Resident asks board to investigate alleged deannexation and voter removal tied to developer

In public comment July 17, a longtime township resident, A.D. Heath, asked the board to place an item on a future agenda and pursue legal review of allegations that voters at a large apartment complex were deannexed without their knowledge.

Heath told the board he had read a Howard Hughes Corporation letter describing developers’ historic intent to shift tax burdens to commercial properties and deannex residential land when it was sold for residential use. He said the letter discussed a property at 8906 Pines — a large apartment building with 427 units and more than 250 registered voters — and suggested the property’s deannexation could be taking place without residents’ awareness.

Heath also read an excerpt of sworn trial testimony from April 1, 2014, by a Phil Grant referencing a complaint of fraudulent voter registrations that Heath said had been filed by township staff years earlier. Heath said those prior actions led to his own conviction for illegal voting in the past and asked the board to “file a complaint and get this investigated legally whether it’s right, proper, legal for a special district…to DNX voters at their will in collusion with the special district and the developer.”

The item was presented as public comment; the board did not take formal action that night beyond hearing the request. Staff and the board did not make factual findings during the meeting and did not commit to specific next steps on the record.