The COVID-19 pandemic was the biggest, but far from the only, change to shake Starkville and Oktibbeha County in 2020. Since March, business and social activities have been limited and citizens have worn face masks, hoping to curb the spread of the virus.
However, the city and county also witnessed the conclusion of a five-year legal battle between the congregation and leaders of a Starkville church, the county lake dam in danger of breaching and flooding the surrounding neighborhood, and a racial justice protest in which thousands marched through downtown Starkville. The public school district opened a new building, and the western and southern parts of the county sent a new state senator from Starkville to Jackson.
Here are some of the top headlines from Oktibbeha County in 2020.
Impact of COVID-19
Two confirmed cases of COVID-19 on March 22 were the first in Oktibbeha County. Thirteen days later, an 89-year-old woman became the first COVID-19 fatality in both the county and the Golden Triangle.
As of Tuesday, Oktibbeha County has seen 3,360 positive cases and 73 deaths from COVID-19, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health website. The virus was at its deadliest in the county in May, with 14 deaths that month.
The spread of the virus spiked in midsummer with nearly 500 new cases in July, and cases spiked again at the end of the summer, with 278 new ones from Aug. 29 to Sept. 12.
December saw another spike with more than 150 new cases per week for three weeks in a row and more than 800 overall. The intensive care unit at OCH Regional Medical Center reached capacity for the first time since the pandemic began, with some patients being treated in the emergency room.
On Dec. 1, Gov. Tate Reeves added Oktibbeha County to the list of more than 60 counties under a mask mandate, assigned to individual counties in which COVID-19 cases are continuing to increase. Both the county and Starkville implemented mask mandates of their own in July, with Starkville’s still in place.
Non-essential businesses such as gyms, salons and dine-in restaurants were temporarily closed under Reeves’ “shelter-in-place” order in April. Reeves gradually allowed these businesses to reopen in May, but the pandemic economy shuttered some businesses permanently.
The pandemic also affected local schools, which closed in March and transitioned to online learning. The Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District delayed the start of the fall semester and gave students a choice between online and in-person learning in hopes of preventing the spread of the virus in schools.
For the fall semester, Mississippi State University rented two hotels in Starkville, the Comfort Suites on Russell Street and the Hampton Inn on Blackjack Road, and 40 rooms with the option of 45 more at Fairfield Inn and Suites in Columbus to house students in quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure.
In December, OCH received 100 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the first such vaccines to be received in the Golden Triangle, and administered the doses to hospital staff most likely to come in contact with COVID-positive patients.
Racial justice rally draws thousands; aldermen change spontaneous assembly ordinance
In the wake of George Floyd’s death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer in May, Starkville activists banded together to organize a racial justice march and rally in less than a week.
Organizers predicted at least a few hundred people would show up, but the actual turnout on June 6 exceeded 2,000. The protestors started at Unity Park, wearing masks and carrying signs, and marched down Main Street and University Drive, across Highway 12 to the MSU Amphitheatre, where students, government officials and religious leaders took the stage for an hour and a half.
The protest was one of thousands nationwide after Floyd’s death reignited the Black Lives Matter movement. Some protests resulted in the destruction of property by rioters, but Starkville’s protest was peaceful, a goal the organizers emphasized throughout the process.
Starkville Stand Up, the activist group that formed to organize the protest, also aims to create a citizen-led police review board and implement cultural sensitivity training for all employees of the city and SOCSD.
The quick turnaround meant Starkville Stand Up could not obtain a special event permit from the city’s board of aldermen on short notice, largely because it could not secure an insurance provider. The board of aldermen proceeded to reevaluate its ordinances that allow freedom of assembly, protected by the First Amendment. There are now no insurance requirements or any other costs for First Amendment events to occur in Starkville.
Oktibbeha County Lake Dam shows signs of breaching
Severe storms in January put enough pressure on the levee at the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam that County Engineer Clyde Pritchard found signs of an “imminent” breach. A crack had formed on the slope of the dam due to water seepage between the dam and the bedrock underneath it, pushing sand boils to the surface.
The dam held steady as county officials installed pipes that siphoned water over the levee, closing County Lake Road for several weeks. A breach would have flooded 17,500 surrounding acres and forced 250 people to evacuate 130 homes in northern Oktibbeha and southern Clay counties.
The Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 in February to authorize Pritchard to draw up plans to replace the dam. Pritchard estimated that project could cost up to $8 million.
Second Baptist Church leaders held liable after five-year civil case
A decade-long dispute between leadership and the board of trustees at Second Baptist Church in Starkville came to a conclusion in November after a 12-day trial in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court.
A jury unanimously found Pastor Joseph Stone and Head Deacon Terry Miller responsible for negotiating a May 2013 contract with Long Beach-based TCM Construction to build a new sanctuary without the church’s board of trustees’ approval and withholding money collected through church offerings from the trustees. The trustees paid TCM’s owner, Donald Crowther, more than $454,000 for the work he was supposed to do, but all that was ever completed was preliminary dirt work, and the project has not been touched since 2015.
Crowther pleaded guilty in July to a longstanding fraud charge for preparing and submitting false invoices, and is scheduled to be sentenced in January. Miller and Stone were ordered to pay a combined $500,000 in damages to the church for conspiracy and breach of fiduciary duty, and Stone will pay an additional $30,000 in damages for unjust enrichment.
Jackson retires, Williams succeeds him after runoff victory
State Sen. Gary Jackson (R-French Camp) retired in June after representing District 15, which includes parts of Oktibbeha, Choctaw, Montgomery and Webster counties, for almost 17 years, citing health concerns.
Bart Williams, owner of Security Solutions Inc. in Starkville, received the most votes in September’s special election to replace Jackson. Williams garnered 33.6 percent of the vote in the four-candidate race, resulting in a runoff between the top two candidates in order to guarantee a majority winner.
He then won 53.6 percent of the vote to Joyce Meek Yates’ 46.4 percent in the runoff in October.
Long-awaited Partnership Middle School completed, open on MSU campus
The $30 million Partnership Middle School, a collaboration between the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District and Mississippi State University, welcomed students in August after years of construction delays.
In addition to serving grades 6-7 in SOCSD, PMS also serves as a training lab for MSU’s College of Education, allowing MSU students to observe classroom teaching and making university faculty a resource for SOCSD teachers and administrators. The middle school classrooms have desks outside where MSU students will sit and observe, and teachers can block the younger students’ view of their observers if need be.
The 123,000 square-foot building was originally scheduled to open in August 2018 before rain delays pushed it to November 2018, January 2019, August 2019 and finally August 2020. The project was funded by a local $16 million bond, a $10 million allocation from the Mississippi Legislature and cash and land donations by MSU.
Armstrong Middle School previously housed grades 6-8. SOCSD renamed it Armstrong Junior High School, which now houses grades 8-9, moving grade 9 from Starkville High School.
North Star Industrial Park development continues to grow
The North Star Industrial Park, under construction northeast of Highways 389 and 82, might include a project that seeks to establish itself in all three counties in the Golden Triangle with an investment of $3 billion — $1 billion per county, Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins announced in January.
The project, codenamed Project Trinity, would create 100 to 150 technical jobs for six-figure wages and has its eye on the entire west end of North Star as its Oktibbeha County location.
Another planned occupant, Project Royal, would create 200 jobs in the textiles and advanced manufacturing industry for an average wage of $35,000, though Higgins said in January that he would prefer the wages be higher.
So far 230 acres of the 360 at North Star have potential or confirmed occupants, and construction of a 500,000-gallon water tank near the park’s entrance began in August.
The new home of Garan Manufacturing, North Star’s first confirmed tenant, will be complete by February 2021. Garan is relocating to the industrial park from its longtime location at the corner of Highway 12 and Industrial Park Road in Starkville.
The construction of a 50,000 square-foot “speculative building,” or an empty building with the goal of attracting a new business to an existing structure, near the entrance of North Star will start in 2021 at the request of Agracel, the Illinois-based property development company that partnered with the LINK to build it. The pad, or plot of land prepared for building, for the structure was initially supposed to be built by the end of the summer but was delayed due to the pandemic.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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