Their attorney sidelined by conflict in his Burlington city council post and not quite trusting the city’s junior lawyer, his partner
Graham’s elected officials have decided to seek some outside legal advice about a potential annexation deal that would allow Burlington to absorb the proposed site of a subdivision that lies on the margins of Graham’s municipal limits.
The council resolved to consult an “independent” law firm about this prospective agreement after mayor Jennifer Talley second-guessed the partiality of Graham’s own city attorneys – one of whom doubles as a member of Burlington’s city council.
“This is technically going into our area that is designated for expansion…and I feel like we need to have an independent attorney looking at this,” Talley argued when the proposed agreement came before the council on Tuesday. “I’m not saying we won’t do it. . . I just want to err on the side of caution.”
The proposal that triggered Talley’s misgivings isn’t exactly the first territorial compact that Graham has brokered with Burlington under its in-house legal team, which consists of veteran city attorney Robert M. Ward, who also serves on Burlington’s city council, and Ward’s junior partner J. Bryan Coleman.
In fact, Graham relied on the same legal team to negotiate a so-called “annexation line of agreement” just over a year ago that gave Burlington full annexation rights to a 91-acre parcel off of South NC 49.
The members of Burlington’s city council ultimately signed off on this agreement in March of 2024 – with Ward joining Burlington’s unanimous decision once he had assured his fellow council members that Coleman had handled all of the negotiations on Graham’s behalf.
Graham’s council, for its part, chose to take no action at all on that original agreement after the city’s administrators raised some concerns about the breadth of the proposal.
The proposed agreement that came before Graham’s city council on Tuesday was essentially the byproduct of its decision to yank the original deal, which gave way to another round of negotiations between the two cities.
Much like its predecessor, the latest proposal concerns property that Raleigh-based Glenwood Homes plans to develop along Race Track Road, which runs through the hinterland between Burlington and Graham. In both cases, the land under consideration straddles the extraterritorial jurisdictions of both municipalities, although its relative proximity to Graham has given the smaller city preference in annexation. Glenwood Homes has nevertheless sought to be absorbed into Burlington, which is in a better position to provide water and sewer services to the property.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
MORE LOCAL BURLINGTON AND GRAHAM NEWS THAN YOU’LL FIND ANYWHERE ELSE. SUBSCRIBE TODAY.
Under the latest proposed line of agreement, the reallocation of annexation rights between the two cities would be more narrowly focused on the land that Glenwood Homes wants to develop. This proposed deal received a formal nod from Burlington city council on April 15. But unlike the case in 2024, Ward recused himself from the council’s most recent decision, although he had apparently continued to entrust Coleman with all of the negotiations on Graham’s end.
Burlington’s own city attorney David Huffman had explained all these details on Ward’s behalf before Burlington’s city council voted 4-to-0 to approve the revised line of agreement in April. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Ward himself made a similar disclosure when the proposal came up for consideration before Graham’s city council.
“I neither participated in any votes or in any deliberations in my role as a member of the [Burlington] city council nor have I participated at the staff level in the review of any of these documents,” Ward elaborated. “I just thought it would be helpful to have that in the record because of my unique role as a member of the council there and as one of the city attorneys for the city of Graham.”
Ward’s assurances that Coleman had handled the negotiations for Graham did little to persuade Talley that her city had received the best legal representation from its city attorneys.
“Nothing against Mr. Coleman,” she added, “but he is in the same law firm as Mr. Ward…[who] sits on the city council, and he represents Burlington.”
In response to Talley’s misgivings, Graham’s city manager Megan Garner insisted that the staff members who represented Graham in these negotiations didn’t simply cave to Burlington’s wishes. Garner went on to recall that these staff members had rejected the earlier version of the agreement because it would’ve given Burlington annexation rights to a wider area than the current proposal.
Garner’s assurances were ultimately waved off by Talley, who resorted to a version of the slippery-slope argument to justify her objections.
“I think there have been some very detrimental decisions made in the past by council members who didn’t grasp the ramifications of their decisions,” she added, “and I don’t want to set this as a precedent that every contiguous piece of property that would technically go to Graham…would automatically go to Burlington…because we can’t provide utilities at that time.”
Talley never seemed to acknowledge Garner’s recollection that Graham’s city staff had rejected the original line of agreement precisely because they wanted to avoid an overly broad division of territory. Nor did this consideration make much of an impression on council member Bonnie Whitaker, who echoed the mayor’s call for a second legal opinion on the proposed deal with Burlington.
“I read the whole thing twice and I still have some reservations about just willy nilly saying ‘yes, y’all can do this,” Whitaker said. “I agree with the mayor. I think we need to have an independent firm look at this for us.”
In the end, the council instructed the city manager to find an experienced real estate lawyer to reevaluate the proposed line beyond its immediate impact on Glenwood Homes.
