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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 101 / 05-0818 Filed October 27, 2006 CITY OF ASBURY, IOWA, Appellee, vs. THE IOWA CITY DEVELOPMENT BOARD, Appellant. and CITY OF DUBUQUE, Intervenor-Appellant. ________________________________________________________________________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Dubuque County, Lawrence H. Fautsch, Judge.

A city appeals the district court's decision nullifying the city's annexation of adjacent land. REVERSED.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Michael H. Smith, Assistant Attorney General, for appellant Iowa City Development Board.

Frank Murray Smith, of Frank Smith Law Office, Des Moines, and Barry A. Lindahl, Dubuque, for appellant City of Dubuque.

Thomas Henderson, John F. Fatino, and Karin M. Sinnard of Whitfield & Eddy, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellee.

2 STREIT, Justice. When does a carrot become a stick? Competing for common

ground, the City of Asbury objects to the tactics the City of Dubuque used to voluntarily annex land. After the City Development Board 1

(CDB) approved Dubuque's annexation application, Asbury appealed to the district court arguing Dubuque's application should have been dismissed because Dubuque coerced property owners into consenting to the annexation by offering them tax and other financial benefits conditioned on each property owner's consent. In response, Dubuque

argued the offered benefits merely encouraged property owners to consent to annexation. The district court agreed with Asbury and found Dubuque's annexation process invalid. Because we find Dubuque's

tactics were not prohibited by law, we reverse. I. Facts and Prior Proceedings Asbury is west of Dubuque. An irregular gap exists between the two cities. The territory at issue in this case is between the western

boundary of Dubuque and the southern boundary of Asbury. Callahan Construction, which owns approximately 114 acres of unincorporated land in this area, asked Dubuque to annex its land in order to facilitate the development of a housing subdivision. Dubuque also received annexation requests from various members of the Bahl family, who separately own several parcels of land totaling approximately 408 acres, which is most of the remaining unincorporated land between Dubuque and Asbury. Dubuque could not annex the Bahl and Callahan properties without also annexing the surrounding parcels of property.
City Development Board is the administrative board established to exercise administrative jurisdiction over annexation petitions." Dunn v. City Dev. Bd., 623 N.W.2d 820, 821 (Iowa 2001) (citing Iowa Code

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