The Chattahoochee Hills City Council last week voted to hire Fayetteville resident Jim Williams as the city’s new manager. Williams is no stranger to municipal government in Fayette and Fulton counties, having served as city planner in Peachtree City from the late 1980s through 2002 and then as the Fairburn city administrator from 2002-2010.
Williams was hired by unanimous vote at the Dec. 6 council meeting. Mayor Don Hayes said a committee including Councilman John Taylor, Councilwoman Faye Peek Godwin and Mayor-elect Tom Reed had reviewed 30 applications for the positions and had interviewed a number of candidates.
“We feel like we have the best candidate for the city,” Hayes said of Williams. “We’ve got a winner. He is a gentleman who knows what he’s doing and he doesn’t need a playbook. He wrote the playbook.”
The City Council agreed. Councilman Carl Hattaway described Williams as an area resident able to give the city guidance.
Along with the words of other council members was that of Councilman Rodney Peek, who said he was excited about the choice of Williams to serve as city manager.
Williams said the position will be part-time and he will begin the job in January.
Commenting after the meeting, Williams said he has no pre-conceived notions about Chatt Hills’ direction for the future, adding that he will review the city’s comprehensive plan and expects to meet with all city staff and supervisors before he starts in January to get their feel for the city and its future.
“I don’t want just a working relationship with the staff but for everybody to be a part of a team,” Williams said, adding that he wants staff to call him anytime for any reason. “I want to learn about their vision for the city.”
Williams also noted that after the beginning of the year he wants to have a series of retreats with staff, elected officials and the citizens designed to help forge working relationships, to discuss the city’s future and to get a clear idea on how to accomplish future goals.
And at a follow-up retreat Williams said he would offer his input based on the information gathered from the previous meetings.
Williams will bring with him to the new job years of planning experience in Peachtree City and planning and administrative experience from Fairburn. But he maintains there is more to the story.
“This is not about Peachtree City or Fairburn. This is about Chatt Hills and its vision for the future of this beautiful area,” Williams said.
So what and where is Chattahoochee Hills? The city is certainly known to many, but not all, of the residents of Fayette and Coweta counties. Chatt Hills is situated in the westernmost area of south Fulton County and is representative of a truly rural landscape.
History was made June 19, 2007 in south Fulton County as Chatt Hills residents gave overwhelming approval to form the new city of Chattahoochee Hill Country. A turn-out of more than 47 percent of registered voters resulted in 83 percent approving the charter of the new city.
A prime mover behind the decision to establish the city was so that citizens could control their own destiny, especially in issues relating to development, rather than relying on Fulton County. The idea for the city is to keep the overwhelming majority of land permanently green while having development centered in a number of “hamlets” and small number of “villages.”
Chatt Hills is nearly completely rural, filled with rolling hills, woods and pasture land. It is bordered by Coweta County and Palmetto on the south, by the Chattahoochee River on the west and north by the Cedar Grove area of unincorporated south Fulton on the north and east.
In terms of size, Chatt Hills comes in at approximately 33,000 acres. By way of comparison, the land mass of Peachtree City totals approximately 15,600 acres.
And as for its population, the city is home to approximately 2,400 people with the hamlet known as Serenbe featuring by far the largest concentration of residences and businesses.
An indication of the mindset and determination of the city’s residents can easily be seen in the way the new city acquired its parkland from Fulton County once the area was set to become a city. Residents themselves in a matter of weeks after the June 2007 vote to incorporate took it upon themselves and raised more than $250,000, then gave the money to the city to purchase from Fulton County the 780-acre Cochran Mill Park, the 103-acre Hutcheson Ferry Park and 234 acres of greenspace property that fronts the Chattahoochee River on the city’s west side.
That type of tenacious approach to community-based problem solving without relying on government is sadly absent in many communities today. But for the residents of Chatt Hills, they cared enough to identify the need and accomplish the task. True to form, they believed they could.
