Bellevue Withdraws Their Petition to Become A City

HATTIESBURG, MISS. - Earlier this year, the Lamar County community filed a petition before the courts declaring its intent to become its own municipality. However, the city of Hattiesburg challenged the petition because it wants to annex a portion of the area.

In order to incorporate, supporters had to gather a certain number of signatures from registered voters in the affected area. Opponents of the move claim they were short of the required number of signatures.

A recent purge of the Lamar County voter roles prompted supporters to temporarily delay their efforts.

“What I want people to understand is, this is far from over” the proposed mayor of Bellevue, John Adcock said. “This is just another part of the process. There are other examples of where people were working to incorporate a city, then had to withdraw and go back and get some more signatures. The city of Byram for instance, a few years ago when they were trying to incorporate they had to withdraw their petition twice, and Byram is a city today. So, this is far from the end of the story. It’s just still part of the process and we feel incredibly optimistic and confident in that we are going to be successful.”

Supporters did not mention a timeline for when they would file the petition again.