Residents ask city officials about taxes, services
The boardroom at Columbia City Hall was filled with nearly 30 visitors Tuesday night with one thing on their minds: annexation.
Grant McArthur, owner of several businesses in the proposed annexation area, spoke on behalf of many residents and business owners who want to learn the drawbacks and benefits of becoming a part of the city.
McArthur asked several questions of aldermen and Mayor Justin McKenzie and mentioned that residents are preparing to meet on March 8, tentatively at 6 p.m. at a location to be determined depending on the size of the group.
“What is our benefit for us?” he asked. “The people out in the study areas?”
“It would give you the opportunity to contribute to your community in other ways other than just existing,” McKenzie replied. “Your investment would be reinvested in the community. It would be reinvested into the parks that we enjoy and the streets and other things. We plan to put a plan together to address things and we would have the funding to do this.”
McArthur asked how it would be possible for the city to take on the care of all of the additional streets and what services could benefit them.
“You would have fire and police protection,” McKenzie responded. “The community out at Lakeview is complaining about never seeing law enforcement. It’s outside the city, so we don’t patrol it. The deputies are stretched thin; on the weekend there may be a few more if they are out. They cover 585 square miles – there’s no offense, I think the sheriff’s office does a great job.
“The same thing for the Tri-Community Volunteer Department: Their stations are just too far out for it to all be included in a Class 7 fire rating. Some of it is classified as a 10 because it is more than five miles from a station. That area is only about 1.9 miles from a city fire station. If you’re going from a Class 7 to a Class 6, it’s not going to affect your insurance much; but if you’re going from a Class 10 to a Class 6, it’s going to have quite an effect.”
McArthur questioned the fire department status.
“If Tri-Community can’t effectively cover it, how is the city going to be able to?” he asked.
“(Consultant Mike) Slaughter submitted what you see drawn out to the rating bureau,” McKenzie replied. “They told him that we would not have to expand the police or fire department with any individual personnel or equipment. We would be good with the four officers that are on shift for the police and the six that are on shift for the fire department to cover the area as it currently sits.
“In the future, everybody around the table has discussed that we want to see a fire station out there somewhere around Stacy’s Skillet or that area to respond to Lakeview or up to new Mississippi 44 and cover CA and areas back into town. We want to see that happen and we believe that we will see enough of an economic impact from not only the ad valorem tax, which won’t affect us a lot, but the sales tax, which really helps drive it home. We believed that based on the numbers he’s already presented to us that it would be a step in the right direction.”
McArthur said all involved were concerned about money, specifically increased taxes.
“A lot of people are on fixed incomes or they have low paying jobs,” he said. “They’re barely making ends meet. If you raise taxes and tags on them it will put a financial bind on people. People can’t afford much more. You’re also talking about potential voters being pulled in.”
McKenzie pointed out that most of the areas in the study are already part of the Columbia City School District, city outside.
“They pay those 68.8 mills for the schools,” McKenzie said. “The city of Columbia is at 26 mills. The average for the state of Mississippi for a municipality is 37 mills. Tylertown recently went to 50 mills. We went from 22 to 26 mills. Hattiesburg is somewhere in the 40s. The city’s taxes are not what’s killing you. If we were to annex you, you will not have to pay taxes on the county fire, garbage millage and maybe some other things. So if somebody tells you your taxes are going to go up so much, you have to take these things into account. Your taxes for the county will fall. If you’re in a Class 10 fire area, going to a Class 6 will help you substantially. We flowed two new hydrants up on Lafayette Street and we have full intentions of the ratings bureau coming back in and reevaluating us. We want to push it to a Class 5.”
Ward 4 Alderman Mike Smith said growth could benefit everyone in the area.
“Think about community,” he said. “It’s all our community. Back in the early ‘90s when I owned Mack Grubbs Motors, a guy from the state came and did a talk at the Rotary Club and he was talking about sales tax collections and how much the city got out of that. I listened to him and went back to the dealership and I said, ‘Why aren’t we in the city?’ That was a lot of money. I called up the mayor and said, ‘Annex me.’ Yeah, the taxes went up, but what the city was getting in sales tax was beneficial. There’s a lot more to think about with annexing. I promise you we’re not out trying to get people to pay more in taxes; we’re trying to do what’s right for the city so the city can prosper and grow.”
Brenda Shields asked McKenzie about the cost of the study and he replied that it was capped at $15,000 with Phase I having cost about $5,000 and Phase II expected to cost $6,000 to $8,000.
“We want to be open to you,” McKenzie said. “We are here to open our ears to you.”
McKenzie said he and individual aldermen have ridden around the study boundary lines to look at feasibility.
“We’ve tried to be an open book,” he said. “The newspaper was along on one of the rides. We didn’t try to keep this quiet. The next move in annexation outside of the study is for us to pass an ordinance saying that we want to move forward with it. It would then go to the Department of Justice for them to review and ensure that it feasible and that you are not playing favorites to any particular demographic, race or sex or anything of that nature. Then it would go through Chancery Court before it was completed.”
McKenzie said many people have asked how lines for the study were determined and that they followed lines from a major power line that comes across the river.
“We found things that could be easily identified on the map,” McKenzie said. “On Dean Griner Drive, we serve the area with water and sewer and a volunteer fire department has to drive through the city to it. It makes sense for us to annex that area because it is right here at the city limits.”
McKenzie said there are some areas where annexation would not be possible.
“It’s easy to say that Singley Road is a long way out there and it would only be for residential properties and then only sporadic residential properties,” McKenzie said. “It would probably not be feasible to take that area on. This is why we hired a professional company that has done five annexation studies for Petal and just about every municipality in the state that has done one. We hired them so that we could make an informed decision.”
The study area would include a lot of former Training School property.
“These are properties that are being turned over to Marion County and to the Marion County Development Partnership for potential development. We already serve the Training School area with water and sewer,” the mayor said. “It makes sense for us to annex some of the Training School property that has the potential for development. They will then come to us because we’re joint partners with the MCDP and Marion County and ask us to help fund it, just like they did with the airport.”
Discussions lasted more than an hour. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Columbia Board of Aldermen is set for 4 p.m. on March 6 at City Hall.
Pictured Above: Grant McArthur, left, spoke for a group of residents with questions about the city’s annexation study during Tuesday’s Board of Aldermen meeting at City Hall. The citizens asked about costs and benefits to them. | Photo by Mark Rogers
