, save, and forward than the website. Fair point. So I’m reopening the Wake Forest Matters Substack for ongoing publishing.

From here forward, stories will appear in both places — website and Substack — so you can read in whichever format you prefer. If you’ve already subscribed to the newsletter, you’ll keep getting it. If you haven’t, subscribe free here.

4. Featured listings in the guides

The restaurant, things-to-do, and neighboring-town guides have become some of the most-read content on the site. A sponsor-supported “Featured Listing” can now appear at the top of any guide for $25 per month — fully labeled, no editorial influence, just a way for local businesses to get visibility in the places people are searching.

This started as a passion project. Me, a laptop, and frustration. It is still a passion project. But for it to keep going, it has to start paying for itself. Reader support, business sponsorship, and the discipline to keep showing up — that’s how it happens.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for telling your neighbors. And to everyone who has already chosen to support Wake Forest Matters as a member, sponsor, or one-time tipper — none of this exists without you.

Fearless. Local. Loud.

— Tom Baker IV Founder, Wake Forest Matters

Wake Forest’s Board of Adjustment convenes Thursday, April 16 at 6:00 p.m. in the Town Hall Board Chambers for a public hearing that could reshape the future of the 125-acre former Wake Forest Golf and Country Club property off Capital Boulevard. The hearing involves two linked cases, both filed by attorney Hunter B. Winstead of Morningstar Law Group on behalf of Mungo Homes of North Carolina, Inc. Mungo is the contract purchaser and intended developer of 170 single-family homes on the site.

The property owners are Green Timber Foundation and Dry Timber LLC, care of Carroll Joyner of Youngsville. Specifically, the property sits at 1180 and 1200 Club Villas Drive, fronting US-1 between the Purnell Road and Jenkins Road intersections. It is bordered by Hawkshead to the north, the Wake Forest Country Club Subdivision and Clubhouse Villas to the south, Fairway Villas to the east, and Country Club Downs and Canonbie to the west.

The development plan, designated SD-24-04 and engineered by The John R. McAdams Company, proposes 170 detached single-family lots on land that has sat vacant with abandoned recreation facilities since the golf course closed in 2007. Mungo has branded the community “Legacy Greens” and describes it as a high-end product: homes ranging from 2,500 to over 4,000 square feet on lots from a quarter-acre to just under an acre, with fiber cement siding, stone and masonry accents, and three-car garages. Notably, the property’s current GR3 zoning would allow up to 373 homes by right. Mungo is proposing less than half that density.

This is not the first fight over this property. In 2022, a rezoning application for roughly 300 homes drew organized protests from surrounding neighborhoods. The Board of Commissioners denied that rezoning in 2023. The current 170-lot plan does not require a rezoning because single-family detached homes are permitted by right in the GR3 district.

The 576-page agenda packet contains two staff reports and hundreds of pages of exhibits. These include the original 1999 Special Use Permit, the 2023 amendment, the full Administrator Interpretation letter, and the applicant’s legal arguments. Here is what is at stake.

The Appeal Before the Wake Forest Board of Adjustment (BOA-26-01)

The first and more consequential case is an appeal of Planning Director Jennifer Currin’s administrative interpretation, issued January 16, 2026. At its core, this appeal asks a deceptively simple but legally loaded question: which set of definitions governs what the developer can and cannot do in the designated open space on this property?

Understanding the backstory is essential to following this dispute.

In 1999, the Town approved Special Use Permit SU-99-02 for a Planned Unit Development covering approximately 166 acres of the Wake Forest Golf and Country Club property. Initially, that permit authorized 30 townhomes adjacent to the operating golf course. It also designated the remaining acreage, roughly 147 acres, as open space. Then in May 2023, the Board of Commissioners amended the SUP to reduce the PUD from 166 acres to 40. As a result, approximately 125 acres were released from the permit. Those acres reverted to their base General Residential 3 zoning under the Falls Lake Watershed overlay.

This is where the fight starts.

When the 125 acres left the PUD, no master plan was approved for redevelopment. The current Unified Development Ordinance, adopted in 2013 and last amended in July 2022, defines “development” broadly. (The UDO and its role in how Wake Forest manages growth is something Wake Forest Matters has examined in depth.) (For background on how the UDO shapes development standards and who pays for growth, see Are Wake Forest Residents Subsidizing Growth?) That definition includes draining, damming, or dredging water bodies, along with excavation, grading, filling, and clearing of land. Meanwhile, it defines “open space” as areas set aside and protected from development.

Under those definitions, staff determined that the developer cannot drain the ponds on the property. Additionally, the developer cannot grade within the SUP-designated open space or count that open space toward the new subdivision’s requirements.

The Developer’s Vested Rights Argument

The developer, through Winstead, argues that those definitions did not exist in 1999 when the Special Use Permit was originally approved. The 1999 zoning ordinance, by contrast, defined “open space” more loosely. It limited open space to conservation, recreation, and agricultural uses but did not prohibit all human-caused activities.

Consequently, the developer contends that applying the 2013/2022 UDO definitions to a 1999 permit violates the vested rights protections in NCGS Section 160D-108(c). Also, the appeal cites the NC Court of Appeals holding in Hewett v. County of Brunswick, which found a local board cannot retroactively apply new ordinance provisions to a previously issued special use permit.

Furthermore, the developer points out that the Town’s own 2023 staff report stated that “the minimum standards outlined in the Zoning ordinance in effect at the time the PUD and SUP were approved in 1999 must still be met.” The developer reads that as the Town conceding the 1999 rules control.

Staff’s Response

However, staff disagrees. Currin’s report draws a sharp distinction: the 40 acres remaining inside the PUD are governed by the 1999 rules, but the 125 acres that were removed have no approved site plan and no vested rights. Therefore, they must comply with the current UDO. Staff’s analysis lays this out across 14 numbered findings.

The Timeliness Problem

Before the Board even reaches the merits, staff recommends the appeal be thrown out entirely. The UDO requires that an appeal be filed within 30 days of the written administrative decision.

Staff’s report documents that the developer was told repeatedly, beginning in 2023 and continuing through 2024 and 2025, that development would not be permitted in the SUP open space. Notably, staff told the developer that draining ponds constituted prohibited development. Despite those repeated notifications, the formal appeal was not filed until February 23, 2026. That date falls well beyond the 30-day window from any of those earlier determinations.

As a result, staff’s first recommendation is that the Board of Adjustment find the appeal invalid and decline to hear the case. If the Board chooses to hear it anyway, staff recommends upholding the Planning Director’s determination.

The Variance Requests Before the Board of Adjustment (BOA-25-06)

The second case is a pair of variance requests from UDO Sections 6.5.1.C and 6.5.1.E. These sections set the maximum block length (800 feet) and maximum cul-de-sac length (400 feet) in the GR3 zoning district. Development Services Manager Patrick Reidy is the case manager.

Why the Roads Don’t Fit

The property is bisected north to south by Horse Creek and its wetlands. Roughly midway through, a tributary branches east with three ponds along it. Because of stream buffers, floodplain designations, and the SUP open space surrounding these features, the buildable road corridors are severely constrained. In addition, the existing surrounding subdivisions provide only one road stub into the property: Simpson Court, from the Clubhouse Villas neighborhood.

Variance 1, Simpson Court Extension (Street G): The developer proposes extending the existing 250-foot Simpson Court by approximately 1,466 feet. That would bring the total to 1,716 feet and serve 21 lots. The request is for a maximum of 1,750 feet. Without the variance, staff finds only two lots could be developed on that section.

Variance 2, Street F: The developer proposes a new 1,228-foot road running south from the main internal road between two ponds to serve 18 lots. The request is for a maximum of 1,250 feet. Without this variance, no lots could be developed south of the ponds because the road simply cannot reach past the pond buffers within the 400-foot limit.

Staff’s Analysis: Real Hardship, But Questions Remain

Staff’s analysis on both variances acknowledges that the hardship is real and not self-created. Horse Creek, the lack of connecting street stubs, and the environmental constraints genuinely prevent the developer from meeting the standards. Yet staff repeatedly notes that “the applicant could choose to provide a shorter block and cul-de-sac to try and be closer to compliance with the regulations.”

Importantly, staff does not recommend approval or denial. Instead, the report presents the four statutory findings of fact and leaves the decision to the Board.

The Four-Fifths Vote Threshold

Under NC law, a variance requires a concurring vote of four-fifths of the Board. Currently, the Board has four members: Chair William Hedrick, Rick Porter, Ken Christie, and Mark Williams. Since four-fifths of four is 3.2, all four members must vote in favor for either variance to pass. In other words, a single no vote kills it.

Who Is Behind This Development

Mungo Homes is a Columbia, South Carolina-based national homebuilder operating across the Southeast. Specifically, they are the contract purchaser and developer of the former Wake Forest Country Club property.

The property is held by two entities. Dry Timber, LLC is a North Carolina limited liability company formed in January 2021. According to NC Secretary of State filings, the registered agent is E. Carroll Joyner of Youngsville. Green Timber Foundation is a 501(c)(3) private foundation formed in 2022 that the IRS describes as a Joyner family nonprofit. It primarily funds Bible teaching programs and holds nearly $2 million in assets.

Morningstar Law Group is a Raleigh firm ranked nationally by Chambers USA in real estate and land use law. Attorney Hunter Winstead is handling both cases before the Board of Adjustment. The engineering firm is The John R. McAdams Company, one of the largest civil engineering firms in the Triangle.

What to Watch at the Wake Forest Board of Adjustment Thursday

On the appeal: Watch whether the Board agrees with staff that the appeal is untimely and refuses to hear it. If it does proceed, the legal question is narrow but the stakes are high. Do the 1999 ordinance definitions or the 2022 UDO definitions govern what constitutes “development” in the SUP open space? If the developer wins, it potentially opens the door to draining the ponds and grading within previously protected areas. If staff prevails, those 24.99 acres of SUP open space remain untouchable.

On the variances: The hardship argument is strong on paper. Horse Creek, the ponds, the stream buffers, and the lack of street stubs are all real physical constraints. The developer can also point out that 170 lots is already less than half the 373 homes the GR3 zoning would allow by right. However, the Board should still press on whether the specific lot layout is generating the need for roads that exceed maximum standards when a different configuration might not. Staff’s repeated observation that the applicant “could choose” shorter roads closer to compliance is a signal worth reading carefully.

On the math: All four Board members must vote yes for either variance to pass. One dissent is fatal.

How to Participate in the Board of Adjustment Hearing

The public hearing is Thursday, April 16 at 6:00 p.m. at Wake Forest Town Hall Board Chambers, second floor, 301 S. Brooks Street. The deadline to register to speak in person is 3:00 p.m. on the day of the meeting via the Town’s Public Meetings Portal. The meeting will also be broadcast live on WFTV 10 and streamed online.

For questions about the appeal, contact Planning Director Jennifer Currin. For questions about the variances, contact Development Services Manager Patrick Reidy. Deputy Town Clerk Ella Dowtin handles meeting logistics. All can be reached through the Town of Wake Forest Planning Department.

If you live in Clubhouse Villas, Country Club Downs, Canonbie, Fairway Villas, Riverstone, Hawkshead, or anywhere near Club Villas Drive, this hearing directly affects your roads, your schools, and your water. Thursday night is when you make that known.

Wake Forest Matters covers municipal government, land use, and accountability in Wake Forest and northern Wake County. Tips: wakeforestmatters.com.

As of today, we are shutting down our Substack. Wake Forest Matters has moved to its permanent home at www.wakeforestmatters.com, and this is the last post you’ll see from us here.

I want to be clear, this is not the end of anything. This is us leveling up. Moving to our own website is a critical step in scaling Wake Forest Matters into a truly independent, truly local newsroom. On Substack, we were tenants. On our own platform, we own everything, our content, our audience, our data, and our future. No algorithm changes, no platform policy shifts, no third-party cut standing between us and the community we serve. A full website also means we can do so much more than a newsletter format allows, breaking news, story archives, topic pages, community tools, and the kind of deep local journalism that Wake Forest deserves. More of every subscription dollar goes directly into that journalism instead of into a platform’s pocket, and it gives us the foundation to grow our team and bring in contributors and reporters as we expand. Local news is disappearing all over the country, and Wake Forest Matters is committed to being here for the long haul. Owning our infrastructure is how we make that happen.

If you’re reading this, you’ve already been moved over. Your subscription is live at wakeforestmatters.com and you’ll keep getting our work right in your inbox, nothing changes on your end.

For those of you who were paid subscribers here on Substack, I want to say this directly: you made this possible. You supported us before we were fully built, and that kind of belief in what we were doing is something I don’t take lightly. Every paid subscriber from our Substack era is being set up with a free lifetime premium subscription on the new site, no charge, no renewal, no expiration, ever. It’s the least we can do for the people who helped launch this thing into something real.

Seriously, thank you. We’re not just a newsletter anymore. We’re a newsroom. Come see what we’re building at www.wakeforestmatters.com.

— Tom Baker IV

Founder, Publisher & Principal Investigator, Wake Forest Matters

Thank you all for your incredible support over these last few months. When we launched this newsletter, the response from this community made it clear that there is a real appetite for serious, independent local journalism here.

Today, I am excited to announce the next step for this publication: the launch of our official website, wakeforestmatters.com.

Building this site is about building vital infrastructure for our town, our future, and our local democracy. It gives our reporting a permanent, professional home so that every story, investigation, and community voice is archived and easily accessible.

What This Means for You

• The Email Shift: We are going to start shifting our emails over to the new website’s infrastructure. You will still get the most important Wake Forest news delivered straight to your inbox every week—no algorithms, no noise.

• Paid Subscribers: Thank you. Your support means a lot and makes this work possible. All paid subscriptions will be fully honored on the new platform as we make this transition. We will also be rolling out exclusive, subscriber-only content soon as an added thank you for backing local journalism.

How to Get Involved. Our mission hasn’t changed. We are still covering the town government, schools, development, and public safety decisions that happen when no one else is watching. But the new website makes it easier than ever for you to participate:

• Send a News Tip: You are our most important source. Submit tips securely and anonymously at wakeforestmatters.com/tip-line or email tips@wakeforestmatters.com.

• Share Your Opinion: Disagree with our coverage or have a take on a local issue? Send Letters to the Editor or community Op-Eds to wakeforestmatters.com/submit-a-letter-or-opinion/.

• Submit an Event: Hosting a public meeting or civic gathering? Add it to our community calendar at wakeforestmatters.com/events-calendar

• Honor a Life: Every life in Wake Forest deserves remembering. We publish local obituaries at no charge. https://wakeforestmatters.com/submit-an-obituary/

Wake Forest has always had stories worth telling. Thank you for reading them, supporting them, and helping fill the void in our local news.

Head over to wakeforestmatters.com to check out the new site, and let me know what you think in the comments.

The Wake Forest Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, March 17 at Town Hall for a packed session that included two public hearings, four presentations, a consent agenda carrying roughly $10 million in park commitments, and a commissioners’ report that ended with a bipartisan condemnation of anonymous political attack letters being mailed into Wake Forest neighborhoods.

Here’s what happened, and what it means.

The South Main Street Rezoning: Approved Unanimously

The Board voted unanimously to approve Legislative Case RZ-25-02, rezoning two parcels totaling 0.46 acres at 810 and 814 South Main Street from General Residential 3 to Neighborhood Business. The applicant, Tyler Davis, is a local dentist who purchased his practice at 814 S. Main from Dr. Fitz in 2012 and the neighboring duplex at 810 S. Main in 2017. He wants to expand his dental and sleep apnea practice into the duplex building, with no major exterior changes beyond ADA compliance upgrades.

Davis told the Board he expects the expansion to add roughly ten patients per day, four to five days a week, with no activity on nights or weekends. He said the existing duplex parking (four spaces) would produce a traffic pattern “similar to less” than the current residential use. No new entrances, exits, or signage are planned. He noted that he canvassed approximately 25 nearby property owners and received no objections, though his required neighborhood meeting on November 20, 2025, drew zero attendees.

Davis also addressed the elephant on the corridor. His property sits directly in the path of the S-Line high-speed rail project, and the Town’s own Comprehensive Transportation Plan calls for the realignment of West Holding Avenue through this area. Davis acknowledged that his lot is “supposedly affected by the DOT for the S-Line plan” but said he has never been contacted by NCDOT. He explained that when he restarted the rezoning process in October 2024 — after COVID and other delays shelved the effort that began in 2017 — he was told at his pre-application meeting that the upcoming Unified Development Ordinance would handle the zoning change automatically, making his application unnecessary. When the UDO was delayed past July, he decided to move forward on his own.

No one spoke during the public hearing. The Board approved the rezoning with a consistency statement finding it aligned with the Community Plan.

Fire Station 6: Public Hearing Held, One Speaker Objects

The Board opened and closed a public hearing on the proposed installment financing for Fire Station 6, an $18.5 million facility planned for Wait Avenue. Only one resident spoke.

Resident David Blackwelder challenged the scope and cost, arguing that smaller substations in different locations could achieve the same response-time improvements at a fraction of the price. He questioned the need for an on-site training facility when the department already trains at Jordan Lake and warned that the bond-financed project would inevitably raise property taxes at a time when residents are struggling with the cost of living. “People almost were in tears because they can’t afford — it’s hard to live now,” Blackwelder said, referencing public comments from a prior meeting.

Tuesday’s public hearing was the statutory prerequisite for the installment financing; the Town plans to file with the Joint Legislative Committee on March 20, accept financial proposals by March 27, and seek Local Government Commission approval at its May 5 meeting, with the loan closing in the second half of May if all proceeds on schedule.

Public Comment: Spending, Vehicles, Engineering Outsourcing, and an Invitation to the Table

Two of the three signed-up speakers addressed the Board, and one walk-up speaker joined them. Together, they covered more ground in twelve minutes than the Board itself addressed during its formal deliberations on several agenda items. Under Board rules, commissioners do not respond during public comment, but the remarks enter the official record and can shape staff priorities and future agendas.

David Griffin, Minister of Wake Forest Christian Church, used his three minutes to invite the Board and the public to a free workshop called “Resetting the Table,” designed to help communities navigate toxic political divides. Griffin described a program that has brought 96,000 people together nationwide to “talk about how to communicate in non-toxic ways, to cross divides, to understand our legacy, our psychological impact, and how we can change life perspectives.” He emphasized that the workshop carries no political agenda. Two sessions are scheduled at the church: Friday, April 24 from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 25 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Each session is limited to 40 participants, and registration is available through the church’s website. The church is covering the full cost.

Griffin’s remarks took on additional resonance later in the meeting when Commissioner Cross raised the issue of anonymous political attack letters being mailed into Wake Forest neighborhoods — and Mayor Clapsaddle explicitly cited Griffin’s comments as context for how corrosive that kind of anonymous hostility has become.

David Blackwelder, who had already spoken during the Fire Station 6 public hearing, returned to challenge the $1.4 million vehicle fleet purchase on the consent agenda. His specific target: nine Chevrolet Tahoes for the police department. “Does it have to be a Tahoe? Does it have to be an SUV?” Blackwelder asked. “Does it have to be a 2026? Can it not be a cheaper version available?” He invoked his own law enforcement background — “I drove a Crown Victoria for years, for almost ten years” — and pressed on whether the Town solicited competitive bids from Ford, Dodge, or other manufacturers, or simply purchased through a government contract. “We need to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars,” he said. “People can’t take it anymore.”

It’s a fair question. The Town’s Finance Department did solicit competitive proposals for the financing itself — four institutions bid on the installment purchase agreement, and Truist Bank’s 3.73% fixed rate beat the highest bid by nearly two full percentage points. But whether the vehicle specifications were competitively bid across manufacturers is a question the agenda packet doesn’t answer; law enforcement vehicle procurement typically follows state contract pricing schedules that limit the field. The larger point Blackwelder raises — whether the Town is doing enough to minimize costs during a period of acute affordability pressure — deserves a substantive public answer, not just a silent nod from the dais.

Margaret Watkins came to the podium to object to the on-call engineering services contracts on the consent agenda. Watkins said she was “not comfortable” with outside consulting firms reviewing traffic impact analyses and development plans, work she believes should remain with the Town’s in-house engineers. “The citizens have been in contact with our engineers. We’re comfortable with them. We trust them. I don’t know who these consultant folks are,” she said. She drew a distinction between supplemental project work — “if they need help, like with a sidewalk or something, fine, great” — and the core regulatory review functions that directly affect development outcomes in Wake Forest. The item passed on the consent agenda without being pulled for separate discussion.

Sustainability Plan: Baseline Data Arrives

Cisco Tomasino of Blue Strike Environmental, the consulting firm the Town engaged last summer, presented the first substantive findings from Wake Forest’s sustainability planning process. The data confirmed what most residents probably suspected — and quantified what they couldn’t.

On greenhouse gas emissions: The community-wide inventory found that transportation is the single largest source of emissions in Wake Forest, followed by residential, non-residential, and industrial energy use from buildings. Waste is the smallest sector. The local government operations inventory — covering Town-owned facilities, fleet vehicles, and streetlights — mirrors that pattern, with fleet vehicles producing the majority of municipal emissions. But Tomasino emphasized the scale difference: municipal operations account for only one to two percent of Wake Forest’s total emissions. The implication is clear. The Town has direct control over a tiny fraction of the problem. Reducing community-wide emissions will require education, incentives, and policy tools that influence how residents and businesses use energy and move around.

On climate risk: The team assessed four priority hazards — extreme heat, flooding, drought, and ecosystem health and habitat loss — selected through a combination of expert analysis and public input. Natural areas and open space emerged as the most vulnerable community system. Tomasino walked through the data on extreme heat specifically, showing that the number of prolonged heat events (10+ consecutive days above 90 degrees) has increased markedly in the last decade-plus, and multi-model temperature projections for Wake County point consistently upward regardless of emissions scenario.

On peer benchmarking: Blue Strike compared Wake Forest’s position against Cary, Chapel Hill, and Morrisville — communities with existing climate action or sustainability plans — as well as Wake County and the state. Tomasino cautioned that every community operates within different financial and policy constraints, and peer targets aren’t one-size-fits-all, but said the comparison helped identify pathways worth exploring.

On what residents want: Engagement across focus groups, open houses, and an online survey surfaced four recurring themes: protecting natural lands and the tree canopy, improving walkability with an emphasis on shade and safety, improving energy efficiency in homes and Town buildings, and expanding renewable energy — with upfront cost identified as the single biggest barrier.

Commissioner Wright asked about expanding the food waste composting pilot to include local restaurants, noting that the program’s three drop-off locations (by the Farmer’s Market, the Depot parking lot, and Joiner Park) are getting regular use. Kari Grace from the planning department said the idea came up in the local business focus group as well and could be incorporated into the plan. The Board also asked whether the Town would set a specific emissions reduction target. Grace said that decision would ultimately rest with the commissioners — whether to pursue net-zero by 2050 in line with state goals, set a different numeric target, or simply commit to directional improvement.

What comes next: Blue Strike will now develop evaluation and prioritization criteria — the framework that will determine what strategies make it into the final plan and in what order. Draft criteria shown at the meeting included adaptation and resilience impact, cost, greenhouse gas reduction potential, community support, and staff capacity. Goals, strategies, and actions will follow, culminating in a plan presented to the Board by late fall.

Age Friendly Community: Pedestrian Safety Grants, “Meaningful Housing,” and a Youth Representation Gap

Ann Welton delivered an update on the Town’s Age Friendly Community initiative, now in year two of a five-year process through the AARP network. The program, accepted in June 2024, has moved from data collection into action planning.

Welton reported that the community survey conducted last year received more than three times the responses of any other Town survey in Wake Forest history. The committee is now working through the eight AARP domains of livability — one per month since September — and expects to present a prioritized action plan to the Board later this spring.

The most tangible near-term outcomes involve pedestrian safety. Using two AARP grants, the committee conducted pedestrian and bicycle audits at 11 locations around town. The findings confirmed what most residents already know: Wake Forest is not bike-friendly. But Welton said there are achievable pedestrian safety improvements, and the Town has applied for an $18,000 AARP/Toyota grant to improve crosswalks on South Main Street. Public works has committed to implementing the improvements if the grant is awarded. A decision is expected in May.

Welton also described newer lines of work: joining a local coalition reframing “affordable housing” as “meaningful housing,” visiting an intergenerational center in Winston-Salem, and learning from a brain health program in Hillsborough that serves people with dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Commissioner Wright pressed on three practical questions. First, whether other towns have seen significant cost increases after joining the program. Welton said the AARP model deliberately encourages communities to pick just two achievable priorities rather than trying to do everything at once, and that the scope of investment is entirely up to each town. Second, what success looks like. Welton acknowledged the committee is still defining its vision and guiding principles — that item is first on the agenda for their meeting the next morning. Third, whether the initiative duplicates existing Town plans. Welton credited Kari Grace in particular for flagging overlap at committee meetings, and said the goal is to identify gaps that haven’t been addressed elsewhere.

Mayor Clapsaddle raised what may be the most important question of the evening on this topic: whether anyone under 30 serves on the committee. Welton said no, noting the committee meets during weekday work hours, though teenagers and young families were well represented in the surveys and focus groups. The mayor pushed gently, suggesting the Town should have some form of official youth advisory voice. Welton agreed and offered to explore ways to incorporate young people through separate meetings or adjusted scheduling. It was a small but meaningful exchange — a reminder that a program designed to serve all ages should visibly include all ages in its governance.

Two Officers Honored

The Board recognized two departing members of the Wake Forest Police Department with formal resolutions of appreciation.

Officer Michael Lawson, an auxiliary police officer since January 2003, served as the department’s chaplain for his entire 23-year tenure and spent 22 years on the SWAT team — all while serving as Director of Campus Security at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. His separation date is April 1. Mayor Clapsaddle presented him and his wife with a coin of excellence, handing the coin specifically to Mrs. Lawson “for everything that you did for our town.” Lawson kept his remarks brief, thanking the community and encouraging continued support for the officers coming up behind him.

Captain Matt Perkinson, whose law enforcement career began with the Norlina Police Department in December 1994, joined Wake Forest PD in January 2005 and rose from patrol officer through drug investigator, canine officer, and impact lieutenant to captain overseeing the Special Operations Division. He earned the Advanced Law Enforcement Certificate, the FBI-LEEDA Trilogy Award, and a canine award from Crime Stoppers. Perkinson retires April 1 after more than 30 years in law enforcement. He told the Board: “You’ve got a great group of folks coming up behind me and I just ask you continue to support them and let them do the job, because they’re going to do it right.”

The Board also approved the surplus of both officers’ badges and service weapons on the consent agenda — a statutory requirement that allows the Town to present the items as keepsakes.

Women Veterans Month Proclaimed

Mayor Clapsaddle opened the meeting by reading a proclamation declaring March 2026 as Women Veterans Month in Wake Forest. The proclamation recognized that more than 3 million women have served in the U.S. armed forces, including over 90,000 women veterans in North Carolina, representing nearly 11 percent of the state’s total veteran population. It specifically honored the American Legion Auxiliary Post 1807 for its March 1 “Salute to Service Women” event. Debora Godfrey, accepting on behalf of the American Legion Post 187 Auxiliary, noted that women veterans often “downplay their service — so many have served and you never know it.”

Grant Policy Overhaul: First Major Update Since 2011

The Board unanimously approved the Town’s first major revision to its grant policy and procedures in 15 years. Jack Cassidy, the newly created Grants Program Manager hired in October, presented the changes.

The core finding from Cassidy’s internal review — interviews with nearly every department director from October through December — was that grants were being managed effectively but inconsistently. Each department had its own process, which created downstream friction for finance and budgeting when it came time to account for the funds, prepare for audits, and file reports. With more than $20 million in active grant funding as of December 31, 2025, the informal system was reaching its limits.

The updated policy makes five key changes: formalizing the Grants Program Manager position, requiring each department to designate a project manager for every grant, establishing clear responsibilities for all parties, creating a step-by-step award cycle, and mandating quarterly updates to the Board on all grant activity.

Cassidy noted the collaborative model is already being workshopped on several active and upcoming applications: $120,000 for the Renaissance Center, $20,000 for organizational performance, a $200,000 application being prepared for Flaherty Park, and a US House Community Project Funding request.

A commissioner asked about a $50,000 threshold for Board approval that appeared in an earlier draft. Cassidy said the final version removed the numeric threshold, reasoning that most large grants — especially federal ones — already require Board approval at the application stage, and the quarterly updates would serve as a backstop for everything else. Commissioner Fatmi followed up on audit oversight, confirming that external audit compliance would fall to the finance department and would be included in the quarterly Board updates. Town Manager Padgett added that the Town’s annual single audit — required whenever the municipality receives federal funding — provides an additional layer of accountability already presented to the Board each year.

For a town staring down $532 million in identified capital needs over five years, with roughly a third dependent on a future bond referendum, maximizing grant capture isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a fiscal imperative. This policy gives the machinery teeth.

The Consent Agenda: $10 Million for the Ailey Young House, a Property Acquisition, and More

Nine items passed in a single vote with no items pulled for separate discussion. Several deserve attention.

The Ailey Young House and Northeast Gateway Park Vision Plan (Item 5.H) received the Board’s formal endorsement. Backed by roughly $10.3 million in combined CIP funding — $4.73 million for the heritage site and $5.55 million for broader park improvements, with $4.04 million coming from the 2022 GO Bond — the plan envisions one of the most culturally significant public spaces in Wake Forest’s history. The design features wireframe art installations marking the footprints of demolished Simmons Row structures, an interactive Legacy Tree, interpretive story cubes, an elevated boardwalk, and preserved mature trees protecting potential archaeological resources. It passed without discussion.

Budget Amendment #4 (Item 5.B) recognized $1,590,775 in mid-year revenue, driven primarily by sales tax collections running well ahead of the Town’s conservative projections — roughly $490,000 in extra Local Option Sales Tax and approximately $719,000 in excess Articles 40, 42, and 44 revenue. The surplus, along with a $357,075 drawdown from the Appropriated Fund Balance, was channeled into capital outlays including facilities equipment, fire department vehicles, and engineering projects.

The 203 N. Brooks Street acquisition (Item 5.G) authorized the purchase of a portion of property adjacent to the Town Hall campus for $116,000. The parcel is currently owned by Hidden Jewel Ventures LTD, whose registered agent is Chris Jorgensen, owner of Norse Brewing. Long-range planning documents have proposed expanding the municipal civic campus in this area for over two decades.

On-call engineering services (Item 5.C) locked in master service agreements with eight major consulting firms for a three-year base term. As noted above, resident Margaret Watkins objected to this item during public comment, but no commissioner requested it be pulled for separate discussion.

Commissioners’ Report: Anonymous Letters, EMS Changes, CALEA, and a Certificate of Need Briefing

The most substantive exchange of the evening came during the Commissioners’ Report, when Commissioner Cross raised the issue of anonymous political attack letters being sent to Wake Forest neighborhoods.

Cross said she had distributed copies of the letters to each commissioner and the mayor. She described them as targeted attacks on residents for how they voted, characterized the language as hateful, and noted the letters were anonymous — not addressed to specific individuals, but distributed in bulk across multiple neighborhoods. The return addresses indicated they originated from outside Wake Forest.

“While people do have the right to express anything they want — we have free speech — I do think I want to make it very clear that that type of language, that type of targeted verbal attack on people, this is not okay,” Cross said. She asked residents receiving similar letters to contact the Board.

Mayor Clapsaddle echoed her, connecting the issue to David Griffin’s earlier public comment inviting the community to a “Resetting the Table” workshop on bridging political divides. “We take it to an extreme and we’re hidden behind anonymous letters like this, or in emails to each other that’s anonymous,” the mayor said. “It belittles us as human beings.”

It was a bipartisan moment — a Democratic mayor and a Republican commissioner speaking from the same podium about the same thing: that anonymous political intimidation has no place in Wake Forest.

Other commissioner highlights:

Commissioner Adam Wright had nothing to report. Mayor Pro Tem Keith Shackleford likewise had no report for the evening, though he was active during the meeting — he made the motion to approve the amended grant policy.

Commissioner Cross reported attending the NC League of Municipalities Advanced Leadership course at the UNC School of Government — the reason she missed the previous meeting — and called it highly worthwhile. She said 25 elected officials from across the area attended the week-long program. She volunteered with Meals on Wheels at the Center for Active Aging, which serves 100 meals per week, attended the Community Schools Art Showcase at the Renaissance Center, and forwarded a Duke Energy grant opportunity to the Wake Forest Conservation Foundation, which applied for $25,000 to restore and maintain the 9.5-acre Joiner Park Butterfly Meadow and Piedmont Prairie.

Commissioner Fatmi expanded on the March 9 EMS county update, noting that Wake County is absorbing 66 new residents per day — “one Wendell per year” — and that the county’s new triage-based dispatch system has generated community concern. He stressed that everyone who calls for an ambulance still receives one, and encouraged residents to share their experiences, positive or negative, with both the county and the Board.

Commissioner Sliwinski, newly named liaison to the Human Relations Council, announced a vacancy with a March 22 application deadline.

Town Manager Kip Padgett reported that the Wake Forest Police Department received its CALEA re-accreditation over the weekend in Arizona — the national accreditation that ensures departmental policies and procedures meet the highest professional standards. After the Board returned from closed session, Padgett added an item he’d forgotten: he, the mayor, and Commissioner Cross were invited by Representative Schietzelt to meet with DHHS attorneys about the certificate of need process via Zoom. The meeting provided insight into how UNC’s applications are evaluated relative to competitors, and DHHS agreed to share documentation showing the comparative analysis. Commissioner Cross described the process as “extremely structured” and said a document showing all Wake County applications, approvals, and denials was “quite interesting.” The Board agreed to share the documentation with all commissioners.

Mayor Clapsaddle closed by praising a resident who showed up at the vandalized Dunn Creek Greenway Phase 3 with white paint to cover offensive graffiti while a TV crew was filming, and thanked the volunteer groups who have been picking up roadside litter on weekends. He wished the community a happy Easter, noted Town Hall will be closed on Good Friday, announced a flag-raising ceremony at Centennial Plaza on April 6 at 11:00 a.m., and offered wishes for Eid al-Fitr.

The Board entered closed session under N.C.G.S. 143-318.11(5) and adjourned.

The Takeaway

Tuesday’s meeting moved real money and made real decisions. The Board authorized up to $18 million in debt for a fire station, approved a commercial rezoning on a corridor slated for $68 million in public infrastructure investment, endorsed a $10 million-plus park vision plan honoring one of the town’s most important African American heritage sites, and overhauled the grant infrastructure that will determine how aggressively Wake Forest competes for state and federal funding.

Most of those decisions passed without discussion or dissent. That’s not inherently a problem — not every vote requires a floor fight. But several of the questions worth asking before the meeting went unasked during it. The S-Line implications of the South Main rezoning. The long-term staffing costs behind Fire Station 6. The specific emissions targets that will anchor the sustainability plan. The construction timeline for the Ailey Young park.

The anonymous letter discussion was the exception — a moment where elected officials spoke plainly about a real threat to civic life, without scripted talking points or partisan hedging. More of that, on more of these topics, would serve the community well.

The next Board of Commissioners meeting is April 7, 2026 (work session) and April 21 (regular meeting). The full agenda packet and archived video from Tuesday’s meeting are available on the Town of Wake Forest Public Meetings Portal.

Wake Forest Matters covers local government for the residents of Wake Forest. We believe transparency and civic engagement aren’t partisan ideas — they’re the foundation of a healthy community. If you found this recap useful, share it with a neighbor.

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That is where the hostage crisis came from. When President Carter admitted the Shah to the United States for medical treatment, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans for 444 days. Carter ordered a rescue mission. Eight helicopters flew to a remote staging site in the Iranian desert called Desert One. A mid-air collision and fire killed eight American servicemen and ended the mission before it reached Tehran. The failure helped cost Carter the presidency and branded Iran as unfinished business in the minds of Washington’s foreign policy establishment for the next four and a half decades. Desert One is the original wound. Every strategic miscalculation since has been shaped, in part, by the perceived humiliation of those burning helicopters in the Iranian desert. A foreign policy elite that could never accept the lesson that we caused the conditions that produced our own humiliation.

I was born in 1984. Five years earlier, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The United States responded by funding and arming the Afghan mujahideen, a proxy war strategy considered a great success when the Soviets withdrew in 1989. What we built did not disappear when the Cold War ended. The networks we funded, the weapons we supplied, the infrastructure of militant organization we helped create: it metastasized. By 2001, it had found us. My generation was in high school on September 11th. I enlisted in the Navy at 18.

In 2016, I read a book that gave what I’d lived through a name. Andrew Bacevich’s America’s War for the Greater Middle East is a military history written by a West Point graduate and Army colonel who lost his son in Iraq. His thesis is simple and devastating: from the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What changed was the Carter Doctrine, his 1980 declaration that the Persian Gulf was a vital U.S. national security interest, that disorder in the Islamic world would be managed through military force. Carter lit a fuse, Bacevich argues, without knowing where it led. Every administration since has followed the same playbook, failed, and handed the next administration a worse situation. It is not a series of separate wars. It is one war. It has been running since 1980. My entire adult life has been inside it.

I studied political science because I wanted to understand why we went to Iraq. What I found was that Iraq wasn’t an aberration. It was the latest installment of a strategy that had been failing, visibly and repeatedly, for two decades before the towers fell. Reading Bacevich in 2016, with a career’s worth of deployments behind me, was the experience of finally seeing the whole map at once. Everything I had witnessed made sense as part of a single, continuous strategic failure. And now I am watching it start again, with Iran, in a way that tracks the same arc so precisely it is almost pedagogical.

It is always handed to someone else. The people who design these wars do not fight them. The people who fight them rarely vote for them. And the bill always comes due on a generation that had no say in the decision.

What I Saw From the Inside

I spent 13 years inside these wars at every level: flying strategic intelligence collection missions over the region, embedded with Special Forces and SEAL teams on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and back again as a contractor fighting the insurgency our previous “victory” had created. When I describe what is happening, I am not working from a briefing. I am working from memory. The people who designed these campaigns were not in Diyala Province or Gardez when the consequences arrived. I was.

Afghanistan Ended. The Bill Hasn’t.

Our war in Afghanistan ended in defeat. The government spent twenty years and over $2 trillion building collapsed within days of our withdrawal. That was not a surprise to anyone who had been there. It was the predictable conclusion of a war that was never honestly explained to the American people and never honestly assessed by the people making the decisions.

The Watson Institute at Brown University has spent years documenting what these wars actually cost. Their numbers are not partisan. They are accounting. The post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and related operations cost approximately $8 trillion. The long-term cost of caring for post-9/11 veterans will reach between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion by 2050. Most of it has not yet been paid. At least four times as many active duty personnel and veterans of these wars have died by suicide as died in combat. 38 million people were displaced by the post-9/11 wars. The bill was handed to someone else. It is still being handed down. The VA backlog has not cleared. The debt has not been paid. The suicides have not stopped.

My generation paid that installment. The question in front of us right now is whether our kids pay for the next one.

The War That Started February 28th

This war did not have to happen. That is not an opinion. It is a documented sequence of events. On February 26th, U.S. and Iranian negotiators met in Geneva through Omani mediation. Talks were active. A deal was within reach. Two days later, Trump ordered the strikes. The decision to go to war was made while the alternative was still on the table, by a president who had already destroyed the last diplomatic framework that had worked, in coordination with a foreign government whose prime minister had been pushing for this outcome for thirty years. This was not a war forced on us by circumstance. It was a war of choice made by specific men who would not fight it.

To understand what was thrown away to get here, you have to go back to 2015. The JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, was working. The IAEA verified compliance. The deal constrained enrichment, imposed intrusive inspections, and put at least a decade between Iran and a weapon. In 2018, Netanyahu delivered a presentation called ‘Iran Lied’ at the Israeli Defense Ministry. Trump withdrew from the deal eight days later, over the objections of every other signatory and despite the IAEA finding no violations. Iran then accelerated its nuclear program, exactly as every critic of the withdrawal predicted. The maximum pressure campaign produced the precise opposite of its stated goal. By the time talks resumed in 2025, Iran was closer to a bomb than when the deal was abandoned. Trump and Netanyahu had spent seven years engineering the conditions that they then used to justify a war.

Twenty-four days in: the supreme leader dead, over 1,200 Iranians dead, thirteen Americans killed, a billion dollars a day, and a $200 billion supplemental request to a Congress that cannot constitutionally be bypassed but is being bypassed anyway. A U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate 2,000 miles from Iran, the first torpedo sinking since World War II. The Strait of Hormuz is contested. I have sailed through it. It carries 20 percent of the world’s oil. Senator Lindsey Graham went on Fox News Sunday this morning and called on Trump to seize Kharg Island. When pushed on the cost to U.S. troops, Graham said: “I trust the Marines. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.’ Iwo Jima killed 6,821 Americans in 36 days. Graham offered it as a selling point. This is what the logic of empire sounds like when it has run out of road. Not a strategy. Not a plan. A reference to a battle from 1945 and the confidence of a man who has never been in the thing he is describing.

Here is what I think is actually happening, and I say it as someone who spent thirteen years serving the institution that is now executing this war. Empires do not end when they are defeated from the outside. They end when the costs of maintaining their reach exceed what society can bear, and the people in charge cannot stop themselves from reaching further. The United States has spent $8 trillion on wars in the Greater Middle East since 2001. It has nothing to show for it strategically. The Taliban governs Afghanistan. ISIS exists. Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than it was when we tore up the deal that was containing it. Every intervention has produced the conditions requiring the next one. And now, rather than reckon with what that pattern means, we are going further. Deeper. Into Iran, whose population is three times Iraq’s, whose terrain makes Afghanistan look manageable, and whose history with American interference goes back seventy years. Martin Luther King called militarism one of the three great evils, alongside racism and poverty, because he understood that a society organized around permanent war cannot build anything for its own people. Every dollar committed to this war is a dollar extracted from the country it is supposed to be defending. That is not a metaphor. That is the mechanism. And we are watching it operate in real time.

If You Have a Teenager

A draft is unlikely. Experts are clear on that, and it would require an act of Congress. My generation was also told Iraq would be quick, contained, and paid for by Iraqi oil revenues. We know how that ended. The honest question is not whether a draft is probable today, but what an unplanned ground war in Iran looks like eighteen months from now if the air campaign stalls and there is still no exit strategy. My generation knows what that trajectory looks like. We lived the last one.

If you have a son between 18 and 25, he is already registered with the Selective Service. If he turns 18 this year, a law Congress passed last year will register him automatically by December. That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to be clear-eyed about the pattern you are watching, because you have watched it before.

What It Costs This Town

The Costs of War researchers at Brown found something that should follow every defense budget debate into every town hall in this country: military spending produces an average of 5 jobs per million dollars invested. The same investment in education creates nearly 13 jobs. In healthcare, 9. In infrastructure, 7 to 8. Every dollar that goes to the next installment of the Greater Middle East war is a dollar that does not build a school, staff a clinic, or repair a road in Wake Forest.

This town plans to issue tens of millions in voter-approved bond documents this year for roads, greenways, and infrastructure. The town’s own bond documents note the schedule is “subject to change due to bond market volatility.” That volatility has arrived. Global bond markets have been whipsawed as the oil shock from the Strait of Hormuz pushes inflation expectations up and interest rate cuts off the table. Every dollar more it costs Wake Forest to borrow is a dollar not going to the road on your street. The S-Line commuter rail project, which depends heavily on federal funding, now competes with a $200 billion war supplemental for congressional bandwidth. Gas prices are up. Your grocery bill is rising. The lag between an energy shock and the receipt at the checkout line is about 30 to 60 days. That lag is almost up.

After Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Act of 1973, written after 58,000 Americans died in a war authorized by a resolution passed based on a naval attack that probably never happened. The law says: if a president commits forces to hostilities without authorization, the action must end within 60 days unless Congress votes to authorize it. They wrote it specifically so the next generation couldn’t be handed a war nobody voted for. Then came Iraq. Then came the $8 trillion. Then came the suicides at four times the combat death rate. The law did not stop any of it because Congress kept finding ways not to use it.

The clock started on February 28th. April 28th is 60 days. Last month, Congress had its first chance to invoke it. Both of North Carolina’s senators, Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, voted no. Ten of our fourteen House members voted no. Four voted to use the law: Alma Adams, Don Davis, Valerie Foushee, and Deborah Ross. On or before April 28th, there will be a second vote, because the law demands one. What our delegation does with it will be on record for a long time.

I am not asking you to have a settled view on Iran. I am asking you to be honest about what you are watching. The people who ordered this war are not new to power. They have been making these decisions, or versions of them, for decades. George W. Bush had advisors who had been pushing for war with Iraq since 1998. The same network, the same think tanks, the same logic of American primacy enforced through force, has now produced a war with Iran that started two days after a diplomatic meeting. These are not mistakes. They are choices. Made by people with names.

Bacevich’s argument, the one that reorganized how I understood everything I had seen, is that this was never a series of separate decisions. It is one war. One continuous strategic enterprise, driven not by genuine security requirements but by the institutional momentum of a military-industrial complex that requires conflict to justify its scale, and a political class that has found war more useful than the hard work of governing. King saw the same logic in Vietnam: that the bombs dropped abroad are connected to the schools not built at home, that militarism and poverty are not separate problems but the same problem expressing itself in two directions at once. I enlisted in this war without knowing it had a name. I spent thirteen years inside it. I watched it consume people I served with and produce nothing it promised. Three days ago was the twenty-third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. What I am watching now is not a new chapter. It is the final one, and it is being written by the same people who wrote all the others.

The decisions made in 1979 shaped my deployments thirty years later. The decisions being made right now will determine what the kids in Wake Forest’s schools are asked to do when they are our age. There are specific people responsible for those decisions. Donald Trump ordered these strikes. Benjamin Netanyahu coordinated them and has been working toward them for thirty years. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis voted to let him keep going without congressional authorization. Chuck Edwards, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Mark Harris, David Rouzer, Greg Murphy, Tim Moore, Jeff Knott, Greg Harrigan, and Addison McDowell voted the same way. These are not abstract institutional failures. These are people, with names and offices, who made a choice. That choice has a cost, and the cost will not be paid by any of them.

The vote records are public. The Selective Service rules are public. The bond schedule is on the town’s website. April 28th is five weeks away, and every member of this delegation will have to go on record again. Watch what they do. And when they come home to campaign, remember what they did when it mattered, and ask them to explain it to the families who will pay for it.

A note on sourcing: This article is based on publicly available news coverage, Wake Forest Police Department communications, Town of Wake Forest municipal code, North Carolina General Statutes, UNC School of Government legal analysis, manufacturer specifications, and local social media discussion. We have not interviewed any participants in the Heritage incident or their families, and the Town of Wake Forest did not respond to our request for comment.

On January 20, the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners voted to update the town’s Code of Ordinances governing motorized scooters, electric bicycles, and electric assisted bicycles. The amendment, which lifted a previous ban on motorized scooters, established clear rules for where these devices can operate: shared streets, greenways, parks, multi-use paths, and bike lanes, but not sidewalks. It capped speeds at 10 mph on greenways and in parks, required helmets for riders under 16, and gave pedestrians an explicit right of way. Captain David Zick told the Wake Weekly that enforcement would initially focus on education.

Less than two months later, that approach was put to the test. A coordinated street takeover in the Heritage subdivision saw a group of juveniles on e-bikes block intersections, blow through traffic signals, ride against the flow of traffic, and flee from officers. The Wake Forest Police Department responded with a public warning and media coverage on WRAL followed quickly.

Chief Julius Jefferson didn’t mince words. “Coordinated events that block traffic, ignore traffic signals, and endanger others will not be tolerated,” he wrote. The department followed up with an additional warning: “We are aware of a possible e-bike street takeover in Wake Forest this weekend. As always, officers will cite and possibly arrest anyone who violates Wake Forest Town ordinances or NC traffic laws.”

We don’t know exactly what kinds of machines were involved in the Heritage incident. The riders may have been on anything from compliant low-speed e-bikes to high-powered electric dirt bikes, or some combination. What we do know is what the law says, what the police are doing, what the community is saying, and what’s at stake for the parents who bought these machines.

What the Community Is Saying

The community reaction has been swift and angry. Local social media threads and neighborhood forums are full of residents demanding action—not just from the police, but from parents.

WRAL’s coverage captured the sentiment on the ground. Mark Morrow, who has worked at The Bike Guy in Wake Forest for nearly a decade, told the station that e-bike repairs have grown from a tiny fraction of his business to an exponential part of it. He described personally being nearly hit on a greenway by kids going 40 to 50 mph on electric motorcycles. “I’m really not a fan of enforcement on bicycles,” Morrow said. “But when I see somebody going down the greenway at 40 mph on an electric motorcycle, the first thing I’m thinking is, ‘Where’s the cops?’”

Wake Forest resident Pam Jones told WRAL that her car was hit by an e-bike rider in January, causing nearly $4,000 in damage. She said she regularly sees kids in her neighborhood riding without helmets and ignoring traffic laws. “How can you expect a kid to obey the rules that we, as drivers, obey, when they’re not even old enough to drive?” Jones asked. “I’m just afraid we’re going to see a rise in accidents or deaths.”

The frustration has reached the Board of Commissioners. Commissioner Adam Wright—who voted in January to update the town’s e-bike ordinance—posted publicly on Facebook linking the WRAL coverage, writing: “This is how someone gets killed.” Wright drew a sharp line between responsible use and what the town is now dealing with. “I supported ebikes done right. Getting around town, using greenways, giving people more options. This ain’t that,” he wrote. “What we’re seeing here is reckless, it’s illegal, and it’s going to get someone hurt if it keeps happening.”

Wright pushed back directly on residents who have blamed the January ordinance itself for enabling the problem. “Some folks are trying to blame the law for this. That’s just not accurate,” he wrote. “We can support ebikes and still expect people to follow the rules. Both things can be true.” He closed with the question now echoing across the town: “How do we stop this before someone gets hurt?”

The comment thread below Wright’s post ran to dozens of responses and captured the full spectrum of community frustration. Several recurring themes emerged. The most common demand was for immediate, tangible consequences: impoundment, fines, and arrests—not more warnings. Multiple residents argued that the warning-first approach has run its course, and that the behavior has been escalating for months without visible enforcement results. One commenter pointed to Philadelphia, where impoundment reportedly curtailed similar takeover activity.

Parental accountability was the second dominant thread. Residents repeatedly noted that these machines cost thousands of dollars and that minors aren’t buying them, parents are. Several commenters argued that safety education starts at home and that the town shouldn’t have to rely on police to do what parents should be doing in their own driveways.

A number of residents pushed back on the term “e-bike” itself, insisting the machines involved should be called what they are: electric motorcycles. One commenter noted that many are capable of 50-plus mph and that under state law there is no difference between these devices and a gas-powered 125cc dirt bike. Others reported seeing the same riders performing stunts on South White Street, West Holding Avenue, and near the TJ Maxx parking lot for months. Multiple people described near-misses on greenways and at intersections, and several predicted that it would take a fatality to force meaningful action.

Not every voice called for a crackdown. Some residents urged a combination of enforcement and education—community service, mandatory safety courses, or a permit system for underage riders. Others cautioned against policies so broad they would penalize the many responsible e-bike riders who use the greenways and streets safely. One longtime rider reminded the thread that e-bikes are a lifeline for people who can’t afford a car and provide real health benefits to seniors—and urged the town not to let a few bad actors ruin a good thing. Wright engaged directly in the thread, answering questions about permits, policing levels, and enforcement strategy, and hinting that the department’s response may be more active behind the scenes than public statements suggest.

Meanwhile, these machines are easier to buy than ever. They’re available online, at powersports dealers, and increasingly at big-box retail. A parent can walk into a store and walk out with a device that may not legally qualify as a bicycle. Most won’t check.

Two Very Different Markets, One Misleading Label

To understand this crisis, you need to understand that the term “e-bike” now covers two completely different categories of machine that are legally and practically worlds apart.

Traditional E-Bikes

The first category is the traditional e-bike—the pedelecs and commuters built by brands like Trek, Specialized, Velotric, and Aventon. These follow standard classifications: Class 1 and Class 2 cap out at 20 mph (Class 2 adds a throttle), and Class 3 tops out at 28 mph with pedal assist only. They cost between $1,000 and $3,500. They look and handle like regular bicycles. They’re built for greenways, the Neuse River Trail, and commuting. These are the machines Wake Forest’s January ordinance was designed to accommodate, and the vast majority of riders using them responsibly are not the problem.

The “E-Motos”

The second category is something else entirely. Brands like Rawrr (specifically the Mantis model), Sur-Ron, Talaria, Stacyc, and Super73 produce machines that blur the line between bicycle and dirt bike. While some ship with a software “limiter” to keep them at 20 mph, riders, particularly juveniles, routinely clip the limiter wire or bypass the software, unlocking the bike’s full capability: 45 to 50-plus mph. These machines cost $3,500 to $5,000 or more. Many lack functional pedals, using foot pegs instead. They have the suspension and torque of a lightweight electric motorcycle. And they are the vehicles primarily associated with juvenile street takeovers, popping wheelies through traffic and swarming intersections.

Who’s Buying Them—and Why

The primary buyers are affluent parents purchasing these as gifts for their middle- and high-school-aged children. Because the machines don’t require gas, make no noise, and are aggressively marketed on TikTok and Instagram as “e-bikes,” parents often buy them under the assumption that they’re expensive toys or glorified mountain bikes. The education provided at the point of sale depends entirely on where parents shop. Traditional bike shops emphasize trail etiquette, greenway speed limits, and helmet safety. Powersports dealers often sell the high-powered e-motos strictly as “off-road use only” vehicles to shield themselves from liability. And big-box retailers like Walmart, advertised a 26-inch big-wheel e-bike at its Wake Forest location for $644, provide little to no guidance at all.

The core problem is the massive disconnect between what parents think they’re buying and what North Carolina law actually dictates.

What the Law Says About These Machines

The UNC School of Government’s Criminal Law Blog provides the clearest available breakdown of how North Carolina classifies these devices.

Under state law, a device qualifies as a legal electric bicycle if it has fully operable pedals, an electric motor of no more than 750 watts, and a maximum motor-powered speed of 20 mph on level ground. If it meets those criteria, it’s treated like a traditional bicycle. No license, no registration, no insurance required.

Between 20 and 30 mph, it’s a moped, requiring the operator to be at least 16, wear a DOT-approved helmet, and carry registration and insurance. Above 30 mph, it’s a motorcycle. That means a valid driver’s license with a motorcycle endorsement, DMV registration, a license plate, annual inspection, and liability insurance.

This is where the limiter bypass becomes legally critical. A Sur-Ron Light Bee X or a Rawrr Mantis may ship with a 20 mph software cap, technically compliant out of the box. But the moment someone clips that limiter wire and the machine reaches 45 mph, it has legally become an unregistered, uninsured motorcycle. The kid riding it is an unlicensed operator. And the parent who bought it is exposed to everything that follows.

Wake Forest’s updated ordinance tracks these state definitions. The January amendment specifically notes that motorized scooters must not exceed 15 mph, e-bikes powered by motor only must not exceed 20 mph, and neither can operate on roads with speed limits over 25 mph. The Town’s e-bike safety rules page and a recent Facebook reminder about greenway speed limits lay this out clearly.

We can’t confirm which specific models or brands were involved in the Heritage incident. But any device capable of exceeding 30 mph on level ground, whether it left the factory that way or got there through a two-minute modification in the garage, falls squarely into the motorcycle classification. If the machine doesn’t meet basic state safety requirements, turn signals, mirrors, DOT lighting, then the only place it can legally operate is on private property with the owner’s permission.

The physics underscore the stakes. A standard bicycle weighs about 30 pounds. A commuter e-bike, around 50. The e-moto class, Sur-Rons, Talarias, Rawrr Mantises—tips the scales at 110 to 167 pounds. When a machine that heavy, carrying a teenager, is moving at 45 or 50 mph and hits a pedestrian or a car, the result is a catastrophic, high-kinetic-energy event. Standard bicycle helmets are engineered for impacts at 15 mph. They are useless at those speeds. Pam Jones’s $4,000 car repair bill is what a low-speed collision looks like. The next one could be a funeral.

Street Takeovers Are a Crime—Including for Bystanders

North Carolina didn’t leave this to interpretation. G.S. 20-141.10 explicitly defines a street takeover as the unauthorized taking over of a highway, street, or public vehicular area by blocking traffic to perform stunts, contests, or exhibitions. The statute specifically lists burnouts, doughnuts, drifting, and wheelies. The UNC School of Government has published a detailed explainer on how the law works in practice.

The statute goes further. It’s a criminal offense to coordinate a takeover through social media, participate in one, commit an overt act in furtherance of one, or facilitate one. The kids texting out the meetup location and those actively filming to promote the event could face the same charges as the riders themselves. The statute does draw one line: mere presence alone, without an intentional act, is not sufficient for conviction. But coordinating, filming for distribution, or any overt act in furtherance of a takeover crosses that line.

What Impoundment Actually Looks Like

Chief Jefferson has publicly warned that participants face arrest, citations, and vehicle impoundment. Some residents have reasonably asked whether that’s realistic for a device that looks like a bicycle.

Here’s where the law gets unusual. The street takeover seizure statute incorporates by reference the older drag racing forfeiture rules under G.S. 20-141.3(g). Upon seizure, a magistrate reviews the officer’s affidavit and orders the vehicle held — typically by the local sheriff or a state contractor. But if the juvenile is ultimately convicted and a judge orders permanent forfeiture, the vehicle doesn’t stay with the police department. Under G.S. 20-28.5, it’s either auctioned at public sale with net proceeds paid to the county school fund, or the county board of education can choose to keep the vehicle for its own institutional use. That’s not a typo. The legislature wrote the forfeiture law so that the proceeds — and in some cases the vehicles themselves — benefit the public school system. And if the case drags on and storage costs keep mounting, the county board of education or the State Surplus Property Agency can execute an expedited sale after 90 days, liquidating the bike before the case is even resolved. Your kid’s $4,500 electric dirt bike could end up as property of the Wake County Public School System.

The financial hit adds up fast. Standard North Carolina municipal towing fees start around $175 for a base tow. Recovery charges run $45 per 15 minutes. Daily storage fees range from $25 to $35. Add a $25 municipal processing fee. If a $4,500 electric dirt bike gets impounded on a Friday night and the parents can’t get a court order for 30 days, they’re looking at over $1,000 in storage alone, to retrieve a machine their child can’t legally ride on public streets.

The Greenway Problem

The danger doesn’t stop at the subdivision line. Wake Forest’s greenways were designed for walkers, joggers, families with strollers, and pedal cyclists. The Town recently posted a reminder about the 10 mph speed limit on parks, greenways, and multi-use paths. Mark Morrow’s description of nearly being hit at 40 to 50 mph on a greenway illustrates just how far the reality has drifted from the rules.

The Town’s amended ordinance bans motorized scooters, e-bikes, and motorized recreational devices from all sidewalks. On greenways, the 10 mph speed limit applies. Pedestrians always have the right of way. Any trail user under 16 must wear a helmet. And any device capable of exceeding 20 mph is subject to moped or motorcycle requirements that effectively ban it from trails.

A teenager in dark clothing on a silent, matte-black electric motorcycle at dusk is functionally invisible until impact.

Vandalism and the Culture of Impunity

This attitude of impunity appears to be bleeding into other forms of damage to shared public space. In March 2026, unknown vandals defaced the soon-to-open Phase 3 of the Dunn Creek Greenway, spray-painting freshly paved trails, fencing, signage, and a pedestrian tunnel. Cleanup and replacement costs easily exceed $1,000. The WFPD has asked for the public’s help identifying those responsible.

We can’t connect these incidents to the street takeover participants. But the pattern of contempt for public infrastructure is hard to ignore, and local frustration over both issues is feeding into the same conversation.

WFPD Is Doing Its Part

Credit where it’s due: the Wake Forest Police Department is being proactive. Officers are deploying on greenways and at parks. A recent WFPD Facebook post announced that the department is ramping patrols up as the weather warms.

The department has two specialized units suited to this problem. The Bike Patrol Unit is trained through a rigorous 40-hour program certified by the International Police Mountain Bike Association, specializing in rolling apprehensions and trail enforcement. The Motor Unit, established with an $85,000 grant from the N.C. Governor’s Highway Safety Program, uses BMW motorcycles for traffic enforcement in subdivisions and secondary roads, exactly the terrain where takeovers happen.

Chief Jefferson has drawn a clear line. The community stands behind it. But enforcement alone can’t solve this if the machines keep rolling out of family garages every afternoon.

What Other Communities Are Doing—and Where Wake Forest Stands

Wake Forest is not alone. Communities across the country are grappling with the same problem: a consumer market that sells high-powered electric vehicles as “bicycles,” a patchwork of state laws that weren’t written for these machines, and a wave of youth riders operating them with no training, no licensing, and no supervision. Here’s how some of them are responding.

Newport Beach, California

• Newport Beach unanimously approved a new municipal code in late 2025 that specifically addresses e-bike enforcement for minors. The ordinance requires helmets for all riders under 18, delineates unsafe riding behaviors, and gives officers discretion to impound any bicycle or e-bike on the spot, with release only to a responsible adult. First-time juvenile offenders can be diverted into a mandatory safety education program. The city’s police department has explicitly stated that Sur-Ron and Segway-type vehicles are classified as motorcycles and are subject to 30-day impoundment if operated without proper licensing.

Naperville, Illinois

• Naperville approved an ordinance in December 2025 imposing a minimum age of 16 for all e-bike riders, effective January 2026. Class 1 and 2 e-bikes are permitted on city trails with a 15 mph speed limit. Class 3 e-bikes are restricted to streets and designated bike lanes. No e-bikes are allowed on sidewalks or the city’s popular Riverwalk. The police chief cited the safety risks created by young, inexperienced riders who don’t understand traffic laws.

Hoboken, New Jersey

• Hoboken took a different approach, focusing heavily on battery safety and registration. The city’s 2025 ordinance bans the use, sale, and repair of secondhand lithium-ion batteries for e-bikes and prohibits charging or storing devices in common areas of multi-unit buildings. Any unregistered Class 3 e-bike can be impounded at the owner’s expense. Police impounded 14 mopeds, motorcycles, and e-bikes in a two-week enforcement surge. New Jersey’s statewide law, taking full effect in 2026, will require licensing, registration, and insurance for all e-bikes, with a minimum rider age of 15.

Durham, North Carolina

• Closer to home, Durham passed an ordinance in late 2024 prohibiting all e-bikes from its greenway trail system, a blanket ban that advocates have criticized as overly broad, since it also affects legal, low-speed pedal-assist riders. The American Tobacco Trail, part of the East Coast Greenway, runs through Durham. The ban illustrates the risk of reactive policy: without clear distinctions between compliant e-bikes and high-powered e-motos, well-intentioned regulation can punish responsible riders alongside bad actors.

The Illinois Model: Regional Coordination

• In the Chicago suburbs, 43 municipalities organized through the Northwest Municipal Conference held a summit in September 2025 specifically to coordinate e-bike regulation. The consensus: the biggest problem is classification confusion. Ride Illinois, a statewide nonprofit, is pushing for legislation in 2026 to formally define “e-motos” in the Illinois Vehicle Code, giving municipalities a clear legal basis for targeted enforcement without restricting compliant e-bikes.

Where Wake Forest Fits

• Wake Forest already has several advantages. North Carolina’s street takeover statute, G.S. 20-141.10, gives police clear authority to act—including seizure and forfeiture—that many other states lack. The January ordinance update established greenway speed limits, a sidewalk ban, and helmet requirements. The WFPD is actively deploying specialized units.

• But Wake Forest still lacks some tools other communities are building. There is no minimum age for e-bike operation beyond the state helmet requirement for riders under 16. There is no juvenile diversion program tied to e-bike violations, like Newport Beach’s. There is no formal, public education campaign aimed specifically at parents explaining classification thresholds and liability exposure. And North Carolina, unlike New Jersey or California, has not yet passed statewide legislation to tighten e-bike definitions or mandate registration for high-powered devices—though Senate Bill 576 introduced in 2025 by Sen. Lee sought to begin that process.

The lesson from these communities is consistent: targeted enforcement works better than blanket bans, classification clarity is essential, and education without consequences doesn’t change behavior. Wake Forest has the enforcement backbone. What it may need next is a local ordinance that fills the gaps state law leaves open.

It Starts in the Driveway

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear: the most critical failure point in this crisis is parental accountability.

As detailed above, the e-moto class of machines costs between $3,500 and $5,000, and lower-end models are available at big-box retail for a fraction of that. Parents are buying these devices as gifts and handing them to unlicensed minors. The point-of-sale education is nonexistent or deliberately vague. And the kids are bypassing the limiters before the receipt hits the trash.

To be clear: many kids riding compliant, low-speed e-bikes are doing nothing wrong. They’re using a legitimate tool for mobility and independence, and the Town’s January ordinance was designed to accommodate exactly that kind of responsible use. This is about the parents of the bad actors, the ones who bought a machine capable of 50 mph and didn’t check the law, didn’t check the specs, and aren’t checking on where their kid takes it every afternoon.

North Carolina law provides multiple avenues to hold those parents financially and legally responsible.

Strict Liability for Property Damage

Under G.S. 1-538.1, if a minor willfully or maliciously injures a person or destroys property, the parent is liable for up to $2,000 in actual damages under strict liability. The plaintiff doesn’t need to prove negligent supervision, the parent-child relationship alone is sufficient.

Negligent Entrustment: Unlimited Liability

Beyond the statutory cap, parents face potentially catastrophic civil exposure under the common law doctrine of negligent entrustment. A parent can be held personally liable when they knew, or should have known, that their child was a danger to others. Buying an unlicensed 14-year-old a machine capable of highway speeds and letting them roam public streets unsupervised is the textbook definition.

When that kid hits a pedestrian on the Dunn Creek Greenway, the victim’s attorney will bypass the minor and sue the parents directly, for medical bills, pain and suffering, and punitive damages. There is no cap.

The Family Purpose Doctrine

North Carolina also enforces the Family Purpose Doctrine: the owner of a motor vehicle is liable for the negligent acts of a family member if the vehicle was provided for household use. Because these machines are bought by parents, housed in the family garage, and provided for the teen’s recreation, the doctrine applies cleanly.

And here’s the final kicker: standard homeowner’s and auto insurance policies will almost certainly deny coverage for injuries caused by an unregistered, illegal motor vehicle operated by an unlicensed minor. The full financial weight of a civil judgment falls on the parents’ personal assets.

What Comes Next

The youth e-bike street takeover phenomenon isn’t a passing fad. It’s happening in Wake Forest, and it’s happening in suburbs and cities across the country. The machines involved exist on a spectrum, from perfectly legal to wildly illegal, and the line between them is poorly understood by most parents who buy them.

The WFPD has the statutory tools and the tactical capability to enforce the law. The community backs them. But other municipalities are going further: setting minimum age requirements, building juvenile diversion programs, coordinating regionally, and pushing for state-level classification reform. Wake Forest should be studying those models now.

For residents who want to understand the regulatory landscape better, BikeWalk NC is hosting a free webinar on April 9 covering North Carolina e-bike regulations, featuring Steven Goodridge. The session will provide an overview of existing laws, clarify distinctions among electric motorized cycles, and explore how these regulations may shape transportation policy going forward.

In the meantime, the warning period is over. Every takeover participant should be cited under G.S. 20-141.10. Every illegal vehicle should be impounded. And the parents who made it all possible need to understand that their exposure, legal, civil, and financial, is enormous and growing.

The safety of Wake Forest’s streets and greenways doesn’t start with a police cruiser. It starts in the driveway.

Editor’s Note

Wake Forest Matters requested comment from the Town of Wake Forest for this story. The Town did not respond. We have not been able to identify or reach the families involved in the Heritage subdivision incident. We did not witness the Heritage event firsthand and cannot confirm the specific types of vehicles involved. This article is based on publicly available North Carolina statutes, UNC School of Government legal analysis, Town of Wake Forest municipal code, Board of Commissioners meeting records, Wake Forest Police Department communications and social media posts, manufacturer specifications, local news coverage from WRAL and the Wake Weekly, and community discussion on social media. Comparative municipal data was gathered from publicly available city council records, ordinances, and news reporting. If you have information about e-bike street takeover activity in Wake Forest or the Dunn Creek Greenway vandalism, contact the Wake Forest Police Department and kindly drop us a tip at tips@wakeforestmatters.com

Two Public Hearings

The biggest action items on Tuesday night come during the public hearing portion of the agenda.

A South Main Street Rezoning Tangled Up with the S-Line (RZ-25-02)

Tyler Davis, a local dentist who owns Davis Family Dentistry at 814 South Main Street, is asking the Board to rezone two parcels totaling 0.46 acres at 810 and 814 South Main Street from General Residential 3 (GR3) to Neighborhood Business (NB). Davis purchased the neighboring duplex at 810 S. Main and wants to expand his dental practice and dental sleep apnea clinic into the existing building. According to the application, no major exterior alterations are planned beyond what’s needed for zoning compliance and ADA accessibility.

On its face, this is a classic infill story, a local business owner looking to grow along a gateway corridor into downtown. The Planning Board voted 6-0 at its February 10 meeting to recommend approval, finding the request consistent with the Community Plan. Town staff agrees, noting the rezoning aligns with the Land Use Plan’s designation of the properties as Neighborhood Commercial.

But the geography of this parcel makes it uniquely complicated. The property sits at the southwest corner of West Holding Avenue and South Main Street, and that intersection is directly in the path of the multi-billion-dollar S-Line High-Speed Rail project, backed by a $1.09 billion federal grant from the Federal Railroad Administration. The State of North Carolina is actively working to restore high-performance passenger rail between Raleigh and Richmond, and the line runs through the heart of Wake Forest. The Town’s own Comprehensive Transportation Plan calls for the realignment of West Holding Avenue through this area to accommodate the S-Line, which means NCDOT may eventually need to acquire the corner lot at 810 S. Main.

Understanding the scale of what’s coming down the corridor is essential context here. The Town’s 2026-2031 Capital Improvement Plan identifies the S-Line as one of its highest-priority projects, a Priority 1, Health/Safety/Welfare classification, with a $5.775 million local match commitment to secure a federal RAISE grant. Of that, $3.35 million has already been approved, and the remaining funds must be obligated by April 1, 2028. But the local match is just the entry ticket.

The CIP also includes a $30 million South Main Street Corridor Access Management project, labeled “Concept B: Full Optimization,” that would bring roundabouts, bike lanes, and pedestrian infrastructure to the same stretch of road where Dr. Davis’s dental practice sits. Add in the $32.75 million Mobility Hub building planned at the future S-Line station, an income-generating mixed-use facility funded through a future bond referendum, and the total public investment planned for this corridor exceeds $68 million. This isn’t a rezoning that happens in a vacuum. It happens in the path of one of the largest infrastructure commitments in the town’s history.

The conflict hasn’t gone unnoticed. On January 21, 2026, the US-1 Council of Planning, a regional advisory body that includes representatives from CAMPO, NCDOT, and surrounding municipalities, officially noted that the proposed rezoning does not conform to the adopted S-Line Record of Decision designs. The Council recommended that the Town and property owners engage with NCDOT’s Rail Division about the funded rail project’s impact on their property.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Town staff met with NCDOT Division of Rail staff on January 15 to discuss the conflict. State officials told them they currently have no plans for advanced acquisitions and did not object to the rezoning. So the regional planning body says it doesn’t conform. The state agency says it’s fine — for now.

That puts the Board in a delicate position. Under North Carolina law, municipalities must tread carefully when restricting current, lawful property rights based on future state infrastructure plans — especially after the North Carolina Supreme Court’s 5-2 decision in Schooldev East, LLC v. Town of Wake Forest in late 2024, which forcefully reaffirmed the state’s public policy favoring free use of private land. In that case, the court ruled against the Town, finding that ambiguous local ordinances or future planning desires cannot arbitrarily block otherwise compliant development. Denying Davis his rezoning based on a future road realignment, when NCDOT itself declines to acquire the property today, could expose the Town to legal risk and accusations of regulatory overreach.

But there’s another way to read this. By approving a commercial rezoning on a parcel that NCDOT will likely need to acquire someday, the Town may be setting up a future eminent domain proceeding at a significantly higher commercial valuation than the current residential assessment. Someone will pay the difference. The question is who, and when.

The neighborhood meeting held at the property on November 20, 2025, drew zero attendees during the 30-minute session, though the applicant says most nearby owners were contacted directly and signed acknowledgment and support forms. Fifty-three addresses within 500 feet were notified by mail.

If you want to speak on this item, proponents speak first, opponents second, and each side gets three minutes.

Fire Station 6: An $18 Million Public Safety Investment

The Board will also hold a public hearing on the installment financing for Fire Station 6, located at 1621 and 1701 Wait Avenue near Old Murray Drive. The Town is seeking an installment purchase agreement under N.C. General Statute 160A-20 in a principal amount not to exceed $18 million to fund the construction and equipping of the new station. State law requires a public hearing before entering into the agreement.

This is not a standard neighborhood firehouse. The campus will span roughly four and a half acres, and the building itself will be a 22,344-square-foot, two-story facility, nearly three times the size of Wake Forest’s typical fire stations, which average around 8,000 square feet. The facility includes three apparatus bays, crew living quarters, a dedicated weight room, and a 4,000-square-foot training room that seats over 50 staff. Outside, a specialized training tower built with “Conex” shipping containers will allow live-burn scenario training on-site — eliminating the need for Wake Forest crews to travel to Jordan Lake for that type of training. The guaranteed maximum price from the selected contractor, Edifice LLC, totals $18,553,907, which breaks down to roughly $17.23 million for the core station and $1.32 million for the training tower.

The urgency behind the project is written in the numbers. The Wake Forest Fire Department responded to 6,007 emergency calls in FY 2024, and the department’s own performance data shows the 90th-percentile EMS response time has ballooned to 501 seconds, well above the 350-second target. Mutual aid from neighboring departments currently accounts for 11.9 percent of fire response, meaning roughly one in eight calls already depends on outside help. The station is designed to serve the rapidly expanding populations in the northern and eastern parts of town, where developments like the 1,000-home Rosedale community have stretched existing response times. Wake Forest currently holds an elite ISO Class 1 fire rating, a classification achieved by less than one percent of fire departments nationwide, and one that significantly lowers homeowner and commercial insurance premiums across town. Maintaining it requires response times within the strict four-to-six-minute window mandated by national NFPA 1710 standards. Station 6 is a direct response to growth threatening those standards.

Station 6 is also just one piece of a much larger fire infrastructure pipeline. The Town’s 2026-2031 Capital Improvement Plan identifies more than $33 million in fire-related capital needs over the next five years: Station 6 itself at $17.4 million, the renovation of the aging Station 1 at $8.86 million, the replacement of Station 5 at $1.5 million, plus a rolling program of engine replacements, radio upgrades, and specialized equipment totaling another $5.3 million. The Fire Department’s annual operating budget already runs $13.95 million, 83 percent of which is personnel costs, making it the second-largest line item in the General Fund behind only Police. Every new station compounds that operational baseline.

The financing timeline is aggressive. Following Tuesday’s public hearing, the Town plans to file with the Joint Legislative Committee on March 20, accept proposals from financial institutions by March 27, file the formal LGC application by April 2, and seek Local Government Commission approval at its May 5 meeting. If all goes as planned, the Town closes on the loan in the second half of May. The Town’s AAA bond ratings from all three major agencies, S&P, Fitch, and Moody’s, should help secure favorable terms, and the current outstanding debt of $43.47 million sits comfortably within an $841 million statutory debt margin. Debt service currently consumes 8.9 percent of governmental expenditures, well below the Town’s self-imposed 15 percent policy cap.

Worth noting: the Town will also need to hire approximately 15 new full-time firefighters to staff the facility around the clock. That operational cost — on top of the debt service — will exert real, ongoing pressure on future budgets.

Presentations

Before the hearings, the Board has a full slate of presentations.

The meeting opens with a proclamation recognizing Women Veterans Month. The Board will also hear an Age Friendly Community Update and receive a presentation on the Sustainability Plan Existing Conditions from Blue Strike Environmental, the consulting firm the Town engaged in July 2025 to lead a Town-wide sustainability planning process. Since the project kicked off, Blue Strike has completed greenhouse gas calculations, a climate vulnerability assessment, and various public engagement efforts. Tuesday’s presentation will share initial findings and gather Board feedback. The presentation materials will be posted to the project webpage after the meeting.

The Board will also recognize two members of the Wake Forest Police Department. Officer Michael Lawson, who joined as an Auxiliary Police Officer in January 2003, is being honored with a resolution of appreciation after more than 23 years of service. Lawson served as the department’s Chaplain throughout his entire tenure and was a SWAT member for 22 years. He also serves as Director of Campus Security at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, bridging the Town and the Seminary on security matters. His separation date is April 1, 2026.

Captain Matt Perkinson, who began his law enforcement career with the Norlina Police Department in December 1994 and joined Wake Forest PD in January 2005, is retiring effective April 1 after more than 20 years with the department. Perkinson rose from Patrol Officer to Captain overseeing Special Operations, serving along the way as a Drug Investigator, Canine Officer, and Impact Lieutenant. He earned his Advanced Law Enforcement Certificate, the FBI-LEEDA Trilogy award, and a canine award from Crime Stoppers.

Digging Into the Consent Agenda

Nine items are bundled into the consent agenda, which the Board typically passes with a single vote and no debate. Any Commissioner or citizen can request that an item be pulled for separate discussion, and given what’s in this batch, it’s worth reading carefully.

The Ailey Young House and Northeast Gateway Park (Item 5.H)

This one deserves its own section. Tucked into the consent agenda is the formal endorsement of a vision plan for what may become one of the most culturally significant public spaces in Wake Forest’s history.

The Ailey Young House, located at 320 North White Street, is widely believed to be the oldest African American historic structure remaining in Wake Forest. Built in the late 1800s as rental housing by Wake Forest College Professor William G. Simmons, it was part of a post-Civil War development known locally as “Simmons Row.” The house became the childhood home of Allen Young, a towering figure in the town’s history who founded the Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School, providing vital education to Black children during the Jim Crow era, and helped establish Spring Street Presbyterian Church. His daughter, Ailey Mae Young, continued that fierce legacy of civic leadership, breaking entrenched racial and gender barriers to become Wake Forest’s first Black town commissioner.

Despite this profound history, the physical remnants of the Northeast Community’s past have been severely threatened by time, neglect, and the pressures of gentrification. Both the 2021 Northeast Community Plan and the 2022 Historic Preservation Plan called for the Ailey Young House to be preserved and transformed into a premier heritage site. The Town acquired 3.06 acres surrounding the house, creating a protectable parcel bordered by North White Street, East Spring Street, and the Wake Forest Cemetery.

After extensive public design sessions throughout 2024 and 2025, including focus groups with senior citizens, local youth, and the Northeast Community Coalition, the landscape architecture firm McAdams developed a final concept. The feedback from those sessions was clear and deeply personal. Residents didn’t want a loud, active recreational complex. They asked for a place of solitude, reflection, and community gathering, a living testament to Black homeownership, generational resilience, and community hope.

The resulting plan is thoughtfully designed. Because the original structures of Simmons Row and the historic Willis Johnson House have been lost to demolition, the park will feature “wireframe” art installations marking their exact former footprints, ghostly outlines that let visitors see the density and layout of the original post-Civil War neighborhood without fake historical replicas. The plan also includes an interactive “Legacy Tree” inspired by a community engagement exercise where residents wrote their hopes for the neighborhood and hung them on branches, interpretive story cubes detailing the Young family legacy and the history of Black-owned businesses in the area, a meandering multi-use path with an elevated boardwalk crossing the site’s stream, and carefully preserved mature trees with minimal ground disturbance to protect potential archaeological resources below the surface.

The boardwalk and path system will also establish critical pedestrian connections between the historically isolated Northeast Community and the booming downtown corridor, making the park both a memorial and a practical link to Wake Forest’s future.

The financial commitment behind this vision is substantial. The CIP identifies $4.73 million for the Ailey Young House Heritage Site itself, covering archaeology, interpretive design, and construction, plus another $5.55 million for the broader Ailey Young Park Improvements, of which $4.04 million comes from the 2022 GO Bond referendum that Wake Forest voters approved. Combined, that’s roughly $10.3 million dedicated to honoring and connecting this historically underserved neighborhood. The first phase of park improvements is projected to begin in FY 2026-27.

By endorsing this plan, the Board is doing something that goes beyond traditional parks planning. It’s an acknowledgment that public spaces should do more than provide recreation; they can actively combat the historical erasure of communities that helped build this town.

Budget Amendment #4: A $1.59 Million Mid-Year Windfall (Item 5.B)

Budget amendments are the clearest window into a town’s real-time fiscal health. This one recognizes $1,590,775 in newly realized revenues and corresponding allocations.

The Town is recognizing roughly $490,000 in extra Local Option Sales Tax and approximately $719,000 in excess sales tax revenue from Articles 40, 42, and 44. In previous budget cycles, the Finance Department deliberately used conservative revenue forecasts, budgeting sales tax growth below statewide projections to guard against downturns. This mid-year surge proves the local economy is running well ahead of those cautious estimates.

For context, Wake Forest’s total FY 2025-2026 budget stands at $139.3 million, with a $93.975 million General Fund supported by a property tax rate of $0.42 per $100 of assessed valuation, unchanged from last year, on a tax base that has swelled to $12.3 billion. Within that budget, the Town has dedicated specific tax allocations to its two most pressing long-term challenges: 1.5 cents of the tax rate (roughly $1.82 million annually) is earmarked for transportation, and 1 cent ($1.21 million) for housing initiatives. The current fiscal year also added 18 new positions, including a Grants Program Manager, a Fire Training Lieutenant, a Radio Technician, and a five-person stormwater crew, hires that reflect a town scaling up its operational capacity to match its growth.

Rather than banking the surplus, the Town is channeling the windfall, along with a $357,075 drawdown from the Appropriated Fund Balance, directly into capital outlays, including public facilities equipment, fire department vehicles and equipment, and engineering capital projects.

The 203 N. Brooks Street Acquisition (Item 5.G)

The Board will authorize the purchase of a portion of property at 203 N. Brooks Street for $116,000 under N.C.G.S. 160D-1312 and 160D-1315, statutes governing municipal economic development and open space protection. Interestingly, the property is currently owned by Hidden Jewel Ventures LTD, whose registered agent is Chris Jorgensen, the owner of beloved Wake Forest restaurant Norse Brewing. This address sits adjacent to the current Town Hall campus. For over two decades, long-range planning documents, including the comprehensive Renaissance Plan, have proposed expanding or relocating the municipal civic campus to this area of South Brooks Street and Elm Avenue. The CIP sheds some light on the thinking: it includes a $32.2 million Town Hall Maintenance line item that encompasses a potential $16 million North Wing expansion option. Whether this $116,000 purchase is defensive (preventing private redevelopment of a strategically important parcel) or the opening move in an active civic campus expansion, it’s worth watching.

Vehicle Financing at 3.73% (Item 5.A)

The Finance Department secured a $1,432,500 installment purchase agreement through Truist Bank to fund the FY 2025-2026 vehicle fleet, which includes police interceptors, Silverado trucks, a fire rescue unit, and a public works concrete mixer. The 3.73% fixed rate over four years with no setup fees or prepayment penalties was the best of four competitive bids; the highest came in at 5.50%. That spread saves taxpayers real money over the life of the agreement and reflects the tangible value of Wake Forest’s AAA bond rating.

The Engineering Bench (Item 5.C)

Without debate, the Town will approve master service agreements with eight major consulting firms, including AECOM, Dewberry, WSP, and Bolton & Menk, to provide on-call engineering services for a three-year base term. No specific dollar amounts are permanently attached, but locking in eight firms of this caliber signals the immense volume of capital improvement projects on the horizon, from pavement management and traffic impact analysis to stormwater system overhauls.

Appointment of Review Officers (Item 5.D)

A procedural but structurally important item. Under North Carolina statute, municipalities must designate review officers to handle quasi-judicial and administrative review functions, things like processing applications, conducting preliminary reviews of development proposals, and serving as points of contact for regulatory compliance matters. The Board will vote to formally appoint or reappoint these officers. It’s the kind of governance plumbing that most residents never think about until a permit gets delayed or an application gets lost. Keeping these positions filled and current ensures the Town’s regulatory machinery keeps running smoothly as development pressure accelerates.

Citizen Advisory Board Appointments (Item 5.E)

Wake Forest maintains a network of citizen advisory boards that give residents a direct role in shaping town policy: the Planning Board, Historic Preservation Commission, Human Relations Council, Parks/Recreation and Cultural Resources Advisory Board, Public Art Commission, Technology Advisory Board, and Board of Adjustment. Members serve three-year terms and advise the Board of Commissioners on matters within their respective areas. Tuesday’s item appoints or reappoints members to fill current vacancies. For a town that’s growing as fast as Wake Forest, with $532 million in capital needs on the horizon, these volunteer positions carry real influence. If you’ve ever wondered how decisions get made about greenway routes, historic district boundaries, or public art installations, this is where it starts. Applications are accepted through the Town’s website on a rolling basis.

Surplus of Badge and Service Weapon — Officer Michael Lawson (Item 5.F)

The Board will vote to surplus the badge and service weapon carried by Officer Lawson throughout his 23-year career as an Auxiliary Police Officer. Under North Carolina law, municipalities must formally declare property as surplus before transferring ownership. For retiring or departing law enforcement officers, this resolution allows the Town to present the officer with their personal badge and duty weapon as a token of appreciation. It’s a longstanding tradition in law enforcement and a small but meaningful gesture for someone who served as the department’s Chaplain for over two decades and spent 22 years on the SWAT team, all as an auxiliary officer, meaning he volunteered this time on top of his full-time role as Director of Campus Security at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Surplus of Badge and Service Weapon — Captain Matt Perkinson (Item 5.I)

The same resolution for Captain Perkinson, who is retiring on April 1 after more than 20 years with Wake Forest PD and over 30 years in law enforcement. Perkinson started his career in Norlina in 1994, joined Wake Forest in 2005, and worked his way up from Patrol Officer through Drug Investigator, Canine Officer, and Impact Lieutenant to Captain overseeing Special Operations. His badge and weapon represent a career arc that spans the entire modern era of Wake Forest’s growth from a small college town to one of the fastest-growing municipalities in North Carolina. Both of these surplus resolutions will pass without debate, but they’re worth a moment of recognition.

Other Business

Under Planning Items, the Board will formally consider the South Main Street rezoning following the public hearing. In Administration and Financial Items, Commissioners will weigh an amended Grant Policy and Procedures, the first major overhaul of the Town’s grant procedures since October 2011. The updated policy creates a dedicated Grants Program Manager position, requires every department to designate a Project Manager for each grant application, and mandates quarterly updates to the Board on all pending, submitted, and active grants. That’s a meaningful structural change for a town preparing to aggressively pursue state and federal infrastructure funding — and the stakes are real. The CIP identifies $532 million in total capital needs over the next five years, and nearly a third of that depends on a $175 million future bond referendum the Town hopes to put before voters in 2028. Maximizing grant capture isn’t optional; it’s a fiscal survival strategy.

The meeting wraps with department monthly reports for January and February, the March tax report, a Commissioners Report, and a closed session under N.C.G.S. 143-318.11(5).

Questions Worth Asking

If you’re thinking about showing up Tuesday, or even just watching from home, here are some of the questions that deserve attention at this meeting.

On the South Main Street rezoning: The CIP makes clear that the South Main corridor is slated for more than $68 million in public investment, the S-Line local match, the corridor access management project, and the Mobility Hub. By approving a commercial rezoning on a parcel that NCDOT will likely need to acquire, is the Town effectively setting up a future eminent domain proceeding at a significantly higher commercial valuation? NCDOT says they have no current acquisition plans, but “current” isn’t “never,” and the local match funds must be obligated by April 2028. Who bears the financial burden of unwinding this commercial development when the rail expansion becomes physically inevitable? And what did the Board learn from the Schooldev East decision about the legal risks of restricting property rights based on future infrastructure plans?

On Fire Station 6: The $18.5 million price tag is one of the largest single capital expenditures in recent town history, but it’s only the first chapter. The CIP identifies more than $33 million in fire infrastructure needs over the next five years, including the renovation of Station 1 and the replacement of Station 5. With the department’s 90th-percentile EMS response time already at 501 seconds, 43 percent above the 350-second target, and mutual aid accounting for nearly 12 percent of all responses, the operational case is clear. But who’s paying for the pipeline beyond Station 6? The live-burn training tower alone costs $1.3 million, and neighboring municipal departments are expected to use the facility for training, effectively making a Wake Forest neighborhood into a regional emergency services hub. Have those neighboring jurisdictions been asked to share in the capital cost? And with 15 new full-time firefighters needed to staff the station on top of a $13.95 million annual fire budget that’s already 83 percent personnel, what’s the projected fiscal impact over the next decade?

On the sustainability plan: What did the greenhouse gas inventory actually reveal about Wake Forest’s biggest emissions sources? What specific feedback came out of the public engagement process? Sustainability planning only works if it reflects the community it’s supposed to serve. This is the right time to ask how resident input is shaping the plan’s direction.

On the Ailey Young House park: The endorsed vision plan is beautiful, culturally significant, and community-driven, and it’s now backed by real money. The CIP identifies roughly $10.3 million in combined funding for the heritage site and park improvements, with $4.04 million coming from the 2022 GO Bond that voters already approved. That said, an endorsed vision with identified funding is still not a completed project. What’s the construction timeline? Is the Town pursuing state historical preservation grants or federal community development block grants to supplement the bond funds? And how will the Town protect the potential archaeological resources beneath the site during construction?

On Budget Amendment #4: The $1.2 million-plus sales tax windfall is encouraging — but the bigger fiscal picture demands attention. The CIP identifies $532 million in capital needs over five years, and nearly a third of that — roughly $175 million — depends on a future bond referendum the Town plans to put before voters in 2028. Wake Forest voters approved a $75 million bond in 2022 (of which $22 million has been issued, with another $23.4 million planned for October 2026). A $175 million ask in 2028 would be more than double the last referendum. Is the Board confident the electorate will support that, and what happens to the projects in the CIP if the referendum fails?

On the grant policy overhaul: With $532 million in identified needs and a tax rate the Board has chosen to hold steady at $0.42 per $100, aggressive grant capture isn’t optional, it’s existential. The new Grants Program Manager position is a start. But what’s the target? How much in federal and state grant funding does the Town realistically expect to capture in the next five years, and which CIP projects are most competitive for outside funding?

And on the consent agenda generally: budget amendments, property acquisitions, multi-year engineering contracts, and a parks vision plan that will define the cultural identity of an entire neighborhood are all passing in a single vote with no debate, unless someone pulls an item. Any Commissioner or citizen can make that request. That’s not being difficult. That’s doing the work.

Why Show Up

Public hearings and comment periods are the most direct tools residents have to shape local decisions—and recent events prove that stepping up to the microphone gets results.

The recent pushback against the Municipal Service District (MSD) expansion is a prime example. When the town considered extending the downtown tax boundary, affected property owners didn’t stay home. They showed up and used their public comment time to firmly reject being included.

Contrast that with the November neighborhood meeting for the South Main rezoning, which drew zero attendees. Fifty-three households were notified; the applicant waited at his dental office for thirty minutes and went home.

The same principle applies to the proposed Fire Station 6. A public hearing for an $18 million debt obligation isn’t a mere formality. It’s a statutory requirement meant to ensure taxpayers are heard before local government takes on that level of spending. Even outside of scheduled hearings, the general public comment period offers three minutes to put any issue—traffic, development, parks, or taxes—on the official record. While the Board can’t take immediate action that night, those comments direct staff priorities and shape future agendas. The MSD outcome is clear proof: the process works, but only when people show up to use it.

The Bigger Picture

Wake Forest is at a crossroads that doesn’t come along very often. The Town’s population has grown 196 percent since 2005 and is projected to nearly double again in the next 15 years. The 2026-2031 Capital Improvement Plan puts a number on what that growth demands: $532 million in identified infrastructure needs over five years, funded by a patchwork of existing bonds, future debt, grant applications, developer contributions, and — critically — a $175 million bond referendum that hasn’t gone to voters yet. The decisions being made in that Board Room on Tuesday night — how we zone our land along a future high-speed rail corridor, how we finance the infrastructure that keeps our families safe, how we honor the communities that helped build this town, how we plan for sustainability- are not routine business. They’re generational. They’ll shape the physical, financial, and cultural landscape of Wake Forest for decades.

None of this requires you to be an expert. You don’t need to have read all 298 pages of the agenda packet (though it helps — and that’s part of why Wake Forest Matters exists). You just need to care enough to pay attention, ask good-faith questions, and hold your elected officials accountable — not with hostility, but with the kind of engaged, respectful citizenship that makes local government actually work.

Our Commissioners are volunteers. They give up their Tuesday nights to make decisions on our behalf. The least we can do is show up, listen, and let them know we’re watching — not to catch them doing something wrong, but because we’re all in this together. Good governance isn’t a spectator sport. It’s a partnership between the people who serve and the people they serve. And the decisions formalized in this single meeting — from the millions in quiet debt authorization to the microscopic adjustments in commercial zoning — will permanently alter the community we share.

So whether you come to the podium or just tune in on WFTV 10, be part of the process. Wake Forest works best when we all do our part.

How to Participate

If you want to speak during a public hearing, you’ll get three minutes at the podium. Proponents speak first, opponents second. If you want to address the Board on any other topic during public comment, sign up with the Town Clerk before the meeting using the Public Comment Form on the Town website. You’ll get three minutes.

If you can’t attend in person, the meeting will be available live on WFTV 10 and the Town’s online Public Meetings Portal. Archived video will remain available for one year.

The full agenda packet is available on the Town of Wake Forest Public Meetings Portal.

Wake Forest Matters covers local government for the residents of Wake Forest. We believe transparency and civic engagement aren’t partisan ideas; they’re the foundation of a healthy community. If you found this preview useful, share it with a neighbor. The more of us paying attention, the better off we all are.

But roll down your window, and you’ll quickly discover the ugly truth: it smells terrible.

The tree responsible for this pungent, early-spring display is the Bradford pear. Once hailed as the ultimate suburban street tree, it has since proven to be one of the greatest ecological missteps in modern urban landscaping. It is an aggressive, invasive species that actively harms the North Carolina Piedmont ecosystem, and it’s time for us to take back our canopy.

The Anatomy of an Ecological Menace

Introduced in the mid-20th century, the Bradford pear was heavily marketed to developers for its rapid growth and perfectly symmetrical shape. Millions were planted across the country, including right here in our town. However, as these trees have matured, their severe flaws have become impossible to ignore.

• Structural Disasters Waiting to Happen: Bradford pears grow too fast for their own good. Their tight, V-shaped branches form exceptionally weak joints. During our severe North Carolina spring thunderstorms or winter ice storms, these trees are notorious for splitting right down the middle, crushing cars, blocking roads, and destroying property.

• That Awful Odor: The blooms emit trimethylamine, the exact same chemical compound found in decaying fish. Instead of a sweet spring fragrance, the Bradford pear forces residents to keep their windows shut on the nicest days of the year.

• The Allergy Illusion: While its heavy pollen doesn’t blow in the wind, the tree’s harsh chemical odor acts as a severe respiratory irritant, perfectly mimicking and exacerbating spring allergy symptoms for many of our neighbors.

• An Invasive Thicket: Originally bred to be sterile, Bradford pears eventually cross-pollinated with other pear cultivars. Birds eat the resulting fruit and spread the seeds everywhere. The offspring revert to their wild Asian roots, creating impenetrable, aggressively spreading thickets armed with lethal, four-inch-long thorns that choke out our native forests.

The Solution: Cut It Down and Plant Native

The objective for Wake Forest homeowners is no longer containment; it is complete eradication.

If you have a Bradford pear on your property, arborists and ecologists urge you to remove it. Because the tree is highly resilient, simply cutting it down isn’t enough, it will immediately send up dozens of thorny shoots from the stump. The most effective method is the “cut-and-paint” approach: applying a concentrated systemic herbicide to the outer rim of the freshly cut stump to ensure the root system is permanently terminated.

Removing a mature tree leaves a void in your yard, but it also creates an opportunity for ecological restoration. After removing the Bradford pear in my own yard I’ve been removing our turf grass, and other invasive plant species replacing it all with a vibrant, multi-layered native ecosystem. By making this switch, I’ve built a resilient habitat that supports local wildlife, manages heavy stormwater, and provides vital shade.

For the ultimate Bradford pear replacement, look to the Serviceberry. It blooms incredibly early with breathtaking, delicate white flowers that actually smell wonderful. It boasts stunning fall foliage and produces sweet, edible berries in the summer that are a magnet for native songbirds like the Cedar Waxwing. Other fantastic native canopy builders include the classic Eastern Redbud, the iconic Flowering Dogwood, and various native Oaks.

Double Down on Eradication: The NC Bradford Pear Bounty

If you’re ready to break out the chainsaw, there is even more good news. The state of North Carolina is actively encouraging you to chop down these menaces through the NC Bradford Pear Bounty program.

This collaborative initiative, backed by NC State Extension, the NC Forest Service, the NC Urban Forest Council, and the NC Wildlife Federation, actually rewards you for removing Bradford pears. Any North Carolina resident who cuts down a Bradford pear on their property can exchange it for a free, native replacement tree. The program will even replace up to five trees per homeowner!

Here is how the bounty works:

1. Pre-Register Online: You must register in advance at treebountync.com.

2. Remove the Tree: Tree removal is the homeowner’s responsibility (though the program website lists several tree care providers offering discounts for participants).

3. Take Photos: You must take a “before” photo of the tree standing and an “after” photo of the tree cut down on the ground.

4. Attend a Bounty Event: Bring your photos to one of the scheduled regional events (upcoming spring 2026 events include Burlington (closest to Wake Forest), Asheville, Hendersonville, and Hayesville) to pick up your free, first-come, first-served native replacements.

Keep It Local: Get Your Free Native Tree at Forest Fest

If you aren’t able to travel to a Bounty event, you can still get your hands on a native replacement right here at home.

The 5th Annual Forest Fest is happening on Saturday, April 18, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM in downtown Wake Forest.

The absolute centerpiece of this family-friendly event is the Arbor Day Tree Seedling Giveaway, located in the Town Hall Parking Lot. Town staff and volunteers will be distributing 2,700 free native tree seedlings, including Oaks, River Birches, and Redbuds.

What you need to know before you go:

• Arrive Early: The distribution operates strictly on a first-come, first-served basis, and these trees will go fast. Be there at 10:00 AM sharp.

• Bring a Bag: To support the festival’s sustainability goals, please bring your own reusable tote or canvas bag to safely transport your bare-root seedlings home.

Beyond the tree giveaway, Forest Fest will feature live interactive theater, an educational petting zoo, local artisans, incredible food trucks, and extended hours for the Wake Forest Farmers Market.

Shaping Our Ecological Future

Our town is growing rapidly, and as we look to the future, it is clear that we need strong, community-driven environmental stewardship. With recent shifts in our local municipal boards, there is a growing, urgent need to establish a comprehensive Environmental and Natural Resources Conservation Board to oversee Wake Forest’s ecological health and protect our urban canopy.

But you don’t have to wait for a board to take action. You have the power to change the local ecosystem right in your own front yard.

It’s time to trade the stinky, dangerous Bradford Pear for the lasting, ecological beauty of our North Carolina native species. We’ll see you at Forest Fest!

If February’s board meeting was a night of citizen revolt and NCDOT bombshells, Tuesday’s work session was something quieter — a reminder that local government, at its best, is about building things that last. Parks that tell a community’s story. Networks that feed its neighbors. Policies that treat people fairly.

Not every work session ends in drama. Some end with unanimous votes, nodding heads, and a commissioner challenging his colleagues to a 5K.

Here is the breakdown of what happened on the 3rd of March, 2026.

1. The Ailey Young House Gets a Vision

The night opened with Senior Historic Preservation Planner Michelle Michael presenting the long-awaited concept plan for the Ailey Young House and Northeast Gateway Park, and it was clear before she finished that Mayor Ben Clapsaddle could barely contain himself.

“I’m terribly, terribly excited about this,” Clapsaddle said. “I can’t wait till we shovel the first dirt.”

The Ailey Young House, believed to be the oldest African-American historic building in Wake Forest, sits on a 3.06-acre site just north of downtown at North White Street. The concept plan, developed through a robust community engagement process involving focus groups, two open houses, and an online survey with 106 respondents, calls for a meandering multi-use trail, an open pavilion, a restroom facility, a bridge connection across a stream to Brooks Street, and public art at key locations throughout the site.

The community’s message was consistent throughout the engagement process: they wanted passive recreation, a place to learn and share the neighborhood’s history, and above all, a source of community pride.

The final design reflects that. Interpretive elements would visualize the Reconstruction-era Simmons Row properties that once lined the street, and a proposed “legacy tree” sculpture could bear the names of Northeast community families in perpetuity, a living history in metal and stone. The site also presents real constraints: an endangered species habitat for the tricolored bat limits tree clearing to non-spring months, and archaeological sensitivity throughout the property rules out heavy excavation for pathways.

Commissioner Nick Sliwinski raised a practical question about mulch paths and ADA accessibility, noting the town has been moving away from mulch in other parks. Michael confirmed that decomposed granite was included as an alternative in the cost estimate, a decision that will carry over into the construction drawings.

The board’s enthusiasm was unanimous and unguarded. The concept plan now moves toward the March 17th meeting agenda for formal consideration.

2. Dirt, Water, and a Handshake Updated

Less glamorous but equally important: Town Engineer Tim Watson walked the board through updates to the town’s Local Erosion and Sedimentation Control Program Memorandum of Agreement with the North Carolina Sedimentation Control Commission.

The town’s local delegation, established under the 1973 Sedimentation Pollution Control Act, allows Wake Forest to conduct its own plan reviews and site inspections rather than relying on the state. The original agreement dates to 2012. The update adds minor clarifications to reporting procedures, grants the state exclusive jurisdiction over oil and gas sites, and — notably — adds a formal termination process for municipalities that can no longer run a local program.

Watson was quick to emphasize that the last point carries no current implications: the town recently passed a state review in July 2025 with no deficiencies.

“We’ve got six protected streams, and of course, one big Neuse River that’s right near us,” Clapsaddle said in thanks. “It’s important what you do every day.”

The board voted unanimously to approve the resolution authorizing the mayor to execute the updated agreement.

3. Feeding the Community — Eight Years In

Community Outreach Manager Drew Brown came before the board with a team of partners to deliver an overview of the Northern Community Food Security Team — a network he helped found in 2018 with just four people around a table.

Today, the NCFST is a sprawling collaborative of nonprofits, faith communities, schools, healthcare agencies, and volunteer gardeners, all working to eliminate food insecurity in northern Wake County. Brown’s presentation underscored just how much can be accomplished with one town employee, strong partnerships, and the willingness to connect the dots.

The team runs a mobile market twice monthly, stocks a growing mini pantry network, partners with Tri Area Ministry (which serves nearly 2,000 people a month), delivers over 100 pounds of produce weekly to the Wake Forest Community Table, and coordinates holiday meal giveaways, an Easter box program, and the annual CROP Walk.

When Brown asked the partners in the room to raise their hands, many in attendance did so.

There was a catch buried in the good news: ARPA funding that has supported portions of the program expires in December 2025. Brown and the team are already thinking through how to sustain what those funds made possible.

“Collaboration is what we are,” Brown said. “None of this can be done without the partners we had.”

Brown also teased a fall Food Summit — a larger, more focused version of the team’s biannual partner meetings, aimed at identifying gaps and expanding the network. The next regular meeting is on March 10th.

Clapsaddle offered thanks that felt personal. “You are the right person to do that,” he said. “All I can say is thank you.”

4. A Dentist, a Duplex, and the S-Line Specter

Planner Rayvon Walker presented rezoning case RZ-25-028, a request by Tyler Davis to rezone two parcels at 810 and 814 South Main Street — currently zoned General Residential 3 — to Neighborhood Business.

The story turned out to be simpler than the paperwork suggested. Davis, a dentist who has operated at 814 South Main since 2012, wants to expand his practice into the adjacent duplex at 810-812 South Main that he purchased in 2017. The rezoning would allow the expansion and bring the duplex’s use in line with the existing dental office.

The Planning Board unanimously approved at its February meeting. Staff concurred.

Commissioner Adam Wright, who runs past the property regularly, had one question: why now, if they’ve been operating for years? Davis answered directly: the dental office has been grandfathered in, but the duplex is zoned residential. His near-term plan is modest — a handicap ramp, ADA compliance, and room for a few more patients.

The elephant in the room was the NCDOT S-Line rail project, which may ultimately require the acquisition of the corner duplex parcel. Davis acknowledged the uncertainty but noted that NCDOT Rail, when consulted by staff, raised no objections to the rezoning and has no current plans for advanced acquisition.

The item moves to a public hearing on March 17th.

5. Naming Rights, Monuments, and Unfinished Business

Parks and Recreation Director Ruben Wall brought two draft policies before the board: a Sponsorship and Facility Naming Rights policy and a Statues and Monuments policy.

Both grew from the same recognition: Wake Forest is building more, and the town has no standardized process for deciding what gets named, who can sponsor it, what background checks are required, or how the town can exit a naming arrangement if something goes wrong.

“Right now, everybody’s kind of doing their own thing,” Wall said. “We need something that all of us can go to.”

Town Attorney Nathan McKinney flagged the legal thread running through both items. The best protection against liability in naming and monument decisions is a viewpoint-neutral policy, consistently enforced.

Commissioner Haseeb Fatmi raised the question of legal exposure if the town ever needs to revoke naming rights from a paying sponsor. McKinney noted that the question would be addressed before the final draft.

Neither policy was ready for a vote. The board reached consensus to bring both back, along with final drafts, to the March 17th regular meeting, and to consider a potential vote on the monuments item at the April work session if more review time is needed.

6. The MSD: What Comes Next

The ghost of February’s Municipal Service District debate returned, this time not as a public revolt, but as a board-directed conversation about what happens next.

Commissioner Sliwinski, who had requested the item, laid out his thinking clearly, championing a move we’re calling Sliwinski’s Residential Relief. The board’s unanimous rejection of the MSD expansion, he noted, sent a signal that residential properties aren’t seeing enough benefit to justify the tax. The logical response, he argued, is to redraw the district entirely to exclude residential properties, not just the ones proposed for addition, but all of them, including those already inside the district.

There’s a legal complication: the town cannot simply exempt residential properties from an existing district that includes them. The only path is redrawing the boundaries.

Commissioner Wright, who has lived inside the district, said he’s supported that idea for years. Commissioner Shackleford added a note of caution: the MSD has funded real improvements to downtown, from facade grants to streetscape work to the downtown plan itself, and those benefits flow to the whole town. The goal should be to continue that work without burning downtown residents.

The board directed Development Services Manager Patrick Reidy to analyze options, redraw a map excluding residential properties, and model the financial impact of reduced funding. The findings would be available with sufficient lead time to inform the FY 2027-28 budget cycle.

“Whatever we do is going to take time,” Clapsaddle said. “And it will require public hearings. But we need to start now.”

7. The DOT Letter Gets Sent

In what amounted to a brief but significant action item, the board voted unanimously to send a formal letter to NCDOT regarding the Burlington Mills/Capital Boulevard interchange redesign, which threatens the Johnson Hyundai dealership currently under construction.

The letter, previously drafted and reviewed, had been waiting for a board vote. Commissioners approved it without debate. Town Manager Kip Padgett noted that commissioners were asked to sign before leaving the room.

The fight over that interchange, which could represent a $50 million economic hit to the town’s commercial tax base, is far from over.

8. Commissioner Reports: Community, Challenges, and One Sick Dog

Commissioner Wright closed his report with something that had nothing to do with policy. His dog Luke got sick, fast and seriously, and the community of Wake Forest showed up in ways that reminded him why he serves.

“People I’ve disagreed with publicly, people who’ve argued with me online, people I’ve never even met — they sent messages, they donated, they shared updates,” Wright said. “No one asked about politics. No one asked about votes.”

Luke is recovering.

Commissioner Fatmi used his time to flag National Consumer Protection Week and a free anti-scam training session at the Center for Active Aging, announced an open search for a National Anthem soloist for the July 3rd Fireworks Spectacular, and issued a public challenge to his colleagues for the June 6th National Trails Day 5K.

He also read aloud from the new historical marker installed in the Northeast community the previous Friday, which recognizes the freed people who founded the East End community in the 1860s, the churches and schools they built, and the families whose descendants still live and own property there today.

“That was a spectacular event,” Fatmi said. “And Michelle — thank you for all that you do.”

Mayor Clapsaddle wrapped up by reflecting on Women’s History Month, the American Legion Post 187 Auxiliary’s recognition of local women veterans, and the Minority and Women-Owned Business Expo — where he counted himself as attendee number 209 and, he noted, spent freely with the vendors.

The Takeaway

Tuesday’s work session didn’t generate the fireworks of February’s meeting, but it did something arguably more important: it showed a board finding its footing after a contentious few months, moving forward on projects that have been years in the making, and beginning to repair a policy gap that left downtown residents and local business owners without clear rules to navigate.

The Ailey Young House project is one of the most meaningful undertakings Wake Forest has attempted in years. The food security network that Drew Brown and his partners have built is remarkable. And the MSD conversation, though slow-moving, is now pointed in a direction that might finally do right by the people who have been quietly paying a tax they couldn’t see the benefit of.

There’s still a fight with NCDOT on Capital Boulevard. There are policies still being drafted. There are finances to model and maps to redraw.

On Tuesday night, Wake Forest was doing the work.

Tomorrow’s Board of Commissioners work session features a packed agenda covering everything from downtown taxes to high-speed rail. Here is a quick, unbiased look at the five major items up for discussion.

1. A Zoning Conflict with the S-Line Rail

The board will review a rezoning request (RZ-25-02) for a property at 810 and 814 South Main Street to allow for a commercial expansion. The catch? This property sits directly in the path of the planned West Holding Avenue realignment, which is part of the state’s $1.09 billion S-Line High-Speed Rail project. The board must weigh local commercial growth against upcoming NCDOT land acquisitions and the complexities of state eminent domain laws.

2. Corporate Naming Rights for Town Facilities

To help fund the $532 million in projects outlined in the 2026-2031 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), the town is introducing a new “Sponsorship and Facility Naming Rights Policy.” This would allow the town to sell corporate naming rights for public assets (like parks or fire stations). Deals over $1 million would require full board approval, while the Town Manager could sign off on smaller amenity sponsorships.

3. A Pre-emptive Public Monuments Policy

Wake Forest is considering a strict new policy for any group wanting to install a statue or monument on public property. The policy shifts 100% of the financial liability to the applicant, requiring them to pay for installation, insurance, and a permanent maintenance endowment, so the town isn’t left footing the bill.

4. Northeast Gateway Park Development

The board will look at the concept plan for the $2.22 million Northeast Gateway Park, a project designed to honor the history of the Northeast Community. The project faces two unique balancing acts: addressing neighborhood concerns about gentrification (which the town’s 2025-2026 budget attempts to mitigate with a housing rehab fund) and navigating federal tree-clearing restrictions to protect the endangered tricolored bat that lives in the area.

5. The MSD Fallout

Following the February meeting, in which the proposed expansion of the downtown Municipal Service District (MSD) was voted down, the board must discuss the next steps. The defeated expansion was supposed to help fund infrastructure and parking around the new S-Line Mobility Hub. With that tax revenue off the table, the board will need to review how to manage the debt model for those planned downtown improvements.

I’ve lived the “vicious cycle” of American foreign policy. I was in Iraq in 2009–2010 during the parliamentary elections—a moment we were told was the dawn of a new democracy. During that same tour, the task force I worked for killed the top leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. We called it a victory. In reality, it cleared the path for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to rise and create ISIS.

By 2013, the cycle continued as I flew missions over the Sahara tracking an Islamist coup led by insurgents armed with weapons stolen from Libya following our 2011 intervention. By 2015, I was forced to return to Iraq to fight the very monster—ISIS—that our previous “successes” helped create. We strike first, create a vacuum, and then spend billions more to fight the fallout. Today, as the U.S. and Israel launch strikes on Iran, we are repeating this exact, faulty, and illegal logic.

The cost isn’t just “over there.” It’s being felt right here on our own streets.

As the federal government finds limitless billions for another “war of choice,” I have to ask: How does bombing Iran help the people of Wake Forest?

• Infrastructure: How does it turn Capital Blvd into the freeway we’ve needed for 20 years? While we wait for design work on Segments C and D to even restart in late 2026, we’re sending carrier strike groups to the Arabian Sea. Construction here isn’t slated to start until 2031.

• Our Schools: How does it fix the heat at Wake Forest Elementary? This month, parents had to petition for basic repairs to a failing boiler while children sat in cold classrooms. Why can we afford a missile for Tehran, but not a boiler for our local school kids?

• The S-Line & Transit: How does it build the S-Line rail or the Rogers Road bridge? These are “long-term projects” dependent on federal grants that are being vaporized in the skies over Iran.

• Housing & Security: How does it help legacy residents survive the insane property revaluations, averaging 53% increases, that are pricing people out of their own homes?

• The Power Grid & Water: Where is the investment for our new power plants or the “One Water” infrastructure plan? Our actual strategic interest is in the bridges, water lines, and energy independence of our own town.

We had a diplomatic path with Iran. We walked away from it. Now, more people are under the bombs, and for what? My experience in intelligence taught me that attacking Iran will not make us safer; it will create the next “Baghdadi” while draining the resources required to rebuild our home.

The Global War on Terror was a failure. Iraq was a failure. Afghanistan was a failure. We cannot afford “more of the same” while our own foundations rot. It’s time to stop policing the world and start carrying forward the project of rebuilding the United States, starting right here in Wake Forest.

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But this unprecedented success has exposed a fatal flaw in how our town is governed. State restrictions out of Raleigh make it impossible for us to plan, build, and adapt at the speed necessary to meet our explosive growth. And because the state holds all the cards, the people who already live here are being forced to foot the bill.

It is time to reform a broken system so that growth actually pays for itself. Right now, because of state roadblocks and rigid tax structures, we are effectively subsidizing our own sprawl. Here is how:

Impact Fee Deficit

Every time a new subdivision is built, it requires roads, schools, water, and emergency services. In a fair system, developers would pay impact fees that cover the true cost of this new infrastructure.

But the NC General Assembly tightly restricts the town’s ability to levy adequate impact fees. The result? Every new house costs the town more in services than it generates in traditional property taxes. To make up the difference, existing Wake Forest taxpayers are hit with higher taxes to subsidize developer profits. It is fundamentally unfair.

Planning Chokehold

To manage our growth responsibly, we need agility. But state lawmakers consistently meddle in local affairs. Look no further than the Hurricane Helene Disaster Recovery Act of 2024, which included a developer-backed provision that essentially bans local governments from “downzoning” without unanimous consent from property owners. If we want to update our Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) to require better design standards or wider sidewalks, the state has paralyzed our planners. Rapid development continues under outdated zoning rules because Raleigh won’t let us adapt.

Right now, legislative efforts are underway to fix this mess. Our local State House Representative, Mike Schietzelt, has introduced H.B. 225, a ‘local bill’ tailored specifically to restore downzoning authority for Wake Forest and Rolesville. This targeted approach is likely our fastest route to removing the state-imposed chokepoint.

Simultaneously, Rep. Schietzelt is sponsoring a broader statewide bill (H.B. 24) to repeal this disastrous provision for every municipality in North Carolina. While H.B. 24 is the ultimate goal, it faces a steeper climb through the legislature. Historically, tailored local bills gain support more easily because they address specific community needs without triggering opposition from across the state. By focusing on Wake Forest and Rolesville first, we can secure an immediate win while the broader battle continues in Raleigh.

While we should enthusiastically support these bills, we must recognize them as stop-gaps. If we have to rely on surgical, one-off legislation every time Raleigh’s mandates derail our planning, we will always be fighting from our back foot. We don’t just need a temporary legislative patch; we need the inherent autonomy to make zoning decisions locally.

Antiquated Tax Structure

We don’t just need the freedom to zone properly; we need the freedom to innovate how we collect revenue. Currently, the state forces us into a traditional property tax system that penalizes improvement. If you build a big, beautiful new business or improve your home, your taxes go up. Meanwhile, speculators can sit on vacant, prime land, paying pennies in taxes while waiting for the town’s growth to drive up their property value.

If Wake Forest had true local autonomy, we could pioneer a transition to a Land Value Tax. By taxing only the value of the land, rather than the buildings on top of it, we would instantly incentivize smart, dense, beautiful development and penalize land speculation. It is a pro-growth, pro-fairness reform. But under current state law, we aren’t allowed to try.

Tax-Exempt Footprint and the Case for a PILOT

This rigid tax system also blindsides us when it comes to our largest landholder: Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). The seminary is a vital part of Wake Forest’s identity and a valuable strategic partner. However, because of their religious and educational status, they own a massive footprint of prime, downtown real estate that generates zero property tax revenue.

While the Seminary collaborates with the town through the Wake Forest Business & Industry Partnership (WFBIP), an entity largely funded by our tax dollars, the stark reality is that regular residents are picking up the tab for the infrastructure, amenities, and services that support prime downtown land. This heavy shift in the tax burden is crushing our seniors and retirees on fixed incomes, forcing them to subsidize the very amenities that drive our town’s growth.

Other towns with massive tax-exempt footprints address this through formal Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) programs, in which large institutions voluntarily contribute to the municipal services they consume. We need the local leverage, flexibility, and autonomy to forge a robust PILOT agreement with SEBTS, ensuring that the cost of our world-class town doesn’t fall squarely on individual homeowners.

Path Forward

Wake Forest has proven it knows how to build a community people desperately want to live in. But we cannot tackle 21st-century growth with a regulatory straitjacket tied by legislators who don’t live here.

We need the state to get out of the way. We need the power to levy fair impact fees, the authority to zone our own neighborhoods, the freedom to experiment with smarter tax structures, and the leverage to build equitable partnerships with our largest institutions. It is time for Raleigh to untie our hands, let us innovate, and allow the people of Wake Forest to build the future we are currently paying for.

What You Can Do: Our town’s future depends on us taking back the steering wheel. Contact Representative Mike Schietzelt to thank him for H.B. 225, but urge him to fight for broader, permanent local autonomy. Reach out to the Wake Forest Mayor and Board of Commissioners and tell them you support a PILOT program for tax-exempt land. Most importantly, share this with your neighbors so we can build a coalition that demands growth pays for itself.

My family has called the Wake Forest area home since the 1730s. But the isolated, quiet Northern Wake County I was born into, a landscape of county roads and collapsing tobacco barns, is increasingly difficult to find today.

I grew up on the edge of things out on Ligon Mill Road, back when it was still partially dirt and gravel reliably graded by a neighbor’s tractor. For years, getting groceries meant a trek into Raleigh, right up until my dad opened the very first Food Lion in Wake Forest in 1988.

In North Carolina, the weather tests your roots. We survived the devastating 1988 tornadoes that wrecked my family’s tree farm, sawed our way out of Hurricane Fran in 1996, and boiled water on propane grills during the freezing, week-long dark of the 2002 Ice Storm. We got through those days because we looked out for one another.

As the 90s bled into the 2000s, bulldozers arrived. Our woods were paved into subdivisions. In the freshly overturned red clay, we’d find arrowheads—reminders that we were merely the newest residents on the ancestral homelands of the Lumbee, Tuscarora, Catawba, and Occaneechi peoples. Then, in 2000, the massive Athey Products plant on Main Street, Wake Forest’s largest employer at the time, abruptly shuttered just before Christmas. It felt like the definitive, heartbreaking end of the old blue-collar Wake Forest, making way for a new era of white-collar commuters.

I left for the Navy in 2003 and returned in 2018 to a town utterly transformed. The COVID-19 pandemic only poured gas on that fire, bringing a staggering 9% population explosion in a single year.

Part of the reason I’m thinking so deeply about these seasons of change is because of what we witnessed at Town Hall this past Tuesday night. We watched our neighbors, people who have anchored this community for decades, plead with the Board of Commissioners against a proposed Municipal Service District expansion, fighting simply for the right to afford to stay here.

We listened to a 70-year-old veteran explain how his property taxes have skyrocketed. We listened to a 71-year-old woman confess she loses sleep trying to make ends meet, ensuring her cats eat better than she does. The modest rural plots of our youth have been replaced by a housing market where median values have jumped from $145,000 in the mid-90s to over $540,000 today.

We aren’t a sleepy rural outpost anymore. With major infrastructure projects like the S Line on the horizon, the growth isn’t stopping. But we must demand smart, fiscally sound planning from our leadership to manage it.

If we want to truly say our community is welcoming, we have to tackle affordability head-on. We must protect our remaining watersheds, not just to “be green,” but to preserve our quality of life. Infrastructure handles the growth, but the community supports people. We have to ensure that working families, teachers, first responders, and the kids growing up here today can actually afford to call Wake Forest home tomorrow.

The physical geography of our past has been overwritten. Yet, despite the lost woods and the disappearing farmland, the core of what makes this place special must remain.

Wake Forest is home. Wake Forest is for everyone. Y’all means all.