Joint panel to discuss city, county shared projects

♦ Annexation and utility billing services are among the planned topics.

Rome and Floyd County leaders will address shared issues, from annexation to the employee health clinic and the future of the commissions’ website, during a meeting of the Joint Services Committee Tuesday morning.

The committee includes Mayor Bill Collins and Commissioner Craig Mcdaniel from the city and, from the county, Commission Chair Scotty Hancock and Commissioner Wright Bagby. However, Commissioner Randy Quick will sit in on the discussion in Mcdaniel’s stead Tuesday along with the city and county managers, Sammy Rich and Jamie Mccord.

They will meet at 8 a.m. in the County Administration Building, 12 E. Fourth Ave.

When Floyd County computer servers got infected a couple of months ago it caused a number of problems for both governments.

Collins said there has been some discussion of the need to keep the website updated with greater frequency and county officials are hoping to find a way to make it easier to upgrade.

The feasibility of combining water billing services is also on the agenda for discussion.

Both the city and county have water departments but the city handles all of the sewer services and billing. A single billing operation is being considered as a possible money saver.

Discussion related to the employee health clinics is also on the agenda. The two governments have had separate contracts with Redmond Regional Medical Center that are expiring at essentially the same time, according to Hancock. The discussion will focus on whether they want to make that a joint contract going forward.

The annexation issue is also expected to generate a lot of discussion.

If the city moves forward with efforts to annex county islands of property that are fully encircled by the city, it would have more of an impact on the county school tax base than county government maintenance and operation.

Hancock and Collins both said the agenda will include a discussion about the city parking management program also taking on the responsibility, including ticket writing, at the county’s Third Avenue and Sixth Avenue parking decks as well as the courthouse lot.

Commissioners will also get an update on the 2013 SPLOST funded road work in the Honeysuckle Ridge community off Callier Springs Road. Some utility issues had slowed down completion of that project for a while.