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PTC cart fee hike debated

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

To better keep track of who owns what golf cart, Peachtree City is developing a procedure that will require owners to register their carts every few years.

The time frame was left up in the air by the City Council Thursday night when it directed staff to flesh out the details of such a project. The original recommendation was to do it once every five years, but Police Chief James Murray suggested it would be more helpful to do once every three years for more current data, and several council members agreed.

City officials said the new requirement will help police investigate golf-cart related crimes such as theft, vandalism and unsafe cart driving. Murray said the current golf cart database has correct information about 40 percent of the time.

Council decided to lower the charge for the registration to $12, down from the $15 recommended by staff. Currently, city residents pay $10 to register their carts, and the registration is good for the life of the cart. When the cart is sold, the new owner is required to pay a $5 transfer fee.

To avoid the city gaining additional revenue from the project, council agreed for all proceeds above the program’s costs to be used for maintenance of the golf cart path system.

When a golf cart is involved in an incident, the owner is contacted, and often the owner has sold the cart and doesn’t recall who it was sold to, Murray added.

Betsy Tyler, the city’s public information officer, said the new registration process would not require an additional employee. The process could be conducted over a nine-month period without interfering with the three-month time frame dedicated for handling occupational (business) tax collection, Tyler added.

City resident Robert Brown said he thought the $15 fee was excessive, and if the project can be absorbed by current staff, “they’re not fully utilized.”

Tyler said the renewals would be handled by staffers who answer phones, greet customers, distribute mail, take messages, and handle all occupational taxes and new golf cart registrations.

The city processes about 100 new cart registrations a month, Tyler said.

Councilman Stuart Kourajian said council wasn’t looking at this project as a revenue stream. Brown replied, “When has a fee ever gone down?”

The city would use different colored decals for each three or five-year period, which would make it easy to determine which carts weren’t properly registered, Tyler said.

Citizens would be able to fill out their registration form online or mail it in to the city to avoid appearing in person to register, Tyler said.

Kourajian voted against the motion allowing staff to proceed with developing the program. Earlier in the discussion, he said he wanted to stick with the $15 fee because that was more in line with staff’s estimates for the cost of the program.

If ultimately approved by council, the billing cycle would start in January, Tyler said.

State law might also need to be modified to allow the registrations to be required every few years.

“I think when they created this law they never envisioned any place with 8,000 to 10,000 golf carts that any organization was allowed to track,” Tyler said.