At Monday's Lenoir City council meeting, I had fully expected to hear some earth shattering, new law or legal issues that would make the city's illegal annexations legal. That wasn't the case.

What we heard was a lot of bluster, threats and rewriting of state law. Even at one point, the city attorney seemed to blame the county for taking too long to catch the illegal annexation of the Belle West property, so too bad.

City attorney, Walter Johnson gave a long speech of all the reasons they "feel" they were in their legal rights to have done what they did. Problem is, he had no legal grounds to back up any of his opinions.

The only non-surprise of the night came when Tony Aikens announced that his personal attorney, T. Scott Jones would be acting as co-council for the city. T. Scott has long been Tony's go-to guy when he knows he's got big trouble. 

Nothing said at the meeting gave any legitimacy to the illegal annexations. And what may have been the most telling of the city's positions was, no one from the city side, Johnson, T. Scott or Aikens ever mentions the phrase, Urban Growth Boundary, UGB or Public Chapter 1101. This is the state law that prevents them from making such illegal annexations. Of course, it might have just been an oversight that they didn't mention the very state law they have violated.

On February 6th, the county commission will take a vote as to whether to take legal action to stop the city's illegal actions. Our attorney, Kyle Baisley, will be at the meeting to discuss and take any questions commissioners might have. I will have the item on the agenda to consider for action.

If the vote is to proceed, that will open the door to depositions and discovery on both illegal annexations such as, who are the actually property owners of both properties, who's funding the Belle West project, bank records, documents and so on. That should provide a lot of very interesting information. 

This doesn't just effect the county property owners on Hwy. 70, if the county chooses not to take any action to stop the city, Aikens and his developer friends will have free reign to take over county lands all over the upper end of the county and bring their urban sprawl and disastrous zoning policies to every neighborhood.