It’s not over yet.
Amendments to Fort Oglethorpe’s charter are still possible, but it’s unclear where they’ll come from.
During the City Council’s most recent meeting, a second reading for an ordinance to amend the city’s charter per the city-council-appointed committee’s recommendation, died for lack of a motion. Steve Cooper, chairman of a separate committee appointed by Georgia state Sen. Jeff Mullis and Rep. Tom Weldon to review and amend the charter, said his committee’s recommendations are still moving forward.
According to Cooper, a message he received from Mullis states that the committee’s recommendations are being prepared by the legislative counsel and are still scheduled for action this legislative session.
“We expect that the recommendations that are now in the hands of the legislative counsel of the General Assembly of the state of Georgia, once finished, will be returned to Sen. Mullis and Rep. Weldon and will then be assigned a bill number for consideration by the General Assembly as a Senate bill or a House bill,” he said.
If the Legislature approves the changes, they will become law.
Mayor Lynn Long said he plans to bring the city-council-appointed committee’s recommendations back before the city council too.
Even though the city council did not vote to move forward with the city-council-appointed committee’s changes at that meeting, Councilman Earl Gray said the work wasn’t in vain.
“The existing charter has gotten us by since 1996 and I think we can continue to do business with the existing charter,” he said. “[City Attorney Robert Stultz] said both [proposed new charters] have some errors. We’re looking for things we think as a council that need to be changed to help this city do business better. That’s what we intend to do. We’re not choosing sides.
“We want to thank everyone who served on both of those committees. We’re kind of lucky we got that many people working on it.”