Athens-Clarke County committee recommends streamlining several advisory boards, updates to BAC handbook

The Athens-Clarke County Government Operations Committee spent most of its April 20 meeting reviewing a wide-ranging staff report that recommends restructuring several locally appointed boards and commissions, clarifying how construction-code appeals are handled, and updating the BAC (boards and commissions) policy manual.

The staff presentation summarized outreach to commissioners, BAC chairs and staff liaisons and proposed a mix of changes: letting the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) handle infrequent construction-code appeals rather than maintaining a separate local Construction Board of Appeals; keeping separate pension and deferred-compensation oversight bodies; sunsetting the currently inactive Commission on People with Disabilities and folding disability work more explicitly into the Human Relations Commission’s remit; keeping the Tree Council, Greenway Commission, Keep Athens-Clarke County Beautiful and Athens in Motion as separate bodies but improving coordination and ex-officio representation; formalizing SPLOST oversight as a BAC moving forward; and consolidating the six existing TAD advisory committees into a single 10-member TAD advisory board.

Why it matters: the proposals are framed as efficiency and coordination measures while preserving technical expertise and local priorities. Staff told the committee that many of the affected BACs are high-functioning and resist consolidation, but that some boards meet infrequently or face…