News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
City of Baxter approved the annexation of some 52-acres of land to the East of Gainesboro Highway at its Tuesday night meeting.
Codes Official Bob Lane said that the landowners had approached the city about the annexation to help with potential development. He said that annexing territories can sometimes be a huge benefit to the city proper.
“The more rooftops you pull into a city the government pays you so much money per person, a lawn tax or whatever they call it, and then you also get the real estate taxes off each piece of property you’re selling water and sewer to,” Lane said. “So it’s numbers. The higher your numbers are, the cheaper you can offer the services.”
Lane said annexing property adds it to the city limits. He said having an annexed property can help developers with additional services, such as garbage pick up and police protection.
Lane said that he believes annexing the territory for potential new development will not create utility capacity issues. He said that they have an extensive program going on to repair the city sewer lines, so they’ll be in good shape.
“We’ve got a lot of I&I (inflow and infiltration) which is rainwater getting into our sewer system but we get that tightened up and it’s going to open up a lot of capacity,” Lane said. “Our sewer plant is nowhere near capacity except when big rains come. So it’s an ongoing process. There will come a day, like all cities where we’ll have to look at our infrastructure and do improvements on our sewer plant as time goes on.”
Lane said when a new property is being annexed for development, the developer would be responsible for building all necessary infrastructure for city service. He said in that way, it’s also a benefit to the city because it doesn’t have to pay for it.
