State Supreme Court Overrules Southwest Clay Decision

The Indiana Supreme Court today passed down their ruling on the Southwest Clay vs. Carmel appeal heard earlier this year. The verdict, simply put, went against the Southwest Clay residents. The Indiana Supreme Court reversed the ruling by judge Hughes, ruling in favor of the City of Carmel to annex Southwest Clay.

Here is a link to the ruling online

First of all, the original settlement that the NOAX group negotiated with the City of Carmel was originally thrown out by Judge Hughes in the Hamilton County Courts. The court went on to hear arguments from the landowners that remonstrated against Carmel and Judge Hughes ruled in their favor.

The Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the original referendum that NOAX negotiated was valid and overruled Judge Hughes’ decision to throw it out.

Carmel announced their intent to annex Southwest Clay on June 21, 2004 and notified landowners on July 2nd which started the 90-day remonstrance clock. During this time, a group called NOAX entered into a settlement agreement with Carmel on behalf of the residents and the City of Carmel revised their fiscal plan and adopted the ordinance on October 7th. This deal with Carmel was voted on by the landowners and approved by a count of 708 in favor and 515 opposed.

After this agreement had been struck, three homeowners led efforts to get the remonstrance signatures they needed to in essence block the deal struck by NOAX and Carmel. They garnished just under 70% of the homeowners’ signatures (almost 5% more than the 65% requirement to remonstrate).

So, there were two deals that went to court on March 20, 2006:

1. The original deal that NOAX had struck with Carmel
2. The remonstrance against the annexation led by the 3 homeowners

Judge Hughes threw out the first deal with NOAX and Carmel and ruled on the annexation in favor of Southwest Clay. The Supreme Court essentially overruled Judge Hughes on the NOAX deal saying that they in fact had a majority of votes by the homeowners and said that the remonstrators didn’t have enough votes to satisfy the 65% they needed to remonstrate.

Wait, didn’t they get just under 70% signatures?

According to the Supreme Court, those people that voted for the original NOAX deal couldn’t also vote for the remonstrance, throwing out 546 petitions from the 2,210 needed to remonstrate.

How does all this affect the Geist annexation by Fishers?

It doesn’t really affect the Geist annexation.  The ruling, whether in favor or against Carmel, merely gives the Town of Fishers the green light to move forward with their annexation plans.

The Geist United Opposition is not secretly or publicly negotiating any special terms with the Town of Fishers. Chief Justice Shepard’s ruling today did not address the key problems that Fishers will have to deal with should the Geist residents successfully remonstrate: fire protection, water, and sewers not currently being provided by the Town of Fishers.

Fishers is providing fire protection through a contract similar to the Southwest Clay / Carmel arrangement. However, Geist residents have a competitive bid from the Lawrence Fire Department for $200,000 less per year (more on this later).