The city of Starkville will move ahead with drafting an annexation ordinance after aldermen voted to authorize City Attorney Chris Latimer to work with urban planning consultant Mike Slaughter to do so at Tuesday’s meeting.

Aldermen voted 5-2, with Ward 6’s Roy A. Perkins and Ward 7’s Henry Vaughn opposing, to authorize the ordinance.

Starkville is considering annexing land east of the city limits after aldermen narrowed down a much larger annexation area in October. The proposed area extends east along the Highway 12 and 182 corridor to Highway 82 and Clayton Village. It also extends south on the far side of Mississippi State University’s campus to San Marcos Drive.

Mayor Lynn Spruill, who has supported annexation since the process began, said she was pleased with the board’s decision on Tuesday.

“We’ve been working on this for over a year now and I think the beauty of our relationship as a board is we have worked together and come up with a compromise that is a path that’s in the best interest of the city and that’s how we’re going to proceed,” she said.

The proposed area would add 3.1 square miles to the city and would increase its population from 25,106 people to 27,146, based on 2010 census figures.

Annexation not final

Tuesday’s vote does not mean an annexation is final. Aldermen must hold at least two public hearings — and Spruill said she wants to hold community meetings as well — before voting on adopting the annexation ordinance, and the ordinance will also have to go before a judge in chancery court before it can take effect.

Latimer told aldermen it will take some weeks to draft the ordinance.

“Remember, he’s (Slaughter) got to get legal descriptions of all this territory, which includes surveys, so this won’t be coming back the second meeting in February,” he said. “This probably won’t be until March or even April before that first draft comes back.”

A ‘black eye’

Discussion lingered on the city’s last annexation, which happened in 1998, and the prolonged time it’s taken to provide services to some of the areas that were brought in.

Spruill said the 1998 annexation added 10 square miles to the city, which was, at the time, about 15 square miles. The 1998 annexation brought in what is now mostly undeveloped land in north Starkville along the Highway 82 bypass and some land to the city’s west past Highway 25.

Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver said he’s still “50-50” on ultimately proceeding with annexation, but he’s more comfortable with the smaller proposed area.

“I think the biggest black eye we’ve got as a city is the fact that we’re 20-plus years after the last annexation — not done by anyone on this board — and the services have not been fully provided,” Carver said. “I think with such an enormous annexation at the time, it wasn’t even feasible to get the services provided within a 21-22 year period. This is much, much smaller and much more of a developed area.”

Perkins, who has consistently opposed annexation, said the city’s past performance — one of 12 considerations a chancery court judge will consider if the board proceeds with adopting an annexation ordinance — should preclude it from moving ahead with the annexation.

Perkins criticized how long it has taken to provide city services to some locations and said he has constituents who still regularly ask him when they will get sewer services.

“It was their understanding, along with all the others that were annexed into the city, that the city would provide the services within, as they understood it, five years or a reasonable time period,” Perkins said. “Certainly not 21 years later, since October or November of 1998. Based on my mathematical calculations, that’s in excess of 21 years and that is an F performance for the city.”

Areas lacking service

Spruill, however, said she feels the city has met its requirements from the last annexation. She said annexation automatically provide new citizens with police, fire, voting, planning and zoning, court system access, parks and recreation, and street and engineering services.

Annexation ordinances, she said, do not require street paving. However, she said the city has only recently gotten ownership of five roads that were brought in under the last annexation — Treasure Lane, Hendrix Road, Jessie Road, Fannie Dale Road and Roundhouse Road — and has already designated funds to pave them. Before receiving ownership of the roads, she said, the city could not legally pave them.

“There are no streets in this city that will not have either some sort of chip seal or paving where there is a residence,” she said. “That is not to say we will have paving on a street that is nothing but a farm road where tractors only go because I don’t think that’s a prudent use for it. But my point is, if you live on a city street in Starkville, it has paving or is about to be paved.”

Spruill added that other services, such as sanitation and sewer services, are enterprise funds and residents who do not receive them do not pay for them.

Spruill also showed a map that highlighted seven areas — three of which are in north Starkville near Highway 82; one of which is in west Starkville near Garrard Road; one on the north side of Highway 182 by the interchange with Highway 25; one on Highway 25 south of the Hilton Garden Inn and across from the Haven 12 apartment complex; and one of which is at the southwestern edge of the city along Louisville Street — that currently do not have city sewer services. She said those areas are not densely populated and the costs — which for each but one of the areas is at least $543,000 — are prohibitive.

An eighth area, along Rockhill Road in near Highway 82 is lacking fire protection. Spruill said a project to provide that service is currently in progress.

In total, it would cost an estimated $4.97 million to provide improvements to all the areas lacking service.

“Those areas that do not have sewer at this time are not dense enough to justify the cost. It’s a prohibitive cost,” she said.

Carver asked Latimer if the city needed to have brought those services to every individual brought in under the 1998 annexation.

Latimer said the previous annexation ordinance’s wording included bringing service to areas where it’s necessary and economically feasible.

“It’s those two items combined, where the service is necessary and economically feasible,” Latimer said. “Part of the city’s case, in the annexation hearing this time around, if the board goes forward would be to tell the chancellor these territories that have not received service yet — to put on proof why that was not necessary or economically feasible.”

Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.

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