Hundreds of residents attend public forum regarding incorporation of The Woodlands

THE WOODLANDS, Texas -- The Woodlands Township board met at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel for an Incorporation Study Public Forum on Sept. 25.

This is the first major public forum to be had on the incorporation topic. Chairman Gordy Bunch began the meeting with a presentation on the history, the steps taken and the steps that still need to be taken for the incorporation process.

Currently, The Woodlands is on step five, about halfway through, which consists of a public forum for the residents to be able to understand incorporation and to voice their concerns or questions.

The next step is to complete the financial analysis and estimation of the costs of services for the city operations. The previous steps were obtaining consulting firms (such as the Matrix Consulting Group) in order to begin analysis and studies on law enforcement, roads, and MUDs.

Why incorporate? As Chairman Gordy Bunch stated, “This started 22 years ago.” This process has been well looked into since 1996, when Houston annexed Kingwood. The Woodlands does not want to be annexed, so they negotiated a deal with the city of Houston and the City of Conroe that prevented annexation for the next 99 years, starting in 2007.

There were two triggers that made incorporation a possibility: The first is the Woodlands Parkway Extension. This was voted on in 2015 and the idea was rejected by residents who believe this extension will ruin their quality of life. The requests to remove the extension from the county’s thoroughfare plan have been denied. Despite the disapproval, the extension is still looking to go forward.

The second trigger was Hurricane Harvey. Cities were given federal grants after the devastation of the hurricane in order to repair their city. The Woodlands applied for millions of dollars in grants, but didn’t get what they asked for. However, if they had been a city, those federal grants may have been granted.

Also, The Woodlands doesn’t have direct responsibility over drainage systems because it is not one agency that has responsibility, but multiple agencies working together that each have different responsibilities. With incorporation, the drainage systems would be under city control.

The people of The Woodlands want to be in charge of their own area. This is not possible as a Township and this is not possible if they remain static in their government. It is only possible by incorporating. The Woodlands area already has so many services such as transit, waste, the fire department, community maintenance and public safety. It is so complex that Bunch mentioned, “Many people already think we are a city.”

Although this is a long process, it does not end with incorporation. If completed, The Woodlands will be a general law city, which can only have the authority to act if the state legislature wills them to do so.

Steps would then be taken to become a home rule city, which will derive its authority from a charter approved by the residents and has the authority to act on any matters unless specifically restricted by the state legislature.

Vice President of the Matrix Consulting Group, Alan Pennington, then took the mic for more financial pros and cons, delving deeper into taxes, law enforcement and other city services that would be under The Woodlands control.

After this presentation, the mic opened up for questions from the audience who wanted clarification or to state their feelings about incorporation.

Another meeting will be held sometime in the future after The Woodlands has gone deeper into the process of possible Incorporation. Some of the next steps that will be talked about will be the tax effect on residents in The Woodlands as well as a community survey and eventually, an election to determine if the residents want to incorporate.

To keep up with the incorporation news and studies, as well as locating common FAQs, visit www.thewoodlandsincorporationstudy.com.