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No Doubt

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: March 21, 2009

This is a time of great doubt and uncertainty. At such a moment it is good to have something on which we can all hang our hats. Last week, the city of Oldsmar received a message on which all the hats in town could be hung: the residents of East Lake Woodlands do want to join you.

In Pinellas County's maiden election entirely conducted via snail-mail postal ballot, the folks in the gated community rejected Oldsmar's offer to annex them. The city was also proposing to bring within its boundaries some prime commercial property, a shopping plaza and a defense-contracting site.

The results of the balloting were 92 percent against annexation and 8 percent in favor. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, you have to go to an oil-rich Third World klepto-state or radical theocracy to find that sort of electoral margin. These days, most elections seemed to be decided by a handful of absentee ballots that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

The annexation referendum in East Lake Woodlands was even more remarkable because 62 percent of the eligible voters took part. That is two to three times the number of people who trudge to the polls to vote in conventional standalone special elections.

The results of the Oldsmar annexation vote suggests the people pushing to have the Palm Harbor area incorporated knew what they were doing when they decided to drop the East Lake area from their proposed city.

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