ATHENS, Ga. (WUGA) — At a special called session on April 8, the Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission voted to approve the next phase of the West Broad St/West Hancock roundabout project.
This issue turned out to be somewhat contentious at the Commission’s regular session back on April 1. The vote was to approve Sub-Project #1, which involves Right of Way acquisition and eminent domain. While eminent domain may need to be used for the project, only small slivers of land are needed – not entire properties. Additionally, most of the property needed for the project has already been acquired. There is only one parcel still in question – the property on the corner of Minor St. and West Broad. However, this raised concern for several commissioners, including Dexter Fisher of District 5, “This is going to affect that gentleman’s business because of what we may have to do with sidewalk and stuff so that’s an issue for me.”
Stephanie Johnson of District 8 voted no, but she said her vote was not in opposition to the project itself but because of last-minute changes to the documents that were given to her, claiming she did not have enough time to review them.
Commissioner Hamby of District 10 expressed his frustration with Johnson’s position, stating that the changes made were extremely simple aspects of the documents and urged his colleagues to move forward, ”This is a public safety issue to move forward to get something done for this community that people are asking us to do and there’s no reason not to vote for this because we’ve been talking about it since 2018 .”
The vote initially failed, 6-4. However, a motion to reconsider was made and passed, bumping the vote for a week so that concerned commissioners could visit the site and take a better look.
In this week’s special called session on April 8th, there seemed to be a marked turnaround. The site visit appeared to allay concerns about the impact the project would have on businesses.
With little discussion, this time the vote passed unanimously 8-0, with Johnson and Culpepper absent.
Ovita Thornton of District 9 still advised caution going forward, “When we get anything that has eminent domain written in it – small print, big print – that it is spelled out because I do think just because this situation kind of worked out, eminent domain is a really serious issue and we should be prepared for it.”
The roundabout at the intersection of W. Broad St. and West Hancock is one of the projects from TSPLOST 2018. Construction is expected to begin later this year.
This article comes to Now Habersham in partnership with WUGA
