The Future of Russell St.

Big plans are in the works for Starkville, and in particular Ward 4 and Russell St. The street that now leads into one of MSU's primary corridors is on the verge of major changes. For a while some have had their eye on the possibility of turning the Cooley Building into a convention center. In addition, Ergon and other developers are looking at transforming Russell Street with large scale development that includes retail on the first floor and office spaces/condos on the second and third floors. Another change is the possibility of boulevarding the street; however, it would have to come from seperate city funds than the money in our budget for road improvements as many other streets have road/drainage issues that still need to be addressed.

*click on images for a larger view*

Cooley Building, aka Physical Plant on Russell Street

The Village is one of the properties proposed for Russell St.

Layout of The Village development

In addition to this development, a request for the University to sell some of its land on University Drive was presented to the IHL board (and as far as I know approved) which would allow the following five story development to take place near the bridge leading to campus with a similar pattern of retail on the bottom and condos above.

University Drive Development

Town Hall Meeting Re: Justice Complex

There will be a town hall meeting on Monday April 10th, 2006, at the Greensboro Center to discuss the two top locations for the Justice Complex: The old Coca-Cola bottling plant location and the two-part downtown location. Figures from the last meeting showed the downtown location as being around $600,000 less expensive; however, there is some doubt to how accurate those numbers are in this preliminary stage. The two locations could end up costing close to the same amount. Another interesting point is the judge's statement that the police station and court should be two seperate buildings. The separate downtown locations would be able to accomodate that request. While I personally prefer downtown, i'd be interested to hear the community response at the town hall meeting. Here are some pictures with the first two being rough sketches of the downtown locations (with a new electric department as well) and the last is an overlay of the combined police/court at the Coke location.

Breaking News About the "Hammer"

Tom DeLay won't be seeking a bid for re-election according to two Republican sources who spoke to CNN. DeLay was calling supporters and is expected to announce it formally tomorrow morning.

Link to CNN story

Five MSU football players charged with assaulting a cop

I normally don't like to forward newspaper articles as I prefer to write my own material; however, I felt this was important and a sad day for MSU football.


Five MSU football players charged with assaulting a cop
By Ian R. Rapoport
irapopor@clarionledger.com

STARKVILLE — Five Mississippi State football players, including two starters, are scheduled to appear in Starkville Municipal Court today at 2 p.m. to face charges that they assaulted a police officer.

The five were were arrested and charged with simple assault of a police officer, a felony, late Sunday night, according to a news release from the Starkville Police Department.

Cornerback Derek Pegues and safety Keith Fitzhugh are the starters arrested. Offensive tackle Michael Gates, and defensive ends Charles Burns and Quinton Wesley are the others. All are freshmen.

Each player charged with the felony was held in Webster County Jail until a $25,000 bond was posted, because Oktibbeha County Jail was full.

Through spokesman Mike Nemeth, MSU coach Sylvester Croom said he’ll wait for the legal process to run its course before disciplining the players. “But,” Croom added in a statement, “there will be discipline taken no matter the outcome of the legal process.”

Police say other arrests are “anticipated.”

According to the report, the incident occurred at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday at Level III, a downtown Starkville nightclub, when off-duty police officer Demetric Armstead attempted to break up a fight between two women.

Armstead was attacked by “several individuals” and was knocked to the floor, said the report. He then identified himself as a Starkville police officer, but the attack continued. After Armstead went outside and called for help, on-duty police arrived, as did Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s deputies. The report said that the “attackers” left the scene. A day long investigation took place on Sunday, leading to the arrests.

Link to article

No Smoking Ordinance

The committee that was formed to deal with the No Smoking ordinance has finalized a draft of the ordinance that will be on the agenda for our Tuesday, March 21st, 2006, meeting. We scheduled that date for the last public hearing and will most likely vote on the issue then. The committee itself consisted of myself, Aldermen Matt Cox, Alderman Sumner Davis, two representatives of the Restuarant Association, two representatives of Breathe Free Starkville, and a representative of the Student Association.

A copy of the ordinance can be downloaded here.

Starkville in Motion Proposed Bike/Walking Path

Starkville in Motion are currently making plans for a proposal for the southern portion of Starkville that would involve placing multi-use paths (walking and biking) all the way from campus to McKee Park. These paths, unlike the bike lanes on University Drive, would be seperate from the street similar to what is on campus. Being able to accomplish this would require an effort on both the city and the university; however, SiM is working on several grants that would help to pay for a good portion of the costs. Below is a rough sketch of the areas the path would be running by.

As per people's requests...

I am restarting my blogging. I was surprised how many people were reading on a daily basis. I had stopped blogging because of trying to get into the habit of balancing being an alderman, school, and work. I didn't realize that several people enjoyed reading it so I am planning to restart and begin using a regular schedule for my alderman based posts:

* Wednesday (following meetings) - overview of meeting
* Friday - update on any new building permits issued or requests made
* Others TBA

I didn't feel good after Tuesday night's board meeting and have since been sick in bed. I wanted to make a quick post for two reasons.

1. There obviously are a lot of people wanting to talk more about the smoking ordiance. I will make a more in-depth post in a few days after I get to feeling better. I also want to make a post concerning the Borden house which is another growing issue for various citizens in the city.

2. A lot of people apparently read my blog and I wanted to say "thank you" to all of you. Above all I want people to feel like they can talk to me.

Tomorrow's meeting

Tomorrow's Board of Alderman meeting agenda has been posted on the city's website. Some of the more interesting topics will be the board hiring a receptionist for city hall, the possible creation of a cemetary commission, discussion and possible expenditure for a citizen survey, the city/MSU fire contract, an extension on Northland Cable's franchise liscence, and as always, drainage issues.

eBay's Rival?

It's already been dubbed by some as "eBay's killer" even though it hasn't even official launched yet. I am refering to Google Base. Google Base is another extension of Google which will provide users with an online datebase for storing... well just about anything. As an online, searchable database people will be able to store anything from recipes to local services they provide to even University researched information such as protein structures.

But how does this represent a threat to eBay? Well, this database can also be used to upload information about products and sell them much like one would do on eBay but with a critical difference. Google Base will be free. The service pays for itself through the now popular simple text advertisements centered around the products being featured. These ads use keywords in the document they're in so that the ad is relevant to whatever people are looking for. With the rising costs of selling on eBay many people have been searching for an alternative and are already lining up to take advantage of Google's services once they become available.

Further evidence that Google will soon be competing with eBay is the fact that they are in the process of setting up their own online payment service, called Google Wallet, which will be similar to the popular PayPal.

Ars Technica has an article concerning Google Base, as well as Outer-Court.com.