Biltmore Lake lost the latest round in court as it attempts to avoid being annexed by the City of Asheville. City council voted to annex the territory in 2007, at which point several people in red shirts left the council chambers mumbling, “See you in court.”
If legislation presented by Bruce Goforth (H524) is successful, persons not wanting to be annexed by Asheville could, instead of paying lawyers, spend days upon days collecting 13,000* signatures in order to put a proposed annexation to a vote of the people. Going door-to-door for a politicized hot topic, I only collected signatures at the rate of six per hour.
*The law would require the collection of valid signatures from 15% of the voting population in the annexing municipality combined with the territory to be annexed. According to the Board of Elections, Asheville currently has 64,235 registered voters. (The city’s population in 2008 was 78,543. If the stats be true, that represents an astounding number of registered voters and a very little population of persons under 18.) Allowing for population increases and the population of the territory to be annexed, 15% would be around 10,000. Unfortunately, a rule of thumb for initiative petitions is that about 30% of signatures will be thrown out. Some claim only 5% are typically invalid, but I think that is psy-op propaganda from people wanting initiatives to fail.
