The original Evansville west side annexation plan appears to be dead.
The plan is coming up against a state-mandated deadline, and the city appears to be ready to let it pass.
City Council took no action on anything related to the annexation tonight.
The city held a public hearing on the west side annexation at a City Council meeting on June 22.
When it did that, the clock started to tick.30 and 60 days after a public hearing to take action on the ordinance.
It's going to be 60 days from Evansville's public hearing later this week.
Attorney Les Shively, who represents the people opposed to the west side annexation, said Monday night's City Council meeting looks like the last scheduled chance for Evansville to take a vote before the 60-day deadline.
"There's nothing that I think the landowners have to do affirmatively at this point," said Shively. "We'll have to see what the city's next move is."
Council President BJ Watts said he was unaware of the deadline issue.
But, he said the city plans to continue moving forward.
"As far as changing the lines that we came up with - the ma
yor and I agreed upon - to work out basically encompassing the commercial properties, I don't think there's been, there's not been a deference from that."
And, Watts thinks the city was basically required to start over anyway.
"If there's, I think the wording is 'drastic changes' in your financial plan, you have to start over from scratch. And, that wasn't an issue for us," Watts said. "If we have to start over from scratch to do it the right way, then that's the way we're going to do it."
But, Shively said the question is after letting the ordinance expire, can the city start over?
"There's not a lot of cases reported on the situation where the ordinance sort of expires under its own terms."
And, he's currently trying to figure out if he can argue that the city is about to box itself into a corner it legally can't get out of.
Shively said his clients worry the city, if it legally is able to, will continue to push new ordinance after ordinance until it gets some land.
And, then, it will use a piece-meal approach to getting the rest of the land it wants out there.
Source: http://tristatehomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=88751
