Columbia aldermen and Mayor Justin McKenzie are constantly getting questions about the annexation study currently being conducted.
And here’s where it stands: Consultant Mike Slaughter is doing Phase 2, which will look in more detail at the costs and benefits, and needs to meet with department heads. It will be an estimated eight to 12 weeks after that meeting, which hasn’t happened yet, before Slaughter’s report is ready.
“He makes the determination on the cost of it,” Alderman at Large Edward Hough said during the April 17 board meeting. “Until he’s handled that, we simply don’t know. This whole process might take 18 to 24 months.”
Businessman Grant McArthur had approached aldermen with questions raised from a March 8 citizens meeting held at the Church on Main. The group has been collecting signatures on a petition against annexation and has vowed to fight it in court.
In July 2017 the board hired Oxford-based Slaughter and Associates to study potentially taking in areas surrounding the existing limits. The cost of the study is capped at $15,000.
Slaughter presented Phase 1 on Feb. 7, which included a study area that would triple the city’s size and increase the population from about 6,400 to about 8,300. The area is mainly to the east and north, and the highest population density is in the Lakeview subdivision just east of the city.
Those annexed would potentially benefit from city services like police protection, sewer service and a lower fire rating at a cost of higher property taxes. The study estimated the annexation would bring in an additional $304,000 annually in property taxes and at least $115,000 in sales taxes.
Phase II of the study will go into greater detail about how much providing the additional services would cost, and aldermen have indicated they are likely to reduce some of the more far-flung parts of the initial study area.
If the city eventually settled on what it wanted to annex following Slaughter’s study, it would pass a resolution defining the boundary, the improvements it planned to make and how long it expected to take to make the improvements. The city would then file a petition in Marion County Chancery Court and run a public notice in The Columbian-Progress for three weeks before a court hearing. Parties opposed to the annexation would have the right to present their objections at the hearing.
The chancellor would determine if the annexation “is reasonable and is required by the public convenience and necessity” based on 12 standards laid out in the law.
At the April 17 meeting, McArthur said one of the big questions from the citizens meeting was if there was a website or Facebook page for study info and if there were any updates.
Hough said there were no updates and that citizens could go to City Hall to look at the initial study maps (an archive of stories and documents is available at ColumbianProgress.com/annexation).
McArthur asked if any streets or areas had been cut from the initial maps and said people had a lot of questions about them.
“There has been nothing definite,” Hough said. “I know several of us have ridden with the mayor individually to the whole scope that was on the map. Individually, we have our own ideas of what we would like to bring in and what we don’t see as feasible. There have been no decisions as a body here as to what it in and out.”
McArthur said people had given him many questions about the process.
“I guess we can answer it like this,” Ward 3 Alderwoman Anna Evans said. “All those questions that you have on there are going to be the same ones we have. Everything that you guys questioned at the meeting and want to know – we’re in the same spot. We don’t have any more information. Every time we get information, we share that information. When we say we don’t know, we don’t know. We all have questions, but we don’t know.”
Evans asked McArthur to leave a copy of the questions so that the Board would know what people wanted answered.
Ward 4 Alderman Mike Smith said the questions come his way frequently.
“Believe me; I get a question every day,” he said. “At the time that this is done, there will be a public hearing. That’s by law, from what I was told.”
McKenzie said from the preliminary discussions, only ward lines would change but the number of aldermen would not.
“The ward lines would be changed to incorporate the area based on demographics,” he said.
McKenzie said updates would be forthcoming when Slaughter & Associates updated the city.
