McCaysville closed the drive-thru lane at City Hall to vehicle traffic beginning Thursday, Aug. 13, citing safety concerns with a retaining wall damaged in the early-August flooding. The closure runs until further notice, and it matters to anybody who pays a city water bill from the driver's seat. The window itself is still staffed. You just have to walk to it.
City Hall was also closed all day Friday, Aug. 14, while Tri-State Electric Membership Corporation relocated a power pole behind the building.
The council will take the situation up at a Special Called Meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 18, at 6 p.m. at McCaysville City Hall.
Park in the City Hall lot and walk up to the window. Do not pull a vehicle into the drive-thru lane. The drop box is still accessible for payments left outside business hours.
Why the wall is the problem
The retaining wall sits at the back of the property, the same side of the building where the utility pole work happened Friday. Ground behind and beneath a wall like that is exactly what 7.3 inches of rain undermines, and the city is not putting vehicle weight on the lane while the damage is assessed.
The rain total came from Mayor Pro Tem Jason Woody on the Sunday morning after the storm. Mud washed off the state highway construction areas, ran down Blue Ridge Drive and into downtown, then clogged the storm drains. That backed the water up and made the flooding worse than the rainfall alone would have.
The list of damaged city buildings keeps growing
Fannin County EMA Director Patrick Cooke said 16 McCaysville businesses were damaged, along with the Post Office and the city Police Department. Both of those buildings were later deemed unsafe for occupancy and closed until further notice, according to local news reports. Mail operations moved to the Morganton Post Office. The police department moved to 1000 Blue Ridge Drive, the former Dr. Woods medical office.
The park building and the police substation at Toccoa River Park were damaged and are closed too. Ron Henry Horseshoe Bend Park is closed indefinitely, with damage to a bridge or culvert, fencing, the playground and the dog park.
City Hall is now the fourth municipal building on that list, though in a much smaller way. The offices are open. Only the drive-thru lane is out of service.
What Tuesday's meeting could cover
The city has not published an agenda spelling out what the council will decide Aug. 18. McCaysville remains under a local state of emergency declared after the flood, and the council has already used special called meetings to close damaged facilities and move operations out of them, which is the legal step required before a department can relocate.
Meetings at City Hall have occasionally been shifted to the building behind it when the conference room is tied up. Anyone planning to attend Tuesday should allow for a change in room, and for the parking lot rather than the drive-thru lane.
The boil water advisory that followed the storm was lifted Aug. 6, but the city asked customers to keep conserving, with the request expected to last two to three weeks because of the damage at the water plant. That window closes around the same time as Tuesday's meeting. The city posts closures, advisories and meeting notices to its news and announcements page.
Stay with the Blue Ridge Georgia Community Website as the recovery continues, and join the conversation in our Community Forum if you have seen conditions around downtown McCaysville that neighbors should know about. For more, read our latest alerts and government and politics stories.
Header photo: Thomson200 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
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