Interestingly, Lenoir City manager, Amber Kelso, attended our meeting and asked to speak on behalf of the city mayor and city council during the public comment time. She had four points.

(1) Dan Smith, the property owner, approached the city requesting to have his property annexed. The city didn't contact him.

Sorry, this still doesn't make it a legal annexation.

(2) If a lawsuit is filed by the county, the only winners are the lawyers.

She is correct, so if Lenoir City officials hadn't passed an illegal annexation, there would be no need for a lawsuit.

(3) Your lawyer has advised us that the county has no standing to challenge the annexation.

This is incorrect. If the county doesn't have standing to enforce the inter-local agreement and state law, who does?

(4) The city doesn't feel they should be telling people what to do with their property.

Please, this is the same city government that jailed a mother and wife of a veteran while he was deployed because her yard was messy.

So, according to Ms. Scott, on behalf of Tony Aikens and city council, the county should just step aside and allow the city to walk all over anybody they want. That's just not going to happen. Everybody knows what the city brings when they control land, destruction of property and mass over development. If county government is in place for anything, we're there to protect our citizens.

In this illegal annexation, the city has already committed a number of legal missteps, not the least of which is, the property is not in the city's urban growth boundary as required by law to be annexed. There are a lot of other problems with the annexation being reviewed now.

It's very unfortunate that we have a city government that just refuses to follow the law.