We’re not surprised that a proposal by Ranier to annex Jameson and French additions is moving forward.

What we are surprised about is that the action to take this proposal to the next step was not conducted at a public meeting.

The Ranier City Council is scheduled to consider the proposal at a meeting Monday. Should the council adopt an annexation resolution and agreement, the Koochiching County Board will consider action Tuesday. If both governments approve the agreement and resolution, the proposal will go to the Office of Administrative Hearings, which will schedule a public hearing.

Clearly, there are strong opinions on both sides of the issue. And all points of view deserve to be heard and considered.

The Ranier City Council has already been criticized for not discussing the issue more at public meetings. And even county commissioners at a public informational meeting held May 4 said there were questions about the proposal that should be answered.

There may have been discussion about the proposal at committee meetings, and we understand that area residents brought the issue to the Ranier Council at the May 18 meeting, but neither the Ranier City Council nor the Koochiching County Board put the issue on the agenda of any regular meetings that followed the May 4 meeting.

The Ranier City Council played right into the hands of critics by not taking action at a public meeting stating it would publish the notice of intent to act on the resolution and agreement. And the Koochiching County Board followed suit.

We’re not saying whether annexation is a good idea, but we are saying that more public action about the proposal would have allowed citizens to stay on top of the issue. Instead, it could appear that the groups were trying to avoid discussion on the proposal. We hope that’s not the case.

Regular meetings of both the Ranier City Council and Koochiching County Board occurred just after the notice of intent was published June 12.

Instead, the notice of intent should have been included on each of the agendas of those regular meetings the next week. Reasonable discussion on the matter could have been controlled at those meetings.

Regardless of the outcome of these upcoming meetings, we think both the county board and Ranier City Council deserve a little criticism for not taking action during regular public meetings to publish the intent to consider the proposal.