STARKVILLE — Oktibbeha supervisors will hold a public hearing in December to discuss the garbage bill coming Jan. 1 to about 1,800 property owners in the county.
The supervisors have debated billing methods for house-to-house garbage collection services for the past three meetings, including the one on Monday. Currently, Golden Triangle Waste Services charges the county $62,000, or $8.12 per house, but the number of residences in the county has increased, and GTWS will charge upward of an additional $14,600 per month at the turn of the year.
Board president and District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer suggested the public hearing, and District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller said the county should also mail out notices to property owners to inform them of the billing change.
“I want to address the landowners, I want them to know what’s about to happen and let them have a voice in it and understand fully,” Miller said.
The board needs to vote to approve the price increase before Jan. 1 and before the GTWS board meeting on Dec. 20. Supervisors from the three-county service area, Oktibbeha, Lowndes and Webster counties, serve on the board. District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard and District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams represent Oktibbeha County on the board.
Dec. 16 should give the supervisors enough time to come up with an accurate count of how many houses in their districts GTWS serves so Williams and Howard can present those numbers to the GTWS board, County Attorney Rob Roberson said.
The board discussed billing property owners instead of individual tenants at a previous meeting, and Trainer said Monday he believed that was the consensus of the majority, but the board will not vote on it until after the hearing.
“I’ve got no problem with making the landowners (pay for it), and I think they’ll bring up collection greatly,” District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery said.
Also, the county has basically obtained all the easements from property owners for a road improvement project on Blackjack Road, Roberson announced to the board. A couple easements have not been filed but have been agreed upon, he said.
The county’s plans to rebuild and expand a portion of Blackjack Road from Bardwell Street west to Stone Boulevard have been in the works for years, but the county needed right-of-way on four properties before starting the project. It obtained the right-of-way through the courts via “quick take” legal action, similar to eminent domain.
The county will hopefully be ready to start the long-awaited project by January but won’t rush, Trainer told The Dispatch.
“We want to make sure all the ink dries on the order and we don’t want to be premature,” he said.
In other business, the board also passed a resolution of support for the potential conversion of the railroad that bisects Starkville and Oktibbeha County into a walking and biking trail. Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill has been spearheading the idea, and the board of aldermen voted in October to start the process.
Supervisors acknowledged the currently unknown cost of the conversion and the potential loss of more than $80,000 in tax revenue for the city, county and school district.
“We would have to maintain it and the city would have to maintain their portion, but also the railroad could come back and reopen, so that could leave us in a precarious situation,” Montgomery said.
Kansas City Southern, the company that owns the railroad, would retain the easement over the land, but the railroad has not been used in several years.
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