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| ROCK, MEET HARD PLACE: Too Much, Too Fast: Collin County Feeling Growing Pains. | ||
Dallas Morning News, July 1, 2017 (excerpts). For years, top civic and elected officials across Collin County have boasted about their top-quality schools, family-friendly communities and vast expanses of open land ripe for development. Their efforts have attracted people in droves. Since 2000, Collin County's population has grown nearly 90 percent. If that pace continues, the county could double its current population before 2035 and exceed the populations of Dallas and Tarrant counties by 2050. Developing all the available land is still decades away. But growing pains are an annoying reality now for many Collin residents, whether they're feeling overrun by high-density developments, struggling with higher property taxes or getting stuck in traffic. Some are speaking out against the boom. In Frisco ISD, one of the fastest growing school districts in the nation, voters rejected a 13-cent property tax rate hike last August to help fund operations. It is believed to be only the second time in history that voters there failed to approve extra financing sought by the district. Community members and district staff spent months figuring out how to make do with the revenue available. Among the tough choices: keeping four new schools closed for a year rather than pay for the added staff to operate them. The district also passed along some costs to parents, such as parking fees for high school drivers and annual fees for athletic participation. To the south of Frisco is a more organized effort against the recent surge in high-density development. Thousands signed a petition to put the city's controversial Plano Tomorrow comprehensive plan to a public vote over concerns about the number of apartments it allowed. When the city rejected that effort, several residents pooled their money and filed suit. That lawsuit is pending. Out of those efforts came a newly formed group called PlanoFuture.org, which backed a slate of three City Council candidates and a mayoral candidate in the May election to keep Plano suburban. Two of them won. The group is not anti-growth, spokesman Allan Samara said. But having a city that feeds into the urban living desires popular with millennials isn't good either. "There's an apartment building bubble going on in America, and we need it moderated in our town," said Samara, who started a business in Plano in 1982 and moved there in 2011. "They put too many apartments in too tight a space in too high a density," Samara said. "We want them to stop." |
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Posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2017 at 4:01 pm by H. David Ballinger |
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