CLARKSDALE, Miss. (AP) - The city’s annexation lawsuit is alive again.
The suit to annex portions of the county began in March 2012, but for the better part of last year, that lawsuit was on pause because in November 2012, the Town of Lyon filed a motion urging the court to toss out Clarksdale’s current annexation bid because, Lyon’s attorneys argued, a 1989 annexation error called into question Clarksdale’s present boundaries.
With its boundaries in dispute, the current annexation attempt couldn’t go forward. But then in May last year, Coahoma Count Chancery Court Judge W. M. Sanders declared the error was simply a clerical misstep and didn’t invalidate any of the last annexation or put in jeopardy this current annexation.
That should have set the annexation process in motion again, except that Lyon appealed that ruling and the case went to the Mississippi Supreme Court. Then in February of this year, the attorneys for the Town of Lyon filed a motion with the Supreme Court to dismiss the appeal. The court granted the motion, and now the annexation case is again in play.
City Attorney Curtis Boschert said he expects the annexation will not meet with more unexpected obstacles.
“Mr. (Chad) Mask has requested that the stay be lifted and I assume it’ll proceed like any other annexation,” he said.
Mask, who is a lawyer specializing in annexation law, is representing the city.
However, Lyon Mayor Woody Sawyer is hopeful that the city and his town can come together to work out a deal, and that’s why he said his town’s lawyers asked that the appeal be dropped.
Sawyer and his town have opposed the annexation because the city seeks land along the U.S. Highway 61 corridor to the east of Lyon, and that land could potentially attract development and yield tax revenue for whatever municipality controls it.
However, with legal fees mounting for the Town of Lyon, Sawyer said he’s hopeful a public meeting between the Clarksdale and Lyon officials will be able to resolve the issue out of court.
“I’m trying to get a meeting with them to have one big forum to talk about it,” Sawyer said. “I want it public. I want the taxpayers to hear about it, so the taxpayers know how much money is being spent.”
The Heaton family, which owns some of the land along Highway 61, filed a lawsuit asking the courts to annex part of their land to the Town of Lyon. In January 2013, Cliff Heaton said he believes his land will be more valuable as part of Lyon.
In 2012, W. S. and Elsie Heaton filed a motion that would have forced Lyon to accept Heaton land, but a court date in January 2013 was postponed after Elsie died, and another court date never materialized.
Chancery Court Clerk Ed Peacock III filed a motion to dismiss the Heaton’s case, which is standard procedure for a case that has been inactive for a year, but on March 31, lawyers for the Heaton family filed a motion to keep the case open.
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Information from: The Clarksdale Press Register.
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