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PTC looks at new golf cart registration

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Peachtree City staff will proceed with a proposal to require golf cart owners to register every few years.

Staff initially recommended doing so every five years, but Police Chief James Murray suggested at Thursday night’s council meeting it would be more valuable if it was done every three years so the database linking golf carts to their owners would be more current. That detail will be fleshed out later on as staff prepares more information and a corresponding new ordinance for the change.

Council voted to reduce the cost to $12 from the proposed $15 fee suggested by staff after resident Robert Brown complained the program would be a money maker for the city.

The main thrust of the proposal is to get a more current database of who owns which golf carts, said City Public Information Officer Betsy Tyler. Currently, much of the city’s golf cart registration data is incorrect, and after paying the one-time fee of $10 to register a cart many residents aren’t notifying the city when their cart is sold or if they move and take it with them, Tyler said.

The police department needs more current information to investigate crime reports, Tyler said.

Murray said one of the top complaints his department gets from the public is of reckless driving on the cart path or golf cart damage, and citizens often report the golf cart number involved in such incidents. But without information on the owner of the cart, police find it almost impossible to follow up on such complaints.

Murray said when his officers stop golf carts, about 4 of every 10 are actually owned by someone other than the person listed in the city’s database.

The new process would include new decals in a different reflective color so it will be easy to tell if a golf cart’s registration is current, Tyler said.

The city is registering about 100 new golf carts a month, Tyler said. The proposed nine-month process to register golf carts will be handled by current city staff, and is timed so it won’t interfere with the process of issuing notices and collecting occupational (business) taxes in the fall, Tyler added.

Although the city has issued almost 12,000 golf cart decals since the registration process began in 1993, Tyler estimated there are between 8,000 and 9,000 golf carts currently in use by city residents.

While city residents pay $10 for a golf cart decal currently, out of city residents pay $60 because they are not paying property taxes which are also used to improve the cart path system, Tyler noted.

In other business, council voted to spend $14,000 to develop a wireless Internet network at three locations: the city’s tennis center, the Kedron Fieldhouse and the Highway 74 south Baseball/Soccer complex. Each facility will have two separate networks: one for free public access and the other for use by city employees to submit information wirelessly, which can be used by the fire department, the police department and code enforcement, according to Systems Administrator Matt Robinson.