Gray and Jones County officials have until the end of June to agree on service delivery areas, and they appear to have a lot a ground to cover before an agreement is reached. Gray Mayor Jason Briley and councilmen David Tufts and Ronnie Miller met with Commission Chairman Preston Hawkins and Commissioners David Gault, Larry Childs, Mell Merritt and Bert Liston March 20 to discuss the service delivery strategy for the entities.
The meeting was held in the Charlotte Wilson Conference Room at the Government Center.
The current service delivery map was adopted in 1999. The county’s service delivery strategy was brought before the board of commissioners February 20 by Rusty Haygood of the Middle Georgia Regional Development Center.
Haygood explained that the service delivery strategy is part of the updated five-year short-term work program required as a portion of the city and county’s Comprehensive Plan, which is required to be completed by June 30. He also emphasized that both the Gray City Council and the Jones County commissioners must equally agree on the service delivery map.
Coming to an agreement is important to both the city and county governments because the penalty for an uncompleted plan is the loss of state and federal funding by both.
Bypass area
Childs started the discussion stating that the county needs to serve the area around the proposed North Gray Bypass in order to serve the Bradley – Wayside area and run a line down Highway 22 and take water to Haddock, and Gault joined in the conversation.
“We need water rights to the area for the future growth of the county’s water system and any commercial growth that comes along with that,” Gault said. “We get reports all the time about problems with wells in Bradley. That is one of the things that we as commissioners have to look into.”
Gault said getting water to the area has been a concern of his for five or six years.
Childs said the county recently ran a water line to Bradley off the city’s line to Lynn Haven but was asked by Gray officials not to connect customers without notification. He said the county needs water in the Bradley area and needs to run water to Haddock.
Tufts suggested that the time has come to renegotiate city and county water agreements.
“To say we are going to give up water rights now would be premature,” the councilman said. “When Lynn Haven said they needed water, the only place they could get it was from us. Now you are saying we need to just limit it to that and back away from it.”
Childs said the county would run its own line across the area and would no longer be hooked to the city line. The commissioner said Briley came to the past board asking to serve water customers outside the city and he objected feeling Gray was attempting to extend its city limits.
“Since then the city adopted a policy, if I am correct, that if you want services from the city, you have to annex into the city,” Childs said.
“Not since then,” Briley responded. “That has been the policy since 1998 when I took office. That policy is long-standing and is certainly more than a few years old.”
Economic development
Briley brought up the need for economic development and asked the commissioners what effect their service delivery plan would have on the county’s economic development.
The mayor said if city and county officials do not consider economic development in their plans, taxpayers can expect higher taxes like what happened in the city and county last year.
“The school board is going up this year and is going to keep on going up,” Briley said.
Gault said growth is shared by the city and county. He said the city and county have talked many times, and he feels what is needed is a water authority.
“We need to stop having these contests. We have spoken many times and think we have an agreement, and then the city backs out,” Gault said.
The commissioner talked about parity of water rates for county residents who purchase water from the city.
“It was brought up just like a contract for providing water. We haven’t received a contract yet,” Briley pointed out. “We never reached an agreement on that and neither did we reach an agreement about parity. It was mentioned as an item to be discussed, but nothing was ever done.
“Don’t try to say that we came up to an agreement and the city reneged on it because it simply is not true. I think people are being careless with the truth.”
Briley said he has received phone calls from people in Clinton and Bradley who are being told the city is trying to annex them, and he would like to know where that idea is coming from.
“That is just not true. All I hear is that the big bad city is out to try to annex the whole county,” Briley stated. “Where is this falsehood coming from? Whose best interest does it serve?”
The mayor said there is not one instance where the city went out and ‘twisted someone’s arm’ to come into the city against their will.
Briley said if the commissioners run water to different areas of the county and connect Highway 22 and serve Haddock, it will spread expensive infrastructure all over the county.
“You can’t generate revenue to service the debt on a waste water treatment plant by spreading expensive infrastructure across all over a county the size of Jones County,” the mayor explained. “We need to densify growth in a small geographic area such as around Gray and the proposed bypass and offer water and sewer; a small enough, compact enough area to generate enough revenue and customers in that small area so you can afford to provide that service.”
Dense growth
Briley pointed out that providing sewer is essential because water is not enough to attract the commercial growth Jones County needs to reduce taxes.
“Once that nucleus is built out and you generate enough customers, that in turn generates enough revenue to service the debt on a waste water treatment plant,” he said.
Briley said the city is already permitted to treat five million gallons of sewage per month and is now operating on 0.4 million. Briley said the growth can be expanded 10 times.
“What I’m saying is, the city has no designs on Old Clinton, or Haddock, or Greene Settlement Road, or Bradley, or anybody else for that matter. What the city wants to do is generate a small nucleus of an area.”
Briley said the water line along Lite-N-Tie Road is a good example of spending money for infrastructure without receiving commercial growth.
“It costs you more for each one of those houses because for every dollar you receive in taxes, you spend $1.33 for services,” Briley said. “If you continue to run water lines as you propose, you are going to serve Bradley and develop farm land, and it will cost you 33 percent more for every customer you add.”
Briley told the commissioners it is possible to supply water to county residents and have economic development.
“The people that live in this small geographic area, around what is now Gray, in this dense area I’m talking about, are probably not going to like what happens. They are not going to like the commercial and industrial growth we are able to generate here,” he said. “But I can tell you what they are going to like. In 25 years, they are going to like it that their taxes did not continue to go up.”
Briley said Jones County and Gray are headed for some of the highest taxes in Middle Georgia unless an economic engine is generated.
“That economic engine had better be right here where we can afford to densify the growth, where we can afford to offer both water and sewer, because without both water and sewer in a small geographic area, you are not going to be able to afford to serve just water out to Haddock.”
Low impact commercial
Briley said the bypass will provide opportunity for the kind of commercial growth the county needs with water and sewer available, coupled with a fiber optic backbone that runs right through Gray.
“That means we can have the kind of commercial growth we say that we want. That means we can have a call center and can attract this kind of growth and put the low impact, high dollar commercial growth right out there, right where we are talking about doing it.”
The mayor said it is not going to happen as long as the city and county argue about it. It will only happen when elected officials start talking about it and make something positive out of it.
“If we can smile, shake hands and walk away saying maybe, just maybe my mind is not as made up as it was when we sat down at the table. Maybe we do need to focus on economic development and forget about who serves it.”
Briley said he could care less who serves the area.
“What I want is economic development so my children and grandchildren and your children and grandchildren may have an opportunity to locate here and live here rather than off to Atlanta,” he said.
Briley said the school system is attracting growth, but without economic development, it too will begin to decline.
“That is just the nature of the curve. That’s the way it goes.”
Gault brought up the idea of creating an advisory board to take the decisions out of the hands of city and county officials, and Briley said he would not ‘slam the door shut’ on the idea.
“At some point maybe it’s going to make sense for us, especially the more we talk about it together like we are now,” Briley commented. “Why don’t we take it slow and focus on economic development together, and let the chips fall where they may with the details.”
The next meeting of city and county officials will be at the D.V. Childs Civic Center Auditorium.
