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County attorney recommends raising maximum code-enforcement penalty to $1,000 to align with state law
Summary
The county attorney presented a proposed amendment to Chapter 2-1 of the Dougherty County Code of Ordinances to raise the maximum penalty for code-enforcement violations to $1,000, bringing the county in line with state law.
County Attorney Alex Sharlow presented a proposed amendment to the general provisions (Chapter 2-1) of the Dougherty County Code of Ordinances. The most substantive change described was increasing the maximum penalty for code-enforcement violations from $500 to $1,000, which Sharlow said aligns the county with the state-law maximum and with practices in other local governments.
Sharlow told commissioners the change harmonizes the code with existing state limits and with penalties already applied for animal-control violations; commissioners and the county administrator expressed support for the amendment as a way to give enforcement more "teeth." The transcript records the attorney's summary and a positive response from the county administrator, but no formal adoption vote appears in the work-session record.
The county attorney said the ordinance updates include mostly definitional clarifications across several provisions and that he would bring additional sections forward in future work sessions to avoid inundating the commission with too much material at once.
