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Supercenter foes lose battles
Jefferson group loses on bids for injunction, ordinance

By Karyn Saemann
Correspondent for The Capital Times
November 16, 2005

In the afternoon, Jefferson County Circuit Judge John Ullsvik refused a request from the Coalition for a Better Jefferson for an injunction to keep the Jefferson City Council from voting on the annexation of about 25 acres along Wisconsin 26 on the city's south side.

In the evening, the City Council voted unanimously to deny a Wal-Mart-related direct legislation petition submitted by the Coalition for a Better Jefferson.

The City Council heard a first reading on the annexation Tuesday night, but Ald. Bob Coffman said it could be early January before the council takes a final vote.

John Rhiel, a member of Coalition for a Better Jefferson, said Ullsvik concluded that because the annexation may not be final for a month or more, the group still has time to fight it. As a result, it failed to meet a statutory test for blocking an annexation, which is that it would suffer immediate, irreparable harm if the injunction was not granted now.

"There are several more steps in the process," Rhiel said. "The judge apparently didn't feel the annexation process had reached the point where we could show irreparable harm."

The direct legislation petition asked the city to enact an ordinance requiring that an environmental impact study, a traffic study, an infrastructure impact study and a broad community impact study be done prior to any annexation of 15 acres or larger.

Rhiel called the request for the studies "a proposal for wise and prudent development. It's not just throwing stones at Wal-Mart. Everyone I know wants jobs to come here and wants to increase the tax base."

Both Rhiel and Coffman said they were under the impression going into Tuesday night's meeting that the City Council had two choices. It could accept the direct legislation petition and a new ordinance requiring the studies would go on the books, or the council could deny the petition and be required by state law to ask voters, either in the April general election or in a special election, whether they would like such an ordinance.

Rhiel said if the City Council had sent the matter to voters in a referendum, the Coalition for a Better Jefferson would have asked that it not take a final vote on the Wal-Mart annexation or any other annexation until after that vote. If it did appear poised to finalize an annexation before then, Rhiel said the coalition would likely take the city back to court. This time, he said, its request for an injunction might be approved because the threat would be more imminent.

But the council went a third, unexpected route Tuesday night.

Instead, the council declared the direct legislation petition to be invalid because it sought to control the city administratively, rather than legislatively. Essentially, the council said that in demanding that four studies be done prior to an annexation, the coalition was trying to dictate how city officials go about their daily work of preparing for an annexation.

"Wisconsin court describes an administrative action as telling the City Council how to do something," Coffman said.

He added that the City Council further argued that the direct legislation petition violated state statutes in that it was trying, by requiring the studies, to change the normal, less-complex annexation process that is laid out in state law.

Finally, Coffman said the petition was in direct conflict with the city's existing big-box ordinance, which already requires traffic, environmental impact and community impact studies on land being annexed. Coffman said the group wanted the studies to be done not just on the land being annexed, but also on abutting land, which is beyond the scope of the big box ordinance.