Preliminary plan would add 1,700 residents, triple city’s area
Columbia’s population would grow from about 6,300 to 8,000 and its size would jump from about 7 square miles to 21 under a preliminary annexation plan being considered by the Board of Aldermen.
During a special meeting Wednesday night, consultant Mike Slaughter presented a proposed map from the first phase of a feasibility study.
The owner of Slaughter and Associates of Oxford said the first legal step in annexation would be adopting an ordinance, which the board has not done yet while it studies the issue.
He said initial work included a land use survey and demographics for the areas that could potentially be annexed. Most border the city to the north, south and east. They include:
• The Lakeview subdivision east of the current city limits
• An area south of U.S. 98 on the east side
• A large area north of the existing city limits that includes parts of Highways 13, 35 and 44.
The Pearl River would generally remain the western boundary of the city.
The benefits for the plan would include increased property and sales tax revenues for the city and police, fire and sewer service for residents. For residents, drawbacks would be higher property taxes, although that could be offset fully or partially by lower homeinsurance rates, and to the city it would the cost of providing services.
“What we’re meeting on tonight is really the Phase I of our agreement, the demographics,” Slaughter said. “If we go into Phase II, we’ll look more at the impact of annexation, from department heads, police, public works and so forth. We would look at overall revenues and expenditures as well as water and sewer costs.”
The urban planner gave the Board a lot of numbers to think about during his more than 90-minute presentation.
“In 2010, the official census of the city was 6,582,” he said. “In 2017, we had an estimate of 6,367. I don’t know if Columbia is losing population or not, but we got that number from the Census Bureau estimate of 2015 and that estimate had it lower than 2010.”
According to Slaughter, the city’s population would grow to more than 8,000 if all of the proposed area were annexed.
“The dwelling units for the existing city are around 2,700,” he said. “With the dwelling units in the study area, it pushes it to around 3,500 units. In the existing city, the population is about 40.5 percent black based on the 2010 census. The study area is about 28.4 percent black; combined city and study area would be right at 38 percent. I don’t think that should be a problem at all, especially if we aren’t leaving out any concentration of minority populations. The 2010 Census would be what we would use today if we had to do redistricting.”
The current city boundaries are 6.9 square miles and the study area is an additional 14.5 square miles.
Slaughter said annexation would result in an annual increase in property tax revenue of about $300,000.
“We calculated the real property tax roll base on information form the Marion County Tax Assessor’s office,” he said. “We also sent them a list of businesses that are in the study area so that they could give a list of personal property. We ratioed out the auto, mobile home and public utility (taxes) out based on a percentage. The total assessed value was $12.3 million, and we estimated ad valorem taxes for general revenue, special revenue, special sanitation and general improvements. In total, we have an estimate of slightly over $300,000 in revenue from taxes. A little over $220,000 of that would go in the general fund.”
Slaughter also discussed items ranging from sales tax diversion — the city would get more sales tax as it brought in additional stores into the city limits — and fire ratings — the areas being annexed would go down to the city’s rating, which is a 6 and could go to a 5. That would lower insurance bills for homeowners who were annexed.
Aldermen looked at maps and analyzed figures. A lengthy discussion about water and sewer items also ensued with aldermen trying to clarify what would need to be done to complete annexation of any property.
Slaughter left maps and a PowerPoint presentation for the Board to study and give direction on moving onto Phase II of the study. The Board will likely discuss the items in upcoming meetings, and the C-P plans to follow up next week with a detailed look at the annexation proposal.
“We appreciate all of the work and information,” Alderman-at-Large Edward Hough told Slaughter.
The Board also conducted several other items of business, including:
• Promoting Davey Bass at the Columbia Police Department to shift sergeant, and giving him a 70-cent-per-hour raise.
• Purchasing two vehicles from Pine Belt Chevy, the lowest bidder, a 2012 Dodge Ram 4500 with 140,000 miles for $6,960 and a 2015 Chevrolet Silverado with 140,000 miles for $10,110. The trucks will be used by the city’s landfill and street departments.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Aldermen is set for 4 p.m. Feb. 20 at City Hall.
Pictured Above: Mike Slaughter of Slaughter and Associates talks Wednesday about the annexation study his firm has been working with Columbia officials to complete. | Photo by Mark Rogers
