grant also contributed to the purchase. The property will be developed as a public trails preserve, with as many as 10 miles for horseback riding, PLC said in an emailed statement. The trails will also accommodate runners and walkers, but not cyclists because horses and bikes aren’t necessarily compatible, said Palmer McIntyre, PLC’s conservation planner. The property had been listed as containing 113 acres. A survey found it actually has 115 acres, McIntyre said. The transaction represents the first time that the three municipalities and the county have collaborated jointly on a preservation and recreational project, according to PLC. It said acquiring the property will help protect Greensboro’s drinking water supply while providing a route for the Piedmont Greenway, a proposed 19-mile trail from Greensboro to Winston-Salem. Late last year, PLC hired Destination
by Design, a recreational trails design firm based in Boone, North Carolina, to help create a site plan for the trails preserve. PLC said it will own the property temporarily until it is transferred to the town of Summerfield for permanent ownership and management. At that point, PLC and town officials will seek grant funds to cover the costs for developing the site with parking and trails. They plan to seek a grant from the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund (PARTF). Summerfield Town Manager Scott Whitaker said he doesn’t expect the town to take ownership of the property until “all efforts to get grant funding from PARTF are exhausted.”
It’s coming,
it’s coming... 2021
That probably won’t occur in 2021, Whitaker told the Northwest Observer in an email, because qualifying for PARTF grants can be “a slow process” spanning multiple years, if municipalities get any money at all.
Backlogs delay audit submissions by PATTI STOKES
STOKESDALE/SUMMERFIELD – An unsigned draft audit is as much as Rex Rouse said he could provide until he has received minutes from several Stokesdale Town Council meetings. Rouse, a partner with the accounting firm Rouse, Rouse, Penn and Rouse, LLP, presented the draft audit at the council’s Jan. 14 meeting; the presentation was on the council’s Dec. 10 meeting agenda, but a few hours before that meeting began the council learned the presentation would have to be postponed because the accountant was still waiting for meeting minutes. Municipalities with fiscal years ending June 30 normally have until Oct. 31 to submit their annual audit to the state’s secretary of the Local Government Commission (LGC). Because of COVID-19’s impact on local governments, the N.C. Dept. of State Treasurer extended this year’s deadline to Jan. 31. Meanwhile, Stokesdale Town Clerk Alisa Houk is pushing through a months-long backlog of audio recordings to document finance-related discussions and votes from council meetings. Last month the council approved Houk working from home one day a week to focus on completing them.
Houk reported at the Jan. 14 meeting she had made progress, but still needed to complete September, October, November and December meeting minutes. Houk has previously told the council meeting minutes were backlogged due to pandemic-related challenges, a higherthan-usual number of council meetings, budget meetings and closed sessions over the last several months, and to the deputy clerk being out for several weeks this fall while recovering from surgery. Until a few months ago, the town clerk also served as the town finance officer. Stokesdale is the only northwest Guilford County town with its own municipal water system, which Houk is also involved with. Other municipalities in the county are also pushing the Jan. 31 deadline. As of Jan. 20, Guilford County, Sedalia, Gibsonville, Summerfield and Whitsett had not submitted their audits to the LGC. Summerfield Finance Officer Dee Hall said her financial work for the annual audit was completed in August, but the Whitevillebased firm the town contracted with to perform this year’s audit has experienced COVID-related issues that required staff to be quarantined several times, creating a Theis still Northwest Observer backlog that the firm wading through.
by published
PS Communications’ 13th annual Northwest FINDER will be headed to mailboxes and newspaper racks throughout northwest Guilford County in the coming week. It’s got lots of great “need-to-know, fun-to-know and good-to-know” information about your community, so keep it handy and use it often throughout the year! • Totally local since 1996
JAN. 21 - FEB. 3, 2021
5
