The big cities here in Texas are blue islands in a sea of red rural areas and small towns-just like the rest of the US complete with the high city and county taxes-small cities/towns and rural areas don’t have property taxes as high because people simply won’t vote for them or pay them-they will just move their home and small business to the next county where the taxes are lower.
When people decided a few years ago that school taxes were too high, a large number of parents began homeschooling-or put their kids in the local small Christian school-which was more than happy to put up 3 new buildings to handle the increase in enrollment-school taxes haven’t gone any higher after that...
In this county, there are no big boxes-and none wanted- you have to drive 30 miles to get to a WalMart-there are not a lot of conveniences close by in a rural area, but the taxes are much lower than a city-if you want to live in a city or burb where everything is provided by the city or is within a few miles, go for it-but you will pay for it on your tax bill-likewise if you want to live on acreage, join an electric co op to provide electricity and internet service, get water from your own or a communal water service/well, get groceries at a local store, etc then move to a rural area and pay low taxes...
Most townie transplants, however end up selling out and returning to the city in 1-2 years-they are too used to having all the conveniences close by and can’t make the switch to traveling farther for stuff...
I guess for now, the rural residents outnumber the city residents . I hope it stays tha way, because without Texas will never get a republican president again. It’s the same in Tennessee, except we only have three large cities and they’re not overly huge either. Lots more rural dwellers. We wanted acreage so that’s why we moved here. The things that city people might call inconveniences I enjoy. Like the occasional power outage. It’s like a mini prepping. I hear if you have acreage in Texas and you raise something, you get a pretty nice tax break.