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KYLE — Kyle Mayor Travis Mitchell, along with all six Kyle City Council members, convened to a full room of over 80 Kyle residents Tuesday night to hold a public hearing regarding the unilateral annexation of an additional 1,400 acres into Kyle city limits.
Throughout the hearing — which included almost a dozen presenting Kyle residents — the comments on the annexation were unanimously negative criticisms, primarily because the current terms of the proposed annexation include an increase of city tax in affected areas, but lack any provisions to offer those areas city services.
“We’re going to get nothing except higher taxes,” said Ed Graning, a resident of Kyle for over 30 years, “...we’re going to get nothing. They’re not going to put sewer in there, nothing.”
After receiving the notice of annexation in the mail, Graning organized a petition protesting the council’s proposal that garnered over 65 signatures, representing over 200 residents in the Kyle community who stand to be affected by the annexation. Garner had hoped that the numbers of the petition would meet the criteria of House Bill 347 — a bill recently passed by Texas legislation that seeks to eliminate unilateral annexation, and allows for disannexation of an area of at least 200 residents via petition to the governing council. But since the bill doesn’t go into effect until Sept. 1, the annexation — which has already begun proceedings — will take effect under the original laws.
“We have no law on our side, basically.” Graning said. “I’m playing on their mercy.”
Despite the concerns of residents, Mitchell asserted that the annexation is a preemptive measure to protect Kyle residents from “predatory developers” seeking to build in the Kyle area.
“The primary reason [for the annexation] is to control development,” Mitchell said, addressing the crowd of Kyle residents gathered in the City Hall lobby during a brief recess, “What happens in a city like Kyle is, around our edges, right outside our borders, developers come in and they go to these parcels and offer folks money to sell, and they have no restrictions. They can build densely, without any kind of oversight, and completely flood our streets, our schools, without paying city taxes. That’s why they do it. Annexation has been a way for us to control — and when I say ‘control’, I mean most of the time ‘limit’ — the amount of development.”
It’s the same reason the council gave in 2016 when the City of Kyle first annexed 1,400 acres into the city limits. But according to former council member Damon Fogley, the argument doesn’t hold much viability.
“It does happen,” Fogley said, “especially with your high-intensity, low-budget builds....But [the proposed annexed area] is seventy-five percent built out. It’s not something you typically see with your cookie-cutter developments.”
Fogley, who retired from public service after finishing a three-and-a-half year term on the council, now operates as a small business owner in the Kyle area, and shares many of the same concerns as private residents with regards to how the annexation will affect the future development and longevity of his small business.
“We’re not using city services at all [out there], and if we do get annexed into the city, the city really has no upgraded services that they’re going to provide us.”
In addition to the general concerns, Fogley also worries how the annexation will affect specific aspects of his business operations.
“Zoning is one of the restrictions we’re concerned about,” said Fogley, whose small business — JDog Junk Removal — relies on high intensity, on-property use of heavy machinery, “I haven’t gotten any reassurance that we’ll be grandfathered in. I’ve been told that that’s a possibility, but if we grow as a business, we’ll be under the umbrella of City of Kyle zoning regulations.”
From a business perspective, Fogley says the idea is not an encouraging one.
“We’re in the junk removal industry,” Fogley said, “people generally look down on what we do, but we’re trying to be good stewards of our environment...There’s a reason we chose to be in the county, and not the city limits.”
The Kyle City Council has scheduled a Special Called Meeting on Aug. 28. The agenda for the meeting includes another public hearing on the issue of the proposed annexation.
