Blackshear City Council has a proposed ordinance in mind that could remove blighted properties by making it too pricey for the owners to not clean them up.
Among several different items under discussion at the city council’s March 3 work session was a synopsis of the potential “Derelict and Blighted Property Ordinance”. The exact legal phrasing of the ordinance has yet to be written or voted upon, but if passed by the council the new ordinance would establish a structured legal framework for identifying, addressing and remediating unsafe, abandoned and blighted properties within the City of Blackshear.
The proposed ordinance would outline the necessary steps for notifying owners, conducting hearings, mandating court-ordered repair or demolition of blighted properties. There could also potentially be recovery through lien authority and, where applicable under Georgia law, formal blight designation and associated tax provisions.
The potential lien authority and associated tax provisions referenced in the work session’s agenda boils down to taxing the owners of blighted properties until they clean them up.
“A lot of it is commercial space ate up with abandoned buildings,” said Blackshear Police Chief Chris Wright. “Taxing it is the most effective way to handle it.”
While discussing the issue, it was said the millage rate on blighted properties could be raised up to seven times. This statement was then clarified to explain it would be done Could properties such as this one near the Five Points intersection in Blackshear be a thing of the past? Blackshear’s city council is considering an ordinance that could tax blighted properties out of existence.
Blight
in stages, not all at once, as a penalty for not complying with a ruling to address the blight, though at the time it was not clear if the punitive millage rate would be raised up to seven times or raised by stages to seven times the current rate.
As for how common this approach is, Better Hometown Manager Bethany Strickland said, “A lot of smaller communities like ours are doing this.”
When and if the proposed ordinance is drafted and passed into law by the city council it will likely fall to the city to enforce any rulings by the court on derelict sites classified as a blight on the community. At the same work session where the blight ordinance was discussed, the city also made clear its intention to by July reassert control over zoning and code enforcement within the city limits, which it has previously ceded to the county through an intergovernmental agreement. (See related coverage in this edition of The Blackshear Times) A Blackshear code and zoning enforcement officer could be serving notices to the owners of blighted properties as soon as this summer. The Times will update this story as it develops.
