Rezoning vote delayed again after petition issue

By Randy Bell

Preliminary site plan for Olde Town Village

     A controversial proposal to rezone forty-two wooded acres in the heart of Clinton will be back on the agenda for the Board of Aldermen when it meets November 5, after a vote at the previous meeting was delayed.

     Kirkland Development wants the property, which stretches from the Clinton Parkway to the Clinton Community Nature Center, zoned for mixed use, so Olde Town Village can be built on the land.  The development would include commercial lots along the Parkway, with the rest of the land devoted to single-family homes and townhomes.

     Opponents are worried that the construction could aggravate flooding in nearby neighborhoods, while other concerns focus on how the Nature Center might be impacted.

     At the October 15 meeting, residents submitted a petition which would make it harder for the Board to approve the rezoning.  According to City Clerk Jimmy Baldree, under state law, if the owners of twenty per cent of the property located within 160 feet of the land to be rezoned object with a valid petition, a three-fifths vote of the Board would be required to approve the rezoning, instead of a simple majority.  With all seven Board members voting, five ayes would be required.

     But the petition ran into problems when Baldree announced that it couldn’t be certified, because its purpose wasn’t identified at the top of each page of signatures.  That prompted a 4-3 vote to table the rezoning proposal to give opponents a chance to submit a valid petition, a decision which Mayor Phil Fisher called “absurd.”

     “It is the responsibility of the petitioner to have it right,” Fisher said.  “I think that this Board needs to move forward and, one way or the other, do what they’re going to do.”

     Ward 1 Alderwoman Karen Godfrey agreed.

     “We’ve had enough discussion about it for weeks and hours and hours.”

     Godfrey shares Fisher’s concern that refusing to approve the Olde Town Village rezoning would set a precedent which could impact the Rising Spring development near Mississippi College.

     “I’ve talked to some folks at MC, and they are very concerned that we would not vote for mixed use,” Godfrey said.  “And they have to have mixed use [zoning] for their development to be successful.  This is a problem for us to vote ‘no’ for mixed use at one spot and not for another.  You can get yourself into a lot of trouble for doing that.  The same principles should apply at every location.”

     But Ward 2 Alderman Jim Martin – who made the motion to table the rezoning vote – believes the opponents deserve an opportunity to submit a valid petition.

     “They signed that petition, and, at the last minute, they were told that it wasn’t adequate, without time to correct it.  So, that just avoids listening to what the citizens say.  And that’s the reason for that statute is that [consideration of] the surrounding property owners is important for the Board of Aldermen to consider.”

     Baldree said Joe Price, the organizer of the campaign to require a super majority vote on the rezoning request, dropped off a new petition at the city clerk’s office on October 24.

     Price said, regardless of how the vote goes, he’s not optimistic about the future of the forty-two acres.

     “Even if this [rezoning] does not pass, they can go ahead with a different development.”

     The property is currently zoned R-1, which allows for houses to be built.

     “This [petition] was more or less to express our displeasure with the whole thing,” Price said.  “But we cannot stop the [property owner] from doing something.”