STARKVILLE — City residents’ sanitation fees will soon increase.

The board of aldermen on Tuesday unanimously approved a $1 increase on monthly sanitation fees to cover garbage bag costs and sanitation employee raises.

Each Starkville resident is provided with a roll of waterproof plastic bags yearly. To continue this distribution, the city put garbage bag rolls out for bid, and a sole source bid for $30, which is three times higher than usual. After putting out for bid a second time, garbage bags came back from company Central Poly-Bag Corp for only $21.32 per roll, equating to $106,000 for 5,000 rolls, which is around only twice as much as normal.

Mayor Lynn Spruill said prices are greater than usual because of inflation to prices of goods in general.

According to the city’s recent results of its salary study, sanitation employees in general need a salary raise, and a higher sanitation fee also would fund those increases.

“A 50-cent increase would probably do the trick, at least for this year, but we have a salary survey which has indicated that our sanitation workers are underpaid, and in order to bring them to a level that is appropriate, it will require an additional increase,” Spruill said. “… An additional 50 cents would, for the most part, cover the cost of an increase in salaries for our sanitation workers, which I think is reasonable and fair.”

Starkville has not raised its sanitation operational fee since 2013, Spruill said. The city did increase its sanitation rates in 2019, but this money has gone into an account to fund Starkville’s landfill remediation, which has not begun construction yet.

Vice Mayor Roy A. Perkins, who represents Ward 6, said this increase is needed because the funds have to come from somewhere.

“Since I have been on the board, there has always been a discussion of bags versus no bags, and the verdict is always, ‘We want the bags,’” Perkins said. “That verdict still remains now. I’m convinced that this fee increase is mandated.”

Brookville Garden

The city voted to adjudicate three buildings within Brookville Garden Apartments on Everglade Avenue as meanaces to the health, welfare and safety of the public.

Police Chief Mark Ballard and Building Official Stein McMullen presented a series of pictures to the board of aldermen at the board’s regular meeting Tuesday demonstrating molded walls, fallen ceilings, spongy floor assembly and other issues within these structures. After recommendations of demolition, the board voted to remove these three buildings from the complex.

The city previously voted to demolish other buildings within the complex, citing similar inhabitable conditions, but property owners Brookville Schoolhouse Road Estates, LLC filed a lawsuit against the city and Spruill in August, claiming it had not been properly notified of building demolitions at the property and was not given adequate time to repair the buildings.

The city entered into a forbearance agreement with company Triangle Development, LLC in September that says the city will forgo demolition and allow the company time to buy the entire complex, and the lawsuit was dismissed. Board attorney Chris Latimer said Triangle is in the process of buying the property and has until March 1 to do so. If by then the company has not obtained the property, there is a 30-day window and then the city can begin demolishing April 1.

“What this does is it puts the property in the queue because when you make an adjudication under (Mississippi code) 21-19-11, which we did tonight, it gives the city two years to deal with these properties, and so we just wanted these properties to be in the pipeline to where if they didn’t go through with their closing, the city would be ready to demolish the properties,” Latimer said.

To determine if the buildings were livable or not, Code Enforcement Officer Sarah Perez and McMullen inspected Buildings 6 and 16 three different times and Building 19, which was inspected twice due to previously being voted on demolition in 2019 because of a fire, and gave proper notice of Tuesday’s public hearing on the property and City Hall.

McMullen said the buildings were clearly unfit for human occupancy. He said walking up to the buildings he could smell the mildew that consumed the buildings and could barely walk around the units.

“Saying the floor was sponging was an understatement because when I stepped down it probably went down two or three inches, and it’s probably more along the lines of rotten instead of being spongy,” McMullen said.

Only one of these units in these three buildings is occupied. McMullen said he has been working with the property manager to relocate the tenant to another unit.

“We’ve been trying to get her moved out,” McMullen said. “I’m going to check again and see if she has moved out, but she has not moved out as of last week.”

Employee pay increases
Starkville will increase salaries for particular employees after the results of the city’s salary study.

The city’s human resources department partnered with the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and Community Development at Mississippi State University to conduct the study, which showed that some employees needed increases to stay on par with other municipalities in the state the size of Starkville. Human Resources Director Navarrete Ashford said roughly 250 of the city’s 320 employees will receive increases.

The money for the increases will come from the city’s 2021-2022 budget with $259,124.73 from the general fund and $186,660.16 from the enterprise fund. Spruill said this survey helps the city stay consistent with increases, and with a hopeful rise in sales tax consumption due to the expansion of the city, the general fund will grow.

“Perhaps as we grow and increase our sales tax and have more people coming into town through Cornerstone, through winning football games and all of those sorts of things, that is something that will fill our coffers,” Spruill said.