What a municipality's annexation map does and does not tell you about a land bank parcel
Most annexation maps show the boundary as a clean line, and it is tempting to read parcels just outside it as next in sequence. The map shows political intent, not infrastructure sequence, and those two things can be years apart. A parcel two miles outside the current limit can be inside the next annexation push if it sits between a funded water main extension and a road already on the capital improvement plan. A parcel half a mile out can sit untouched for fifteen years if the council has no political reason to cross a drainage corridor to get there. The map is worth pulling, but the CIP document is what tells you whether anyone has appropriated money to make the map real. My question for the room is whether anyone has found a way to read the gap between annexation intent and infrastructure funding before committing to a hold, because those two documents being out of sync is what turns a five year story into a twelve year story.
