A Special Meeting of the City Council has been scheduled for Monday evening at 6:30pm to discuss and consider a moratorium on residential growth in the city of Forney. There had been rumors that the new City Council (namely Amanda Lewis and Sarah Salgado) were floating the idea of implementing the aforementioned moratorium, citing a strain on “the surrounding street network, water and wastewater facilities and other public facilities” and to give staff a break from the multitude of inquiries for developments here in Forney. Initial reaction by a portion of the citizenry here in Forney is that this is a great idea. However, many are also skeptical. Lets take a look at what this really means for Forney.
Lets start by looking at what this moratorium wouldn’t do, which is what Amanda Lewis and Sarah Salgado want you to believe it will, and that’s stop residential growth. First, this moratorium would not include any housing or multi-family developments that have already been approved and/or are currently under construction. It would only affect new developments on undeveloped land, which is comical. Why? The proposed moratorium is only for a four month period. Even if a development was approved today there wouldn’t be one two-by-four delivered to the site of the development within four months, much less any homes built (not to mention any new roads, water, or wastewater infrastructure that’s allegedly strained). Next, the developable land left in Forney would require zoning changes to allow for residential development. So, City Council can just deny the zoning change if they don’t want more residential. Planning & Zoning did just that a few weeks ago. Developments inside the city limits of Forney such as Chestnut Meadows, Diamond Creek, Fox Hollow, Eagle Ridge, and Mustang Creek are all at or close to build-out. Developments such as the Bellagio, Oak Creek, and a mixed-use (commercial, hotel, town home, multi-family) development next to Kroger don’t even have a two-by-four on the ground. There are currently houses being built in Lover’s Landing but that development includes a total of 145 lots and on August 17th City Council just approved the plats for a new apartment complex in Gateway (approximately 300 units) and 32 single family residential units in Park Trails. Lastly, what critics of residential growth never want to recognize is that most of the growth that effects the infrastructure within the city limits of Forney is actually outside the city limits of Forney. See chart below.
| Development | Homes at buildout |
| Clements Ranch | 150.00 |
| Devonshire | 3,000.00 |
| Heartland | 8,000.00 |
| Lakewood Trails | 607.00 |
| Las Lomas | 10,000.00 |
| Shamrock Ridge | 400.00 |
| Travis Ranch | 3,000.00 |
| Trinity Crossing | 215.00 |
| Vintage Meadows | 376.00 |
| Windmill Farms | 12,000.00 |
| Total: | 37,748.00 |
That’s just under 38,000 single family housing units that do not provide property taxes to the city of Forney (tax revenue needed for infrastructure), but utilize city infrastructure everyday and that doesn’t account for the apartment complexes in those areas. At build-out, these developments will account for over $50,000,000 in property taxes from single family homes alone. Add in the apartment complexes within these developments and that number will be millions more. That’s approximately two times the amount of the entire city of Forney budget. That’s a lot of money for infrastructure. But, Amanda Lewis and Sarah Salgado want to cut off Forney’s nose to spite it’s face, delaying and/or cutting off tax revenues from property taxes, plan review fees, impact fees, and park fees needed to keep up with the usage of our infrastructure. Not to mention, this may leave new employees they’ve just requested for next year’s budget on the sidelines with nothing to do.
Now, lets talk about what a moratorium will do. Amanda Lewis loves to use the word optics in City Council meetings. Just this week news came out that Texas Roadhouse would be opening a location in Terrell. While the city of Terrell doesn’t reap the benefits of their recent retail and restaurant development for years to come, they’ve done a great job of luring high profile tenants such as Buc-ee’s, Academy Sports & Outdoors, Spec’s, Olive Garden, Chili’s, and much more. Forney is just now positioning itself to lure it’s own high profile retail, restaurant, and additional grocery store development. These developments rely on future growth in growing areas like Forney and Terrell for their success. There is a ground breaking for a development that is to include Kohl’s and several other retail and restaurant tenants next month, a grocery store was to be submitting plans for a much needed location on the south side sometime over the next couple of months, and one of the most popular grocery stores in Texas, as well as other prospects have approached the city about locations in Forney proper. But, current leadership wants to announce that they are stopping the growth that those businesses rely on. I can tell you what kind of optics that gives potential retail and restaurant prospects, Terrell is open for business, that’s what.
To conclude, what this proposed moratorium really amounts to is, politicians who don’t understand how municipal government works often times make promises they can’t keep. Rather than admit they had no idea what they were talking about, they propose bad ideas to give the facade that they are carrying out their campaign promises. The problem is those bad ideas end up hurting everyone in the long run.