Georgetown takes up draft qualifications for city committees

GEORGETOWN — City Council is taking up the task of revising its regulations for serving on one of the city’s many committees and boards.

A draft of such regulations was presented to the council at its Aug. 25 meeting, at which city administrator Sandra Yúdice asked the council for feedback and revisions to be considered at council meetings in the coming months. 

“At this point, we need to know from council if there are any revisions to the individual ordinances as far as eligibility for applicants or any other revision that we need to do to the ordinances,” Yúdice said. “Once those ordinances are revised, we will bring back the ordinances one at a time before council… and it will require two readings to make those revisions to the ordinance that has created a particular board or commission.”

In one specific instance, Yúdice asked the board to decide on a number of meeting absences per quarter that would be deemed “excessive” and thus be considered grounds for removal from a board by the city council.

The section on grounds for removal is likely to see more than one change before adoption. The draft presented Aug. 25 listed conviction for driving under the influence while serving on the board as grounds for removal, but not other offenses resulting in misdemeanor or felony convictions.

Councilman Jim Clements asked for a discussion of the boards themselves, noting his concerns about the city Stormwater Appeals Board. The council adopted an ordinance in January 2021, effective that April, allowing property owners to appeal to the three-member board for a stormwater fee reduction once a year.

Clements pointed out that the section of city code outlining the stormwater fee appeals does not include a minimum percentage of impervious area — the part of a property consisting of pavement or other materials that do not allow water to infiltrate the ground — required for a property to have its appeal considered.

“I don’t see any basis for anybody to even be able to appeal the stormwater fee as we sit today,” Clements said.

Yúdice, who said no one had been appointed to that particular board to date, replied that feedback like Clements’ is what the city needs before the regulations are adopted. Georgetown Mayor Carol Jayroe instructed the council to submit any proposed revisions via email by Sept. 15.

The qualifications of city board members played a role in a pair of matters the council took up in the first seven months of the year, causing significant pushback from the local steel union in one case and months of vacancy on a city board in another.

On July 21, the council declined to reappoint Donald Gilliard to the city Board of Zoning Appeals in a 3-4 vote that prompted councilmembers Clarence Smalls and Hobson Henry Milton to leave the building before the council adjourned.

Gilliard, who clashed with board chairwoman Ede Graves during hearings on the status of Liberty Steel Georgetown, asserted that it was “obvious” the move was a political one. Jayroe said the council was purely concerned with qualifications when it voted not to reappoint Gilliard and appointed Jerry Miller to the board instead.

On March 17, the council adopted an amendment to Article XVII of the city zoning ordinance, which lays out the regulations of the Community Appearance Board. The amendment updated the qualifications of board members, and the seven-member board was “expired” at that time, requiring new members to apply for seats.

Members of the board, which considers building permits in Georgetown’s Urban Core Overlay District and variances from the regulations of the Main Corridor Overlay District, were not appointed until July 21. That left the city without a sitting Community Appearance Board for months while sign applications from local businesses piled up. The Community Appearance Board reconvened on Aug. 30 to consider six such applications.