Busy night for Supes
The Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors held its second November meeting at the Oktibbeha County Courthouse on Monday night, where they listened to a mold report and discussed potential redistricting.
Back in October, County Administrator Delois Farmer called Michael Keeton of Green Home Solutions to come and inspect the courthouse and its air quality.
“So, I came out here on the 26th of October and did two different types of tests. One of those tests was an aerosol air sampling kit that traps spores inside of it, and it will tell us if there’s mold and what the levels for it are,” said Keeton. “The other test we used is a new diagnostic tool that will test for VOCS, the carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity levels. That gives us an overall picture, because it may or may not be mold, it may be something like a VOC [volatile organic compound] which is basically chemicals from paints and solvents.”
One of the solutions that Keeton suggested was to get a newer air filtration system installed in the building’s HVAC system to help improve the air quality.
District 5 Supervisor Marvell Howard was overall pleased that the report did not give catastrophic results.
“Overall, this is a pretty good report. The reason we’ve asked for that report is because we’ve had some concerns from the employees who thought that maybe the air quality was pretty bad,” Howard said.
Earlier in the meeting, Toby Sanford from the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District talked with the Supervisors about potential redistricting solutions for the county.
According to the 2020 Census, the county’s population stands at 51,728, up around 4,000 residents since the 2010 Census. While it is a good thing that Oktibbeha’s population has risen, it is not even across all five districts.
To determine if county lines need to be redrawn, Sanford suggested taking the total population and divide that by the five districts to come out with an “ideal number.” The next step would be to determine a deviation which would be the difference from that ideal number. The deviation would then be multiplied by 100 and divided by the ideal number to get a population percentage.
The highest and lowest percentages are subtracted from each other, and if that number is higher than 10 percent, redistricting is needed.
The first plan Sanford suggested was to take the part of Rolling Hills that is split between Districts 2 and 3 and put it all in District 3.
The second plan Sanford suggested was to redo another change from the last redistricting process. In this case, it would involve moving an entire apartment complex into District 1 instead of it being split between 1 and 3. The idea of this plan is to clean up some of the district lines.
The third plan, which Sanford
brought to the Board for the first time Monday night, is mainly the same as the second, except Starkville Manor Health Care and Rehab would not move into District 3 but rather to District 5, so that it wouldn’t overpopulate District 3.
The Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors did not make a motion between the three proposed plans. They are expected to revisit the decision at their next meeting on December 6.