MOULTRIE — The prevailing topic of Tuesday’s Colquitt County Commission work session was nuisance abatement as commissioners debated actions when citizens came forward to appeal to them for help with ongoing nuisance complaints.

Over the past couple of months, the Colquitt County Commission has made amendments to the zoning ordinances, specifically the one dealing with “Unfit Property.”

At the September meeting County Attorney Lester Castellow proposed an amendment to this ordinance so that the county would be in compliance with state law. The amendment would be that when a nuisance abatement complaint is filed, it’s heard by the magistrate court within 30 days. This would give the county the power to go in and clean up the property if the resident still doesn’t comply after the hearing. The amendment was voted on and carried unanimously at the commission’s October meeting.

Matthew Hilton, who had attended the September work session of the board of commissioners, was there again to follow up on a nuisance situation on Crumb Road. He had stated previously that the property next to his was like a small landfill.

County Administrator Chas Cannon opened the discussion on the Crumb Road nuisance abatement complaint, “There’s a legal process to what was going on out there and that has ended as of last week or the week before last.”

He said he wanted Castellow to tell the board where they came from and where they were now in the process and then he wanted some guidance from the commission on where they would go from there.

“I don’t think she’s (the property owner the complaint was made against) complied with the legal side. The other option is to seize some of the property through clean-up and abatement,” he said and then deferred to Castellow.

They went to the magistrate court, Castellow said, and all of the evidence from the homeowner and Chief Compliance Officer Justin Cox was heard. The judge found that there was a nuisance and gave the homeowner 30 days to clean the nuisance up herself.

“My recollection is that, that 30 days expired on Nov. 29 and, since it has expired, now the county has the power to go in and clean it up at county expense but we’ve got a deadline that seems like it’s 270 days,” he said.

Cox chimed in that it was six months.

Castellow said that the next step would be they would have the right to pursue a lien against the property for whatever the cost of cleanup is and he said the question is “Has she cleaned it up?”

Cox responded, “No, she has not.”

Cox said that the cost of the clean-up to the county would be around $10,000.

Commissioner Marc DeMott wanted to know if there were any other liens on the property and Castellow said his recollection was only “taxes” and the lien they pursue would rank with a tax lien, which supersedes financial institutions.

“It is enforced as a tax lien. We send it to the tax commissioner and she levies on it,” Castellow further clarified.

Cannon said, “Well that’s kind of where we are. We just need some feedback on do we proceed from here with the clean-up.”

Commissioner Mike Boyd said, “We amended the ordinance so that we could enforce this in case anything happened. It’s not next door to any of us but it’s next door to someone who’s in here tonight. If it was next door to us, we’d be screamin’ and hollerin’. If we make it a point of not cleaning up our problems, is it going to open the door for us have more and more problems? In my opinion, yes.”

He also said that both Cannon and Cox had been out to the property and the odor was equivalent to the county’s landfill.

“Nobody wants to spend the taxpayers’ money but we’re here to protect the taxpayers, so what do we do?” Boyd said.

Commissioner Paul Nagy said that he had gone out and looked at the property as well, and it was the worst thing that he had ever seen.

Commissioner Johnny Hardin said he was familiar with the property but his question was did the homeowner work or get some kind of income.

“If we go in there and clean this up and put a lien on the property and she don’t pay it, then we’re going to go in there and take it — where’s this lady going to go live?” he asked.

Boyd asked Hilton if he knew if the homeowner worked and he said that he imagined that she got some kind of government funding, and his wife, Jessica, confirmed that she did get government funding.

Hardin asked again what would the people do who lived there if the county put them out, and Boyd responded, “I don’t think we put them out. I think they put themselves out.”

He went on to say that the county has taken every course they could to let the homeowner clean-up the property and she hasn’t done it.

Commissioner Chris Hunnicutt wanted to know if the homeowner had any other relatives that she could live with.

Chairman Denver Braswell asked Cannon what he thought about the situation and he replied, “Well it’s obviously up to the board but I mean, we put her in jail for two days, sat her before a magistrate judge twice, so she’s obviously not very worried about the law.”

He went on to say that the county had never done it before so there was no historical precedent for it and he understood that it was a big problem, referencing the state of the property.

“If we do it, then we are setting a precedent for… for to do it again in the future and I just look at it from a proper role of government function. Is this something that we want to proceed with by forcibly taking someone’s property and then have a group of seven commissioners or whatever determine what clean looks like and then are we going to hold that same standard across all parcels in the county?” said Cannon.

He said if they could get to that agreement on what clean looks like, then move forward but he sees it as hard to get there.

He then asked if Hilton had approached the owner with a discussion on how they could work together or offer to buy the property. He said that could be a possible solution and he would like to facilitate a discussion like that.

“I’d be willing to participate in that,” Cannon said. “… I worry about what we do in the future if we do this. It’s never been done before. That’d be the first time we do this. That’s kind of my biggest concern. Are we making a mistake forcibly taking someone’s property and then determining what it should look like? Then that opens the door to all parcels being subject to that.”

He asked Hilton again if he had tried to talk to the homeowner and he and his wife both responded in the negative, asserting that the homeowner was not approachable at all.

“Talking about forcibly taking somebody’s land in such a way, you know a lien. Correct me if I’m wrong but if somebody doesn’t pay their garbage bill on the garbage can after so many months, y’all put a lien on that, correct? and it’s auctioned. So what’s the difference in that kind of taking where they’re not paying the county and y’all going in there and cleaning up and not paying the county?” Hilton asked

Braswell responded that the difference was that one was very clear-cut on the bill that is owed on services provided and the other is strictly opinion-based.

He went on to say that, “I agree with you. I’m sympathetic with you but even if I trusted this board here to make the right decision on whose property is good enough and whose isn’t, I really don’t have faith in every future board from now on to have that.”

Braswell said that it scares him to give a group of people the power to look at his yard and say, “You know, that ain’t quite good enough, we’re going to do it the way we see fit and charge you what we deem is enough and possibly take your land over. That’s what scares me to death.”

Boyd said that he thought it was a case-by-case basis and the county commission has set an ordinance and said, “These were the standards.”

“These standards have been broken because we’ve taken them to court twice,” he added.

Braswell said that what worries him was that it could be “an extremely deep rabbit-hole,” when it came to going in and cleaning-up the property. He said he had seen the property in question, but he could show them a dozen more like it.

“I’d think we’d need ten extra employees and more equipment to work full time on this, if we go down this road,” he said.

Pictures of the property were shown to the board of commissioners.

During the discussion Nagy said it was a dilemma because they would be setting precedent but, on the other hand, they have an ordinance and a magistrate who declared it a nuisance.

“Now what the magistrate determined was there is a nuisance. He doesn’t determine whether you go in and clean it up. He determines whether there’s a nuisance,” said Castellow. “And he has determined that is the case.”

After a long pause in discussion, DeMott asked Castellow if he had a recommendation from a legal stand-point.

“That’s a political issue. That’s not a legal issue,” said Castellow.

After some more discussion by the commissioners, Boyd made a motion that the county clean up the property in question and Nagy seconded the motion.

In further discussion, DeMott and Nagy both expressed that they wished that there was an alternative with Boyd replying, “I think if there was an alternative, between legal counsel and all of us, we would have tried our best to find it. I think we worked hard to find it.”

Hardin said that he’s worried about what the county is “stepping in” if they enforce the ordinance and Hunnicutt said that he had places in his district that were bad, too, but he didn’t think it was the place of the county to spend money cleaning up somebody’s property.

Other commissioners also chimed in with their account of properties in their districts that were in bad shape.

“Lester, if we do this, we lien the property is that right? This is like a tax lien is that correct?” Boyd asked

Castello said that was exactly what it was and they would send the amount to the tax commissioner, Cindy Harvin, and ask her to levy it.

“And it’s like a tax lien and we take their land like a tax lien,” Boyd clarified.

Braswell called for the vote and the motion failed for lack of four. Commissioner Barbara Jelks was absent.

Denver asked that Cannon and Cox keep working on it and Cannon said that he plans on going out to see the homeowner and see if she would be willing to sell the property. He and Hilton will get together on a time that they can go out together and talk to the homeowner.

In another appeal during the work session, Brooklyn and Travis Key also came before the board with a nuisance complaint about a property elsewhere in the county. Brooklyn showed photos of a mobile home on a property that was across the road from her home to illustrate its current condition.

“Every day when I open up my kitchen window and look out of it, this is my view. Every single day. and it’s been my view since 2019,” she said.

“So I want to give you a little bit of a timeline and tell you a little bit more of why we’re here. What I’m going to be asking for is some sort of a scheduling order to help us (the neighboring owners of the dwelling) get this thing demolished and taken care of and put us back in rightful zoning codes. Cause we’re currently not. I mean it’s in violation of numerous zoning codes,” she said, naming “abandoned mobile home” as one of them.

Brooklyn told the commissioners that when Hurricane Michael came through in 2018, half of the mobile home’s roof was blown off and the homeowners put a tarp over it and lived in it until June of 2019 when their daughter got sick and they had to move out.

“They took her to the doctor and it turned out that she had mold in her lung,” she said.

She also said that, even though the mobile home remained vacant with the roof tarped, she and her husband decided to “let it ride” because they thought the homeowners were working with an insurance company. She said that she kept checking in with them every so often and they would respond that they were still working on getting it fixed. Then, in 2020, when COVID hit, she stopped asking.

“So I didn’t start worrying about it again until probably 2021 and I then contacted Mr. Cox and he’s been so helpful in the liaison, helping me back and forth sort of trying to get some sort of end to the situation,” Brooklyn said.

Sshe was able to find out who the mortgage company was that owned the property and found out that it had been foreclosed on. She contacted them to let them know what the state of the home was and that it was in violation of the codes.

“The bigger issue is that in 2021-2022, at least once a week, we had somebody stopping by, going in that house. I mean this is an attractive nuisance,” she said.

She voiced her concern that since people were stealing out of the mobile home, then her home would become attractive to thieves, as well.

Brooklyn said she believed that with her and Cox’s persistence with the mortgage company, the lien was finally released to the homeowners on the home. At that time, Cox, told the homeowners to start doing the demolition on it.“I want to say it was October 15 or 16, they come over there that day and the next day and removed all the doors and windows and that’s all they’ve done,” she said, throwing her hands up.

She said that for four years, she’s looked at that house and they haven’t done anything to it in all of that time and she’s at the point where she needs some help from the commissioners.“We’ve got to figure out what we can do because they’ve been in violation. and these zoning codes don’t mean anything if we don’t enforce them,” Brooklyn said.

Nagy asked Cox to remind him of what the letter said that was sent to the home owners and he replied, “Thirty days to demolish.” He also added that the homeowners had gotten a demolition permit already and have enquired about putting another mobile home on the property. He said that he had sent them down the proper channels to get that process started.

Nagy wanted to know how long the demolition permit was good for and Cox responded that it was good for six months (180 days) unless work ceases and will auto-renew unless work ceases for six months.

“We’ve done everything but take them to court,” said Cox.

Nagy also wanted to know if they were in violation of anything right now, and Cox responded that they were: They have a derelict mobile home.

“I mean surely y’all can understand our position,” Brooklyn said.

Nagy asked County Administrator Chas Cannon’s suggestion and he responded that they could get County Attorney Lester Castellow involved to try and speed up the process of encouraging the landowner to hold up their end of the deal with demolishing the mobile home.

Other business

At the November board meeting, Castellow told commissioners the Georgia Zoning Procedures Act changed and the county’s zoning law does not comply with state requirements. Bringing it into compliance will require adding a third public hearing. Currently, the county ordinance requires a hearing before the Moultrie-Colquitt County Planning Commission and one before the Colquitt County Board of Commissioners. The proposal would add a second public hearing before the county commissioners. Cannon scheduled the public hearing for the December meeting. The public hearing on the amendment to the zoning ordinance was held, and, there being no opposition, it was voted on and passed unanimously.

Sheriff Rod Howell presented the bids for the jail construction and improvements and recommended which company to use for the project. The commission voted unanimously to accept the recommendation from Howell.