| Document | Status on grayscreeknc.com | What it needs to contain |
|---|---|---|
| Town Charter | In Preparation | Form of government (council-manager vs. mayor-council). Council size and terms. Method of election (at-large vs. district). Method of mayoral selection. Any special powers requested from the General Assembly. This is the foundational document of the proposed town. |
| Feasibility Study | In Preparation | Required by the NC Joint Legislative Commission on Municipal Incorporations. Must show four required services can be provided at a reasonable tax rate. Must include line-item budget, revenue source documentation, and sensitivity analysis. |
| Proposed Boundary Map | In Preparation | A legal boundary description, parcel by parcel. The NC Commission specifically reviews whether the boundary is gerrymandered to capture commercial tax base or to exclude opposition. A 50-square-mile boundary needs an explicit justification. |
| Startup Guide | Coming Soon | First-100-days operational plan. Required service contracts. Initial budget. Zoning transition plan. The petitioners describe this as a "working draft." Residents have not been shown the working draft. |
| Draft Zoning Ordinance | Not listed | The website says "county zoning map carries over at startup." That's the map, not the ordinance. A town adopting the county zoning map can immediately rewrite the ordinance that governs it. Residents should see the first proposed ordinance before signing. |
| Service Contract Frameworks | Not listed | The plan depends on contracts with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, Gray's Creek Fire Stations 18 & 24, Cotton Fire Department, and a sanitation hauler. None of these contracts exists. None of the counterparties has publicly endorsed the plan. |
| Tax Base Calculation | Not listed | The $5.5M ad valorem revenue claim implies a specific assessed value within the boundary. The supporting calculation (parcel count, assessed values from Cumberland County Tax Office, exemptions) has not been published. |
| Population Verification | Not listed | Facebook post: "over 20,000 residents." 2020 Census for Gray's Creek township: 11,725. The petitioners' boundary is larger than the township boundary. The exact population inside the proposed boundary should be calculated from Census block data, not estimated. |
North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 120, Article 20 establishes the Joint Legislative Commission on Municipal Incorporations and the documentation required for it to recommend a new town to the General Assembly.
The Commission reviews:
Without the underlying documents, none of these can be evaluated. The Commission has historically declined to recommend incorporation petitions that arrive without complete supporting documentation.
The petitioners' plan to submit by November 1, 2026 means all of these documents would need to be substantively complete by late September or early October, roughly four months from now.
The petitioners can edit grayscreeknc.com at any time. To keep an honest record of what was claimed and when, the pages of their site were captured to the Internet Archive on 20 May 2026. The snapshots are frozen, public, and timestamped. They are also independent of this site: archive.org hosts them, we do not control them, and we cannot edit them.
Note on archives: the petitioners' site is a JavaScript-rendered single-page application. The Wayback Machine captures the initial HTML shell before JavaScript executes, so its archived copies show layout without the loaded content. The live links above show the rendered content. We are working on additional snapshots that capture the rendered page.
As the site changes, we will add additional snapshots here, with dates, so the record stays complete.