Starkville has seen some good times, and Mayor Lynn Spruill doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
Spruill, speaking to the Starkville Rotary Club on Monday to deliver an update on the state of the city, rolled through a list of the accomplishments the board of aldermen and her administration have accomplished in the nearly two years since they took office.
During the talk, Spruill said she’s “still riding high” from the success of the 1-percent tax vote for the city’s parks system.
The referendum for a 1-percent addition to Starkville’s restaurant and hotel/motel taxes went before voters on Thursday and passed with 74 percent of the vote. The city will use the tax to fund the construction of Cornerstone Park, a tournament-ready facility with a focus on baseball and softball, and for maintenance and capital improvement projects at its existing parks.
Spruill noted the high support — which easily cleared the 60 percent needed for the tax to pass — is a rarity for Starkville, a city that’s prone to elections with razor-thin margins.
“We usually skate by with just a little bit,” she said. “But I feel as though there is a sense of trust and understanding that we’re going to make this the best we can be and that it’s going to be the best for Starkville.”
Spruill said the city will work to quickly move through the final planning and decision-making steps to begin construction on Cornerstone Park. She said it will likely be 18 months to two years before the park is completed and ready to open.
“We are already starting to work on it, but as you can imagine, it’s going to be a long process,” she said. “… I’m trying to schedule a work session with the board. I’ve got a phone call (today) with (planning firm) Dalhoff-Thomas to get a game plan on going forward.”
The city is also progressing in its consideration of annexing land to the east. Starkville is looking at annexing land along the Highway 182 and 82 corridors. The annexation study process and drafting of the ordinance has taken much of the term to date. The city started with a much broader possible annexation area that included land to the city’s south and west and a small addition to the north to bring a road that juts beyond city limits into Starkville.
Spruill said the board will call for the first of two public hearings about the annexation ordinance at this evening’s meeting.
“There will be two public hearings,” she said. “So if the board moves forward — which I’m hoping that they will and I seem to be getting thumbs-ups from most of them — we will be having our adoption of our ordinance the first meeting of July and then it will go through the proper channels in the court system.”
During her talk, Spruill covered a wide range of ongoing city initiatives, from pedestrian improvements to Starkville Utilities Department projects to build a new southwest substation and upgrade the city’s near-capacity sewage lagoon to make it more sustainable.
Spruill said the city, which has faced recent issues with drainage from heavy rains in the winter and spring, is continuing to look into ways to better prepare for the future. She said some of that will likely come through updates to the development code to codify more stringent stormwater retention practices.
However, she said the city is also looking at ways to potentially make better use of the drainage basins around town.
For all the major projects that have been completed or are underway, Spruill said some of the little things the city has embraced — murals, street pianos or lighted trees downtown — can have just as much impact in creating a sense of place.
“It’s little things that make us feel good,” she said. “It makes us proud to be a part of our community.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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