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Ability to Provide Services and Facilities <br />Properties or an area should be annexed only to a municipality willing and able to provide fire <br />and police protection and refuse collection immediately and sanitary sewer and water service <br />within a reasonable period of time. Provision of sewer and water service should, however, not <br />be at the expense of areas already within the municipality that still do not have these services. <br />• Simplification of Municioal Boundaries <br />Annexations should be encouraged and enhanced that have the effect of consolidating a <br />community's corporate area and reducing the irregularities that previous annexations may have <br />added to the corporate limits. "Squaring off" the municipal limits to create an easily recog- <br />nizable shape can enhance the image that residents have of their municipality and create a <br />more logical shape for administering services. Also, more logical and easily definable <br />configurations of annexed property also provide the development community with <br />opportunities oftentimes to create developments that are more efficient and aesthetically <br />pleasing. Annexation lines should be drawn so as to avoid ribbons or odd pieces of <br />unincorporated land between communities. It is preferable for municipalities to abut and have <br />a common boundary rather than be separated by a small unincorporated area. <br />• <br />Lost-RevenueAnalysis <br />The deficit of income to be realized from the annexed area against the expenses to the <br />municipality in serving it should be reasonable. Cost -revenue analysis, a topic in itself and <br />beyond the scope of this report, can compare the annexation area's potential revenue base with <br />the costs of furnishing necessary services, For example, consideration should be given to a <br />situation whereby a city annexes a residential subdivision that was not built to that city's <br />subdivision standards. in the long -run, therefore, the current citizens within the annexing <br />municipality may have to pay for upgrading said potentially annexed subdivision. <br />• Economic Development <br />in conjunction with cost -benefit analysis, Paris can use annexation, where appropriate, as a tool <br />to stimulate local and regional economic growth and implement sound, long-range capital <br />Improvement programming. A sub -tool for this kind of economic development could be, for <br />example, public-private partnerships and investments. <br />• Comprehensive Plans and Zonins District Maos <br />Texas does not allow zoning of unincorporated areas. Therefore. If property is annexed, it <br />should be zoned as soon as possible to be in conformance with the annexing municipalities' <br />future land use plan within its comprehensive plan. If such zoning does not occur in a timely <br />manner, the municipality runs the risk of having its recently annexed area developed with land <br />uses that may be incompatible with that city's land use pians, growth -goals, and policies. <br />• Parks. Recreation, and Oren Space <br />oftentimes, parks, recreation, and open space plans can be more fully implemented if linkages <br />can be made to other parks elements, to increase citizen use, city design, and aesthetic features. <br />in certain instances, therefore, it could be an important factor to annex areas outside of Paris <br />that could enhance trail systems, as well as use environmental resources that are presumably <br />outside the city (e.g., flood plan and/or other environmentally sensitive, archeological and/or <br />historical sites or interesting areas). <br />R1 <br />