May 02, 2008 11:51 pm
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The Daily Sun recently covered a meeting of the town council in Retreat where we renewed our request to have about 500 acres deannexed by that town. Your headline called this request an “Ultimatum,” and your story implied that we appeared unexpectedly, demanding results and threatening consequences. You have the narrative backward.
First of all, we do not wish Retreat or anybody living there any trouble. Furthermore, this was our fourth appearance before the Council since December of 2007, when we requested that Retreat deannex property that lies within its claimed city limits, and is under our control. We asked the Council to encourage sustainable, environmentally responsible growth by allowing others provide services they simply cannot provide. In return, we offered assurances that homes will be site built, 1,400 square feet or more, and that no commercial development will be directly adjacent to homes currently in Retreat. We want to avoid hundreds of septic systems in the Richland Chambers water shed when city sewer is only a few hundred yards away, and we want the market to determine lot size.
We seek this change because of the property’s suitability for traditional neighborhood development: two minutes from Wal-Mart and Navarro College, with clear views of downtown Corsicana, the Courthouse, and I-45, it is the ideal location.
So we asked. And the Council refused. We offered compromises and were rebuffed again. From the beginning, Retreat’s position seemed extreme to us. The council functions essentially as a neighborhood association that prevents trailer houses from locating in the area. It can’t afford services, it has no business district or definable nucleus of population, no city staff, water treatment plant or police force. Retreat’s resources are so bare that some months the budget shows neither income nor expense, because it collects no city property tax. It collects a fee, however, and to defend this fee Retreat’s Town Council wishes to impose zoning on thousands of acres of open pastureland, many of which are closer to Navarro Elementary School than to the Retreat Town Hall. How, we asked ourselves, could this be legal?
It’s not. The Texas Local Government Code clearly limits a town of Retreat’s population to 1280 acres of territory, but Retreat’s election order describes nearly triple that amount. The incorporating procedures are the same as they were in 1960, when Retreat’s election order was issued. They are clear and specific, and require documentation recorded in the deed records of the county and maintained on file in the town offices. But in response to my Texas Open Records Act request for these documents, I received only the election order and a hand-drawn sketch labeled, “plat.” No survey, no meeting minutes, no charter or order from the County Judge declaring the incorporation valid. These requirements were no secret; in the County Clerk’s vault a file drawer contains the incorporating documents of other general law cities in the county…all in perfect order, all with surveys closing at 1280 acres or less.
We are not proposing an industrial facility, a rock crusher, or a rendering plant. On the contrary, our plans will increase the values of our neighbors’ properties. Why, furnished with this information and the legal requirements described above, would the Council still refuse to release us? Your story provides a clue.
Retreat collects no city property tax, but your story reported that Retreat collects a fee on the delivery of electricity to the Mobil Pipeline tank farm located on Corsicana’s south side. The Council seems to believe their claim on that fee will be suspect if they voluntarily comply with the statute limiting their territory to 1280 acres. But our research indicates that franchise fees are calculated based on where the electricity travels, not where it is delivered. It appears to us that Corsicana is due that fee anyway, since the electricity travels through Corsicana’s rights of way. Besides, Corsicana’s taxpayers provide police, fire, emergency medical and water services to that facility. Either way, we do NOT seek Retreat’s dissolution, voluntarily or otherwise. The validating statute of 1973 most likely cures technical defects in their incorporation procedures. However, those statutes validate meaningless technical mistakes, not fundamental violations of law, like the excess territory or the absence of a survey.
Furthermore, the Council’s claim that Retreat would “cease to exist” without a franchise fee is overstated. There are scores of general law cities in Navarro County and elsewhere that pay their own way through property taxes. And if Retreat is unwilling to go that route it should consider changing its zoning regulations to allow for commercial establishments, which would generate sales taxes.
Finally, town officials have indicated they have no problem with our developing this property as long as they get to make the rules. But what would they bring to the table? They currently struggle even to maintain the roads they have. The bottom line is that these statutes exist for a reason, and they usually become law after the legislature observes a train wreck and takes action to prevent another one. In this case, the legislature foresaw tiny cities incorporating vast territories and preventing the reasonable use of property by its owners, and they took action to forbid it. After months of costly research and efforts at compromise, we are not looking for a fight; we’re simply asking the Retreat Town Council to let us go.
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Submitted by Robert Means and JoAnn Means.
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