Opinion ID: 1761976
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 1962 Houston Ordinance (62-1766)

Text: On December 5, 1962, after the agreed judgment was entered, Houston passed Ordinance 62-1766 on first reading and finally passed the ordinance on January 6, 1963. By force of Ordinance 60-989 and the agreed judgment, Houston then had the exclusive jurisdiction to annex the territory described in its ordinance. Our only question is whether Houston validly exercised the power which the judgment preserved to it. Pasadena attacked the validity of the 1962 ordinance because it annexed territory which was not lying adjacent to said city   . as required by Section 2, Article 1175, Vernon's Ann. Tex.Civ.Stats. The courts below have rejected this contention and have upheld the validity of the ordinance. The property described in Ordinance 62-1766 was a long meandering strip of land which was ten feet wide. Commencing at Point A, which we have designated on the accompanying illustrative drawing, the strip touches ten feet of the Houston boundary and then extends in an easterly direction along and adjacent to the southern boundary of Pasadena for about five miles to Point B. It proceeds on to the east to Galveston Bay (Point C). At Point D the strip proceeds west and southwesterly to and along a portion of the city limits of the City of Webster, thence generally northwesterly along Clear Creek to Point E where the strip again opens upon the boundary of Houston for a distance of ten feet. This thread of land extends from Point A to B, C, D, and E for a distance of more than fifty miles, but the ten-foot strip embraces only 97.3 acres of annexed lands. Pasadena says that this filament of land lassoes a vast body of 44,637 acres of unannexed land. The encircled body of land stretches for a distance of seventeen miles from West to east and a distance of ten miles from north to south. Pasadena argues that the strip of land touches Houston only at its two openings (Points A and E) for a total distance of twenty feet. Houston says that the strip is adjacent over its entire length since the 1962 agreed judgment accorded Houston exclusive annexation jurisdiction to the whole of the territory, including that which was encircled. We do not agree with Houston's contention. A city's jurisdiction or exclusive power to annex is not the equivalent of annexation. The agreed judgment was not, itself, an annexation ordinance and did not extend the boundaries of Houston. The judgment recognized that Houston's Ordinance 60-989, which was a true annexation ordinance, but which was never finally enacted, was effective to accord Houston exclusive jurisdiction to annex by appropriate ordinances. Beyer v. Templeton, 147 Tex. 94, 212 S.W.2d 134 (1948). The judgment did not purport to excuse Houston from complying with the requirements set by the law for effecting a valid annexation. If the judgment had done so, there would have been no occasion for Houston's annexation of the ten-foot strip; it would already have been within the Houston city limits. We conclude, therefore, that Ordinance 62-1766 was enacted at a time when Houston had exclusive annexation jurisdiction over the strip taken as well as the large body of land which it encircled. We conclude that none of the area over which Houston had annexation jurisdiction, had actually been annexed at the time it passed the ordinance. Whether or not the ten-foot strip was annexed to Houston depends upon the validity of Ordinance 62-1766. More particularly the question is whether the strip was lying adjacent to said city, because it touched Houston at both ends of the strip. City of Irving v. Callaway, 363 S.W.2d 832 (Tex.Civ.App.1952, writ ref. n. r. e.); 62 C.J.S. Municipal Corporations § 72. In City of Irving v. Dallas County Flood Control District, 383 S.W.2d 571 (Tex.Sup. 1964), we held that adjacency was a law question. We held also that a finger of land which extended easterly from the eastern city limits of Irving, which body of land was surrounded on the north, east and south sides by the City of Dallas, was not adjacent to Irving. There are some factual differences between that case and this one, but we regard this case as one which presents a greater degree of non-adjacency than existed in City of Irving. From Point A to Point B on the map, the strip touches Houston for a distance of ten feet; it disproportionately touches Pasadena for a distance of five miles. We repeat our holding in State ex rel. Pan American Production Co. v. Texas City, 157 Tex. 450, 303 S.W.2d 780 (1957) that the Legislature used the word adjacent in the sense of being contiguous and in the neighborhood of or in the vicinity of a municipality. In City of Irving, supra, we stated an illustration of non-adjacency:    `Adjacency,' as between two Home Rule cities, must be tested by the facts in each case. By way of example, a 100-acre tract of land lying on the northern boundary line of the City of San Antonio is adjacent to that city but is not adjacent to Austin some 75 miles distant, although, conceivably, the 100-acre tract could be encompassed in lines drawn around a thin sliver or finger of unincorporated territory adjoining the southern boundary of Austin and running the full length of the 75 miles to the northern boundary of San Antonio. The ten-foot strip is not adjacent to Houston.