By Adam Aasen
The City of Carmel is still trying to resolve a lawsuit from a southwest Clay Township citizens’ organization that is opposed to how the annexation agreement has been implemented.
The organization, NOAX, said it hopes to reach an agreement soon.
NOAX, led by its president Fred Yde, filed a breach of contract lawsuit last year claiming that the city broke its agreement to provide certain services after the forced annexation of Southwest Clay Township in 2004. It appeared court mediation would occur soon, but Yde said they’ve postponed the mediation in order to find some common ground.
“We have established some things that we do agree upon and we’ve established some things that we don’t agree upon and we are in the process of finding common ground,” he said. “We want to minimize the amount of time and expense in the legal system.”
In May 2005, the city reached a settlement agreement with Southwest Clay which was approved by a 59 percent margin. But NOAX claims that many promises in the agreement haven’t been kept, including drainage improvements, properly resurfaced streets and improved connectivity between sidewalks and paths. Curently, Yde said both sides are closest to agreement on drainage and furthest apart on resurfacing streets.
Yde said they will have a third-party engineering expert meet with the city and possibly City Councilor Carol Schleif – who is a representative of NOAX and named in the lawsuit – to go over the solutions for the drainage issues.
Yde said he will have another meeting to thoroughly analyze the street conditions in the area. All of this will occur in the next few weeks and then both parties will convene to try to reach an agreement, which they would then bring to the court for approval.
Officials from the city’s legal department did not respond to requests for comment.
