The City of Clarkesville is seeing exponential growth, according to their city manager, and the city is looking at changes and improvements for the budget and community infrastructure.
Millage and budget
The city will vote on the millage rate for the upcoming year at their November meeting; City Manager Keith Dickerson recommends a full rollback, going from 6.35 mills to 6.11 mills.
“I feel very confident that we can roll it [the millage] back to 6.11 mills,” Dickerson said. “The biggest reason for this is we’ve had […] $28 million worth of growth [since 2019] in the community, that’s new housing, businesses, also some tax assessment changes have happened, but this will keep everyone’s taxes where they were so they won’t have a tax increase this year.”
The city manager also shared budgeting plans for a 2 percent pay raise for all city employees who have been employed for over a year, and a one percent raise for employees under a year, to help combat inflation.
Projects on deck
While the city has lots on its plate to work on, like updates to the Mauldin House with hopes to eventually make it Clarkesville’s visitors center, and preliminary discussions into updates for Mary Street Park, the city shared another project it’s been working on: the Clarkesville Community House.
The community house has sat vacant and deteriorating for at least 10 years, according to Clarkesville Mayor Barrie Aycock, but the city is working on restoring it to its former glory.
“It has turned out to be a little bit more of a project than we originally thought,” Aycock said. “But it’s under control, we’ve got a contractor who is working on it, and we are hoping to get the structure to where it is safe and then we’ll decide where we’re going to go from there.”
Aycock says the restoration is something the community will need to be involved in, but she’s hopeful it will be something community members will be “excited about.”
Some other projects, like the four-way stop near Ingles in Clarkesville becoming a roundabout and updated sidewalks in the city are “in limbo” until the city receives more information from the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) about requirements and funding from possible federal infrastructure plans and the American Rescue Plan.
“We’re kind of just in limbo on a few of those things,” Dickerson said. “I know it feels like it’s going on and on and on, but if someone’s going to give us money to do that [the projects], we might as well take the money and do what we can with it.”
The city is also planning to vote to instate an entertainment district in their downtown area in the coming weeks, following in the footsteps of Demorest and Cornelia.
