“We need dreamers, we need visionaries,”

Better Home Town Program (BHT) Manager Mona Lowe said during an informational meeting on February 3rd to the applicants who are the 19 applicants being considered to be on the city’s upcoming Downtown Development Authority (DDA) board.

“We need somebody who can think way out there about what we could do, but then somebody who can imagine us actually doing it.”

Lowe’s statements refer to the city’s new DDA board that will be selected at the next city council meeting on February 20th. The city council unanimously approved a motion to begin a DDA at the December 19th council meeting, and now a city appointed sub-committee is looking over the names of applicants that they will recommend to them.

Lowe announced during the Friday morning meeting that the sub-committee will recommend a list of names of applicants to be on the city’s seven-member DDA board to the city council on February 20th. The sub-committee consists of council members Al Fuller and David Westmoreland, Chamber of Commerce President Paige Green, Gregg Altman of the BHT Restructuring Committee and local realtor John Tutten. Lowe said the committee will also recommend geographical boundaries of a downtown district to the council that is to be the “central business district” of the city and must be within city limits, and that the sub-committee with the help of the BHT Restructuring Committee has two recommendations for a downtown district already. Once the sub-committee presents their recommendations to the city council, the city council will then select a DDA board, adopt a resolution stating the need for a DDA, and determine the geographical boundaries for a central business district.

Lowe opened the informational meeting for the applicants with a comment made at a previous informational meeting from Paul Kreager, owner of The Heart of Town, Inc who does consulting for DDAs all across Georgia,

“A DDA is not a quick fix for Ellijay, it’s a process, and it’s a long term program.”

The reason for Lowe’s opening message was to advise the applicants that though the city had taken a huge step to begin the DDA, it is not yet a done deal.

Lowe went on to explain that building a DDA would be like “building a team” and the team must have different personalities and different skills. Lowe told the applicants that they would need planners, organizational builders, leaders, resourceful fund raisers, and people who are aesthetically, artistically creative in order for the DDA to work.

The type of planning that Lowe is talking about in particular is the kind that includes more visioning.

“City planning to this point has not been charged with organizational types of planning or aesthetic types of planning…It’s a broader type of planning that the DDA will do,”

Lowe said Friday. For example, this includes a scenario where the city might bring in a new business that would be beneficial to the city or renovate an existing business that the city already has. Some existing businesses could possibly recieve new signs that would be more pleasing to the eye to tourists which would in turn generate more business. This falls in direct line with the main purpose of a DDA according to the State of Georgia Constitution: to revitalize and redevelop the central business district. Now all the city has to do is decide what the central business district is.

According to Lowe some of the questions are,

“Is the city park Harrison Park in the central business district, is the depot in the central business district, is the Dairy Queen in the central business district? Those are all things that the city council will determine.”

When asked by one of the applicants if the county authority would overlap with the cities, Lowe said no, but explained one of the best ways to help fund new business development is the state’s Downtown Development Revolving Loan Fund or DD RF. Lowe explained that the DD RF is a revolving loan program that requires authority participation, and so far there have been projects in the city done under this program, but the county has done them.

Sub-committee member Al Fuller then asked Lowe to explain what the DDA can do as opposed to the city council. Lowe explained that a city council is not able to do the type of long-term contracts that a DDA can do. She said the council can make long term contracts, but anyone making a contract with the city has to realize that the next city council that comes in could dissolve that contract so there is no long-term guarantee. A DDA can do more funding than the city can do because a city council has a certain amount of restriction on the amount of borrowing it can do. Lowe also said that a DDA can issue revenue bonds on a DDA vote that does not require any council vote or population vote. However, Lowe said that the DDA once established, would present to the city council everything it plans to do. She said that more than likely the DDA will present to the council at the beginning and end of the year just like BHT does.
Chamber of Commerce President Paige Green, who is also a member of the sub-committee appointed by the city council, commented,

“The authority can also abate taxes which the council cannot do, but the key thing an authority cannot do is indebt the city.”

Also in the meeting, the idea of looking at other DDAs in the state as an example of what this DDA could do was mentioned. So far there are 148 DDAs already in the state of Georgia. After the meeting, FYN had the opportunity to ask BHT Chairman Larry Robinson to comment further about this concept,

“There is no sense reinventing the wheel, we can go to other cities that have proven success with there DDA to see how they’re doing it, and we can kind of use that as a starting point for our DDA.”

Robinson said. FYN will bring you further information about what kind of central business district the city council determines and who they select for the DDA board after the February 20th city council meeting.