Hogansville updates lake rules

Published 8:00 am Thursday, July 8, 2021

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On Tuesday, the Hogansville City Council met to discuss several items. One was updated rules for Lake Jimmy Jackson.

“While we can’t be everywhere at one time, we do want to make sure that you all are on board with the new rules and regulations before we get signs made and get those posted out in the park,” City Manager Jonathan Lynn said. “There’s really not a whole lot different. We did kind of tidy up some of the language, and we added Letter Z — no diving, running, jumping, or backflipping off the dock.”

Lynn said the city had been getting a lot of complaints recently about people moving ropes over to the docks and jumping into the roped off area.

Whereas the rules previously didn’t allow pets, Lynn said they were updated to allow pets so long as they are kept on leashes and out of the beach area.

“That can be changed if people don’t pick up after their pets,” Lynn said.

The council also discussed revamping Hogansville’s amphitheater.

“What you have before you all tonight are essentially two different scopes for amphitheater renovation and concept planning — one from TSW and one from GMC,” Lynn said.

“We’re not asking anyone to vote on these tonight, but we did want to show you all what they’re looking at doing to make sure that we’re going in the right path.”

According to Lynn, the proposals showed that a survey will be needed.

“We will need some engineering done and then an enhanced scope of services to essentially come up with a set of plans that we could bid out to have the work done for whatever we want to see happen at the amphitheater,” he said.

Lynn demonstrated visual examples of TSW’s past projects.

“We have a lot of options at this point. And they’ve done Peachtree Corners, Lawrenceville, there’s Powder Springs and Douglasville in here as well. You can kind of see where we’re thinking, and obviously, it would be scaled down. We do have a budget,” he said.

Hogansville Mayor Bill Stankiewicz said that a survey of the property wasn’t needed because some surveying had been completed when the land was acquired.

“We can look at those, absolutely,” Lynn said.

The council also discussed a MEAG IPT, which stands for Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia Intergovernmental Power Transfer, according to Stankiewicz.

“This year, based upon our projected growth, [MEAG] said we were going to be short [on electrical power],” Lynn said.

To compensate for this, he explained that the city of Monroe could sell their excess power to Hogansville.

“I honestly believe we will not need them because that growth is not happening as quickly as MEAG has suggested, but this just puts it in place so that if we need it, we actually get it at a MEAG rate and not have to go out to a market rate,” Lynn said.

Lynn said Hogansville could potentially buy 474 kilowatts of power.

“There is no financial impact to the city because if we do need it, that amount is passed along in user fees because we have citizens using that amount of electricity,” he said.

The council voted to approve the IPT.

A couple of preliminary plats for developing subdivisions were also discussed and approved for Shallow Creek Subdivision and Villages at Huntcliff.

“We did receive a preliminary plat for phase two of Huntcliff, and they are seeking to add the subdivision’s final phase, an additional 83 lots that would extend northward from the existing development,” Lynn said.

Lynn said the Shallow Creek preliminary plat would create an additional 38 lots that would “wrap around” the existing subdivision.