by Arielle Robinson

Mableton’s City Council held two special-called meetings Monday and Tuesday to approve an updated city insurance ordinance.

The city voted unanimously Tuesday to amend Chapter 7, Article 2, which instructs the city on how to impose license fees on insurance companies operating in the city. The amended version, with two changes, can be read here.

The first change was that authorization was given to the mayor to waive penalties and late fees through February 29, 2024, under Chapter 7.

The second change is that the Occupation Tax Schedule A was updated under Chapter 7, classifying standard industrial classification fee ranges as identical to the county ones.

Interim City Attorney Emilia Walker-Ashby said that the insurance fees are anticipated to be the city’s second-largest revenue source.

Councilwoman Patricia Auch was absent due to an illness.

Earlier this week, Mayor Michael Owens told the Courier that the state of Georgia contacted the city and told them it needed to adopt the state’s updated version of the ordinance because it could have an impact on revenue.

Monday, Owens further explained the reasoning for the meetings. It was previously thought that last week’s council meeting would be the year’s final one.

“The basic reason…is that we utilized the [ordinance] Cobb County has, which is long-standing, been one in use, but since we are a new city, the state wants us to use a new version of that,” Owens said.

The seemingly rushed meetings are due to the city having to have this done by January 1. 

Walker-Ashby said the city needs to adopt the ordinance before January 1 to approve its entitlement to assess the fee. The Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner contacted her about amending the ordinance, she said.

Walker-Ashby also said she did not notice a large difference between the previous ordinance the city passed and this new one.

“I didn’t see anything within the county’s [insurance ordinance] that was not compliant,” Walker-Ashby said. “It appears just to be a preference to use their [the state’s] template for whatever reasons, and they didn’t communicate to me the reasons why they prefer their template over the county’s.”

The interim city attorney said the reason for the two meetings is due to a requirement in the city charter to have two readings on the ordinance and they cannot be on the same day.

Walker-Ashby explained how insurance collection works in Georgia.

“The state of Georgia collects all the insurance tax proceeds and then they distribute those proceeds to municipalities who elect to assess that particular tax and they base that by population,” Walker-Ashby said.

There was a procedural mistake at Tuesday’s meeting in approving the ordinance. The city initially voted to approve it, but was actually required by its insurance ordinance to have public comment before approving it to get comments on the fee schedule.

The city had to have a vote to open public comment.

After opening up for public comment on the ordinance, one woman asked how to find the city’s ordinances. They can be found on the city website. There were no more comments after that.

The city council then voted again unanimously to update its insurance ordinance.