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Residents press council to help Gaston Station Museum; local proposal suggests tiered commercial tax
Summary
At the June 1 Stanley Town Council meeting, residents urged support for the Gaston Station Museum, called for decorum among elected officials, and presented a proposal for a tiered commercial property tax to incentivize active commercial use. Manager and council members discussed funding options and email-forwarding and public-records concerns were raised.
Several residents used the June 1 public comment period to press the Stanley Town Council on local priorities and governance issues.
Ronnie Lineberger, president of the Gaston Station Museum, described the museum’s financial strain following COVID-19 closures, a recent rent increase after the sale of its Main Street property, and a decline in donations, and asked the council for municipal assistance to keep the museum operating. “Without assistance the museum—and the history of Stanley it preserves—could be lost,” Lineberger warned.
Resident Joshua Pendergraft proposed a “Commercial Utilization and Economic Activity Assessment Program,” a tiered municipal property-tax approach that would set an initial commercial rate at 1.62% reducible to the standard 0.54% if owners demonstrate active commercial use through occupancy, employment, utility consumption or operations; an additional incentive could lower the rate by an amount equal to 5% of verified annual sales tax receipts, to a floor of 0.44%. Pendergraft asked the council and the town attorney to review legal feasibility.
Resident Betsy Pendergraft urged the council to address professionalism and decorum among elected officials, saying public attacks via social media undermine trust and civic participation.
Town Manager Steven Denton also addressed recent procedural concerns: he defended Public Works Director Daniel Hendrix’s decision to hire a licensed contractor for a camera installation because of concealed electrical wiring, reported a local contractor’s fabrication quote of $7,080.40 for 20 downtown lighting poles, and said the town’s three-notification water cut-off system reduced the cut-off list by about half (from approximately 150 to 75 households). Denton further read an IT consultant’s statement confirming that Council Member Brendan Sweeney had set an email-forwarding rule to a personal Gmail account; the consultant said the rule did not create a security compromise but noted forwarding rules to outside accounts can indicate potentially compromised accounts.
Council Member Corey Kelly raised concerns about a series of anonymous public records requests and said formatting and timing similarities suggested a possible link to Council Member Sweeney; Kelly said he did not intend to make a formal accusation. Sweeney said he had filed public records requests prior to his election and, to his knowledge, had not done so since taking office.
The council discussed the Gaston Station Museum in the budget conversation but did not include direct funding in the adopted budget; members explored alternate, non-recurring avenues of support including letters to state representatives and encouraging private donations.
The public-comment items were heard as part of the June 1 meeting; the council did not commit municipal funds during the meeting.
