The Demorest City Council met Tuesday night for their regular meeting, during which they further tabled a second reading of the city’s stormwater ordinance. The ordinance has been a topic of discussion since the fall of 2021.
The council revisited the ordinance with a new mayor and councilman, the vote to table taking place the day after swearing in new mayor Jerry Harkness and new city councilman Roy Ferguson. Harkness succeeded former mayor Rick Austin and Ferguson succeeded former councilman Jim Welborn.
The ordinance, which adds minimum development standards for stormwater mitigation to any new developments in the city, was brought forward by Austin in the fall. The then-mayor believed the ordinance would be in place by the end of his term at the council’s last meeting in December.
The council had moved forward with the first reading of the ordinance at their Dec. 7 meeting and had come to a consensus to reconvene at a special called meeting at the end of the month to set the ordinance in motion. The council ended up not scheduling that meeting and also canceled their December work session for the holiday season.
The details of the drafted ordinance come to be around 400 pages long, and Harkness said at the meeting that he’d like to see input on the ordinance from an engineer who is not currently involved with the city.
“I would love to see an outside engineer come in and take a look at this,” Harkness said on Tuesday. “Someone that’s not looking at current development in the City of Demorest, somebody that’s worked with municipalities in the past, to look at these things.”
Harkness also proposed putting together a workgroup to go over the ordinance and discuss any issues it may have. City Manager Kim Simonds is in the process of finding an engineer to bring to the proposed workgroup.
Councilman John Hendrix suggested that the ordinance may need further clarification for redundancy with some points of the ordinance discussing other development standards.
“I would like the city to form a workgroup with a separate engineer to look this over and see what things we may need to modify, add to it, to make this better suit our city,” Harkness said. “I was looking at our current ordinances and kind of comparing what’s in here now, and this holds us to a tighter standard that I appreciate, that we need, most municipalities have this tighter standard. Right now, ours is very limited, so I do think it’s very important that we pass this standards ordinance.”
The council agreed that the workgroup should include an engineer, Simonds, Public Works Director Bryan Popham, Councilman Nathan Davis and Fire Chief Jonathan Knight. The council hopes to bring the ordinance back for a second reading within 60 days after discussing it further with the workgroup, but it may take longer.
The council tabled the second reading unanimously.
