Mo Manouchehripour raised his right pinky finger to the sky as he spoke to the Anna City Council about his home — a dream he and his wife achieved after 27 years of sacrifice and hard work.

“I planted two hundred trees, oak trees, not even thicker than this,” he said at a July council meeting.

Today, the 70-year-old college professor worries about what will come of those trees.

A string of city council votes dating back to May cleared the way for a development called Liberty Hills, which will hug the northern boundary of Manouchehripour’s property.

Narrow county roads that feed into the planned development will likely be expanded, and there’s no guarantee Manouchehripour’s oaks will survive.

The development is more than 1,000 acres and includes plans for single-family, multifamily and mixed-use commercial structures. In July, the Anna City Council approved the annexation land included in development plans.

“Y’all said a long time ago that this place is not going to have things more than 1-acre land, that it’s going to be like the countryside. Don’t go back on your word,” Manouchehripour told council members.

He and others who live near the future development say they feel duped, pointing to parts of the city’s comprehensive plan designated some of the Liberty Hills project’s land for ranching and agriculture.

Others say they had issues with the lack of transparency on the project, pointing to campaign donations connecting the developer to elected officials.

Campaign donations questioned

Pete Cain, who started his first term as mayor in May, got two donations from Old Prosper Partners — $7,500 in January and an additional $7,000 in February, campaign finance documents show.

Teague Griffin, a partner at the Prosper-based real estate development firm, is also part of Brown & Griffin Real Estate Advisors, which bought the Liberty Hills property.

In an email to The Dallas Morning News, Cain described the potential builders on the project as “absolutely top notch.” He said the development could increase the city’s commercial and residential tax base four-fold.

“This is how I plan to lower household taxes for our neighbors,” Cain wrote.

Cain participated in votes related to the Liberty Hills project at the July and August council meetings.

But Randy Atchley, who served on the Anna City Council with Cain before the two ran against each other for the mayoral seat in May, said he thinks the mayor should have recused himself in matters related to Liberty Hills. Atchley, a McKinney firefighter, lost by about 250 votes.

Atchley said he has no issues with Old Prosper Partners, adding that his criticism was directed at what he saw as a lack of leadership and transparency from Cain.

“The campaign is over, the election is over. You’re the mayor,” Atchley said during an interview with The News. “I think it’s about doing what’s ethical. It’s about doing what a leader does and not looking at it as a political thing.”

Cain said he’s shocked at “the tactics” taken by Atchley.

“I have served this community for over 20 years, on the school board, chamber of commerce, local nonprofits, as an elder at my church and have never had my integrity questioned,” Cain wrote. “I published all my financial information online just as I am required. I have done nothing wrong or illegal. I have not tried to convince anyone on this council one way or another on this development. I certainly promised nothing to anyone regarding that donation.”

Council member Lee Miller also questioned the mayor’s refusal to recuse himself.

“A recusal isn’t an admittance of guilt,” Miller said at the August meeting.

Miller, who voted against the annexation and rezoning for Liberty Hills, said he originally started having objections to the project because of the campaign donations to Cain.

“As we started to dig a little bit, it came into focus that there were some other issues with the developer agreement, and it was mainly the size of the lots. We could have done a little better job with that,” Miller told The News. “It got rushed at the end.”

Jeff Brawner, who spoke on behalf of Old Prosper Partners at the same council meeting, defended the company’s donations to Cain.

“We care about this community. We care,” Brawner said. “People approached us and said that Mayor [Pete] Cain was a terrific asset and would be a terrific asset to the city of Anna, so we gave to the person everyone thought would be the best for the city.”

A learning experience

On May 14, the city council approved a preannexation development agreement for the Liberty Hills project. The city uses the binding agreements to bring developments into city limits through annexation, Anna City Manager Ryan Henderson said.

City staff prefers that residential developments in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, just outside of city limits, be annexed into the city as opposed to becoming municipal utility districts that govern themselves.

“We feel that by annexing these developments into the city, we are actually, in turn, really protecting the integrity of our entire community,” he said.

After a preannexation development agreement is signed, the annexation and the zoning changes associated with the project are largely “administrative,” he added.

Developers have the option of bringing a draft of the preannexation agreement to the city’s planning and zoning commission for review and recommendations before the matter is brought to the city council for a vote.

In the case of Liberty Hills, Henderson said, the development agreement was approved by the city council and signed before it came before the commission, which recommended the zoning changes be denied. According to a city presentation, the denial was based on several concerns, including single-family lot sizes and tree preservation requirements.

The kerfuffle over Liberty Hills was a learning experience for city staff. Anna city officials are considering updates to its comprehensive plan, Henderson said.

“I think the Liberty Hills project is very endemic of where we are going as a city and as an organization in the sense that development is going to keep coming,” Henderson said. “This is going to be something that we’re going to have to navigate over the next decade, two decades, three decades.”

‘Ripping your heart out’

Connie Montgomery and her husband, Larry, are coping with the reality that they might be forced to move from their 103-year-old home, where the couple has lived for 40 years.

The land is owned by Risland, a different developer.

Earlier this year, their landlord told the couple they need to be put on a month-to-month lease.

“He asked us, if it came down to it, how much time we would need to find a place,” Montgomery said. “It’s ripping your heart out.”

Matt Benton bought his property in Anna’s extraterritorial jurisdiction in 2017, and moved his family to the area earlier this year. He said he was looking for a more remote, rural way of living, where his pets can lounge on the porch and his children can play without worrying about cars speeding down the road.

The Bentons, who homeschool, said the Liberty Hills development would border their newly built home.

“It kind of makes me wonder who the council is representing. Is it the people or the developers who don’t even live here? It’s a big concern of mine,” Benton said.

Manouchehripour has watched his neighborhood grow since he moved to the area. His home is filled with furniture and decorations he created in his workshop. He loves seeing the birds that visit the pond in his front yard in the mornings, and he spends his weekends with his wife, watching the sky turn pink.

Next to the pond is an old barn Manouchehripour kept around as part of a promise he made to the previous landowner.

Standing next to the first oak he planted, he was flooded with memories of his wife and daughter seeing the property for the first time and meeting the Montgomerys, who welcomed him like family.

He hates the thought of seeing the trees he planted ruined by development.

“Oak trees are slow growers; they don’t grow quick. They grow very slow,” he said. “But they last a long time.”