Q2: What are your goals as a city commissioner?
One of my goals was to… work with our police department and fire department and work to get them more money because they were grossly underpaid. We’ve accomplished that goal right now. We worked and they got a raise that went into effect August 1. That brought them up to a comparable level with other cities around northwest Georgia and even really over into northeast Alabama. Now, did we get them where we want them? No, but we are much closer than what we were six months ago. That was one of the goals.
We are in bad need for workforce housing, and I think that we’re going to have to work out something to get some workforce housing built. By workforce housing, I mean houses that are in the $175-$250,000 range. That will allow people to come into Rome, get a job, and be able to have housing for their families.
We want affordable housing… so that we can have people able to make a living, tend to their children, their wives, their husbands, and be able to grow and bring people into the city. We’ve met with some developers about doing that very thing and building these houses. What’s holding the developers and builders back right now is the cost of supplies. They used to could buy their supplies at $120-125 a square foot, and since COVID came into play, those costs are now up to $175-180 a square foot. To build an affordable workforce home, now instead of it costing $150-175,000 dollars, it’s costing them probably $225-250 to build it.
They’ve come to the city and asked for some help because the city needs it, they’re willing to provide it, but they’re looking for some help in the cost of the homes. It’s something the city’s talking about. I can’t say that this is where we’re going with it, because I don’t know just yet, but we have kicked around the idea of incentivizing the builder or the developer. It’s just going to be a question of can the city afford to help, and will it be enough for the developer to say “okay, we can do this”? We’re still trying to figure out what’s the best route to go.