In the year and a half since she began trying to stop a slew of warehouses from being built on rural land dotted with single-family homes near Edgerton, Jennifer Williams has gotten used to hearing the metaphorical sound of doors slamming shut.
Challenges to city hall on annexation and rezoning, a stab at creating a new city – all failed.
Key Takeaways
• A Johnson County judge recently ruled that a group of homeowners did not have standing to file a lawsuit challenging the annexation of land that paved the way for a massive warehouse development outside Edgerton.
• Still, the group Protect Rural JoCo says the judge left open the question of whether the annexation was legal, and they are now trying to convince Attorney General Derek Schmidt to block the annexation to stop the warehouse project.
• Edgerton’s mayor says the annexation was done in the best interests of the community, and he has accused Protect Rural JoCo of misrepresenting the judge’s opinion.
But another failure, this time in court, has re-energized Williams and her group, Protect Rural JoCo. On paper, it still counts as a loss, but that matters less to Williams than what the judge said during the hearing.
Those comments have convinced her that the annexation of land near her home in south Johnson County that cleared the way for a 600-acre warehouse development is illegal, and at least that one judge agrees.
Now, she and her neighbors are on a mission to get help from Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
A loss viewed as a win
Like most things involving the warehouse development happening near the BNSF intermodal facility outside Edgerton, it’s complicated.
Protect Rural JoCo, joined by two other landowning couples, had asked Johnson County’s 10th District Court to declare the annexation illegal and void under Kansas statutes.
That didn’t happen. District Court Judge James Vano ruled that under the law, the neighbors did not have standing to challenge what is considered a “consent annexation.”
A consent annexation is one in which a landowner abutting a city boundary can ask the city to annex the property.
That’s what allowed Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development to successfully gain approval from the Edgerton City Council in December 2020 to annex the vast tract of land just south of Interstate 35 on which the company now wants to build nearly 10 million square feet of warehouse space.
Kansas law allows that type of annexation to go forward fairly easily, with none of the public hearings or approvals required with an annexation where the property lines don’t touch.
Only agencies of the state – like the attorney general – or the city and landowners involved would be allowed to challenge that type of annexation, under Kansas law.
Despite what would seem like a negative outcome in court, the hearing and the judge’s comments has had a rejuvenating effect on Williams and the group, who are still pressing forward with their bid to challenge the warehouse project.
At a June 23 meeting of the county commission, Williams presented it this way: “On June 7, Judge Vano confirmed that this is an illegal annexation by Edgerton.”
That may have been an overstatement.
Vano didn’t actually rule on the annexation itself. But other comments at the hearing seemed like a glimmer of hope for neighbors of the warehouse development, who say they have felt voiceless before the overwhelming economic infusion offered by the warehouse developement.
“When you get something like this where we’re validated and it says, ‘I see you, I know what you’re saying,’ it really helped boost the morale again for the people to be like, maybe the whole system is not corrupt,” she told the Post in a recent interview.
‘The call that is best for our community’
Williams had been asking the county commission to write Schmidt’s office asking him to take the annexation question back to court.
Sixth District Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, who is currently running in the August 2 primary election for commission chair, voiced support with a motion to that effect.
It was ultimately voted down with other commissioners giving various reasons, including Kansas’s “home rule” statute, which gives cities wide latitude to run their local affairs, as well as more procedural concerns over approving a motion offered at the end of a meeting without a chance for more review.
After that meeting, Edgerton Mayor Don Roberts responded with a letter demanding a correction and criticizing O’Hara for repeating Williams’ claims that the judge considered the annexation illegal.
“The city of Edgerton has always scrupulously followed the legal requirements for annexation and zoning of property in its jurisdiction. It has been transparent in its actions and has openly and fairly addressed every legal issue presented in the appropriate forum,” Roberts’s letter said.
In an interview later, Roberts stood by the annexation process and reiterated that no illegal action had taken place.
“I believe it is our job to listen and at the end of the day make the call that is best for our community,” he said. “I believe we have done that.”
A ‘narrow corridor’
The neighbors’ complaint goes back to the time before December 2020, when the Edgerton City Council approved the annexation.
Although plenty of warehouses were built or in the works in the area by then, they say they had been unaware of a plan by NorthPoint to add millions of square feet of warehouses right next to their farms and homes.
That’s because the land, which was mostly on the east side of Gardner Road, was bought under the names of various farms and cattle companies affiliated with NorthPoint but were unknown to the neighbors.
Those parcels weren’t connected to the town – yet.
That happened at the end of 2020, when a tract on the east side of the road was purchased that made the annexation possible.
That tract was in the shape of a boot, with the wide end to the west and narrower “toe” touching the properties east of the road. Shortly afterward, the properties were annexed and rezoned.
It’s been the neighbors’ contention that the toe point of the “boot” constituted a “narrow corridor” of land whose only purpose was as a connection for annexation. Narrow corridors of this type are outlawed by Kansas statute.
What the judge ruled
A look at the transcript shows that Judge Vano did not directly say Edgerton’s annexation of the land is illegal. His only ruling was that Protect Rural JoCo didn’t have the power to sue.
But he did make a few comments that showed the legality of the annexation is at least open to question.
“Where I am really having a problem here is I can see the illegality and it sounds similar to (another case that had been cited during the discussion),” Vano said.
The lawyers had been discussing a Sumner County case in which a five-mile, 100-foot-wide corridor was drawn to connect to a casino.
“In your case you’ve got this strip that’s an outlying strip, you’re in agreement that doesn’t look like approved or authorized by the statute?” he asked Edgerton’s lawyer, Todd Luckman.
Luckman replied the shapes and distances are not comparable.
“It’s apples and oranges,” Luckman said. “We’re not doing a five-mile long strip here.”
In delivering his decision, Vano said, “I’m in agreement with the city (Edgerton) though this looks like something that should be reviewed.”
He continued that the law does not appear to allow Protect Rural JoCo to sue.
“There is no claim that they can make. There is no statute and there is – it is what it is, and I can’t create that jurisdiction myself,” Vano said.
No word from Schmidt
Williams said neighbors who tried contacting the attorney general’s office through online forms were at first blocked by replies that said their complaints did not fit the forms.
Lately, though, they’ve been able to get through to a person who says the office is investigating.
The attorney general’s office has not responded to calls and email from the Post for comment. (Schmidt is currently running for governor in the Republican primary and is widely seen as the presumptive challenger to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in November.)
Through it all, the rural neighbors around have been searching for their voice in all of this.
They can’t vote in Edgerton elections because they don’t live inside city limits. Their efforts to incorporate a new town called Golden in neighboring Miami County to block future warehouse developments has been rejected. Yet they feel the noise and especially the truck traffic from a massive new warehouse site will affect them just as much if not more than town residents.
Williams said she tries to keep spirits up.
“People’s spirits do get beat down and I hate the fact that they have that power to do that to people. People just kind of give up after a while,” she said. “But in this particular case I feel like the people are hanging on with anything that they can.”
Roxie Hammill is a freelance journalist who reports frequently for the Post and other Kansas City area publications. You can reach her at roxieham@gmail.com.
