Wednesday, August 6, 2003
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Wednesday, August 6, 2003 |
PTC special events policy would place limits, charge fees for servicesBy J. FRANK
LYNCH
Peachtree City's growing popularity as a site for large-scale special events is stretching the city's emergency services personnel nearly to the breaking point, members of the Recreation Commission were told last week. "It's not a crisis yet, but we need to head it off before it becomes a crisis," Leisure Services Director Randy Gaddo told commissioners during their regular July meeting. Fire Chief Stony Lohr and Police Lt. Stan Pye backed up Gaddo's position, relating story upon story of city police officers, fire and rescue personnel giving up their days off and personal time, sometimes several weeks in a row, to make sure safety requirements were met at public functions. A triathlon planned for September was apparently the event that prompted emergency services personnel to cry for help. "Personnel are being stretched so thin, it was getting tough to cover the special events and other duties," Gaddo explained. Many of the events that require extra police or emergency services protection are staged by out-of-town concerns, and almost always held on weekends. That means the same pool of off-duty officers or medics is called upon, repeatedly, to volunteer their time to work such events. "It's done out of a personal feeling that we need to do something," said Fire Chief Sonny Lohr, who confessed to working events himself in lieu of asking his staff to do it, just so all the bases would get covered. "When we started this however many years ago, it was no big deal," said Lohr. "But now it's weekend after weekend after weekend. And something needs to be done." To that end, the recreation commission endorsed a new Special Events Policy, a first for the city, that seeks to define and categorize events, establishes rules on what event organizers can and cannot do in the city, and sets up a fee structure for applications, deposits and the hiring of extra city personnel. After some minor clarification of the language, the document will be presented to the City Council for formal approval at an upcoming meeting, Gaddo said. The ordinance would affect any activity drawing 100 or more participants or spectators, which would have to be approved by a special events review committee before permits would be granted. The committee would be drawn from across city agencies, and would categorize proposed events as having small, medium, large or major impact on the city, its services and residents. For example, the Great Georgia Air Show on Sept. 6-7 is a "major impact" event, Gaddo said, drawing 20,000 visitors to the city. Event organizers would have to formally apply through the recreation department to hold events, paying an application fee and, if approved, various deposits and expenses for safety personnel, cleanup, and the like. Organizations would also have to show proof of liability insurance for major events, Gaddo said. The fee structure has yet to be firmed up, but likely would include $50 for the application and deposits starting at $100 and up, depending on the size of the event. If approved by the city council this year, the recreation commission suggested implementing the events policy starting Jan. 1, 2004. Events already scheduled or budgeted by organizations for the coming year would be grandfathered in, effective Jan. 1, 2005. "This is a draft policy, not set in concrete," Gaddo said. "There are a lot of issues that still need to be worked out." Longtime city events, such as the Peachtree City Running Club's annual 5K in the fall, would receive special consideration. A representative of the running club was concerned the group couldn't afford the new fee structure. "This is not an attempt to limit or exclude," Gaddo explained. "We left in the policy the ability to waive some of these things, to use our judgment because no two events are the same." Pye said the policy won't change the way the police department handles events so much as give the department a better heads-up on planning for them. "I don't think you'll see much difference, just better planning on our end, so we can handle the 8,000-people events with no problems," Pye said. Gaddo said the proposal should be ready to present to the City Council at the Aug. 21 meeting.
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