Senate panel hears House bill on Lake MyKee-Holts Summit merger

For the second time in a month, a Missouri Senate committee heard a bill to let Lake MyKee merge with Holts Summit.

The House passed Rep. Travis Fitzwater’s bill March 31, by a 149-1 margin.

“This bill allows two separate communities in the state of Missouri to consolidate, if they have inter-governmental agreement,” Fitzwater, R-Holts Summit, told the Senate’s Jobs, Economic Development and Local Government Committee.

The two communities are eight-tenths of a mile apart, too far under the current law’s half-mile-or-less distance requirement to allow the two Callaway County communities to consolidate.

The same committee heard Sen. Jeanie Riddle’s version of the bill March 16.

Fitzwater reminded the panel Wednesday: “Lake MyKee is having sewer issues — they’re being required to create their own sewer system, which is incredibly expensive for the size of their community.

“Over 90 percent of the citizens in that area have agreed to consolidate with Holts Summit to decrease the cost of that.”

Riddle told the panel last month it would cost Lake MyKee an estimated $1.5 million to build its own system, and that cost would be divided among the approximately 130 households in the village — for more than $11,530 per household.

If the state law allowed the two communities to merge, Fitzwater testified, Lake MyKee “would tie in with the Holts Summit sewer system, which has an agreement with Jefferson City. It makes it much cheaper for them.”

Jefferson City Counselor Drew Hilpert told the News Tribune Wednesday that Holts Summit’s agreement with Jefferson City requires Holts Summit to pay “a flat fee for the total amount of sewer used by its residents” at the Jefferson City treatment plant. “They are allowed a certain amount of flow before the charge increases.”

Hilpert said Jefferson City’s government has no comment on the proposed merger of the two Callaway County communities.

And, as far as the merger increasing the amount of sewage Jefferson City’s plant would have to treat, he said: “So long as the flow did not go beyond the allowable flow, there would be no impact. If it did (go higher), they would be paying more.”

Fitzwater’s bill began as a companion proposal to Riddle’s but was changed in the House to include Ironton, Pilot Knob and Arcadia in southeast Missouri, he told the committee, noting those three communities have the same situation there.

Riddle and Fitzwater have been working on the issue together since before the 2016 legislative session began, and Riddle will handle Fitzwater’s bill in the Senate if the committee recommends full Senate debate. It took no action Wednesday.

Chairman Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, told the News Tribune he expected the committee would endorse the bill for debate with enough time to get it passed before the Legislature adjourns in four weeks.