Area cities’ planning ‘turned upside down’ by annexation law
The mayor of Conroe denounced “forced annexation” during a recent City Council debate over plans to add homes and businesses to the city. Some residents on the outskirts of Pearland made the same point in resisting an annexation proposal.
The talking points in the two fast-growing suburbs are similar, but the discussion in Pearland is more urgent due to an accident of geography.
Because Pearland lies partly in Harris and Fort Bend Counties, which each had more than 500,000 residents based on the 2010 census, the city must comply with a new state law requiring municipalities to get voter approval before annexing populated areas. Conroe lies wholly in Montgomery County — the 2010 population was 456,000 — so it gets a pass until the 2020 census.
The sponsors of the new law, known as Senate Bill 6, argued that it’s wrong to drag people across municipal boundary lines against their will. But why is this injustice worthy of the state’s attention in Pearland, population 120,000, and not in Conroe, which has 82,000 residents?
Any population threshold for a legal requirement is arbitrary, of course, and the 500,000 level was the product of negotiation. But more is at stake here than the potentially irrational outcomes of legislative sausagemaking.
For decades, Texas cities have expanded by gradually absorbing areas within a designated zone surrounding them known as extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ. As the population in these outlying areas increases, city officials make plans to build roads, fire stations and libraries — balancing, among other factors, the potential for increased tax revenue against the burden of taking on the debt incurred by the special districts that serve unincorporated areas.
“Texas cities have been the engines for extraordinary growth, and a big piece of that has been the ability to have these ETJs and the ability to plan out the systems of city life and have annexation as an option,” said Pearland City Manager Clay Pearson. “That’s all been turned upside down” by SB6.
The system certainly hasn’t worked perfectly, and organized resistance to annexation dates back at least to Houston’s struggle with Clear Lake City in the 1970s. Growth can be a messy business.
As I’ve discussed in previous columns, Houston threw a kink into the works when it reversed a long-standing policy and essentially stopped annexing populated areas, partly in response to opposition to its acquisition of Kingwood in the 1990s. Now an estimated 1.9 million people live in unincorporated areas in Harris County alone — unable to incorporate without Houston’s permission, which the city is reluctant to give.
Conroe No. 1
But smaller, fast-growing cities such as Pearland, Conroe and Sugar Land have continued to acquire areas on their periphery. Suburbs of Houston, Dallas and Austin consistently land spots among the nation’s top 10 fastest-growing cities; Conroe, in fact, enjoyed a burst of attention when it grabbed the No. 1 ranking this year.
Pearland’s annexation of five parcels south and west of the city, including the Pearland Regional Airport, would be completed before the new law takes effect Dec. 1 if the council approves. That’s probably a good thing from the city’s perspective: Comments by residents at a recent council meeting, as reported by the Chronicle’s Jaimy Jones, indicate annexation would be a tough sell in a referendum.
“I believe this is nothing but a land grab,” said Michele Falzon, who owns property in two of the five targeted parcels.
Not a simple issue
Independent-minded Texans might well be sympathetic to the idea that cities shouldn’t annex residents against their will, but the issue isn’t that simple. Texas cities don’t have walls around them; people just outside of a municipal boundary take advantage of a city’s services and amenities every day without paying city taxes.
In addition, counties struggle to provide services to growing numbers of residents who don’t live in a city. Municipal utility districts and their various special-district cousins fill the gap to some extent, but vital functions like law enforcement fall to county governments designed to serve rural areas.
Some of the Pearlandarea residents resisting annexation get their water from wells and make campfires and raise animals on their property. It’s disingenuous, at best, for leaders of a state that worships growth to promise residents of major metropolitan areas that they can maintain their cherished rural lifestyles.