{"data":{"id":"us-nc/n.c.-gen.-stat.-159-48","jurisdiction":"us-nc","citation":"N.C. Gen. Stat. § 159-48","heading":"For what purposes bonds may be issued.","body":"(a)\tEach unit of local government may borrow money and issue its bonds under this Article in evidence thereof for any one or more of the following purposes:\n(1)\tTo suppress riots, insurrections, or any extraordinary breach of law and order.\n(2)\tTo supply an unforeseen deficiency in the revenue when taxes actually received or collected during the fiscal year fall below collection estimates made in the annual budget ordinance within the limits prescribed in G.S. 159-13.\n(3)\tTo meet emergencies threatening the public health or safety, as conclusively determined in writing by the Governor.\n(4)\tTo refund outstanding revenue bonds or revenue bond anticipation notes.\n(5)\tTo refund outstanding general obligation bonds or general obligation bond anticipation notes.\n(6)\tTo fund judgments for specified sums of money entered against the unit by a court of competent jurisdiction.\n(7)\tTo fund valid, existing obligations of the unit not incurred by the borrowing of money.\n(b)\tEach county and city may borrow money and issue its bonds under this Article in evidence thereof for the purpose of paying any capital costs of any one or more of the following:\n(1)\tProviding airport facilities, including without limitation related land, landing fields, runways, clear zones, lighting, navigational and signal systems, hangars, terminals, offices, shops, and parking facilities.\n(2)\tProviding armories for the North Carolina National Guard.\n(3)\tProviding auditoriums, coliseums, arenas, stadiums, civic centers, convention centers, and facilities for exhibitions, athletic and cultural events, shows, and public gatherings.\n(4)\tProviding beach improvements, including without limitation jetties, seawalls, groins, moles, sand dunes, vegetation, additional sand, pumps and related equipment, and drainage channels, for the control of beach erosion and the improvement of beaches.\n(5)\tProviding cemeteries.\n(6)\tProviding facilities for fire fighting and prevention, including without limitation headquarters buildings, station buildings, training facilities, hydrants, alarm systems, and communications systems.\n(7)\tProviding hospital facilities, including without limitation general, tuberculosis, mental, chronic disease, and other types of hospitals and related facilities such as laboratories, outpatient departments, nurses' homes and training facilities, and central service facilities operated in connection with hospitals; facilities for the provision of public health services, including related facilities such as laboratories, clinics, and administrative offices; facilities specially designed for the diagnosis, treatment, education, training, or custodial care of individuals with intellectual or other developmental disabilities, including facilities for training specialists and sheltered workshops for individuals with intellectual or other developmental disabilities; nursing homes; and in connection with the foregoing, laundries, nurses', doctors', or interns' residences, administrative buildings, research facilities, maintenance, storage, and utility facilities, auditoriums, dining halls, food service and preparation facilities, fire prevention facilities, mental and physical health care facilities, dental care facilities, nursing schools, mental teaching facilities, offices, parking facilities, and other supporting service structures.\n(8)\tProviding land for corporate purposes.\n(9)\tProviding facilities for law enforcement, including without limitation headquarters buildings, station buildings, jails and other confinement facilities, training facilities, alarm systems, and communications systems.\n(10)\tProviding library facilities, including without limitation fixed and mobile libraries.\n(11)\tProviding art galleries, museums, and art centers, and providing for historic properties.\n(12)\tProviding parking facilities, including on- and off-street parking, and in connection therewith any area or place for the parking and storing of automobiles and other vehicles open to public use, with or without charge, including without limitation meters, buildings, garages, driveways, and approaches.\n(13)\tProviding parks and recreation facilities, including without limitation land, athletic fields, parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, shelters, stadiums, arenas, permanent and temporary stands, golf courses, swimming pools, wading pools, marinas, and lighting.\n(14)\tProviding public building, including without limitation buildings housing courtrooms, other court facilities, and council rooms, office buildings, public markets, public comfort stations, warehouses, and yards.\n(15)\tProviding public vehicles, including without limitation those for law enforcement, fire fighting and prevention, sanitation, street paving and maintenance, safety and public health, and other corporate purposes.\n(16)\tProviding for redevelopment through the acquisition of land and the improvement thereof for assisting local redevelopment commissions.\n(17)\tProviding sanitary sewer systems, including without limitation community sewerage facilities for the collection, treatment, and disposal of sewage or septic tank systems and other on-site collection and disposal facilities or systems.\n(18)\tProviding solid waste disposal systems, including without limitation land for sanitary landfills, incinerators, and other structures and buildings.\n(19)\tProviding storm sewers and flood control facilities, including without limitation levees, dikes, diversionary channels, drains, catch basins, and other facilities for storm water drainage.\n(20)\tProviding voting machines.\n(21)\tProviding water systems, including without limitation facilities for the supply, storage, treatment, and distribution of water.\n(22)\tProviding for any other purpose for which it is authorized, by general laws uniformly applicable throughout the State, to raise or appropriate money, except for current expenses.\n(23)\tProviding public transportation facilities, including without limitation equipment for public transportation, buses, surface and below-ground railways, ferries, and garage facilities.\n(24)\tProviding industrial parks, land suitable for industrial or commercial purposes, shell buildings, in order to provide employment opportunities for citizens of the county or city.\n(25)\tProviding property to preserve a railroad corridor.\n(26)\tUndertaking public activities in or for the benefit of a development financing district pursuant to a development financing plan.\n(c)\tEach county may borrow money and issue its bonds under this Article in evidence of the debt for the purpose of, in the case of subdivisions (1) through (4b) of this subsection, paying any capital costs of any one or more of the purposes and, in the case of subdivisions (5) and (6) of this subsection, to finance the cost of the purpose:\n(1)\tProviding community college facilities, including without limitation buildings, plants, and other facilities, physical and vocational educational buildings and facilities, including in connection therewith classrooms, laboratories, libraries, auditoriums, administrative offices, student unions, dormitories, gymnasiums, athletic fields, cafeterias, utility plants, and garages.\n(2)\tProviding courthouses, including without limitation offices, meeting rooms, court facilities and rooms, and detention facilities.\n(3)\tProviding county homes for the indigent and infirm.\n(4)\tProviding school facilities, including without limitation schoolhouses, buildings, plants and other facilities, physical and vocational educational buildings and facilities, including in connection therewith classrooms, laboratories, libraries, auditoriums, administrative offices, gymnasiums, athletic fields, lunchrooms, utility plants, garages, and school buses and other necessary vehicles.\n(4a)\tProviding improvements to subdivision and residential streets pursuant to G.S. 153A-205.\n(4b)\tProviding land for present or future county corporate, open space, community college, and public school purposes.\n(5)\tProviding for the octennial revaluation of real property for taxation.\n(6)\tProviding housing projects for persons of low or moderate income, including construction or acquisition of projects to be owned by a county, redevelopment commission, or housing authority and the provision of loans, grants, interest supplements, and other programs of financial assistance to these persons. A housing project may provide housing for persons of other than low or moderate income if at least forty percent (40%) of the units in the project are exclusively reserved for persons of low or moderate income. No rent subsidy shall be paid from bond proceeds.\n(d)\tEach city may borrow money and issue its bonds under this Article in evidence thereof for the purpose of paying any capital costs of any one or more of the following:\n(1)\tRepealed by Session Laws 1977, c. 402, s. 2.\n(2)\tProviding cable television systems.\n(3)\tProviding electric systems, including without limitation facilities for the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric light and power.\n(4)\tProviding gas systems, including without limitation facilities for the production, storage, transmission, and distribution of gas, where systems also include the purchase or lease of natural gas fields and natural gas reserves and the purchase of natural gas supplies, and where any parts of the systems may be located either inside or outside the State.\n(5)\tProviding streets and sidewalks, including without limitation bridges, viaducts, causeways, overpasses, underpasses, and alleys; paving, grading, resurfacing, and widening streets; sidewalks, curbs and gutters, culverts, and drains; traffic controls, signals, and markers; lighting; and grade crossings and the elimination thereof and grade separations.\n(6)\tImproving existing systems or facilities for the transmission or distribution of telephone services.\n(7)\tProviding housing projects for the benefit of persons of low income, or moderate income, or low and moderate income, including without limitation (i) construction or acquisition of projects to be owned by a city, redevelopment commission or housing authority, and (ii) loans, grants, interest supplements and other programs of financial assistance to persons of low income, or moderate income, or low and moderate income, and developers of housing for persons of low income, or moderate income, or low and moderate income. A housing project may provide housing for persons of other than low or moderate income, as long as at least twenty percent (20%) of the units in the project are set aside for housing for the exclusive use of persons of low income. No rent subsidy shall be paid from bond proceeds.\n(e)\tEach sanitary district, mosquito control district, hospital district, merged school administrative unit described in G.S. 115C-513, metropolitan sewerage district, metropolitan water district, metropolitan water and sewerage district, county water and sewer district, regional public transportation authority, metropolitan public transportation authority, and special airport district may borrow money and issue its bonds under this Article in evidence thereof for the purpose of paying any capital costs of any one or more of the purposes for which it is authorized, by general laws uniformly applicable throughout the State, to raise or appropriate money, except for current expenses.\n(f)\tFor any of the purposes authorized by subsections (b), (c), (d), or (e) of this section, a unit may do any of the following that it considers necessary or convenient:\n(1)\tAcquire, construct, erect, provide, develop, install, furnish, and equip.\n(2)\tReconstruct, remodel, alter, renovate, replace, refurnish, and reequip.\n(3)\tEnlarge, expand, and extend.\n(4)\tDemolish, relocate, improve, grade, drain, landscape, pave, widen, and resurface.\n(g)\tBonds for two or more unrelated purposes, not of the same general class or character, shall not be authorized by the same bond order. However, bonds for any of the purposes listed in any subdivision of any subsection of this section shall be deemed to be for one purpose and may be authorized by the same bond order. In addition, nothing in this section prohibits the combining of purposes from any subdivision of any subsection of this section and the authorization of bonds therefor by the same bond order to the extent that the purposes are not unrelated.\n(h)\tAs used in this section, \"capital costs\" include, without limitation, all of the following:\n(1)\tThe costs of doing any or all of the things mentioned in subsection (f) of this section.\n(2)\tThe costs of all property, both real and personal and both improved and unimproved, plants, works, appurtenances, structures, facilities, furnishings, machinery, equipment, vehicles, easements, water rights, franchises, and licenses used or useful in connection with the purpose authorized.\n(3)\tThe costs of demolishing or moving structures from land acquired and acquiring any lands to which the structures are to be moved.\n(4)\tFinancing charges, including estimated interest during construction and for six months thereafter.\n(5)\tThe costs of plans, specifications, studies and reports, surveys, and estimates of costs and revenues.\n(6)\tThe costs of bond printing and insurance.\n(7)\tAdministrative and legal expenses.\n(8)\tAny other services, costs, and expenses necessary or incidental to the purpose authorized.\n(i)\tThis section does not authorize any unit to undertake any program, function, joint undertaking, or service not otherwise authorized by law. It is intended only to authorize the borrowing of money and the issuance of bonds within the limitations set out in this section to finance programs, functions, joint undertakings, or services authorized by other portions of the General Statutes or by city charters. (1917, c. 138, s. 16; 1919, c. 178, s. 3(16); C.S., s. 2937; 1921, c. 8, s. 1; Ex. Sess. 1921, c. 106, s. 1; 1927, c. 81, s. 8; 1929, c. 171, s. 1; 1931, c. 60, ss. 48, 54; 1933, c. 259, ss. 1, 2; 1935, c. 302, ss. 1, 2; 1939, c. 231, ss. 1, 2(c); 1943, c. 13; 1945, c. 403; 1947, cc. 520, 931; 1949, c. 354; c. 766, s. 3; c. 1270; 1953, c. 1065, s. 1; 1957, c. 266, s. 1; c. 856, s. 1; c. 1098, s. 16; 1959, c. 525; c. 1250, s. 2; 1961, c. 293; c. 1001, s. 2; 1965, c. 307, s. 2; 1967, c. 987, s. 2; c. 1001, s. 1; 1971, c. 780, s. 1; 1973, c. 494, s. 4; c. 1037; 1975, c. 549, s. 1; c. 821, s. 1; 1977, c. 402, ss. 1, 2; c. 811; 1979, c. 619, s. 3; c. 624, s. 1; c. 727, s. 3; 1985, c. 639, s. 2; 1987, c. 464, s. 7; c. 564, s. 10; 1989, c. 600, s. 7; c. 740, s. 4; 1991, c. 325, s. 5; 1997-6, s. 19; 1999-366, s. 4; 1999-378, s. 1; 2003-403, s. 3; 2009-281, s. 1; 2013-50, s. 4; 2019-76, s. 32; 2025-39, s. 8.8.)","path":["Chapter 159. Local Government Finance.","SUBCHAPTER IV. LONG-TERM FINANCING.","Article 4. Local Government Bond Act.","Part 1. Operation of Article."],"source_url":"https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_159/GS_159-48.html","current_through":"S.L. 2026-30","vintage":"","retrieved_at":"2026-08-27T18:24:52Z","sha256":"cd34cf961e126c51c1adb9ae578041171c34ad53b78cdf9cd6768333dfd14672","source_id":"us-nc","stale":false,"prev":"us-nc/n.c.-gen.-stat.-159-47","next":"us-nc/n.c.-gen.-stat.-159-49"},"notice":"GroundRules: Original legal text. Not legal advice."}