Does Fargo really mean it?
After previous false starts pretending to do so, the Fargo City Commission actually voted Monday night not to pursue forced annexation of land near Harwood — the future site of data company Applied Digital’s new facility. Whether the city really means it, based upon recent history, remains to be seen.
Fargo has been engaged in repeated attempts, over the past several months, to force annexation of the roughly 300-acre parcel, as we’ve written. The first attempts were overt, but unflattering media reports and firm opposition from both Applied Digital and the city of Harwood resulted in continued — although covert — attempts to pull the land into its city limits.
Most recently, Fargo publicly announced an agreement with Harwood, under which it had renounced its attempts at forced annexation. As we reported, the only problem was that not only had Harwood not agreed to any such resolution, its city leaders hadn’t even seen or heard about the proposal before Fargo announced it as an ostensibly altruistic move and a mutually approved agreement.
When the actual legal document was later delivered to Harwood and the terms were revealed (in return for dropping its attempted forced annexation, Fargo’s attorney had drafted an agreement which would have required that other land, also lying in Harwood’s extraterritorial zoning area, be exclusively annexed to Fargo, with Harwood renouncing all rights to annex it), it was summarily rejected.
After Harwood Mayor Blake Hankey revealed the chicanery and disclosed that the owner of the new parcel Fargo apparently coveted also wanted nothing to do with his property becoming part of Fargo, the Harwood City Council unanimously rejected Fargo’s proposal. Not only was it not a done deal at the time of Fargo’s announcement, it hadn’t even been seen, and it was a dead deal soon after it was.
Various local news reports of this week’s meeting indicated that even the tone of Fargo’s vote to “back off” (as Harwood’s mayor had bluntly instructed them to do at a previous meeting) was still anything but regretful or circumspect. Mayor Tim Mahoney reportedly continued to express that Fargo was only trying to help, because he believed that the smaller Harwood could not provide the services to Applied Digital that the larger Fargo could (no mention of the higher taxes and regulatory morass which originally drove Applied Digital toward Harwood). As a further parting blow, it was reportedly announced that mediation would ensue (per the process outlined in state law) over another parcel near Harwood which Fargo covets and apparently seeks to annex.
Commissioner Dave Piepkorn also expressed the arrogance and disdain for any hamlet of smaller population near it which has so plagued Fargo’s image, according to a report by KVRR TV. It quotes him as vowing violation the cities’ mutual aid agreement, over the matter, by denying the future assistance of Fargo’s Fire Department:
“The HAZMAT team is Fargo. And so that’s what they’re trained in so if they think they’re going to call for us to go into a building where we don’t know what’s in it, and jeopardize our firefighters, hell no. So good luck with that,” said Piepkorn.
Fargo Commissioner Dave Piepkorn (per KVRR TV report)
Neighbors should be able to cooperate and work well with one another. The problem is that Fargo’s history should make all neighbors wary. For Harwood, if not history, at least recent behavior, has clearly, but sadly, showed its larger neighbor’s true colors and created that wise apprehension.