The Morgan County Board of Commissioners met this past Tuesday to discuss a wide variety of items on their agenda.
The meeting began with Bob Hughes of the Joint Development Authority updating the board on its financial situation and the upcoming projects they have.
“We were awarded $111.3 million in grants to fund portions of the Rivian project including land acquisition, due diligence, permitting and a portion of mitigation,” Hughes said. “We also received our first pilot payments from Meta’s project in the amount of $2 million; that’s in addition to the $3,426,000 that we received earlier from them this year from Takeda, which was collected and distributed.”
The JDA of Jasper, Walton, Newton and Morgan Counties strive towards its goal to “create an industrial area to attract industry to the region.”
In the next quarter, Hughes believes the land acquisition for Rivian will be complete, and the other requirements needed to break ground will be met.
The JDA and Rivian met in court last week to discuss bond validation as well, which will be reviewed by the opposition and decided on within the next 30 days.
After Hughes left the podium, the board approved “the July 2022 payables to include General Fund in the amount of $1,195,597.09, TSPLOST in the amount of $232,214.27, SPLOST in the amount of $311,573.69 and the July 2022 financials.”
Furthermore, the BOC acknowledged the minutes for their regular meeting held on July 19 and their special called meeting held on July 28.
Once the commissioners started discussing “New Business,” county manager Adam Mestres explained to the board that the county is currently in the process of converting “murder case files” from hardback to electronic copies and indexing them.
The whole process will cost the county $31,400, and Mestres explained why the benefits will likely outweigh the cost.
“[The files] will be made more accessible to the public, and from a historical perspective, making sure that we keep those documents so that they’re stored and backed up,” Mestres said. “This is very commonplace on what’s going on around the state and the country.”
Other notable agenda items included the approval to fill a Development Authority Board opening. AgSouth Farm Credit’s regional lending manager Scott Webb will be filling the vacant spot on the board.
The commissioners also discussed resolution-millage rate adoption for FY2023/Tax Year 2022.
The presented document stated that the county’s net maintenance and operation millage is set at, “10.580 mills rolled back from 14.194 mills for revenue collected from Local Option Sales Tax in the amount of $4,216,765 which is equal to 3.614 mills.”
This stems from property values rising and the current state of the market. The meeting wrapped
The meeting wrapped up with a couple public comments from county residents on the current agenda items. The board’s next meeting will be held on Aug. 16, at 5 p.m.