Recap for October 6, 2025 Board Meetings at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
The Johnston County Board of Commissioners on Oct. 6 hired a firm to engineer the next leg of the Neuse River Trail.
McAdams, a design, planning and engineering firm, will design the 1.5-mile bike and pedestrian path near the new Wilson’s Mills High School.
“We are projecting construction to start in October, November 2026,” said Austin Cross of the county’s Parks & Open Space Department. “We hope construction will take 10 to 12 months.”
The Wilson’s Mills segment will be part of the Neuse River Trail, which currently extends from Falls Lake in Raleigh to Clayton, with a segment in Smithfield known as Buffalo Creek Greenway.
“This is a step toward connecting the two,” Cross said of the Wilson’s Mills segment, which will connect a future passive park and proposed 500-home subdivision to the high school site.
Johnston County has secured the $4.21 million it needs to design and build the trail, Cross said. Most of the money — $3.3 million — is from a state-federal Carbon Reduction Program grant. Other funding comes from the East Coast Greenway Alliance through the state grant, Complete the Trails Program ($592,500) and the county’s Open Space Fund ($250,000). The county will pay McAdams up to $287,203.31 for the trail’s design.
The Neuse River Trail is part of the state’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail and the state-federal East Coast Greenway.
“The next phase is further downriver from the Wilson’s Mills site,” Cross said. “We have secured funding from the state grant, Great Trail State Program, to purchase the next easement of land, which will be roughly two miles of additional trail until we reach Selma’s future park/nature preserve.”
The board gave Johnston County Emergency Services the go-ahead to staff what will be the county’s 20th EMS location.
Dubbed EMS16, it will share space with Wilson’s Mills Fire Station No. 3, a building under construction at 1988 Gordon Road, Clayton.
In all, Emergency Services will hire eight people to staff the station and hopes to have them in place by mid-January of next year.
EMS 16 will cover parts of Clayton, Wilson’s Mills, Selma and Smithfield, Ryan Parker, director of Emergency Services, said later in the week.
“The area that will soon be the primary response district of EMS16 is already being covered by units responding from Clayton, Selma, Smithfield, and Wilson's Mills Fire Station 2,” he said. “The introduction of EMS16 to our system will further reduce response times of EMS resources and provide additional resilience to a high-performing EMS system.”
The county will staff EMS16 with a mix of EMTs, advanced EMTs and paramedics, the highest certification, Parker said. “There will be at least one paramedic assigned to EMS16 per shift,” he said, noting that is the standard for all other EMS locations in the county.
Firefighters at Station No. 3 will complement the staff.
“Wilson’s Mills Fire Rescue personnel are trained to at least an EMT-level certification,” Parker said. “Wilson’s Mills Fire Rescue, like all other contracted fire departments within Johnston County, supplements the Johnston County EMS Division with pre-hospital care.”
Parker thanked commissioners and Wilson’s Mills Fire Rescue for their support for EMS 16. “Johnston County Emergency Services is thankful for the continued support of the Johnston County Board of Commissioners and the partnership with Wilson’s Mills Fire Rescue to add this unit to our EMS system,” he said.
In all, Johnston County Emergency Services staffs seven EMS stations and shares space within 13 fire stations.
Commissioners agreed to pay a consulting firm up to $73,905 for work that could ultimately decide whether they say yes or no to development requests.
Creative Economic Development Consulting, an Elkin, N.C., firm will prepare both a Cost of Community Services study and a Local Fiscal Impact Model.
The first will determine two things. One is the cost to provide county services to homes, businesses, industries and farms. The second is the tax revenue the county can expect from those various land uses.
The county will apply the Local Fiscal Impact Model to specific development requests, say, a 200-home subdivision. The model will determine that project’s cost to schools, law enforcement and other county services and then measure that cost against expected revenue from property and sales taxes.
The consulting firm will begin work this month and deliver the study and impact model in February.
The board adopted a Fire Apparatus Replacement Policy that gives priority to fire trucks and other equipment that is more than 30 years old. Also, commissioners adopted a policy that requires fire departments to have their annual budget requests to the county by March 15 of every year.
Commissioners agreed to pay Sanford Contractors Inc. $4.85 million to replace the sewage pump station on U.S. 301 South near the Neuse River in Smithfield. The company will replace the old pump station with a new one that’s outside of the flood hazard plain.
Also on Monday morning, commissioners endorsed NCDOT’s petition to add the following streets to its roster of state-maintained roads:
- Wilson Farm Lane, Old Pine Court, Blalock Court, Wheat Straw Court, Mockingbird Way and Back Gate Court in Wilson Farm subdivision in Clayton Township.
- Thunder Ridge Drive, Diamond Hill Court, Look Drive, Crown Point Drive, Starwood Drive, Cliffview Drive, Tradewind Court, Capewood Court, Clear Creek Circle, Dove Valley Circle, Tall Timber Court, HIdden Grove Court, Mountain View Drive, Trail Point Circle, Tang Circle, Lockhaven Drive, Good Morning Lane, Morning Star Lane and Son-Lan Parkway in River Oaks subdivision in Cleveland Township.
Commissioners made the following appointments and reappointments:
- Child Fatality Prevention Team — Brandon Allen and Travis C. Johnson.
- Firefighter’s Relief Fund Board of Trustees — Douglas R. Whitley, Beulah Fire District; Carol Woodard, Corinth-Holders Fire District; and Randy Earl Allen, Wynn Fire District.
- Johnston County Heritage Commission — Pearl Blackmon, Carolyn G. Ennis, Vicky Temple-Rains, Lettie Inez Best, James Dana Carter II, Catherine Rusher Gutierrez, Gary Underwood and Dr. Shiquita Blue.
- Moccasin Creek Service District Board — Jeff Holt and Debra Heuertz.
- Nursing Home/Adult Care Home Community Advisory Board — Keisha Godwin.
The board proclaimed:
- Oct. 20-24 as Employee Appreciation Week. Johnston County employs more than 1,000 men and women working in 31 departments and agencies. “Johnston County runs smoothly on a day-to-day basis primarily because of the dedication of employees,” the proclamation says.
- Oct. 5-11 as National 4-H Week. 4-H provides young people with hands-on learning in science, engineering and technology; healthy living; and citizenship.
- October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In Johnston County, Harbor provides aid, including shelter, to more than 3,000 victims and survivors annually.
At their evening meeting on Oct. 6, commissioners rezoned 12.56 acres on Pierce Road near Cleveland Road for heavy industrial use. But with the developer’s support, the board barred a number of uses, including trucking terminals, chemical manufacturing, asphalt production and meat processing.
Page last updated on: October 24, 2025