Requesting prayers to preserve my town of Summerfield, NC

#1

I debated about posting this… But it seems like there are a lot of good people in this community… So I just wanted to ask anyone who sees this to please pray for the town of Summerfield, NC that I live in. It is one of the most beautiful towns in North Carolina filled with lots of land, old farm houses, and natural beauty everywhere you look. It is a rural town with a tight-nit community of also really good people. Most people have lived there for generations.

Our town has been fighting a virtue-signaling sociopath named David Couch, who wants to turn a thousand acres in the heart of our town into a “planned community.”
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He has been fighting the town for 7 years and has used every sneaky and dishonest trick in the book to sew seeds of doubt, manipulate our town counsel and convince the citizens that his massive development that will double the population of our town is actually a good thing… He even tried to say it would lower crime and we could possibly get sued for not being “diverse” enough… Whatever that even means. He is one of the most dishonest people I have ever met.

However, after 7 years of getting told no by our town council with polls showing over 95% of residents against this project; a few years back he started making huge donations to our key state legislators and is now asking them to de-annex the very center of our town to build his 15 minute city.

I do believe in the power of prayers… And we have also been flooding our state Rep. Phil Berger - with emails asking him not to sell us out.

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Our community has setup Facebook pages, showed up in droves at the meetings, gone out to protest, given out yard signs, sent out flyers, and so much more… It has really been a fight and the residents have spent tens of thousands of dollars to fight Mr. Couches paid lobbyist and P.R. team. Our mayor, town council and the whole town showed up at the last meeting to speak up against it. Mr. Couch did not have a single supporter… Yet the threat is still very real that Phil Berger will sneak into a bill a de-annexation proposal.

Our towns Facebook groups are…

And we have managed to get some stories printed in the local newspapers… Mr. Couch has paid Forbes and a dozen other “news agencies” to print stories that show him in a favorable light… But he is the most despised man in our town. He actually doesn’t even live here, he lives in Dennis Quade’s old ranch in Montana and has a mansion in Tennessee. The guy has over 41 massive apartments complexes in his portfolio, strip malls, farms, businesses of all sorts… And has destroyed other areas before. It truly is bad news for our town.

Our town counsel has gotten other neighboring town’s counsels to support us, they also hired a $600/hour attorney to represent us… and are fighting for us tooth and nail… but we really could use all the prayers we can get!

In my opinion a “planned community” is not a community at all. It is a system that is designed to harvest the economic productivity of the residents. I love my community of Summerfield. I love the people I’ve met, the traditions, the beautiful landscape, the beautiful old houses… I don’t want to see Summerfield become just a place to live, with as many people as Mr. Couch and his penny pinching cronies can shove into tiny soul less buildings that make up renting districts. It would be a shame to destroy a town so that one virtue signaling socio-path makes a whole lot of money so he can be a really groovy and happening kind of guy… so I am just asking for anybody willing to pray!

Here’s just a few of the news stories about the issue…

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#2

Terrible situation for you and your community. We will join in with the prayers.

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#3

Thank you so much! I truly appreciate it!

#4

Ironic who the town was named after….who managed that one? Looks like a highly desirable area for Greensboro. Saw some homes in the $500,000 to $1.2 million range Building sites in some developments at $50,000 to $70,000 makes his 1,000 acres a potential $50,000,000 value.
Based on his other holdings looks like he is determined and has the money to recoup his investment. Praying is about all that’ll do it. May want include the name sake in them.

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#5

Sending good thoughts your way. Keep pushing back!

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#6

Thanks Bill!.. I like your idea :slight_smile: The town was incorporated in the 90’s at the request of 500 families who came together to protect the community from ironically, developers… and they met in, I’m assuming the same Methodist church that we still hold many town council meetings in today, which explains John Summerfield. Mr. Couch could make an absolute fortune selling the property, but his greed and at this point his ego won’t let him. He loathes the entire town and called us all dumb country folks, according to a very reliable source. There are many beautiful homes in the area. There is low crime, crowded but great schools, low taxes, and a strong faith based community. Unfortunately these are the kinds of places developers want to exploit and destroy.

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#7

Thank you FiatLux!!! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

#8

I will pray for your lovely town. This is happening everywhere and it’s definitely worth the fight. God bless you and your lovely town🙏

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#9

Thank you! That means so much… It is so heartbreaking to see it happening everywhere. I pray for all towns that this is happening to and also the ones it has already happened to. We are all going to fight it to the bitter end :pray:

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#10

I will certainly pray for your beautiful Summerfield. Please pray for my State of Texas, if you will.
Much love and concern.

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#11

Thank you Beaver… and I definitely will!!!

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#12

Sorry to heard about this, hope prayers will help.

Sounds like Couch should already be in jail for all that blatant extortion, wonder why he hasn’t been arrested yet?

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#13

Put up that good fight !
Vibes your way.

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#14

Thank you Bahri & Uinatom… And it is a mystery Bahri. He flew our towns planning board on a private plane to look at similar developments in North Myrtle Beach… When he’s definitely got some closer… And two meetings ago, his developer tried to nullify the towns survey and said they had found ways to trick the towns survey by putting in false information… To which I said, I’m no Perry Mason but that sounds an awful lot like wire fraud. That developer was let go haha… But I do think prayers help, we have fought him off for 7 years because of some brilliant insights from people in the town, and I sometimes wonder if they were not divinely inspired. But I appreciate this group so much :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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#15

What kind of environmental impact was done and was the community one of the considerations? (Impact to neighborhoods: sociological, financial, physically (transportation, schools, etc).

Is it possible, besides a private plane ride, to prove that any of the planning board members, including family, has shown a sudden unexplained asset/service/vacation… ie pay off clues, aka money laundering.

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#16

Where is the spotted owl when he’s needed most?

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#17

We really don’t have the infrastructure to support the project at all… We don’t have the roads, we don’t have the schools and to make this project work, Mr. Couch said he would need Greensboro’s water and sewer brought out here. Which is a massive project that will require tax payer money. He tried a few years ago to make it seem like he had worked out all the water/sewer accommodations with Greensboro which was not the case in the least. We think he wanted the town to sign off on it before going to Greensboro, but that lie really hurt him. Our planning board is corrupt and it’s a volunteer position… Fortunately it has no power and several things have come out about conflicts of interest…

But basically a few months ago, after 7 years of trying to get Summerfield to make an exception to our text amendment that prevents high density housing in the town… He tried a new tactic which was to request that his property be de-annexed from the town completely by the state legislature. Even though he knew when he bought the property (over a period of years) what the development regulations were. So now if it happens, it is not a local decision, but it is made at the state level. He hired a lobbyist which was a former aide to the most power republican in the state, Phil Berger, and has been working actively to get it slipped into a bill. So it’s just a mess. But the town council has gotten their own lawyers and lobbyist and we have a lot of retired professionals working behind the scenes… but like our mayor said, this will always be a gun to our head :grimacing:

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#18

Bill hahaha, I like how you think… If only we were lucky enough to find a rare spotted owl on his farm. I actually live on his street, so I will keep my eyes open and my camera ready. I do have a pair of binoculars too! I’m also not above painting the spots on the owl myself if I can find one :rofl:

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#19

That probably is wire fraud then, if you can get together some evidence of that I’d recommend taking that to the cops right away and then hopefully an arrest warrant will go out before he’s able to flee the country.

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#20

Are you sure that NC does not require an environmental impact statement for residential PUD projects that exceed x number of units. If not, shouldn’t that be another issue-" we don’t want another one of these cropping up." Maybe that should be in the bill, instead.

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