LUMPKIN COUNTY, Ga.- Planning Director Bruce Georgia brought the board the update on the revisions to the land use ordinance and also asked the board to extend the moratorium for an extra thirty days.

Sheriff Stacy Jarrard presented the board with a contract amendment for the CorrectHealth inmate medical contract with the jail. The board also recognized employees of the year at the meeting.

Earlier this month Georgia along with the board of commissioners held a public hearing to review the revisions planned for the land use ordinances. To review what happened at the hearing visit https://lumpkin.fetchyournews.com/2022/01/25/public-hearing-for-land-use-framework-revisions/.

At the work session prior to the meeting on Feb. 15 Georgia presented the board with an update on where he is in the revisions. At this stage, they have expanded the definitions for the character area map and made the agricultural preservation (AG for short), rural places (RP), and residential growth (RG) restrictive development areas.

Georgia and his team have also set about identifying the different roads in the county as an arterial, collector, or local. There are 586 roads in the county, 22 of those will be arterial, 25 will be collector roads, and the remaining 536 are identified as local roads.

Arterial roads are state and county-maintained roads that are used throughout the county to get to other counties. Collector roads are for moving between local and arterial roads. Local roads are everything else.

The third step in the revisions is identifying the developmental categories. Georgia has identified two restrictive and general development. The general is for the areas that are not AG, RP, or RG such as the Gateway Corridor.

The remainder of the revisions is an ongoing process. There will be another public hearing on Feb. 22 at 6:00 p.m. To view the agenda for that meeting visit http://lumpkincountyga.iqm2.com/Citizens/Default.aspx. Georgia asked the board for an extra 30-day extension on the moratorium to give the legal review and final draft the time needed before presenting to the board for consideration on Apr. 19.

“I want to say I appreciate you and your staff on doing this its no easy task for sure, I know its a work in progress and there’s a lot that’s still unfinished but whatever we come up with I just want to emphasize I think it needs teeth and to be enforceable. I’ve heard you mention teeth a couple of times in this already so I think you’ve got that,” commented Commissioner District 4 Jeff Moran.

Jarrard brought the board a contract amended that the CorrectHealth company is requesting to continue working with the jail. The contract has already been approved for the year and there was no written notification of changes.

The changes to the contract are a $60,000 increase due to the nursing shortages the company is facing. The board voted to table accepting the contract to give staff an opportunity to negotiate a price with the company.

“We’ve had great service with them, I’d like to continue with them even though there is an increase but I believe we’d get that increase if we shopped it out with anyone else,” explained Jarrard.

The board also took the time to recognize three employees of the year for 2021. These employees were from the Emergency Services, Sheriff’s Office, and the Animal Shelter. They were Derek Haynie, Mark Sutton, and Jeannie Knight.

“Regarding the Feb. 22 public hearing, I would just like to reiterate the board is very interested and encourages the public to attend because this will become a document we have to live by and the Board of Commissioners is very interested in public comments,” stated County Manager Alan Ours.