Avondale Estates, GA — The Avondale Estates City Commission will meet on Wednesday, Sept. 13, at 5:30 p.m. for a regular meeting. The city commission meeting will be held at Avondale Estates City Hall, 21 N. Avondale Plaza, and via Zoom.
The city commission will not have a work session on Wednesday.
During the regular meeting, the city commission will hold the second reading and vote on the land disturbance permit ordinance, which seeks to tighten some guidelines in the zoning code and offer additional guidance to the land disturbance permit process.
To join the meeting via Zoom, click here. To call in, dial +1-301-715-8592. The webinar ID is 874 9916 0426.
To view the meeting agenda, click here.
Public comments can be made either by attending the meeting in-person or through Zoom.
At the last city commission meeting, the board brought the ordinance back to a first reading due to changes that were made to the draft ordinance, so this will be the second reading.
The differences include the addition of a minor land disturbance permit, including section A, that grading of an area of any size and/or replacing or expanding a driveway of any size would require a minor land disturbance permit, and section D, gutter system best practices.
The ordinance outlines situations where a land disturbance permit would be required, which includes any grading, building a new structure or addition, adding 1,000 square feet or more of impervious surface, adding impervious surface when structures exceed the maximum lot coverage, and land disturbance of 5,000 square feet of land.
The ordinance also provides for exemptions for home gardening or landscaping projects, grading or land disturbance on public property by the city, work on transportation projects, building a shed, and the maintenance or improvement of an existing structure that does not involve land disturbance or adding an impervious surface.
The city commission will also hold the first reading of an ordinance to amend the 2023 operating budget. The amendment reflects an increase in revenue and a decrease in collections from traffic citations.
“Although the board voted to reduce the mileage rate for 2023, the collections anticipated, plus motor vehicle taxes owed from the previous year, and the penalties associated with that project now to be higher than what was originally budgeted,” City Manager Patrick Bryant previously said. “So, we are recommending increasing the revenue gained from those taxes.”
He added that the strategy for policing has changed under Police Chief Harry Hess.
“We are no longer aggressively pursuing traffic violations on 278, which has reduced the number of citations issued for those violations,” Bryant said. “We are anticipating collections pretty much identical to those of 2022, and we believe that will remain flat for the foreseeable future.”
Writer Angela Walker contributed to this article.
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