South Fulton council and development authority press for clearer, regular project communication

At a joint meeting, City of South Fulton council members and the South Fulton Development Authority (SFDA) discussed gaps in communication about development projects and asked staff to deliver clearer, more regular reports so both bodies and the public can track proposals and incentives.
The meeting matters because council members said they are frequently contacted about projects they do not know the details of, and development authority members said they often learn of proposals only when developers request tax incentives. That timing, both sides said, prevents coordinated review of tradeoffs such as commercial mix, traffic mitigation and public benefits.
Councilmember Linda Becker Pritchett raised the issue directly, asking why the SFDA sometimes did not know what projects were coming before council votes or public hearings. “Someone should be there to see what’s coming before the council,” she said, arguing the authority needs earlier notice so it can weigh incentives against council priorities.
SFDA board member Dana Tucker Davis said some authority members follow public hearings individually but do not always receive formal, systematized reports: “We don’t approve anything … we don't approve anything and we've said in meetings and we said, well, no one contacted us about that,” she said. Davis also told the group the retail recruitment reports are kept confidential in a secure file but that staff has begun sharing a redacted version with council.
Staff presented immediate steps. Assistant city management and economic development staff said they will: 1) provide the SFDA and council with regular project updates and redacted retail-recruitment summaries; 2) prepare a single, searchable spreadsheet or web page listing active and completed projects, key dates and incentive requests; and 3) develop a communication protocol so the SFDA learns of zoning and planning applications that are likely to request abatements at an early stage.
Attendees recommended a joint training session for both boards and staff so everyone understands the separate roles of the city’s planning, council, the SFDA and the Downtown Development Authority (DDA). Attorney guidance at the meeting urged that in-depth private negotiations should be brought to the full body rather than handled only in one-on-one conversations.
The council and SFDA also asked staff to confirm scheduling for a Retail Strategies presentation and to circulate meeting minutes and development-authority materials online. The meeting ended with both bodies moving into executive session to discuss real estate, litigation, personnel and cybersecurity matters; they returned and adjourned without taking any public votes tied to those executive-session topics.
A follow-up: staff agreed to produce the requested spreadsheet and to propose a standing schedule for joint updates so the SFDA and council can evaluate incentives and public benefits earlier in each project’s timeline.