STARKVILLE — Aldermen on Tuesday will host a second public hearing on revisions to the city’s unified building codes, one of which would require property owners to repair boarded up buildings within 180 days.
While City Planner Daniel Havelin said most of the changes to the codes — last approved in 2019 — are typo corrections and minor changes, a requirement for citizens to board up exposed structures and repair them within a certain time frame is among “one of the bigger changes.”
If approved, the new UDC would require anyone whose property is damaged extensively enough to need boarding up to obtain a permit from the city and board it up as quickly as possible. From there, the property owner has 180 days to make necessary repairs and remove the boarding.
This would apply to residential and commercial properties.
“We’re trying to help eliminate the chance for vagrants, wild animals and children to get into these structures,” said city building official Stein McMullen.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the current UDC has no requirements for adding or removing boards to exposed properties, and such properties not only cause a health and safety hazard but also negatively impact the value of surrounding properties.
“We have some properties that badly need boarding up,” she said. “There are others that have been boarded up and still sitting there — some for years, some for decades.”
As part of the permitting process, McMullen said, the property owner must submit what is being boarded up and why, as well as how it will be remedied. The only instances the city would deny a property owner a permit to board up an exposed structure is if the boarding in an occupied building would make it harder for occupants to escape in an emergency, such as a fire, he said. In those cases, the city would expect the owner to repair the property immediately.
Failure to comply with the ordinance, if passed, could result in charges in municipal court.
“Be a good neighbor,” Spruill said. “That’s really the crux of it.”
Subcontracting commercial trash pickup
Aldermen will also consider subcontracting its commercial garbage pickup to Waste Pro of Mississippi’s Columbus division.
The contract, according to city officials, would shift pickup operations for more than 300 commercial customers and apartment complexes from the city’s sanitation and environmental services department to the private company. The city, as the primary contractor, would continue to collect rates from those customers but pass that revenue on to Waste Pro.
During a Friday morning work session, Spruill told aldermen commercial customers have been “dropping off” in recent years because they can contract out their garbage pickup themselves without using the city’s service. That, added to increased costs of equipping and maintaining the service, makes privatizing more attractive.
“If the private sector can do it better than we can, that’s at least a good reason to look at the rational and reasonableness of that approach,” Spruill said.
Currently, the city offers 4-, 6- and 8-cubic-yard receptacles for commercial customers, sanitation and environmental services director Christopher Smiley told The Dispatch. Those customers can choose the size of the receptacle they need, as well as the number of days — between once weekly and six days per week — they want garbage collected.
Those with a 4-cubic-yard container are charged $60 per month per collection day (up to $360 per month for six-day-a-week pickup). The monthly rate jumps to $80 per weekly pickup day for 6-cubic-yard and $100 for 8-cubic-yard containers.
The Waste Pro contract would leave those rates the same, as well as add a 2-cubic-yard option, with rates ranging from $45 to $245 monthly, depending on the number of pickup days.
“We’re not in a position where the city cannot provide the service,” Smiley said. “This is more of a proactive approach.”
The city uses two front-end loading trucks for commercial service, which Smiley said are expensive to maintain. When they break down, he said, the city has them towed to Tupelo, Meridian or Birmingham, Alabama, for service, an issue the Waste Pro contract would eliminate. The city would also shed landfill costs associated with disposing of commercial garbage.
Spruill said the department also needs to buy another truck if it continues commercial service, equipment that would cost upward of $300,000.
“It just seems more prudent to allow commercial to be picked up by a private (subcontractor),” she said.
Waste Pro plans to leave all the containers in place and purchase them from the city in phases, Spruill told the aldermen Friday. The city would also sell its two trucks.
One sanitation employee would be affected by the change, but Spruill said there’s an opportunity for that person to be moved to another city position.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 28 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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