San Antonio weighs annexation plan

[Chase Unperson]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/san-anto...DS=san+antonio

San Antonio is moving ahead with plans to annex as much as 66 square miles around it, a land grab that would add as many as 200,000 people to the city and potentially make it the nation’s fifth-largest metropolis.

The San Antonio City Council this month voted in favor of conducting a fiscal analysis of the proposed annexation. The process requires further council approval and the annexation would take about four years to complete. City leaders say the move would allow San Antonio, currently the nation’s seventh-largest city with 1.4 million people, to better manage growth and remain economically vibrant.

If the annexation occurs, San Antonio could break into the ranks of the top five biggest U.S. cities, behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston and ahead of Philadelphia and Phoenix, now Nos. 5 and 6......


saw this in the WSJ. Amazing that Texas will have 2 of the 5 largest cities in the US.

[The ATX]

I know the haters are going to complain about sprawl. But San Antonio is very fortunate to be able to do this instead of being surrounded by suburbs that it can't tax.

[j korzeniowski]

Originally Posted by Hill Country

I know the haters are going to complain about sprawl. But San Antonio is very fortunate to be able to do this instead of being surrounded by suburbs that it can't tax.

you're damn right i'll complain. and give me a break about texas having these "large cities". didn't houston annex a bunch of land for years? helps when these cities can artificially inflate their population numbers.

ridiculous.

edit: "But San Antonio is very fortunate to be able to do this instead of being surrounded by suburbs that it can't tax." makes less sense the more i read it. what cities can tax other surrounding cities?

[dc_denizen]

good for them, most cities should do it.

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by j korzeniowski

you're damn right i'll complain. and give me a break about texas having these "large cities". didn't houston annex a bunch of land for years? helps when these cities can artificially inflate their population numbers.

ridiculous.

edit: "But San Antonio is very fortunate to be able to do this instead of being surrounded by suburbs that it can't tax." makes less sense the more i read it. what cities can tax other surrounding cities?

If San Antonio didn't annex the area it would eventually turn into a bunch of self governing suburbs. How is that a better option?

Your main concern seems to be where cities rank on some population list. We all know that Metro population is the true measurement of a city, and not the city proper population. This doesn't change the Metro population. Texas Metros are growing fast because people are moving there - not because the central cities are annexing.

[Pinion]

San Antonio drops down to 27th when talking about metro area according to wikipedia. And metro is all that really matters. I live in a city of 50,000 that's really a city of 2,400,000 in half the physical area of metro San Antonio.

Annexation is not good. That is how you end up with people like Rob Ford as mayor. I'll take my 22 small cities any day.

[Chef]

Originally Posted by Pinion

Annexation is not good. That is how you end up with people like Rob Ford as mayor. I'll take my 22 small cities any day.

This was what I was thinking too. The last thing I want is for Michelle Bachmann to be mayor of Minneapolis.

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by Pinion

...Annexation is not good. That is how you end up with people like Rob Ford as mayor. I'll take my 22 small cities any day.

I blame the alcohol...and crack.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Pinion

San Antonio drops down to 27th when talking about metro area according to wikipedia. And metro is all that really matters. I live in a city of 50,000 that's really a city of 2,400,000 in half the physical area of metro San Antonio.

Annexation is not good. That is how you end up with people like Rob Ford as mayor. I'll take my 22 small cities any day.

I like using county populations; either you get the entire (or "entire") city, like Philadelphia, San Francisco, Indianapolis, etc; or you get the inner suburbs, but leave out the far-flung places that can count in MSA and CSA populations (like Elkton and Cecil County, Maryland, as part of Philadelphia's MSA).

As far as annexation goes, I am kind of neutral on it. On one hand, a city can control what goes on far away from the central city, which is good for them. On the other hand, if a pocket of people away from the central city want to govern themselves, then it's good for them to keep their interests in mind without having to compromise for other neighborhoods in a big city.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Pinion

Annexation is not good. That is how you end up with people like Rob Ford as mayor. I'll take my 22 small cities any day.

The vast majority of Calgary's suburbs are within the municipal limits and they have a very progressive, liberal mayor. The "suburbs elected Rob Ford" trope is simplistic at best, but this isn't the right forum for that discussion.

There are pros and cons to annexation really. The dilution of a city's urban agenda is certainly a con. But at the same time it allows for less competition between municipalities for tax income, and a more comprehensive approach to planning. The ideal situation may be a strong regional government with smaller municipalities controlling more local agendas. But there can be issues with duplication of service there too.

[Owlhorn]

If you're talking Texas, this could really screw with San Antonio's politics. The same will eventually happen with Fort Worth as well.

[llamaorama]

As far as annexation goes, I am kind of neutral on it. On one hand, a city can control what goes on far away from the central city, which is good for them. On the other hand, if a pocket of people away from the central city want to govern themselves, then it's good for them to keep their interests in mind without having to compromise for other neighborhoods in a big city.

I think it's kind of too late.

In Texas and some other states, cities have an extraterritorial jurisdiction buffer which can be up to 5 miles from their boundaries. Another city or a newly founded one can't easily grab land inside this area. Though in time city boundaries in metro areas tend to abut one another anyways.

San Antonio has a lot of very tiny suburban municipalities in it's metro, but they are all basically self governing subdivisions from the 60s and 70s with a strip mall on the edge to harvest sales tax revenue from and not anything which people would want to create now.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Hill Country

I know the haters are going to complain about sprawl. But San Antonio is very fortunate to be able to do this instead of being surrounded by suburbs that it can't tax.

Not really. The city is taking on the liabilities as well as the assets. Obviously just annexing more land isn't inherently more revenue-friendly than not doing so. It depends on the situation.
SF and Boston would probably be poorer if they annexed adjacent towns. Dallas and Houston would probably be richer if they de-annexed parts of their city.

It also means that city policy will increasingly be controlled by voters who have interests opposed to urban interests. Transit, affordable housing, and redistributive programs will suffer.

[llamaorama]

I guess there's the notion of preventing competition. Dallas is probably worse off that Plano exists and poaches jobs constantly. And it's mayors haven't necessarily been that amazing. San Antonio has had more progressive leadership despite being closer to a uni-city.

Houston gobbled up it's suburban rivals and it did end up with suburbanite leadership for a time in the 1990s. That former mayor, Bob Lanier also just died recently. BUT he was an old-school progressive who pushed for all kinds of improvements for poor neighborhoods and was only "conservative" in the sense of being anti-rail and suburban minded in his vision for the city/region.

But then yeah, Fort Worth seems like a stick in the mud. Splashy vision for downtown, but mediocre investment into ordinary neighborhoods or everyday public services compared to what the other cities in the state do.

[chris08876]

Maybe this is a ploy to get more federal dollars due to the larger population?

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Pinion

San Antonio drops down to 27th when talking about metro area according to wikipedia. And metro is all that really matters. I live in a city of 50,000 that's really a city of 2,400,000 in half the physical area of metro San Antonio.

Annexation is not good. That is how you end up with people like Rob Ford as mayor. I'll take my 22 small cities any day.

yes and yes.

Vancouver seemed fine with its fragmented municipal government (I lived there for 5 years). As did my hometown, Montreal (which undid its megacity a few years after implementation). I haven't seen a single benefit from the amalgamation of the former Metro Toronto boroughs into Toronto. On the other hand, they ended up with Mel Lastman, and then, much worse still, Rob Ford.

[brickell]

more cities should be doing this

[scalziand]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Boston would probably be poorer if they annexed adjacent towns.

Most of the neighbors of Boston are the rich ones that resisted annexation in the past; Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Newton, Medford, Arlington.

[Eightball]

If San Antonio does this and gets a top 5 city population there should definitely be an asterisk involved.

[jg6544]

What difference does it make unless you happen to live there?