Commission Recommendations to Reform Annexation in NC

SNCA Update January 25, 2009

So how did the Joint Commission do with the recommendations that were presented during the final meeting on Thursday in answering the call of the people for:

1) Meaningful oversight;
2) Meaningful services; and
3) Meaningful voice?

Hang in here with me _even if this analysis is long and sounds a bit pessimistic at the start. Being realistic and clearly looking at what we have and where we are is essential to knowing what we need to focus on in the upcoming Legislative Session. This dance is far from over and it's more about savvy politics than policy expertise.

We should let policy experts continue to do the excellent job they are doing with the issue while the grassroots stays focused on the political arena where we have an invaluable role to play.We've proven that all of us together can effect the conversation in the General Assembly about the annexation issue.

After my head stopped spinning from the confusion and chaos that dominated the way that the Joint Commission meetings transpired, especially the final meeting, I took a clear look at what happened and what we ended up with.

Most of the final meeting was spent trying to get through some tweaks to the laws that were proposed by various members, and as was admitted by the Legislative Aide, Steve Rose, "other speakers" to the Commission.
(Gee, I wonder who that was....could it have been _"The League"? )

The very first recommendation, which on the surface seems to address the "meaningful oversight" that the people were requesting, is to have the Local Government Commission (LGC) review city initiated annexations.
(Wow, the alarm bells were going off in my mind immediately.)

Let's look at the make-up of the LGC.
The LGC was created to oversee the balance sheets and borrowing of the local governments. They have done that well. Giving them the task of reviewing municipal annexations without any guidelines to determine whether the annexation should be approved will probably be beyond the Commission's ability.

In fact, it is very likely to end up with similar results to what we have already seen when the LGC was given the task of approving Tax Increment Financing (TIF) projects. The Roanoke Rapids Randy Parton Theater project was the very first TIF project that was given the green light by the LGC. That turned out to be a model of everything that could go wrong with a TIF project.

We need to take a look at just who are the decision making members of the Local Government Commission. I'll give that information to you straight and let you decide how this is going to work out for the two parties involved in a city initiated annexation.
http://www.greensboro-nc.gov/departments/finance1/LocalGovernmentCommission.htm

"The Local Government Commission is composed of nine members: the State Treasurer, the Secretary of State, the State Auditor, the Secretary of Revenue, and five others by appointment. The State Treasurer serves as Chairman and selects the Secretary of the Commission, who heads the administrative staff serving the Commission. A major function of the Commission is the approval, sale, and delivery of substantially all North Carolina local government bonds and notes. A second key function is monitoring certain fiscal and accounting standards prescribed for units of local government...."

LGC MEMBERS:
(The five "others")

Patrick Smathers _ Mayor of Canton, NC
Attorney; Governmental Law
2nd Vice Chairman, Region A, Southwestern Planning Commission
Ex-offico, Economic Development Commission

Mr. W. Calvin Horton _Chapel Hill Town Manager
retired 2008
Board Member - International City/County Management Association
Board Member (past) – Chamber

Irving Joyner
NCCU School of Law Professor – NAACP legal consultant

Allen Joines – Mayor of Winston Salem
Joines had served as deputy assistant city manager
Marvin Collins Distinguished Leadership Award from the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association
Past Board member of the N.C. League of Municipalities and is the
Chairman of the N.C. Metropolitan Coalition, made up of the 25
largest cities in North Carolina.

John H. Zollicoffer, Jr. _Henderson City Attorney,
Municipal Law Atty

According to comments during the Joint Commission discussion of the LGC as the oversight body, this recommendation is supposed to be better than having the County Commissioners act as the third party in city initiated annexations. Someone claimed that the LGC would be less biased and more objective in representing the best interests of the affected property owners. (Who could say that with a straight face?)

The five appointed members on the LGC consists of lawyers, city bureaucrats, and unabashed associates/members of the North Carolina League of Municipalities (NCLM).
So the idea of LGC oversight was to address two of the areas of concern: meaningful oversight and a meaningful voice for the affected property owners. This recommendation gets an F- on fulfilling those needed reform areas.

After researching the membership of the LGC, I then went through the remaining recommendations that the commission waded through before voting on whether to recommend a moratorium or a referendum.
(You can read all of the amendments that were proposed on the agenda by downloading the document from the StopNCAnnexation website homepage: http://www.stopncannexation.com/Joint_Commission_Recomendations.pdf )

The recommendations from the Joint Commission sheet were cross referenced with the "20 point recommendations" that the NCLM presented to the Joint Commission at the December 17th meeting.
Six out of the eleven recommendations that actually passed out of the meeting for recommendations to the General Assembly were taken from the NCLM recommendations either unchanged or with slight alteration.
Six out of the eleven are just tweaks to certain areas of the law that will not significantly change the problems that we have with the laws that has caused the ongoing discontent since the laws were enacted, came to a head and brought us to where we are today.

The commission recommendations give us:

• A very minor change to how the annexation victims are notified of their impending fate. (NCLM #2)
• A minor adjustment to how we pay for those services that we never wanted or needed. (NCLM #12)
• A minor adjustment to the density standard used to qualify the next victims of municipal takeover.
• Minor adjustments to make it harder for cities to use "shoestring" or strips of land to take in areas. (NCLM #15 & 16)
• Minor adjustment to recourse with the LGC if services are not fully provided.
• An additional protection for large working farms from city regulation if the farm is annexed.
  (Shouldn't it be absurd that large working farms can be annexed in the first place?)
• A lower threshold of necessary agreement in a low income area to petition for annexation. (NCLM # 19 & 20)

So what do we have left that could actually make meaningful reform happen?

The one recommendation to address meaningful services failed to pass but it was taken from the NCLM 20 point recommendations and fell far short of addressing the need to define what truly meaningful services are in the spirit of the NC Supreme Court ruling in Marvin v. Nolan. So the request to have meaningful services addressed by the Commission failed.

We have a recommendation for a moratorium, and that would be a fine tourniqet to stop the bleeding, but doesn't actually make any meaningful changes to the law itself.

We have a recommendation to exempt a small fraction of landowners from forced annexation, but the original subset of those who would benefit from this exemption was narrowed even further by the city advocates on the commission.
Recommendation III(C) is very similar to a Bill that was introduced at the very beginning of the 2007 long session by newly elected Representative Joe Boylan - HB 56. Recommendation III(C) doesn't have the Homeowners Association provision, but it is otherwise very similar. As passed by the Commission, a small number of situations where water and sewer treatment is provided by an third party utility provider would be exempt from annexation .
But, property owners with perfectly good private onsite septic systems are still subject to having their infrastructure replaced with municipal utilities that are not needed or meaningful, and costly at that.

The city advocates on the commission opposed Recommendation III(C) after insisting on amending it. Expect Recommendation III(C) to have equally strong opposition after it ends up in a Bill from both the city lobbyists and from others who feel that it unfairly protects only a small fraction of property owners.

The best thing that came out of the commission's recommendations for the pro-reform citizens and legislators of North Carolina is Recommendation VIII(A). Recommendation VIII(A) would return the right to vote on the annexation to the affected property owners. This puts the push for a vote of the people in a slightly better position than it was at the beginning of the 2007 Legislative Session.
But Tony Rand made it clear that he did not like this recommendation and it would not get past his desk in the Senate.

Does that mean we should throw in the towel because of that? Absolutely not!

We also need to get the reform legislators to rescue the need to deal with a better definition of providing meaningful, non-duplicating services and we need them to put third party oversight in place that really will provide a true representative voice.

Go back to the idea of using the County Commissioners to provide the third party oversight. They are the local government body charged with administering State laws and they directly represent ALL of the people affected by annexation decisions.

Keep calling and writing your legislators and the House and Senate Leaderhip as well as the Commission members so we can get meaningful reform instead of meaningless tweaks.

Some Cities Pull Back From Forced Annexations

The Town of Cary voted to abandon it's current forced annexation attempt.

The residents of the neighborhoods organized and made a very convincing economic and environmental argument against the annexation to the Cary Council.
Mark Winston and Ferris Chandler, homeowners in Brookridge, and leaders in the organized response to the annexation, were interviewed for MyNC.com.

Cary and other cities just might also be facing up to the real costs of forcibly annexing.
Town Decreases Revenue Surplus Estimate

Goldsboro has announced that they have reconsidered the wisdom of moving forward with the next phase of their annexation plans. The cost of forced annexation is also a factor here.
Goldsboro News-Argus News: City says 'no' to more annexations ... for now

It would be nice to think that this realization on the part of City Councils that forced annexation is really a costly proposition when you factor in the long range costs will start a trend away from forced annexation.

Hey, Rocky Mount, Lexington, Asheville, Wilmington, Pinehurst, Oak Island, and others, follow their lead and join the trend!



I can dream, can't I?

Debating Annexation Law

No matter what your political pursuasion happens to be, if you are one of the thousands of people in North Carolina who now knows about the Annexation Laws of NC and are opposed to the concept, I hope that you will take the time to read some of the excellent work that the policy analysts at the John Locke Foundation are publishing about the annexation laws.

This State has been saturated for decades with rhetoric without substance from the NC Municipal League Lobbyists and helped along by the School of Government. (More about that in another post) Now, at last, there is somewhere else to turn to for some well researched analysis of the NC annexation laws.

First, I would recommend the "A Blueprint for Annexation Reform", written last month by Daren Bakst. Mr. Bakst is the legal analyst at JLF. You can read his 'Spotlight' about the paper and download the paper itself for reading later by using the link above.

This paper supports the growing consensus among more legislators about three key problems regarding forced annexation as it is being done by the cities, now 50 years from the time the law was enacted;

• To provide a meaningful voice for the affected property owners
  
• To define and require truly meaningful services in city initiated annexations
  
• To create meaningful third party oversight of city initiated annexations.
  

The paper makes very good recommendations for reforming the laws. Every legislator who will be called upon to weigh in on passing good legislation to reform the law (and that would be all of them) should obtain and read "The Blueprint".

There is also an interesting post by Daren on the Locker Room Blog exposing some truths about the oft heard claim that NC Annexation Law is "a model for the nation".
Daren looked into this claim by researching the documents that were cited to back this claim and found some serious misleading going on with the claim.
"The Big Lie of NC Annexation: Exposed"

I'm pretty confident that there is a lot of fertile ground in the rest of those 'talking points' for uncovering more like this.

I'm counting on seeing more good stuff coming from the John Locke analysts like Daren about the annexation laws as well as more truth exposed about the "talking points" from the city lobbyists.

Thanks guys!

Annexation Law Tweaks vs the Truth

The NCLM had their usual say in the N&O recently:
How N.C. should tweak its annexation laws

The city lobbyists claim that the law requires cities to provide a long list of urban services, but the truth is not so simply stated nor the bar necessarily so high. What do the laws require of the cities? It depends… it depends on what the city has to offer in the first place. Each annexation requires different responsibilities from the annexing city because the law allows such a wide variation regarding what the city must provide. The law allows cities that don’t even have their own fire and police departments to forcibly annex.

Before the NC Supreme Court decided in the Marvin case that the city should at least have something more than planning and tax collecting, some cities could forcibly annex without providing anything but tax collection. Garbage collection, street lighting, road maintenance, parks and recreation, police, fire, water and sewer, or any of the other services that most people equate with urban living were not necessarily required. The Marvin case changed that to where now a city initiated annexation has to provide “meaningful” service to be able to forcibly annex.
The Appeals Court later allowed the Town of Weddington to call just the addition of a contract with the County Sheriff's a "meaningful" service that qualifies the Town to forcibly annex. This is a good example of the absurdity of the law.

The city lobbyists make claims that annexing cities must provide water and sewer within two years, but the truth is _ it depends. First, if the annexing city is a provider of water and sewer service, the annexation victims have to figure out, before the city even votes to actually annex them, that in order to have water and sewer lines brought to their property they must submit an application request for the services. The property owner has five days after attending the meaningless Public Hearing, where the victims get to vent their opposition in vain, to make a request for the water and sewer. If they don’t apply, the city can make them wait as long as it suits the city to bring the service to them. There are forced annexation victims who have been, or will be, waiting for better than fifteen years for municipal water and sewer. And they’ll pay dearly for these services that they probably didn't need in most cases. It doesn’t even matter if your septic system malfunctions in the mean time. If it does, the owner gets to pay for repairs to a septic system that will eventually be replaced.

The areas that the cities can annex don’t even have to be urban enough to require higher levels of police and fire protection or municipal water and sewer. Farms can be forcibly annexed! Rural areas that aren’t farms can be forcibly annexed. What about those urban density requirements or the subdivision requirements, you say? To hear the city lobbyists tell it, the cities have to show that the area meets both density and subdivision tests. The area must be “urban in character”. Not really. The formulas in the statutes are not that strict and are filled with either/or provisions. The city planners can exercise their creativity to make a desirable area qualify while annexing around areas that the city knows will cost them more money to serve because the area actually does need some city services.

When the 1959 legislature studied the idea of giving the cities the power to forcibly annex, they justified overriding the property rights of land owners with the excuse that cities were the providers of modern services that would improve the lives of people living outside but within reach of the cities. It was the familiar argument of giving rights along with concurrent responsibilities. Now, in these “tweaks” proposed by the ‘tin cup’ municipal spokespersons is a request for more subsidies from every taxpayer in NC to pay the cities to do the job that the law gave them the responsibility to do in the first place.

The city lobbyists claim that forced annexation keeps municipal bond ratings AAA. The truth is that NC instituted something unique during the 1930’s depression in order to keep the cities from spending themselves into bankruptcy. It’s called the Local Government Commission. Cities must submit financial reports to the LGC every year showing that they have balanced books and are solvent. This is what keeps the bond ratings high.
http://www.citymayors.com/finance/nc_finance.html
There are quite a few other States that have more cities with AAA bond ratings from one of the rating agencies and they aren't "forced annexation States". A couple have no annexation by cities at all. It's time to look elsewhere for the reason that cities have AAA ratings. Perhaps it just boils down to better fiscal management in general, and that is what the LGC helps to insure in NC.

An interesting pattern can be found in these records reported to the Secretary of State regarding most forced annexations. The forced annexations seem to take affect predominately at the end of June, which is the end of the fiscal year for municipalities. Why might that be? Is it for the benefit of the new taxpayer? I doubt that is the case. It’s more likely for the benefit of the municipalities by using forced taxation to apply a temporary 'band-aid' to the balance sheets.

One NC City I know well prepared an Annexation Feasibility Report in 2001; the report included an analysis of the annexation revenues versus the incurred expenses for each of the considered areas. Many of the areas showed that the total expenses of the annexations would exceed the total revenues from 9 to 85 years.
But property tax revenue would be collected immediately while the capital expenses could be delayed for years. The annexation would bring an immediate infusion of property tax revenue into the General Fund and would certainly make their financial report to the LGC look better that year. The city could worry about the additional expenses later, when any related bond debt came due. Then the city could patch the books again with another forced annexation. This appears to be a financial shell game made possible by forced annexation that is unsustainable. Delay the day of financial reckoning, but the day will come.
Forced annexation was not supposed to be about revenue enhancement or for patching up the 'end of the year' financial picture for the cities.

The city lobbyists say that cites must grow outward or die. With this statement, they are admitting to being a failure already. If they can’t honestly balance their books at the size they currently are, I doubt being bigger would make a positive difference. It would just delay the day of reckoning and make the city a bigger failure once the inevitable end of annexable area was reached.

NC Annexation Law needs more than tweaking. The NCLM has been tweaking it to the advantage of the cities for decades. The laws are now failing to fulfill the original stated intent of the 1959 Legislative Commission. Much has changed over fifty years in the area of modernization and private provision of safe and healthy living conditions. The cities need to move forward and face the future instead of behaving and thinking like we are still living at the turn of the 20th century.
No more tweaks.
Restore the pre-1959 rights of the property owners in order to reign in the inevitable municipal abuses of this power.

Annexation Reform Blueprint & a Quiz

Getting ready for tomorrow's meeting of the Joint Commission Studying Municipal Annexation has gotten some help today from Daren Bakst, the Legal Analyst at the John Locke Foundation.

Daren's 'Blueprint for Annexation' policy report has been published online today. You can find it here and take a look at the ideas for reform that Daren outlines and backs up with the extensive research he has been doing on the issue.

After you read the report, consider sending Daren an email and let him know what you think about the report.
Then follow up that email to Daren with an email to the Study Commission members telling them about the 'Blueprint' along with your thoughts about it.

There is also a one day Quiz about annexation that Daren has started online at the JLF 'Locker Room' blog. Daren has the first two questions posted now and will be posting more as the day goes along. See how well you do with the questions about NC annexation laws while you get ready for the Commission meeting tomorrow.

If you cannot attend the meeting tomorrow, you can listen to the meeting live by going to the General Assembly website 'Audio' page and opening the audio link for "Appropriations Committee Room (Rm 643)".

The meeting starts tommorow morning at 9:30 am and is scheduled to last until 11:30 am. If you can attend or listen live, and you care about annexation reform, please do listen to this meeting. The more people we have who hear for themselves how this issue is being discussed by the Commission, the better it will be for the effort to reform the laws during next years' Legislative Session.

Thanks to ALL who have written to the Commission Members!

Cathy Heath

Joint Annexation Study Commission 12/17 meeting

The next meeting of the Joint Commission to Study Municipal Annexation is scheduled:

NOTE: TIME CHANGE

MEMORANDUM

TO:
Members of the Joint Legislative Study Commission on Municipal Annexation

FROM:
Senator Vernon Malone, Co-Chair
Senator R. C. Soles, Co-Chair
Representative D. Bruce Goforth, Co-Chair
Representative Paul Luebke, Co-Chair

SUBJECT:
Meeting Notice:
Due to the short time frame before session, any member that has recommendations they would like to present to the committee must do so on the 17th.

The Joint Legislative Study Commission on
Municipal Annexation will meet on the following date:

DATES:
Wednesday, December 17, 2008

TIME:
9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

LOCATION:
Room 643 Legislative Office Building

Posted:
December 5, 2008

I hope that all of you who want to see NC Annexation Law changed have been writing, calling, and emailing the Joint Commission Members, letting them know what you want them to change about the annexation laws. http://www.stopncannexation.com/Joint_Committee.htm
Taking the time to do this is very important.

There are too many Legislators on the Joint Commission who think forced annexation is a good thing for North Carolina and the cities. The cities told them it was true, so they believe it.
These Legislators clearly haven't heard enough yet from the citizens who disagree. They need to hear a lot more from the citizens to balance out the years of repetition that they've heard from the cities.

If you can make it to Raleigh to attend the meeting on the 17th, that would be a real good way to emphasize the points you made in your previous communication with the Legislators. Think of your presence at the meeting as a visual underline and bold to what you wrote or said to them before the meeting. I wouldn't count on being able to say much more to them at this meeting. It doesn't look like the citizens are going to be given any other chances to weigh in about what needs to change. The meeting is only two hours long.

At the December 4th meeting, Chairman Malone became anxious to quickly adjourn the meeting soon after Professor Lawrence finished his presentation. He seemed more worried about getting to lunch on time than continuing any real discussion of the annexation issue. He also made it very clear that the December 17th meeting was going to be the "last call" for the members to weigh in with proposed changes. As you can see, this warning was repeated in the Official Notice of the meeting. There won't be much time to listen to all the members on this Commission.

A good number of the Senate Legislators on the Commission seem to be a bit bored with the excercise of holding these meetings and didn't have too much to say on the 4th.
It's almost like they don't think they really have any work to do.

Could it be that all the work has been done, or will be done, outside of these meetings?
I'd say yes.
And the rumors are going around from people closer to what's really going on that the Chairs are planning to meet with League Officials on the 16th.
I'd say the League has already had their private session with some of these Legislators and have given them the "approved" changes for the Commission to recommend.

Here is my “crystal ball” prediction on the final recommendations.

The final recommendations (as the Senate side will propose) are going to:

1. Require all cities to adopt long range “Annexation Plans” like Charlotte and Raleigh currently use.


2. Require all cities to offer amortized financing terms for water and sewer development charges.


3. Tighten the statutory language that the cities ‘get around’ in order to annex narrow strips of land.


4. Set up a State fund to help all cities pay for the water and sewer infrastructure when they annex low income/minority areas.

Recommendation 4 works nicely with the mission of the 'Institute for Emerging Issues' that the NC League of Municipalities helped establish at NCSU and now promotes.

The NCLM is really expanding their reach and influence into more and more aspects of government and policy all the time.

I'll report more on that another time.

Annexation Study Commission Meeting

The first meeting of the Joint Commission to Study Municipal Annexation held this morning was quite interesting.

I arrived just before the start of the meeting. When I stepped out of the elevator and turned toward the meeting room, I saw people overflowing out of the double doors. When I walked into the meeting room it was standing room only and most of the people attending were citizens dressed in the signature red attire.

There were plenty of city officials and bureaucrats, but they were far outnumbered by the people who would like to see the municipalities reined in and stopped from abusing taxpaying property owners across North Carolina. These citizens included familiar faces of some who have been in this battle against forced annexation for many years, like Walter Murphy from Fayetteville. Today they were joined by some of the new faces of the latest victims of the horrible law, including the homeowners from Oak Level being annexed against their will into Rocky Mount.

The meeting itself turned out just as I thought it would in many respects. The Chair, Senator Malone, started the meeting by stating that there would be no time given to the public for comments. The meeting was going to be devoted to David Lawrence's presentation explaining the Annexation Statutes. It was an "informational meeting only" for the Senate members who had firmly declined at the end of the session in 2007 to be a part of the study that many House members wanted.

I talked to David Owens on that day in 2007 to try to find out why the Senate was refusing to endorse the study. His explanation was that the Senate remembers the last time annexation was studied and they didn't want to go through that again. All the time it took up! All the people beseiging the legislature about the issue! Not again!!

Funny how they remembered that much about the last study, but they now need a refresher course on the General Statutes that they are responsible for. It was apparently real important for them to hear David Lawrence from the School of Government explain annexation law to them again for the umpteenth time.

Kind of looks like an excuse to blow some of the extremely limited time this Commission has to examine what is actually going on in the real world of forced annexation. Hey! I have an idea! Just give our side a decent chance to tell them what's wrong with it and how to fix it.

But on the subject of someone speaking up about what's wrong with the law today, there were quite a number of the Commission members who weren't shy at all about laying the problems out on the table.

Larry Brown, Nelson Dollar, and Trudy Walend fired the opening salvos with questions for Professor Lawrence. They had questions about how other States deal with annexation; how NC cities are using annexation like a weapon against neighboring cities with the property owners being used like pawns. Questions about how the cities are providing (or not) water and sewer and other services. Rep. Walend tried to get Lawrence to explain the "five day window" that citizens have to submit applications for hook up in order to make the city bring the lines all the way to their property.
Lawrence was clearly trying to answer the questions "diplomatically" and Larry Brown 'called him out' on that. It looked to me like Lawrence was being very careful not to answer in a way that might upset the city lobbyists. He dodged any mention of the five day window until Larry Brown pinned him down on it. Go Trudy! Go Larry!

Nelson Dollar brought up the Nolan vs. Marvin case where the NC Supreme Court decided that annexing cities should actually have services to offer. Larry Brown brought up the problem with cities that really don't have significant "urban" services to offer being able to forcibly annex. He mentioned the other case that the Nolans took to court when Weddington also tried to annex their land.

Doug Aitken brought up the issue of what the members of the 1959 Study [that recommended giving cities the power to forcibly annex] were saying about the reasons to do it that would justify overruling the property rights of the citizens. This led to more interesting talk about provision of services and how much things have changed since 1959. Back then, only the cities were providing water, sewer, and zoning. Now we have Counties and special authorities providing these things and more. Dependence on cities for modern services is obsolete and it's time the cities face up to it and the legislature adapt State law to that fact of life.

Professor Lawrence ended up saying "I don't know" quite a few times during that meeting.

Lawrence was asked to explain the role of the Local Goverment Commission. That ended up being quite interesting and worthwhile.
Lawrence explained how NC is unique in having the 'LGC' as guardians of the fiscal health of the cities. He explained how the LGC was created during the 1930's depression when NC cities were going bankrupt. He gave the LGC the high credit for keeping the cities bond ratings high.

Yes, that's right, it is the fact that NC has the LGC providing fiscal oversight that keeps those city Bond Ratings high, _NOT forced annexation, (which represents a fraction of the growth of the cities). Having a few 'city initiated' annexations blocked by the property owners would not likely have a impact on the bond rating.

McCarley, Wegner, and Soles made feeble attempts to spin the discussion more in favor of the cities, but it wasn't working. Foriest tried to explore the possibly unconstitutional idea of establishing a pro-rated tax structure to make up for any delays in service provision.

The two County officials on the Commission, Grainger Barrett and Tina Hall, stepped up to the plate and threw some pitches toward the negative affect of city annexations on County revenue. This is where Wegner tried to shoot down the idea that it affected County balance sheets at all, but Ms. Hall came back and quickly put that attempt in it's place. Go Tina!

After all of this, I can tell you that the really good stuff was saved for last. In the end, Earl Jones spoke up and said that he'd like to see some statistics about the fiscal health of cities in other States where forced annexation is not an option. He wanted this data so the Commission could move past that and get down to doing the work of addressing the House Committee's concerns about protecting and restoring the property rights of citizens. YEAH Rep Jones!

Rep. Goforth seconded Rep. Jones comments and pointed out that the Commission needs to "get on target" because their time to do anything is short. YEAH Rep Goforth!
(Message to Goforth and Jones: We, the affected citizens, feel so marginalized in this debate that we strongly suspect that the final recommendations of the Commission have already been written. We'd like to help you change that.)

Chairman Malone was ready to wrap up the meeting and get out of there after that. He told all the members that they had better attend the next meeting because if the didn't their input would not be included in the final recommendations. Sounds pretty final to me. Dec 17th and "that's all folks!" was the message sent.

Larry Brown had the final suggestion of the day. He recommended that the Commission move the Dec 17th meeting to the auditorium or somewhere larger that would accomodate more of the public who want to attend. YEAH!
Stay tuned and you might want to plan to add yourself to the fun at that meeting.
Although I don't think that more three minute comments are going to add much to the debate, a large crowd hanging over the Commission's shoulders would definitely be _as Ms. Stewart says_ a "good thing".