The Starkville Board of Aldermen approved to allow community development staff to review and update the current special event policy during its meeting Tuesday night.
Aldermen approved the measure with a 5-2 vote, with Vice Mayor and Ward 6 Alderman Roy A'. Perkins and Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn voting against.
The agenda item was brought to the board by Ward 3 Alderman David Little. He said the aldermen need to address the policy and have input on the specifics of how the city will address each event.
"I don't know if the board has an appetite on limiting or setting some sort of limit or threshold on that or some kind of match," Little said. "That's something that puts a burden on our departments, such as the fire department, police department, with overtime."
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the city always provides the cost associated with special events, so it knows what it is providing in terms of dollar amount.
During discussion, Little said in-kind services had a large jump from 2015 to 2016 and then a slight increase for this year.
"As we grow and become more of a destination, we're going to get more and more requests for this type of stuff," Little said. "We just need to consider what is a good fiscal policy on that moving forward in my opinion."
Ward 2 Alderman Sandra Sistrunk said she is hoping a new policy will make the process more "streamlined" and "simplified."
She said the board has information on how other cities handle its special event requests to make a more informed decision about whether or not they would want to make a change.
Perkins said he is not comfortable with receiving a proposed draft or revised version of the policy from the Community Development Department. He said the only way he would support a revised version of the policy is if it is drafted by City Attorney Chris Latimer.
As for certain guidelines, Perkins said the new policy should include, but not limited to, not providing any in-kind services and not closing down the streets when businesses are open.
"The only event that I see we should shut the streets down for is maybe the Christmas parade," Perkins said.
Perkins said if there are other people wanting to use downtown for a march or race, they should have an alternative and less intrusive route that would not interrupt traffic.
Perkins also noted the taxpayers can't afford the in-kind services.
"I'm not concerned with what other cities want to do," Perkins said. "We need to come up with a very good streamlined, conservative, strict policy that does not allow for the closure of our downtown streets only just for that Christmas parade."
Spruill said the Community Development Department staff is able to handle the task of looking at developing and updating the policy.
She said she doesn't see any reason to start from the beginning because their current policy was developed by looking at how other cities handled special event requests.
As for the legal counsel, Spruill said Latimer always passes off on what the board does. She said the policy hasn't been looked at in a while, so this provides the city with an opportunity to update its policy.
"When it comes to looking at what others do, it's perfectly appropriate because we don't need to reinvent the wheel," Spruill said. "If there are things that work for us, then that's fine and if they're things that don't, then you don't use them."
OTHER BUSINESS
•Aldermen unanimously approved Sumner Davis to fill the vacant School Board position.
•Aldermen approved the special event for the visit of the Clydesdales. Perkins and Vaughn voted against the special event. Perkins said he was concerned because there would be free alcohol samples being provided at Fire Station Park, which is not legally permissible.
Latimer said he thinks the city's special event policy should be fixed legislatively as soon as possible to allow alcohol at special events. "Right now as the ordinance is written, it does violate the city's open container law," Latimer said. "I think if the city were challenged on that, the city would argue that it's allowing an exception by approving the special events policy that it's allowing exception to its subordinates."
•Aldermen approved to call for a public hearing to amend its alcohol ordinance for serving alcohol during special events.
•Aldermen approved to advertise to fill the Executive Director position for the Parks and Recreation Department.
•Aldermen met in executive session to discuss pending litigation regarding the Pride Parade and the rezoning of the industrial park. The board did not take any action.