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The Indiana Court of Appeals is set to hear the city of Bloomington’s challenge of a lower court ruling that blocked the city’s efforts to annex 4,900 acres to its west and southwest in a bitter legal feud that stretches back eight years.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Aug. 19 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:10 a.m. at the Statehouse. The three-member appellate panel hearing the case will be Judges Mark Bailey, Elaine Brown and Leanna Weissman.
After a five-day bench trial, the Monroe Circuit Court determined that the city of Bloomington was not permitted to annex two adjoining areas because, according to court documents, it failed to prove the annexation areas satisfied one of the four statutory territorial qualifications needed for annexation.
The appellees in this case, County Residents Against Annexation (CRAA), a nonprofit based out of Monroe County, and numerous property owners, argue that the proposed annexation would have a significant financial impact on the landowners and is not in their best interest.
The city counters and disagrees, saying that “even if the annexation caused a significant financial impact on the residents and landowners in the annexation territory, Bloomington is still entitled to annex the land because it established at trial that annexation is in the landowners’ objective best interests.”
Efforts by the city to acquire the property began back in 2017, but those plans were shut down by the state following the passing of legislation in 2019 that retroactively cancelled hundreds of contracts between landowners and the city that had granted the landowners the right to connect to Bloomington’s municipal sewer infrastructure in exchange for an agreement from the landowners to refrain from protesting eventual annexation by the city, according to court documents.
The Indiana Supreme Court later decided that the state’s intervention was unconstitutional, so the city continued forward with its annexation plans in the second half of 2021.
Residents of Bloomington pushed back against the city with petitions, acquiring enough signatures to stop the annexation of several proposed territories. And in 2022, the CRAA and numerous individual landowners in two of the annexation territories (Area 1A and Area 1B) filed suit against the city, forcing the court to review the annexation.
That same year, the city filed separate complaints against Monroe County Auditor Catherine Smith, one for each of seven annexation territories, to examine the constitutionality and application of the 2019 law. That case is scheduled to be heard by the Indiana Supreme Court later this year.
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