Item B: River Road/Santa Clara Annexation Policy

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On arterials and collectors, staff looks at including whole blocks (i.e., intersection to intersection), several blocks or the entirety of the street within the urban growth boundary to make it clear which sections of streets are in the city. This improves the ability of all service providers to determine who is responsible for maintenance of infrastructure and delivery of services. On local streets, we focus on streets where a significant amount of front-footage is adjacent to properties already in the city. We would look at the streets which provide access to the subject property where annexation would result in efficiencies in the development permitting process and service delivery areas. We still believe that annexation of whole blocks is more logical than annexing only the portion of the street immediately adjacent to the subject property. We might include less than a block if the property is adjacent to the existing city limits and annexation of a segment of street would expand the contiguous area of the city. We only request the inclusion of the full width of streets because annexing less than the full width causes numerous service delivery problems. The Metro Plan contains a policy specifying that the urban growth boundary is located on the outside of any street right-of-way, which leads to the recommendation of including perimeter streets so as not to leave a narrow “gap” between the city limit and urban growth boundary where public services are provided. There has been an average of 28 annexations per year since 2000 (195 total) with the majority of these occurring in the River Road and Santa Clara area. The City requested the inclusion of street right-of-way in about half of these annexations. The Boundary Commission approved all but three of these requests. 2