United by a Common Goal

Our mission is simple: to ensure property owners and residents have the right to vote on the potential annexation of their property.

Until 2017, Texas state law allowed cities to annex private property outside their boundaries without any approval by the impacted landowners. A new law was enacted December 2017 that required cities to allow impacted landowners to vote on an annexation plan before that plan could move forward… but the new law only applied to 11 counties statewide (they are called Tier 2 Counties), leaving residents of 243 Texas counties (known as Tier 1 Counties) without those protections.

Thankfully, the new law also includes an option for those 243 Tier 1 counties to become Tier 2 counties, and have the protections against forced annexation apply to their residents.

Residents in counties across Texas organized into groups to fight forced municipal annexation, by petitioning to become Tier 2 counties under the new law.

In November 2018, six counties (Atascosa, Freestone, Johnson, Palo Pinto, Parker, and Wise) successfully attained Tier 2 status, ending forced annexation in those counties. The question will appear on the May 4, 2019 ballot for Ellis and Montague Counties.