Oconee County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard said at the beginning of an hour-long hearing last week on the suit filed by the Townley Family Partnership LLLP against the Town of North High Shoals that he would not make a decision at the end of the session.
He told attorneys for Townley and the Town of North High Shoals that he would be reviewing the materials already submitted after the hearing and would follow up on “things that you think are important.”
He advised the attorneys “to highlight whatever you think you need to highlight” but “don’t feel the need to restate” what already had been submitted.
Attorney David Ellison for Townley and Joe Reitman for the Town of North High Shoals did quite a bit of highlighting in the next hour on the two requests before the Court.
Ellison, on behalf of Townley Family Partnership, is asking Haggard to reverse the decision by the Town Council on April 15 to deny Townley’s request to deannex from the Town 175.8 acres the Partnership owns.
Reitman is asking the Court to reject Townley’s request for a review of the decision by the Town but also to declare unconstitutional House Bill 374, passed by the legislature in 2023, which changed the rules for deannexation.
Ellison’s Arguments
Ellison told Haggard in the hearing on Thursday (July 11) that the first thing he has to decide is whether the Town denial of the deannexation request was “a quasi-judicial or legislative decision.”
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| Ellison Addresses Court 7/11/24 |
Ellison argued that the Town decision to deny the Townley request was quasi-judicial, yet the mayor and two Council members publicly stated their opposition to the deannexation before holding hearings on the Townley request.
“We’re concerned that we have not been treated fairly by the Town of (North) High Shoals,” he said. “Since this is a quasi-judicial decision body, they have to have fairness, and they can’t do anything that is prejudged or show any kind of bias.”
Ellison said Tony Townley filed the deannexation petition because the 175 acres he owns within the city of North High Shoals is part of a larger 400-acre tract, and the remainder of the tract is in the county.
Ellison said it is “a real problem having this parcel divided between two jurisdictions.”
Ellison said “there is no evidence whatsoever that deannexing the Townley property from the Town will increase any burdens or will increase any cost on the Town at all.”
As a result, he said, the Town made “a legal error” in denying the request for deannexation.
Reitman’s Arguments
Reitman said the deannexation request by Townley is based on passage of House Bill 374, or “the Leaf Act.”
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| Reitman Addresses Court 7/11/2024 |
He said the bill “pertains to leaf blowers, and then fuel, and then tacked on at the end of the legislative session, just before day 40, was this section 3...which talked about deannexation.”
Reitman said this bill violates the “one subject matter clause of our Georgia Constitution which clearly prohibits this mishmash of fuel and leaf blowers and then the added deannexation.”
As a result of this, Reitman said, he has filed a motion to dismiss the Townley suit.
Reitman also said that the two Council members who “exercised their First Amendment rights to give their honest assessment of the deannexation request” did not vote for the first reading or the second reading of the ordinance denying the Townley request.
The Mayor only votes “in the instance of tie,” he said.
Reitman said the legislature in 2022 with House Bill 1405 “completely changed the landscape” for zoning and annexations, saying they are legislative.
The Council, in its vote to deny the Townley request, was “clearly acting in a legislative capacity,” he said.
Rebuttal Comments
Judge Haggard gave Ellison the opportunity to respond to Reitman, and then Reitman the opportunity to make final arguments.
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| Judge Haggard 7/11/2024 |
Ellison said “we have not been treated fairly in this case from the very beginning when we filed this application.”
“There has been constant tabling, they are trying to shift the goal posts. He is trying to come up with new arguments every other week, to try to keep Townley’s property in this municipality.”
“The General Assembly has complete control over what the municipality can do,” he said, “and they chose to ignore the General Assembly’s instructions.”
Reitman turned to the motion to dismiss that he had filed in his final comments, saying that the one-subject matter rule exists “to prevent what is commonly known as log rolling, in other words, getting something through by combining it with other measures.”
Reitman said he expects the case will go to the Georgia Supreme Court over this issue.
Judge Haggard ended the session by saying that the case raises basic issues about the law relating to municipal corporations but he recognized that “real property rights and people’s lives here...are involved in all of this.”
Video
I attended the hearing in the Courthouse in Watkinsville and, with Judge Haggard’s permission, recorded the entire session.
Ellison began his comments at 2:08 in the video. A tiny gap appears at that point as I attempted to refocus the camera.
Ellison’s comments as summarized above do not follow the order as spoken, as Ellison repeated arguments at several points and I pulled them together for clarity.
Reitman began his initial comments at 24:28 in the video.
Ellison responded to Reitman’s comments at 51:16.
Reitman responded at 58:55 in the video.
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