CED Annexation Policy Plan 1992 - Laserfiche WebLink

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II CRITERIA FOR ANNEXATION A. GENERAL Chapter 3, Title 36 of the Indiana Code provides the statutory criteria for municipal annexations. Familiarity with this criteria is essential for developing the City's annexation policy and plan and, ultimately, for attaining the City's annexation goals. An annexation policy and plan that is consistent with the statutory criteria, including case law, will help the City to proceed smoothly through the annexation process. Except for special use annexations, territory to be annexed must be contiguous to the corporate limits of South Bend. Such territory is considered to be contiguous if at least one -eighth (1 /8), or 12.5%, of the aggregate external boundary of the territory to be annexed coincides with the corporate limits. A strip of land less than one hundred fifty (150 ) feet wide which connects South Bend to the territory proposed for annexation is not considered contiguous to either South Bend or the property proposed for annexation. These criteria defining contiguous territory were added to the Code in 1981 in an effort to minimize selective flag -pole annexations whereby municipalities were using narrow strips of land, such as street right-of-ways, to annex remotely located territory. The Code was further amended to disallow the use of such flag -pole annexations as being part of the contiguous corporate limits for future annexations. In 1985, this section of the Code was again amended to permit annexations off of flag -pole annexations only if subsequent annexations off of the flag -pole territory had been approved prior to May 1, 1981. In 1977, South Bend annexed the Laurel Woods Apartments on Auten Road at Laurel Road. This annexation appears to be a flag -pole annexation in which no subsequent annexations prior to May 1, 1981 occurred which used this territory as part of the contiguous corporate limits. Therefore, this territory cannot be used as contiguous territory for future annexations. Annexations may occur in one of three ways. The first is annexation by petition from property owners contiguous to the City. This is commonly referred to as a voluntary annexation. The second is the annexation of non-contiguous territory containing a special land use, as described by State Law. The third is annexation of contiguous territory by the City Council. This is commonly referred to as an involuntary annexation. Each of these three types of annexations are discussed in the following sections along with additional requirements specifically related to annexation by the City Council. 13