SYLVESTER — Growing more comfortable in their roles, the four new faces on Worth County’s Economic Development Authority took action Thursday to secure the county’s only available industrial tract.
Isolated and empty, the former Blue Ridge Winkler textile mill on U.S. 82 West has been burglarized before and needs added security, authority board member Hal Carter said.
“Every deputy sheriff should have a key,” and know the facility’s alarm combination, to adequately handle trespassers and frequent false alarms, Carter said.
Several years before, the textile building was condemned by Worth County for nonpayment of taxes and given to the EDA, Board Chairman Roy Sumner said.
Board member Daniel Nesbit questioned the EDA’s $800 monthly bill for utilities at the site, which is located on about 86 acres just west of Sylvester.
The bill turned up in monthly financials the board reviewed during a regular meeting Thursday morning.
Assets in the financials include the BRW facility, small tracts in Poulan and in Sylvester’s northside industrial park and the tract now home to Reese Building Components off Dexter Wilson Boulevard.
Board members commented on escalating legal fees reflected in the financials, including $60,818 in legal fees spent during the previous seven months.
Most was spent in preparation of a bond issue to purchase and develop land for an industrial park, Sumner said.
Land for the park adjoined the BRW property and the EDA retains through July two $20,000 options to buy the land, Sumner said.
The bond issue idea was nixed last year when Worth County’s Board of Commissioners refused to sign off on the bond issue or a 1.33 mill tax increase to fund it.
After the plans were refused, several commissioners rallied to have EDA Director Alex McCoy removed. Four new members were named to the EDA board, which fired McCoy last month.
Nesbit also questioned the price of the options, which board member Mike Garvey said was negotiated with the property owners’ attorney, Sylvester lawyer Norman Crowe.
Sumner said that former EDA attorney Clarence Miller likely looked over the option documents as well.
The board also heard a report from Chamber of Commerce President Hollie Jones. The chamber’s contract with the EDA expires in May.
With a paid staff of two, the chamber holds an annual banquet, regular ribbon cuttings events for businesses, quarterly business after-hours events, membership breakfasts and an annual leadership program, among other activities, Jones described.
The primary organizer of the Georgia Peanut Festival, the chamber participates in Warwick’s Grits Festival and the Sumner Egg Festival. Membership has grown from 130 to more than 200 during the last three years, Jones said.
Carter asked if the EDA’s telephone could “roll over” to the chamber when EDA secretary Terri Tomlinson or others were unavailable.
The financials showed the EDA’s portion of Chamber funding was $26,250 for the preceding seven months.
EDA tax receipts grew when its millage rate was increased from .33 to .67 mills in 2006.
EDA revenues from property and vehicle taxes increased from about $129,000 in 2006 to $254,000 in 2007.
Board members raised two other concerns at the end of the meeting, one of which was McCoy’s severance pay, which included three weeks’ vacation pay in addition to two weeks’ salary.
“He was only due one week, under the contract,” Garvey said.
Sumner said he’d assumed McCoy had accrued three weeks’ pay when he made the motion two weeks earlier.
Carter questioned why his tax preparer of 30 years, Steve Miner, was preparing financials for the EDA board.
Miner, vice-chairman of the board, has not attended an EDA meeting since December.
Board member Joe Gaines has not attended a meeting since 2005, officials have said.
“I have a great deal of respect for Steve,” Carter said. “I don’t have a problem with it personally, but it does not look proper.”