What’s in a name? With apologies to The Bard, sometimes quite a lot.
“When people ask me where I live, I tell them Columbus, but not that Columbus,” Caleb Pounders told The Dispatch Friday morning. “There’s always some kind of scandal (in the city), and in all honesty I would rather my address say ‘New Hope.’”
Pounders is one of a group of residents of the New Hope community looking to incorporate, for reasons both practical and political. The desire to formally band together has been simmering for a while, and now, both Pounders and Tony Hannah said, is beginning to come to a boil with talks of Columbus annexing more territory.
“We’re ready to separate ourselves from Columbus,” Hannah said. “People don’t want to lose their way of life in our community. We know if Columbus continues to annex out, they will eventually get our New Hope Park and some of our bigger subdivisions.”
Pounders agreed.
“The city was looking at annexing (Columbus Air Force Base),” Pounders said. “If they’re willing to go that far, the state line isn’t that much of a reach. A lot of us moved out here for a reason.”
The city of Columbus is planning to annex two areas south and east of the city, which would take in territory closer to, but not including, what’s commonly accepted as New Hope. It looked at taking in CAFB to the north as well, but that part of the plan was dropped due to excessive cost.
Hannah, who made incorporation a plank in his unsuccessful bid for District 3 supervisor last year, said there are more practical reasons to consider incorporation, also.
“The biggest thing is our business area is not growing,” Hannah said. “Being incorporated we could reach out to businesses and maybe get some eateries and grow a little, just enough to make it easier so we don’t have to drive into Columbus every day.”
Incorporation would make it easier to improve infrastructure, Hannah said.
“We could apply for grants to do things like put street lights on Stadium Road and Center Road and places like that,” Hannah said. “There are so many kids out there, and we need sidewalks and streetlights and safety features for the community.”
Improvements like those have to be paid for with tax dollars, too, but both Hannah and Pounders are confident the burden doesn’t have to be onerous.
“Some people have told us you can’t just start a town, you have to have taxes and a fire department and police and all this,” Pounders said.
“Caledonia doesn’t. They have volunteer fire and a marshal. You don’t have to do that right out of the gate.”
If incorporated, New Hope would become the fifth such community in Lowndes County, joining Columbus, Caledonia, Crawford and Artesia.
Incorporation process
Incorporation isn’t going to happen overnight. According to the Secretary of State’s website, citizens must submit to Lowndes Chancery Court a petition signed by two-thirds of registered voters in the proposed municipality. The petition must lay out the boundaries of the proposed city, designate a name, identify the number of inhabitants and calculate the assessed value, among other things.
The first step along that path is a public meeting, Hannah said, to gauge interest. Based on public input, he said some proposed boundaries will be drawn, with a central area around the Piggly Wiggly, 3610 New Hope Road, and potentially reaching as far as Highway 182 and the state line.
“Where it gets into a gray area is going toward Columbus and going down Highway 69,” Hannah said.
Caledonia annexation
Caledonia, meanwhile, is about a year into a years-long process that will hopefully end in annexation. The reason there isn’t so much keeping away predatory nearby polities as it is a simple matter of needing room to grow.
“We don’t have any empty buildings and we don’t have any land for sale,” said Mayor Betty Darnell. “We have people all the time who want to move out here, and there’s not a place for them. We just don’t have any available area for more businesses, and we need that.”
That means annexation, Darnell said. The town has been working with Slaughter and Associates to come up with a comprehensive plan for about a year, and Darnell estimated there was probably a year or so of work left to do before any actual annexation moves forward.
The town has identified some potential areas, Darnell said: north of town in the Old Wolf Road area, potentially as far as the Buttahatchee River; south to Dowdle Road, including the section of land between Wolfe and Cal-Steens Road; west to the Dale Road.
“That’s just potential areas,” Darnell said. “It may not cover all of that. We’re just doing a study right now.”
Should the entire area be taken in, Darnell estimated it could double the population of the town, which is currently around 1,135.
Any decision likely a year out or more, Darnell said.
“It could be longer than that,” Darnell said. “Our term ends in June 2025, and we would like for at least some things to be done by then.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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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 36 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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