“Sometimes I just sit back and say, ?I can?t believe this,? ” says Aberdeen golf course owner Sam Smedley, as he rubs his hand over his face in obvious exasperation.
Smedley is immersed in a battle to maintain a decision of Aberdeen City Council to annex more than 500 acres of property into the city, a battle where his opponents are his neighbors ? people he has claimed to have known for as many as 15 years.
At present, Smedley waits while his neighbors work to gather enough names on a petition that would send the city council?s decision to referendum.
However, the opposition Smedley faces is not what has him exacerbated, but rather what he claims to have offered his neighbors on Locksley Manor Drive in order to gain the support for a residential housing development he would build next to his Wetlands Golf Course.
“I offered to pay for their water and sewer hook-up fees. I offered to pay for their [city] taxes for the next five years. I offered them lifetime memberships with the golf course ? with the use of a cart,” Smedley recounts, just to name a few concessions he offered.
Frances R. Randles, a resident of Locksley Manor, responded to questions about these negotiations via e-mail, claiming to speak on behalf of her neighbors who are opposed to the annexation.
“Our reasoning behind concessions was to make the best of a bad situation,” Randles explained.
Randles did confirm that Smedley made these offers, but in the end it seemed to residents of Locksley Manor Drive that Smedley was “stringing” them along, that he “talked a good game,” but when it came to putting things in a binding contract, Smedley faltered. At the end of the negotiations process, Randles said it was Smedley who walked away.
“Every time they came back to me wanting more,” Smedley said, but he has hopes that he and his neighbors can still reach an agreement. “What they don?t realize is that if this [the annexation] is successful, everything I have offered goes away.”
Registered voters of Aberdeen have 45 business days from June 19 to gather signatures from 20 percent of the city?s voters to force the issue to referendum.
