CITIES KEEP FOCUS FRIENDLY; JACKSON, CAPE EACH LOOK AT 'REASONABLE GROWTH'

JACKSON -- City officials in Jackson and Cape Girardeau will begin identifying growth patterns for each city as the two communities continue to work out annexation issues.

A joint annexation committee made up of representatives of both cities met Tuesday at Jackson City Hall.

Committee members reviewed a map showing where growth is expected to occur over the next five, 10 and 20 years around the corporate limits of each city and along major corridors, including Route K, Route W, Highway 25 and Interstate 55.

Now, said Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III, it is time for each city to sit down and project "the reasonable growth of Jackson, the reasonable growth of Cape into these areas."

The two cities have already informally agreed that Jackson will grow into the areas west of the interstate from the I-55-U.S. 61 interchange to Fruitland, while Cape Girardeau will grow into the east side of that corridor.

The area south of Center Junction will be "the subject of much future discussion," said Jackson Mayor Paul Sander.

Kent Bratton, Cape Girardeau's city planner, said staff from both cities drew an "arbitrary line" from Klaus Park in Jackson to the junction of Highway 25 and Route K to help determine growth patterns in the center region between the two cities.

The areas around Route W, Route K and Highway 25 will come under scrutiny as both cities continue to expand, Bratton said.

Both mayors said their cities will focus on friendly annexations, as they have in the past. The areas under discussion will be "logical" tracts for annexation because of growth patterns, but will not necessarily be brought into either city's corporate limits, they said.

A number of factors will come into play as the two cities work to determine future expansion, Spradling said.

In Cape Girardeau's case, he said, the city has already extended water and sewer lines to the new Notre Dame High School on Route K, so it makes sense for Cape Girardeau to grow along a portion, at least, of that corridor.

And the Jackson School District will be building a new school on Highway 25, which makes that corridor a logical growth area for the city of Jackson.

The cities also have to consider the cost of expansion, Spradling said.

For that reason, he said, the cities need to plan for growth in an orderly fashion, "not just helter-skelter. That doesn't make sense, because of the high cost of providing services."

Each city has to take into account the cost of providing water and sewer service, streets and police protection, he pointed out.

Mapping out projected growth areas will give both cities a planning tool for use in the future, Spradling said.

It may also lay the groundwork for future cooperative projects, such as a shared wastewater treatment plant or the already-discussed joint water line between the two cities.

The proposed East Main Street interchange at I-55 would be a good location for a shared water line, Spradling said, since both cities are growing in that direction.

There are already questions about the feasibility of setting up a shared water line at Center Junction, Spradling said, but the East Main intersection would be a "more logical" site.

John Dudley, a member of the committee appointed by the Cape Girardeau County Commission to draft a zoning plan for the county, said his committee "will definitely influence what you're doing here, because it's an overlap of both sides."

The joint annexation committee is a "long-term" effort to increase cooperation between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, Sander said, and the committee's work will take place over the span of several years.

"The cities aren't bound to this in the future," he said. "However, we would hope that with the planning tool we're laying the groundwork for here that the discussions will continue for some years."

The joint committee will meet again in the fall to discuss more detailed plans and "some logical preliminary annexation ideas," Sander said.

No date for the next meeting has been set.

The joint annexation committee meeting grew out of a joint city council meeting between Jackson and Cape Girardeau held in January. Tuesday's meeting was the second time the annexation committee met.