THOMASVILLE — The majority of the Thomas County Commission voted Monday to give Thomasville City Council design plans for South Pinetree Boulevard.

The vote came during a commission personnel committee meeting late Monday afternoon. The five commissioners attending the meeting voted unanimously to give the plan to the city.

Attending the meeting were commission Chairman Wiley Grady, and Commissioners Hershel Ansley, Ken Hickey, Merrill Baker and Phillip Brown.

Grady made the motion to turn over the plans to the city, with a second by Ansley. Grady amended the motion to let the city have the plan at no cost.

“The plans belong to Thomas County,” Mike Stephenson, county manager, told commissioners before the vote. “They’ve had the PDF file since last summer sometime.”

Grady said he had polled commissioners individually about turning over the plan to the city, and all agreed.

The plan was done by Falcon Design Consultants, which has offices in Stockbridge and Cumming. Thomas County paid Falcon $136,000 for the work before commissioners turned county-owned South Pinetree rights-of-way over to the city earlier this year.

In October 2017, the council voted to use Falcon for a two-lane project. Council approved an expenditure of $71,800 for the design work.

In surprise and a previously unannounced plan of action, city council voted 3-2 in May for a three-lane Pinetree project.

As a result of the May action, a group of local residents retained an Albany lawyer, who contends May council action violated Georgia law. Litigation has been threatened if the three-lane plan proceeds.

Before the Monday county commission vote, Chris White, city assistant utilities superintendent, said the city did not have 2017 plans drawn for the county. 

“We have never gotten a full copy of those,” White added.

The plan has been requested by the city, White said. Falcon would not release the plan to the city, he said, because the county’s permission was needed.

“We have been working with Falcon since October 2017 on a two-lane plan,” White said, adding that the city plan had three left-turn lanes, a 10-foot trail, curb and gutter and a roundabout at Pinetree and Magnolia Street.

Mayor Greg Hobbs did not respond to a request for a comment about the county turning over the the plan to the city. Neither did he respond when asked why the council voted on a three-lane plan when the city did not have one.

The city never received the computer-aided design and drafting (CADD).

White said the CADD is a profile of the road that shows locations of storm drains, road contour and utilities — “everything you need to construct a road.”

“We’ve yet to get accurate and complete drawings for our plan,” White said.

Midday Tuesday, White said the city had not received the county plan.

Receipt of the plan will give city staff an opportunity to see what is in the county CADD compared to what the city is doing, he said.  

Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 1820