Applicable areas
According to the Chattanooga city attorney’s office, areas of the city annexed since 1998 would include Enterprise South, the U.S. Xpress site, the Ramsgate and Black Creek residential areas, and commercial strips along Highway 58.Black Creek residents petitioned to be annexed, Noblett said, although if 10 percent of them now disagree with that decision, it could be put to a new vote.
A bill is moving through the state Senate that would allow disgruntled residents living in areas of Chattanooga and four other cities annexed after May 1998 to press for de-annexation referendums.
The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, passed 65-24.
The bill would allow 10 percent of voters in the five included cities to petition for a de-annexation referendum affecting areas annexed after May 1998. There would be only vote vote, and the window would close at the end of 2018.
The bill specifically provides that if a de-annexation vote is successful, those who voted against removing themselves from the city can ask officials to be let back in.
The bills sponsors, Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, and Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, noted provisions that would allow cities to also keep commercial and industrial property, even if voters living in the same parcel voted to secede.
“Only residential property is guaranteed a referendum,” Carter said.
That was good news for Chattanooga city officials: The city annexed the Volkswagen plant and other parts of the Enterprise South industrial park in 1998 and has invested millions of dollars in developing the land for industry.
“This makes little sense if you are trying to provide services efficiently,” Chattanooga deputy city attorney Phil Noblett said of the bill and its provisions. “You could end up having police officers driving by residential areas that we wouldn’t serve in order to serve commercial and industrial areas. You wouldn’t be serving the whole area.”
The bill’s provisions wouldn’t let departing residents off scot-free tax-wise either. They would still be on the hook, conceivably for decades, to pay property taxes on their share of any general obligation debt issued during their tenure.
Chattanooga officials have said they have concerns because the city used cash for some improvements and didn’t issue general obligation bonds.
Some opponents across the state have questioned the bill’s constitutionality, since it applies only to a few cities. But Carter inserted language he hopes will keep courts away. The bill’s language accuses the five specific cities, listed not by name but by population categories, as having engaged in “egregious” instances of annexation.
Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey has filed an amendment that specifically removes Kingsport, one of the specified cities, from the bill’s provisions. It does that by excluding any city that operates its own school system, which Kingsport does.
If Ramsey’s amendment passes, the bill would apply to only Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and tiny Cornersville, in Marshall County south of Nashville.
An amendment to the passed House bill removed Johnson City after that city de-annexed some areas in response to the threat posed by the bill.
Such amendments led senators to send Watson’s version of the bill back to the State and Local Government Committee on a 19-12 vote last week. Senate State and Local Government Chairman Sen. Ken Yager, R-Kingston, said the limitations and some other provisions were not what the Senate envisioned when Watson’s version was moved out of Yager’s Senate panel last year.
“The amendment that the House has put on is totally unacceptable and totally out of line with the sentiment and policy that drove those votes last year” in his committee, Yager said.
Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, a former Knoxville mayor, has voiced concerns about the bill, but stopped short of threatening a veto.