Bad Links?
Other glitches?
Notify Webmaster

On 1st try, PTC annexation fails 3-2

By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@thecitizennews.com

Officials from John Wieland Homes say they’ll go back to the drawing boards and come up with a more detailed plan to annex 415 acres of land on Peachtree City’s west side after the City Council turned down their initial request last week.

Supporters of the annexation packed Thursday’s meeting, but the council voted 3-2 anyway to deny Wieland’s request that city staff be allowed to engage in an in-depth study of the idea.

That would have been the next step according to the city’s new procedure on dealing with annexation requests, adopted over the summer. Previously, the city had in place an ordinance forbidding even the consideration of annexation requests.

But even though the change was intended to simplify and streamline the process, it appeared to confuse matters last week, and instead turned Wieland’s request into a victim of an untested ordinance, some said.

The three council members who voted against the application — Stuart Kourajian, Steve Rapson and Judi-ann Rutherford — all said that Wieland’s request was too vague and lacked enough information to proceed.

Rapson, for example, was concerned with density and wanted to know how many homes Wieland needed to build on the site to turn a profit. The majority of the tract, which Wieland already owns, is now in the unincorporated county and zoned for two-acre homesites.

Kourajian asked Fields if the company had seriously considered building the project in the county and still finding a way to extend McDuff Parkway to Ga. Highway 74, which is a key part of the proposal. He was also concerned about plans to have school buses cross CSX railroad tracks to the site.

Rutherford was concerned about what would become of hundreds of acres of land with multiple owners that isn’t part of Wieland’s tract, stretching north all the way to Tyrone.

After the vote, Wieland Senior Vice President Dan Fields appeared visibly perplexed by the questions.

“I didn’t know we had to provide so many details,” Fields said. “We’ve not had one of these go through the new process yet.”

Fields said his design team would revisit the issues the council members seemed most concerned about.

“We can revisit the density issue, we can revisit the quality issue,” he said.

“Hopefully we will come back and present you something that you’ll be willing to annex,” Fields said.

No time was given for when the annexation request might be brought back to the council, but the current ordinance doesn’t put any restrictions on that from happening.

Mayor Steve Brown, who along with Murray Weed cast the only votes in support of moving forward on the annexation study, expressed sympathy.

“I have a lot of compassion for Dan Fields,” Brown said. “Wieland has spent a lot of money on this already, and what the council was asking for was really the information to be provided in the second step.”

Brown said some residents on the city’s west side attended three different planning meetings to brainstorm ideas for the annexation, and turned out in force Thursday night. They were “very angry” at the outcome, Brown said.

“I still think we can pull something out of this,” said Brown. “There are thousands of people on the city’s west side who want that road connection.”

Brown said he had hoped the changes made to the annexation process would have made things go easier.

“The previous process was flawed, and that’s why I was opposed to annexation plans under it,” Brown said. “But it’s much different now. We really engage the residents in the planning of it. It was my hope that many would see the process has changed dramatically.”

Weed voted to allow the discussion but prefaced his vote with the caveat that he was opposed to annexation on the west side and intended to vote against any future Wieland proposal.