All states require that taxpayers and citizens be legally notified through public notices in newspapers of the activities of their government entities and courts. In North Carolina, that includes information pertaining to notice of meetings, proceedings or minutes of meetings, elections, annexations, budgets, property taxes and hearings, delinquent payments, hearings, ordinances, foreclosures and many other vital official matters of government entities; for courts, examples of required public notices include filings of estates, law suits, dissolutions, custody, assumed names, foreclosures, and many others.
This website is a compilation of public notices which are first published in newspapers across North Carolina. The notices are updated continually after the publishing date of each newspaper. This is a free-access website with a wide variety of search functions. There is no cost to any government entity to support this site; rather, it is a public service by North Carolina’s newspapers to disseminate this information as widely as possible to the taxpayers and citizens of North Carolina.
Public notices are a crucial part of the legal process, notifying taxpayers and citizens of proposed or pending actions by government entities, or of the courts, that may affect them individually, or their personal property. Public notices in newspapers fulfill these important steps in the legal process: accessibility, archivable, independent and verifiable.
Public notices contain important information that serve a number of purposes. While this site is free access and the content is available at no cost to the public, the website does offer an expedited delivery function by email of customized searches by keywords, or key phrases. For example, within hours of them being published, contractors can receive all bid notices published in any of the counties across North Carolina. For a more specific search, such as for roofing, simply further define the search keywords or phrase. If you rely on public notices for your business or just want to track specific information, sign up to use Smart Search.