Lost Creek voted for independence from the City of Austin -- what now?
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Driving through the Lost Creek area, a small community just southwest of downtown Austin, you're not going to see a shortage of American flags heading into Independence Day.
It's a community that values that independence a great deal. This year, it utilized a new state law to disannex from the City of Austin.
"This is new, this is something that hasn't happened yet and we're still figuring it out and figuring out what everything means," said Leslie Odom, a community advocate who has lived in the area for more than a decade.
They'll have to have it figured out in just a few months. The City of Austin says a disannexation ordinance will be on the Austin City Council agenda Aug. 29. That ordinance will go into effect Sept. 9.
Until then, the Lost Creek Limited District board, first responders and the city are working to make it a smooth transition.
"Since this has never been done before...it's kind of an untangling of services. So we're currently working to figure out what the next steps will be, what Aug. 29 will look like for Lost Creek," Odom said.
Last year, Texas passed legislation that allowed Lost Creek, and five other territories, to depart city limits. House Bill 3053 specifically targeted areas annexed into cities that have a population of 500,000 people or more between March 3, 2015 and December 1, 2017.
Three of those six territories -- including Lost Creek, the most populous -- voted to disannex. A successful election was also held in Travis County Emergency Services District No. 9 to allow Lost Creek to receive services from the Westlake Fire Department.
What will change for Lost Creek?
Some of the biggest changes include shuffling from Austin Fire and Police Departments to Travis County resources. The Fire Chief for Travis County ESD No. 9, Westlake Fire, said they're already running calls to Lost Creek now.
In terms of emergency response, he said they'll really only be taking on additional lower-priority calls. That workload, their analysis found, shouldn't be a problem.
"But from our prevention division, we're looking at that this budget process. We are looking at adding a wildfire prevention officer that will also be doing fire inspections and we think that will help with some added workload that we're anticipating," said Fire Chief David Wilson of Travis County ESD No. 9.
Here's a full list of changes from the City of Austin:
- The Travis County Sherriff’s Office will provide law enforcement instead of the Austin Police Department
- ESD No. 9 will respond to fire-related incidents instead of the Austin Fire Department
- Austin-Travis County EMS will remain the same
- For people with Austin Water, the city will continue to provide water and wastewater service. The city said there will be no change in rate
- The same for Austin Energy customers, but those in the disannexed areas will pay the out-of-city customer rate
- Austin Resource Recovery services such as trash, recycling, composting, large brush, bulk and dead animal collection, and street sweeping will be discontinued
- The Watershed Protection Department’s Drainage Utility charges and drainage services will end
These additional city services would also be discontinued:
- Code enforcement
- Street maintenance
- Streetlight maintenance
- Sidewalk and crosswalk maintenance
- Traffic sign maintenance
- Right of way permitting
- Public Health and sanitation regulation, such as litter on the rights of way
- Maintenance of drainage infrastructure
What does it mean for people still in Austin city limits?
In short, the city said not a whole lot.
Property taxes will be collected from the areas that chose to disannex until their share of city debt has been paid off, according to city staff.
“In sum, disannexation will not have an impact on City revenue,” a spokesperson for the city said prior to the election.