Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Council Ponders Annexation Of Cemetery, GPS

Annexation was a big issue at Monday night's meeting of the Gurdon City Council.

The city's governing body discussed annexing the Rose Hedge Cemetery area into the city limits by utilizing the petition method.

Bringing the Gurdon Primary School into the city can, and will, be done through ordinance.

Gurdon Mayor Rick Smith said the annexation of Rose Hedge will affect six to eight houses, but only a majority of property owners in the area need to sign the petition before the annexation procedure can begin.

City Attorney Taylor King drew up a timetable for getting the property annexed into the city limits. On a best case scenario it will take about four months, or until late September or early October to complete the process.

Once the petitions have been signed by a majority of land owners, both by number of owners and acreage, the petition will be presented to Clark County Judge Floyd "Buddy" Manning and be placed on file with the Clark County Clerk.

From there, the judge will set a public hearing date of not less than 30 days from the filing date of the petition.

A public notice of the hearing must then be published once a week for three straight weeks before the hearing.

During this time, affidavits for or against the petition can be submitted to Manning.

Should the petition be granted, the court will issue an order and deliver all relevant papers to the county clerk.

At any time within a month of this order, suit may be filed to prevent the annexation. However, the suit must be filed in the Clark County Chancery Court.

If no suit is filed, the annexation will be confirmed at the end of the month.

Then the Gurdon City Council will have to approve the annexation of the property into the city limits by ordinance or resolution and assign it to an existing ward or create a new ward for it.

Smith said petitions will be circulated in the Rose Hedge area this week.

Because GPS is surrounded by the city limits, he said, it can be annexed in by ordinance. Under the law, any property surrounded by the city can be brought in with an ordinance by the council.

The petition method would have to be used for the area of Highway 67 to get the Gurdon High School and Cabe Middle School annexed into the city.

While several people have expressed a desire to have this area brought into the city limits, no one has done any work to get petitions signed, Smith said.

He went on to say the mayor's office has the necessary paperwork and will gladly help anyone interested in getting the schools annexed into the city.

However, he added, if these annexation projects are not successfully completed before Dec. 31, 1999, he will fight to see the annexing is not done.

This is because state turnback funds are based on population, and if these areas are not in the city limits before the next census begins on Jan. 1, 2000, no turnback money would be allowed for them. But, the city would still be responsible for providing all city services to these areas if they were annexed in after Dec. 31, 1999.

In addition, he said, money is available through the U.S. Department of Justice to fund the salary of a police officer for the purpose of school protection. This grant, though, can't be obtained or applied for by Gurdon as the school is outside the city limits.

Landowners in annexed areas would be responsible for paying city tax on their property. This amounts to 5.4 mills on real and personal property, or about $1.08 per $1,000 of actual property value.

Of this millage, four tenths is dedicated to the Gurdon Fire Department, while the other five mills is used to pay bonded indebtedness and for general operation of the city.

The current amount of property tax the city receives is about $40,000 a year.

Another added benefit to being in the city limits, Smith said, is those properties would then be under the protection of the Gurdon Fire Department. In most cases, this would result in lower insurance premiums for homeowners for their fire protection policies.

Currently, GHS and CMS are in the Beirne fire protection region, though the GFD will respond if assistance is requested.