Starkville City Hall (courtesy photo)
At its first work session of 2019, the Starkville Board of Aldermen received a presentation on the city’s ongoing code rewrite.
City Planner Daniel Havelin, a member of the Starkville Development Review Committee, told the board several aspects of the rewrite were complete, but the city still had a long way to go.
“Our first step was to go back to the comprehensive plan, and really examine all place types, all suggestions made by consultants, and then also take that and start looking very carefully at the place type map,” Havelin said. “Once we started getting into the place type map, we found some things that could come up in the future.”
Havelin said the review found some errors in the map. Some of the errors resulted from a change in place types with nothing replacing it, while others resulted from Oktibbeha County updating parcel data, which threw off some of the existing parcel data on the map.
“We started looking at all the exiting neighborhoods in the city,” Havelin said. “We started working with the utilities department, working on some utilities information that we’ll be addressing at each parcel. We’re able to use that data to determine a density map.”
The density map will be used to determine new zoning classifications.
“Of the 17 sections, nine are at 85 percent or above (complete),” Havelin said. “Five are currently what we’re working on right now, and the remainder will either be input from other departments or existing code that we sort of reformatted.”
Currently, the code rewrite is 64 percent complete. Of the work, 77 percent has been completed by the planning department, with the utilities and engineering departments working on the remaining portions.
“Obviously, our next immediate step is going to be writing the remaining sections, and then after that it will be to obviously format everybody’s sections,” Havelin said.
The scheduled completion date for the first draft is March 1.
Ward 5 Alderman Patrick Miller acknowledged the work city employees were putting into rewriting the codes.
“I’ve said since the very beginning, I don’t want to get to year four, and still be talking about the code rewrite, so to say that potentially by the first of March we will have a first draft is in my opinion, very impressive,” Miller said.
Mayor Lynn Spruill also said she was impressed with city staff’s performance on the project.
“I greatly appreciate what they’ve done,” Spruill said.