San Antonio Report
by Shari Biediger
The City Council is taking steps to manage sprawl in San Antonio despite an increasing number of state laws limiting the power of cities to control growth through annexation.
It is studying a proposed policy that would employ other development tools and strategies to address growth in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ), unincorporated areas adjacent to San Antonio’s city limits where the population is continuing to increase.
Bexar County is projected to grow by about 1.1 million new residents between 2010 and 2040, adding 500,000 new jobs and 500,000 new dwelling units, according to a draft policy document from the city’s Planning Department.
For years, San Antonio grew by annexing outlying areas as new development occurred, growing its tax base and geographic area, until residents of some areas pushed back and eventually laws changed beginning in 2017.
New development surrounding San Antonio, combined with fewer annexations, affects service demands. It puts strains on infrastructure, transportation, natural and environmental resources and the economy, the planning document states.
The stress comes without the additional tax revenue that would ordinarily be generated from annexed areas.
With the number of people living in unincorporated Bexar County increasing, making up a third of the population growth between 2000 and 2020, the reality is that even more development could stretch resources for the entire region.
The new growth management policy is being created in response to that anticipated growth and what Mayor Ron Nirenberg has said is “two hands tied behind our back in terms of how we plan and manage” growth.
The proposed policy updates the city’s annexation plan but is not intended to stop development, said Rudy Niño, interim director of the city’s planning department, during a recent council briefing.
Instead, “the policy aims to encourage sustainable, quality development that the city would find beneficial to potentially annex in the future,” Nino said.
“The goals also support the economy of the city … protect sensitive natural features, our military assets, and establish considerations for proactive planning between our regional partners.”
Another goal is to improve coordination for emergency, utility and service delivery in the ETJs, according to the draft policy.
This table provides a general rundown of the powers and authority that San Antonio has within its city limits and within the extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ).
Credit: Courtesy of City of San Antonio Planning Department
Legislative limits
On Aug. 31, the council is set to consider the new policy keeping San Antonio in compliance with laws that went into effect in 2017 and 2019 and still managing the pressures and needs of growth.
The first, Senate Bill 6, curtailed the annexation powers of cities in counties with a population over 500,000 and requires landowner or voter approval of annexations. A primary sponsor of the bill was New Braunfels Republican Sen. Donna Campbell, whose district includes a sizable portion of North Bexar County.
House Bill 27 ended most unilateral annexations by any city in Texas and requires cities to obtain landowner or voter approval.
The revised policy also arises from fights over annexation on the far North Side, along U.S. Highway 281, dating back to 2015, said Rob Killen, a land use attorney who represented residents in ETJ communities who did not want to be annexed into the city.
Since then, “we’ve developed a very good working relationship with the City of San Antonio,” said Killen, one of many stakeholders, including CPS Energy and the San Antonio Water System, that the city consulted in developing the proposed new policy.
He said the policy reflects practices the city already has been implementing for the past four years in the form of development agreements that extend land use controls and create a funding mechanism for public improvements.
“We’ve got nearly 20 of these districts around Bexar County, around the city of San Antonio, where their agreement with the city is they will have at some point the opportunity to annex these properties, which of course they don’t have the authority to under state law to do anymore,” Killen said.
An effort to update the existing annexation policy, adopted in 2016 as part of the SA Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan, began in 2019 but was put on hold during the COVID pandemic.
The new policy outlines criteria that city staff and council can use when weighing requests related to annexation and development in the ETJ, in accordance with state law.
PIDs and MUDs
Besides annexation, which the city has used to ensure orderly development on the city’s edge, there are other ways a municipality can manage growth.
Those include several types of land use planning tools and interlocal agreements as well as special districts like Public Improvement Districts, known as PIDs, and Municipal Utility Districts, or MUDs.
“A special district is essentially a financing tool used by a property owner to provide the infrastructure necessary for development,” Nino said.
Public Improvement Districts give developers an increased ability to provide major infrastructure, both on and off the site, improving county infrastructure in places where it cannot keep pace with development.
Improvements are financed through the sale of bonds by the district, which are supported by issuing assessments on future residents of the district.
In the case of the neighborhoods Killen represented, such as Cibolo Canyons, the city’s agreement with the developer allowed the city to annex the commercial areas along Highway 281 North, but not the residential sections for a period of time.
The Cibolo Canyons area can be annexed in 2031, according to the non-annexation agreement. Timberwood Park and the areas along the highway that are subject to the agreement can be annexed in 2033, Killen said.
“So San Antonio gets some immediate revenue stream if there’s some sort of retail sales tax being generated,” Killen said. “So it’s a win-win for everybody, and we’re very happy to say that the city is now formalizing this policy.”
To create a district within the ETJ, approval by both the county and city is required, and the proposed policy would require applicant fees to process such requests.
Niño said the proposed policy also would streamline and formalize the process of approving such districts but also give the city more options to manage development, like requiring compliance with the updated tree ordinance or adding on an assessment paid to the city for each residential unit developed.
Similarly, municipal boundary adjustments — requests from other cities to adjust boundaries for more land — would come with a set of criteria for approval, including a requirement that there be no adverse fiscal impact on the City of San Antonio.
District 9 Councilman John Courage said during the Aug. 9 briefing that the city needs to pay more attention to growth outside city limits, but that he doesn’t care for PIDs as they now exist.
“[Developers are] buying land, they’re building out there, and it ends up seeing literally unbridled growth and continued expansion of the population in areas outside of the city where we have very little influence,” he said. “And yet, almost every one of those people come into San Antonio almost every day to live, work and play.”
Nirenberg said the policy document should guide the council toward its aspirations, “noting that in some places, we might end up at a brick wall, potentially, with state statute.”
“We should be cognizant of where those brick walls are so if there is the opportunity to advocate for policy change, we’ll know where that we will know where that is,” he added.