4 April 11 - 17, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents G lenda Hefner calls where she lives “the black hole of Wilmer.” It doesn’t look like a black hole on the city’s planning map — more of a gray rectan- gle that captures her property and the one across the road from her. All around them is the city, mostly covered in warehouses: massive, flat struc- tures, filled with tools, diapers, washing machines and other goods delivered from the nearby rail yard. From her 2-acre property, Hefner needs to drive only a short distance down North Goode Road before she runs into the in- dustrial behemoths that have replaced the fields of her youth in Wilmer. At about a million square feet, the facilities have been affecting the water pressure from her neighbors’ wells. They appear all around Wilmer, even right near the center of the city. They have put Wilmer “on the map,” Mayor Sheila Petta says. Once a city of 3,000 people, Wilmer was surrounded by farmland, fields of cotton and wheat, and scores of homes like Hefner’s just outside the city’s boundaries. Many of those prop- erty owners would like to keep it that way and not pay city taxes for services such as sewer and water they’re not receiving. Wilmer’s officials have other ideas, though, and they want those warehouses inside the city’s boundaries, so the city has gone on an aggressive annexation spree since 2008, roping in properties, often whether the owners like it or not. Trouble is, the Texas Legislature cares very much about whether property owners want to be annexed and effectively outlawed involuntary annexation in 2019. That fact and a handful of successful lawsuits over the years haven’t dimin- ished Wilmer’s hunger, though. And the problem for home- owners in this rural, not affluent section of Dallas County is that fighting an unlawful annexation means going to court, which takes money. Hefner had fond memories of the roller rink in town and Cottonwood Creek where she and others played as children. Later, she would struggle to recall that fondness, in part be- cause of certain city officials. They tried to force her property and others into the city, but they won’t compel the diesel shop next door, which is inside city limits, to finish its parking lot. She claims the exhaust from the diesel trucks and the parking lot dust have harmed her health … for 10 years. Coincidentally or not, it has been 10 years since Hefner fought the city over involuntary annexations and won her release from city boundaries. Twenty property owners had joined her in the successful fight.. But a couple of properties did remain voluntarily inside the new boundaries. “Now they got brand new warehouses on them,” Hefner says. W ilmer sits alongside a major rail corridor with easy highway access and industrial businesses nearby. This makes it an ideal location for warehouses and distribution centers and for Wilmer to sweeten the pot with generous tax abatements for new warehouses. Some in Wilmer would prefer to see the city pursue a dif- ferent style of growth. “I’d rather see 50 years of taxes on 424 rooftops than another 75% tax abatement on | UNFAIR PARK | Mark Graham >> p6 Welcome (like it or not) Wilmer to A small suburb’s greedy annexation grabs run afoul of the law, rile homeowners. BY CHRISTIAN MCPHATE A neighborhood of manufactured homes in Wilmer, a once more rural community.