By John Howell
City officials will begin one hour early Tuesday, February 2 at 1 p.m. to hear urban planner Mike Slaughter’s recommendation for city limit expansion.
Annexation has been an on-off subject with the mayor and aldermen that was initially spurred when the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) proposed a bypass that would divert east/west traffic on Highway 6/278 south of its existing route.
Slaughter met with the mayor and aldermen in early 2010 to discuss steps to annex areas south of the city that included the route of the proposed bypass. By June last year, after MDOT announced that a bypass was no longer planned, Slaughter returned at city officials’ invitation with a less ambitious annexation plan that identified five small areas to be considered for annexation.
The urban planner is again invited to Tuesday’s work session where he is expected to review the proposal that he first presented last year. The mayor and aldermen were presented a map identifying the five areas at Monday’s special called meeting.
Area 1 is an area along Highway 35 North that would take in the Panola County Airport and jail. Slaughter’s revision also includes land north of the airport and jail to the Tallahatchie River and west, to include the new part of the Airport Industrial Park presently under development.
Area 2 is a corridor from 300 to 400 feet wide along Highway 6 East from the present city limits past the Good Hope Road/Bethlehem Road intersection.
Area 3 is from the present city limits boundary on Eureka Road, west past Highway 51 about .4 miles south of the present south city boundary on Highway 51. It includes Ivy Gordon Drive.
Area 4 extends west and south of present city limits on Highway 35 South to a Tallahatchie Valley Electric Power Association sub-station. It includes Watts Road.
Area 5 is a corridor along Highway 6 West extending the present boundary to about .3 mile west of the Chapeltown Road/Highway 6 intersection. It includes North Delta School.
“I’d like to move forward; I’d like to start sooner rather than later,” Alderman Stan Harrison said at the January 19 meeting.
Following Monday’s special meeting, Alderman Bill Dugger raised an issue that he had first mentioned last June.
“I would like for someone to explain to me the advantage to the city to have the jail and airport in the city limits,” Dugger said.
Like all meetings of elected officials, a “work session” is open to the public.
The regularly scheduled First Tuesday meeting will begin at 2 p.m.