By HARVEY SIMPSON
CORDELE — More than 22 years after receiving its previous flood plain map, Cordele City Commission members adopted Tuesday a new one that showed the amended city limits effective as of Sept. 25.
City manager Jean Burnette told commission she would estimate that 300 parcels had been annexed into the city since the previous map was prepared in March, 1987.
Without such a map, Burnette said financial institutions would be hard pressed to approve mortgage loans. If a property is in a flood plain area and is mortgaged, the owner must purchase flood insurance.
The city had been working on the new map since Nov., 2008, and had until Sept. 25 to adopt the map prepared by an engineering company under contract to state and federal governments. It is officially known as FIRM (Flood Insurance Rate Map).
There was good news and bad news for commissioners in other areas.
First for the good that comes in the form of a $500,000 stimulus check awarded the city for the repair and maintenance of the sanitary sewer line running to the wastewater treatment plant.
Burnette said the city will select someone to represent it when a “big check ceremony is held on Sept. 25 at Callaway Gardens.
Commissioners were also pleased to hear that the Planning Commission had given approval for construction of 56 single-family houses in a Joe Wright Drive S. development known as Rosewood Estates.
Now for the bad that was contained in two letters received recently from the Department of Community Affairs.
One of the correspondence from that agency advised the city that its applications for FY 2009 funding in the amount of $500,000 to construct an additional building at the Boys and Girls Club had been denied.
The second correspondence informed the city its request for $300,000 funding to revitalize housing in the Gillespie-Selden District that generally lies between 11th-15th Streets and from the Heart of Georgia Railroad to 15 1/2 Alley was not approved.
In other activity, commission members:
Had the first reading of an ordinance to amend the abandoned vehicles mandate. The amendment would give discretion to a city official to allow an extension of time for an owner to remove such vehicles from their property.
—Heard from Burnette about a recent Southwest Georgia Railroad Excursion Authority meeting that included a reception for John Thompson, who represented the Department of Natural Resources on SAM Shortline.
Thompson had been involved with that group for some eight years and is now retiring. “He’s always provided excellent counsel and guidance to help make SAM Shortline the success it has been,” Burnette said.
— Learned that since the end of May the city has made 109 cases under the unsafe building and premises ordinance. Of that number, 27 have been closed with successful results. The remaining 62 are still pending.
