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Book Reviews JANET CLARK, Editor Special Districts, Special Purposes: Fringe Governments and Urban Problems in the Houston Area By Virginia Marion Perrenod College Station, TX: TexasA&M University Press, 1984, 152 pp. $18.50 Reviewed by Alan Schenker, University of Wyoming Listeners to the old-time radio show "The Shadow" will find it easy to appreciate just how invisible is the typical special district government. You can be right next to it and not know it is there until it makes some sort of "move" or "speaks" to you. How can 26,000 governments be invisible? When they are special districts. By Bureau of the Census definition, special districts are the residual form of government after one has separated out all of the other types: counties, municipalities, towns and townships, and school districts. The leftovers, perhaps like the remains of the last few nights' meals that one mixes together and pops into the microwave as a new concoction, are all lumped together. What special districts have in common then is chiefly that they are not one of the other governmental types. To a lesser extent they also share some positive features. One commonly assumed characteristic, as Virginia Marion Perrenod reminds us in the intro- duction to Special Districts, Special Purposes, is "that districts are involved in only one or two functions." The list of responsibilities found across the country is long, but includes airports, cemeteries, fire protection, libraries, water supply, mosquito abatement, etc. Being a residual category, however, special districts are resistant to simple classification. Numbers of them--I'm not sure who if anyone knows precisely how many--are much more complex. Years ago, John C. Bollens called urban fringe special districts "junior cities." What this means is that a special district may sometimes be a quasi-municipality, providing a wide range of urban-type services to persons living in a town-like, but unincorporated development. The Social Science Journal, Volume 24, Number 3, pages 343-359. Copyright © 1987 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0035-7634.

Special districts, special purposes: Fringe governments and urban problems in the Houston area

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Book Reviews

JANET CLARK, Editor

Special Districts, Special Purposes: Fringe Governments and Urban Problems in the Houston Area By Virginia Marion Perrenod College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1984, 152 pp. $18.50

Reviewed by Alan Schenker, University of Wyoming

Listeners to the old-time radio show "The Shadow" will find it easy to appreciate just how invisible is the typical special district government. You can be right next to it and not know it is there until it makes some sort of "move" or "speaks" to you.

How can 26,000 governments be invisible? When they are special districts. By Bureau of the Census definition, special districts are the residual form of government after one has separated out all of the other types: counties, municipalities, towns and townships, and school districts. The leftovers, perhaps like the remains of the last few nights' meals that one mixes together and pops into the microwave as a new concoction, are all lumped together.

What special districts have in common then is chiefly that they are not one of the other governmental types. To a lesser extent they also share some positive features. One commonly assumed characteristic, as Virginia Marion Perrenod reminds us in the intro- duction to Special Districts, Special Purposes, is "that districts are involved in only one or two functions." The list of responsibilities found across the country is long, but includes airports, cemeteries, fire protection, libraries, water supply, mosquito abatement, etc. Being a residual category, however, special districts are resistant to simple classification. Numbers of them--I 'm not sure who if anyone knows precisely how many--are much more complex. Years ago, John C. Bollens called urban fringe special districts "junior cities." What this means is that a special district may sometimes be a quasi-municipality, providing a wide range of urban-type services to persons living in a town-like, but unincorporated development.

The Social Science Journal, Volume 24, Number 3, pages 343-359. Copyright © 1987 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0035-7634.

344 THE SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL Vol. 24/No. 3/1987

Virginia Marion Perrenod provides us with a very interesting, readable, and informa- tive examination of urban fringe districts located about Houston, Texas. While scarcely a random sample of districts across the country, or even of urban fringe districts, Perre- nod's study may be even better than scientifically generalizable. Building on a theoretical structure that takes into account both the potential strengths and weaknesses of special districts for democratic governmental values, she has delved in depth into the urban fringe district in the Houston metropolitan area, and more particularly the Greenwood Utility District and Harris County Water Control and Improvement District #91. While the reader may not already be aware of his or her interest in these two districts (or, for that matter, even may not be aware of their existence!) the tale Perrenod relates is fascinating and intimate. Her credential as a political scientist working in the geographi- cal area of the study is substantially enhanced by her involvement as a participant- observer in serving for several years on the Board of Directors of one of these districts.

In a nutshell, a very tiny nutshell compared to the conditions confronted by the hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of water districts in Harris County, Texas, the problems Perrenod considers are: (1) substantively: land subsidence in an already low-lying area; and (2) in terms of governmental structure and process: how one policy problem can be addressed by the fragmented "system" of several hundred highly autonomous, discrete units. One important public function served by urban fringe districts in the Houston area is the provision of water to suburban housing developments. A common technique for developing water supplies in that area is to pump the water out of underground aquifiers. One result is simple to foresee, but more difficult to control: once' you remove the water--unless natural processes replenish the supply--you have created in effect "holes" underground. Not surprisingly, the surface gradually settles to a lower level. What is the problem, you ask? Well, the Houston area is already so close to sea level that there is little if any leeway to go down and stay above the ocean. This means that as hundreds of separate water districts each individually develops water supplies for its customers, the overall regional impact has been to induce land subsidence, which in turn has increased the likelihood of serious flooding of already low-lying areas, especially during times of adverse weather conditions: heavy rains, hurricanes, high tides, and the like. Hundreds of districts each in business for themselves helped to contribute to the problem. Can they solve it? Perrenod offers some "modest proposals." They are "mod- est" insofar as they do not involve major political restructuring in Texas. That means they may also be practical. Yet these are serious proposals insofar as they build on her expertise to construct real substantive solutions to dangerous environmental conditions. It would render both Perrenod and the reader a disservice to list these proposals here, as they flow logically from the development of her study and should be appreciated in context.

I cannot say that Special Districts, Special Purposes will kindle a concern in special districts for the reader who has never even heard of them and could not care less about cities and water and their government. However, the student of local government, public administration, or water policy, to mention only a few areas, should find her work exciting and of considerable assistance in helping one to envisage the climate of public service provision in this important segment of American government. I hope with Per- ronod's book as inspiration, other scholars will further expand our knowledge of related activities elsewhere in the United States.