Hall Commission adopts an Agri-Entertainment ordinance

GAINESVILLE - Hall County now has a new ordinance on the books, an agri-entertainment ordinance that permits and regulates country style weddings on agriculture zoned land without a commercial zoning change. County Commission Chairman Dick Mecum said Thursday night he did not see the need to table it as he suggested at Monday's work session.

Commissioners appproved the ordinance with several changes proposed by Commissioner Craig Lutz with a unanimous yes vote, including Mecum's, who said the ordinance he supported was much simpler and compact.

"The problem was there were so many events that required so many different criteria; it just made it confusing," Mecum said. "We got it down to the problem and the problem is wedding venues."

Mecum said before there was no control on agriculture wedding venues, but with passage of the ordinance the county may begin to control it.

"The control factor is not so much controlling what they do on their property but it has a lot to do with safety," Mecum added. "A lot of these places that have had these types of events on their property have not had safety items, such as fire prevention with sprinklers, or safety exit doors for evacuation, fire extinguishers, those kinds of things."

Under the ordinance those items will be required along with a building permit and a business license along with commission approval.

North Hall homeowners W.J. Wesley and Ray Chastain both told the commission board they wanted the ordinance tabled, still unsure it would protect neighboring homes from noise.

"We took input from the public, including some emails and we discussed it," Lutz said. "The biggest change was taking out some of the things that really weren't ag-entertainment and were more ag-business. We really wanted to just deal with what the issue was, which was these event venues with these barns that have come up in the past."

Lutz said he wants county staff to come up with a separate ordinance in a couple of months to regulate events like corn mazes, wine tastings, and similar events. He added that the ordinance contains a 'word of warning' for agriculture property owners with land that is tax exempt as a conservation district.

"If you are having an event on your property for your family and it's not a commerce action, you can do that," Lutz said. "That's what the state senate bill was designed to do, but when you're building these commercial venues to have event facilities, it's not really conservation use anymore and potentially it's going on the tax records. That's one of the things we wanted to make sure we added into this, a warning flag for people that says if you're going to do this you may not be in the covenant anymore and you need to keep that under consideration."