Having an address in “Jamestown, NC 27282” means never being quite sure where Jamestown’s boundaries begin and end. (I wrote about the “Town of Jamestown vs. Jamestown 27282 Quagmire” back in January, using cut and paste diagrams of the 2023 Zoning Map.)
The subject has come up multiple times in the past few days as my fellow candidates have placed campaign signs in areas they thought were “Jamestown,” only to have them removed because the signs were actually on High Point or Greensboro property.
Also over the past few days, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to use visuals to talk about the property valuation inconsistencies, especially since our property taxes fund the Pinecroft-Sedgefield Fire Department (which needs $ for a firehouse expansion).
Let’s start with the Town of Jamestown’s zoning map, which was updated in August by Town Planner José Colón, who did a nice job – we can actually see and read the street names now (the zoning codes are explained in a slideshow of images at the bottom of this post):
If we remove the lakes and background streets, here’s what the Town of Jamestown plus its ETJs (extraterritorial zones) looks like:
If we remove the ETJs, here’s what the voting/property tax base looks like:
I dropped in a few street names and locations to help with identification:
If you look carefully, you’ll see that I’ve hand-colored some of the parcels in gray, green and dark brown. These sites are classified in the Guilford County GIS Property Tax System as “civic,” “agricultural” or “industrial,” but the way they’re colored on Jamestown’s zoning map doesn’t show this.
(1) Sites zoned as “Civic” (dark brown areas on the map, plus the dark green Jamestown golf course/park) don’t have to pay any property taxes (schools, churches, government-owned property).
(2) Sites zoned as “Agricultural“ (lime green) are “residential with two or more acres.” The land is taxed PER ACRE, ranging from $6,500 per acre to $9,500 per acre.
(3) Sites colored in gray – both the hand colored gray and deeper graphite gray – are zoned as “Industrial.” According to the 2022 Guilford County Property Tax manual, these are “typically the most valuable land parcels.” But that’s not the case in Jamestown, where industrial land property tax valuations have DECREASED by an average of -12% over the past twenty years (since 2006).
By comparison, over that same time period, Jamestown’s residential homeowners saw their valuations INCREASE by 30% to 50%.
Making matters worse, the land parcels in Jamestown’s named neighborhoods (Forestdale, Yorkshire, Whittington Hall, etc) are valued by “UNIT” instead of by “ACRE.”
In Jamestown’s Yorkshire neighborhood, for example, each lot is valued at $35K whether it’s a quarter acre or an acre and a half. [Note: the 2026 revaluation raised ALL Yorkshire lot valuations from $35,000 to $95,000]
On the next map, Jamestown’s Civic, Industrial and Agricultural per-acre-priced parcels have been removed, leaving behind Main Street (in blue) and all of the residential neighborhoods where the lots are assessed at the high PER UNIT prices. This is who’s paying the bulk of Jamestown’s property taxes:
Here’s how the maps look side by side::
Incidentally, the $1.6 million half-mile sidewalk being built on Guilford County School Board property with Jamestown’s ARPA money is going in the middle of the untaxed triangle-shaped gap on the map.
D.R. Horton’s 467-acre parcel (in purple) is being taxed on a PER ACRE valuation of $50K, but Windsor Homes’ Harvey Road “Oakdale Forest” community is still listed in the County Property Tax system as “AGRICULTURAL.”
The land parcel in front of the GTCC Manufacturing Facility on which the new Panda Express restaurant sits is listed in the County Property Tax system as nonprofit (and non-taxable) GTCC property.
If you want to look up your property (or any parcel in Jamestown and Guilford County), go to the GIS website HERE. Type your address in the SEARCH box at the upper left corner of the screen. Click on “Tax Appraisal Information” at the top of the sidebar on the left (there’s also a “Tax Bill” option here if you want to look at the tax bill history). Click on the “LAND” tab and you’ll be able to see how the land is valued for property tax purposes.
JAMESTOWN ZONING CODES, Defined (click on image to enlarge):
