Wake County Commissioners on sale of Crooked Creek Golf Course

In a sharply worded letter Tuesday evening, four Wake County commissioners defended their vote to sell the former Crooked Creek Golf Course property, saying the county shouldn’t spend millions of dollars to “rescue homeowners” or be in the “business of failed golf course bailouts.”

Commissioners Vickie Adamson, Greg Ford, Jessica Holmes and James West released a 13-page statement standing by their decision to list the former golf course as surplus property to sell despite hundreds of angry emails and potential lawsuits. The county bought the land last summer from the nonprofit Conservation Fund to be used as a county park — called the South Wake Park Project by supporters.

“Because of the volume of misinformation circulating in online social media platforms and in some media outlets, we believe it is important to present the facts of this situation, our perspective based on those facts and our path toward resolving the Crooked Creek and southern Wake park access issues with the transparency and best practices that citizens expect from their government,” according to the four commissioners’ statement.

Nearly 70 people spoke during the commissioners’ Jan. 7 meeting, asking Wake leaders to keep the land. Commissioners Matt Calabria, Susan Evans and Sig Hutchinson voted against putting the property up for sale.

Calabria first saw his fellow board members’ statement after it was forwarded to him by a community member. The statement provides no “new information” and is a “rehash of misunderstandings” that the board and community has debunked, he said.

“The continued insistence that they are right while everyone else in the community is wrong only further distracts from the pressing issues in our community,” Calabria said.

The statement, Hutchinson said, continues to mislead members of the public about the property.

“The park supporters are going to see this as patronizing and more excuse-making,” he said.

Efforts to reach Evans were unsuccessful.

The statement says the commissioners understand the Crooked Creek homeowners’ “personal interests” in wanting to preserve the land they had sold to The Conservation Fund but that it isn’t the “county’s responsibility to use millions of taxpayer dollars to rescue homeowners who took on this risk in private transactions.”

“Doing so ignores multiple other golf course failures within Wake County in recent decades, where there were no calls for taxpayer-funded preservation of those properties as parks or open space,” the statement said. “The county’s contested purchase of the former Crooked Creek Golf Course opened serious questions about the broader community’s expectations of the county’s role when other landholders and private property owners may insist that the County again use taxpayer dollars to buy and develop their unprofitable, bankrupt, folded or abandoned properties under the umbrella of ‘preserving open space’ or creating ‘A Park for Everyone!’ — as is the case with Crooked Creek.”

‘Lame-duck’ vote

Wake County commissioners announced their intent to purchase the land in late 2017 and followed through in mid-2018 with a 4-to-3 vote.

Commissioners Calabria and Hutchinson and former Commissioners John Burns and Erv Portman voted in favor of purchasing the property. The vote came after Burns and Portman had lost their re-election bids in the Democratic primary to Adamson and Evans, respectively.

The purchase of the property, located outside Fuquay-Varina, turned into a political football during the primary.

Some school supporters — including big-time Democratic donors Ann Campbell and Dean Debnam — felt slighted the county would spend $4 million to buy a park when the school system didn’t get its full budget request. Commissioners voted to increase school funding by $21 million over the previous year, but the amount fell short of the school system’s request of $45.2 million in additional money.

Campbell and Debnam, their spouses and political action committees, poured thousands into the campaigns of the four Democratic candidates challenging the pro-park commissioners. Debnam’s PAC went as far as sending out an election mailer saying the four incumbents wanted to “bail out a failing golf course.” The golf course closed in 2015.

Campaign contributions became a sticking point during the Jan. 7 meeting. Evans said she found it insulting to insinuate she wouldn’t be on the county board without the Crooked Creek issue. Adamson, on the other hand, acknowledged she campaigned on the issue.

The statement says current and former commissioners have “questioned the potential influence of campaign donors who support public education, while remaining silent on the potential influence of their own donors who are property owners, land developers, real estate agents, and others with potential economic interests in Crooked Creek, or in the precedent it sets for taxpayers buying failed private projects. ”

“Even knowing it required a divisive vote that was dependent upon the support of two lame-duck commissioners, and that funds were not available to complete the expensive process of turning it into a park, and that other county priorities were starved for desperately needed funding — they still voted to placate the residents of the Crooked Creek golf course community and their supporters,” the statement said.

Brian Edlin, an attorney for the Crooked Creek Community Association, has threatened “widespread litigation” if the county sells the property. An online fundraiser has already raised more than $15,000 to help cover the any costs from the “legal fight.”

The property had to meet 11 conditions to be purchased by the county, including the removal of restrictive covenants put on by the nearby property owners. The Crooked Creek Homeowners Association believes it has the grounds to litigate due to a “’bait and switch’ effort by the county to coerce Crooked Creek residents to remove their covenants in order for the county to purchase the land as a park, but then sell it to an unknown buyer or buyers and for an unknown purpose, just a few months later.”