DOT insists on unmanned rest stop south of Chocowinity | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Like it or not, an unmanned rest stop is scheduled to be built in Beaufort County on Highway 17 south of Chocowinity, according to Beaufort County's administration and elected body.

    Within the past week, the North Carolina Department of Transportation offered to purchase some of the right-of-way and pay a reduction of values to neighboring property owner Charles Haddock, who rejected their offer and ordered an appraisal to determine the current value versus the eventual value with the rest stop.

    “I do have an offer from them that they’re willing to settle now, but it’s not an acceptable figure,” he said, during Monday night’s Beaufort County Board of Commissioners meeting.

Chocowinty property owner Charles Haddock addresses Beaufort County commissioners at Monday night's board meeting in Washington.
    Beaufort County commissioners have been opposing the unmanned rest stop since January 2009, when they unanimously voted to send a letter of opposition to state officials. Their concerns included improper cleanup, lack of supervision, drug interaction, safety measures, proximity to residences and, overall, an additional problem for law enforcement.

    The DOT is sending their capital project staff person as well as the individual responsible for rest facilities to meet with commissioners and neighboring property owners at 4:15 p.m. on June 10, to detail the construction and operation of the facility, said County Manager Paul Spruill. Beaufort County has in its possession a conceptual drawing of the facility within a publicly available DOT brochure.

    Commissioner Hood Richardson resented having waste time meeting with the DOT to listen to what he called a “cram down.”

    “We did a resolution, we told them we didn’t want it—too many drugs, too much prostitution around these things, too many problems with law enforcement around these things,” he said. “We don’t want it, and they’re still insistent on it.”

    Spruill clarified for Richardson that it was he who organized the meeting, to provide the commissioners—who, as private property owners, are sure to be approached by the DOT with an offer to purchase—with information and a relationship that may help them better negotiate a suitable price in the future.

    “If you get caught up in a more aggressive tunnel-vision type of process,” Spruill said, “it may be useful to you to have this meeting with them at this early stage in the game in order to educate yourself about what you may or not be willing to accept for the property that Beaufort County owns.”

    Spruill said the meeting would also help commissioners better formulate their argument, if they decided to take further action against the DOT’s plan, yet reminded them that the state has the ultimate right to take private property for public use, via their power of eminent domain, upheld by the U.S. Constitution.

    “You had talked about the idea of opposing it through Senator Basnight’s office…You all are not only an elected body, with a platform that you can use to oppose the facility, although it’s symbolic—you all do understand that—that they can put it there anyway, whether you want it there or not,” said Spruill. “I doubt that they want to proceed with that level of aggression…If y’all don’t change your minds, maybe you put bullets in the gun for lobbying against the facility.”

    Richardson agreed to meeting with the DOT on that basis, but said he’s “still rabidly opposed to this project, because we don’t need any more crime in Beaufort County.”