ETJ, Annexation, & Municiperialism

ACIR = Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relations; (A Federal level committee).

ETJ = extra territorial jurisdiction; (land outside the city limits that the city planners regulate by ordinances that the landowners being affected had no voice or vote to agree with them)

Municiperialism = (An assumption that city government should have priority in regulating and controlling land use and behavior of area landowners and citizens with or without their consent).

In order to understand the debate about land use planning just outside of city limits and who controls it, one has to look further up the chain of discussion about local government and land use planning.

There has been an ongoing debate raging for decades about metropolitan area governance and whether it is better to consolidate governance by transferring control to the existing cities or to encourage city/county consolidation or to allow the public choice option of having a metropolitan area fragmented into many small municipalities with tiers of regional authorities managing and providing infrastructure like transportation and water and sewer. The debate rages on with no real consensus. This has always been an issue that the ACIR includes in the reports that they put out. The ACIR was formed for the purpose of trying to resolve the roles and responsibilities of the Federal, State, and local governments and how they interact with each other. The existing cities would love to be given all the power and revenue.

What ever happened to local control and public choice about which of these governmental entities is ultimately regulating what the individual can do with his property? The growing intervention by the Federal government into local land use planning is very troubling to me. And the role of municipal corporations has been transformed to where far too much authority has been transferred to them for no good reason. WHY should a governmental entity that began as a voluntary association of property owners be given the authority to dictate land use outside of their corporate limits? Because the city said so? Who ordained the cities as the highest and the best choice for local government?

Where did the idea that cities have some moral authority to become a mandatory level of government, instead of voluntary, come from? The cities are getting away with this because WE let them and we buy into the idea that all land use must be predetermined by some higher authority. The city lobbyists have successfully elevated the cities above their proper place in the Counties in the minds of the State, if not as much in the Federal government. They are doing this by selling confusion and fear to our lawmakers using lies at worst and smoke and mirrors at best. What makes them so darn special that they should be allowed to do this?

The Counties have always been the local government entity tasked with the responsibility of administering the laws and services of the State of NC. The city lobbyists want to shove the County government into the back seat and impose themselves on landowners against their will.
Why should we accept this?

If the County enforces the building code, polices health, sanitation and safety, why do property owners have to be regulated by land use plans drawn up by a small group of bureaucrats who think they know best? Are individuals incapable of deciding the best use of their own land? Are entrepreneurs incapable of responding to market demands and providing services and amenities that others will want to buy?
Changing the annexation law is enough of an issue to work on by itself and we can do that without wading into the issue of making recommendations about who should zone and regulate landowners. There are Counties in this State that are full of property owners who feel no need to have their property regulated by zoning and land use ordinances and they actively oppose it. Do we want to lose the support of this large group of people who make up the base of support for putting an end to forced annexation?

I don’t. And I don’t see any compelling reason that the annexation reform movement should start making recommendations about who should be in charge of land use planning.

Some Cities Pull Back From Forced Annexations

The Town of Cary voted to abandon it's current forced annexation attempt.

The residents of the neighborhoods organized and made a very convincing economic and environmental argument against the annexation to the Cary Council.
Mark Winston and Ferris Chandler, homeowners in Brookridge, and leaders in the organized response to the annexation, were interviewed for MyNC.com.

Cary and other cities just might also be facing up to the real costs of forcibly annexing.
Town Decreases Revenue Surplus Estimate

Goldsboro has announced that they have reconsidered the wisdom of moving forward with the next phase of their annexation plans. The cost of forced annexation is also a factor here.
Goldsboro News-Argus News: City says 'no' to more annexations ... for now

It would be nice to think that this realization on the part of City Councils that forced annexation is really a costly proposition when you factor in the long range costs will start a trend away from forced annexation.

Hey, Rocky Mount, Lexington, Asheville, Wilmington, Pinehurst, Oak Island, and others, follow their lead and join the trend!



I can dream, can't I?

Annexation Law Tweaks vs the Truth

The NCLM had their usual say in the N&O recently:
How N.C. should tweak its annexation laws

The city lobbyists claim that the law requires cities to provide a long list of urban services, but the truth is not so simply stated nor the bar necessarily so high. What do the laws require of the cities? It depends… it depends on what the city has to offer in the first place. Each annexation requires different responsibilities from the annexing city because the law allows such a wide variation regarding what the city must provide. The law allows cities that don’t even have their own fire and police departments to forcibly annex.

Before the NC Supreme Court decided in the Marvin case that the city should at least have something more than planning and tax collecting, some cities could forcibly annex without providing anything but tax collection. Garbage collection, street lighting, road maintenance, parks and recreation, police, fire, water and sewer, or any of the other services that most people equate with urban living were not necessarily required. The Marvin case changed that to where now a city initiated annexation has to provide “meaningful” service to be able to forcibly annex.
The Appeals Court later allowed the Town of Weddington to call just the addition of a contract with the County Sheriff's a "meaningful" service that qualifies the Town to forcibly annex. This is a good example of the absurdity of the law.

The city lobbyists make claims that annexing cities must provide water and sewer within two years, but the truth is _ it depends. First, if the annexing city is a provider of water and sewer service, the annexation victims have to figure out, before the city even votes to actually annex them, that in order to have water and sewer lines brought to their property they must submit an application request for the services. The property owner has five days after attending the meaningless Public Hearing, where the victims get to vent their opposition in vain, to make a request for the water and sewer. If they don’t apply, the city can make them wait as long as it suits the city to bring the service to them. There are forced annexation victims who have been, or will be, waiting for better than fifteen years for municipal water and sewer. And they’ll pay dearly for these services that they probably didn't need in most cases. It doesn’t even matter if your septic system malfunctions in the mean time. If it does, the owner gets to pay for repairs to a septic system that will eventually be replaced.

The areas that the cities can annex don’t even have to be urban enough to require higher levels of police and fire protection or municipal water and sewer. Farms can be forcibly annexed! Rural areas that aren’t farms can be forcibly annexed. What about those urban density requirements or the subdivision requirements, you say? To hear the city lobbyists tell it, the cities have to show that the area meets both density and subdivision tests. The area must be “urban in character”. Not really. The formulas in the statutes are not that strict and are filled with either/or provisions. The city planners can exercise their creativity to make a desirable area qualify while annexing around areas that the city knows will cost them more money to serve because the area actually does need some city services.

When the 1959 legislature studied the idea of giving the cities the power to forcibly annex, they justified overriding the property rights of land owners with the excuse that cities were the providers of modern services that would improve the lives of people living outside but within reach of the cities. It was the familiar argument of giving rights along with concurrent responsibilities. Now, in these “tweaks” proposed by the ‘tin cup’ municipal spokespersons is a request for more subsidies from every taxpayer in NC to pay the cities to do the job that the law gave them the responsibility to do in the first place.

The city lobbyists claim that forced annexation keeps municipal bond ratings AAA. The truth is that NC instituted something unique during the 1930’s depression in order to keep the cities from spending themselves into bankruptcy. It’s called the Local Government Commission. Cities must submit financial reports to the LGC every year showing that they have balanced books and are solvent. This is what keeps the bond ratings high.
http://www.citymayors.com/finance/nc_finance.html
There are quite a few other States that have more cities with AAA bond ratings from one of the rating agencies and they aren't "forced annexation States". A couple have no annexation by cities at all. It's time to look elsewhere for the reason that cities have AAA ratings. Perhaps it just boils down to better fiscal management in general, and that is what the LGC helps to insure in NC.

An interesting pattern can be found in these records reported to the Secretary of State regarding most forced annexations. The forced annexations seem to take affect predominately at the end of June, which is the end of the fiscal year for municipalities. Why might that be? Is it for the benefit of the new taxpayer? I doubt that is the case. It’s more likely for the benefit of the municipalities by using forced taxation to apply a temporary 'band-aid' to the balance sheets.

One NC City I know well prepared an Annexation Feasibility Report in 2001; the report included an analysis of the annexation revenues versus the incurred expenses for each of the considered areas. Many of the areas showed that the total expenses of the annexations would exceed the total revenues from 9 to 85 years.
But property tax revenue would be collected immediately while the capital expenses could be delayed for years. The annexation would bring an immediate infusion of property tax revenue into the General Fund and would certainly make their financial report to the LGC look better that year. The city could worry about the additional expenses later, when any related bond debt came due. Then the city could patch the books again with another forced annexation. This appears to be a financial shell game made possible by forced annexation that is unsustainable. Delay the day of financial reckoning, but the day will come.
Forced annexation was not supposed to be about revenue enhancement or for patching up the 'end of the year' financial picture for the cities.

The city lobbyists say that cites must grow outward or die. With this statement, they are admitting to being a failure already. If they can’t honestly balance their books at the size they currently are, I doubt being bigger would make a positive difference. It would just delay the day of reckoning and make the city a bigger failure once the inevitable end of annexable area was reached.

NC Annexation Law needs more than tweaking. The NCLM has been tweaking it to the advantage of the cities for decades. The laws are now failing to fulfill the original stated intent of the 1959 Legislative Commission. Much has changed over fifty years in the area of modernization and private provision of safe and healthy living conditions. The cities need to move forward and face the future instead of behaving and thinking like we are still living at the turn of the 20th century.
No more tweaks.
Restore the pre-1959 rights of the property owners in order to reign in the inevitable municipal abuses of this power.

A Picture of Predatory Annexation...

Fayetteville Forcibly Annexing Again!!

(click here to view)

Dennis Draughon Freelance Aug 3, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Great Editorial about Annexation Moratorium

First the latest from the out of control cities of NC:

The Village of Marvin is at it again: http://www.charlotte.com/breaking_news/story/598820.html

Wendell Commissioners oppose moratorium plan

And now the good news:

The Editor of the Freedom Communication, Inc. Newpapers has published an excellent editorial in support of a temporary moratorium on forced annexation. This editorial has appeared in a number of their newspapers, including the Kinston Free Press and the Jacksonville Daily News. We need to thank them for being consistent supporters of property rights issues for years, including their support for putting an end to forced annexation.

'Forced' shouldn't be part of policy in free society

A temporary hold on annexations?

In a free society, property owners should have the legal status that would allow them to choose whether or not to be taken into a city or town.

April 28, 2008 - 6:34PM

Some encouraging news came out of a special legislative committee that is studying municipal annexations. The study panel wants the state to enact a one-year moratorium on involuntary annexations.

While we'd like to see forced annexations banned altogether, this moratorium proposal is a step in the right direction. It's just that the idea of "force" doesn't mix very well with the idea of a free society.

It's worth noting that a number of cities and towns across North Carolina don't use the involuntary annexation powers that the General Assembly has given. They should be commended.

But those that do use such powers should stop.For decades, municipalities across the state have used this power as a growth tool.

They decide that property that is outside their corporate limits is ripe for annexation, so they vote to swallow tracts of land into the city.

The problem with this method is that those being annexed effectively have little that they can do to stop this land grab. In a free society, property owners should have the legal status that would allow them to choose whether or not to be taken into a city or town.

That actually occurs quite often in North Carolina. Developers may be building an office park or residential community and believe that their projects will be more valuable if they have city services such as water and sewer or street lights. In that case, they will petition a city for annexation.

Likewise, an established community might desire the police and fire protection that a municipality has to offer and be willing to pay the extra taxes that annexation would demand. Complaints are held to a minimum when those types of voluntary annexation occur.

However, when neighborhoods or tracts of property are taken in against the will of those being annexed, the complaints go up. People feel that they've been violated and they have.

Over the years, many municipalities - including Jacksonville - have experienced sone heated battles over forced annexation, producing hard feelings that take a while to go away.

Supporters of an involuntary annexation moratorium will likely have their hands full when the General Assembly comes back into session next month.

Expect to see municipalities and supporters of this unfair growth tool fight the moratorium, or at least weaken it so that it's rendered ineffective.

While we'd like to see an elimination of involuntary annexation altogether, having a moratorium is a good first step.

Thank you Freedom Communications Editor!!

Municipal Annexation, _ why should you care?

When most people are shopping for a home, annexation and how it might affect them is not usually what they think about. The choice of the home does often include a decision about whether the property is in the city or outside of it, but......
Why should you care about annexation?

North Carolina's Statute regarding Annexation include giving cities the power to annex property owners into the city without their consent. When the cities exercise this power, it is usually over the strong objections of the victims.
Often their biggest objection is that they are given no choice.

The property owners that are the target of forced annexation have never voted for the elected officials who are making this unilateral decision about their land and their expenses.
NC Law, as it has been since 1959, gives these property owners no voice in the decision, no standing to negotiate, or power to veto it.
This situation gives the cities no incentive at all to negotiate fair or equitable terms for becoming city residents.
These property owners are often forced to abandon perfectly good septic tanks and wells and pay very high fees and assessments to be hooked up to municipal services.
They are forced to abandon the private businesses that they contracted with for services, and are instead forced to "buy" government services.

A recent annexation by Carrboro caused the affected homeowners to be faced with a bill from the County Water & Sewer Authority of around $24,000. That would be in addition to the private contractor fees to eliminate their private infrastructure and run new lines to the government services, along with the increased property taxes and other city fees.
These were older stable neighborhoods, where many of the homeowners are retired and on fixed incomes. Their lives and financial stability are turned upside down.
This is often the case in forced annexations.
There is no real negotiation with the city to share the costs of forced annexation.
The victims of forced annexation are powerless in this exercise of authority

Unincorporated homeowners hire private business to serve their needs and are satisfied with volunteer fire services and County Sheriff's patrols. They're satisfied with asking LESS from the government in supplying their needs. They're less of a burden on their fellow taxpayers and they helped sustain private industry. Much of their taxes paid end up subsidizing cities.
Yet the proponents of forced annexation call them "free riders"! A dressed up way to demonize them as "freeloaders"!
The annexation victims have paid their County, State and Federal Taxes and have helped contribute to the welfare of all of their neighbors, including the cities. I think it would be safe to venture that cities are given more grants and subsidies from their taxes paid than any other unit of government.
If the truth were examined, it is probably not the unincorporated landowners who are the "free riders" in the equation at all.

The proponents of forced annexation have "talking points" that they give to city officials to repeat when confronted by anyone who questions this power to forcibly annex. It's pure Madison Ave PR spin with little substance.

*The problem of "free riders" (?)

If there are "free riders" to be dealt with, criticism for this state of affairs should be laid at the feet of the municipal governments that make this claim, NOT the property owners living outside of municipal boundaries.

It is in socialist style governments and communes that "free riders" can exist and become a problem, not in a government of individual freedom and responsibility.
It is the shared "public", not the "private", that creates the "tragedy of the commons".

It is the cities themselves that are creating problems by spending tax revenue on "public amenities" that the government shouldn't even be venturing into, like sports venues and recreational and entertainment facilities.
Without the constraints of the market, local governments get into financial red ink with these things. Forced annexation becomes the way to continue subsidizing losing ventures.

* "Orderly growth and sound urban development" ?

Perhaps some Legislators in 1959 came to believe that involuntary annexation would serve that purpose, but as anyone who looks at the way most NC cities are growing, it is hard to see evidence of orderly growth or very much of what many feel is sound development resulting from the cities exercising this power.
Instead, City boundaries are gerrymandered to suit the greed and ambitions of inner city bureaucrats and some developers.
High tax neighborhoods that neither need nor want the services from the cities are annexed against their will while struggling communities in need of urban services are ignored and annexed around. Combined with Extra Territorial Jurisdiction cities have power over landowners while giving them no rights. Whole communities are put into a regulatory limbo that violates American principles. Thousands of people in NC are governed without a vote.
See: Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities

As the cities go unchecked in their power to add new taxpayers and customers for themselves, the roads and schools and water and sewer systems are strained to their limits and beyond. It doesn’t make sense to force households to abandon perfectly good private waste systems and wells and add them to the demand on the municipal water and sewer systems and the health of our rivers.

Forced annexation is used to manipulate racial demographics, as documented by the Cedar Grove Center for Sustainable Communities, and admitted to in court by a Council member in Goldsboro. Goldsboro is a city that needs DOJ preclearance before annexing, yet evidently, not much has changed.
Forced annexation is "dressed up" with other excuses so it can continue.
Proponents like to point to Richmond VA as a failed city due to not having the power to annex, yet Richmond forfeited the right to annex when they tried to use annexation to recapture white voters into the city.
The Richmond case went on for nearly a decade and is chronicled in the book
"Politics of Annexation Oligarchic Power in a Southern City".

Proponents of IA include the NCLM, a lobbying organization for the municipalities, which is funded by tax revenue, claiming exemption from open records laws, while steering policy behind the scenes for municipal powers that harm property owners.
The NCLM, with the help of the National League of Cities, put protection of the power to forcibly annex and regulate property use as a top priority.
These two organizations were actively supporting and involved in the New London Development Corporation/City of New London, against Suzette Kelo and others, in the Supreme Court case that outraged the nation.
They do not apologize for their actions and have clearly established that they are enemies of property rights.
The credibility of the League should be suspect at best when they put forward their defense of forced annexation.

What else do the proponents say about forced annexation?

* "Efficiency of services"?

The Director of the NCLM says "Expanding the existing infrastructure, like water and sewer, rather than building new systems, benefits the majority of taxpayers."

Studies that have been done by and for both sides of this debate do not back that statement up.
The purported reasoning behind this statement is that it is more efficient to have one very large system of infrastructure to serve everyone rather than multiple small units serving citizens.

Can you think of a case where government or government services that have grown larger have proven to be more efficient or less costly?
Ask the Cary taxpayers about their sewer bills.
Many studies have been done on whether regionalization results in greater efficiency for services or representation. Several studies concluded that there was little to no evidence to support this claim. One study found that sewage treatment plants peaked in efficiency at around 10,000 customers. Water treatment systems peaked at 125,000 customers.

National Association of Industrial & Office Properties; "Financing Regional Infrastructure"
Dept. of Urban & Regional Planning; Univ. of Illinois _ "Government Policy & Urban Sprawl"

The debate over the most efficient size of government has proponents on both sides.
Which do you find logical when it comes to government?
One side says that the larger government consolidates services into one provider with more customers and the end result should be cheaper and more efficient. Ignored are the limitations of economies of scale.
While living in Philadelphia, the evidence I saw did not prove the claim of larger being efficient.
The other side states that smaller units of government are closer to their constituents and are responsive to the community. Multiple small units can customize services to the needs and desires of a particular segment. Multiplicity and flexibility expands the choices and options about where to live and what people want to support in "amenities". Competition for "customers" keeps cities efficient and innovative.

Does it keeps the cities “economically balanced” or maintain cities as job centers?

The proponents seem to be playing a shell game with statistics in this claim.
If the cities "capture" higher income taxpayers outside of the city, it doesn't actually change the income of those who live in the city. It just makes the average look better on paper.

If the cities reach out and "capture" employers that chose to locate outside of the city, it doesn't change that fact that they are still outside of the central city. But the city can claim to be a "job center" on paper.

This is manipulation of numbers having no real meaning or substantive change for the citizens inside or outside of the city. City residents are affected by forced annexation because they often have to provide the upfront capital costs for forced annexation and sometimes subsidize part of the cost of extending unneeded services to established areas.

Forced annexation allows cities to "balance revenue distribution"

Think about what this is actually saying and admitting.
This claim is often made along side of the claim that if cities are not permitted to expand geographically they will fail and deteriorate. Is this argument logical?

The proponents are admitting that in order to stay alive, they must be allowed to reach out continuously to "capture" more taxpayers and revenue to "distribute" money from the outskirts to the center. Proponents thmselves use the word "capture" when they advocate this idea.
Often, the city is trying to finance amenities that the "captured" have little interest in or don't need.

All cities will reach a limit of outward growth sooner or later. Are they doomed to fail then? If this is true, should we allow cities to reach enormous proportions and then deal with the inevitable failure?

Wouldn't it be far better to limit the size of cities to smaller, less costly failures?
Or is the real problem found in a failure to manage municipal finances in a responsible manner?

Is forced annexation enabling cities to be fiscally irresponsible? Rather like someone with a stolen credit card? Are the city officials being enabled to view their surrounding neighbors like a "money tree" in their back yard?

*Forced Annexation Maintains a High Bond Rating ?

Think about what this is saying!!
It's no wonder though, that the proponents claim that forced annexation keeps the cities bond ratings high. When a bond issuer can see that a city can just reach out and add more taxpayers at will to pay the debts, of course this would make these cities look like less of a credit risk Does that make it the right thing to do?
Imagine how good your credit rating would be if you could claim as many of your neighbors assets as you wanted as future revenue that can be tapped at will.

Isn't it enough for the cities to be able to annex willing landowners to increase their tax base?
Is it necessary for cities have the power to annex unwilling landowners also?

Hundreds of homes that were affordable before annexation suddenly become unaffordable at the whim of the nearby city. Then the city officials wring their hands about the lack of affordable housing in their municipality, created most likely by their own policy decisions.
People have always been able to buy more for their money in land and home outside of cities and this has been a benefit to families with limited resources. It has meant the difference between renting and buying, between private access to land where their children can play instead of cramped quarters and unsecure public spaces for their children. The cities should not be allowed to take this opportunity, that is part of the American Dream, away from people.

Neighborhoods that are targeted for forced annexation are often older established neighborhoods. There may have been a time when many housholds outside of cities had no indoor plumbing or electricity, but those days are behind us for the most part. Old and new technology has made it possible to live far from cities and be self sufficient while enjoying a very modern lifestyle. Dependence on city living for modernity or even jobs is evidently becoming obsolete.
The justification for extending municipal services is narrowing down to being simply a way to support higher and higher densities. The very thing that people move from the cities to get away from.

The worst abuse of the power to annex at the cities discretion is the fact that the neighborhoods that cities seem to want are the ones that don't need the "urban services".
The neighborhoods that the cities annex around are often the ones that do need the services.
Too often agressive forced annexation is used to wage border wars with neighboring cities.
This is abuse of power.

It's all about the money and power. It's about the power and money.
Not what the cities can do for the property owners.
It's what the city wants to force the property owners to do for it.

As long as municipalities have the power to make city residents out of unwilling landowners by force, every homebuyer needs to care about annexation.