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Old Posted Oct 15, 2022, 2:50 AM
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sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TWAK View Post
How easy is it to annex out there in Texas? Can cities just take what they want, or does it have to go through a vote and tax-sharing schemes? CA cities have to include the areas they want to annex in the Sphere of Influence and an area can fight to not be included in that. It has to go through the Local Agency Formation Commission too.
And I believe LAFCOs are just a California thing, created in the 1960s to "more orderly" create municipalities and handle annexations. Prior to a LAFCO (every CA county has one), it was much easier to create a municipality, but what ended up happening was the creation of cities for special-interest groups, like the City of Industry and City of Commerce, which were basically created to be tax havens for industries, and the creation of completely gated cities like Hidden Hills and Rolling Hills, to protect rural estate type of properties and limit entry to the city to residents and their guests only. These types of incorporations are no longer allowed under a LAFCO. And, an incorporated city has to be proven to be able to provide revenue for itself. East Los Angeles, long an unincorporated community, has wanted to incorporate as a city several times, most recently in 2012, but it was determined that it could not generate enough tax revenue to maintain itself as its own city.

I believe annexations used to be easier in California too, before LAFCOs were created. But since the 1800s, annexations cannot cross county lines, which is why San Francisco is as small as it is, since they are a consolidated city and county, which they've been since 1856.
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