Mayor Robyn Tannehill joined the Associated Student Body Senate to discuss infrastructure and housing challenges in the city of Oxford on Tuesday, Feb. 7.
ASB senators geared their questions toward Oxford’s rapidly increasing student and resident population and how the city plans to accommodate it. Tannehill acknowledged that the recent exponential population growth has caused growing pains in the community that must be handled carefully.
“Oxford is the second-fastest growing college town in the United States,” Tannehill said. “That just scares the hell out of me. We’ve got sometimes in excess of 200,000 to 250,000 (people) on a football game week, and guess what that means? We got to be able to flush the commode for 300,000 people every day of the year. You don’t put water and sewer infrastructure in place seven days of the year, that has to be in place 365 days, and that costs a lot.”
She also discussed how the resident population is increasing in addition to the student population.
“We’ve grown 102% since 2000,” she said. “We are projected to grow another 24% before 2030. That’s just talking about Oxford, as a community.”
ASB senators asked Tannehill questions in an effort to better understand how Oxford plans to accommodate its growing population.
“What measures are the city, county and university taking to ensure that the increasing number of students does not negatively affect the quality of life of the permanent residents, faculty, commuters and current students?” one senator asked.
Although it is a pressing issue that Tannehill put at top priority, the mayor could only speak to measures being taken by the city of Oxford, not for the entire county and university. However, she has arranged weekly discussions with the Chief Operating Officer, city planner, city engineer and building official to discuss the carrying capacity of Oxford to determine how many people they can provide quality services to.
Infrastructure needs, additional parks and ordinance changes were all considerations the mayor brought to the table.
“Changing those development guidelines starts to help change people’s traffic patterns and starts to impact our infrastructure,” Tannehill said.
Another question presented to the mayor involved concerns over city infrastructure.
“Do you have a plan to combat increasing infrastructure needs? If you do have a plan, what is the most crucial step in funding?” the question asked.
Tannehill noted that Oxford has partners at the state and federal level, which has led to a $10 million investment in water and sewer upgrades in the past two years. In addition to these improvements, she also clarified how Oxford roads are being maintained.
“We prioritize roads…based on traffic counts, accident count and development numbers in those areas,” she said. “That’s really what we base our transportation objectives and priorities on.”
Included in infrastructure concerns are also sidewalks, bike lanes and multimodal public transportation. Tannehill urged students to utilize Oxford’s public transit system.
“The bus system is critical to improving our infrastructure,” Tannehill said. “Transit is probably the place that you want to help us the most, because the (Oxford University Transit) system is so critical to solving some of our infrastructure problems, and the only way that’s going to change is when student leaders encourage more people to get on the bus.”
She also mentioned future projects in development, such as a new police station, parking lot developments and an underwater stormwater detention.
