The House Appropriations Committee will hear House Bill 524, Annexation Omnibus Changes on Tuesday July 21 at 8:30 in Room 643 (audio feed of the meeting is available here). Here are five key points on annexation I wish the committee would consider:
1. Vote:
Before a property owner is charged more taxes for services they may or may not need or want, they should be allowed to vote on whether they want to be annexed. The vote should be fair without burdensome petition requirements, unrealistic timetables, include only affected parties and held when other local elections are decided. Two-thirds (67 percent) of states that have annexation of unincorporated areas allow a vote or approval by the affected property owners. A good explanation of the referendum currently in the bill can be found here.
2. Require Municipalities to Pay for Water and Sewer Infrastructure:
A city initiates a forced annexation–it therefore should be their responsibility to pay for the water and sewer lines necessary to provide the services annexation victims might neither want nor need. These costs can be $15,000 per household or more and may be the biggest single problem with annexation. Few people, especially those on fixed incomes can afford these kinds of expenses, for services they don?t even need and in some cases the additional expenses have led to foreclosures on those properties.
3. Duplication of Services:
The primary purpose of annexation is to promote sound urban growth through the provision of services that offer a meaningful and significant benefit to the annexed property owners. However, with forced annexation, areas that don’t need one single service are being forcibly annexed, hardly providing a meaningful or significant benefit. A municipality should be required to show that a majority of property owners need just one meaningful service. If this minimal requirement is met, the annexation could progress.
4. Oversight:
A county should provide annexation oversight. County commissioners represent both city residents and the citizens being annexed in the unincorporated areas and are accountable to both. Oversight should include a thorough evaluation of the merits of an annexation, not just the financial feasibility. It should include protecting the best interests of all effected parties and ensuring statutory compliance. The municipality that is initiating the annexation should bear the burden of demonstrating that the annexation has value. Public hearings and comment periods should be well advertised and allow adequate time for all parties to participate in the process.
5. Allow Amendments on the Floor:
The long and strictly written title is simply a ploy to keep anyone from amending the bill once it gets on the floor, chilling deliberative debate and quashing representative democracy by prohibiting all members from fully participating in annexation reform decisions. Open and full debate is impossible when amendments are not allowed. And without full participation the process is not transparent, open or representative of what citizens want.
See also Daren’s Spotlight report, Forced Annexation in N.C.: A question-and-answer guide and Hood’s recent Daily Journal for more.
