The Culver Town Council is working its way through new guidelines for the annexation of property.
Culver is currently considering annexing land to its Northwest to increase the Town’s assessed valuation and potentially offer the land up for development. Surveys have been sent to the landowners affected by any future decisions. 22 have been returned.
Culver Town Manager Jonathan Leist says there’s a mix of opinions from the surveys.
“Only a few have actually been fully in favor,” says Leist. “There’s a few maybe/sort of, and quite a few no’s in there, but once I get the information from the last six I’ll try and present a full map and give you guys an idea of what the assessed value is on all those sections and all those details.”
The Town of Culver is now contending with legislation passed this spring by the General Assembly. It makes annexation slightly more difficult from the Town’s perspective.
Culver not only must decide which parcels should be annexed, but also is anticipating to spend around $5-thousand to develop a fiscal plan for annexation. The fiscal plan would illustrate how the Town plans to bring services to the land, such as water and sewer.
Leist says as soon as the law went into effect, it was too late.
“One of the big changes was that if it’s initiated by the Town and not the landowners, there’s a six month education process, one meeting a month, six meetings,” says Leist. “And that’s in addition to the 90 day process so it turns it into a nine month process now.”
Among the challenges the Town of Culver may face are ordinance violations. Livestock, smells, noise, and other byproducts of rural life may interfere with the Town’s current laws.
The Town Council will not take further action until surveys have been returned and additional data has been reviewed.
