Avondale Ethics Board dismisses complaint against city commission
The seldom-used Avondale Estates ethics board dismissed a complaint filed against the city’s five-person Board of Mayor and Commissioners on August 20. The probable hearing was brief, with Chairman Patrick O’Connor concluding, “The complaint doesn’t set forth sufficient facts to constitute an alleged violation.”
Earlier this month John Pomberg, a member of the Planning & Zoning Board, filed a complaint stating that an agreement between the city’s BOMC and developer Trammell Crow Residential violated Georgia’s Open Meeting Law.
That agreement, couched within a proposed development contract, states that Trammell Crow agrees to “improve the Park Property [in] Avondale Estates by removing asphalt from approximately 2.5 acres [and] grading the area and planting grass …”
The “park property” is part of four acres owned by the city and separate from the proposed Trammell Crow development site several blocks west.
Succinctly, the complaint declares the agreement was made in a forum not open to the public.
The ethics board countered that it doesn’t matter if the agreement was made in public or not. There are 11 standards of conduct in Avondale Estates’ code of ordinances that fall under the ethics board’s jurisdiction. An open meetings violation—if that in fact occurred—is not one of them. Instead Georgia’s Open Meeting Law confers jurisdiction on the superior court.
“The range of our jurisdiction is pretty limited,” O’Connor told the AJC. “Even if it goes to the superior court, and the superior court had found a violation of the open meeting act, it still might not be an ethics violation. At least that’s the way I read the law.”
