At Monday morning’s regular county commission meeting, commissioners appointed new county officers, approved new contracts, and rejected three rezoning requests — among other items of business.
As is customary when the new year comes in, a new county commission chair took the gavel. Ted O’Steen, 2023’s chairman, passed the gavel to this year’s chairman, Jimmy Kitchens. Johnny Wayne Jowers was named vice chairman; as such, he will serve as chairman in 2025.
The agenda for the meeting was lengthy; in addition to new business, commissioners had to make decisions on two items that were tabled during a special called meeting on Tuesday, December 19, 2023.
The first item of old business sprang forth from the city commission’s final meeting of the year. In that meeting, city commissioners announced they were ready to proceed with building a new Head Start facility at the George Washington Carver Freshman Campus. Though that project had been in the works for a while, the city had only recently bid the project. The expense of the new facility, which includes a new kitchen, had surpassed what the city had budgeted.
To help with the new facility, the EDA, county, school board, and an out of town organization had pledged funds for construction. Due to the increased costs, the city had come back to those organizations and asked for funds. The county had originally agreed to contribute $100,000; the city’s new requests is $200,000. At the December 19 meeting, commissioners discussed the request at length. They contacted the Georgia Henderson, Community Development Director with the city, and asked her for more information regarding the project. Henderson assured the county that the city had done its due diligence regarding the project. Initially, the city was going to provide in-kind services for the construction. It would handle all the paperwork and the logistics of seeing it through. Now, Henderson stated, that had changed. “We didn’t expect this either,” she said. “We’re putting in $200,000 as well.”
County commissioners didn’t make a decision during the December 19 meeting as to whether or not they would agree to double the county’s contribution. Tuesday morning, though, they approved the $200,000 contribution. County administrator Wesley Vickers stated that the money would come from the county’s ARPA fund.
Another item of business from the December 19 meeting the county had to decide upon was an amendment to the intergovernmental contract between the county and Coffee Regional Medical Center. The amendment would enhance the way the hospital reports its available finances. Commissioners approved the request from the hospital.
Commissioners also rejected a trio of rezoning requests:
- 3.93 acres at 280 Oat Butler Road in Ambrose from Ag to Warehouse Light Industrial for the purpose of building cargo trailers. One citizen attended the meeting and spoke against the request. The Planning Commission and county staff had recommended the request be denied. Emmanuel Castro Perez had made the request.
- 31.21 acres on Iron Road from R2 Residential and Commercial to RM Residential Mixed. Seven Acres Properties filed the request. Company representatives had said they intend to establish a subdivision of stick-built homes on the tract. One citizen also spoke against this request. Commissioner Jowers stated that he was against changing the zoning. The reason, he said, is because it’s already zoned appropriately for homes. If the county changed the zoning to RM, that would allow the developers to bring in manufactured houses if they wanted to. Jowers added that the developers had assured the county they had no plans to do that. However, Jowers was still uneasy with giving them that option. He made the motion to reject the request and the rest of the commission agreed with him.
- 3.14 acres at 6878 Highway 32 East from Ag to Commercial. Mark Horton made the request; he owns the property and would like to sell it. Commissioners stated that he had said it would be easier to sell if it was zoned Commercial. The Planning Commission and county staff were not in favor of the request. Neither were commissioners; they unanimously rejected the request.
The commission also conducted the first reading of a fourth rezoning request, this one from Tyrone Jordan. He would like to rezone 5.01 acres at 1264 Iron Road from R-2 Residential to RM Residential Mixed for the purposes of construction duplexes or quadraplexes. Commissioners will vote on this request at next month’s meeting.
In other business, the commission approved:
- The annual contracts with CRSA Probation Services for Magistrate Court, State Court, and Superior Court;
- The publication of qualifying fees for the 2024 election. Most county offices are up for grabs this election cycle;
- Engineering services for the CDBG application to Statewide Surveying;
- The county maintained road list. Currently, the county maintains 1,018 miles of roads — 589 miles of dirt roads and 429 miles of paved roads.