Zionsville-Whitestown land feud continues before Indiana Supreme Court

Border fight between Boone County towns continues as attorneys presented their arguments Wednesday

Kristine Guerra
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Zionsville wants to reshape its government through a reorganization plan that would absorb Perry Township’s government. Whitestown is trying to block the merger and is seeking to annex parts of the rural township for future growth and development.

The border fight between Zionsville and Whitestown continues as attorneys representing the two Boone County suburbs in a legal land battle presented their arguments Wednesday before the Indiana Supreme Court.

Caught in the middle of the land feud is unincorporated Perry Township, an undeveloped area of hundreds of acres of farmland west of Whitestown. Zionsville wants to reshape its government through a reorganization plan that would absorb Perry Township's government. Whitestown is trying to block the merger and is seeking to annex parts of the rural township for future growth and development.

The case reached the Supreme Court more than a year after Whitestown filed a lawsuit in Boone County challenging the validity of Zionsville's reorganization plan with Perry Township. Whitestown won in Boone Superior Court, where Judge Rebecca McClure ruled it has the authority to annex part of Perry Township. The Court of Appeals, however, reversed the ruling in favor of Zionsville. Whitestown is now asking the state's highest court to reverse the appeals court ruling.

Whitestown to appeal Zionsville reorganization

Whitestown argues that the 2006 Government Modernization Act, which allows local governments to merge and redraw boundary lines, requires that territories must be adjacent to each other to reorganize. The town's lawyer, Stephen Unger, of the Indianapolis firm Bose McKinney & Evans LLP, said that is not the case in Zionsville's organization plan because Whitestown is between Zionsville and Perry Township.

"From top to bottom, you can't go from Zionsville (to Perry Township) without going through Whitestown," Unger said in court.

Unger said if Perry Township becomes part of Zionsville, Whitestown will be landlocked between two Zionsville territories.

"This isn't right," Unger said. "This isn't what the Modernization Act was intended to do."

Zionsville's attorney, Mark Crandley, of the Indianapolis law firm Barnes & Thornburg LLP, argued that adjacency does exist between Perry Township and Zionsville. He said there's a strip of more than 150 feet of Zionsville land that touches Perry Township. According to the Modernization Act, two territories or political subdivisions aren't considered adjacent to each other if they are connected by a strip of land that is less than 150 feet.

Crandley also said that Perry Township and Zionsville voters have ultimately agreed to the reorganization.

"There's a massive support for this," Crandley said. "It's up to the voters. Let the local people decide what's best for them, and that's ultimately what happened here."

In 2014, Zionsville and Perry Township each adopted similar resolutions to merge their governments. Under the reorganization plan, the Perry Township trustee, who is elected every four years, will be part of the Zionsville Town Council, and township land will become part of Zionsville. That includes a portion that Whitestown seeks to claim in a separate annexation battle that's also pending in the courts.

Rural Boone County landowners fighting annexation

Whitestown is locked in another legal feud with 20 Perry Township landowners who oppose its annexation of about 620 acres of township land. Landowners filed a lawsuit against Whitestown and won after a trial court judge in 2014 voided the town's annexation ordinance. The Court of Appeals later reversed that ruling in favor of Whitestown. The landowners are now asking for a rehearing in the appeals court.

Perry Township landowners say they prefer to be left alone, but they don't believe that would happen. However, they say that being part of Zionsville is the preferable option. That scenario does not involve involuntary annexation, but rather a voluntary merger of two governments, Perry Township Trustee Sam Baldwin said in an earlier interview with The Indianapolis Star.

Landowners also fear that annexation by Whitestown would lead to skyrocketing property taxes, but being a part of Zionsville would result in only minimal tax impact, if any. Whitestown argued that any tax increase, which is projected to be 52 to 74 percent, would not be felt for 13 years because its ordinance includes a three-year delay in the annexation's effective date, followed by a 10-year tax abatement.

This isn't the first time that Zionsville has sought to expand its territories through reorganization. In 2010, the suburb reorganized with the two Boone County townships of Eagle and Union. Township governments were consolidated into Zionsville's.

The Supreme Court justices did not rule after Wednesday's hearing and will make a decision at a later date.


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