In this corner you have the county, trying to get back land and stop two Farms from spilling into the county. In that corner you have Thompson’s Station, overstepping the Urban Growth Boundary with a large parcel of the potential Two Farms transect community.
Last Monday the Williamson County Commission passed a resolution that gave Mayor Rogers Anderson the authority to initiate legal proceedings to contest the annexation by Thompson’s Station of 760 acres of county land. The land in question, owned by Gary and Anita Baker and known as Eagle’s Rest Farm, was part of the 2,000 acres annexed by Thompson’s Station last November and later rezoned to allow the Two Farms development to come in on it.
The resolution, sponsored by Commissioners Todd Kaestner, Brian Beathard, Jeff Ford, Judy Herbert and Sherri Clark, states that 760 acres of the land Thompson’s Station annexed sits outside the Urban Growth Boundary set by the county and the town, and that Tennessee laws prohibit the annexation of land outside of the UGB unless certain conditions are met. The resolution claims that these conditions were not met and therefore the annexation was illegal.
“I would like to prevent the annexation, and prevent them from doing anything outside of the UGB- and have them comply with the law,” said Kaestner. “Thompson’s Station is entitled to do whatever the hell they want within the boundary- that is their world, if they want to build a huge shopping mall, hotels, or create a more urban area, fine, I am cool with that- it is what the UGB is all about. But when they start coming out of the boundary, nobody in the county likes it except for one guy selling his land, and a few people making money off the development. You have got seven people trying to push this deal, and on the other hand you have 700 saying they do not want it. I sure would like it to go away.”
According to county attorney Jeff Moseley, two Tennessee statues cover extending beyond the UGB. One allows it if the land is contiguous to the municipality and owned by one person to whom the municipality has been providing services. The other statue allows it only after a comprehensive committee approves it or it is approved by referendum.
“In my opinion the criteria was not met for this annexation,” Moseley said.
So now the commission has asked the mayor to sit down and try to work something out with Thompson’s Station leaders- and this resolution gives the county leverage in its discussions.
“I can call the mayor and have the discussion, but I have to figure out just how that will go,” said Mayor Rogers Anderson before last Monday’ s vote, which had the Bakers and Two Farms developers in attendance. “I do not like suing cities, none of us do, but it definitely got their attention. It is pretty compelling to me, regardless of what legal counsel is saying, and pretty clear that something is not right or else they would not all be here this morning trying to get this fixed. This issue here is what happens going forward, if this annexation stands as is as a precedent, what happens to Lieper’s Fork, to all the unincorporated parts of the county.
Leaders from Thompson’s Station, meanwhile, seem on watch.
“The process the town followed in the annexation was legal, and we would certainly like to sit and talk to the mayor about that and see where it goes,” Joe Cosentini, Thompson’s Station city administrator said. The town is looking at potential solutions to fixing any of the concerns the county has, but we want to get a better understanding of the situation first. We are discussing internally and would like to do that before we talk with the mayor about whatever the solutions could be. If they have concerns we want to address them.”
According to Kaestner, the concerns are self-evident: they exceeded the growth boundary and therefore the annexation is technically not legal. In fact, he said, the only grounds for an annexation outside the boundary by a municipality in Tennessee are technical.
In 2014 the state legislature approved a change to the state’s annexation law which created a loophole for municipalities to annex outside of their urban growth boundaries. This, according to Kaestner, allowed Thompson’s Station to leap north and annex the 2,000 acres between Coleman Road and State Route 840.
“The amendment that created the loophole, as near as we can tell, relates to one guy, out around Kingsport,” Kaestner said. “He had a piece of land, wanted one thing done – one guy, one spot – and the state legislators passed an amendment to allow it to happen. Now we have developers running through a chink in the armor. It’s like kids playing Monopoly. Play to the edge of the rules and you win.”
The resolution also states that the failure of the town to recognize the UGB and the annexation of land lying within the rural areas of the county will require the county to incur significant costs to provide educational and governmental services with the annexed area.
“To be honest with you I would rather that we buy the Baker farm for whatever he has it under contract for, and turn it into a park,” Kaestner said. “It would be cheaper by far than this- having to build $50 million worth of roads, and $80 million worth of schools and whatever else we are going to suffer.”
The Baker property is under contract to the Two Farms developers for $22 million.
In anticipation of the county’s challenge, two weeks ago Thompson’s Station town attorney Todd Moore sent a letter to the county that said the town received a request from the Bakers asking the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to call a referendum regarding the annexation of their 700-acre property.
Moore wrote that the town intends to consider it as soon as possible, and that if the town leadership decides to hold a referendum that neither BOMA nor the Planning Commission would take any further action until after the vote came in. County attorney. However, according to Moseley, it is up to Thompson’s Station to decide on whether a referendum is town-wide or just affected landowners- both meet the criteria in the applicable statute. The letter does not define the scope of the referendum.
“This letter was designed to simply induce the County Commission to take no action to oppose the annexation, by saying, ‘Look, we can easily fix this, so don’t bother opposing us,'” said Kaesnter. “I doubt it’s that simple. First, the city has to formally admit that all actions heretofore taken with regard to the annexation were and are invalid. Then they can begin to try to annex, doing everything properly.”
As for the referendum, Thompson’s Station officials said that no action has been taken on it yet- it is something being discussed that may come up at the August Thompson’s Station BOMA meeting.
“There is not enough definition on this referendum to have an opinion on it,” said commissioner Barbara Sturgeon. “If it is just a referendum of two landowners, then it is pretty obvious what the outcome will be. What about the neighbors who live adjacent to this annexed land who reasonably believed they were safely far outside of the Urban Growth Boundary? What’s protecting their property rights? Even a referendum of Thompson Station residents does not give them a say. And what does this mean for Williamson’s long term land use plan if it can be this easily violated?”
Kaestner sees this as a legal issue- and a slippery slope. The county must draw the line somewhere.
“We have a comprehensive county land use plan that is award winning and it sets out what each part of the county is supposed to be and what we have here is completely opposed, completely different- and that bugs me and it ought to bug you, too,” he said.”
“The question is is this going to be done within the law? Maybe we oppose this and some judge slaps this down; that’s fine I’ll live with that. But to not contest this, that is just not good enough.”
