Residents Pack McKinney Council Meeting to Protest Planned Forced Annexation

MCKINNEY -- The City Council is considering a plan to annex miles of adjacent land in hopes of beating a new state law that goes into effect Dec. 1. Tuesday night, property owners in the affected area were seeing red -- and wearing it, too -- as they voiced a resounding "No" to annexation at a tense council meeting.The law signed earlier this year by Gov. Greg Abbott will require voters from unincorporated areas to approve a city's request to annex them. In August, the Council approved a resolution to consider forced annexation of nearly 6 square miles of rural land in McKinney's extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ. A city's ETJ is unincorporated land that a city has marked for annexation. Public hearings are scheduled for Oct. 16 and Oct. 17. Council members are scheduled to vote on the annexation Nov. 7.The resolution explicitly states the change in the state law as a reason for the annexation since it will "severely limit the ability of Texas municipalities" to annex land. "There's a land grab going on here to try to skirt the Dec. 1 deadline," said Shannon Blake, who lives on a 33-acre tract with her husband and six kids and received a letter in early September breaking the news to them about McKinney's plans.  Continue reading...