MEDICINE PARK – Updating Medicine Park’s annexation map could cost the town as much as $2,500.
After discussing the issue April 18, the Medicine Park Board of Trustees allowed Mayor John Branch to authorize a vendor to redraw the map. The board also said it would spend no more than $2,500 on the project.
Some of the town’s boundaries were left off the current map, which is available at Town Hall, Branch said.
“We really need that to be accurate, and the one we have on file is not,” he said.
Elgin Mayor JJ Francais, who also serves as a consultant to Medicine Park, said the current map does not include property that has been annexed into the town since 2015.
“When you annex property, you’re supposed to prepare a map,” he said. “And then you send that to Oklahoma Tax Commission. You send it to relative parties so that you get your jurisdiction fully captured.”
Francais said some properties that were included in the town’s 1990 annexation map are not part of the current map, and there is no record showing that those properties were properly deannexed. He said the town needs a vendor who uses a good mapping program to create a new map.
Francais said when the new map is ready, the town could publish the document and host a public hearing to see if anyone objects to it.
“If they don’t protest it, assume they’re in the city limits,” he said. Proper jurisdiction Medicine Park Police Chief Tom Crawford said an inaccurate map creates headaches for the police department.
“If the map’s not right and the jurisdiction’s not proper in our respect, it causes jurisdictional problems for enforcing laws, writing tickets or making arrests,” he said. “If somebody contests that and the map’s not right, we lose that case in court.”