Misenheimer, North Carolina

Misenheimer, is an incorporated village in Stanly County, North Carolina. It is in the southern Piedmont region of North Carolina, near the city of Richfield. The population was 728 as of the 2010 Census.

It was chartered on in 2003 directly (without a local referendum) by the North Carolina General Assembly, becoming effective on June 26. The town was created without citizen referendum, in a political move to prevent the federal and state permitted re-exploration of the former Barringer gold mine by local entrepreneur and developer Joe Carter. Carter bought 240 acres and assayed the mine at over a billion US dollars in gold ore in 1998.(1) It has a mayor-council government with five total council members serving staggered four-year terms. The council elects one of its own members as the mayor every two years, and may remove and replace the mayor as well. This system prevents the direct general election of a mayor by the citizens of the town. Members are elected at-large (without districts) and in a non-partisan manner. The local legislation creating the city specified that elections were to be held in even-numbered years, while the rest of the state always uses odd-numbered ones.