Flowery Branch officials want to hear from residents on a proposal to recover the costs of the city’s street lights.

City Council is set to give its final OK Thursday to an ordinance that sets up the framework for creating the additional charge, which residents could see on property tax bills going out this fall.

Public hearings are set for Sept. 15 and Oct. 6, with the possible approval of a street light assessment district or districts on Oct. 20.

Officials are looking at several scenarios to address a longstanding inequity — the city paying for public street lights in some neighborhoods, while residents in other areas are paying for their lights, such as through homeowner association dues.

The issue was spurred in late 2010 by Madison Creek subdivision residents complaining about having to pay nearly $35 per month per street light to Georgia Power while the city has absorbed street light costs in two other subdivisions — Portsmouth and Newberry Point.

They ended up agreeing in February to have the city serve as the go-between with Georgia Power and residents to pay a much lower governmental rate of $15 per month.

At the same time, city officials talked about crafting a street light ordinance aimed at equally distributing the cost of street lights.

The city is paying about $9,000 a year for the lights in part of Portsmouth and Newberry Point.

“We don’t pay for street lights in any other neighborhoods anywhere else in the city,” Councilman Kris Yardley said. “As a matter of fact, other neighborhoods have paid them through their homeowner associations.

“I look at this as being an unfair distribution of tax dollars. Everybody else is distributing tax dollars to these two neighborhoods, so we undertook the idea of starting to find a way to remedy that subsidy,” he said.

City Planner James Riker said officials can’t trace the inequity to anything improper.

“We didn’t find any sinister documents that (suggest favoritism),” he said. “I think it was just a different level of city government at the time. ... I doubt that when they were approving these subdivisions, they ever considered the city would be the size it is now.”

Riker has presented a few scenarios that council members could consider.

One of those divides the city into several street light assessment districts, with residents paying just for the publicly funded lights in their district based on the number and expense of the lights.

But that scenario presents a special problem for residents along Atlanta Highway, a main thoroughfare through town that features particularly expensive lights. Those residents could end up paying more than $200 per year in their tax bills.

Council members asked city staff to consider other scenarios, including one that addresses just the residents whose lights are subsidized by the city.

At Thursday’s meeting, “the hope is to get a little better, refined direction and then be able to come back on (Sept. 15) with a more accurate map and more accurate numbers for (the council’s) consideration,” Riker said.

The city’s 2011-12 budget covers street light costs through October, leaving open how to continue funding them.

“We’re coming down to where we have to make a decision on how we’re going to cover these costs,” Yardley said. “We can obviously put it back in the budget if people don’t want an assessment or (special) district.

“We’re going to listen. If they don’t want it, we’ll put it back in the budget,” he added. “If that’s something the citizens are willing to pay for, that’s what we’ll do.”

If the council decides to include a street light assessment, property tax bills reflecting the charge likely would be sent in late October or early November, Riker said.