LaGRANGE – The Troup County Board of Commissioners considered several requests during their first work session at the new time on Thursday, including a grant request from the Juvenile Court, a hiring request from the Elections & Registration Department and a text amendment to the development and design standards.

Juvenile Justice Incentive Grant

The commission considered a request from the Juvenile Court to apply for the Juvenile Justice Incentive Grant from the state, which would not require matching funds from the county, and a request to allow the court to accept the grant if it is awarded. This is the fifth time that the department has applied for the grant.

“We would be providing the same service if we receive the grant as we did this year, which is the multi-systemic therapy,” said Chief Probation Officer Nicole Kostial. “We would be able to serve 24 families, and we are asking for $238,000.”

The number of families could vary slightly if someone failed out of the program since the number is determined by the cost of four months in the program, but Kostial expected the final number to remain close to that estimated 24. The funding would go exclusively to youth from the county who are identified as good candidates for the program through an assessment.

“It is only allowed to be used on our county kids that are high risk,” said Kostial. “There is an assessment that has to be done, and so they aren’t pre-identified. As the children are placed on probation, they are assessed, and their families are assessed to make sure that they are the appropriate family to receive this very intensive service because it requires a lot of the parents as well.”

The grant aims to discourage youth have been through juvenile court from making those choices part of a lifestyle by examining delinquency risk and implementation quality of programs with an encouraged focus on high risk youth.

Hiring

The Troup County Elections & Registration department requested to lift the hiring freeze to replace an employee who had found employment elsewhere. The position is a part-time budgeted position.

Design Standards

The board of commissioners also discussed striking a phrase from the current design standards for a single family home.

“There was one sentence: ’Vinyl lap siding may not be used on more than 25 percent of the front façade of the dwelling unit,’ and staff believes that we should strike that sentence,” said Senior Building Official Jay Anderson. “It was probably good for that particular time that it was put in, but the way materials are made these days – (they) are much more aesthetically pleasing – we don’t think that it is really applicable these days.”

Anderson noted that at normal setback from the road, it would be difficult to see what kind of siding was used anyway, and some commissioners noted that the limitation seemed overly restrictive.

“A homeowner out in the middle of the county – in the un-incorporated area – wants to build a small home that can’t even be seen from the road, and they don’t like the fact that the county is telling them what they can and cannot put on the front of their house,” said Commissioner Lewis Davis. “That is the kind of restriction – to my thought – are more for subdivisions, where if a subdivision wants to put a restriction on what type homes go in that subdivision then that is their responsibility, but I just don’t see us controlling that.”

The change would need to go before the zoning board before the commission could vote on it, so that change would not be reviewed by the commission until the April 18 meeting.

The Troup County Board of Commissioners plans to meet on Tuesday at 9 a.m. at 100 Ridley Ave.

Reach Alicia B. Hill at alicia.hill@lagrangenews.com or at 706-884-7311, Ext. 2154.