Optimism that Starkville’s justice complex bond referendum would pass Tuesday sank when the first two precincts reported.
Wards 4 and 7 showed just 33 percent of citizens in favor of the $8.45 million bond issue, well short of the 60 percent needed to pass.
By 10 p.m., Starkville’s fourth attempt in 12 years to finance the construction of a new police station was dead in the water with just 44.54 percent of the votes.
“It’s a little surprising to me,” Starkville Mayor Parker Wiseman said. “Until election day, it’s hard to get a read on how the total electorate is moving. Today, it didn’t move our way.”
Just one ward, Ward 5, had more yes votes with 259 to 226. The figure greatly contrasts the failed referendum in 2006, which saw the city barely fall short with 59.14 percent of votes. Then, six of Starkville’s seven wards had more yes votes than no notes.
Nearly 600 more people turned out to vote this time around, though the 3,031 that voted represented just 23 percent of the registered voters in Starkville.
Ward 5 Alderman Jeremiah Dumas said he was “floored” by the difference from the last bond referendum, a $6.4 million project that failed by 22 votes.
“It’s eye-opening to say the least,” Dumas said. “This is obviously very telling of where we are as a community right now.”
Starkville officials had hoped to solve a long-standing police-facilities quagmire with a new, 26,400-square-foot facility on the corner of Highways 182 and 389.
Next to City Hall on Lampkin Street, the Starkville police station is prone to water and sewage leaks. The force has outgrown the building, which opened in 1969, and doesn’t have sufficient areas to store evidence. Additionally, the SPD doesn’t have separate rooms to book suspects and record witness statements.
The Starkville Board of Aldermen and the citizens’ committee tried to illustrate the pressing need to the community by hosting open houses, speaking at civic group meetings and advertising on radio and TV. They created a Web page for the facilities master plan, which included a proposed plan to renovate City Hall, to give citizens a portal to calculate millage increases and have access to all information about the project.
“I started this process thinking we weren’t doing enough,” Dumas said. “And here we are, we reduced (the cost) by half and still got 40 percent of the vote. Despite the fact it failed, there’s still a significant need.”
Dumas said numerous citizens who voiced opposition to the municipal complex bond cited other citywide referendums that have passed since 2006, including a $27.5 million bond to renovate OCH Regional Medical Center in 2009 and a $26 million bond issue for Starkville School District in 2007. The municipal complex would have raised the annual millage rate by 3.49, or $35 for every $100,000 of residential property value.
Wiseman said he picked up negative feedback prior to the referendum about the overall cost of the project and the cost of the land. In a question-and-answer forum hosted by the Starkville Tea Party, citizens questioned the location and the need to build a new facility instead of moving into a vacant building.
During a town hall meeting in July, when the citizens’ committee introduced the two-phase plan, and two public hearings, the plan got little, if any, negative feedback.
The negative feedback wasn’t significant enough to foreshadow a lopsided result in the referendum, Wiseman said.
“The numbers are what they are,” Wiseman said. “I’ll leave the pundits and prognosticators to theorize what they might mean. But what we know tonight is that we don’t have a project moving forward to help improve our police facilities.”
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