The town of Elon and Elon university are mending relationships and working on more effective communication following a dispute that prompted Elon University to halt payments to the town.
When Brian Graves was appointed fire marshal of the Town of Elon in 2024, fire inspection responsibilities for Elon University and businesses transferred from Alamance County to the town of Elon as a part of the town’s initiative to hire fire inspectors. The county had previously done the inspections at no cost.
The transition revealed code violations the university had not addressed. The dispute that led to the university halting payments to the town centered on the rollout of the new fire inspection process.
The Town of Elon gave Elon News Network access to citations and emails through a records request.
An example of one of these violations was in a written citation by Graves about Danieley dorms A, B, C and D. It stated that in January 2025, Elon University had “assured” Graves that the carbon monoxide monitors would be installed. The town conducted a follow-up later in June which revealed that the university was still not complying.
It said there were “missing carbon monoxide alarms in required locations.” Some of the installed alarms were reportedly “defective or inoperable,” with some containing batteries that had been dead since 2023, and others that had corroded parts in batteries and terminals.
The citation described this as “willful neglect by the university to maintain critical life safety systems as required.”
In an email to Elon News Network, Patrick Noltemeyer, Elon University’s chief of staff to the board of trustees, said that the buildings were over 30 years old and had met previous fire codes, but not modern ones. He said once the problems were identified, the university installed temporary monitoring systems that were checked monthly to make sure they were operational. Since then, he said the university has begun switching out carbon monoxide detectors with modernized equipment that have back-up battery power.
“Most detectors have now been updated, with the remaining units scheduled for replacement by Aug. 1.,” Noltemeyer said in the email.
In an interview with ENN, Noltemeyer said the decision to halt payments came as the university was adjusting to the shift in oversight and the new procedures.
“We were used to going to the county level fire marshal for support, for building inspections and for building permits, site reviews and so on,” Noltemeyer said.
According to Noltemeyer and Elon Town Manager Richard Roedner, the payments in question are “voluntary,” and unlike PILOT payments, which are made in place of taxes, they carry no binding agreement.
“We have a letter from the university saying they will give us this money on an annual basis,” Roedner said.
Roedner said he acknowledged that the initial process of inspections was slow. The town has since purchased software that has sped up this process by allowing inspectors to document their findings online, on-site.
Communication breakdowns between the university and town also fueled the conflict. In one email, Roedner noted a concern over the HealthEU building process.
“Over the past several months, there have been several issues with the Health the EU project that have raised concerns about the ongoing communication process between the various review entities and the school,” Roedner wrote in an email concerning the “EU review process.”
He said there were also tensions between the on-the-ground inspectors and the higher-level administrators, who weren’t present during the inspection, which caused repeated escalations. By mandating that inspectors have written reports, the town has begun to alleviate this problem.
“There’s an inherent conflict between those different hierarchies,” Roedner said, “and everything’s gotten escalated. So, everything has to be in writing now, no more ‘Take care of that law,’”
Roedner noted that the relationship between the university and the town is complex. In terms of statistics, he said half of the town is the university, and a quarter of the town’s population is made up of students.
“Based on that alone, they’re a huge user of municipal services,” Roedner said. “Whether it’s sewer and water, whether it’s fire, whether it’s fire inspections, whether it’s permitting, the university uses a lot of town resources.”
More than this, Roedner said they have a working relationship when it comes to large projects like the sidewalk construction down S. Williamson and building the plaza.
Above all, the town and university have a financial relationship.
“They’ve made contributions, we’ve taken on responsibility for matching those contributions to create something that we didn’t do before,” Roedner said.
In a memorandum by Roedner, he said when the university cut funds, the town had to implement new budget cuts.
Noltemeyer said the friction has been a part of the university adapting to a new authority.
“Each fire marshal is responsible for the interpretation of the fire code and establishing a process for evaluating compliance with the fire code,” Noltemeyer said. “We needed to get up to speed with how the new fire marshal, who was now our authority figure, was going to implement supervision of the code, and what his interpretation was going to be.”
The university has resumed its payments to the town and both parties say they are working to maintain communication and their relationship.
“We’re intertwined,” Roedner said. “There’s benefits to it, there’s detriments to it, and we both have to live with the good and the bad.”