Rome News-Tribune

Floyd County to hear Land Bank plans

Commission­ers also will hear mobile-home requests on Tuesday.

- By Diane Wagner Staff Writer DWagner@RN-T.com

The Floyd County Commission will get an update Tuesday on activities of the Land Bank Authority, a joint entity charged with trying to get abandoned parcels back on the tax rolls.

Community Developmen­t Director Bekki Fox is scheduled to give a presentati­on at the board’s caucus on progress in assembling tracts for private redevelopm­ent out of surplus properties owned by the city and county. The LBA was created in February 2017.

The County Commission transferre­d into its coffers earlier this year a handful of properties in South Rome and on Chulio Road and East 20th Street. Most recently, the board donated two back-to-back lots on Maple Street and Darlington Way.

“We’d been holding them for the Northwest Georgia Housing Authority, but that didn’t work out,” County Manager Jamie McCord said ahead of the April 10 vote.

“The Land Bank wants them now,” McCord said. “They have an extremely motivated buyer.”

An applicatio­n process requires potential buyers to explain what they’ll do with the land.

Commission­ers also are slated to hear from Chief Building Official Howard Gibson on the Clean It Or Lien It program. Used in the city of Rome, the initiative targets dilapidate­d and dangerous properties.

Commission­ers caucus at 4:30 p.m. and start their regular session at 6 p.m. in the County Administra­tion Building, 12 E. Fourth Ave. Both meetings are public.

Two public hearings are on the agenda for the regular meeting — both seeking special-use permits to put mobile homes on tracts within areas

platted as subdivisio­ns. The Rome-Floyd County Planning Commission is recommendi­ng approval of the applicatio­ns covering 11 Baker Drive and 125 Presley St.

“There are other mobile homes in the area,” Planning Director Artagus Newell. “They own those and a mobile home park nearby.”

Roger Tate of Ray Tate Homes said they also have about 30 other lots in the area “but they’re all in the floodplain, so I don’t know what we can do with them.”

The building code requires the lowest finished level of a home to be at least two inches above the highest known level of the flood plain, Newell said.

 ??  ?? Bekki Fox, Rome-Floyd County Community Developmen­t director
Bekki Fox, Rome-Floyd County Community Developmen­t director
 ??  ?? Artagus Newell
Artagus Newell

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