Cookeville City Council will set a new date Thursday for a public hearing on the annexation of some 275 acres around Dodson Branch Road.
Cookeville Community Development Director Jon Ward said the total cost to service the area would be an estimated $7.5 million. If the city moves forward with annexation, the decision would go to a resident vote.
“I wish I had better information to provide you guys that, you know, a referendum would be successful, but I do not,” Ward said. “There’s no way to get that, that I am aware of. So we tried, we notified everyone, we tried to make it easy to respond, and that’s the status of the responses that we received.”
Ward said he has sent out over a hundred letters and has only received 17 responses, with eight responses being for the annexation and nine being against. City Manager James Mills said the annexation would likely be worth the investment.
“What we’ve done historically is look for land that can be developed,” Mills said. “This has a lot of land that can be developed, and that’s where it starts to make financial sense for a city. But to go annex a developed single-family subdivision, will never be a payback for the city.”
Ward said the expected tax revenue to come from the current state of the proposed annexed area would bring in an estimated $329,000 per year.
“We have to post the plan of services in the territory, run our appropriate notices, have the plan of services available in three places in the community for folks to review,” Ward said. “So I pushed it back a little bit there to give us a little bit more time to make sure we get all the notices out.”
Ward said the referendum cost may go up since the new annexation proposal would include two voting precincts. The council still has not determined whether they would lean toward holding a special referendum or wait till the next election.
The council also briefly discussed considering doing a special census study if the city completes the annexation. Mills said performing a special census study could help the city get more revenue from state-shared taxes.
The council originally delayed the decision to set a public hearing date after more acreage was added to the originally proposed annexation.
