Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Annexation Public Comment topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Resident alleges financial focus, inadequate due diligence in Carriage Trails annexation during Huber Heights public comment
Summary
A Bethel Township resident told the Huber Heights council their annexation decisions emphasized money over broader impacts and said more than 1,200 local signatures opposed the annexation; the public commenter was cut off at the council’s time limit.
Huber Heights — Jeff Morford of Miami County’s Bethel Township used the public-comment period at the June 23 Huber Heights City Council meeting to criticize the council’s handling of the Carriage Trails annexation and the city’s due diligence process.
“My concern is that the due diligence report considered only one aspect — the money — which has been acknowledged as your prime motivator,” Morford told the council. He said the phrase due diligence properly means “the care that a reasonable person takes to avoid harm to other persons or their property,” and argued the council ignored nonfinancial impacts when it approved the annexation.
Morford told the council that more than 1,200 Huber Heights citizens signed a referendum petition in four days objecting to the annexation vote. He said scores of residents had previously testified that past annexations had harmed Bethel Township’s community and schools; he urged the council to reconsider how it weighed community impacts.
Mayor Gore interrupted Morford when his allotted time expired; the record shows the mayor enforcing the meeting’s time limit. After public comments concluded, Mayor Gore said he had a clear conscience and was proud of the council’s actions for the city and taxpayers.
The remarks were made during the public-comment agenda slot and do not reflect any formal action by the council in that meeting. Claims about the number of referendum signatures and impacts on schools and the community were presented by the speaker and were not independently verified during the meeting record.
