By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
City council members stared down the mayor and county commissioner Monday night over rumors that the two conspired on behalf of deannexation.
Councilman Bobby Williamson asked Mayor Kurt Mayabb if he and Canadian County Commissioner Marc Hader were encouraging citizens to detach from the city.
“I’ve been hearing from several people that our mayor and county commissioner are pushing for deannexation,” Williamson asked.
Mayabb dismissed the rumor.
“I think people are reading way too far into this, from my point of view,” he said. “I sit up here, I give my opinions but it’s our duty as a mayor and council to look into the requests of the citizens.”
But there has been talk among citizens and Mayabb on the matter.
“There are times where I will be talking to people and I’m not talking out of both sides of my mouth, it’s just the fact that I want to know what the citizens want as far as the deannexation. When I’m involved with that, in the conversation it might look like I’m for it. I’m riding the fence on it.”
Mayabb said deannexing would be costly to citizens and unproductive.
“It doesn’t help us as a city if we deannex,” Mayabb said. “It takes us to a different threshold of how many people we have, population, in our city. We just got literature on detachment and I don’t think everyone understands what it takes to deannex.”
A driving force behind deannexing from the city seems to be the promise of better roads.
“I feel like a lot of people think that roads are the biggest problem and if we deannex the roads will be taken care of,” Mayabb said. “They will eventually be taken care of, but I don’t believe it (detachment) is an overnight fix. I think that we can do the same thing with the direction that we’re going.”
Mayabb warned of the consequences. He said the city has a fire boundary but also a city limit.
“Anything outside the city limit that ACOG (Associated Council of Oklahoma Governments) says we will go to, if it’s outside you could be billed. Is that right Mr. (Andy) Logan?”
Chief Logan answered yes.
“The second thing I’m being told is that you will have to pay for all the infrastructure that has been done for that property,” Mayabb said. “Your roads that suck, we’re working on it. I’ll say that out loud. You’re going to have to pay us for that. You’re going to have to pay for that water line, trash.”
Mayabb believes the issue demands more consideration.
“There’s a lot more literature out there that we need to be looking at before we go this far,” he said. “If the citizens want it Bobby, you almost got to be for it. But before we go that far, we need to do our due diligence on it.”
Williamson fired back.
“You say the citizens, you mean a select few that want it or the majority?”
Mayabb said he believed it was a few talking.
Councilwoman Melissa Ashford pointed out that according to state statute it would have to be a majority of registered voters. In addition, the landowners favoring the proposal must own three-fourths of the deannexed property’s total value.
Williamson did not let it rest there.
“That wasn’t my (original) question,” Williamson said. “My question was, do you support deannexation?”
“N-No,” he said. “From the mayor’s point of view, it does not help our city get to the point where it needs to be population-wise. Now if you want to stop this deannexing, then we need to figure out how to get this road bond passed and get these roads fixed, because I think that’s one of the main things these people are frustrated with.”
Councilman John Brown said he had also heard that Hader was encouraging deannexation. He called Hader to the podium for an answer.
Hader called the rumors “falsehoods,” but pointed out that he had spoken to a member in the audience about the matter during a football game last Friday.
“People call me and send me messages. We talk about the pluses and minuses of these things,” Hader said.
However, Hader has told constituents that the commission can fix their roads.
“If folks decide they want to try and do that (deannex), I’ve said we don’t have a magic wand to fix all that but we are in a little better position financially that eventually if that were to happen on roads we can get in there and systematically, and those are largely going to be rural roads so dirt and gravel roads.”
Brown asked Hader why, if he was willing to fix those roads after detachment, he wasn’t willing to help Piedmont fix them now.
“We have 900 miles of road that we are responsible for,” Hader said. He claimed that the council does not “necessarily come to me and ask me,” for help.
Hader said Waterloo Road was “something that you guys weren’t getting done and I was tired of getting complaints” and ultimately approached the council to help fix it.
“I came to you, I called you,” Williamson argued sternly. Hader left the podium.
Brown wasn’t finished.
“It would basically be the end of Piedmont,” Brown said of deannexation. “One of our largest sales revenues is sales tax on electric bills. We would be looking at laying police department (staff), fire department, (city) staff. We would be severely constrained because of budget problems.”
Brown said the windmills would go up and trailer parks would come in.
“Big farms, landfills,” Ashford said. She directed her questions to Hader.
“Mr. Hader, does the county benefit from part of us deannexing at all?”
“For the most part I’d say no. There are revenues that come in for miles of road but,” Hader explained, “it’s something like $3,000 to $4,000 per mile and that’s not even enough to pay for a load of rock to put down on a mile of road. There’s no reason I’m out there saying, ‘hey do this, grow my kingdom.’”
Hader said the county gets a small amount of ad valorem tax.
OTHER BUSINESS
Council members are moving forward with plans to purchase a hot patch truck that will better repair potholes and a new road grader.
Efforts to move toward a road bond continued as the council voted unanimously to approve a road bond advisory committee. The committee will not be limited to a set number of members and will not be limited by ward. The committee could be expected to submit a road map recommendation for roads to be repaired by late December.
