By Cesar Neyoy Bajo El Sol
Plans by the city of Yuma to annex nearly 29,000 acres next to the San Luis city limit could set up a legal battle similar to one fought between the two in the 1990s, San Luis Mayor Nieves Riedel said.
Riedel said San Luis city officials are already looking at legal steps that could be taken to contest, if necessary, Yuma’s annexation of the lands.
The area in question extends from Avenue A east to Avenue 4E and from the border north to County 24th Street. In March 2019, San Luis sought to annex the same area, but could not get enough petition signatures to do so from owners of the land, much of it federally owned.
Riedel said the former San Luis City Council should not have given up trying to annex the land.
“We know that they are federal parcels that currently can’t be developed, but they are in our backyard, and we don’t know why they decided not to protect the future growth of San Luis,” Riedel said.
A potential obstacle to San Luis to challenging Yuma’s annexation of the area is an intergovernmental agreement signed in 2020 by both cities, which allows Yuma to annex all or any land east of Avenue A and a half-mile north of international boundary, and allows San Luis to annex any land west of Avenue A and a half-mile north of the border.
