First District Commissioner Ed Elkins asked that the law enforcement committee look into whether someone on the Planing Commission approached Judith and Larry Allen in regard to rezoning their land.
“It appears that the Allens may have been ... requested to initiate a request on rezoning of their property in the Georgetown area by one or more members of the Planning Commission reporting themselves to be acting on behalf of the Planning Commission. Therefore, I would like to place on next week’s agenda a motion to authorize the law enforcement committee to investigate or to request an investigation regarding any potential impropriety of the Planning Commission resulting from the rezoning request,” Elkins said.
“I don’t believe there has been any report of anything inappropriate,” 6th District Commissioner Mel Griffith said.
The rezoning request was denied last Monday with 13 out of 14 commissioners voting against it. During the public hearing, property owner Larry Allen said at that meeting he and his wife had not thought of rezoning the property until they were approached by a member of the Planning Commission.
Planning Commission chairman Tony Young addressed the issue during the communication from the audience portion of the meeting. Young said he had approached the couple because he is a member of the Cleveland/Bradley Industrial Board.
“The reason for doing that is we have virtually no sellable property in Bradley County for new members of our new industry,” Young said. “I welcome the investigation and I would request a vote of confidence or no confidence by the County Commission on my positions.”
The issue of whether Bradley County will join the cities of Cleveland and Charleston in providing additional funding for the Bradley County 911 Communications Center was again discussed Monday.
A resolution to provide the funding was placed on the agenda. Finance committee Chair Connie Wilson said she planned on updating the resolution to list how it would be funded before the commission voted on it.
Fifth District Commissioner Jeff Yarber said he had received some phone calls from people worried the Commission would take the proposed raises out of the budget in order to provide the needed additional funding.
Wilson said she “would not do that to our employees.” She also said the money could not be taken out of the county’s general fund because of the state requirement of having 10 percent of the budget in the general fund.
She said she would be looking into what other options the county had.
“We are going to be very limited in what we can do,” Wilson said.
Commissioners were presented an updated version of the 2012-13 fiscal year budget with changes made by the finance committee at its last meeting.
