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Thank you, Bill, for sharing this. As a Bethel Township resident, we moved here for the rural feel and agricultural base. Growing up on a farm, this was a logical place to land for my husband and I. We have loved this township for the past 30 years, and I work and volunteer here as well. Our townships make up 1/3 of the state of Ohio, yet we have no protection from bordering cities from being annexed. This is a problem at the state level that needs addressed. Huber Heights is quickly gobbling up yet another 300 acres of our township to put another 1480 residences in, overburdening our school system yet maintaining that it is representing future "Huber residents". We have a plethora of local residents who have attended Huber Council meetings continuously, speaking at those meetings and urging council to reconsider what they are doing to our township and why we live here in the first place. As Huber marches towards Route 40, where will they stop? When we passed the 3.8 mil levy to put in the water and sewer lines down 40, we were told that would prevent any further annexation, as they could not cross the w/s lines. Then the state quietly changed annexation law, adding in the Type 2,3,4 Annexation law and that cemented our future. We have to get the local townships, the county and the state township organizations to band together and plead to the state powers to change this annexation law. They aren't making any more land, last I checked, and these annexations are killing farm communities, decreasing the amount of land farmed, adding to the food shortage/insecurities, and stressing small schools. Many feel that if a municipality wants to annex into another county and school system, they should absorb those students into their own school system. One merely has to look at Bethel's rate of teacher loss and overcrowded classrooms to see this - our brand new elementary, only open one year, was already over capacity in its first year open. We simply cannot handle any more growth due to being annexed so Huber can get their population to the 50k mark for more perks and benefits for them. It is likened to a hostile takeover.....

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I learned a lot, reading this. Thanks for writing it.

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Thanks JB! Much appreciated!

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