The decision is not always fiscal, says Fort Wayne Director of Community Development John Urbahns. “We want to be seen as a growing community, not a dying one.”
He’s talking about reasons for annexing. As our Kevin Leininger reports, the city is evaluating areas north, northeast and south of Fort Wayne to determine whether they meet state guidelines for annexation and would make financial sense for the city.
Urbahns is right about the importance of image, but there’s an important caveat: If the only thing that prevents a city from dying is to keep taking in people who don’t want to be there, something is horribly wrong. Annexation is one tool to consider in a city’s economic development and growth plans, but it can never be the only one.
And annexation always needs to be pursued carefully and slowly, even reluctantly, for the simple reason that it makes so many people unhappy. People in the annexed areas will end up paying higher taxes for services they were perfectly happy to live without. Those already in the city might see their services strained if the city miscalculates its ability to easily provide them for the newcomers. County officials will face an erosion of their tax base and find it harder to provide services for the dwindling number of county residents, who might then face higher taxes themselves.
Annexation-eager officials are right to point out, as they have many times, that suburban residents in some ways are getting a free ride. They enjoy all the amenities of urban living without having to pay for them.
But the suburbanites are also correct when they complain of losing the freedom to live where they want to based on the services they are willing to pay for.
So the city owes it to those it targets to make sure they get at least as much as they are giving up. Fortunately, the state has tightened its annexation policies to make that more likely. At one time, cities merely had to make a good-faith pledge to provide adequate services to annexed areas. Now they have to have something resembling proof that they can actually deliver them.
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