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Annexation correction (October 10, 2012) |
Financially, the city of Wilmore has received some good news that will give a much-needed injection into its deficient revenue streams; however, it will not take effect until the next fiscal year.
Wilmore utilities and public works director Dave Carlstedt and engineer John Horne have been working feverishly over the past several years to correct an oversight in Wilmore’s annexation process with Frankfort that they say should be rectified by December.
The issue spans three decades, back to 1982. Since then, no annexed boundaries made by Wilmore have been recognized or properly recorded at the Kentucky Secretary of State’s land office.
This oversight by the city has affected the census and cost revenue to suffer in forms of property, insurance and road-tax revenues.
“We are now in the home stretch of this annexation correction, and we’re going to get it done by December and officially know our city limits to a very specific boundary,” Carlstedt said. “There are between 22 and 25 parcels of land that have been annexed since 1982 that were never recorded in Frankfort. Our effort for the last couple of years have been fixing that map dilemma.”
The map in Frankfort is the key to all sorts of municipal data, Carlstedt said, such as the census count, decisions made on the fees to the city of Wilmore for life and health insurance, and the voting boundaries.
The oversight caused a stir in the 2010 census as some high-density areas were not counted. Wilmore’s population was marked at 5,905 in 2000. However, the 2010 census stated the city’s population was at 3,686 because the state reverted back to the 1982 boundaries.
“(The state) is asking us to go back and review every single annexation effort and make sure all the paperwork was exactly correct or if there was anything that was deficient,” Carlstedt said. “We have to declare in 2012 that this is what the city did, intended to do, that we are providing service to all these properties and then the secretary of state accepts that affirmation and corrects the map in Frankfort, which is basically now the mother of all maps.”
At last Monday’s night Wilmore City Council meeting, Horne presented an annexation resolution of five parcels to “re-declare” them as annexed into Wilmore. The council approved the annexation resolutions, which accounted for select parcels with Asbury Theological Seminary, part of the Thompson and Riester property, Roseglade Farm, Forest Creek and a piece called the Wiggs Property.
Then on Friday, Carlstedt and Horne went to Frankfort with the approved parcels and presented them to Kandie Adkinson in the state’s land office.
After thoroughly studying each application, Adkinson rubber-stamped the project, Carlstedt said.
One of the reasons the process is taking so long is because the state is not allowing Wilmore to submit a consolidated annexation of all the parcels. Carlstedt and Horne must go over every parcel of land that has been annexed, prepare a current-day survey and prepare a resolution of annexation for the city council, then take that to Adkinson with supporting documentation.
“It’s perfunctory — as long as we follow this model and do the rest the same way, it should work out,” he said. “John (Horne) will present more parcels each city-council meeting, and we plan to have them all approved and to Frankfort by the end of the holidays.”
The total 2010 PVA assessment for all the annexed properties and anticipated taxable value of those properties of the Harrodsburg Road annexations (Forest Creek and contiguous properties) is $3,895,093.
“At our proposed 2012 substitute rate of 22.4 cents per hundred, it would generate $8,725.01 for the city,” Carlstedt said. “Keep in mind, these revenues would not be added to the 2012-’13 budget. If we get all of our annexation issues resolved with Frankfort this year, they would be included in our 2013-’14 budget.”
Carlstedt said if everything goes according to plan that mid-term census and insurance and tax rates will be adjusted to the corrected maps as of Jan. 1.
“When we get this all finished, (the state) will know all the ways for the different government agencies to determine funding,” he said. “We get money from the state for our road taxes, and we get that based on which roads are in the city limits, and other things will be adjusted, too.”
