By Scott Smith
By mutual agreement, the plaintiff and defendant in the East Side Annexation are postponing the court trial scheduled for Tuesday.
City attorney Derek Sublette and Kokomo attorney Dan May both said Wednesday they’ve put the case on hold, probably for at least a couple of months.
May is recovering from eye surgery and is behind on his other cases.
Sublette said the city, which presented a formal argument in the West Side Annexation Nov. 18, is making changes to the East Side’s fiscal plan.
“In the event we decided to amend the fiscal plan, we thought it was only fair to let Dan have some time to look that over,” Sublette said.
He said the city’s financial position has changed since mid-2008, when the East Side fiscal plan was first presented.
The fiscal plan outlines how the city expects to pay for extending city services to the annexation area.
Sublette said the city administration has been a good steward of the taxpayers’ money.
“We have some ideas we’ve put in place [to save money],” he said. “I think we might have put ourselves in a better position.”
Sublette said the fact the city just finished presenting its West Side case to Tipton Circuit Judge Thomas Lett also played a factor.
“We just thought we’d take some time to re-evaluate, what with the goings-on from the West Side,” Sublette said. “It’s difficult for us to do all of this at once ... we have limited resources.”
May said he thinks the city intends to amend the fiscal plan, particularly the section describing what the city intends as far as extending city sewer service.
In the original plan, the city made no provision for paying any of the costs associated with extending sewers to annexed areas. The city’s plan basically indicated that neighbors could use a legal process, called the Barrett Law, to bring sewers to their specific area.
Under the Barrett Law, if 60 percent of the homeowners in a subdivision sign a legal form asking for a particular service, the city would pay the up-front cost of providing that service.
Each neighbor would then have an assessment added to their property tax bills each year until the cost of providing the service was reimbursed.
“It’s a real complaint in my mind about their fiscal plan,” May said. “It requires them to pay nothing [for most capital expenses] and they get to take all the tax revenue.”
May said the city had already missed the deadline for amending the fiscal plan.
In addition, there’s little incentive for the city to press ahead quickly with the East Side Annexation.
The city has already spent upward of $200,000 on legal and other annexation-related expenses this year, and federal law prevents an annexation from taking effect the year prior to a census.
Lett is presiding over remonstrance lawsuits brought by residents of two areas adjacent to the city, referred to respectively as the East Side and West Side annexation areas.
The two areas comprise 6,800 acres of unincorporated territory in Howard County, and annexing both areas would increase the city’s annual property tax revenue by $5 million to $6 million.
Remonstrance petitions were submitted for both areas in the fall of 2008, after the Kokomo Common Council voted in favor of annexation.
• Scott Smith is a Kokomo Tribune staff writer. He may be reached at 765-454-8569 or via e-mail at scott.smith@kokomotribune.com
