City Council Will Be Busy Thursday

The will be busy approving contracts, bid awards and purchases and hearing the requests of citizens to amend zoning laws at its meeting Thursday night.

John Lewis is asking the council to strike an amendment from the city's zoning ordinance that calls for limits on the types of businesses that can operate near an apartment complex. Lewis wants to convert the property at 100 Cook St. to a multiuse apartment and commercial property, and the current amendment has hamstrung his efforts.

The city manager has recommended striking the amendment from the ordinance.

Lewis' mixed-use building also needs a special-use permit. The permit would allow apartments, commercial and office uses in the same building.

The building at 100 Cook St. was built in the 1930s and was once used industrially but now lies vacant and was rezoned to G-C with conditions in 2002. The city's Planning Commission has recommended the approval of the permit.

A largely procedural hearing will be held regarding the annual update to the Capital Improvements Element of the Comprehensive Plan. This update lists the impact fee receipts and expenditures for fiscal 2011, which ran from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011. The city adopted impact fees in 2006, and they went into effect on Jan. 1, 2007. The current fee is set at zero.

After the hearing, the finished update will be sent to the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission and the Department of Community Affairs before it is adopted by the council.

The council will then discuss an ordinance that will amend the general fund and special revenue fund budgets to comply with generally accepted accounting principles. The amendment will keep the budgets of those funds at a zero-based level, where revenues equal expenses.

A license agreement to make road improvements over state-owned property, a part of the cooperative effort to improve Country Club Drive, is also on the agenda. The council is also expected to renew its retiree insurance plan with United Healthcare.

There are five bid awards and purchases on the agenda, including the painting of steel pole and transformer hoist structures and steel pole light racks and a roof replacement at the laboratory building.

The monthly financial statement for August will be read. The city's general fund netted a profit of $199,231; the gas fund lost $496,111.

The last item on the agenda is an appeal by the , and of the Alcohol Control Board's rulings on the sale of alcohol to minors.

Join Cartersville Patch Thursday at 7 p.m. for live coverage of the meeting.