The City has held numerous public meetings since it presented details of its annexation plans in November. Efforts by lawmakers to pass legislation giving residents in unincorporated areas the right to vote for or against annexation failed after a vigorous lobbying effort by the Texas Municipal League. Hundreds of millions of dollars in annual tax revenues are at stake, and the City appears to have the legal authority to move forward and annex the unincorporated areas. Lyle Larsen (R-122) published this anti-annexation op-ed in the Express-News in June opposing annexation and lamenting the failed legislation to give unincorporated voters a say.īy state law, residents in unincorporated areas of Bexar County living within five miles of San Antonio’s city limits, known as the City’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, can only incorporate if they win approval from the City. Richard Cash, chairman of the Committee to Incorporate Alamo Ranch, published this anti-annexation commentary on the Rivard Report in April. Still, San Antonio’s determination to grow is placing it on a bigger stage, as evidenced by this Wall Street Journal story published last December.Īt the same time, not everyone wants to become part of San Antonio, pitting the City against unincorporated communities from Alamo Ranch to Canyon Springs. Phoenix, with 4.5 million people, is the 12th largest MSA and still would be double the size of San Antonio, which counts 2.3 million people in its MSA today, even after the annexation of 200,000 more people. Philadelphia dwarfs San Antonio with six million people, making it the nation’s sixth largest MSA. San Antonio would not really be passing Phoenix and Philadelphia. A more accurate measure of San Antonio’s size is comparing it to other MSAs, or metropolitan statistical areas, which reflect distinct urban areas and regional economies, that is, a city and surrounding communities that self-identify as forming a distinct physical and economic place.īy that measure, San Antonio, now the 25th largest MSA, would surpass Portland, Pittsburgh and Charlotte and become the 22nd largest MSA, still trailing by hundreds of thousands of people the Denver, Baltimore and St. All four cities are at the core of large metropolitan areas. No one will seriously consider San Antonio in the same breath as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Houston, the four largest cities. Dallas, surrounded by incorporated suburbs, is only 386 square miles. Philadelphia, the fifth largest city today, is only 142 square miles with 1.53 million people, reflecting the density of Northeast cities compared to the sprawl of Sunbelt cities.
Phoenix, the nation’s sixth largest city, is 517 square miles with 1.53 million people. By comparison, Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, is 627 square miles with 2.2 million people. If the City moves forward with its annexation plans, San Antonio will grow from 486 to to 552 square miles with a population of more than 1.6 million. Cities manage to comply with the law and continue to extend their boundaries through limited purpose annexation, which signals the intent to annex without requiring immediate delivery of services.Ī construction vehicle sits on a recently cleared lot in Alamo Ranch. That changed in 1999 when the Texas Legislature passed a new law requiring cities to provide basic services to communities as soon as they were annexed rather than over time. Wolff, who served as San Antonio mayor from 1991-95, presided over pro-annexation City Councils, which acted with regularity anytime a community in fast-growing Bexar County reached a size where its service demands and potential tax base aligned with San Antonio’s growth and management objectives. Significant parts of Bexar County remain unincorporated and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff has urged the City to accelerate its annexation plans to help County government, which lacks the same resources to provide basic services. The City’s annexation plans come after more than a decade without significant annexation, although San Antonio is the only major Texas city that isn’t largely corralled by incorporated suburbs. The City of San Antonio is on track to make itself the fifth largest city in the nation by annexing five of the fastest-growing unincorporated areas of Bexar County, a plan first announced last year that will expand the city’s geographic footprint by 66 square miles and add an estimated 200,000 people to its population base.