MOULTRIE, Ga. — Two rural Colquitt County landowners asked the county to abandon a road between their properties but were rejected after lengthy discussion Tuesday night. 

During that discussion, county attorney Lester Castellow told commissioners they’d been handling road abandonment contrary to state law for years.

Seeking to end that part of the discussion, Commission Chairman Denver Braswell shook his head and told Castellow, “I can’t eat all the worms in that can you just opened.”

Landowner Charles Griffin and Gary Linnenkohl, who said he manages property for out-of-town landowner Dan Tutcher, addressed commissioners at Tuesday night’s meeting, but commissioners started discussing their proposal at the work session that preceded the meeting.

Willingham Road lies in the southwest corner of the county, not far from Meigs. Part of it is paved and part is dirt. Griffin’s and Tutcher’s properties lie across the dirt road from one another for 1 1/2 miles, between Lloyd Road and Widow White Road.

Linnenkohl approached Commissioner Marc DeMott, who represents that district, about closing that portion of the dirt road and DeMott asked the county staff to look at the proposal.

Griffin pressed for the road closure because people ride ATVs onto his property to get drunk and party. He alleged poaching and drug drops and said four-wheelers can be heard riding the road at all hours of the night.

DeMott told his fellow commissioners at the work session that after hearing Linnenkohl’s proposal, he thought it was a win-win for the landowners and the county. The road is made of red clay, has two bridges and is difficult to maintain in wet weather.

Then, he said, the calls started coming in. 

DeMott said he heard from eight people in a day and a half, the most reaction he’s gotten from any county decision since he joined the board in 2015. Other commissioners got calls as well. Most of the callers wanted the road to stay open.

Two of them spoke at Tuesday’s meeting.

Bill Weldon, who lives farther up Willingham Road, owns property on Lloyd Road, and he uses Willingham to get farm equipment from one site to the other. If it were closed, he’d have to take his tractors up to Lower Meigs Road then back down.

“It’s a whole lot safer to use Willingham Road,” Weldon said.

Weldon said he also spoke for two neighbors who weren’t at the meeting. He said they use Willingham Road to go to Thomasville.

Chester Stalling said he’d lived on Willingham 56 years. Closing the road would add three or four miles to any trip he takes. He also said the school bus and garbage trucks use Willingham, and closing it would add five or six miles to those routes.

Braswell said the county builds and maintains roads to help people get where they need to go. Closing one generally requires support of the adjacent landowners and no opposition from anyone else. He said in this case, Willingham Road benefits too many people to close. He did not call for a motion on Linnenkohl’s proposal, and no commissioner offered one.

The commission’s headache came up during the work session, however, when the county attorney said if the county abandoned the road, it couldn’t just give the land back to the adjacent landowners.

Castellow said the county can abandon the road from the road network but it retains ownership of the land the road lies on. Local governments can’t just give land away; that wouldn’t be fair to the taxpayers they’re working to serve. Instead, the law requires the county to get the land appraised. It must offer it to the adjacent landowners first, but it cannot accept less than the appraised price, he said. If the adjacent landowners aren’t willing to pay that price, the land can be sold to the public like any other county-owned land.

If the county acquired the land through a deed and that deed has a reversion clause, Castellow said the reversion clause would take precedent, but otherwise the county can’t just give the land away.

One of the commissioners said most of the county’s dirt roads weren’t acquired through deeds; landowners just allowed the county right-of-way to build the road. Castellow countered with the legal concept of adverse possession. In short, he said, if the county maintains a road for a certain number of years, the county then owns the land the road lies on. Castellow wasn’t specific about how many years that was: possibly 10 or 20.

Abandonment of a road is uncommon, but this is at least the third request the county commission has fielded in the last few months, including one that was approved in March.

After the work session, The Observer asked Castellow if the county will now need to retroactively deal with land it had already returned to previous owners.

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t have an answer.”

In other action Tuesday, the Colquitt County Board of Commissioners:

• Received an update from Chief Assessor Jim Mac Booth, who said property tax appeals are scheduled every Thursday through the end of April plus some in May. Fewer than 100 commercial property appeals remain, he said, but most appeals decided so far have gone in favor of property owners.

• Approved a contract in which the county government would serve as a “pass through” for money from the Georgia Department of Transportation to the Moultrie-Colquitt County Airport Authority for improvements at the municipal airport.

• Eliminated the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. The committee formerly oversaw the Parks and Recreation Department of the City of Moultrie, but that department became an independent authority four years ago.

• Approved the reappointment of Pam Heidelberg to the Department of Family and Children Services board.

• Approved a memorandum of understanding with the Colquitt County Archway Partnership. Archway connects local governments with resources from the University of Georgia to address local problems. The county, City of Moultrie, county Board of Education and Colquitt Regional Medical Center each contribute $15,000 to fund the project, but each must vote every year to continue its allocation.

• Approved a policy to rent out space at the livestock barn and show arena.

• Approved a bid for a surface mount shower at the Colquitt County Correctional Institution. The low bid was H&S Supply at $17,647.06.

• Approved plans for paving of Greenfield Church Road. Low bidder was The Scruggs Company at $1,047,540.05. Of that, a Community Development Block Grant will pay $750,000 and the county will pay the rest from Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax money.

• Approved the purchase of two dump trucks from Nextran Truck Center for $146,695 each. The county purchased two similar trucks last month at the same price from the same vendor but had been scheduled to purchase four. This month’s purchase was the correction to that oversight.

• Approved the purchase of two asphalt body dump trucks from Nextran Truck Center for $149,904 each (after a government discount).

• Approved the purchase of two mulchers that would enable road crews to grind trees in place rather than one crew cutting them and another following behind to put the debris into a wood chipper. Low bid was $32,489.51 each from Tidewater Equipment.

• Approved the replacement of tracks on the bulldozer used at the county landfill. The low bidder was Yancey Brothers at $13,448.28.

• Approved contracting with Barber Construction to erect metal buildings to house the maintenance and public works departments, subject to additional negotiations. The base bid for the maintenance building was $665,000 and for the public works building was $745,000, but the company offered some additions for more insulation or deductions for a different heating system. The commission chose the cheaper gas heating system and authorized the county staff to negotiate a compromise price for which office space would receive more insulation but the warehouse area would not.

• Declared a 2000 Sterling truck tractor and a 2002 GMC Savanna van to be surplus and approved sending them to auction.

• Accepted Calleighs Way into the county road inventory. The road is located off Highway 37 West.

• Approved a zoning variance to allow Kevin Perryman to build a dry stackhouse for his chicken farm on Hurst Road. The law requires a setback of 1,500 feet, but Perryman’s land configuration allows only a 156-foot setback.

• Approved the transfer of Bert Harsh Park, located beside the Moultrie library on Fifth Avenue Southeast, to the Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Authority.