Tiny Culloden seeks to quadruple city's size

CULLODEN -- In a town of fewer than 200 people, community is everything.

In Culloden, that sense of community extends beyond the confines of municipal lines.

The current official boundary is a half-mile from the town’s center, but when it comes to the overall community, Mayor Steve Eller said, “the boundaries of Culloden are apparently arbitrary.”

Eller and other city officials want to expand the official city limits to include those people who they say are already part of Culloden in every way -- except on paper.

“A lot of people right outside, contiguous to the city, are already part of the community,” Eller said. “I think, overall, that it would benefit the city and the surrounding community if folks outside of town felt that they had more say-so in what goes on in the community.”

Former Mayor Edd Norris estimates that the expansion could add 50 to 75 people, a significant number for the small city, which was named in honor of William Culloden, a Scottish Highlander who opened a store here in 1780. The 2010 U.S. census put Culloden’s population at 175, down from 223 a decade earlier.

“It’s been talked about for years, but (Eller) started the project. He’s the only one who did anything about it,” Norris said. “We’re just trying to be progressive and reach out and pull the town up by its bootstraps, so to speak.”

Norris, who called himself the mayor’s “executive assistant,” is organizing the expansion project, as Eller is tending to health issues.

Mapping out a plan

The expansion is still in the preliminary stages, Eller said, noting that officials haven’t decided exactly what the plan will be.

City officials sent a notice to the Middle Georgia Regional Commission asking for help with the legal matters surrounding the process.

In that document, sent in January, Culloden officials noted an “annexation initiative to extend current municipal boundary from a 0.5 to 1.0 mile radius.”

The regional commission agreed to help with the request.

However, now that Culloden officials have looked further into the process, they say that plan may not be the best way to go about extending the boundaries.

From talking to folks around town, Norris said, most people are excited about the expansion. There are a few, however, who enjoy life outside the city’s boundaries.

For that reason, Norris said city officials are looking to expand the boundaries property by property, with each landowner given the choice to join Culloden or remain a part of unincorporated Monroe County.

“The property just has to touch part of the existing city,” he said. “You can’t just have an island sitting out there anymore.”

Click on the shaded areas of the map below to learn more about Culloden's expansion plan.

City officials requested maps from the county tax assessor’s office, showing who owns which property.

Norris said the issue likely will come to the surface within the next few months because city officials will have to contact all the potential residents. For now, the regional commission is on hold.

“If we find out that we don’t have enough people who are interested, there’s no point in us getting them involved,” he said.

Potential problem zone

Monroe County Commission Chairman James Vaughn and his sister own a farm, which straddles the municipal line.

Only part of the land is inside Culloden, but Vaughn said he is content with the current setup of his farm there.

While city officials haven’t officially begun canvassing the area surrounding Culloden, Vaughn first learned of the plan while reading the minutes from the mid-January Middle Georgia Regional Commission meeting.

“I really don’t know what the idea is and haven’t been contacted by anyone in either capacity from the city government,” Vaughn said, speaking as both a commissioner and landowner.

As a commissioner, however, he voiced concerns with an expansion of Culloden.

“I don’t really know who’s behind that or what the plan is,” he said. “From a county standpoint, I don’t know that without more information I would support that.”

His hesitation stems particularly from land-use issues. Culloden, he said, has no zoning regulations.

“I question the thought of making a place much, much bigger,” Vaughn said.

“To increase the size of unregulated land, ... that would be an area the size of the original size of Forsyth before the annexation,” he said, speaking of the initial plan to expand Culloden to a one-mile radius.

There are a number of differences between modern-day Culloden and Forsyth, but at the end of the Civil War, both cities were home to about 1,500 people each. Both had a one-mile radius, and while Forsyth has grown significantly in size, Culloden was cut to its current size in the late 1800s, Norris said.

Forsyth’s 2010 census count showed 3,788 people, some 21 times more than Culloden.

Growing the city

Culloden was incorporated in 1887, but it does not take in money from property taxes. Those fees are collected by the Monroe County Tax Assessors’ Office, which holds the funds because Culloden still receives many of its services from the county.

Culloden operates a volunteer fire department, but it is housed on county land.

The Culloden Police Department is active through a partnership with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, in which Sheriff John Cary Bittick is chief of police, and sheriff’s deputies have jurisdiction inside the city’s boundaries.

The city does operate its own water service, but taking on additional residents wouldn’t affect that service, officials said.

“Most of the areas that we would expand to, we’re already serving them,” Eller said. “They’re already water customers of the city.”

The city has a small annual operating budget of about $100,000.

Culloden gains most of its income from sales tax proceeds.

“We’re a small town, and a lot of us are closely related to each other,” Norris said, adding that the only financial gain to the city would potentially be a small amount of additional sales tax through the county, particularly if businesses opened on a stretch of U.S. 341.

“We don’t know what will happen, but if we can take in (U.S.) 341 again, we may have some businesses that would be interested in opening up on that highway,” Norris said.

At one time, the highway ran right through downtown Culloden, Norris said, estimating that between 7,000 and 8,000 cars passed through the city each weekend, some stopping to buy gas or food, and bringing revenue into the city.

Today, only about 100 yards of the highway cross through the city.

Although the addition of Interstate 75 has lightened the load of that highway, if businesses did open on that stretch within the city limits, they would generate tax revenue for Culloden.

“We know that we’ll never be another Macon, or even another Forsyth, at this point,” Norris said, “but we want to have a community we can be proud of and people will enjoy living here, and in time, would want to move here.”

To contact writer Caryn Grant, call 744-4347.

This story was originally published March 24, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Tiny Culloden seeks to quadruple city's size."