Toccoa delayed decision on Savannah Lane abandonment, leaving route’s fate unresolved

Toccoa’s City Commission unanimously postponed a proposed abandonment of Savannah Lane and part of an alley at its Nov. 25, 2013 work session, tabling the second reading until Dec. 16. The commission said the delay would give the parties time to work toward a satisfactory solution, leaving the proposed change to the street and alley right of way undecided at that meeting.

The decision matters because abandoning a street or alley right of way can affect the future use and public status of land adjoining the route. For residents and property owners, the central question was not whether commissioners paused the proposal — that action is documented — but whether Savannah Lane and the alley segment ultimately remained public, were abandoned, or were addressed through a revised arrangement.

By Nov. 25, the abandonment proposal had reached a second reading before the commission. Rather than complete that stage of consideration, commissioners carried a unanimous motion to table it until their Dec. 16 meeting, explicitly linking the pause to further efforts by the parties to reach a satisfactory solution. That sequence establishes a delay in the proceeding, not a resolution of the underlying proposal.

The City Commission took the formal action, while the minutes refer more generally to “the parties” who were to use the interval before Dec. 16 to seek a solution. The record does not identify those parties, describe their respective positions, or say what terms they were considering. It therefore supports reporting that there was an effort to resolve the matter, but not assigning motives, demands or agreement to any particular resident, owner or city official.

The documented action was a unanimous tabling of the second reading, not an approval or denial of abandonment. The Nov. 25 minutes set Dec. 16 as the planned return date, but they do not state whether the matter returned then, whether the proposal was amended, or whether commissioners later adopted another disposition. No implementation step is established by this account.

The next concrete public step is locating a subsequent City Commission agenda, minutes, ordinance or other official record that expressly addresses Savannah Lane and the alley portion after the Nov. 25 tabling. Until such a record establishes whether the Dec. 16 consideration occurred and what the commission decided, the final status of the proposed abandonment remains unresolved.