Local Politics

Wake commissioners get noses bent over proposed Crooked Creek sale

Two Wake County commissioners engaged in an email feud Thursday over the proposed sale of a former golf course that the county bought last year for a park.

Posted Updated
Former Crooked Creek Golf Course
By
Matthew Burns
, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor
FUQUAY-VARINA, N.C. — Two Wake County commissioners engaged in an email feud Thursday over the proposed sale of a former golf course that the county bought last year for a park.

The Crooked Creek Golf Course, off Hilltop Needmore Road west of U.S. Highway 401 in southern Wake County, closed in 2015, and county officials began looking at it in 2017 as a potential site for a future park.

The land has been an issue ever since.

Last June, commissioners voted 4-3 to buy the land, but two of the commissioners who approved the park lost their re-election bids. In January, the board voted 4-3 to declare the land "surplus property," paving the way for it to be sold.

Commissioner Greg Ford posted on Facebook Wednesday that the county will consider transferring the 142 acres to Fuquay-Varina at no cost at its meeting next Monday.

Although that move has been characterized as a win-win for the county and for people in the area who want a park, board Chairwoman Jessica Holmes and Commissioner Matt Calabria blasted each other repeatedly in emails Thursday that were also sent to various reporters.

Holmes fired the opening shot, demanding that Calabria retract a statement he made on social media that the county planned to sell the Crooked Creek land to the highest bidder.

"You are either intentionally misleading the public or intentionally being inflammatory and disingenuous," Holmes wrote, insisting that immediately following the January vote that she asked county officials to work with Fuquay-Varina or Holly Springs officials about preserving some of the land as a park or open space.

Calabria responded that the commissioners approved an "upset bid" process for selling the Crooked Creek property, which is designed to generate the highest possible bid.

"The actual resolution that commissioners passed is unambiguous," he wrote. "Certainly, various individual aspirations were articulated, though when efforts were made to slow down the process to more thoroughly consider what the board should/will do, that motion was voted down."

Although he said he was pleased for a possible resolution to the issue, he also expressed reluctance to engage in an email argument before the media.

"I don’t think this method of communicating questions or concerns is particularly appropriate or constructive," he wrote.

"I agree that this method of communication is unfortunate and less than ideal," Holmes replied. "However, communicating a falsehood to the public is even more disturbing and you tend to take the approach of deny and or lie when concerns are brought to you directly."

She also questioned Calabria's appearance at events sponsored by a group fighting to keep Crooked Creek as a county park, calling it unethical because the group could sue the county over the issue.

"The reality is that you were not at all engaged in conversations regarding the proposed solution that will be discussed on Monday and are only now seeming to claim credit and involvement as this best suits your narrative that you are the good guy and the rest of us are anti-park and or anti-open space," she wrote. "Your political maneuvering throughout this process has been divisive and counterproductive, and at times intentionally misleading to the public."

Calabria responded that he had on various occasions tried to talk the group out of suing the county, and he disliked being accused of doing otherwise.

"[I]t is unbecoming of this commission for anyone to accuse a colleague of unethical behavior (especially on such a non-issue) simply because they don’t like something or someone," he wrote. "It is also unbecoming to publicly throw any allegations one can think of up against the wall in the hope that a reporter will take interest in one of them and more loudly repeat one’s negative messages."

Holmes' insistence that she publicly stated the county wouldn't sell the Crooked Creek land to the highest bidder "doesn't pass the smell test," he wrote.

"No observer walked out of the boardroom on January 7 and thought: 'Oh good, now it will be preserved as a park,'" he wrote.

"I have made no comments regarding what you personally want or wanted to do with the land, and you alone have made reference to your personal aspirations regarding the South Wake Park land," he wrote. "As you know, someone’s private ambition is not the law. Contemporaneous or subsequent statements by elected officials or others are not the law. The text of the law is the law."

Calabria then ended the back-and-forth, saying he wouldn't reply to any further emails from Holmes on the issue.

"Emails seeking credit or acknowledgement are inappropriate and counterproductive, and they focus on the wrong thing," he wrote. "But it’s especially perverse to act as if acknowledgement is some sort of zero-sum game; just because one person worked on something doesn’t diminish someone else’s efforts. We should rise as a commission and a county. We should not seek to rise by pushing others down."

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