Several years ago, city officials devised an imaging plan for Flowery Branch; unfortunately, there was no budget for signage at that time, but now that the financial status of the city is more stable, the plan is moving forward.
City council members voted last week to approve a request from the city's finance department to begin seeking bids on signage for the city.
Bill Andrew, Flowery Branch City Manager, said the city needs some better identification for a couple of reasons.
"Our zip code extends into three other cities legally and of course, is somewhat broad into unincorporated Hall County, so we get a lot of calls from people about city services, who aren't actually in the city," Andrew said. "Then, we want to give people a sense when they enter the city, they see a different look with landscaping and signage and things like that. We just want people to know they're in Flowery Branch."
Andrew said city staff actually came up with a large part of an imaging plan three years ago, but there was no money for the project at that time.
"Now that we have the Old Towne Flowery Branch development actually beginning to happen, we wanted to start moving on this," Andrew said. "We didn't want to ask for bids if we didn't have a budget for it."
With some help from Sky Design, the development department determined a complete imaging package will cost just under $350,000. The imaging would be done in three phases, with each phase requiring about one-third of the budget. Financing would come from SPLOST VII and from the city's local resources fund.
With permission from council to seek bids for the first phase of the work, Andrew said he hopes to have bids for council to review by the end of the year.
