8 April 11 - 17, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents had been continuously provided with municipal services, including police protection, according to a June 2008 court document. Trouble was, Wilmer conceded that it didn’t have any re- cords of providing services and had also denied municipal services that included police protection twice in the five months prior to the annexation ordinance council had passed in early April 2008. Aldrich says he started the website Wilmer Citizen be- cause of Hudson’s shenanigans, and people in the area started sharing their ire with city leaders over their golden goose relationships with developers. It had gotten so contentious that one developer, Xebec, threatened local environmental activist Lorrie McDonald with litigation and sent a cease and desist letter for her to quit participating in public debate over 95 acres on Belt Line Road that the California-based company was deter- mined to get council to annex voluntarily, according to a Sept. 10, 2008, report by the Wilmer Citizen. “So would anyone be surprised if there was a mafia hit? No. Would anyone be surprised if a mother-in-law was held hostage? No, some may not want her back. But the serious truth here is that you do run a danger of things happening to you or your property for speaking out against those in power. … Now they are trying to stop free speech. Are we now to be censored for speaking out against something we believe is wrong for the city[?]” wrote an anonymous com- menter on the Wilmer Citizen site. “I don’t like it when developers court the same people like Hudson,” McDonald says. “When they court our people and when they’re courting our politicians, they are doing fa- vors for them and having parties for them. I don’t like that. That’s not right. You’re not serving the community.” Aldrich has always sympathized with property owners but points out it could be worse: they could be dealing with 6,000-home master-planned communities like other cities in North Texas. “On the other hand, the warehouses are good neigh- bors,” he says. “They don’t live there, don’t vote and participate in elections. But they don’t look very great, a bunch of big boxes all over the place.” J eff Steele has been called many names over the years. He was known as “Dr. Honky Tonk” in his wife’s country and western band and the “devil on the po- dium” not long after he took office as mayor in Novem- ber 2008, appointed by the city council to fill a vacancy. He promised to bring trans- parency back to City Hall. Hudson had resigned as mayor in early October 2008 be- fore his term ended. “I never done anything I’m ashamed of as mayor,” Hudson says. “I understand that when you take people from the county and annex them into the city, it creates new taxes. But I also understand why they’re upset about it. I would be, too.” Steele’s term as mayor would mirror Hudson’s, and with similar results. Like Hudson did in April 2008, Steele as mayor voted to use the local government code to initiate involuntary annex- ations along Belt Line Road and North Goode Road in June 2010, including Hefner’s property. Hefner credits Billy Joe Wickliffe, a former council mem- ber, with bringing nearly two dozen property owners to- gether in 2010 as part of a lawsuit to stop the city’s involuntary annexation of 50 tracts. City attorney Michael Halla, who had to settle the 2008 lawsuit, also had to settle the late December 2010 lawsuit and deannex the properties. But in Wilmer’s case, it doesn’t matter if he loses. As property owners pointed out, Wilmer and the developers interested in the land still win since the majority of property owners who have been involuntarily annexed over the years couldn’t afford to hire an at- torney to stop the city. “As much as I would like to talk to you about the boundary adjustments that the City of Wilmer exer- cised under authority of [the local government code], we are still in litiga- tion so any comment would be premature,” Steele wrote in an early March email to the Observer. “You can di- rect inquiries to the City At- torney Mike Halla.” We did. Halla didn’t re- spond. The late December 2010 lawsuit discussed that when a city like Wilmer annexes a bunch of land, the ETJ naturally expands, subjecting new ar- eas to the possibility of annexation — yet the city of Wilmer was also being sued by the city of Ferris for “never properly annexing many of the areas adjacent” to Wilmer. It was a law- suit Wilmer settled in late March 2014, establishing a line that divides the adjoining and future territory. One of the points made in the case was that Wilmer was using illegal annexa- tions to extend its grasp of more land, building a house of cards made of one improper annexation after another. “As such, this will tend to create situations in which sub- sequent annexations become themselves invalid because state law is quite clear that annexations which create ‘is- lands’ which are not directly connected to the city are void,” according to the late December 2010 lawsuit. That’s what Wilmer calls doughnut holes, pockets of the ETJ landlocked by city limits. Steele’s tenure as mayor went down in flames be- cause of political controver- sies and lack of transparency. Steele had tried to reap- point a council member to a seat vacated by the mayor pro tem, who had resigned to spend more time with his family. “She was voted out by the citizens of this town, and she should not have been reseated,” Robert Wells, the city’s former police chief, who was fired by Steele, told The Dallas Morning News in early June 2011. Wells was one of two new candidates who had won their council seats in the May 2011 election to reverse the course that Steele had charted. Several townsfolk gathered outside of Steele’s office in May 2011 and chanted, “The mayor must go!” according to The Dallas Morning News. Steele had also paid city bills without council approval and was sued by another council member, which resulted in a court directing Steele “to cease interfering with the at- tempts by the new majority of the City Council to place items on the City’s agenda, revising and amending various City policies and ordinances.” That same month, August 2011, Steele was also accused of slander and threats before resigning in September 2011, according to the Wilmer Citizen. A fter settling two court cases and enduring years of turmoil at City Hall, you might think Wilmer would have changed its ways. Instead, in 2022, it tried to in- voluntarily annex another 45 properties, including Hefner’s. She didn’t find out it was happening until just 48 hours be- fore the issue came before the council that December. Hefner immediately started calling other people, as did Patel, who had filed a lawsuit against the city a couple of months earlier due to the 2008 annexation of 12 acres on Belt Line Road he had recently pur- chased east of the city. He spent six months working with the county to build an RV park before the city told him about the annexation. Hefner also wanted to sue the city. She couldn’t believe Steele had returned as a council member in 2019 and was trying to an- nex her property after the city had released their properties in 2013 as part of a court settlement. The city was annexing properties involved in both the 2008 lawsuit and the 2010 lawsuit. But this time, it took care not to repeat the mistakes it had made in the previous law- suits. It held the annexation hearings in early December 2022 and mid-January 2023. It also did its best to avoid us- ing the phrase “involuntary annexation” on the agenda, though annexation did appear at the end. “None of the 140 people had any notice by phone, email, mail or newspaper, and the description for the agenda item was labeled ‘Discuss and consider ordinances regarding in- clusion in reference to local government code section 41.003. Case No. (M-22-62).’ How would any single person know what that means or that they are going to be annexed?” Patel asked in June when he first contacted the Observer. Property owners outside the city limits weren’t paying at- tention to city agendas because they weren’t paying city taxes. “They didn’t say anything, didn’t give me the opportunity to say whether I want to be annexed or don’t want to be,” says Cynthia Jarvis, who had inherited 100 acres between Wilmer and Ferris from her grandmother. “With cities, it is a rule that we have to be asked. I’m a real estate broker, and you have to ask to be annexed.” Property owners also didn’t have the Wilmer Citizen to keep them updated. Aldrich says he had to shut it down in 2014 because “two council members were going to file bo- gus criminal charges” against him. “These people are nuts,” Aldrich says. “I wanted to stay away from them.” Halla had signed off on the agenda that used the local government code as the rationale for the involuntary annex- ations. Hefner’s attorney, Robert Miklos, who was repre- senting 12 property owners, claimed the city had no record to demonstrate that the properties had been receiving long- standing service from the city. Hefner and other property owners claim that whenever they called 911, they were routed to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. They were also paying taxes as part of the unincorpo- rated county and were not receiving road repair, sewerage or water services from the city to justify the “inclusion.” They were also upset that McDonald, who now serves on the Planning & Zoning Commission, lives in the ETJ off Belt Line Road but wasn’t included in the annexation. “I’m not part of that,” McDonald says. “I’m almost down to the river. No favoritism.” Milkos filed another lawsuit in January for eight other property owners. Three more lawsuits by 10 other property owners followed that same month, all claiming that their properties didn’t meet the criteria laid out in the local govern- ment code. Mark Graham Jeff Steele became the mayor of Wilmer in November 2008. Mark Graham Wilmer city attorney Michael Halla has worked to deannex many properties swept up in city annexation. Unfair Park from p6 >> p10
