What you may Have Heard

All Rumors quoted from “www.bethlehemNC.com.”

as of Nov 6, 2024

Rumor: “The group plans to provide street lighting as one of the four services required to incorporate. Think about every road in Bethlehem. How many street lights do you think it will take?”

Fact: The state only requires that the new town takes over the current Duke power bill for street lights. It does not require us to add any additional street lights on exisiting streets.

Rumor: “Chances are you've been told that this group will only charge you $.05 on the $100 on your property taxes. This is grossly misleading. One dumpster truck costs $500,000.”

Fact: Garbage disposal is not included with our town services so dumpster truck costs are irrelevant. However if you review the tax tab on the website you will see the additional tax revenue that we will recieve to support running the town in excess of the $0.05/100. The roughly $3M tax revenue estimate is larger than Taylorsville’s current budget of $2.85M which includes $1.5M in costs we do not need for their police force.

Rumor: “Establishing a police force is expensive, requiring personnel, equipment, and ongoing operational costs. The existing county services already provide adequate protection, making this yet another unnecessary financial burden.”

Fact: We will not be duplicating efforts and will be working with our current Alexnder County Sheriffs department to ensure that the current great service is continued with additional School Resource Officers or a dedicated deputy if needed. We will not be purchasing police cars for Bethlehem.

Rumor: “Bethlehem is already covered by existing fire protection services. Creating a separate service would add significant costs without clear improvement over current services.”

Fact: We will not be creating a separate fire department. We will instead be using the fire district funds we already pay $0.043 to contract with the Bethlehem firedepartment. No new services or equipment needed due to incorporation. However with the new growth in Bethlehen due to the high denisty zoning a new firehouse is already in the planning stages off of Rink Dam road. It would be the new developments that are increasing our fire tax.

Rumor: “Incorporation adds a mayor, council, zoning officers, dedicated and licensed inspectors, office buildings , and office spaces, resulting in delayed responses and more red tape our community doesn't need.”

Fact: If you read the town charter, we will not be having a mayor. We will be creating a 3 member council/ town manager government. We are not planning and are not required to have an office building. Office space for the 2 reguired employees can either be leased or allowed to work remotely. The only legal requirement is a space to host monthly town council meetings. Alexander county does not have a dedicated facility and uses the CVCC room under countract. We will also not be hiring inspectors as we will also contract those services out either through the exisiting inspectors in the county or through an outside service which many municipalities current do.