Commissioners discuss housing moratorium

As promised during its last regular meeting on March 22, the Hart County Board of Commissioners held a work session following Tuesday’s scheduled meeting to specifically discuss changes to the ordinances regarding subdivisions, inching closer to ending the moratorium on construction of multi-family housing projects.

The moratorium, which hit 624 days during Tuesday’s meeting, currently prevents the new construction of all residential development outside of site-specific, stick-built single family residential homes, mobile homes or modular homes. The board voted to place the county under an 180-day moratorium on July 27, 2021, before voting on three separate occasions to extend the moratorium.

With the current extension set to expire in July unless another extension is approved, Board Chairman Marshall Sayer said he hopes another moratorium renewal won’t be necessary.

“Hopefully, it’ll be lifted here, I’m hoping this summer,” Sayer said.

As Sayer and his fellow board members, minus District Five Commissioner Joey Dorsey, who left following the regular meeting, sat down for the work session, they were met with a 19-page “preliminary draft” of the ordinance dated back to May 15, 2022, with highlighted changes throughout.

Sayer pointed out his major flaw with the draft immediately.

“One thing about this ordinance, in my opinion, is that it’s too complicated,” he said. “If we’re going to write an ordinance, we ought to be able to explain it. With this, we’d just need to keep [County Attorney] Kim [Higginbotham] on speed dial to explain this one.”

The draft, which edits Chapter 46 of Hart County’s Code of Ordinances, highlights three classifications of subdivisions, with more stipulations for larger projects. District One Commissioner Michael Bennett said he thinks that might be overkill.

“I agree with Commissioner Sayer. It’s complicated, and we need to lessen some of them,” Bennett said. “I don’t necessarily know if we need [three] levels of subdivisions.”

Sayer once again called for an easier ordinance to explain.

“I think it does need to be simplified,” Sayer said. “There’s a lot of repeated things that are really not necessary….If we’re going to write it, we ought to be able to explain it, and I think we’re past that point.”

However, with Dorsey missing, the board that was present felt uncomfortable digging too deep into the ordinance.

“I did mention that I would like for Commissioner Dorsey to be here to go through this,” Bennett said. “These men, we’ve spent 12-15 called meetings working on this when we started it, and we were all here then. And we butted heads. We butted heads with the public out there, real estate agents, property owners, whoever.”

While the work session did last about an hour, most of the discussion between the four remaining board members and the six remaining citizens revolved around a specific potential project which would currently not be allowed due to the moratorium. District Four Commissioner Jeff Brown encouraged all of the board members to study the 19-page document and come to the next meeting ready to make significant edits.

“I agree with the rest of the commissioners. We need to take this home,” Brown said. “Let’s study on it and make some notes. That’s what I intend to do. This is the first time I’ve had it physically in front of me.”

The board did not schedule another work session to discuss the ordinance and moratorium during the meeting.