Did you know that by law, municipalities in the state of Tennessee can annex your property right out from under you without your permission? This is simply called expanding their “Urban Growth Boundaries”. Any Tennessee city can widen its boundaries, pulling homes, businesses and privately owned land into its pool of taxpayers. As our cities are grasping for more tax dollars “Municipal annexation”
is a practice that is growing more frequent in our rural Tennessee counties. And many times this is done without any knowledge by the effected citizens. One day you get a tax bill informing you that you are now a resident of an adjacent city and that is it. Believe it or not, this can only be done in four states in the union, and Tennessee just happens to be one of them. After an Urban Growth Boundary has been approved by the county commission, a city may annex any parcel located within that boundary at any time without a public referendum. In other words, the residents have no voice in this decision. We essentially already have three layers of government that we are supporting in our rural county communities: Federal, County, and State. When a city chooses to annex your community you are adding a fourth layer of government to support. Do we really want another layer of bureaucracy demanding our tax dollars? "Individuals should have the right to challenge a city’s ability to suddenly start collecting taxes from them, through public hearings, petitions and ultimately a vote by all citizens located in the effected communities. That’s a common-sense principle that should become a part of Tennessee law." TAFA has been founded to help all concerned citizens gain the necessary knowledge on how to fight this “annexation at will” by our municipalities. We will be proposing legislation next sesson to stop this practice and would appreciate your support and participation in this process. It can happen to anyone at any time who resides in an unincorporated area. And oh yes. Don't let them fool you. They claim this is a 20 year growth plan, but, it can be revisited and changed at anytime a city decides they want more land and tax dollars. No matter what you political affiliation is, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent, you should be interested in supporting this cause. Everyone should have the right to chose if they want to have their property annexed by a local municipality and have their taxes increased.
