City poised to start process to look at annexing county pockets of land

At issue are so-called pockets of land, some of them the site of homes, that are mostly, if not completely, surrounded by the city. As was noted at Friday’s meeting, adding these pockets to Cheyenne’s tax rolls has been a topic of discussion for years.

Although it remained unclear at press time whether this latest process could lead to the successful annexation of these areas, a time frame was laid out for potentially introducing city legislation to do so, and also for doing the necessary bureaucratic work to move things forward. It appears that the legislative consideration process could take a few months, and the city planning process also perhaps a similar length of time.

One official who did speak with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, the county’s planner, in general confirmed that the city-provided statistics and some other details appeared to be accurate. Some other officials from both the city and county could not be reached right away.

Broadly, Cheyenne officials emphasized that Laramie County residents had little to fear from the process. There will be numerous steps taken to include them, such as public meetings, and a website was unveiled Friday. There will be a form that county residents can choose to fill out. The new online site is at cheyennecity.org/Annexation.

Taxes

The primary city staffer presenting to the council noted that the website showed that typical residents whose properties were annexed might not pay a lot more in taxes. And, he said, they would get a lot more in services, while the city earned potentially even more in revenue.

For instance, for a residential property valued at around $325,000, annual taxes might rise by about $150 to $2,227. That equates to a tax hike of around 7%.

The staffer, Charles Bloom, told the council that “there’s been a fear, I’ll be honest … the city is going to annex us,” and that may necessitate hooking up to and paying for additional city services, such as for water and sewer. “There has always been a fear of taxes: ‘I don’t want to be in the city because my taxes are going to increase so much.’” In reality, he said, that would not actually be the case.

“It really isn’t that much more of an assessment you are going to see, especially for the benefits that you are going to get,” such as via a city fire and police response in the event of emergencies, Bloom said. He is Cheyenne’s planning and development director.

Bloom took some time to address the issue of whether the pocket properties would need to immediately follow municipal code. He indicated that they would not, as long as they were within county regulations. “We need to put together a form or something so we can document what is on that property,” he told the council.

“They can say, ‘I have 13 goats, I have two horses, I am running a chicken coop,” Bloom said. “They can provide enough proof to us … this is our baseline, this is what we want to continue to do” following annexation. He estimated that perhaps 10-20% of the properties could be considered nonconforming with Cheyenne code.

“We’re working to set the stage to get into the annexation of county pockets,” the staffer said toward the start of this portion of the council’s work session. “They are counted as city residents” already in the census, he went on to note. He indicated that there are about 65 of these county pocket parcels, with perhaps a few hundred property owners total.

Path ahead

The county itself may not need to be much involved in the annexation process, an official indicated. “It’s not statutorily required,” Justin Arnold, the Laramie County planning manager, said by phone.

“They’ve got continuity” geographically of these parcels because they are adjacent to Cheyenne, Arnold explained. “They go through their annexation process … the county isn’t really a party to that.”

“There’s really no county approval that comes into it,” he said. The county government has “not had a chance to do a deep dive” on the pros and cons of such annexation, he noted. Arnold confirmed that, as Cheyenne officials indicated, the city must give advance notice to affected pocket residents.

Some work was previously done to help pave the way for certain of these pockets to be admitted into city boundaries, officials said. “There are a lot of properties that are low-hanging fruit” because they may have already had a geographic survey done, Bloom testified.

At the conclusion of Bloom’s presentation, council member Michelle Aldrich asked Bloom about holding meetings, perhaps in each of the city’s three wards. He responded that there would be meetings, although not perhaps by ward, but by county pocket, and that he would invite stakeholders, including the lawmakers.

Fellow council member Pete Laybourn noted the length of time that there has been talk about such annexations. “I’m amazed I have lived long enough to see this come to fruition,” he said. Acknowledging these are “complicated” issues, he said that he looked forward to taking action.

Clarification: The first sentence of this news article has been clarified to show that there are several hundred properties total in the pockets of land the city wants to potentially annex, not several hundred overall pockets of sometimes bigger parcels of land.