Opinion ID: 1631438
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Annexation

Text: It is this area that Pigeon Forge has annexed. It is approximately one mile long and is situated astride Highway 441 with 200 feet on each side. Thus, it is one mile long and its width is 400 feet plus the width of the highway. Its population is 47 persons. It is adjacent to the northern city limits of Pigeon Forge and adjoin[s] its existing boundaries. Section 6-309, T.C.A. So nearly does it resemble the existing City of Pigeon Forge that the Executive Director of the Tennessee Municipal Technical Advisory Service, in testifying at the trial, commented thusly: [Y]ou wouldn't know that it is not a part of that urban community if you didn't see that sign there in certain parts that says Welcome to the City Limits of Pigeon Forge.       It is all a part of that urban development. We should emphasize that this is not, as appellants insist, merely a strip or shoestring or corridor annexation, although it is long and lean. Such annexations, so long as they take in people, private property, or commercial activities and rest on some reasonable and rational basis, are not per se to be condemned. We do not deal with an annexation wherein a city attempts to run its corporate limits down the right-of-way of an established road without taking in a single citizen or a single piece of private property. Such an annexation is perhaps questionable and is not here involved. As in any annexation, and more particularly one wherein a geometrically irregular parcel of land is annexed, the Court must scrutinize the stated and ostensible purpose of the annexation. The record shows that the officials of the City of Pigeon Forge were motivated by a civic-minded compulsion to control and co-ordinate the expansion and growth of the city and insure that its development was on an orderly basis, in keeping with the character of the existing city. Additionally they were concerned about aesthetic considerations.