Skyview South

City Readies to Annex Huge Enclave

May 14, 2001

Agreement with county sets stage for absorption


In a little over three years, a mommoth enclave will be annexed into the city.

At 1,781 acres, it will be the city's largest single-piece annexation ever -- easily surpassing the 1,197 acre Allen, Lind, Moore annexation in 1984 that paved the way for the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

To put it another way, the enclave will be nearly 40 percent larger than the towns of Wellington (1,132 acres) and Timnath (148 acres) combined.

Whether city officials believe the annexation is necessary is not an issue -- at least for the moment.

The city is obligated under the terms of an intergovernmental agreement signed with Larimer County in 1980 to pursue any parcel that becomes eligible for involuntary annexation.

Under Colorado Revised Statues, "when any unincorporated area is entirely contained within the boundaries of a municipality (in other words, an enclave), the governing body may annex the area if it has been surrounded by the municipality for at least three years."

And that is exactly what city officials plan to do.

In this instance, the property will officially become an enclave the moment the city approves the propsed annexations of the Cathy Fromme and Coyote Ridge open spaces. That approval is expected to occur at City Council's May 1 meeting.

"We have it in our mind to (annex the area), and, quite frankly, I think we should," said Fort Collins City Manager John Fischbach. "We have land up here behind Home Depot (on Harmony Road) that is not even in the city limtis. That's ridiculous."

The mere size of this future annexation has some city officials concerned.

"We've never had an enclave of this magnitude or complexity," said Ken Waido, chief planner for the city's Advance Planning Department. "When the council decides it wants to annex, I'm sure they will want a serious financial analysis done."

An early draft is already complete. Alan Krcmarik, the city's finance director, did a preliminary annexation analysis of the area in 1999.

In his analysis, Krcmarik noted that the enclave wil have three main streets -- College Avenue, Shields Street and Taft Hill Road -- that carry huge volumes of traffic at high speeds. He also noted that there are about 200 acres of undeveloped land that, upon build out, will add about 1,400 residents to the area.

The city departments most likely to be affected by such an annexation, he said, will be Police Services, Light and Power, and Transportation. In looking at those departments, Krcmarik predicted:

?• Police Services will need eight additional patrol officers, two detectives, three nonsworn personnel, a traffic officer and an additional community service officer. The projected cost will be $1.5 million in the first year and $1.2 million annually in continuing costs.

?• Light and Power, which assumes responsibility for providing electric service when the city annexes land, will need to add another 5 megawatts of load -- about a 2.5 percent increase -- to the present system. That cost is estimated at $1.5 million.

?• Transportation staff will see three categories of costs for streets in the new ares -- arterial street costs, collector street costs and residential street costs. The maintenance costs for arterials are estimated at $85,000 a year. The same costs for collector streets are estimated to be $26,000 per year. And street sweeping, snow removal and pothole maintenance for residential streets is estimated to be $4,100 per year. Total estimated costs for all streets is $115,000 per year.

Krcmarik notes the costs in the enclave study area are based on a 20-year period, or the time he believes it will take for the area to buld out completely. He points out that costs likely will be higher than revenues during this period and that it will take an additional five to seven years to reach a cumulatitive balance.

In his conclusion, Krcmarik said that, despite the costs, the sooner the area is annexed, the sooner development in the area will begin contributing financially through fees and taxes. He points out that if the city waits too long to annex the area, the loss of plant investment fees, capital improvement expansion fees, taxes and other revenues will lag further behind the demands for infrastructure and city services.

Fischbach and Waido both agreed that a more detailed ananysis must be done in three years before a final recommendation is made to the City Council.

And, Waido pointed out, there is plenty of time to do that.

"The state does not require us to annex this (quickly) just to fill in the doughnut hole," the chief planner said. "Our IGA with the county does obligate the city to purchase it when it's available. But we've got more than three years to do this. We're not obligated on the first day of the fourth year to bring this in. We'll take our time and do it right."