Nearly two years to the day since the original annexation was defeated in a special citywide election, the Wetlands annexation proposal (revamped and renamed Glengarry) will return to Aberdeen City Hall Monday night during a 7 p.m. city council meeting.
Forget visions of sugar plums, whenever ‘annexations’ and ‘Aberdeen’ are mentioned in the same breath memories of community outrage, fire code violations, election fraud, handgun charges, and other political shenanigans come immediately to mind.
The mayor and city council’s agenda for Monday, Dec. 8 includes a public hearing for Resolution No. 08-10, Glengarry Annexation Plan. You may remember the Glengarry as the kinder, gentler Wetlands annexation proposal of nearly 500 acres. It will be interesting to see how closely the would-be developers followed the results of the Glengarry Community Survey they disseminated in the area last April.
The Wetlands developers won’t be the only team set to make a triumphant return to City Hall on Monday night. The Aberdeen Communities Together ‘red shirts’ (now technically blue shirts) are also planning to once again storm the council chambers.
Although the ACT group has not officially taken a position on the Glengarry annexation request, the group – which led the charge to defeat the original Wetlands annexation by a 2 to 1 vote in the referendum election of December 5, 2006 – isn’t taking any chances this time around either.
The ACT group’s position, according to a group email, is as follows:
“We therefore suggest that all of those interested, who believe that this annexation is not in the best interest of the City, that City growth should be confined to the County defined Development Envelope, and would prefer to see additional commercial growth before massive residential development, attend this meeting wearing an ACT blue shirt or the former anti-annexation red ‘stop sign’ shirt.”
Informed sources believe this annexation request will be shot down by the mayor and city council – both because of its resounding defeat two years ago when it was before city voters and because the development team was/is quite friendly with the former city administration. That administration was run out of town largely because of its support of the Wetlands annexation.
As a bonus, for those interested in staying past the main event, the legislative session of Monday’s meeting is also expected to include another controversial item – “Approval of Ripken Stadium Memorandum of Understanding.”
I think Brian is correct. This will be shot down for political reasons not good logic or what is good for the citizens of Aberdeen in the long run. The original request was shown to have failed 2 to 1 in 2006, in spite of the fact that ALL exit polls showed the opposite to be true and that the one machine which had to be brought in to replace a failed one also came out 2 to 1 in favor of the annexation. The interesting question is how many people voted because they had actual facts. The group calling itself ACT used unbelievable deception and outright lies in that campaign. Now this same group is in charge at Aberdeen city hall. The annexation makes huge economic sense, but would destroy the view for a handful like bicycle Bob and stinky the lawnmower guy.