WRI’s appeal to Wake Superior Court to overturn or amend the Wake Forest commissioners’ unanimous vote to deny a special use permit for Wake Union Place Shopping Center is pending, waiting for the court to set a hearing date.
            Eric Vernon, the attorney for the town, said this week both Clyde Holt, acting for WRI, and the town’s litigator, an attorney in the Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton office with Vernon, for the town filed their briefs in a timely fashion before the deadline earlier this month. Usually the court proceeds to set a hearing date, but that has not yet happened.
            Stay tuned.
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          Boy, do we eat a lot of oysters! According to Wake County government, the restaurants here end up with more empty shells than any county in the state, including the coast. In 2008, a pilot program involving just four Wake County oyster bars collected over 5,000 bushels of oyster/clam shells.
            Now the Wake County Solid Waste Department, working with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, will create oyster shell recycling drop-off areas that can be used by all restaurants and by the county’s residents, who like to hold their own oyster roasts. The recycling sites will be at all 11 County Waste Convenience Centers and at the South Wake Landfill. For Wake Forest area residents, the nearest convenience centers are on N.C. 98 west of town and Lillie Liles Road. The one on Eagle Rock Road near Knightdale may be closer for some.
            The oyster shell recycling sites will be set up Thursday, June 25.
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          Mayor Vivian Jones really started something when she, working with Triangle Transit and Raleigh’s CAT system, instituted Wake Forest’s express bus service to Raleigh and the in-town loop bus.
            Now Triangle Transit and CAT are planning schedules, routes and stops for two proposed express bus routes to Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon. One route will be between Knightdale and downtown Raleigh, and the other route will run from Zebulon and Wendell to downtown Raleigh.
            The routes are proposed to begin in September, and both routes would have three morning and three afternoon trips.
            People have been saying for years that all the rural and small-town areas in Wake County needed bus service, but it apparently took $4 gasoline and Wake Forest to lead the way to make it happen.
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            Quite a few people took advantage of the town’s Great Grass Giveaway, in which over 1,400 pounds were distributed. With all the recent soaking rains, those lawns must be in good shape.
            The Gazette did get a complaint from a homeowner in Jones Dairy Farm who could not get the grass seed because she is not a Wake Forest resident. Jones Dairy has Wake Forest water and sewer (now owned by Raleigh) but Wake Forest has never annexed the subdivision.
            When the Jones brothers, Robert and Roy Ed, first asked for town services back in 1986, they could get the water easily but it was too expensive to run a large sewer main out there. Instead, they built a package wastewater plant, planning to hook into the town’s system when growth on the east side of town made it possible. They also, at the town’s request, included a clause in the deeds, stipulating the owners would not fight annexation in the future. Unfortunately, that clause was dropped as the homes sold and resold.
            When Bowling Green developer Steve Gould planned the 18-inch, 6,900-foot sewer line to his subdivision, Robert Jones paid part of the cost for the line that will also serve Bishop’s Grant and Austin Creek subdivisions. Everything thing seemed set for the annexation of Jones Dairy and Willow Deer subdivisions.
            In 2004 Robert applied to the town for annexation, but then he and the town learned about the resales. The difficulty is that even one homeowner who objects to a voluntary annexation can mean it would have to be a forced annexation, and the town has not had a forced annexation since the 1980s when it added the Forestville area after a legal battle. The solution would be for 100 percent of the homeowners in Jones Dairy and Willow Deer to petition for annexation.