The role of parking as it relates to a growing downtown has always been a topic of debate, regardless of the community you call home. We’ve written about the dangers of using valuable land for surface parking in the past but have also acknowledged that parking is...

There’s a provision in the statutes that says many financing arrangements with a term of less than five years don’t need LGC approval. This provision has been in the law since well before installment financing under Section 160A-20 was approved by the State Supreme...

One often wonders what problems an unexpected piece of legislation is designed to address – especially when something as broad as the new 159-154 (found in Section 5(a) of Session Law 2023-138) sweeps into town. This legislation now requires Local Government...

Counties have established water and sewer districts to facilitate water and sewer service to discrete areas. Many counties have several of these districts. Over time, it has become a challenging process to administer the separate districts, especially when some...

We have occasion to discuss from time to time the meaning of a preaudit certification by a finance officer, especially in terms of construction contracts that will be funded at least in part by borrowed money. A preaudit certificate imposes potential liability on a...

Washington County is constructing a new preK-12 school that will consolidate substantially all the County’s public schools to one location. We worked for the County as bond counsel in connection with its $19.8 million local financing for the project. The project had a...

Our client Jackson County recently made a $2,500,000 loan to Summit Charter School to help finance the construction of a new high school facility in the southern part of the County. The County made this loan pursuant to legislation enacted near the end of the 2023...

Back in 2013, the Town of Hillsborough issued North Carolina’s first “special assessment revenue bonds.” Most of the proceeds went to pay costs of constructing a road through Waterstone, a large development that includes a variety of housing units and the UNC Health –...

When you have a project that needs approval from the Local Government Commission, not everything you need to know about the process is written down in one place (or in many cases, written down at all). Bond lawyers and financial advisers will help you navigate, but it...

The State Auditor’s investigative reports on local governments sometimes document really bad, and even criminal, behavior by local government officials. In other cases, the findings are more about sloppiness, although sloppiness that gets bad enough can have criminal...