In 2018, the North Carolina General Assembly voted to confirm a straight border between Guilford County and Alamance County – after a horrendous decades-long dispute between the two counties – and, on Thursday, Nov. 21, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners is ready to settle a similar – though much less contentious – dispute with Forsyth County.
The board intends to adopt a resolution reestablishing the county line with Forsyth County at that meeting now that a North Carolina Geodetic Survey has been completed and reviewed.
The survey was funded by the NC General Assembly “to assist with the re-survey of ambiguous or uncertain county boundaries.”
In February of 2024, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution authorizing the state to conduct the survey, map the boundary and mark it.
The survey team then sent a report to both counties, which has now been reviewed by county staff. The state team doing the work used a 1960 boundary line survey conducted by Southern Mapping and Engineering as the starting point for the new survey.
According to the resolution to be adopted by the Guilford County commissioners later this week, the new survey found that the Guilford/Forsyth line is in “the same location or very close
to the location set by the 1960 survey.”
The county managers of both counties have given their thumbs up to the reestablished line and now it’s time for the two Boards of Commissioners to give their stamp of approval.
The resolutions of Forsyth County and Guilford County will declare the agreed upon line as the exact boundary between Forsyth County and Guilford County,” and, “Upon ratification of the survey by the board of commissioners of each county, a map showing the surveyed boundary shall be recorded in the office of the register of deeds of each county in the manner provided by law for the recordation of maps or plats and in the Secretary of State’s office.”
When Guilford County and the surrounding counties were established, the county lines were marked with physical markers. However, over the years, markers were shifted and people who live very near the lines either got confused as to which county they lived in or they just decided that they lived in the county they wanted to be in.
In the case of the Alamance County line, people almost always chose Alamance County since it had a lower property tax rate than Guilford County.
For about two decades, that county line dispute with Alamance county dragged on; however, that debate was finally put to rest when the NC General Assembly voted unanimously to support a bill sponsored by former State Rep. Jon Hardister that confirmed the line.
When the county’s edges were mostly forest and pastures, ambiguity wasn’t such a big deal; however, as new housing developments and buildings were constructed, the problem grew – since the question arose as to which county some property owners should pay taxes in. It created other questions as well, such as where kids should attend school and which emergency responders should serve homes or businesses near the line.
Alamance County and Orange County had a dispute over the county line and the two created a “zigzag” line that gave property owners along the line a choice as to which county they were in. The complexity of that experience was likely one reason Alamance County finally agreed to a straight line with Guilford County.
In 2012, the Guilford County commissioners voted to go along with Alamance County’s effort to create a new zigzag county line – with residents who lived very close to the line deciding which county to live in.
But the Guilford County commissioners later didn’t like the fact that 61 property owners elected to go into Alamance County while not one wanted to be in Guilford County with Guilford County’s higher tax rate.
At that time, it was estimated that Guilford County would lose about $8.5 million of property tax value to Alamance County – which would have meant about $65,000 annually in tax revenue.
