Request By:
Mr. Ira L. Crooks
Box 552
Uniontown, Kentucky 42461
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in response to your letter of March 2 in which you relate that the City of Uniontown enacted an ordinance to annex a portion of an unincorporated territory consisting of fifty property owners. These property owners filed a petition containing more than 75% of the property owners' signatures opposing annexation, following which the city declared that the question of annexation would be placed on the November 1982 ballot. Your questions are as follows:
"Can the City of Uniontown put the ordinance to annex a portion of San Hill on the ballot since more than 75% of the property owners signed the petition against annexation?
Will the property owners and registered voters involved be the only ones to vote on this ordinance or will the citizens of Uniontown be able to vote on this, too?"
You have apparently misconstrued the provisions of KRS 81A.420, particularly subsection (2)(c), which refers to the percentage [75%] of the votes necessary to be cast in opposition to annexation at the November election in order to defeat annexation.
KRS 81A.420 initially provides that if 50% of the qualified voters or property owners petition in opposition of annexation following the adoption of the initial ordinance, the city must place the question on the ballot in November. Then if 75% of the qualified voters in the area to be annexed vote in opposition, the ordinance shall then become ineffectual for any purpose. Thus the city properly ordered the question of annexation to be placed on the November 7, 1982 ballot following the filing of the petition containing the signatures of more than 50% of the registered voters or property owners.
Only the registered voters in the area to be annexed are entitled to vote on the annexation question, as the statute provides.