County gave away house without bids

Smith’s freebie, however, may still be an issue with the county commissioners, who don’t meet again until January. The Tax Assessor’s Office assessed the house before the move at $91,917, and the county code requires county property to be declared surplus and auctioned to the highest bidder.

Said Smith: “If we erred, I guess we should have held an auction. But that’s the county’s procedure, not the industrial authority’s… Our procedures are not necessarily that way.”

Shook initially told Smith that because of health problems, he and his wife Deonda planned to move out of their two-story home next door and into the single-story structure after it was renovated.

But after the 2,259-square-foot house was moved, the Shooks decided not to occupy it. Instead, they want to sell it on a one-acre lot they have carved out of their 20-acre tract. They also are asking the county to rezone the acre to R1 for residential use.

After no one spoke against the application during the public hearing, the Barrow County Planning Commission last Thursday night voted 4-0, with three members absent, to recommend that the Barrow County Board of Commissioners approve it.

But questions now are being raised behind the scenes to the media about both the house giveaway and the rezoning application, in part because giving the house to Shook and allowing him to place it on his Hwy. 82 property would appear to weaken the county’s defense of a lawsuit Shook filed after the previous commissioners denied a 2007 rezoning application for the same property.

For the complete story, see the Dec. 23 issue of the Barrow Journal.