Wendell race figures to be the marquee event this fall in eastern Wake County.

Zebulon commissioners have extra money to play with.

Untangling a complicated merger agreement will require the experience of commissioners like Buddy Scarboro.

Superior Court Judge Carl Fox dismissed a lawsuit brought in November 2007 by dozens of Wendell residents claiming the town acted improperly when it approved the expansion of the Pepper Pointe subdivision.

Fox handed down his one paragraph ruling late Friday afternoon, one day after hearing arguments in a motion for summary judgement.

The ruling clears the way for the developer, William Barker, to begin work on the new phase of the development. Commissioners approved the project in September 2007 after having initially rejected the plan. Under town rules, developers were required to wait one year before resubmitting plans for a new development if those plans were rejected. The only exception to that rule is in cases where significant changes are made to the plan.

Barker incorporated some changes in his plan, including some he had agreed to in negotiations prior to the commission's rejection.

Commissioners OK'd the plan the second time, prompting the lawsuit that included 65 complainants.

Fox's ruling can be appealed by the complainants to the N.C. Court of Appeals. In his ruling, Fox offered no explanations of why he ruled the way he did.

When David Bone was hired as town manager in Wendell, one of the first things he did was to adjust the meeting agenda. He took a section titled "Agenda items pending from previous meetings" off the cover page of the agenda and put them in the back of the agenda packet. The information is still there for commissioners to see, but it's not quite as readily available to the public.

That item is now routinely placed in a section of the agenda called "Reading Material."

The information contained in that section is normally fairly routine stuff - letters, memos and newspaper articles about topics of interest to the town.

But this week's reading material section included a fascinating item. Among the items was a copy of a resolution adopted by the town commissioners at their Nov. 10 meeting supporting the efforts to incorporate Archer Lodge. The page in front of that resolution was a letter from Mayor Harold Broadwell to Carlton Vinson, the representative of the Archer Lodge Municipal Exploratory Committee who asked the town to adopt the resolution.

In his letter, Broadwell said, despite the board's approval of the resolution, he could not support it.

"Personally, while I admire and love the Archer Lodge community, I cannot support this initiative because I believe it to be against the interests of the Town of Wendell," Broadwell wrote.

Broadwell said Monday night that he has already gotten some negative feedback from at least one commissioner who felt Broadwell was out of bounds in expressing his own opinion.

While Broadwell doesn't get a vote except in cases of a tie vote (hard to do when there are five commissioners) he certainly has an obligation to make his position known publicly.

After all, he took an oath just like the town commissioners.

And in case you're wondering, since this item was tucked away in the reading material section of the agenda, there was no public conversation about it at last nights meeting.

Zebulon town commissioners wrestled for some time last night with a new benefits package for employees.

Commissioners were deciding which companies would provide town employees (and elected leaders) with health insurance, vision insurance and dental insurance.

The issue of health insurance was particularly moot because the town recently entered into a new contract with United Health Care to provide employees with that coverage. But vision and dental insurance were more of an issue. Ultimately, Commissioner Don Bumgarner zigged when the staff was zagging and suggested the town keep its business with Ameritas, the company that had provided dental insurance for town employees for several years. Bumgarner's logical argument won the day with his fellow commissioners.

The most interesting discussion came when Finance Director Emily Lucas explained to commissioners how the town wants to ease the burden of higher insurance costs for employees. She proposed the establishment of a Flexible Spending Account, or FSA, for every town employee. The town would put $240 per year into an account for each of the town's 62 employees. That wouldn't eliminate the cost increase for employees, but it would reimburse employees for a significant amount of the additional cost.

The town currently offers an FSA for employees, but Lucas said only about 4 or 5 employees take advantage of it. That's surprising because the FSA is a pre-tax deduction, which means the employee could spend the money but wouldn't have to pay taxes on it.

Bumgarner and fellow commissioner Dale Beck, to their credit, admitted up front they didn't understand the FSA concept, but they were willing to study the idea.

Until Public Works Director Chris Ray stood up.

He explained to commissioners that he is one of the four or five town employees that uses the FSA and he praised the benefit because he said it's money he would spend anyway and he gets a tax break to boot.

Ray's endorsement won over Beck and Bumgarner and commissioners ultimately OK'd the idea.

Employees will find it one of the best benefits they could hope for as town employees. If they will just use it.

Two weeks ago, Wendell Mayor Harold Broadwell promised a long town board meeting when that group convened Sept. 22.

He delivered.

Commissioners met for nearly three hours last night, spending most of their time on one topic: the annexation and development of the Anderson family property.

That property first came under public scrutiny when the owners asked to annex all but nine of the 138-acre parcel. Commissioners sent the property owners a signal that they would not annex just part of the property, so the request was changed and commissioners annexed it all last night.

Then came the fun part.

Commissioners were asked to rezone the larger portion of the property - everything except the nine acres one of the heirs, David Anderson, wants to keep for himself.

The heirs asked for conditional use zoning, which means conditions can be placed on the development of the property. But here's the catch. The town and the property owner must agree to the conditions.

Last night's rezoning included 20 conditions, some as detailed as the slope of roofs on houses to be built on the property, others more general, such as requiring the maintenance of some historical structures.

Jumpstarting this development has been a herky-jerky process from the get-go. Last night, commissioners delayed action to give the town and the heirs time to negotiate some of the more controversial aspects of the rezoning.

That ensures another long meeting next month.

Wendell commissioners wiped their hands of the Central Baptist Church water problem last night. Church leaders offered to bond future construction of a water line in return for permission to hook on to the line that now extends to the edge of their property.

If you're just tuning in, church leaders thought they had followed all the rules in extending the line to the edge of the property, only to have Raleigh tell them the rules require the line be extended, essentially, all the way across the church property.

That's a several hundred thousand dollar proposition and the church had pretty much tapped out its financial resources to pay for the large new building it's now waiting to occupy.

Without the money to extend the line, church leaders turned first to Raleigh, then to Wendell, back to Raleigh and, again, back to Wendell, looking for relief from the rules. No one seemed interested in giving them that relief.

At last night's town board meeting, Wendell Mayor Harold Broadwell ruled out of order a motion by Commissioner Ronald Thompson that would have accepted the church's offer of a bond guaranteeing the future construction of the line. Broadwell said the agreement had been turned down by Raleigh officials and Wendell had no authority to enter into such an agreement.

Commissioners then voted down a motion to ask Raleigh to approve the bond. That vote failed 3-2 with commissioners Sid Baynes, Bill Connolly and Carol Hinnant voting against it out of concern that it might anger Raleigh officials who control the town's water supply.

So for now, the church has three choices - build the line or pay the fee-in-lieu of construction - either way, the bill will run six figures; or do without water.