Twenty-six homeowners within the Willow Ridge subdivision are pushing back against 14 property owners’ requests to annex out of the proposed city of St. George and into Baton Rouge, emphasizing that “the vast majority” of property owners in the subdivision do not want to be annexed into city limits.
At tonight’s meeting, the Metro Council will hear requests from the 15 property owners who filed four separate petitions seeking annexation into Baton Rouge. But the HOA will also present signed documents from homeowners requesting Willow Ridge remain intact and within the proposed city of St. George, along with signed documents from at least one homeowner wishing to withdraw their name from the annexation petition, which the HOA further alleges violates its bylaws.
“Many more who signed wish to opt out of this annexation but are fearful of reprisal and involvement in what has now turned into a very public fight,” says HOA president Keith Richardson in a prepared statement. “I don’t blame them. At least one homeowner was threatened with massive legal fees if she withdrew her name from the application.”
Richardson alleges that Bill Benedetto, a Willow Ridge homeowner who “publicly participated in the effort to stop St. George at the ballot,” has for the past six months actively engaged individual property owners in the subdivision in an attempt to annex into Baton Rouge—a plan in which Richardson further alleges attorney Charles Landry is complicit, citing an email in which Benedetto writes, “through some very creative maneuvers, Landry and his staff have developed a clear path of annexation for all of us.”
Willow Ridge includes 40 home sites. Fifteen homes are on Willow Bay, a man-made lake, which was used as an entry point for annexation.
Both Landry and Benedetto emphatically deny the accusations, arguing the annexation requests have nothing to do with the entire subdivision at large.
“Nothing that has been submitted will have any effect on anyone, or any property, other than those 15 lots,” Landry says. “It doesn’t affect the HOA, the rest of the neighborhood, or anyone other than those people asking to exercise their option to be in the city.”
Benedetto says no one has contacted him asking to withdraw their signature from the petition and argues that the HOA doesn’t have any jurisdiction over whether an individual property owner can seek annexation anyway.
Moreover, Landry says the way the property is being annexed is “100% consistent with the way every other annexation has taken place in East Baton Rouge over the past 10 years,” pointing to how the interstate was used to connect Baton Rouge’s then-existing city limits to the enclosed Mall of Louisiana, though Sears and Dillard’s were not annexed into the city, as one of several recent examples.
“[These allegations] are outrageous, but predictable in an effort to create an emotional environment that does not exist,” Landry says, arguing that the only reason the issue has come up is because Lionel Rainey III, a well-known St. George promoter, lives in the neighborhood.
Rainey could not be reached for comment before this morning’s deadline.
