By Hannah Caudell
It may be at least 60 calendar days before Baldwin makes a final decision on the Cook Construction annexation and rezoning petition.
After a brief discussion with City Attorney Sammy Tomasello, council decided to table their vote the petition until the arbitration process between the city and county is complete, unless all parties come to a resolution beforehand.
The Habersham County Commission did have objections to the Cook Construction petition for a 45-acre annexation and rezoning at Ga. 365 and Duncan Bridge Road in Baldwin at its Aug. 17 meeting, meaning that an arbitration process through the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) must ensue. That process is currently underway; soon, arbitrators will be chosen, and Tomasello said that a decision would have to be made within 60 calendar days after the list of arbitrators is sent to the parties involved and the process officially begins. That is unless all parties consent to pausing the arbitration process for no more than 100 days to negotiate a settlement, Tomasello said.
According to Tomasello, there is no law that prevented council from moving forward with a vote Tuesday night, but voting could come with “some administrative and regulatory risk,” he said.
The law asks that all parties act in “good faith” with one another; if the DCA decides that a party has not acted in good faith, the organization could dole out repercussions ranging from a simple warning to removing a city’s local government status.
“The reason I bring this up is, qualified local government status mainly impacts things like financing through DCA,” Tomasello said. “Grants that DCA has, our GEFA loans can be impacted by that.”
He advised council that if they wanted to avoid the potential risks, they could table the agenda item. Mayor and council agreed after brief discussion, unanimously tabling the petition vote until council receives a final resolution from the arbitration process. Mayor Doug Faust said during the meeting that the item would likely return to the agenda in 60 to 90 days under the best-case scenario.
The Northeast Georgian reached out to Cook Construction President of Real Estate Services Keith Cook after the meeting for his thoughts on council’s decision; he declined to comment.