The Columbia County Board of Commissioners approved 3 to 1, during the meeting Tuesday, March 21, moving forward with a government efficiency and functionality study in regards to incorporation and consolidation.
County Manager Scott Johnson told commissioners the study is to determine the pros and cons of incorporation and consolidation of the unincorporated areas of Columbia County. Incorporation is the creation of a city, and consolidation is the consolidation of a county and a city.
“In Columbia County now we have two cities, Harlem and Grovetown,” Johnson said. “Everything else in unincorporated. What this would do is this would take everything that’s unincorporated, create a brand-new city and turn around the very next day and consolidate that with the county government so we could continue to operate the governance the same way.”
Johnson stated the sheriff would still be responsible for law enforcement, along with the fire department and other government entities remaining responsible.
“There would be no reason to have a mayor, an additional police department and all those things, consolidation would take care of that,” Johnson said.
With the incorporation and consolidation, Johnson said the unincorporated communities, including Evans, Martinez, Appling, Winfield, and Leah, will become one new city.
“Right now Martinez is not a city, Evans is not a city, Winfield, Leah, Appling, all of those are unincorporated areas of Columbia County,” Johnson said. “So they will still continue to have their community names and their community identity, but they will be within whatever this new city is if this moves forward.”
The study is the first step in what Johnson described as “a long process.” He added there are several ways the county could go about this, including asking the legislation to introduce a bill to allow for the incorporation and consolidation.
“We could’ve asked that to happen this session and they could’ve moved forward with that legislation, and had it passed, then the next step would be to put the item on the ballet and let the voters vote,” Johnson said. “I think this body thought that it would be in the better interest of the citizens to at least perform a study first to see if this body was even willing to ask the legislature to move forward with that sort of action.”
Johnson said there have been brief discussions with the mayors and managers of Harlem and Grovetown, but a lot more discussion needs to be had.
If the study shows it would be worth it to move forward, it would tell the county how to move forward and what path to take ensuring everything is done properly.
“This particular path has never been done before in Georgia,” Johnson said. “There’s never been a time that I know of that a county has incorporated their unincorporated area and then turned around and consolidated it at the same time. Typically, incorporation and consolidation is done when there’s one city that would incorporate the unincorporated areas, which is allowed. This is not prohibited by the constitution, but it’s not specifically allowed, so there’s a reason to have experts to perform this study to be able to give us those opinions.
The study will take approximately eight months to complete, so it should be done by the end of the calendar year. After the study is complete, Johnson said the county is looking to have further discussions with community members, including open forums, citizen discussion groups, possibly special panels and more discussions with the cities.
“Then and only then if it’s the will of this board to ask for such legislation to be introduced, it would be introduced,” Johnson said. “It would then have to pass both the house and senate and then signed by the governor. If all those things were done, all that would do is get it in front of the voters. This is the beginning of what I would consider probably a three-year process and at any time we see, or you see, this is not the direction we need to go, we can certainly change direction, change gears and not go this way. This is far from being a done deal.”
District 3 Commissioner Gary Richardson said he was in favor of the study and in the long-term it would be a good thing for the county. But if the study shows it’s not good for the county, then he would be in favor of not moving forward.
“If we can move this forward and we see it’s going to benefit long-term the county in the future, I think it would be a disservice not to explore these options for the community,” Richardson said.
Commissioners approved authorizing the study to be done and fund it up to $100,000. District 4 Commissioner Alison Couch was the sole vote against the study.
“I voted against the study because I am not comfortable with the idea of incorporation and consolidation at this time,” Couch said. “Though I appreciate the information that this study will likely give, I didn’t have enough details on it to be able to vote yes.”
