Residents of Lafayette Village and Gallup Acres will be city residents next summer. Sewer service will be extended to the 3,600 residents in the two residential areas, south of Raeford Road at Hope Mills Road. The Bonnie Doone community already notes improvements. Residents of Cottonade were less welcoming of annexation, and understandably. The cost of sewer hookup is a hardship in places where flooding isn't a problem.
Annexed residents are subject to city and county taxes.
But one function of government is to make choices of when whose needs should prevail. In Fayetteville, the issue was control. A subdivision on one side of a highway may be in the city, while a nearly identical development on the other side may not. This makes it difficult to fully address such problems as street flooding or garbage disposal. Fayetteville residents could not indefinitely continue to pay for the services and amenities of a city whose day population is many thousands higher than that of its tax-paying population providing those services.