Cookeville City Council asking state legislators to reauthorize a law allowing annexation with majority property owner consent.
Elections are now required as part of annexation. City Manager James Mills said rules formerly specified if two/thirds of the property owners in the proposed annex area consented in writing, and those people own a majority of the property in the area, a city could annex without a referendum. Mills said that rule might make more sense.
“It reduces or removes the cost of an election, and you know, we have scheduled for an annexation that we have to wait until May,” Mills said. “That’s the other thing this does, it takes away the extensive delay for annexation. So it’s a higher threshold, but it saves money and reduces delay, so it only makes sense.”
Mills said currently, only consent from 51 percent of the property owners is needed for an annexation referendum. Mills said though the law was passed several years ago, a sunset provision clause was included requiring that legislative action be needed to reauthorize the law.
The council discussed that the reauthorization was proposed last year to the House of Representatives. However, Mills said it did not pass.
“Ryan (State Representative Ryan Williams) tried this last year and it didn’t pass,” Mills said. “But we just need to be adamant and stay on this because again, I don’t understand the logic of being opposed to this. I understand a lot of the state representatives are opposed to cities growing and annexing, but this makes it a higher threshold. How can you be against it?”
The council will vote on a resolution to ask state representatives to support the reauthorization of the law during Thursday’s Council meeting.