A Cherokee County recycling company facing eviction by the county filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization Friday, a move that may allow it to stay open for business.
Ball Ground Recycling owes the county, its partner in the plant, about $1.7 million. The company had been given a 10-day eviction notice to pay the county $60,000, or vacate the property. The deadline was Tuesday afternoon, said Board of Commissioners Chairman Buzz Ahrens, who hand-delivered the 10-day eviction notice to company owner Jimmy Bobo.
The recycling plant has become a huge controversy in the county in recent weeks as some citizens questioned the commission’s decision in 2005 to form a partnership with Bobo.
In 2006, the commission formed the Resource Recovery Development Authority to sell $18.1 million in bonds to fund moving Bobo’s recycling plant from a location on Blalock Road, where neighbors had complained about the noise and pollution from the facility. The plant, which recycles waste wood and converts it to landscaping mulch, employed about 100 people during the county building boom.
When the economy tanked, so did the company’s business. That left county taxpayers on the hook for about $100,000 a month in bond payments to the Bank of New York. The bankruptcy filing lists Resource Recovery Development Authority as the company’s single biggest creditor. The company owes RRDA $1,724,641.88. The next largest debt is $20,000, owed to an auditing company.
Most of the equipment at the plant is owned by the county, Ahrens said, and the bankruptcy won’t change that.
Cherokee has been making the bond payments since last summer as Bobo’s business has struggled and he’s slashed his staff to about 50 employees.
“I’m upside down on my mortgage, like a lot of people,” he said last week, before filing.
County Commissioner Harry Johnston said Tuesday it’s unclear if the filing will allow Bobo to continue to operate. He said the county is still responsible, either way, for the $100,000-a-month bond payments, as it looks for a new firm, or partnership, to take over the facility.
Bobo and his Atlanta attorney, Herbert Broadfoot, did not return calls seeking comment.
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