To the Editor:

We are concerned. As rural residents and farmers trying to preserve our resources, we are very concerned with the recent actions of the city of Austin.

For decades, Lansing Township has been steadily annexed into the city of Austin bit by bit. Over 2,000 acres to date, despite the city itself experiencing a steady loss of businesses and population over those same years. Our township is a rural farming community and we have spent many years and a lot of resources to maintain these attributes. We need farms to stay farms. Austin has on at least two separate occasions in recent years annexed parcels of Austin Township and Lansing Township farmland under the pretense of some development interest, only to later discover no development is forthcoming.

Yet these farms remain under city jurisdiction. Now, once again, and despite twice being denied by the township supervisors, the city officials are at it again. In a brazen attempt to subvert the political will of the rural area, they are proceeding, with hostility, to the residents to annex raw farmland into the city without consent.

This has many ramifications for Lansing Township and impacts surrounding farms negatively. First, there are concerns around how and what type of agriculture is allowed close to the rural-urban interface. The potential for conflict rises with each incursion into the countryside. Second, the Austin City Council committed an appalling act of subversion several years ago by voting for itself authority to dictate how any rural subdivision development occurs for a stunning two miles beyond their jurisdiction. This dictatorial pseudo-annexation, with “no plans for development to occur at this time,” according to city officials, also denies our township the opportunity to have control over how and where future development happens and denies our township the benefit of any tax revenue presently assessed or assessed in the future.

Austin has seen business contraction and a steady loss of residential structures in the existing town limits, creating vast amounts of empty commercial space and dozens of empty lots needing to be filled within the present limits of the city. Further, past annexations have proven to be excessively costly for property owners with a substandard level of, or no city services at all, being extended into these areas. This type of reckless sprawl is contrary to smart growth practices as they exist today and does nothing to contribute to creating a green, recreation, or pedestrian friendly community.

A fact further underscored by Austin’s lack of planning is for a new wastewater facility to handle all the expected “growth,” or new parks, or trails into what was formerly Lansing land.

I believe it is time for Lansing Township to explore becoming a service providing municipality in its own right. We already have a water and sewer department and we can easily explore the potential to expand it to provide these services to our own residents and businesses. There are numerous grants available for rural development, and we have substantial need for water treatment from industrial facilities in the township already that need a long-term solution. Orderly annexation is meant to be a mechanism of good development planning and comes as the result of growth. Austin clearly has neither, in practice or at interest with this maneuver. Lansing residents need to take the initiative now to keep our rural area rural, and free from the haphazard and shortsighted development whims of Austin’s fly-by-night leadership.

Respectfully submitted,

John Ryther, S.M. ASCE

Lansing Township