The Town of Artesia has filed a petition with Lowndes County Chancery Court to extend the town’s corporate limits, approximately doubling the size of the town.
With a new Dollar General just west of the town on Highway 45 South Alternate and hopes more businesses will move into the area, expanded borders could mean more sales and property tax income for the town of 433, Mayor Jimmy Sanders said. With that hope, the town’s board of aldermen passed an ordinance redrawing the town’s lines in February.
If approved in Chancery Court, the change would affect 293 parcels of land totaling approximately $6 million worth of value. Millage on the properties would increase by 30.89 mils, according to the Lowndes County Tax Assessor’s Office, making for an estimated 36 percent tax increase on the properties.
Columbus-based lawyer and board attorney Collen Hudson filed the petition with Lowndes County Chancery Court requesting approval of the ordinance. The petition is set to be heard by Judge Dorothy Colom in Noxubee County Chancery Court in Macon at 9:30 a.m. on July 26.
Hudson plans to start sending notifications by mail to the property owners in the expanded area in the next month — affected property owners legally must be notified at least 30 days before the court date so they can object if they want to. Neither Hudson nor Sanders expect much opposition to the plan.
For one thing, Sanders said, Artesia already provides the properties in the expanded area with water. If the new borders are approved, the town can also provide them with sewage, which the town is legally required to provide within five years, according to the petition.
There are other benefits to being in the town, Hudson said.
“Artesia is a small town,” she said. “Because of their size and the income of some of the people who live there, they’re eligible for different grants and things throughout the state. … So there will be a benefit to the people who were once on the outskirts of the city limits who would now be eligible for whatever grants they could get based off their size.”
The proposed borders would extend the town north by a few miles, west just across Highway 45 South Alternate and east to Beulah Grove Road. Incorporated into the town would be the new Dollar General being built on Highway 45 and about 15 residences, Sanders said. The area includes farmland and property owned by public utilities and Kansas City Railroad.
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The proposed Artesia annexation map is pictured. Photo by: Courtesy photo
Jimmy Sanders
