Gilmer Board of Commissioners Keep Progress Rolling

ELLIJAY, GA — The March 12th GIlmer Board of Commissioners meeting followed suit with the rest of this years meetings with the commission board getting the process of several actions started as well as getting other actions taken care of.One of the first items that the board voted on was to renew the lease agreement with the Georgia Department of Corrections for office space within the Gilmer County courthouse.

“All of the Judges agreed that having them [GDC] in the same proximity makes the work of the courthouse easier,”

said commission chair Charlie Paris.

Although all of the judges may have been on the same page, all of the commissioners were not.

“I understand what they [the judges] are saying, but one of my desires is to have all of the department heads here in the same building instead of spread out over the county…this would help the citizens by not having to go all over the place to get permits,”

said post 2 commissioner Dallas Miller.

Miller proceeded to vote against renewing the lease while Paris and post 1 commissioner Travis Crouch voted in favor to renew the lease.

Another item of business that the board of commissioners voted to proceed on getting the process started was that of changing some of the county code.

One of the first things that Paris said he would like to see changed was to be able to follow the state law on purchasing decisions for road projects instead of having a separate County provision.

Right now the spending limit, without having to have two bids, that is set by the county is $20,000, but Paris stated that he would like to see that amount moved up to $200,000 which would follow state law.

“When you are talking about a road project $20,000 dollars doesn’t go very far. Raising the limit to $200,000 will help that problem,”

said Paris.

The second thing that the commission board said they would like to see changed is to increase the amount of money that the chairman can approve to spend.

At this time the amount that the chairman can approve to be spend is $20,000. As of right now, though, the board doesn’t know what limit they would like to set on how much the chairman should be allowed to approve to spend.

The board voted unanimously on moving forward with the process to begin changes in the county code.

FYN will keep everyone updated during the process by sharing with the citizens the dates of the public hearings as well as the actual documents with the verbiage of the changes in the county code as soon as they become available.

Watch the full meeting video below:

test from Fetch on Vimeo.