There was an election in Austin this past weekend.
Because of changes in state law, areas of Austin that were previously annexed by the city could vote to de-annex from the city.
Some of those results are interesting.
For example, Proposition B, “Disannex Mooreland Addition” received 0 votes against…and 0 votes for.
Proposition C, “Disannex Blue Goose Road”, got 3 votes for…and none against.
Proposition E, “Disannex Wildhorse/Webb” also ended up in a 0-0 tie.
And Proposition F, “Disannex River Place Outparcels”, won, 1-0. See, one vote can matter.
In case you were wondering, Proposition A, “Disannex Lost Creek”, won, 1,447 – 138. Proposition D, “Disannex Lennar at Malone”, won lost 110 – 2.
Edited to add 5/7: Actually, I mis-read the results. Proposition D, “Disannex Lennar at Malone”, was defeated.
I don’t know that there’s any major trends to be drawn from this. I want to say that the results prove general unhappiness with the city, and a desire to be well separated from it. But I feel like that can only be said for the areas covered by propositions A and D, since those seem to be the only ones with a significant number of voters.
Edited to add 5/7: Thanks to T. Migratorious for his comments.
Also, KVUE has a post election follow-up article.
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“My grandfather fought the annexation of this little area the whole time here until he died in 2015,” Kizer said. “He was the kind of guy that would call the county … call the city and tell them, ‘You need to come do things.’”Kizer said they never got any benefits from the city in the seven years they were annexed and that their roads and water infrastructure deteriorated.
“I did call and contact the city for services, and they’re like, ‘No, we’re not up to date in your area to provide those services,'” Kizer said. “Huge potholes everywhere … They didn’t actually come and fix our road until they started doing new construction in the rest of the area. It was only to benefit the newcomers to the area, not anybody that’s already been here and paying taxes.”
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Disannexing means the residents will no longer receive certain city services, like fire or police protection, street maintenance, public health sanitation and more.
“There weren’t a lot of things to look forward to or that they were giving us,” Kizer said. “So, the major benefit is that I get to go back to being county taxed.”