Meeker’s Town Board informally has agreed to continue with the process of annexing about eight square miles into the Town’s limits.
That was the consensus of the five Trustees during their meeting last week. They could only discuss the issue, because the agenda didn’t call for taking any action.
They discussed the other night taking a little different approach to the annexation issue. What they talked about was developing a plan which hasn’t been done yet.
Trustee and former Mayor Aaron Head has suggested possibly patterning a plan the town of Grove in northeastern Oklahoma developed and using some of that information.
That appears to be a positive approach. Head has been on the town board for a number of years. He was serving as mayor in November of 2018 when Trustees voted to set the boundaries of the annexation. They previously had approved proceeding with it.
He’s the only member from that board who is currently serving as a Trustee.
In April of 2019, Trustees again voted unanimously to continue the process of annexing that area into the city limits.
Former Town Administrator Dickie Walton had explained several times, “the purpose is to protect the town’s interests and the Quapaw 15 Project more commonly known as the Lake Project.”
Walton had pointed out that April Burns, an economist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recommended the guidelines for the borders of the proposed annexation.
One of the first steps the Trustees now should take is to determine if the federal and state funding pledged for the Quapaw 15 Project is still on track. If it is, the annexation will be needed.
If it’s not, the annexation wouldn’t become as pressing.
Recently, in three consecutive months, the Trustees scheduled a required public hearing but had to cancel each one of them for various reasons.
Before that hearing can even be held, each of the 348 property owners in the proposed annexation area must be notified by a certified registered letter about the hearing that would be held at the town hall.
Notification of that public hearing must be within a minimum of 14 days and a maximum of 30 days of the public hearing.
The annexation would require the town of Meeker to provide certain services within a specified amount of time.
The consensus of the board in the meeting last week was that once a plan is developed, a special meeting of the board would be called for discussion purposes only. At that meeting a question and answer session would be held with the public to field some of the concerns they have raised.
Mayor Jeff Wilbourn has stated that personally he’d like to see that take place within the next month or two.
Their idea to develop a plan and hold that public meeting for discussion only is the right approach and they should be able to better proceed from there.