Oktibbeha County supervisors will consider a proposed policy for collecting unpaid garbage bills at Monday’s meeting after discussing it at length during a work session on Wednesday.
Supervisors voted unanimously in December to bill property owners instead of renters for garbage collection services. The property owner is ultimately responsible for paying a garbage bill even if the previous owner or renter did not pay it.
Board attorney Rob Roberson’s proposed policy would allow anyone with a delinquent garbage bill to pay 25 percent up front and make regular payments to finish off the rest of the debt. They can still purchase a car tag as long as their payments are on schedule, Roberson said.
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard said the proposed policy “sort of addresses all the issues we face” and only needs a few changes before the board can vote on it Monday.
Golden Triangle Waste Services charges Oktibbeha County more than $76,000 per month at $8.12 per residence. The agency increased its billing from $64,000 per month in January to account for residences that had not been billed previously.
The Golden Triangle Planning and Development District is responsible for counting the houses, billing the residents and collecting the money, which the county then pays to GTWS.
GTPDD currently bills 8,841 of the 9,533 rural residences in Oktibbeha County. This does not include apartment complexes, which have their own dumpsters, and some of the remaining residences are not occupied, GTPDD representatives told the board in August.
The board will also consider strengthening the county’s ordinance pertaining to vicious dogs in light of recent dog attacks on both humans and animals in the Maben area.
The ordinance defines a “vicious dog” as one “with a known propensity, tendency or disposition to attack, when unprovoked, to cause injury or otherwise endanger the safety of human beings, domestic dogs, livestock or poultry.” A vicious dog that kills or severely injures a human “shall be immediately confiscated and thereafter destroyed in an expeditious and humane manner.”
Capt. Brett Watson of the Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office will present a proposed ordinance to the supervisors on Monday, and he said he could not comment on the proposal until then. OCSO is responsible for enforcing the ordinance, and vicious dog cases are adjudicated in Oktibbeha County Justice Court.
Additionally, the board discussed formalizing its policy for hauling heavy loads like dirt and logs across county roads. The current policy is not a formal ordinance, and haulers typically contact the county supervisors and ask them for the route to their destination that would do the least damage to county roads, but not all drivers follow the supervisors’ directions, Howard said.
The board hopes to accommodate large development projects that require hauling several heavy loads across the same roads to one area, he said.
“We would have our county engineer (Clyde Pritchard) go out and do a pre-inspection of that road before the work actually begins, and once it’s completed, have him go back and do an inspection and come up with the amount of damage (that) possibly could have happened doing that project,” Howard said.
Finally, the board agreed Wednesday to provide overtime pay for the resolution committee that will process the county’s absentee ballots for next week’s general election. As of Monday, Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk Tony Rook estimated 2,500 voters had turned in absentee ballots this year, an increase of 56 percent over the 1,600 absentee ballots cast in 2016.
District 1 Supervisor and Board President John Montgomery said the committee will probably have to work three times as long on Tuesday as they would have in previous years, and they will come back on Nov. 8 and Nov. 13 to finish processing absentee ballots that come in after Nov. 3.
“We’re going to adjust their pay accordingly to reflect their workload,” Montgomery said.
Overtime pay for the committee usually totals an extra $175 per person, but the board agreed to pay them an extra $300, with $200 for Election Day and $50 for each of the two additional days.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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