Van Wyck may be a new born of a town, but it didn’t take long to start growing

This brand new town is growing by leaps and bounds.

At a special meeting Monday, the Van Wyck Town Council approved an ordinance adding 16 parcels to the town.

“We are officially having this meeting inside the town,” Mayor Sean Corcoran said during the meeting at the Van Wyck Community Center. “Before that, we were outside of the town.”

Council has been busy since taking oath less than two weeks ago. In addition to approving annexation of 16 parcels, council also adopted an administrative code for rules of procedure, establishing departments, appointing officers and setting the duties for Town Clerk Linda Vaughan.

The property annexed in adds 105.26 acres to the town’s footprint.

Some residents who attended the meeting Monday wanted more information about annexation. One attendee asked council members what would happen if she wanted to have her property annexed in, but her neighbors did not.

Corcoran explained that Council is pursuing annexation through the 100 percent method – the landowner petitions council with an annexation request, and if the property is contiguous, then council passes an ordinance to annex the property.

“There’s also the 75 percent method, where if 75 percent of the landowners in an area want to annex in, the town can take the whole area even if the 25 percent don’t want to,” he said.

But the 75 percent method involves a lengthy procedural process, including public hearings and a feasibility study that Corcoran said isn’t necessary.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “We don’t want to do that to our neighbors at this point unless we absolutely had to for some reason and we don’t because there’s enough interest in annexation that we’re focusing on.”

The properties annexed into Van Wyck are located on Old Hickory Road, Foxes Pond Road, West Rebound Road and Steele Hill Road. Corcoran said Council hopes to eventually annex the entire area included within the Van Wyck Fire District – east to the Union County line and west to the Catawba River.

“Sixteen parcels – that’s a tremendous stride forward right of the gate,” Corcoran said. “Our first official regular meeting will be next Monday (Dec. 4) and we hope to have another ordinance in the works by then with hopefully at least as many, or more, parcels.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2017 at 5:29 PM with the headline "Van Wyck may be a new born of a town, but it didn’t take long to start growing."