Annexation issue headed for final Council vote
By SHANNON CRABTREE scrabtree@leader-news.com

The Tuesday vote of a six-member El Campo City Council will determine if Sandy Corner residents and a handful of businesses owners along U.S. 59 will be paying municipal taxes next year.

Council will also have to decide whether to annex industries along D-A-M Road north of the city, accept an industrial development agreement or drop the issue entirely.

The industrial agreement, if approved, would allow businesses 400 or more feet east on the private D-A-M Road to remain outside the city limits for up to 15 years, free from ordinances and other expectations.

In return, the businesses will be asked pay a yearly fee equal to El Campo's almost 56 cents per $100 in property tax levy.

Both decisions are expected during the meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday in City Council Chambers, 315 E. Jackson. The meeting is open to the public.

Whether the city of El Campo should approve involuntary annexations has been a major debate for the past several months. While opponents bemoan the loss of rural ways of life from trash-burning and varmit shooting to individual water wells and the freedom to do one's own electrical work, proponents are touting the positives of municipal growth and expansion of the tax base.

Residents of the Sandy Corners area, the only residential section targeted, presented Council with a 50+ signature petition asking them to stop annexation proceedings during the first November public hearing.

But since those in the targeted area do not qualify as municipal voters, that petition did not trigger City Charter provisions requiring an issue to go to a public vote.

For a petition to force an issue to a public referendum, the signatures would have to be from qualified voters. By Charter rule, that's 20 percent of the vote turnout in the last at-large election or 150, whichever is greater.

Tuesday, Council will be asked to vote on the final adopting ordinance for annexation.

That voting question is anticipated to be an all or nothing vote on the five tracts currently targeted.

Those targeted tracts are: the Sandy Corners neighborhood along with 400 feet east of Hwy. 71 North to Wilbur Road - contingent upon an industrial agreement; and along FM 2765, ag land owned by the Bode family (although it may qualify for ag exemption) as well as land tracts south of FM 2765 which likely be ag exempted.

The preliminary motion also called for the city limits to extend on East Jackson to encompass Wharton County Electric Cooperative and capture all previously debated land west of South Meadow Lane and along the U.S. 59 south corridor.

Three outcomes can occur: