Opinion ID: 1124080
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: whether this court should adopt new guidelines for the determination of reasonableness in annexation cases?

Text: This Court has set forth a list of factors or so called indicia of reasonableness to guide a chancellor in his determination of the reasonableness of a city's annexation request. The Court first enumerated these factors in Dodd (citation omitted), and in later decisions has expanded the list. Matter of Enlargement of Corp. Limits of Hattiesburg, 588 So.2d at 818. The Chancellor must consider all of these factors and determine, under the entire factual setting, whether the annexation is reasonable. Matter of Enlargement of Corp. Limits of Hattiesburg, 588 So.2d at 819. Southaven contends that there no longer exists a suitable framework in this state for the judicial review of the reasonableness of municipality annexations. They maintain that a new approach is merited and suggest that this Court follow the reasonable approach set out by the Mississippi Municipal Association, MMA, in Matter of Enlargement of Corp. Limits of Hattiesburg. The proposal suggested by the MMA provides a number of criteria for this Court to consider. These include: 1) Does the municipality need to expand into surrounding territories when urban, suburban, or other non-rural growth has occurred or is expected to occur; 2) Assurance of a reasonable level of services and benefits; and, 3) Factors indicating unreasonableness. Southaven has failed to inform this Court why, or which part of, the MMA proposal should be accepted as a replacement of the Court's current twelve indicia of reasonableness, which have been used by, and expanded upon since this Court's decision in Dodd v. City of Jackson, 238 Miss. 372, 118 So.2d 319 (1960). Thus, Southaven has neglected to provide this Court with legal authority to support its argument and, as we stated in Kelly v. State, 553 So.2d 517, 521 (Miss. 1989), this prevents us from considering this claim on appeal. See also, R.C. Petroleum, Inc. v. Hernandez, 555 So.2d 1017, 1023 (Miss. 1990). This argument, or lack thereof, does not merit consideration at this time.