MOULTRIE — At a called meeting Tuesday, the Colquitt County Commission agreed to assist in funding, in part, a commercial development project with the Moultrie-Colquitt County Development Authority and the City of Moultrie.

After comments from the audience, commissioners voiced their opinions on the matter and then, a vote was taken. Commissioner Mike Boyd made the motion to agree to giving the funding to the EDA for the project and Commissioner Paul Nagy seconded.

All of the commissioners except Commissioner Chris Hunnicutt voted “yes” to the motion.

Moultrie City Council had previously agreed to funding the project with City Manager Pete Dillard telling The Observer via email that the council was looking forward to it and understood the importance of industrial and commercial development.

Last month, Skylar Long of JBS Capital and Moultrie-Colquitt County Development Authority Chairman Ross Dekle made a presentation to the commission about the large commercial development project they wanted to build north of Lowe’s Home Improvement Store and east of Harbor Freight.

Long told the commission that it had been just a little over a year in the works. He said the tenants of the development that wanted to put stores in Moultrie and were committed to the project were Hobby Lobby, Marshall’s and Five Below.

“The reason we’re here is the need to facilitate a gap for funding in this project, of which the Development Authority has already committed up to $1.8 million of its funds to assisting with,” Dekle said at the time.

During the meeting, County Administrator Chas Cannon asked what the total gap in funding was and Dekle told him that it was $5.6 million. He said that the EDA would invest $1.8 million and they were asking the County to invest $2.8 million and the City to invest $985,000.

Dekle told them at the June meeting that, for the County’s money, it would see a ten-year return of 9% on its investment and a twenty-year return of 173%.

Later, in the meeting, commissioners voiced their concern about the amount of money that the County was being asked to give.

On June 2, the Development Authority approached the commission again with a new proposal that updated the break-down of what each entity would contribute.

“My apologies, as the last time we were here, we had a very recent change to our projections, based on other entities’ lack of ability to participate, and I believe we caught the county administrator, as well as all of you guys, off-guard with the much larger number than projected,” said Dekle.

The new break-down is that the EDA would put in $2,420,000, the County would put in $1,995,000 and the City would put in $1,185,000.

The city council will need to approve the increase in its part of the funding and Dillard said that he couldn’t imagine that there would be any reduction in their support of the commercial project.

“Commercial and industrial businesses are the most essential taxpayers for any community. Without them, property taxes on residential property would be exorbitant and unaffordable,” he said.

When commissioners met at the called meeting Tuesday, there was an audience of approximately 44 individuals in attendance, which included the developers and members of the EDA.

The EDA and the developers made a short presentation to recap the proposal and to expand on more information about the project.

The public was also allowed to address the commissioners and a few individuals, including a mix of business owners and residents, spoke for and against the proposal. It was pretty evenly split between supporters and opponents.