Hundreds of Spencer countians pushing back after being told they live in Shelby County

TAYLORSVILLE, Ky. — For 200 years, life has been pretty quiet in Spencer County.

Formed from parts of Nelson, Shelby and Bullitt counties, the rural community once thrived on dairy and tobacco farming. Churches and banks popped up on nearly every corner.

As time passed and farms were sold in sections, developers built small subdivisions.

Spencer County became a bedroom community, where residents escaped the big city of Louisville.

It's where they voted. It's where they sent their kids to school. It's where they paid their taxes.

But at the end of April, more than 200 residents received a letter from the Shelby County clerk telling them they weren't residents of Spencer County, after all.

The letter said they're actually Shelby countians.

They were told their voting registration had been removed from the county's books and moved to Shelby County.

They thought it was a joke. Maybe a ploy to steal their votes, maybe a money grab.

Then came a letter from Shelby County's property valuations administrator, to let them know taxes were higher in their new county.

Now the residents of Spencer, um, Shelby, er ...

Now, these Spencer-Shelby County residents are confused and a bit angry.

They want to know if the state doesn't see you as a Spencer County resident, and you don't see yourself as a Shelby County resident, where do you call home?

How does land that has never changed, besides the things built upon it, suddenly become land by a different name?

But really, they want to know: How in the heck does this happen? And what can they do about it?

Their first step will be to create a petition to reverse the change. Ultimately, though, where they call home will be decided by their new neighbors — the people of Shelby County.

"For 27 years, I’ve been a member of this county," said Roger Royalty, whose Spencer (now Shelby) County house is caught up in the boundary change. "And I refuse to leave it."

'All of a sudden, I live in Shelby County?'

Tony Sweazy looked at the glossy mailer in early May.

"Vote for me," it said.

He can't remember if it was for the sheriff or the school board. He just remembers it was for some political office in Shelby County.

"I looked at it and said, 'Well, I don't live in Shelby County,'" and threw the mailer in the trash.

Unlike his neighbors, Bud and Betty Ridgeway, who live directly across the street, or Royalty and his wife Linda, who live just across a pond, Sweazy hadn't received a letter dated April 23 from Tony Harover, the Shelby County clerk, informing him the State Board of Elections had found an "error" in the Spencer-Shelby County boundary when using updated mapping technology.

"Regardless of how or when the voter registered, this must be corrected upon discovery," Harover's letter stated.

That error was that more than 100 properties, including 240 registered voters and about 40 children, were technically inside the county boundary of Shelby County, not Spencer.

The State Board of Elections found the discrepancy during legislative redistricting, when advanced mapping technology uncovered residential areas in the "physical territories of Shelby County, not in Spencer County where the voters residing in the area were registered."

Had the voter registration not been updated to reflect the correct county, the clerks of those counties could have been charged with a felony, per a letter to the clerks from the board.

It doesn't matter that 25 years ago when Sweazy found a piece of land in the country and built his home on a one-acre plot, everything he did ― from the building inspection to the electrical permits― went through Spencer County.

His car registration? Spencer County.

The deed to his land? Spencer County.

"For 25 years, I've been paying Spencer County taxes, and now, all of a sudden, I live in Shelby County?" he wondered.

On May 22, the affected residents got the letter from Shelby County's PVA about their now-higher tax — a 15% increase.

State Rep. James Tipton represents Spencer County in the legislature, but he's also been a farmer and Spencer County resident all his life.

"It started a snowball effect," Tipton said of the Board of Elections' findings.

For instance, the affected residents on the northwest edge of the county boundary are no longer his constituents.

With each passing day, Spencer County Judge-Executive Scott Travis watches this snowball turn into a snow boulder, uncovering county problems big and small.

"If you call me about a stray dog, which animal control is going to come?" Travis asked. "Who’s going to pick up my trash?"

Shelby County Judge-Executive Dan Ison told the affected residents in a meeting in June it would be "very costly" to put additional first responders in their area since there are no direct-access roads to their properties in Shelby County.

"You have to drive 6 or 7 miles through Spencer County to get to these Shelby County properties," Travis said.

In a meeting between Spencer and Shelby emergency management officials to find out how much time it would take for Shelby to service those properties in an emergency, Travis was told "probably 30-plus minutes, not counting traffic."

For now, there is an interlocal agreement. Spencer emergency services will continue to serve those properties.

Ison understands the residents' concerns — and their outrage.

"I want those people to remain where they are," Ison told The Courier Journal in July. "I know if I had bought a home in what I thought was Spencer County and had raised my family there ... I would hate to think that, no, I really didn't live in Spencer County. That I was always a Shelby countian."

The affected residents plan to prepare a petition that would place the issue on the November ballot in Shelby County, asking voters to agree that they should remain Spencer residents.

"I would totally support Spencer County's effort ...," Ison said of the petition effort. "I’m going to encourage (Shelby voters) to vote for the petition that would allow the citizens, over 100 homes, to remain as Spencer County residents."

Ison believes the current situation stems from decisions made decades ago.

"To me, it's a mishandled situation from previous administrations that allowed a subdivision to be built in Shelby County that led the people to believe — and the filings with the PVA to be shown — as Spencer County," he said.

Neither Tipton nor the judge executives in either county are clear on which office in Frankfort found the mapping discrepancy.

"Who says this line is by-golly absolute?" Travis asked. "Who says it’s this way or the highway?"

40 Spencer County students now live in Shelby County

Mina Schelling flipped through aerial photos of her subdivision at her kitchen table.

"So, right here is Spencer," she said pointing to Hochstrasser Road. "Our (school) bus stop is right here."

She pointed to the front edge of her property.

"Technically, it's in Shelby County," she said. "But all the kids walk up to my house to get on the bus to go to Spencer County."

"I know they’ve said you vote where you lay your head down at night," Schelling said. "If I have to go and pitch a tent in the backyard that’s in Spencer County, I will do it."

She and her husband moved to the house five years ago for the school system.

Based on the new maps, Spencer County schools superintendent Willie Foster said about 40 of the district's students are technically Shelby County residents.

"There are two things you can mess with that are pretty personal: your home and your child," Foster said. "Our job is to do whatever we can to help and support these families getting information and processing that one step at a time."

In a June 3 letter, Foster told parents that transportation to impacted areas will not change, and bus routes will remain active but may be adjusted due to capacity.

Spencer County schools will allow any of the affected students to continue in the district for the upcoming school year. If a non-resident wanted to attend school in Shelby County, the tuition would be $3,200.

Schelling is worried that if nothing is resolved and they do become permanent Shelby County residents, the Spencer County school board could vote to charge a similar tuition.

"I cannot afford that," Schelling said. "Had I wanted to do that, I would have put them in St. Michaels down the street, like some of our neighbors have. For us, Spencer County Schools was the biggest sense of community."

She was looking to run for the school's PTA. Now she isn't sure what to do.

Shelby voters may get the final say

Rep. Tipton walked down Main Street in Taylorsville, a folder stuffed with property drawings and deeds tucked under his arm.

When not working on his farm in the last month, he's been in the deed room in Spencer County, getting the exact legal language of each plot of land.

While the deeds show that the land is in Spencer County, Tipton says if you look at the county map in either PVA office, the land has always been in Shelby County — another complicating factor for the residents.

The residents will need that legal language to create the petition that says they want to stay in Spencer County.

The petition will have to be signed by 51% of the affected residents and placed on Ison's desk the first week of August. From there, Ison can place the issue on the November ballot.

But even if it's successful, the Kentucky Association of Counties told the county judge execs the legislature will likely have to take action since county boundaries are part of state law.

This means the Spencer County decision will be left to Shelby County citizens — and lawmakers in Frankfort.

"The people who are voting on this are the people who aren't going to care about this," Sweazy said. "Why in the world if I live somewhere in the middle of Shelby County would I care about a couple of houses down here?"

According to language added to the Kentucky Constitution in 1891: "There shall be no territory stricken from any county unless a majority of the voters living in such territory shall petition for such division."

In 1963, a portion of Russell County, known as the Jabez Precinct, petitioned to leave Russell and join Pulaski County. The state Court of Appeals ordered the county judge to place it on the ballot in 1964, but today, Jabez remains part of Russell County, separated by Lake Cumberland from the rest of the county and immediate emergency services.

Sitting at the kitchen table inside Bud and Betty Ridgeway's home, the neighbors recently discussed the sticks and stones they have called home when Bud proposed a solution.

"You could always take (your) pontoon, put a house on it and call it Spencer County," he said to Tony Sweazy.

"Can I back it in the pond in your backyard?" Sweazy asked, laughing. "Well, no wait, your yard is in Shelby County."

An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the results of the 1960s effort to change the Russell/Pulaski county border.

S tephanie Kuzydym is an enterprise and investigative reporter. She can be reached at skuzydym@courier-journal.com . Follow her for updates at @stephkuzy .

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Hundreds of Spencer countians pushing back after being told they live in Shelby County