What's the Deal with Residential Annexation?

In South Carolina our annexation laws were designed to make annexation difficult.  There are three ways to annex property whether it be commercial, whether it be undeveloped land, whether it be a residential property or a residential subdivision. 

 The individual property owner must sign a petition requesting to be annexed into a municipality.   Basically they have to ask, they have to be contiguous to our town, and the town votes and agree to annex them in.  One property at a time.  This process is very slow, but it allows growth.  You can do that, if someone next to your town wants to annex in, and they're one property, and you do it. 

 The second way is called the 75% method.  You have multiple property owners who want to annex into the town, a stretch of road, a subdivision, a business park.  You draw up a petition with all the owners of all the properties in that area and 75% of the property owners must sign within a 6 month period of time and they must own 75% of the value of the property being annexed.  As an example, let's take Caedmons Creek Subdivision on Broad River Road.   I drew up petitions to annex the land along Koon Road, from the interstate to Broad River Road and most of the property from Broad River up to Shady Grove Road, on the right hand side.  I purposely left off Caedmon's Creek and one small tract that had five homes in it.  Caedmon's Creek has, and I'm just gonna make a number up for the sake of discussion, 400 homes.  And let's just say half the homes have one owner, and half the homes have two owners.  So you have 600 owners.  Of that 600 owners 75% must sign the petition requesting annexation.  So 450 people must sign the petition all within 6 months of the first signature.    Now if Councilman Walker, or any other individual thinks that they can get 450 signatures out of 600 in a six month period, than by George, I think Councilman Walker ought to go do it himself.  He has been serving before me.  While I was out knocking on doors getting all the other annexation signatures, I never ran across him knocking on doors.  It was my understanding, another neighborhood that he wanted to annex, they had a meeting set up, and he didn't even show up to talk to the homeowner group to talk about annexation.  That neighborhood has been sitting there, he wants to annex residential areas, there's one.  All of Coatsworth Subdivision isn't in the town. What's he waiting on?  Quail Valley wanted to be annexed in years ago, why doesn't he go annex them?  QV worked on a petition themselves 12-18 months and couldn't get the 75%.  Candidate Condom was the president of the homeowner's association for 10 years, and it wasn't ever annexed in. 

They finally put it to a vote, which is the third way of annexation, and it failed.  The problem with the vote is, you don't have to be a property owner to vote.  So whether  you own the property, rent the property, are living in the home with Mom or Dad or with their children - they are all allowed to vote.  One home could have 6 voters, and  they don't even own the property.  So I don't think that is a very good way to decide whether someone can annex property by people who don't own the property. But that is the way the law allows. 

When Councilman Walker is talking about "we", he's actually talking about paying town staff or sending out a mailer to people requesting them to annex in.  That cost town staff, that cost money for mailers, and it probably ends up in the same trash can with other junk mail.  The only way people annex in, is some"body" has to go talk to them, face-to-face, and explain the benefits.  And I can betcha that Councilman Walker and others talking about annexing more residential property do not have a clue of the cost associated of annexing into a town, the pros, the cons, and nor could he explain to people why they should annex in.  Why is he saying this is a goal of his "as Mayor", when he's had 7 years to accomplish it?

The smartest and easiest way to annex residential subdivisions is to annex the undeveloped land before it gets developed into a residential subdivision.  Then it only requires one property owner's signature.  We get all the revenues derived from building permits.  This is one reason I have tried, and been successful, annexing in a lot of undeveloped land along Broad River and Koon Roads and Western Lane.  I said we needed to do more annexation, I went and did it, I didn't wait for others, I didn't say "we", meaning who knows who. I went and did it.  On the job training. Took my time. Got it done. I encouraged Councilman Walker and others to do the same thing.  If you believe something needs to be done, just go do it.