Alice Pickering
Wyoming Area Reporter

Wyoming City Council on Tuesday, Aug. 15 authorized going ahead with an appeal of Judge Michael T. De Courcyís decision to deny the Writ of Mandamus.

The decision is related to the joint city and township merger request. Last month, De Courcy denied the writ and in effect referred the merger decision back to the Office of Administrative Hearings.

The city and township sought an order to require the state board to act on the orderly annexation request of the two Wyomings and not allow Chisago City and Stacy annexation bids to come into play.

By a 5-0 vote last week, council members agreed to take the decision to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

According to Mayor Sheldon Anderson, Wyoming Town Board supervisors agreed to the same action at the Aug. 8 town board meeting.

Contacted later, Anderson said the cost of the appeal to the city and the township, will be $2000 each.

City and township attorney Tim Sime of Rinke-Noonan was ready to file papers about the matter Wednesday, Aug. 16, but is waiting for a certified copy of the judgeís decision before filing the appeal.

It is estimated that there could be a wait of between six and 12 months for the appeal process, but it could take as little time as three months, according to information available to Anderson.

On Monday of this week, Sime said a hearing might come sooner by going through the appeal process rather than waiting for the OAH to act.

However, he did not know when the appeal hearing would be scheduled.

Findings in the denial suggest that De Courcy believes the OAH should hear all the petitions on equal footing before rendering its decision on the annexation itself.

Sime thought that the OAH would be addressing the Chisago City and Stacy annexation petitions before hearing the Wyoming City/Township merger request. It was by petition in 2004 when Chisago City annexed a portion of Wyoming Township.

The appeal process may be about a month shorter, but a decision may not come until spring of next year.

ìNo matter what we do, it will be into 2007 before we get a decision,î Sime said.

The court case was filed by the city and township after the boundary adjustment unit declared it would combine the city and township orderly annexation request with separate hostile annexation cases filed by Chisago City and Stacy.

In the district court case, Wyoming Township and the city of Wyoming argued that because their petition was filed prior to the moves by Stacy and Chisago City, it should be acted upon first.

Judge De Courcy, in his ruling, denied the request based in part on ìambiguousî state statutes that refer to joint resolutions for orderly annexation and conflicting petitions.

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