Roanoke Rapids will transfer the New Town Resource Center on Jackson Street to the county as part of a settlement of a lawsuit the city initiated over 911 Center funding.

City Attorney Geoffrey Davis told the city council Wednesday that in exchange for the property, the county will continue providing 911 service in the city and will forgive nearly $1.7 million the county contended the city owed for its share of the cost of operating the 911 Center.

Halifax County commissioners discussed the matter in closed session Monday.

“I think this is a good deal for the city and I thank you for getting this to the point we can bring this to a conclusion,” Mayor Emery Doughtie said.

The settlement comes after the city in 2022 decided to exit the agreement it had for providing funding to the county 911 Center. “That’s because of changes in the law that there’s no obligation for a city to pay anything for dispatching services that are covered by a 911 center. The county has always taken the position that even though the law to some extent is silent on any kind of funding obligation, that by receiving those dispatching services the city can be obligated to pay it.”

It has been an issue where other municipalities have reached out to the city, saying they were having the same problem. “We stopped paying. The city and the county sued each other. That went to the superior court in Halifax County. The superior court ruled against the city and ruled for the county and said that we were obligated to pay it.”

The case went on to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, where it sat for two years before the court issued an unpublished opinion last year stating that neither the city nor the county had standing to bring their respective declaratory actions. “I have to be careful as a licensed attorney talking too much about my views of court opinions I disagree with — this isn’t Fox News. I’m not some kind of pundit — but for a court to sit on a case for two years and to resolve it on standing after that, that communicates something to me, and what it communicates to me is that we’re not going to decide this issue for you. Either the legislature has to decide or the parties have to decide amongst themselves.”

Davis said he didn’t anticipate any interest from the legislature on the issue. “One of the things that I tell clients when we’re looking at potentially resolving a case — whether it’s a settlement or some kind of compromise — is you’re bargaining against your risk.”

Because the city exited the agreement and has not paid any money to the county for 911 services, over the last four fiscal years the county contended the city owes nearly $1.7 million. “For a city of our size and our budget, that would be a significant amount of money that we would have to pay if we had an adverse decision somewhere down the road, and that’s including all potential future calls,” Davis said. “To me, those are hard numbers that we can look at and we can say, ‘OK, this is our risk.’”

And at the end of the discussions between the city and the county, the county agreed to wipe out the $1,690,992 the county contended the city owed and also agreed that the city owes no future costs. “The county will continue providing services so long as there’s a county-maintained 911 center.”

To finally settle the matter, the city agreed to transfer the ownership of the resource center to the county. “It hasn’t been used by the city for any of our operations for several years now. Up until the last couple of years, there were three organizations that we’ve rented it out to share the different spaces in there.”

The Boys & Girls Club used it but moved out; the Choanoke Area Development Association has used it, and the county has used it. “The building is aging,” Davis said. “It’s continuing to require maintenance and the amount of rent we receive for it — it’s not an asset that the city is generally using at this time.”

County Manager Dia Denton said this morning that the Women, Infants, and Children program, commonly known as WIC, needs more space so it will likely move to one of the other two spaces in the building.