Milledgeville’s mayor and city council held a five-hour planning session in June, and considerable discussion led to the conclusion that an ordinance aimed at neglected property would be beneficial.
City Manager Hank Griffeth confirmed in an interview last week that he presented information regarding “blighted” property to council members June 14 in Savannah during the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) annual convention.
Griffeth said vape shops were also addressed, with the view the city possibly can have some control over the establishments through zoning.
The regulation concerning blight is a financially driven ordinance, Griffeth explained.
“If a property is determined to be blighted, based on a very specific definition of blight, then the property tax on that piece of property can be increased by, probably what we’re going to look at is an increase up to seven times normally what it would be.
“We’re modeling it after the one used in Byron,” Griffeth said. “Seven times (the normal tax rate) is what they use. The City of Atlanta just recently passed one,” he added, “and they are increasing theirs 25 times.”
According to the Byron ordinance, blighted property is defined as that which presents at least two of several conditions, including: uninhabitable, unsafe or abandoned structures; inadequate provisions for light, ventilation, air or sanitation; and damaged by a natural catastrophe such as tornado or flood to the extent that it causes an imminent harm to life or property and the owner has failed to take reasonable measures to remedy the harm.
There is another, more practical, definition of such property, according to the city manager.
“One of the things you can use to find a blighted property is if you know there are known drug users going in there utilizing the area for things such as illegal drug transactions.”
“A fair amount of the situations we have with blighted property now is absentee owners,” he asserted, “and because they don’t take care of their property, it isn’t worth anything. So, they send their check for $125 a year and pay the taxes on it and don’t do anything about it until they pay that $125 check next year.
“So,” he said, “we’re going to start trying to get people’s attention through their pocketbook.”
Griffeth recalled that he asked the Byron city administrator how many properties were being taxed at the seven times rate.
“She said two. Obviously, it’s worked for them.”
The possible new measure has Griffeth’s attention.
“I’m excited about that,” he said. “I don’t see it being in effect for the next round of property tax bills, but I think it will be by 2025 when property tax bills go out.”
Griffeth then said that vape shops also have his attention. Those are establishments that sell items such as electric cigarettes and other tobacco-related products.
“We also talked about vape shops,” he reported, “and the consensus was that we could probably control that better through zoning. We really didn’t want more ordinances that we had to do enforcement on.”
Last year, City Council enacted a moratorium on licenses for the sale of distilled spirits to give council members time to study that ordinance. That may be the case with vape shops.
“I may recommend to Mayor and Council that we put a moratorium on those in all the districts around town,” Griffeth added. “They are everywhere. If somebody has got a convenience store, there’s a better than 75% chance they’ve got a vape shop.”
Griffeth pointed out that certain uses cannot be located in certain zoning precincts.
“That’s the way we’d be looking at it here,” he theorized. “We will probably look very closely at where convenience stores can and cannot be.”
The possible creation of a zoning classification for vape shops does not appear to be imminent, according to Griffeth.
“That’s going to be one of those things that we really have to research,” he concluded.