Leading North Carolina in Defining Local
Governmental Best Practices

This website is currently under construction.

We the People of Cumberland County is a grass-roots, citizen-led, and voluntary association of residents of Cumberland County, North Carolina.

We the People was formed following a community discussion of whether local governments should consolidate or merger in a quest to provide all residents with better service. We quickly discovered that – while most everyone had an opinion -- no one had the knowledge to help decide which approaches might be best for the community. The idea of We the People was born in that defining moment.

Our mission is to build community consensus on governmental best practice solutions. We accomplish our mission by an open examination of the alternative ways we might choose to govern ourselves.

• We seek to build a team that is reflective of the community in which we live: socially, economically, ethnically, and educationally. We are on the way to that goal.

• We seek to conduct effective research with broad community support and strong analytic processes. We have already begun the process of community self-study: looking how governmental institutions work, and what they cost; looking at the community to understand how its economy functions.

• We seek to create a consensus environment in the community, where all the citizens can come together, look at the research data, and come to agreement on how we can best govern ourselves.

At the end of our journey, we will have a clear picture of ourselves as a community, we will understand the trends of the future, and we will know – collectively – how we want to govern ourselves.

We the People welcomes all who are interested in local government to join us in our quest. Citizens from within and without the community are encouraged to join us here, in the hopes of bringing a diverse set of opinions and a broad array of facts to the table for discussion.

Please journey with us as we seek to understand what great local government means!

Doing what's right isn't the problem. It's knowing what's right.
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson