Annexation
Submitted by: elenolo
8 October 2005 - 4:15pm
What are the challenges communities face when attempting to annex landowners who are unwilling to annex?
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Many....
That's a good question. If a City government is attempting to annex land, then usually it's for a reason. Perhaps, a City is seeking to plan future development and would like to plan future infrastructure such as roads, waste water treatment or environmental reasons. Or they would just like to increase the City's tax base and attract developers.
The challenges all depend upon the reason for the annexation. Most City governments have annexation agreements with surrounding communities, but not all. These agreements allow the annexation process to be orderly and most of the time the amount of land to be annexed, when and how the annexation will occur. However, it is difficult to persuade surrounding communities to enter into annexation agreements if property owners are unwilling to support an agreement. Most of the time there must be some incentive for property owners and their authority to enter into an agreement.
Perhaps, property values would increase. Selling large parcels of land may be in their interest rather then subdividing into lots under another authority that controls the size of subdivision parcels. Other challenges include amenity and environmental considerations.
Some property owners and surrounding communities may wish to be independent from local planning controls to maintain their existing amenity and costs. Persuasive arguments to convince surrounding communities to connect future and existing lots to City water and waster water can be made. However, some communities that are not annexed like being separate from City infrastructure and associated costs.
So you can see there are many issues and most of the time each community has its own specific set of challenges.
Annexation
Most opponents from a neighboring jurisdiction have concerns over increasing densification if the area is annexed by a city. There is also fear of losing local control and the local flavor of the area. They may also not want increased regulation. They may have trailers and junk cars sitting in their yards in overgrown lots. They don't want to deal with Code Enforcement. For example, a rural area next to a city may not want to be annexed out of fear of becoming suburbia. Plus there are always the crusty old timers or desert rats (which I say affectionately) who like it the way it is. They moved to the rural area because they wanted to get away from urban or suburban areas. Also, they may have lived their since God knows when and want it to remain the same.
Most importantly, there is the issue of increased taxes and service fees that they don't want to pay because they are on the lower end of the SES spectrum or they are just plain cheap regardless of income.
In order for a city to make money off the property owners, they will either have to have increases in the property tax rate, or increase density to allow for more concentrated use which will bring in higher tax revenues. They will have to recover their costs for any new infrastructure, increased emergency services, or additional staff needed to cover the area.