Angier homeowner Donald Gregory says he feels like he has a contagious disease. Now that he might have a highway running through his property, he doesn’t know how he will ever get anyone to buy his land, should he decide to sell it.

This is the case for many other Angier citizens, as well. A proposed transportation plan in Angier would feature a four-lane loop around Angier to help rid the town of congestion around the intersection of N.C. 210 and N.C. 55. But property owners won’t get a say in the matter.

“This basically puts your land on reservation, “ said Gregory, who would have six acres of his land consumed by the loop. “No one can do anything with it. If you wanted to develop your property, that’s too bad.” The road would not be built for 20 to 30 years, according to the plan.

Gregory said what most frustrates him is that he can’t vote for the people on the city planning board who are making the decisions about the transportation plan.

“It’s government without representation,” he said. There have been three meetings on the issue, but the first meeting where citizens could voice their opinion to the planning board was conducted July 17.

The Capital Planning Metropolitan Organization, developers of the proposal, discussed different plans, all of which included a loop around the town, Angier Town Manager Coley Price said. There was some opposition from citizens, but not an overwhelming amount, he said.

Richard Blalock, a homeowner, doesn’t agree. “I can’t find anyone in support of this bypass. It’s a clear situation, in my opinion, that the town wants this versus the merchants and citizens.” Blalock’s home, as well as his father’s and brother’s, are situated in the proposed bypass area.

“I thought in this country that elected officials were supposed to be doing the will of the people,” Blalock said of the Harnett County commissioners, who will ultimately vote on the new plan. “If you can’t find anyone in support of the bypass, then you shouldn’t do it.”

But Blalock and many other citizens think that the matter has already been decided, despite Price’s assurance that nothing is settled.

“At what point in time does the town say, ‘The people don’t want this. We’ve got to do something different’?” Blalock asked.

Localities in North Carolina and across the nation are increasingly using eminent domain for various projects, but the takings aren’t always found under that name.

Angier officials aren’t calling the bypass an eminent-domain issue, although the project appears so. Instead, the government is not only taking land away from property owners for “public use,” but it is not attempting to negotiate the purchase of the property for fair value.

“If someone would have come up to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to build a bypass two years from now and we’re going to pay you market price for your land,’ I could live with that,” Blalock said.

But Blalock will never get that offer. By Aug. 6, the plan will either be approved or rejected by the town board, and Angier property owners will know what is to become of their land.

Brittany Bussian is an editorial intern for Carolina Journal.