LIBERTY – Taxpayers sidestepped financial quicksand when the Clay County Commission dropped the former commission’s plan to spend $20 million to build an annex the public did not want. “That annex was not going to happen. Once we got the new commission in, the project, from my point of view, was pretty much dead,” Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte said last week after the commission had acted. Although a member of the former commission, Nolte opposed the annex last year and continued to do so when the new commissioners, Megan Thompson and Jon Carpenter, took office. Thompson and Carpenter reviewed the project and voted no. “This issue was known to them before they took office,” Nolte said. “Once they got sworn in, they got all the details they would need to finalize their thoughts on it.” The decision on the annex met public expectations, he said. “This is something the public had weighed in on even in a...