The City of Fishers has wrapped up a series of six open houses providing information about a proposed annexation of what is now an unincorporated part of Hamilton County close to the Madison and Hancock county borders.
During a July 29 open house at the downtown Fishers Municipal Center, Chief of Staff Jordin Alexander and department directors greeted people, walked them through the annexation process, answered questions and listened to concerns.
Alexander said attendance at the open houses has varied, but there were at least a couple that drew a pretty good crowd. Most concerns focused on taxes and sanitary sewer systems.
“There’s a lot of people that are on septic systems and a lot of people are curious if we’re going to force them to go on to sanitary,” she said. “We actually will not force anyone to go off of septic unless that septic is failing and beyond repair. But we have had some other individuals actually come to the meeting saying, ‘Hey, I do have a septic that is failing or going to be, can we explore connecting?’ And our engineers, they work with residents that are interested in that.”
Alexander said the city does have sanitary sewer infrastructure installed in the roadways for the proposed areas to be annexed. Those areas are, roughly, between Cyntheanne Road and the county line from East 101st Street to East 113th, with some carryover outside those roads.
The main concern has been taxes, though, and residents in the annexed area would see a tax increase. Alexander noted that there is a tax calculator online at fishersin.gov/annexation for people to plug in their address and see exactly how their taxes would change. She said the newly annexed area would have its own tax rate that, for example, would not include existing debt payments.
Alexander said there have been some positive responses, as well — many are happy that Fishers Police Department would be responding to law enforcement calls, because it is closer than the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office. And then there are a lot of neutral questions about practical matters, such as would they have to switch water providers? They won’t — in fact, some of the residents get water from nearby Fortville and would be able to continue that service.
There was some question about whether Fortville would actually try to annex the same area, even though that would mean crossing county lines. Alexander said to accomplish that, Fortville would have had to get approval from the Hamilton County Commissioners.
“Hamilton County Commissioners have indicated that they don’t really have an interest in allowing that,” she said, adding that the Fortville officials who initially proposed a competing annexation process were not familiar with the history of the area’s development. “I don’t think they were fully aware that we’ve kind of been tracking toward this for a while now.”
During an earlier interview, Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness explained there has been a longheld understanding that those areas eventually would be annexed by the City of Fishers. The developers of the Vermillion and Flat Fork neighborhoods agreed during the development process that the properties would fall under a waiver so future owners couldn’t legally object to annexation.
The proposed annexation area includes about 950 parcels and about 75 percent of those have waivers attached.
Fall Creek Township Trustee Doug Allman was one of the citizens attending the July 29 open house. He doesn’t live in the area proposed to be annexed but said the township-managed Fall Creek Woods Natural Area would be part of the annexation.
Allman said annexation would, from what he can tell, be beneficial to the township’s property, in part because he would be able to work with the city to draft ordinances regulating what kind of activities can happen at the park.
“It will help us if we have some issues out there, so it’d be beneficial to the park,” he said. “And then, right now, local law enforcement is the sheriff’s department, so Fishers is probably a better first response.”
With the conclusion of the required open houses, the next step is for the Fishers City Council to introduce an ordinance and adopt a fiscal plan. That most likely will happen during the council’s Aug. 19 meeting. A public hearing is planned for October, with a final vote likely to take place in December.
Residents who do not have waivers attached to their property would then have until May 2025 to file objections.
For more details, visit fishersin.gov/annexation.
