City limits dispute heats up
Home Rule vote draws attention
to boundary issue
Branch area resident Alvin LaFon has lived in Princeton all his life, and says he has driven FM 982 dozens of times each week, stretching back to when it was a dirt road.
“I used to take my cotton to the gin up there on 982, back when I was 10 years old,” he said.
He was there when Branch became a city in the 1960s, and he was there when the community became unincorporated in the 1970s.
Today he still calls home the land along C.R. 437, right across the road from the church.
Up until 2003, he says, the city limits of Princeton stretched south only to the area of Courtney Lane.
That year, the sign was moved down to FM 546, where it stands today. LaFon said that move was illegal and shouldn’t be that way.
“I’ve been around here 72 years,” he said.
Although he isn’t part of the group of residents taking similar complaints to the Collin County District Attorney’s Office, he validates the group’s concerns.
“There never was a Princeton city limits sign where it is now, and there never had been in the last 50 years.
The Princeton City Limits sign had always been about half a mile from the (Buffalo Run apartments), at the bottom of the hill where the Copelands used to live,” he said.
Lafon’s views of the situation are similar to those of some of the other residents in the areas south of town, and are the basis for a movement against the proposed home rule charter.
A letter written by Council Member J.M. Caldwell to the Princeton Herald on March 13 states that the strip of land along FM 982 stretching south to Branch was never deleted from the city’s annexation ordinance in 1971.
“The ordinance that passed by the city council on Jan. 20, 1971 was number 104,” writes Caldwell in his letter.
“We held a public hearing ... no one appeared to voice opposition to this ordinance. Now after thirty seven years, we are being told that someone writing on that ordinance the word deleted can undo what a Mayor and City Council did.”
Caldwell said in his letter that he believed the people disputing the location of the city limit and in effect fighting the passage of the proposed Home Rule Charter.
Some residents in the Branch area claim the statements in the letter about the ordinance are not true, and are taking it to the Collin County District Attorney’s office.
“I believe it is illegal,” Lafon said, describing the actions of the city back in 2003.
“They went back and saw that it is going to be a very valuable piece of property and the city wants to take it in and take total control of it, which is wrong. You are not go to stop progress, but for them to try to force something on the people down here ... The old-timers are fully aware of what is going on.”
Some of the younger residents in the Branch area are taking issue with the location of the city limits, and also with the city’s application for a Certificate of Necessity, which will allow the city to do obtain easements to do necessary water and sewer lines to projects within the city’s ETJ, such as the new Princeton ISD elementary school.
“Branch would not have incorporated if it was within the city limits of Princeton,” said Branch area resident Robert Gammenthaler.
The greater problem, though, he said, is that the citizens who live in his neighborhood have no rights when it comes to city government.
“People who live in Princeton’s ETJ are in an unfortunate position. They have no voice in city government,” he said.
That’s part of the reason the group is laying this at the feet of the Collin County District Attorney’s office.
“We felt we gave the city plenty of time to make some response, but we’ve received no response,” Gammenthaler said.
“The people in Princeton sure better give it some thought because it can increase property values. The city doesn’t have a lot of money ... they’re wanting all the tax money they can get,” LaFon said.
