Judge overturns McLeansville annexations
GREENSBORO — Three McLeansville subdivisions are no longer part of the city, after a judge declared their 2009 annexation void.
Four McLeansville residents sued Greensboro last year to stop the planned July 1 annexation. Greensboro added the land, but late last week, Judge Edwin Wilson sided with residents, who argued the city could not hold them to annexation agreements made with the subdivision developers.
Wilson’s ruling means that the three subdivisions — including 151 acres and about 285 homes — will go back to being part of Guilford County.
“It’s a very happy day for everybody,” said Ron Powell, one of the residents who brought the lawsuit.
Greensboro leaders are still trying to work out when and how to withdraw city services such as trash pickup.
Assistant City Manager Denise Turner said Greensboro has spent about $450,000 providing items such as new street signs and trash cans and public safety services for the subdivisions — a figure that does not include the cost to extend water and sewer lines.
It will be up to the City Council to decide whether the city will appeal the judge’s decision.
Between 1997 and 2000, developers of the Whitehurst Village, Hartwood Village and Laurel Park subdivisions — just off Interstate 85 in the area of Mount Hope Church Road — asked for city water and sewer.
In exchange for the infrastructure, developers petitioned for the city to annex the subdivisions.
When the city got around to annexing the land years later, some people who bought those homes said they did not know their neighborhoods were going to become part of Greensboro.
The council approved the annexation in April 2009, amid protests from homeowners.
The McLeansville residents have argued that the city would not be able to provide them with all the amenities other city residents enjoy, such as parks and libraries.
Although there is a fire station in the area and the city police department covers the neighborhood, bus service routes do not extend to that part of McLeansville.
The subdivisions, an island of homes surrounded by open land, are connected to the city by little more than a strip of highway.
“It would be something different … if they had really provided the amenities we have in other areas,” Powell said.
In Guilford County Superior Court, the residents argued that the city could not hold them to the utility agreements and annexation petitions signed by the developers years ago.
“We showed the court they (the agreements) didn’t run with the land and the people who bought the land were not bound by them,” the residents’ attorney, James Eldridge, said.
Late last week, the judge sided with the residents, making the McLeansville annexation null and void. Wilson also ordered the city to pay the plaintiffs’ legal costs.
That means the city extended — and now must rescind — services to an area that is not part of its jurisdiction.
It also means that the homes in the area are likely to go back to paying higher, out-of-the-city water rates, and the city may have to refund property taxes that homeowners have paid.
Those are some of the issues city staff members are trying to resolve, Turner said.
She said the tax collector’s office is still tallying how much property tax revenue the city has collected from those homeowners.
The court ruling does not affect any annexation other than the one in McLeansville. But it may make Greensboro reconsider its practice of waiting, in some cases for years, to bring petitioned annexations into the city.
That’s a policy issue the City Council will have to consider, city staff said.
Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com
Related Links
Search News-Record.com
closeSearch News & Record Article Archives
Not all of the newspaper's content appears online.
*There is a fee for downloading some older articles.
