Voters will consider ‘City of Big Lake’

BIG LAKE — Voters will ultimately decide whether this community becomes the Valley’s fourth city, state officials said.

The Local Boundary Commission voted 4-0 June 23 to move incorporation ahead to the next phase, which requires a vote of the people living in the prospective city, said Brent Williams a local government specialist for the commission.

An vote April 16 cleared the way for a large parcel of land to be annexed to the adjacent city of Houston, but questions about the mill rate postponed the vote. Big Lake officials say they plan to collect a 3.02 mill rate on behalf of the borough, and then turn it over to the borough to cover services — like the Big Lake Library — currently provided by the borough, Williams said.

In addition, the city’s size will remain fixed at 76.8 square miles (larger geographically than St. Louis, San Francisco, or Miami, and roughly as large as Baton Rouge, Louisiana). That’s smaller than the original size of the incorporation petition outlined, but includes some portions of the former Road Service Area 21 that had left unnamed lakes partially in the proposed city and partially out.

While voters will get to vote on the question, officials don’t know when that vote will take place, Williams said.

“I can’t tell you when,” he said. “That’s in the hand of the Division of Elections. It might be on the same date as the municipal elections (Oct. 5), or it might be a separate by-mail election.”

The commission will formally publish a decision on incorporation July 23, Williams said. Once the commission files the paperwork with the Division of Elections, it has 30 days to send out an order to hold the election. From there, the division can hold the election “no less than 30 and no more than 90 days” afterward.

By that schedule, the earliest possible date for an election would be Sept. 21. The last possible day an election could be held is Nov. 20.

This will be the third time Big Lake voters have taken up the question of incorporation.

Voters appeared to approve incorporation by 12 votes April 16, 1974. However, 16 ballots were mailed improperly, and when the vote was cast again Dec. 3, 1974, incorporation lost by seven votes.

The question failed a second time — this time by 149 votes in Oct. 6, 1987, according to figures provided by the Local Boundary commission.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.