Council tweaks urban service area boundary

Craig Hosmer: Springfield is in danger of being landlocked by outside growth.

Jason Gage: Urban service area is about serving and eventually annexing land.

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As Springfield City Council made some adjustments to its urban service area boundary – a housekeeping issue, according to a city planning official – the discussion turned to annexation strategy.

The May 6 meeting included a resolution to adjust the city’s urban service area, which is the area in which city services, such as sanitary sewer service and transportation, may be extended.

As a resolution, the measure was up for a vote after a single reading, and council passed it by an 8-0 vote, with Councilmember Derek Lee, a civil engineer, abstaining.

The adjustments approved by council eliminated areas where the urban service area encroached upon negotiated growth boundary agreements with neighboring municipalities: Republic, Battlefield, Rogersville, Strafford and Willard. In effect, with council action, the urban service area pulled back from places those municipalities view as being reserved for their own growth.

While the resolution dealt with providing city services within unincorporated parts of Greene County, future annexation was on the mind of some of the city leaders.

“If this was a battlefield and you would be looking at this, you would say we were losing the battle,” said Councilmember Craig Hosmer. “It seems like we’re going to be completely landlocked with Battlefield, Republic and Willard to our west, and probably not too much longer, Rogersville and Strafford will merge and be landlocked to our east.

“We have to have a long-term plan for the city.”

City Manager Jason Gage pointed out the large area of the map that exists between the city limits and the surrounding cities.

“There are still areas that provide room for growth,” he said. “It’ll take quite a bit of time to develop into that. We just want to clean it up right now.”

The explanation of the measure provided to council by the city’s Planning and Development staff said the provision of city services, such as utility connections, often occurs separately from annexation of property into the city.

Councilmember Matthew Simpson noted that any time property in the urban service area is connected to city services, it’s under the condition that owners sign a consent to annex their land.

“For decades, we didn’t act on those,” he said.

He added that he hopes the city takes the next step by beginning to act on annexation agreements.

Forward SGF, the city’s 20-year comprehensive plan, points out benefits of annexation into the city like greater tax revenue, expanding resident resources to participate in city elections and government, adding natural amenities and making needed transportation connections.

Urban service area explained
Prior to the vote on the resolution, Senior City Planner Alana Owen said that in addition to eliminating encroachment into neighboring cities, the measure would expand the service area boundary to include the city of Springfield’s Southwest Wastewater Treatment Plant, as that area is within the Springfield city limits.

Additionally, the amendment brings a 1,200-acre area of the Upper James River Basin into the urban service area following a request for sewer services by the developer of a single-family residential project at East Sunshine Street and Farm Road 199. In response, the city’s Environmental Services department suggested amending the service agreement to include a much larger swath of the drainage basin as a matter of long-range planning.

A wastewater lift station will be put into place by the developer temporarily, but ultimately, the city plans to install a gravity sewer system to serve the area.

Forward SGF had revising the urban service area as one of its recommendations.

The comprehensive plan states, “The USA represents a geographic area where the city and Christian and Greene counties agree on a reasonable area to preserve for future urbanized growth that the city may someday annex.”

The plan notes that the area includes varying levels of priority, but overall it represents the city’s future long-term growth boundary. Springfield’s ownership of the sewer system provides leverage for achieving the kind of growth it desires, the plan states.

Owen said the revised urban service area boundary shrinks by approximately 1,790 acres overall, even with the addition of the 1,200 acres of the Upper James River Basin.

Gage said the city’s Planning and Development department has been working hard to look at properties that are adjacent to the city limits and receiving city services that would make sense to annex. He did not give a timeline for the ongoing work.

“An urban service area is both about serving and potentially annexing, which is ideally what you want to do,” he said.

Gage said the biggest concern is not suburban growth.

“It’s really more so the unincorporated growth that creates a belt, and we want to make sure that we don’t get completely belted in – that’s what we’re paying close attention to as well,” he said.

Wastewater agreements
Hosmer pointed out that Springfield provides wastewater treatment services to four neighboring cities – Willard, Battlefield, Rogersville and Strafford.

“It’s something that gives them a more aggressive view towards annexation,” he said of the neighboring cities, noting the city charges the same rate for the other municipalities that it charges its own residents. He suggested the city charge different rates for customers outside the area, as City Utilities of Springfield does.

Gage said many years ago a citizens’ committee decided it would be best to treat the sewage of these communities without an additional surcharge. It’s still an active conversation, he said.

“I think you are correct that for the smaller city, with us being able to actually treat the sewage – because they do provide their own collection system and we treat it – they get a pretty good cost efficiency by having a larger entity treat their sewage,” he said.

Councilmember Brandon Jenson noted the strategic importance of a city being able to provide its own sewer service.

“It is a pretty significant hindrance for economic development to not have your own wastewater system that you own and operate,” he said.

Jenson also inquired about whether the city was working with Greene County to formalize restrictions on development within the urban service area to ensure that projects meet density and quality that would be expected for the city to extend services to an area.

City Planner Owen said that this was happening, and the county was amenable to looking at its codes and changing them to match the city’s.

“I love whenever planners work together,” Jenson said.

Senate bill stalled
In the 2024 Missouri legislative session, scheduled to wrap up May 17, Senator Curtis Trent, R-Springfield, proposed Senate Bill 979, which would allow Springfield to annex areas within six miles of the city and within the urban service area by an ordinance if landowners request it.

Trent told Springfield Business Journal in January that the bill would eliminate the need for annexed areas to be compact and contiguous – that is, connected to the existing borders of the city. The bill would even allow unconnected parcels of land to be annexed, provided they are within the urban service area.

“A city can grow to a part of the county that is growing, rather than being unable to grow to those areas,” Trent said.

The bill was referred to the Local Government and Elections Committee on Jan. 25 with no further action as of press time.

At the time of SBJ’s original reporting on Senate Bill 979, some neighboring city leaders raised concerns about the measure. Republic City Administrator David Cameron pointed out a large infrastructure investment that existed in an area that would be subject to the legislation.

“When you’re investing $150 million in infrastructure, you’ve got to know the places you’ve targeted to run that infrastructure aren’t all of a sudden going to be a problem – will that be annexed into the city?” Cameron said at the time.