A petition is being circulated to incorporate roughly fifty square miles of Cumberland County as the Town of Gray's Creek, on a November 1, 2026 deadline. The petitioners have published no charter, no feasibility study, no boundary map, no zoning draft, and two conflicting budgets. Below is everything you need to evaluate the proposal before you sign anything.
The charter, feasibility study, boundary map, and zoning draft are all listed as "in preparation" on the petitioners' own Documents page. The petition deadline is fewer than six months away. NC General Statutes Chapter 120, Article 20 requires the Joint Legislative Commission on Municipal Incorporations to evaluate all of these documents before recommending a town to the General Assembly. Without them, the petition cannot be evaluated, and the petitioners cannot answer basic questions about what residents would be voting for. Read the full breakdown →
Two different budgets are in public circulation. The Facebook version totals $17.0M in revenue and $11.0M in expenses. The website version totals $13.97M in revenue, $7.5M in operating expenses, and $4.95M in one-time capital. They disagree on sales tax (off by $3M), on transportation funding, on trash service, and on whether households pay a sanitation fee. They cannot both be correct. Read the full budget analysis → · See the side-by-side comparison →
The petitioners cite Hope Mills and Spring Lake as evidence that "small towns work." Both of those towns are 6.5 square miles. The proposed Gray's Creek boundary is roughly fifty square miles, with one-sixth the population density. That is the geographic footprint of the City of Wilmington with one-eighth the people. There is no North Carolina municipality of similar area at similar density running a healthy budget without significant fiscal stress. Read the geography breakdown →
The petitioners pitch the town in part as a way to "champion the water project." A North Carolina municipality has no legal authority to regulate Chemours, set drinking water standards, enforce against polluters, or require remediation. NC G.S. 150B-19.3 specifically prohibits local governments from adopting environmental rules more stringent than state rules. The PFAS authority claim does not survive contact with the statute. The $260M+ in committed remediation funding flowing through state, federal, and consent-order channels does not require Gray's Creek to incorporate. Read the full PFAS analysis →
The petitioners' Village Center page calls the overlay district "a protective planning tool, not a development plan." The same page then lists the planning steps to build a Village Center. The page reads in both directions simultaneously: an instrument to prevent development and an instrument to enable it. Residents are entitled to know which it is before they sign on. Read the Village Center breakdown →
Every public-facing claim the petitioners have made on Facebook differs in material ways from the same claim on their website. The website is the polished version. The Facebook post is closer to what the petitioners actually believe. Residents at the June 25 and July 16 meetings will be pitched the Facebook version. Residents who later read the website will see something different. Both are public. Both are quoted. See the side-by-side comparison →
Read the petition carefully before signing. Read the Documents page on the petitioners' own site, and notice what is marked "in preparation." Ask the petitioners, at the June 25 or July 16 meeting, when the missing documents will be published. If the answer is anything other than "before signatures are collected," that is the answer.
If you have read the case and you have questions, take one of these next steps. The petition deadline is November 1, 2026. The window to act is now.
Type an address and ZIP. See whether your property is inside the 50-square-mile proposed town.
North Carolina law lets you withdraw your signature before the petition is filed. Here is the letter to send.
A printable one-page handout. Three questions, the budget comparison, sources. Hand it to a neighbor.