At the center of a Monday night Town of Bethlehem meeting in Barrow County was a piece of property on Manger Avenue currently owned by the township.
Mayor Chris Lelle was overridden, with three councilors voting to “veto his veto.” The issue at hand was whether to put $30,000 of the town’s money into a property at 742 Manger Avenue that was purchased in 2024.
“Whenever you vote, you vote in the majority, you have the power to do that,” Lelle told the council. “I’ll just let it reflect that I’m 100% opposed to wasting taxpayer money.”
The subject property was bought by the town in June of 2024 for $425,000 with a down payment of $25,000 out of the general fund from Snellville-based H2J Investments. Some of the councilors took issue with the property not being utilized by the town in the nearly two years since it was purchased.
“I’ve never bought a piece of property myself that I’ve just let it sit and do nothing,” Post 4 Councilor Sharon Johnson said at the meeting. “I’d like to make a motion to veto the veto on getting the brick house on Manger ready to be rented.”
Post 3’s Eric Dailey seconded Johnson’s motion and Post 2’s Doug Koestel voted in favor.
Post 1’s Sally Brown was the lone councilor in attendance who was not in agreement.
Lelle said he believed the move was a bad decision, and was in favor of having a group come in to assess the property before moving forward.
“This is a very poor financial decision, zero financial analysis done going into this,” Lelle said. “The parking lot requires additional roof, there’s a whole piece of the building to be brought into what it needs to be done, you have nothing presented to any of the residents here in the town that says this is a good financial decision.”
When he brought up a group coming in to do an analysis, Dailey asked at what cost.
“Zero dollars,” Lelle replied. “Right now we’re shooting from the hip, saying ‘we still have $30,000 for a building’ … just the building itself comes in at roughly $70,000.”
Johnson told Lelle that people in the community have asked her why they bought the property in the first place.
“It’s important to how long it takes to get anything else going,” Johnson said. “If we decide to sell it and let somebody else develop it, you’re going to recoup money anyway … why should you get a firm to come in and charge us to tell us what we’re going to do?”
“If zero dollars is too expensive, I’m sorry,” Lelle replied. “I hope that you can create the plans that are needed from a permitting standpoint, and we can bring the building into code compliance, and we can complete that work that’s going to do all of that for the $30,000 … I hope I’m wrong. I hope that you guys prove me wrong.”
Lelle finished with telling the council he would not manage the project, and would only ensure the town’s policies and procedures are followed.