GAINESVILLE – “This meeting is adjourned.” Those were the words of Gainesville Mayor Danny Dunagan Tuesday evening as he gaveled to a close the final city council meeting of 2017.
Dunagan said he couldn’t believe how fast 2017 had passed, but he also admitted that he was eagerly looking forward to 2018 and where the city is headed.
“There’s a lot to be thankful for,” Dunagan told this reporter. “We’ve come a long way.”
Several challenges loom on the horizon, Dunagan confided, with none more pressing than “traffic”. “We’re addressing some of our traffic problems; we’ve still got a ways to go, but we’re working on them as fast as we can.”
Dunagan said housing and commercial development was running strong and with an increased tax digest (and the subsequent increase in tax revenues) some of the traffic fixes now under consideration might be able to appear sooner than anticipated.
“I think we’re going to see some growth in the budget,” Dunagan suggested.
Without getting into too much detail because of ongoing discussions and negotiations, Dunagan said, “We’ve got a lot of interest in our old jail site, some very quality developments.”
He was referring to the parcel of now-vacant land on Main Street that the city purchased from Hall County in 2012 for $7.2-million. It continued to serve as a detention center until its demolition earlier this year.
“But our main goal for 2018, I think, is going to be traffic,” Dunagan said, returning to his previous train-of-thought. “We’ve got to do something about our traffic downtown.”
“We’ve got some short-term fixes and we’ve got some long-term fixes, and we’re working on getting them done as quick as we can.”
Dunagan added that he saw the city’s effort to attract and annex “island” properties winding down. “Island” properties are parcels of land in unincorporated Hall County that are surrounded, or nearly surrounded, by city property.
“I don’t see any more annexations unless someone comes in wanting to annex. We’re not looking to annex any properties unless there’s a request for that annexation.”
The city council won’t be idle very long: following time off for Christmas and New Year’s they hold their first work session of 2018 on Thursday, January 4th...and you can be sure “traffic” will be included somewhere in the discussion that morning.
