MOULTRIE — Two months ago, Colquitt County commissioners faced a question about a refugee facility proposed for the former Riverside Manufacturing plant outside of Moultrie. In the face of public criticism, the property owner withdrew the proposal even as the commission came out against it.

Since then, the county has found a loophole that might allow such a facility without needing the commission’s approval, and on Tuesday night commissioners began the process to close it.

The Riverside property is zoned in accordance with its former industrial use. To allow housing of refugees — or anyone else — the county would have to rezone the property or provide for a special use permit. The property owner hadn’t even requested the zoning change when it became clear it wouldn’t be approved.

But county leaders have realized that farmers who build dorms for the H2A immigration program already have their land properly zoned for such a facility. 

County Attorney Lester Castellow said someone already running an H2A camp could decide to switch over and do dormitories instead because, “We’ve got these people from New York or wherever coming down with a bunch of money and are willing to invest it.”

He told the commissioners that the way the zoning ordinance is now, they could do just that.

“The proposed ordinance just says that would be a special use permit. That would require a special use permit. … And it defines what a dormitory is,” Castellow said.

Chairman Denver Braswell asked if it exempted H2A and Castellow replied, “Right. Expressly says this doesn’t apply to H2A.”

County Administrator Chas Cannon asked if this proposal would be on the December agenda for the board and Castellow replied in the negative. He said this was just giving the board information, and if there was a consensus that they wanted to move forward with the proposal, he would have Chief Compliance Officer Justin Cox put together the application and run the ads for it.

Braswell asked if they could get a consensus on the zoning ordinance amendment proposal that addressed the dormitories and the board agreed to move forward. It will be on the agenda sometime after the first of the year.

The dormitory question was one of two zoning ordinance changes that the commissioners discussed Tuesday.

Castellow told commissioners the Georgia Zoning Procedures Act changed quite some time ago, 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.

Castellow further explained that, over the last 15 or 20 years, the Georgia appellate courts have “really screwed-up” the process of appealing a zoning decision from the commissioners to the Superior Court and that has resulted in a lot of them being thrown out.

“Basically, they came in and simplified it all and said, ‘This is how you have to do it,’” he said and that the bottom line was that they didn’t have any other choice but to adopt it.

Commissioner Marc DeMott asked if it was a hard 15 days or no less than 15 days that the hearing would be held because that wouldn’t line-up with the Board of Commissioners’ regular meetings.

Castellow said he would go back and look at the change and let them know but reiterated that it had to be adopted so that the county was in compliance with the state. He said he would send out an executive summary of the modification to the board members.

Cannon said a public hearing on the proposed change would be held at the commission’s Dec. 5 meeting.