Thousands of residents have Magnolia mailing addresses but do not live in the specified city limits, which is only about one square mile, but instead live in the extra-terretorial jurisdiction (ETJ).

“What I want to do, with council’s approval, is do everything I can to get voluntary annexation in the ETJ,” City Administrator Ryan Kelley said at a Nov. 10 council meeting.

Councilman Todd Kana has sponsored the annexation items for discussion on the last two meeting’s agendas, saying that he wanted to keep it a standing agenda item to “make sure it didn’t go away.”

The council had previously discussed annexation months ago, but nothing ever came of it, Kana said.

4A Economic Development Corp. president Jonny Williams, who is also on the board of directors of the Planning Commission, expressed interest in the boundary line extending west to the Waller County line, south to FM 149 in Pinehurst and east to the FM 149 spur during the November meeting.

City Attorney Leonard Schneider discussed the three ways a Type A city such as Magnolia can annex at an October meeting.

The first would be a three-year plan, in which the city would serve either water or sewer to the ETJ areas. City staff would then notify the residents of impending annexation, and after three years, if a resident doesn’t want to annex, the city would have to wait another three years before trying again.

Second is individual annexation, which would require a resident to voluntarily petition to be in the city limits of Magnolia. This would then bump the city’s boundary lines to wherever that resident lives, and so on.

The third option is if there are fewer than 100 separate tracks of land or less, a city can annex without a three-year plan, unilaterally, as long as there are residential dwellings on each tract.

“It’s obvious that it’s in our best interest to annex at this time,” said Kelley.

The potential sales tax revenue that could come to the city as a result of annexation could benefit the city, he said.

“We need to take advantage of that (sales tax), otherwise other areas like Montgomery will take advantage of it,” Kelley said.

Kelley said only one neighborhood falls under the third option requirements for annexation, Magnolia Crossing.

“It’s not possible to unilaterally annex large areas that we don’t already serve sewer and water,” Kelley said. “We will probably have to go to a three-year annexation plan.”

Kelley told the council he would talk to the Texas Municipal League about the “ins and outs” of unilateral annexation to see if the city had any other options.

However, Schneider advised the council and mayor that the city could not surpass 10 percent of its current size in one year.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed