TIFTON — The Tifton City Council and the Tift County Board of Commissioners approved a service delivery strategy update at their respective meetings Monday night.

The update requests a year-long extension to the original service delivery strategy deadline from Department of Community Affairs, pushing the deadline to June 30, 2019.

The agreement also adds on Ruth’s Cottage and the Patticake House to the list of services that are involved in service delivery negotiations.

Adding Ruth’s Cottage to the service delivery list was necessary for it to be considered for a $750,000 Community Block Development Grant that the county applied for earlier this year, according to DCA.

The grant would be used to help fund a new facility for Ruth’s Cottage and the Patticake House.

DCA will announce grant awards in the fall.

This signing comes after disagreements between city and county officials about how to proceed.

Tifton City Council

At the Tifton City Council meeting, city attorney Rob Wilmot said that city officials have been working with the county and the DCA to draft something to submit that the city can certify as accurate.

Wilmot highlighted water, sewer, E911 and the landfill as items that still need to be worked out.

City manager Pete Pyrzenski said that approving this agreement and extension would secure their status with DCA, adding that the situation the city and county find themselves in is “certainly nonconventional.”

Tifton Mayor Julie Smith added that approving this resolution would allow the cities of Tifton, Omega and Ty Ty and the county to stay in the process and move forward.

“This is only the beginning of the work,” Smith said. She added that she appreciated the DCA’s willingness to work with them to resolve the issue.

Council member Jack Folk expressed concern about making sure that approving this resolution did not mean that the items that aren’t notated as needing to be changed will be considered settled.

Smith informed the council that service delivery agreements can be amended at any time as long as all parties agree.

“We can continue to have those conversations,” Smith said. She added that a silver lining of this process was that it “forces us into communication” with the county, and that she is looking forward to RCPCH getting the funding they need and attending a ribbon cutting soon.

Pyrzenski said that the biggest lesson learned from this process was to continually look at and update service delivery agreements, rather than waiting until the mandated ten-year review process.

Tift County Board of Commissioners

“I appreciate all the hard work of everybody,” said county manager Jim Carter at the county meeting Monday night. “The councilors, the commissioners and everyone involved.”

“Regarding service delivery, I know it’s been a process, a long arduous process,” said commissioner Stan Stalnaker. “This process wasn’t the easiest. I know sometimes we got crossways — every, any, which way, you could call it. But it appears we’ve worked it out. I know we’ve still got some issues to work out…That CBDG grant is going to go through and I thank everybody for doing what they did to make that happen. It wasn’t the easier thing to do, but we all came together.”

“I would like to echo the comments,” said Tifton Mayor Julie Smith, who attended the meeting. “How much we appreciate working with the county and getting to this point. Saving the Ruth’s Cottage CBDG grant — I think it’s good time for Tifton and Tift county and [I’m] looking forward to working through the rest of service delivery.”

Service delivery

The city and county governments have been working for months to come to an agreement about the service delivery strategy and how services like animal control, E911, mosquito control, the fire department, solid waste collection and others are funded. Those negotiations are ongoing.

Speaking in an April article in The Tifton Gazette about those negotiations, city and county officials said that while they were coming to an agreement on most service delivery areas, harder to come to an agreement on was water/sewer services.

Discussions about equalizing the city and county water/sewer rates have been held on and off for the better part of two decades.

“It’s been an ongoing discussion for 19 years,” said commissioner Melissa Hughes, in that article. “But I am very confident because both boards are working very diligently to make that happen.”

While no committee member wanted to delve into the specifics of the ongoing water rate negotiations, equalizing the rate throughout Tifton and Tift County could possibly lower the water rate for residents who have been paying higher rates for years while raising the rate for residents who have been paying less.

Ruth’s Cottage

With the city and the county signing off on making “transitional housing” part of the service delivery agreement, Ruth’s Cottage, a domestic violence shelter that’s been serving the community for more than 15 years, can be considered for the $750,000 grant.

Ruth’s Cottage is in the middle of a fundraising campaign to build a new facility.

Currently, the operations of Ruth’s Cottage are spread across five buildings in different locations.

There’s the shelter itself, an administration building, two storage facilities for secure documents and a fifth building they use to store donations and supplies.

The new, 11,200 square-foot building would take Ruth’s Cottage from 12 to 25 beds.

The building would include several separate apartments, making room for people with several children.

The projected cost is $1.6 million.

The grants aren’t awarded until later in the fall.

Monetary donations for the new building can be made at www.stopthehurtga.org/capital-campaign.

Donations can also be sent to P.O. Box 2727, Tifton, GA 31793.

More information: 229-387-9697.