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Ex-mayor upset over ‘secret’ meetingThu, 03/29/2007 - 3:14pm
By: John Munford
City admits notice not posted for impact fee confab Peachtree City officials say they didn’t intend to keep Wednesday’s meeting of the city’s impact fee committee secret. They just failed to publicly advertise the meeting’s time and location, which is normally how all public meetings are handled, said city spokesperson Betsy Tyler. But the lack of an announcement was not done intentionally, as several city staffers erroneously thought the meeting had been posted, Tyler said. The meeting took place around noon Wednesday at a local restaurant, which according to former Mayor Steve Brown doesn’t allow the public to have much input. Several city staffers thought the meeting had been property advertised by posting a notice outside City Hall, but it turns out that didn’t happen, Tyler said. “Though legally it didn’t have to be (publicized), but it’s something we’d have done anyway,” Tyler said, explaining that the city wants to avoid even the appearance of having any secret meetings. Tyler said City Attorney Ted Meeker confirmed that Georgia law does not require the meeting’s time and date to be publicized because the committee does not include any city council members. Still, she added, it has been the city’s procedure over the years to publicize all meetings, Tyler added. Brown added that since the impact fee committee is talking about matters relating to the controversial proposed annexation in the city’s West Village, the city should go out of its way to make sure the public is given ample notice and opportunity to attend. The reason the impact fee committee was created by the City Council recently is the proposed annexation of two parcels on the city’s northwest quadrant that would add more than 1,194 homes via annexation. If those two annexations are approved, the city will have to determine how much the developers of those parcels, John Wieland Homes and Levitt and Sons, must pay in impact fees. Impact fees, which are charged per residential unit, can be used to pay for various infrastructure, and in this case some of the items being considered include a potential new fire station to serve the West Village area. Brown said one of the main issues with the impact fee will be how much impact fee credits the developers will get for building the bridge over the CSX railroad tracks and how much in impact fees will be used to build a new astroturfed multi-purpose sports field that may be built at the city’s Hwy. 74 south baseball and soccer complex. The committee is heavily represented by members of the development community, but that’s because the makeup of the committee is required by Georgia law, Tyler said. Ironically, when Brown was mayor The Citizen filed an open meetings lawsuit against the city because the city council at the time wanted to have a closed meeting with a developer of a proposed shopping center who was suing council at the time. Also invited to that secret meeting was a homeowner’s association that had also joined that lawsuit which Faison Inc initially filed against the city. Ostensibly that proposed secret meeting was to work out potential settlement issues with Faison, Inc., but Fayette Superior Court Judge Christopher C. Edwards ruled in The Citizen’s favor, noting that Georgia’s open meeting statute doesn’t allow third parties to be present in closed session of governing bodies. Edwards issued a temporary restraining order in the case and ultimately the secret meeting was cancelled before it was convened. The city later entered a settlement agreement allowing Faison to build the 125,000 sq. ft. Target store, a size which violated the city’s big box ordinance allowing no stores larger than 32,000 sq. ft. The shopping center was also above the ordinance’s limit of 150,000 sq. ft. for the total size of the shopping center. The city routinely advertises on its website and in e-mail notices to the media and other citizens about the various agendas of city commissions such as the planning commission, the recreation commission and the library commission. Additionally, the city’s development authority and water and sewer authority do likewise all in the spirit of open government as required by Georgia law. login to post comments
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