Two Starkville aldermen want Oktibbeha County supervisors to enact growth control measures to ensure the city inherits proper infrastructure and buildings in future annexations.
Officials asked for the help Monday after reviewing the first draft of Starkville’s upcoming comprehensive plan, which explicitly calls for the city to expand its boundaries east of Mississippi State University’s campus in one to three years.
The document would also define land uses in developing areas, which will be used to help re-write Starkville’s development code.
Ward 3 Alderman David Little and Ward 5 Alderman Scott Maynard said they were concerned about the county’s lack of development regulations in areas where annexation is possible. Those areas, they said, are prime for development but pose serious concerns for the city because of a lack of regulation.
Both aldermen used the Poor House Road area — a corridor south of Starkville that is expected to host significant investments after a road connecting it to Blackjack Road via MSU property is constructed — as an example of where they fear unrestrained, unchecked development could cause future headaches for the city if it expands.
Although supervisors have shown an unwillingness to impose strict zoning rules, Maynard said he was optimistic a compromise could be reached that would suit the government’s needs without choking development.
“I don’t think we’d ever ask the supervisors to enact restrictive zoning like the city has, but I believe they have seen the potential issues come to fruition after watching Blackjack develop so quickly,” he said. “If we can get our friends from the county to buy into these suggestions … they could help protect all of us in the future.”
Neither aldermen went into detail about the specific requirements or restrictions they’d like supervisors to discuss.
Development along Blackjack and Oktoc roads have proven to be a double-edged sword for Oktibbeha County. Ad valorem collections will increase because of the large-scale apartment complexes’ impact on the tax rolls, but construction efforts and increased traffic along the major thoroughfares have caused numerous infrastructure issues.
Supervisors previously tasked Oxford-based planning firm Slaughter and Associates to develop subdivision regulations that would charge developers with developing proper roads and repairing existing infrastructure damaged during construction efforts, but the board ditched a 65-page plan this month, opting instead to use the county engineer to write a simpler document.
At the time, county leaders said Slaughter’s proposal, which cost the county about $4,000, would impose too many regulations on developers and stifle single-family home construction.
Compounding aldermen’s fear of inheriting problems from the county is the fact that Oktibbeha County has no building codes on its books.
Calls for such codes, along with zoning ordinances and land-use rules, have met resistance in Oktibbeha County for years.
When supervisors held public hearings for Slaughter’s comprehensive plan in 2014, few residents said they favored more-stringent rules to control development. Supervisors, however, tempered those few comments leading up to 2015’s election by saying they would not pass explicit, land-controlling rules.
After a second-story deck collapse in Highlands Plantation injured more than 10 people later that year, Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors President Orlando Trainer said the county should seriously consider taking up discussions on building codes.
No traction emerged for such a project, and only one other supervisor — District 1’s John Montgomery, who also serves as a Starkville firefighter — said he would be willing to discuss fire sprinkler requirements for large apartment complexes.
Public fears related to the lack of county building codes are noted numerous times in the comprehensive plan.
Aldermen added numerous revisions — mostly clerical — to the draft and will send their changes back to the Tennessee-based Walker Collaborative.
Once the document is finished, code formatting efforts are expected to make Starkville’s development rules more user-friendly with the addition of visual elements — charts, graphs and other graphics — and the removal of redundant text.
Two major problems Community Development Director Buddy Sanders previously said the process will also address: Starkville has more than 20 zoning designations — almost one for every 1,000 residents — and a subdivision ordinance rooted in the 1970s.
Eliminating duplicity, modernizing rules and making codes easier to follow should provide the biggest and most immediate impact for developers, Sanders said last summer after aldermen selected the Walker Collaborative for its comprehensive planning project.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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