The Greensboro City Council unanimously approved three annexation and original zoning requests at the Tuesday, March 21 meeting.
This is pretty much par for the course as far as annexations and zoning requests go. Two of the annexation and zoning requests were for residential developments. The city has a serious housing shortage, which is projected to get much worse when the Toyota battery plant, at the Greensboro Randolph Megasite, and Boom Supersonic, at the Piedmont Triad International, start hiring thousands of employees.
Residential zoning requests without opposition don’t receive much attention by the City Council and are usually approved with little or no comment. If the requests do face opposition, they are still usually approved but with a lot of discussion and comment.
The information provided to the City Council for annexation requests includes a report on providing city services to the site. The report includes how water and sewer service will be provided and what fire station will answer calls from the site. It also includes reports from the Police Department and Field Operations Department (garbage, recycling, trash collection) on how they will service the site.
If the planning department is recommending approval of the annexation, which it usually does, these reports state that service to the site can be provided without additional facilities or personnel.
At the March 21 meeting, the section of the report on the police for the 5.6 acres being annexed on Kalmandale Road states, “The Police Department can provide comparable response service to the property under consideration as of the date of annexation. Additional resources may be required as development on the subject property and/or additional annexation in the general area occurs.”
That second sentence may appear to be pro forma, but it actually says a lot.
After the meeting Mayor Nancy Vaughan said that the annexations were putting a lot of stress on city departments.
The issue is that each annexation is considered individually and not cumulatively.
In 2022, all of those individual annexations added 1,581 acres to the city and were zoned for 4,733 new dwelling units.
If, instead of these coming in as individual annexation requests made throughout the year, there was one annexation request for 1,581 acres and 4,733 new dwelling units, the report from the various departments would certainly include a request for additional employees and city facilities to provide city services to those areas.
It is also more costly for the city to provide services to outlying areas once they are annexed than it is to provide those same services to the city’s core, but these are not considerations that come before the City Council.
While the City Council has a long established goal of encouraging more density, the current annexation policies are having the opposite effect.
Death by a million cuts. The failure isn’t in keeping the ‘big picture’ in view with every annexation but in the failure to have a formal process to evaluate total annexations impact on an annual basis. In corporate Finance we would deal with this as part of the annual budgeting process by evaluating operational. Total cost per Unit, HC per Tech Support ratios, etc… In this case, Housing Units per public services. The schools do this each year.
I would think the city and county track these ratios on at least an annual basis. At least we can hope.
“Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay, oh, oh, oh
I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win
Half my life’s in books’ written pages
Storing facts learned from fools and from sages…
Dream on
Dream on…”
Chris, neither the city nor the county do any such thing. All they see is tax money and the fees collected from building regulations and inspections. They also are aware of the potential profits for themselves, family, and friends as most are connected in some fashion to real estate or construction businesses. It’s always been that way.
What few citizens see is behind the scenes where emergency services, inspectors, and other governmental services argue over who should respond to provide requested assistance or help for new annexations for the following years as builders, homeowners, and businesses call asking for information, reporting emergencies, or needing the approval to complete construction in order to occupy their buildings. It’s not only frustrating but in some cases can be dangerous for people who have no idea that in the background there are people on the phone arguing about who will respond to their call for help.
Just another SNAFU.
Why is housing projected to get much worse when the Toyota battery plant, at the Greensboro Randolph Megasite, and Boom Supersonic, at the Piedmont Triad International, start hiring thousands of employees? Why can’t Toyota and Boom hire from local population who are already living here in housing? If Toyota and Boom are bringing their own employees and employees from other areas, why would locals want Toyota and Boom to move here? The only things they would be bringing to the area are pollution, stress on our schools, stress on police resources, stress on our social services and the destruction of our land. Government elected officials and bureaucrats do not care about the downside of the Toyotas and Booms in the world. If any company wants to move here, a requirement should be that 95% of the workforce must be people already living in the area. Remind me again, how much taxpayer money was given to Toyota and Boom?
How much more can the sewer system support. When will the city start crying for another new sewer plant
Duh!