OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — Oktibbeha County may be headed for a countywide zoning or building code, but residents are wary of overreach.
Public sentiment was split Tuesday during a meeting to develop a comprehensive plan for the county hosted by the board of supervisors at Belaire Fire Station. Residents were adamant supervisors should minimize limitations on private land outside of city or town limits, but nevertheless seemed cautiously amenable to the idea of very basic construction codes.
District 4 Supervisor Pattie Little was the most outspoken advocate for some sort of basic guidelines. She said having nothing in place cripples the county’s efforts to get federal grants.
“It’s been brought to my attention by several different grant writers and engineers that when we apply for grants with no codes in the county, when we check that box ‘no’ we get negative-50 points,” she said. “The only way you get a grant when you start at negative-50 (out of 100) is if nobody else applies for it. … I’m talking about codes as simple as for wiring in apartment complexes, basic common sense things. State and federal grants want to know that somebody is looking at something.”
The meeting packed the fire station wall to wall with more than 50 citizens in attendance. It was one of two initial public forums organized by Slaughter and Willingham, an Oxford-based urban planning consultant firm the county contracted to update Oktibbeha’s comprehensive plan for the first time since 2014.
Firm partner Nathan Willingham led Tuesday’s meeting, showing initial findings about population growth trends and where aerial photography shows development spreading in the last 10 years. The residents in attendance, however, were more concerned with what the plan would mean for their daily lives.
“I don’t think everybody wants to be regulated for the benefit of growth in the university and city (of Starkville),” said Becca Andol, an Adaton resident. “We live in the county because we want to live in the county. If we wanted to live in the city, we’d live there.”
The idea of strict building codes and higher taxes drew the loudest condemnations from the crowd, but guests were more amenable when Little said some developments were building unsafe apartments whose only access between floors were stairs made of flammable material. When she suggested the county could fulfill federal grant requirements and ensure basic safety levels with limited building code, her proposal got no resistance and a few voices in agreement.
If the county does adopt a building code, Willingham told The Dispatch ahead of the meetings that it would have to be based on something in the comprehensive plan. The 2014 plan included that option, though supervisors never exercised it.
District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer and District 1 Supervisor Ben Carver were also at the meeting, though they didn’t chime in to the discussion. Carver did not respond to a request for comment, but Trainer told The Dispatch on Wednesday that he would support a limited countywide building code both for federal grants and simply to ensure safety.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” he said. “It’s not a wise public policy to just allow things to be built that would put people in jeopardy. But at the same time, you don’t have to be overbearing. … You can’t just depend on private developers to build safe and functional structures.”
Aside from building codes, there were few clear takeaways from the meeting. With growth mostly clustered around the edges of Starkville, utilities and rural water associations will face increasing demand, but that’s not something the county regulates directly. Roads, however, are managed by the county, and the suggestion of road improvements got near-universal support.
Actually implementing that suggestion isn’t quite so simple. Paving new roads takes funding, and maintaining them is an ongoing expense. In an area that resoundingly rejects the idea of raising taxes, that means road improvements will come slowly through the existing backlog, by private development that brings its own issues of spotty construction and increased traffic, or through more creative solutions like the chemical stabilizer and dust suppressant trials this spring.
A second public meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. today at Sturgis Fire Station at 137 Montgomery St. More meetings will happen but haven’t been scheduled yet, with a final draft tentatively ready in July or August. Residents will have a chance to review that and then, if the projected timeline holds, the plan could be ready for adoption in October.
Slaughter and Willingham are also collecting resident surveys for feedback. Paper copies will be available at the County Courthouse in Starkville, with a digital version available at https://forms.office.com/r/fDDxBsQtYM.
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