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Sharon, we ready? | 00:00:00 | |
All right. Welcome everybody, to the May Watkinsville City Council meetings. Great to have a packed house here tonight. We're | 00:00:05 | |
grateful for that and also grateful to have a quorum here. Tonight. We have everybody here, everybody here from City Council. The | 00:00:12 | |
microphone is on. | 00:00:19 | |
OK. | 00:00:27 | |
Can you hear me now? There we go. OK. | 00:00:30 | |
So we will start as we normally do with the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. | 00:00:37 | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:00:43 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:00:49 | |
All right. Couple things before we get going in earnest tonight. I'm not sure what's brought such a big crowd in here tonight, but | 00:01:02 | |
I do want to point out, I do anticipate several items being tabled tonight, including the pipe plant project. It doesn't mean if | 00:01:08 | |
you came for that, that you can't speak, but you will need to wait until the public comment period of the meeting to speak to | 00:01:14 | |
that. We won't have a unless council sees otherwise. I anticipate us tabling that until August. | 00:01:20 | |
The gentleman involved with that project are here tonight and I'm sure if you've got thoughts or want to have a conversation with | 00:01:27 | |
them too, they're happy to engage in that and at at the appropriate point I'll encourage Mr. Keller to introduce himself, but we | 00:01:32 | |
will not be having that as a formal item on the agenda tonight unless council chooses to do so, but the developer has requested | 00:01:37 | |
that that be tabled tonight. | 00:01:42 | |
For those of you who haven't been here before, we're pretty, I won't say, loose with the rules. We do allow public comment at | 00:01:49 | |
council's discretion at moments where where some other governments may not. That said, we do have standards and expectations in | 00:01:54 | |
terms of how we do communicate. | 00:02:00 | |
Your comments will always need to be addressed to the council, not to the crowd. They will need to be respectful. They will need | 00:02:06 | |
to be focused on the matter at hand, unless it's during public comment. During public comment, you can comment on matters that are | 00:02:12 | |
wide-ranging, but you cannot insult or attack anyone in this room, or you will be asked to leave and shut down, OK? | 00:02:19 | |
So that'll be the way that that works that I'll provide some more clarity as we move through the agenda tonight. | 00:02:27 | |
I am your mayor, Brian Broderick. The other council members names are up here in front of you tonight. So we will start off with a | 00:02:32 | |
proclamation tonight. And that proclamation is for Municipal Court Corps Week and we have a very good Municipal Court clerk and | 00:02:38 | |
that's Miss Lee Black and we're grateful to her. | 00:02:44 | |
And all Municipal Court clerks for the vital services they perform in their exemplary dedication to the communities they represent | 00:03:54 | |
and serve. Lee, thank you. | 00:03:58 | |
Our finance director. | 00:04:18 | |
All right. I'm going to move to the microphone for our next. | 00:04:38 | |
Love it. We have. | 00:04:43 | |
Amelia Anderson. | 00:04:48 | |
And Cindy Pritchard, if you could come up here with me. | 00:04:52 | |
Amelia, how are you? This is your third council meeting in a row. Isn't that crazy that you're here? | 00:04:58 | |
A few months ago Amelia wrote me a letter and that was prompted by a project at her school and asked suggested that we have a | 00:05:03 | |
litter cleanup contest in Watkinsville. And we love that idea so much that we. | 00:05:09 | |
Had that contest and we are Amelia has been our leader and we're grateful to her. And then Cindy, right Oconee County clean and | 00:05:16 | |
beautiful and we're grateful for Cindy for her support. So we've had people all during the month of April during Earth month | 00:05:21 | |
cleaning up the streets around Watkinsville and the streets look great. So Amelia thank you for your work there. And so we had a | 00:05:27 | |
contest to see who could pick up the most trash during that month and I'm really pleased to announce the winners of that contest | 00:05:33 | |
tonight so. | 00:05:39 | |
In first place with $100.00 gift certificate to Athens running company we have. | 00:05:45 | |
Rosalind. Romano. Rosalind, come on up here. | 00:05:53 | |
$25 the cost that Allegra as well. | 00:06:06 | |
OK, there you go. How many bags of trash did you pick up? | 00:06:09 | |
Tell these people. | 00:06:12 | |
You don't remember? | 00:06:15 | |
Let's see. It looks like you picked up 5 to 9 bags of trash. | 00:06:20 | |
So Roslyn picked up 5 to 9 bags. So congratulations, Stay up here with me, all right? And then our next winner, our second place | 00:06:24 | |
winner is. | 00:06:29 | |
Alexander Emerson, do you know this guy? OK, Alexander, come on up here. Alexander is going to get. | 00:06:35 | |
70 He's going to get a $75.00 gift certificate to Mama Ning. So that could pay for the whole family, I think. So congratulations, | 00:06:44 | |
Alexander. | 00:06:48 | |
That's exciting. And then I understand, is today your birthday too? Is that right? Well, happy birthday. | 00:06:53 | |
All right. | 00:06:59 | |
Our third place winner is Dan Matthews, who picked up it looks like Dan did. You pick up 8 bags, 8 bags of trash. So Dan is going | 00:07:03 | |
to get fattened up at scoops. | 00:07:10 | |
Got a $50.00 gift stick? Get the scoops. | 00:07:19 | |
Dan also found our weirdest object, Which was which? Yeah, which I think was. | 00:07:22 | |
A. A piece of the library? Something from the library. | 00:07:33 | |
The door to the little Free Library Dan found. OK, so, so Dan, thank you for that. And then the last person I want to recognize is | 00:07:38 | |
Amelia. Amelia, thank you for thank you for what you've done and and your leadership. | 00:07:45 | |
So we're going to also going to give you a $25.00 gift card to Costa Allegra as well, so that's for you. | 00:07:52 | |
So thank you, Amelia. | 00:07:57 | |
Yeah, oops. Hang on a. | 00:08:25 | |
Yeah, yeah. | 00:08:33 | |
All right, we've had a lot of young leaders stepping up in Watkinsville lately, and Amelia Emerson is a great one. I know some | 00:08:47 | |
people were having trouble finding seats. If you're out in the hall, we do have seats available in here now as some people have | 00:08:51 | |
departed. Sophie. | 00:08:55 | |
Feel free to come on in. | 00:09:00 | |
A couple other quick announcements. May is April is Mental Health Month, and one in five at US adults experience mental illness | 00:09:02 | |
each year and only half of them receive treatment. So we'll remind people, if you have a mental health issue, Please remember to | 00:09:09 | |
call 988 if you need a help with. Need help with that. | 00:09:16 | |
So for a live meeting, the user must click the CC icon in the lower right corner of the video window. | 00:09:54 | |
When the video from tonight's meeting is posted online, closed captioning will automatically appear. Interested parties can also | 00:09:59 | |
view a transcript of the meeting under the tab titled Transcript As A Reminder. A notice of the council meeting, along with the | 00:10:04 | |
current month's agenda, is posted one full week before the meeting to allow the public sufficient time to provide comments and | 00:10:08 | |
writing to the clerk if they choose to do so. | 00:10:13 | |
I'll move on to the meeting minutes from the April 17th, 2024 Meeting Council. I'll entertain a motion to amend or approve the | 00:10:18 | |
minutes as necessary. | 00:10:23 | |
I make a motion to approve the minutes. Second we have a motion, we have a second. We have Any comments? | 00:10:29 | |
Hearing none all in favor, say aye. Any opposed motion carries 50. | 00:10:38 | |
We'll now move to the approval of the agenda. We are going to make the following amendments to the agenda. | 00:10:43 | |
We're going to table items 10 and 11. The applicant I'm requesting that we table items 10 and 11. The applicant has requested that | 00:10:48 | |
for the variance for 56 Dooley St. to the June 19th meeting. I'm also requesting that we table items 12 and 13, the rezone of 1180 | 00:10:54 | |
Greensboro Highway to August 21st meeting. | 00:11:00 | |
As I said earlier, if you're here to talk about that tonight, you can certainly mention, give us your thoughts during the public | 00:11:07 | |
comments portion of the meeting. And I do anticipate the meeting being relatively brief tonight other than the budget. So if you | 00:11:12 | |
want to hang around and comment, that's fine. | 00:11:17 | |
We also want to table item 16 per staff, request the contractor for trail work at the Thomas Farm Preserve to June 19th and then | 00:11:22 | |
I'd like to request that we add under old businesses item 14 a revision to approve the selection of the contractor related to our | 00:11:28 | |
work on School St. and Simonton Way. | 00:11:34 | |
So if anybody could make a motion to that effect I would appreciate it. So moved. | 00:11:40 | |
Sorry, we have a motion. We have a second. Any comments? | 00:11:45 | |
Hearing none, all in favor, say aye, aye. | 00:11:49 | |
The motion, the agenda is amended. | 00:11:53 | |
And that will be our agenda tonight. | 00:11:55 | |
Right. We'll move through administration. Well, that'll be our financial reports, economic development, Police Department reports. | 00:11:57 | |
Miss Dickerson, if you want to kick us off with administration, please. Thank you, Mayor. Everybody should have received and these | 00:12:03 | |
are available online as well, a balance sheet, the general fund revenues and expenses, right now we are at 98% revenues when we | 00:12:08 | |
should be closer to 83. So that's good news. On our expense side, we should be close to 83 and we're actually at 76%. So that's | 00:12:14 | |
even better news. | 00:12:19 | |
Any questions in general about those? | 00:12:26 | |
OK. Talk about a little bit about our SPLOST. | 00:12:29 | |
So Splice 3 this these projects include the improvements at Hair Shoals Park, including the recent paving down there as well as | 00:12:32 | |
the bathroom renovation. We have some work on a boardwalk that we're currently working on with a consultant. We also have some | 00:12:40 | |
work in this in this budget that covers Thomas Farm Preserve that has been encumbered and some work that's currently underway. | 00:12:47 | |
It also included some work on Jackson Street with some drainage improvements, downtown streetscape, some sidewalks, work at Rocket | 00:12:55 | |
Field and our entryway signs. And we still have a fair amount of money left in the budget that has that has not been spent, that | 00:13:01 | |
will be spent on some of these projects. The average monthly revenue is around 81,000. | 00:13:08 | |
And we budgeted around 60, I think 68,000. This floss is collected at 8.63% under agreement with Oconee County and it will sunset | 00:13:16 | |
on September 30th of 2027. We have a little bit more than $1,000,000 in this account. | 00:13:23 | |
On T's bosses, our transportation special purpose local option sales tax that began in April of last year. It ends in March of | 00:13:32 | |
2028. It is calculated 7.77% with the county. Right now our average revenues are right around 71 and some change projects under | 00:13:38 | |
this I. | 00:13:44 | |
Program or sidewalks and paving of roads, those are ones that are currently under. In fact, one of the items on your agenda | 00:13:51 | |
tonight that we're going to be talking about deals with some money is out of this, out of this program. | 00:13:56 | |
And we have a little bit more than $655,000 in that account. | 00:14:03 | |
Seen a growth of about 6%. | 00:14:07 | |
Any questions on any of that? | 00:14:45 | |
OK, whoops. | 00:14:48 | |
Hang on a second. | 00:14:49 | |
Economic development. So business licenses were probably about 92% complete. We've got some that are waiting on some fire | 00:14:52 | |
inspections and some others that we're trying to clarify if they're still in business or not. | 00:14:57 | |
So that that's a good number to be at just a month after the deadline on excise tax collections. We have alcohol excise tax and | 00:15:03 | |
our short term vacation rental or hotel motel tax. Those are tracking as we anticipated. | 00:15:09 | |
And on building permits, we have 24 permits for 20 projects. Our biggest one on here dollar wise is the Waters Walk project that | 00:15:17 | |
has been outstanding that is a low income housing tax credit funded. | 00:15:24 | |
Project that will provide for its age restricted, so 55 plus or older people will live in that in that complex. It'll be located | 00:15:31 | |
behind a county State Bank off of water and Durham St. So they've paid this fees and they're working to demo those buildings which | 00:15:37 | |
all that all that has been approved. They're just finally at the point where they can start triggering that work. So any questions | 00:15:43 | |
on those? | 00:15:49 | |
All right. I have one more thing that I normally don't only do this once a year. This is our annual review with Civic Plus. They | 00:15:56 | |
maintain our website. | 00:16:00 | |
We've been working with them since 2018 and just some interesting stats that I wanted to share I. | 00:16:05 | |
So our website, if nobody knows, it's cityofwatkinsville.com. | 00:16:12 | |
So we had 30. Over the past year we've had 33,000 plus users, a total of 77,716 page views and an average time of two minutes and | 00:16:17 | |
20 seconds. Our population is a little bit more than 2800 according to the census, the top listed pages. I'm not surprised by this | 00:16:24 | |
Christmas festivities that always gets a big push. Hair Shoals, Park Police Department and then Thomas Farm City Council meeting, | 00:16:30 | |
which was good to see and just general information about the city. | 00:16:37 | |
And then our top search items, paying a ticket or paying miscellaneous items. So we do also don't want everybody thinking that's | 00:16:46 | |
just tickets. That also includes anybody want to rent the parks or whatnot, they can use that as well. | 00:16:51 | |
And then, of course, Christmas festivities and building permits. | 00:16:57 | |
And then these are the top downloaded documents, our occupational tax application affidavits which are required for contractors, | 00:17:00 | |
information about garbage and recycling and other items. So it's always interesting to see what we get each year, what the | 00:17:05 | |
analytics are. So any questions about any of that? | 00:17:11 | |
OK. | 00:17:17 | |
All right. So I I don't know how many of y'all participated in our first ever annual burger week that the DA put on with some of | 00:17:21 | |
our local restaurants. | 00:17:28 | |
And also partnered with the Georgia Beef Board. But it was an exciting week. I personally ate way more hamburgers than I normally | 00:17:35 | |
would, probably in a month, and they were excellent. | 00:17:41 | |
We sold over 1000 total burgers, approximately 414 lbs of beef, 423 total votes and $55 was raised for O arc. 7 restaurants in | 00:17:49 | |
downtown participated. | 00:17:57 | |
And the winners were Best Burger, Blind Pig Tavern. | 00:18:05 | |
The most creative burger. And it was, and it was delightful. And I've heard that even though it's not officially on the menu, you | 00:18:13 | |
can actually request it if you go to Kiki's Kitchen. | 00:18:18 | |
And then the last one, best collaboration with some great. | 00:18:23 | |
Great businesses and people here was Wing House Grill. So that was a lot of fun and today and our DDA meeting we talked through | 00:18:30 | |
some tweaks and some improvements. Anytime you do something there's always you know room for changes and improvements and we do | 00:18:37 | |
think that is the that this was the first annual and so something to be looking forward to in the future. It also just in general | 00:18:44 | |
that obviously the point of doing these things is to help bring more business to downtown into our restaurants and. | 00:18:52 | |
They really did see increased sales overall and increased business and I heard a lot of people try places that they hadn't tried | 00:18:59 | |
before. So again, that's the the reason we do these things and it really was a success. The next big thing that DDA has coming up | 00:19:07 | |
is right, it's going to be a kickoff right before school starts. August 3rd is a BBQ competition and Bake Off and we are still | 00:19:16 | |
taking entries. We are still looking for sponsors. We actually have a fair amount of sponsorship, which is excellent. | 00:19:24 | |
This is all a fundraiser. It's appropriate for me to talk about it right now as this is Mental Health Awareness Month and this is | 00:19:32 | |
going to be going to help support Bethel Haven, which is a local nonprofit that has mental health services available to | 00:19:40 | |
individuals and families. So mark your calendar. I know August 3rd sounds like it's forever away, but we are all going to blink | 00:19:47 | |
and it's going to be there and it is Kathleen's birthday, so we will all go and set. | 00:19:55 | |
Which birthday? Seven. OK, so we're going to have a big party. | 00:20:03 | |
At Rocket Field. So all exciting things to look forward to. | 00:20:08 | |
All right. With that, we'll turn it over to Chief GAIL for the Police Department report. | 00:20:17 | |
Thank you. | 00:20:27 | |
Got to bring it down from my short self. That's OK. The police department's been very busy over the past month with lots of good | 00:20:29 | |
things. I I take no credit for this. These officers have been working their tails off and as citizens, you all should be very | 00:20:37 | |
proud. They're doing the property checks. They're they're, you know, they're citing people for violations on vehicles that are | 00:20:44 | |
safety issues. And that's the thing we try to emphasize. Yes, it might be equipment, but there's also usually some. | 00:20:52 | |
Safety event going on. That catches our attention. So I just want to keep that in mind. But they're getting out there checking | 00:21:00 | |
property checks. That's a big #675 property checks. So they're getting out of their cars, they're walking around, they're driving | 00:21:06 | |
it around the property. So very meaningful activities. We're also amping up our training and so several officers have gone to | 00:21:12 | |
different classes. | 00:21:19 | |
We've had an officer complete family violence and those laws are always changing, so it's a constant need. | 00:21:26 | |
We went, we had another officer go to criminal procedure. So that goes with your legal foundation and our city attorney can | 00:21:33 | |
appreciate that. I I appreciate it. I'll tell you that for sure. And there we have several classes still lined up at our state | 00:21:40 | |
training facility. So there is minimal cost to the department or the city. But we're, you know, I'm trying to reach out to | 00:21:47 | |
agencies close to us so that we are perpetually training our officers to be confident at what they're doing. | 00:21:55 | |
And safety is always an emphasis. So we're we're doing training on our tactics and such. | 00:22:03 | |
We are still dealing and will be dealing with the police vehicle recall issues. They're only doing one car at a time. So it's a | 00:22:10 | |
slow process and it's a multiple multi pronged process because we can take a car for one issue and then we'll have to take it back | 00:22:16 | |
for a separate recall. And that's just the story of our life and moving on to the next slide. We've been busy with community | 00:22:23 | |
events and that is, that's what drives us. You all drive us and it's been thrilling. It's been wonderful. I sent a ton of | 00:22:29 | |
pictures. | 00:22:35 | |
To manager Dickerson and you know it's it's just. | 00:22:43 | |
That's how we get to know you and that's how you all our community get to know us, so we will continue to do this. | 00:22:46 | |
And and so with that I'm going to ask two officers to and they they really don't want to do this, but we need to recognize the | 00:22:54 | |
time and effort that these officers put in to you, to our community and our children. So we've had two, we've had multiple events, | 00:23:02 | |
but two of them were done really. The officers take the lead on planning this and they do it in their off time, so. | 00:23:11 | |
Doing a majority of this work when they're not here, so it takes a lot of effort and then when they're on midnight shift it it's | 00:23:20 | |
painful to see them get up or stay over to continue to get everything planned and organized for our incredible event. So we did | 00:23:28 | |
cops and bobbers. We've done an event at a adult elderly facility, residential facility for Valentine's Day. We've hard agree | 00:23:36 | |
Fishing sanctuary allowed us to use it. We partnered with them. | 00:23:44 | |
And we had an incredible event with our kids and that's where our kids, you all get to know us as humans not wearing the uniforms | 00:23:52 | |
and we're out there. So I'd like to recognize two of our officers that really took the lead on these events. So I'd ask for | 00:24:00 | |
Officer creation, Officer Anglin to go ahead and stand up here. And these are commendations. | 00:24:09 | |
So these are accommodation bars and I guess. | 00:24:30 | |
Do the circle for their uniforms. | 00:24:33 | |
But these are community service. | 00:24:36 | |
Hands and arms, work hours that are included in these things. And so again you know, I applaud them. I applaud their dedication to | 00:24:39 | |
our community and to our kids, our youth and our adults, everybody. And so I think, you know we then need to get them around and | 00:24:47 | |
and officers that are here, they're supporting their teammates because they care and and this is how you all get to know us and | 00:24:55 | |
know that we are engaged with our community and we want to hear from you. We want to see what you all want us to do. | 00:25:03 | |
So thank you. | 00:25:12 | |
If the rest of the officers, if all of y'all could come in since we've got such a crowd here tonight, I think it'd be great for | 00:25:19 | |
the I think it looks like we've got a couple out in the hallway if y'all could all come in. | 00:25:23 | |
Come on in. | 00:25:28 | |
We've got such a group here tonight, that's umm, I think it's important for us to. | 00:25:29 | |
In law enforcement in Watkinsville and continue to invest there. And you guys are a core part of making this community what it is | 00:26:11 | |
and making it one of the safest communities in Georgia and America. And we're grateful to you guys. So thankful. | 00:26:17 | |
So that pretty much sums up what the police departments been up to. We're busy. We enjoy being busy and we will continue to be | 00:26:31 | |
busy, but in a good way. So do are there any questions? | 00:26:37 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:26:44 | |
All right. | 00:26:48 | |
All right, under consent agenda, we've got a resolution to approve a grant application from the Georgia Recreational Trail program | 00:26:52 | |
and authorize the city's financial commitment. You know, we typically don't discuss consent agenda items, so I'll entertain a | 00:26:57 | |
motion to approve the consent agenda. | 00:27:02 | |
I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right, do we have a second? Second. | 00:27:09 | |
Any discussion? Hearing none all in favor say aye. Any opposed like sign motion carries 5 O. | 00:27:14 | |
All right. We will now move into our public hearing, our public hearing tonight. I think the only one that we have will be on the | 00:27:23 | |
budget I. | 00:27:27 | |
We'll let folks who need to slide out of here, slide out of here. While they do that, I'll remind remind you about our budget | 00:27:37 | |
public hearing procedures. | 00:27:41 | |
For for public hearing, for public hearing, we have Joe's at. | 00:27:49 | |
To make any public comments or suggestions or thoughts on what you want to see in the budget for the City of Watkinsville for | 00:29:00 | |
Fiscal year 25, a couple notes that I'll make as we get started. | 00:29:05 | |
The net tax digest has increased more than 13 million. | 00:29:11 | |
Between the past two years to Net Tax Digest in Watkinsville is just over $230 million in 2023. Now it's 243,000,000. And I'm | 00:29:17 | |
sorry this is a bit of an eye chart up here, but this is on on the website. So even though the property digest did increase, the | 00:29:23 | |
city manager and I are recommending that we roll back the mileage rate, meaning that there will not be a property tax increase | 00:29:29 | |
from the City of Watkinsville this year. | 00:29:36 | |
You'll see the top three revenues, our property taxes, local option sales tax and the insurance premium tax. | 00:30:50 | |
On our expense side, we have a lot of services that the city provides. We have 21 staff member, full-time staff members and one | 00:31:00 | |
part time employee that's in our Police Department. We do a lot of the same municipal services that a lot of communities around us | 00:31:06 | |
provide, but we end up doing a lot of contracting for services such as our garbage and leaf and limb, our city engineer, our | 00:31:13 | |
attorney, our building permits and inspections. That keeps the cost of personnel and benefits and whatnot at a lower price, plus | 00:31:19 | |
we get the benefit of having. | 00:31:26 | |
Have gotten much older and they don't use that technology anymore. They're actually using like tablets, which we're not, we're not | 00:32:40 | |
interested in moving towards. And so we put in in the budget for that and we also have to replace our City Hall server. We should | 00:32:45 | |
have replaced it a couple years ago, but we've been pushing it out as long as we could and we've got we're at the point where we | 00:32:50 | |
need to replace it now. | 00:32:56 | |
And that is it. I can answer questions if there any, but I think we'll let you turn over the public hearing. | 00:33:02 | |
All right, Council, any questions or comments you want to make before we start the public hearing? | 00:33:09 | |
All right. Hearing none, I'm going to open the public hearing. As a reminder, you have 4 minutes to step forward and make your | 00:33:16 | |
comments about the budget. | 00:33:19 | |
I'm Bob Smith. | 00:33:29 | |
Excuse me just a second, I hope this isn't kept my time I've got. | 00:33:32 | |
Turn this off. | 00:33:36 | |
I'm Bob Smith, former mayor of Watkinsville, for one year and three months before I resigned for a number of reasons I wanted to | 00:33:39 | |
point point out. | 00:33:43 | |
That there are three lawsuits pending against this city. One in the United States District Court, Middle District Court of | 00:33:47 | |
Georgia. I have a copy that I think you need to see. And one of the reasons there's a microphone is never close to your mouth. | 00:33:53 | |
That's one of the one of the reasons that I could not hear. | 00:33:58 | |
Before, during mayor and after mayor. I'm gonna pass this out when I when I get through. All right, We're here to talk about the | 00:34:04 | |
budget. Are you gonna talk about the budget? Sure. | 00:34:08 | |
The cost of the 100 acre park that Y'all just purchased for $1 million more than the appraisal, I'd like to see in that budget how | 00:34:13 | |
that's going to be maintained 100 acres #2. How you going to maintain hairstyles park that's right behind us here that's loaded up | 00:34:21 | |
with Kudzu, can't even maintain the park that we have, but you're buying 100 acre park. | 00:34:28 | |
Open records clerk. Perhaps you need to get an open records clerk to handle the records of people that want to know. Open and | 00:34:37 | |
transparent, Honest government. | 00:34:41 | |
And it's not funny, Mr. Mayor. It's not funny when when I have to do an open records for secret emails, 2147 pages are in the | 00:34:46 | |
response for a secret e-mail to this city and you read it. | 00:34:56 | |
$100,000 in budget. | 00:35:08 | |
For building permits, it looks like the pipe plant property is already a done deal. Is that correct? Is it not? Then? I know | 00:35:11 | |
smiles are wrong along the table here, but this is a serious matter that that you've already foregone. Looked like you put 100,000 | 00:35:18 | |
according to some people I've talked with already in next year's budget for building permits. | 00:35:25 | |
But then. | 00:35:34 | |
I'd like to know in the budget that 100% of all the taxpayer money that used to be 6,000,000 when I was a Mayor Nash about | 00:35:35 | |
4,000,000 is all in the Mayor Broderick's bank. I want to know how much interest is getting paid for last year and this year's | 00:35:41 | |
budget. | 00:35:46 | |
And then last thing would be. | 00:35:53 | |
When I was mayor the budget was $1.7 million and I think I've just heard, I think I just heard 3.2 million. I'm going to double in | 00:35:57 | |
three years and all and the top five people that get paid in this city, right here, the top five people. | 00:36:06 | |
Don't even live in Oak County County. | 00:36:16 | |
There's some talented people in Watkinsville and Oconee County, but they don't even live in Oconee County. | 00:36:19 | |
And. | 00:36:26 | |
I just want some answers on on how you're going to pay for all these things to park. | 00:36:27 | |
How you got paid for the three lawsuits, 2IN Superior Court and one in a federal court for Americans with Disabilities Act, that | 00:36:33 | |
those are the things I did not see in the budget. So I'm going to leave now and pass out the the suit that was filed. | 00:36:40 | |
All right. Would anyone else like to step forward and make a comment on the budget? | 00:36:50 | |
All right, hearing none. I will close the public hearing. | 00:37:01 | |
Seeing none, but I will respond to what Mr. Smith had to say. I think it's important that the guests here hear the truth. We have | 00:37:05 | |
increased our parks budget. We're going to add an additional employee for our parks. The addition of the lawn mower that we've | 00:37:11 | |
anticipated is going to help us out a second crew to take care of the mowing. So we're pretty confident we can take care of | 00:37:17 | |
things. | 00:37:23 | |
In the way that we're doing on the parks, your second question was open records. Mr. Smith, as you probably know, the vast | 00:37:29 | |
majority of those come from you. We probably have gotten maybe 20 in the past two weeks. That takes a tremendous amount of time. | 00:37:37 | |
The lawsuits also come from you. Our estimated expense on those is an excessive 20 to $25,000 This year alone outside of our | 00:37:44 | |
insurer, our insurer has dealt with 22, two $100,000 plus of legal fees, again due to your lawsuit. | 00:37:51 | |
We anticipate an amount of building permits that we get every year and those building permits, if we get a fee from a developer | 00:38:34 | |
then a portion of that I think 75% what's that Sharon, 67% of that goes to Bureau Veritas, 33% of that comes back to the city to | 00:38:40 | |
bear our cost for those If we do, if those building permits don't come through, we simply lose the revenue and we lose the | 00:38:46 | |
expense. So they offset, but we do make an estimate of what we anticipate in terms of building permits each year when they come | 00:38:51 | |
through. | 00:38:57 | |
The interest rates, I'll let Manager Dickerson respond to. I think she's got those. I think they flex up and down every month per | 00:39:03 | |
our agreement with the bank. But again, I won't comment on banking matters. Yeah, and I don't have the exact number, but I know | 00:39:08 | |
we're somewhere between 4 and 5% on our money right now. We are way over on our revenues of what we thought we were going to | 00:39:13 | |
receive this year because we didn't anticipate that high of an interest rate. | 00:39:17 | |
Yeah. So we have a formal agreement with the bank that Manager Dickerson negotiated, that I recused myself from and that council | 00:39:23 | |
approved, I think approved when actually the previous mayor may have been here for the first time. | 00:39:29 | |
We're all ears and we want to answer those. So we want you to know what's going on with your local government. | 00:40:09 | |
All right. Moving on from that, The next item is appearances. We have none. The next item is old business. Do we need to discuss | 00:40:15 | |
the? | 00:40:20 | |
The consent agreement with Green River Builders and Construction for the green space, no update on that. So we will not take any | 00:40:27 | |
action on that. That means we move to 14 a under old business which is a contract amendment related to ELMIG and Paving which | 00:40:34 | |
impact school St. Simonton Way. | 00:40:42 | |
Niagara Drive and Jackson St. | 00:40:50 | |
And so the decision was made, recommendation is being made that that road be demoed that we define a culvert on the Northside to | 00:41:26 | |
help with the flow of water to install a curb. The better direct the flow of water from the roadway into our catch basins and | 00:41:32 | |
construct the road based if needed. We're not 100% sure that road is so old. We're not sure if it has a road base, but if it | 00:41:38 | |
doesn't that will have to be constructed. So there is a difference of $25,000 an estimate but not to exceed $25,000 to do that | 00:41:44 | |
work. | 00:41:50 | |
The difference the 25,000 will come out of the TS blast which is a requirement. There's 30% of the T spots referendum is supposed | 00:41:57 | |
to be used on roads resurfacing and rehabilitation. I just use the exact same report you had last month and just added Redline | 00:42:04 | |
where we needed to have it. So the update on that is again Engineer Campbell met on the May 9th. I believe that was a Thursday | 00:42:11 | |
with the contractor to discuss our desire to address to change the scope of work as I explained to you. | 00:42:18 | |
And Tony Smith, the owner of Tony Smith and kind of, sorry, Cut Smith and Company said that he estimates the additional work at | 00:42:26 | |
cost not to exceed $25,000. So that's what we're asking. I don't know if the city engineer wants to offer any additional. | 00:42:32 | |
Input or feedback on that, Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to answer questions. The original scope on School St. if you'll remember we | 00:42:39 | |
worked on Water St. to really address some drainage issues there. That seems to be working very well on School St. The the | 00:42:46 | |
original plan was to middle School St. I don't have any documentation of the last time School St. was milled. If you go out there, | 00:42:52 | |
you can see that that paving has been added on top over and over over a period of time. So the original plan was to Middle School | 00:42:59 | |
St. before new pavement was added. | 00:43:05 | |
Upon further examination specifically during rain events, I think the better course of action is going to be the salt cut and | 00:43:13 | |
remove to go back to start from a firm foundation. We can patch it and we can certainly save money in the short term to patch it. | 00:43:19 | |
I think that the better opportunity would be to fix it. And so that was the discussion that took place. That's the new number you | 00:43:25 | |
see there. | 00:43:32 | |
All right. Questions from council to staff. | 00:43:41 | |
Hearing none. | 00:43:47 | |
All right, Council, I'll entertain a motion. | 00:43:52 | |
I make a motion to approve. | 00:43:55 | |
We have second. | 00:43:57 | |
All right, we have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion. | 00:43:59 | |
All in favor, say aye aye. Any opposed All right. The motion carries to adjust the paving scope on. | 00:44:02 | |
School St. the portion near the courthouse, not east of Main Street but West of Main Street. All right under New Business. We have | 00:44:10 | |
three items under new business and we'll be at public comments. | 00:44:16 | |
The Approve a contractor for the bathroom renovation at Thomas Farm Preserve. | 00:44:22 | |
Invasive removal and such. On April 18th we released it a request for proposal for the renovation of the bathroom. On May 6th we | 00:45:02 | |
received one proposal from Smith and Co for $39,877 in addition to a post on the city's website. It was advertised in Oconee | 00:45:09 | |
Enterprise and provided directly to three companies, Martin Pell, Free Handyman, Smith and Co, and Triple J Construction. Based on | 00:45:17 | |
the council's approved budget for the Thomas Farm Preserve, we have $50,000 available for that renovation. | 00:45:25 | |
All sorts of things we have to do to make sure that it is accessible. And so we are negotiating with the contractor to bring it | 00:46:08 | |
down. But we are asking you go ahead and approve the contractor for an amount not to exceed 40,000. We anticipate it will be much | 00:46:13 | |
lower than that. | 00:46:17 | |
All right, Council, you've heard the recommendation from staff. Any questions? | 00:46:23 | |
Hearing none, do we have a motion. | 00:46:29 | |
Make a motion that we approve the bid and the project. | 00:46:33 | |
All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Any further discussion? | 00:46:39 | |
All in favor, say aye, aye. All right. As we discussed that was previously budgeted and it's coming out of SPLOST funds. | 00:46:43 | |
We'll move on to item 17. Item 16 was tabled and this is the Watkinsville Warehouse District LLC, Wastewater capacity allocation | 00:46:50 | |
request and all that staff introduced that and Mr. Bishop, you can come on up and stand while staff does the introduction. | 00:46:57 | |
Thank you, Mayor. So this applicant has a project that has been approved by the City Council. We were under the impression, I | 00:47:09 | |
believe he was as well, that he would be able to use an existing guaranteed sewer capacity from the county when we do. Further | 00:47:15 | |
that agreement realized that the agreement was only for guarantee and reserve for sewer collection and pumping and not for | 00:47:22 | |
capacity. So he is requesting for the capacity for that front building, which is 290 gallons a day. | 00:47:28 | |
That has been confirmed. That amount has been confirmed by Oconee County and he is here to request that. | 00:47:35 | |
Good evening, everybody. | 00:47:41 | |
Just requesting the 290, I think it's the minimum amount. Yeah, 290. So just for the project at 1260 Greensboro Highway. | 00:47:42 | |
All right. Mr. Bishop, will you give an overview of the project just for our guests here so they understand what's going. So the | 00:47:51 | |
building is 7100 square feet, is located directly in front of what everybody knows is the Core Blend building. | 00:47:56 | |
Corbin is actually going to move out of their current location into the new location. So they'll just use minimal amount of sewer | 00:48:02 | |
for just four bathrooms, single hole bathrooms. And so that's pretty much just the scope of the projects, basically office, | 00:48:08 | |
warehouse space, OK. | 00:48:14 | |
Council, any questions? | 00:48:21 | |
Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the wastewater capacity allocation request. | 00:48:24 | |
I make a motion to approve the wastewater allocation request. | 00:48:29 | |
Do we have a second? | 00:48:33 | |
2nd. | 00:48:36 | |
Mr. Thomas, you'll get in at some point. All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further comments or questions? | 00:48:37 | |
Hearing none all in favor say aye Any opposed like sign. | 00:48:43 | |
Motion carries 50. Mr. Bishop, are you staying for the next one, too? That's not me. OK, all right. Address is similar. | 00:48:47 | |
Oh, yeah, that's right. OK, now, now it's all clear. All right. So we have a wastewater capacity allocation request for 12:40 | 00:48:56 | |
Greensboro Highway. Welcome back, Dax and Life. If you could introduce yourselves and maybe remind everybody what you have going | 00:49:02 | |
on. Well, before we do that, why don't we let staff talk and then I'll let y'all talk. | 00:49:08 | |
That remind you that the property owner was recently approved for seven hundred 780 gallons per day for three buildings at that | 00:49:14 | |
location. They're requesting an additional capacity for building 200 which they're preparing for an event space, restaurant and | 00:49:21 | |
Oconee Water Resources has indicated they would need an additional 28165 gallons a day. | 00:49:28 | |
All right. So if you want to walk us through what y'all have planned and and then council will take a look at this. Sharon, was | 00:49:37 | |
there anything else you needed to offer that? It looks like you've got the chart up there in terms of our capacity, is that | 00:49:41 | |
correct? | 00:49:44 | |
OK. So we keep up for the benefits of those who aren't here. We keep up with our sewer capacity there in certain parts of the | 00:49:49 | |
city. We have an allocation of 100,000 gallons per day, but we have another 100,000 gallons coming when the county expands its | 00:49:56 | |
sewer plant in the next few years. This is this is approved, not actually you know in use sewer capacity at this point. So it | 00:50:03 | |
includes future development projects. So if y'all want to introduce yourselves and give us a quick overview, that'd be great. | 00:50:10 | |
Right. I'm life Hansford and. | 00:50:17 | |
Right. OK. So we're rebuilding the property that burned on our property, the building that burned building 200 and we started with | 00:50:20 | |
minimum capacity. But as we've gone along and we've had interest, we've had a restaurant reach out to us and an event space that | 00:50:26 | |
we'd like to put up there. And those require I think 50 seats per and there's allocation of gallons per use per day. That's what | 00:50:31 | |
we got to this number to be able to do those things in that building. OK. | 00:50:37 | |
All right, Council. Questions for Dachshund Life. | 00:50:45 | |
All right, I'll entertain a motion to. | 00:50:51 | |
Entertain a motion. | 00:50:54 | |
I'll make a motion that we approve the wastewater capacity. | 00:50:57 | |
All right. We have a motion to approve. We have a second from Councilman Garrett. All right. Good. The left side speaks up. All | 00:51:00 | |
right. Any questions or comments from council hearing none. All in favor. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign motion carries 5 O. | 00:51:07 | |
Thank you all for coming. I'd like to say just real quick that this is the third meeting that Lake and I've been at and we really. | 00:51:14 | |
I do appreciate everything that you guys do. I don't think you guys think get thanked enough. So just from he and I would just | 00:51:21 | |
like to say thank you for everything. Well, thanks for your investment in Watkinsville. We appreciate it. Yeah. | 00:51:26 | |
Mr. Lay, welcome back. | 00:52:02 | |
Thank you. Always good to have a former Council member back with us. | 00:52:04 | |
My name, Johnny Wright. I've been living The Walking business in 1964. | 00:52:08 | |
I've always been very concerned about Walking Field Hub. | 00:52:14 | |
I got the admit that was in the last. | 00:52:19 | |
I got mixed emotions by right now so. | 00:52:21 | |
You know, we got too much development going on, We got too much bending going on. | 00:52:25 | |
I I have this impression to develop the company to town, take it over and just do what you want. I know it sounds ugly, but I | 00:52:32 | |
don't even feel it that way. | 00:52:35 | |
By the same token. | 00:52:40 | |
The three developments that we already had, you know who three I'm talking about? | 00:52:41 | |
I got me there first. They look like a first class development to me. I'd use it with just read. That's why I didn't call from my | 00:52:47 | |
house. | 00:52:52 | |
Oh, it's nice, neat. I couldn't say nothing negative about it. So when I say I think we got too much building going on, they nice | 00:52:57 | |
building, they nice development. | 00:53:02 | |
So. | 00:53:08 | |
I'm going to lead up to the, one of Y'all said. It's been postponed and not the concrete pipe place. | 00:53:09 | |
By the same token, I say something about the development. | 00:53:16 | |
Building UH? | 00:53:19 | |
I'll go ahead and throw this in. And this wasn't in my speech. I've been practicing for three weeks and since newspaper come out. | 00:53:21 | |
At the same time, the stuff y'all doing, I may not agree with a lot of it. I'm going to take rocket for you all the paving down | 00:53:28 | |
here at the park. | 00:53:32 | |
Everything you're doing so far looks nice. I call it quality work. Down the road it going to be worse. | 00:53:37 | |
I'm just, I'm telling old fashioned, don't like to spend money. | 00:53:44 | |
But but it's looking good. | 00:53:47 | |
What I'm concerned about the concrete pipe development is. | 00:53:52 | |
The fact that. | 00:53:57 | |
I think at the time. | 00:53:59 | |
I think you're too larger to development. | 00:54:02 | |
If you really look at the way I looked at it, I have been in the paper and. | 00:54:05 | |
All the way from the railroad down to Marshall St. that's a lot of development. | 00:54:09 | |
That's a lot of traffic. | 00:54:15 | |
There's a lot of footwork, a lot of protesting congestion. | 00:54:17 | |
So to me, I'm saying that particular project need to be put on hold. There's simply that. | 00:54:22 | |
I narrowed all that. Then in one word, that's traffic. | 00:54:29 | |
Traffic Rockin Field who hasn't ever been in? | 00:54:32 | |
And not gonna get no darling better. | 00:54:36 | |
I don't see nothing changing, Nick. 1015 years. | 00:54:38 | |
We don't need to meet you that loaded from Greensboro Road to the bypass where you can bypass Wardenville Hill Bypass ain't moved | 00:54:43 | |
in 20 years. | 00:54:47 | |
He's still around life we've been getting going to Bishop yet. | 00:54:51 | |
So I don't see any help in traffic in downtown Walking field. | 00:54:55 | |
And nobody don't get our heads haven't told me this past week and I'm not going to get into it, not just because y'all talking | 00:55:01 | |
about it. | 00:55:05 | |
Sure, I said something, that guy said. You know why so much building going on in the city, don't you? Not really. | 00:55:11 | |
He said it cost developer his first priority to sewing water. | 00:55:20 | |
I don't want a true or none. I'm not a new asset I won't try to find out for. | 00:55:25 | |
But if that's right. | 00:55:31 | |
It seemed like me this whole development bad concrete pipe place. It don't seem like a little Shorty there. You talking about 400 | 00:55:33 | |
toilet 4500 faucets people? | 00:55:38 | |
So what's the big deal to sewer connection? | 00:55:45 | |
When we developed them coming in here, no problem with it. | 00:55:49 | |
That's another story. | 00:55:52 | |
I don't want to get my tooth in about the concrete pipe place where I don't have to come back next month. I'm against it. | 00:55:54 | |
Thank you, Mr. Way. Appreciate you being here. | 00:56:01 | |
And Julie, we have Mr. Lays address on file, is that correct? OK, remember to please state your address and your name when you | 00:56:08 | |
come up. | 00:56:11 | |
Mr. Smith, Mayor, I didn't intend to come before, right, but. | 00:56:15 | |
Because you tabled this, this project are great for Hwy. There are a number of people that wanted to talk about. | 00:56:21 | |
Traffic, traffic and traffic and more traffic. | 00:56:29 | |
And that's an issue. | 00:56:34 | |
We're continuing to do this until we have a plan for truck bypass that was in the works at one time. Where's the truck bath | 00:56:36 | |
bypass? | 00:56:40 | |
But most importantly, what I will understand here and talk about is no laughing matter about this federal lawsuit that's filed for | 00:56:44 | |
the American Disabilities Act. It's not laughing. | 00:56:50 | |
Are coming here again and I have to look around to see who's making the motion and the microphone is about a 14, three feet away | 00:56:56 | |
from your mouth. | 00:57:01 | |
And if I can't hear it? | 00:57:07 | |
And this has been going on since before I was mayor, while I was mayor, and after I was mayor. Otherwise I would never have filed | 00:57:09 | |
a federal lawsuit against his body. | 00:57:14 | |
But you continue to do it even tonight. Now why am I doing this? | 00:57:20 | |
It's because almost 60 million people in America have a hearing issue. That's about 18 to 20%. And if we keep people out of this | 00:57:26 | |
body from running for office or participating in the process, that the the political process, the smart people that can't hear. | 00:57:36 | |
We need to pay attention to those smart people that can't hear and include them in the process, but otherwise you're precluding | 00:57:47 | |
them. | 00:57:50 | |
What? Excluding him? Whatever you want to say. But this is a not a laughing matter like I have seen here. | 00:57:55 | |
That the microphone is 234 feet away from your face and you're making motions, and I couldn't hear who made the motion. | 00:58:03 | |
This is a serious, serious matter, you know. | 00:58:13 | |
That hearing impaired people I walked through here. | 00:58:16 | |
I'm not handicapped. | 00:58:20 | |
But I'm 80% hearing loss. I've lived with this since the 4th grade. You have to work hard to live with it. | 00:58:22 | |
And when I was in the legislature, we passed and I offered this a Commission on the here impaired. We went to the Georgia Lines | 00:58:30 | |
Lighthouse because I care about the hearing impaired. I can find the money to help myself. But there are people that don't have | 00:58:36 | |
the money, they don't have the resources, they don't have the knowledge to find out how to hear and participate in the American | 00:58:42 | |
experiment. | 00:58:47 | |
We went to the Georgia Lions White House with a public private partnership. | 00:58:54 | |
And a year ago, I called them. How many people in Georgia have been affected by this legislation? 25,000 Georgians. That's not | 00:58:59 | |
enough, but it's a good start. | 00:59:05 | |
But this is a serious matter and I passed out. | 00:59:12 | |
That federal lawsuit to you, because I don't know if you've ever gotten it. I don't know if, if, if the legal counsel has even | 00:59:16 | |
given you that, but you now have it. | 00:59:21 | |
And you'll see in there why without it. | 00:59:26 | |
And statute of limitations kept me from going further back when one member of this body, when I was outside this body, not as a | 00:59:30 | |
mayor, mocked me for my hearing. | 00:59:35 | |
On this council. It's unacceptable. But thank you for listening. It's a very, very serious matter. And I hope that you'll look | 00:59:42 | |
forward to what's happening in this, this, this lawsuit. It's very serious. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith. | 00:59:49 | |
As a reminder, for anyone who's hearing impaired, there is a hearing loop installed in City Council in the City Council chambers. | 01:00:01 | |
So if you do have a hearing impairment, I would encourage you to use that. We also have headphones. | 01:00:07 | |
Over here that we make available and that's why we stress that our meetings are captioned and closed, captioned and available and | 01:00:13 | |
easily accessible for anybody who chooses to use those. But again, thank you Mr. Smith for your comments, Mr. Prescott, please | 01:00:17 | |
come forward. | 01:00:21 | |
Anyone to hear when you're not. | 01:00:27 | |
Can you hear me right now? Can, can you hear, can you hear me, Julie, can you hear me? | 01:00:30 | |
I didn't. I haven't. I haven't changed where I'm sitting. Can you hear me? | 01:00:36 | |
I live at 1090 Simonton Drive. I've lived in Oconee County for almost 50 years and in Watkinsville for approaching 25 years. Mr. | 01:01:09 | |
Mayor and members of the Council, I thank you for the opportunity to address you, address you on the rezone request for 1180 | 01:01:15 | |
Greensboro Highway. If approved without major changes, this project would certainly shape the future of Watkinsville in a | 01:01:22 | |
detrimental way, in my opinion. In the opinion of many others who I believe are here to comment on that project tonight, as well | 01:01:28 | |
as others I have seen commenting. | 01:01:34 | |
Robustly. | 01:01:42 | |
On various social media platforms about the project. | 01:01:43 | |
In thinking about this project, I was reminded of a news story from July 2019 authored by Lee Becker in Oconee County | 01:01:47 | |
Observations, where he described this council's past efforts to seek citizen input, both city and county voters, on possible | 01:01:55 | |
upgrades to hair Shoals. Park surveys were created and reviewed to prioritize the wishes of park users on its future. | 01:02:03 | |
While much could be said about the state of Harris Shoals Park almost five years later. | 01:02:11 | |
My real point is that the Council has shown a willingness to hear from citizens in the planning stages of past projects, at least | 01:02:17 | |
projects the Council believes may have a great deal of support. | 01:02:22 | |
I first heard of the 1180 Greensboro Highway proposed rezone in the Oconee Enterprise. When I last drove by the site, there was no | 01:02:29 | |
signage posted to notify the citizens of the pending project. | 01:02:34 | |
I believe the council knows that this project has very little support among the citizens of Watkinsville in Oconee County and for | 01:02:40 | |
some reason has decided to quietly pursue it knowing the ire that it will raise. Anyone who travels through Watkinsville daily is | 01:02:46 | |
aware of the traffic issues in need of abatement, not increase. We don't need a near 300 page traffic study of downtown traffic to | 01:02:53 | |
tell us what we already know through daily experience. Further, the project will have serious consequences, in my opinion, related | 01:02:59 | |
to our schools. | 01:03:06 | |
Public safety, infrastructure and ever increasing taxes. | 01:03:12 | |
This council seems intent on paving the way for apartments and other rental units at the gateway of every entry point to our city. | 01:03:17 | |
We now have apartments at the North End of Main Street, Barnett Shoals and this proposed project on Hwy. 15 at 1180 Greensboro | 01:03:25 | |
Highway. My question is, what's next? Raising something on Experiment Station or the South end of Main Street to usher in more and | 01:03:32 | |
more rental units for our small community? I implore you to listen to the voters. | 01:03:39 | |
And open this up for discussion and major changes to what is appropriate for our small town. I thank you for the opportunity to | 01:03:47 | |
speak with you tonight. | 01:03:51 | |
Thank you, Mr. Prescott. | 01:04:02 | |
Next up. | 01:04:05 | |
Yes, Sir. Come on. | 01:04:09 | |
I just want. | 01:04:13 | |
Back up what he just said. My family's been here since 1870. I've lived it in my got my grandfather's, my great grandfather's | 01:04:15 | |
property. | 01:04:19 | |
Back in 1990. | 01:04:24 | |
And I lived in Lawrenceville. | 01:04:27 | |
I actually bought a house there, me my wife back in 1982 I guess and it was a one acre house and a small rural area and I wanted | 01:04:29 | |
to be out in the country, but anyway. | 01:04:35 | |
This property found my lap. | 01:04:41 | |
And I'm seeing and you remember the signs were don't turn Oconee into Gwinnett, I believe it was about a year ago. | 01:04:44 | |
The traffic we're losing our small town charisma. | 01:04:53 | |
And I hope to God that you all will listen to what he just said, the people, and it's all over on. I guess I don't get on | 01:04:58 | |
Facebook, but I've heard it's consumed with a lot of people complaining about this 1180. | 01:05:04 | |
So please reconsider. | 01:05:11 | |
And listen to the people for that. We don't need that. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. | 01:05:13 | |
Hi, I'm Susanna Heiml. | 01:05:28 | |
I'll give my address afterwards if you need it. Just go ahead and do it now, please. I live in Watkinsville. I don't want to say | 01:05:31 | |
it in front of everybody. I'll be glad to write it down and give it to you. | 01:05:36 | |
I've got questions about this project. I'm not necessarily against it, but I do have questions about how many people will bring | 01:05:43 | |
in. I do see that it lists 203 apartments, studios, 123 bedrooms, but it doesn't specifically say how many of each there are, as | 01:05:49 | |
well as 24 townhomes. What's the makeup of those? | 01:05:55 | |
6 detached cottages So I'm kind of curious as to how many, how many people this will bring and I think we already have traffic | 01:06:01 | |
congestion on 15 on Main Street. I do love off Barnett Shoals and I've seen a considerable increase in traffic turning left from | 01:06:08 | |
Main Street to Barnett Shoals since Wire Park is opened. So that would be my my first concern. Second concern is. | 01:06:15 | |
What these apartments rent for, what are the townhomes and cottages sell for? Because I feel like the things that are opening | 01:06:23 | |
around her that the rents, the rents on the prices like on townhomes at Wire Park are so high. I just feel like our our jobs | 01:06:29 | |
around here are not supporting those kind of rents and those kind of property prices. So I feel like we we need to figure out a | 01:06:34 | |
way to keep. | 01:06:40 | |
Prices for the townhomes, I'm sure they must have been established when this project was presented. So I'd love to hear those | 01:07:21 | |
numbers and I'm sure that everybody else would too. I haven't seen the paper. I don't know where they where to find them, so. | 01:07:27 | |
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yep. | 01:07:33 | |
All right. | 01:07:41 | |
Hi, my name is David Phillips. | 01:07:45 | |
My wife and I lived at 1321 Beechnut Lane. That's off of Elder Mill Rd. which is off of Hwy. 15. | 01:07:47 | |
So we've been out there for 45 years. | 01:07:55 | |
And we moved to Oconee. | 01:07:59 | |
Because it was rural. | 01:08:02 | |
And I'm one of those people that sort of believes that. | 01:08:04 | |
The Gwinnett thing is happening. I've seen it. That's not like I just heard it or read it in the paper. | 01:08:08 | |
And I'm really concerned about the Highway 15 development. | 01:08:15 | |
The. | 01:08:20 | |
I think everything on 15 S of the railroad track is commercial. | 01:08:22 | |
I don't see. | 01:08:27 | |
Moving that many people into it, getting through Watkinsville now is a chore. | 01:08:28 | |
Linda and I we. | 01:08:35 | |
We support Watkinsville businesses. | 01:08:37 | |
We shop in Watkinsville Butlers Crossing Epps Bridge. She's not going to stop at a strippers to do her shopping offense to | 01:08:41 | |
strippers. | 01:08:46 | |
But she shops at Publix Earth Fair, Trader Joe's. | 01:08:52 | |
We bank at two banks in Watkinsville. | 01:08:59 | |
We we go to Walgreens. I mean that's that's our business. I I remember the Athens I. | 01:09:02 | |
Health and fitness gym which is at managers crossing. | 01:09:13 | |
I'm there every day. | 01:09:16 | |
So we're going through the traffic every day. | 01:09:19 | |
And we're retired, but we're still going through every day because we live here and this is where we want to do our business. | 01:09:22 | |
So we came to to support voting no, to rezone that there's a residential area. I guess that's what you're thinking about doing. | 01:09:30 | |
Thank you. | 01:09:41 | |
Say I'm Dana Blair. I live on School St. in Watkinsville and we're here tonight for a. | 01:09:50 | |
The pipe plant. | 01:10:00 | |
Discussion and I just think it's a horrible idea to have any more high density housing within the city. | 01:10:03 | |
It's my opinion, but traffic and the impact on schools, I just think we need to slow down a little bit and. | 01:10:11 | |
And think. | 01:10:20 | |
What do we want? What quality of life? | 01:10:21 | |
What atmosphere? | 01:10:23 | |
Anyway, thanks. | 01:10:25 | |
Thank you, Mr. | 01:10:27 | |
Right. | 01:10:32 | |
Mr. Blair, I just see things that that come to the top of my mind when we're talking about. | 01:10:35 | |
More traffic. | 01:10:44 | |
Traffic down Main Street and 15 is horrible. | 01:10:46 | |
But we're not talking about everybody who doesn't go down 15, but they cut through our neighborhoods that are line Main Street and | 01:10:50 | |
15. We live on School St. and 2nd St. | 01:10:56 | |
Is constant traffic all day long. | 01:11:03 | |
I'm sure that it's the same thing on the other side of the street. And the second thing is that the apartments and whatever | 01:11:07 | |
housing at Wire Park isn't even open yet. | 01:11:12 | |
So we're not even seeing the the height of the traffic. | 01:11:18 | |
Until that happens. So once that gets open, it's going to, you know, I don't know who knows how bad it's going to be, but in | 01:11:21 | |
talking about adding 200 apartments, I can't help but think that they're saying 200 apartments so they can settle for 100 | 01:11:28 | |
apartments or whatever. But is tends to be the type of way that people approach that when they're trying to get rezoned. So | 01:11:34 | |
anyway, that's all I have to say. I just wanted to add these guys did a great job. | 01:11:41 | |
Thank you, Charlie. | 01:11:49 | |
Mr. Popov. | 01:11:52 | |
Good evening everyone. Thank you for your service and being here. | 01:12:00 | |
I'm not going to talk about 1180 since it's taken off the official for tonight. I didn't want to discuss why our park in the | 01:12:04 | |
condominiums going in front of it. When it was initially presented to us, the people of Watkinsville, it was supposed to be, quote | 01:12:11 | |
UN quote small, a few condos or something for people that worked here that couldn't afford to live here. And it said it was | 01:12:18 | |
nonprofit. I think we all know that's BS. They are for profit, OK? They're really nice. I have a friend of mine who's extremely | 01:12:25 | |
wealthy and he's got one on the list. | 01:12:32 | |
So I'm seeing here on our part, 56 condos, 60 flats, 21 townhomes, how many single family I can't read, moon riding, 54, I think. | 01:12:40 | |
I mean, how many people are y'all trying to cram in there and what is the purpose? I mean, who benefits? It's not us. You guys are | 01:12:47 | |
for us, OK? You're supposed to be for the people of Watkinsville. In other words, represent our interest, what we wanted, a life, | 01:12:54 | |
what we want our city to be like. Not a person here wants our city to be inundated with a whole bunch of more people to deal with | 01:13:01 | |
traffic. | 01:13:08 | |
No answer for it. So you're making it worse. You lied about the condos to begin with. A major in business geography at UGA. | 01:13:15 | |
Location principles of business. Water park needs to be seen from the road for people drive by to go, man, that's gold. Let me | 01:13:23 | |
stop in there. Condos in front of it. I mean, come on. Do you ever see that anywhere, Anywhere. I've been all over America. I've | 01:13:31 | |
never seen them all condos blocking it or, you know, any retail place with condos blocking it. | 01:13:39 | |
I can't fathom the logic or decision behind that, not even mention 1180. And the bottom line is from everyone, we don't want the | 01:13:48 | |
growth. | 01:13:53 | |
We want proper growth. We want calculated, rational, logical growth that we can handle. Our infrastructure can handle our streets | 01:13:58 | |
and traffic can handle. We're overloaded already, traffic's bad. So with this in mind, do you guys understand we don't want growth | 01:14:05 | |
and there's a better way to spend our money and govern our city than to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow with these businesses and in | 01:14:12 | |
my opinion, our park putting the condos in front of us, a huge mistake. | 01:14:20 | |
You don't do that, man. People need to see that. I'd like to see it succeed. Honestly, I really would. Putting condos in front of | 01:14:27 | |
it cuts out the attraction. People driving by and seeing this beautiful, nice new place, all they're going to see is condos and | 01:14:33 | |
oh, well, I guess that's just condos and it's not going to draw the people in. So, you know, I I guess do we need to have some | 01:14:39 | |
kind of a serious citizen meeting to discuss growth, proper growth and what we want here in Watkinsville? Because I think we're | 01:14:45 | |
getting it. | 01:14:51 | |
I don't think a person here can say we really feel that you guys represent our best interest. Because I don't. I don't think you | 01:14:57 | |
do. I really don't. | 01:15:01 | |
Bids I'd like to know you know, are you getting a professional engineer to write specs for a job before it's released for billet? | 01:15:07 | |
Are y'all letting you know this guy quote this. That guy quote this. | 01:15:12 | |
Like the sidewalk back on Hardin Hill, this should have been one engineer that designed the whole thing. He got paid for the | 01:15:18 | |
design, and guess what? If there's any problems to design, he pays for it out of his pocket. | 01:15:23 | |
We paid for that huge mistake. I mean, why wasn't it done by an engineer that stamped it and said, OK, boom, I dare you to find | 01:15:29 | |
something wrong with it. Well, double the cost of it, I guess. There's a few little things, but my God, doubling the cost of that | 01:15:35 | |
project, that's inexcusable. Whoever engineered that project should be responsible for that mistake and that overrun of the | 01:15:41 | |
budget. | 01:15:47 | |
So, I mean, I'd really like to know how does this process work when you all have big projects that want to be done other than just | 01:15:54 | |
putting them in the county enterprise, which admittedly a ton of contractors in the state of Georgia don't use. I used to go to | 01:15:59 | |
the bedroom in Atlanta and there was everything under the sun. Thank you, Mr. Papa. Yep. | 01:16:05 | |
Just for the record, before the next person comes up, there was no promise of a nonprofit, condominium or homes ever made at Wire | 01:16:19 | |
Park and the Harden Hill thing we've discussed. | 01:16:24 | |
For months and months of the scope of the project changed. It was not a cost overrun. All right, next person please. | 01:16:29 | |
Kathleen Kristen, 13 S Corner. | 01:16:42 | |
I thought it was a beautiful project. | 01:16:46 | |
The fellow had a nice designs for the buildings. It was kind of him to consider the low income for some of the back cottages. | 01:16:49 | |
However, it's his job to pencil out his project to the Max. | 01:17:01 | |
It's our job to push back and I think hearing from the citizens tonight that we're pushing back against. | 01:17:07 | |
This developer maxing out his profits. | 01:17:15 | |
To develop this piece of property, I think that a better use of it would be something that would not have as much impact on the | 01:17:20 | |
traffic. I go to core gym and some days that traffic is backed up to that to that entry to that gym. | 01:17:28 | |
And if there no matter what project goes in there, I don't think it should be approved until the dot. | 01:17:39 | |
Agrees to put a light there. | 01:17:46 | |
To keep the traffic moving, I don't think a roundabout would work because something about the trucks coming in there at 4550 miles | 01:17:49 | |
an hour, sometimes faster and going around and roundabout isn't really going to work. So I really recommend that you go back to | 01:17:57 | |
the developer, back off the project. He can still make a profit. It doesn't have to be as much as it looks like he's going to make | 01:18:05 | |
and listen to the citizens about what we want in our city. | 01:18:12 | |
Water park scares the hell out of all of us because the people who are going to live there haven't even moved in yet and we I | 01:18:20 | |
can't get out of my street sometimes in the morning. The traffic on 2nd and 3rd St. | 01:18:28 | |
As cut throughs has increased exponentially. At 5:00 you can barely get out of your driveway. | 01:18:37 | |
All right. Thank you. Thanks, Kathleen. | 01:18:46 | |
Next up. | 01:18:54 | |
Jason Smith, 32, Thrasher Drive. | 01:19:08 | |
Forgive me, I've caught off guard a little bit. I thought was going to be tabled and I would get a few months to work my comments | 01:19:13 | |
out and but now I am well, I know it is table, but I'm going to, I'm going to join in tonight and I'll be back in August. | 01:19:19 | |
I have grave concerns about the development of the pipe yard. | 01:19:28 | |
I have spoke to somebody on the phone. Some of you have reached out to you haven't got a chance to get to and I appreciate you. | 01:19:32 | |
Some return my calls. We just can't get the same schedule yet. Thank you. I understand this is a tough job for $200 a month. | 01:19:38 | |
OK. | 01:19:44 | |
Bless you and thank you. OK. | 01:19:46 | |
It's a hell of a thing to get up here once a month. Take beat. | 01:19:51 | |
All right. That being said, you guys are the guys that are elected to represent us and you guys are the guys that are in control | 01:19:54 | |
right now, OK? And it seems to me there's a lot of people greatly concerned where we're going. | 01:20:00 | |
I'm not asking to stop. I'm not asking to pause it. I understand that this is a big ship and it will always move forward, OK? As | 01:20:07 | |
much as I would love to pause time. | 01:20:12 | |
And live and walk until as it is now. I'd much rather live in Walksville 15 years ago. | 01:20:17 | |
20 years ago, maybe even more. | 01:20:23 | |
I certainly didn't have as many bills and taxes pay back then, so it's a health lot nicer place, but we can't do that. | 01:20:25 | |
But we can slow down. | 01:20:32 | |
Assess where we're at and assess where we're going. | 01:20:35 | |
And how we get there? | 01:20:39 | |
Water Park is not built out yet completely. It will be and I'm sure. | 01:20:42 | |
Whatever decisions they made in the management of their their enterprise, whether they want to put stuff in front of it, behind it | 01:20:47 | |
or around it, that's their deal. | 01:20:50 | |
Passes it fails if it succeeds, if it doesn't, that's their business. But it does affect us and the traffics, the tax values, the | 01:20:54 | |
revenues, things of that nature trove is not done yet. The forgive me, I don't know the name. The 55 and N community is not even | 01:21:00 | |
started yet. There are serious things that are going on right now that we need to take a step back and evaluate and see where | 01:21:06 | |
we're at. | 01:21:12 | |
As I understand it, I reached up to a member of the Board of Commissioners. | 01:21:19 | |
Once we're done with the allotted sewer capacity, again, as I understand it. | 01:21:24 | |
We have to apply again for another 100,000 gallon block. | 01:21:29 | |
And then? | 01:21:33 | |
And forgive me if you want to correct this after I speak sorry. | 01:21:35 | |
If that is approved. | 01:21:39 | |
That'll be the last guaranteed block that we get. | 01:21:41 | |
After that. | 01:21:45 | |
There are no guarantees with getting more sewer capacity. | 01:21:46 | |
At the earliest, and under the best of circumstances as I understand it. Admittedly, I was on the back foot trying to figure this | 01:21:49 | |
out. That's it. Very fastest. Best case scenario. | 01:21:54 | |
Late next year. | 01:22:00 | |
I don't believe that's probably going to hit it. It'll probably be longer than that. | 01:22:02 | |
So even even if this project is approved. | 01:22:06 | |
200 apartments you can't flush the toilet in aren't going to go a whole lot of places, you know. | 01:22:10 | |
I I have heard the the calls for affordable housing and I understand that. | 01:22:16 | |
By happenstance and the grace of God, I managed to ****** hold of a letter that was getting pulled up really fast and I am hanging | 01:22:21 | |
on for dear life, believe me. | 01:22:24 | |
That is not our problem to solve. | 01:22:30 | |
I I, I understand that. And there's people that work here that live here, or people that work here that can't afford to live here, | 01:22:33 | |
but that happens everywhere. | 01:22:36 | |
I know a lot of EMTs, firefighters, people of that nature. They all drive to Fulton County, Atlanta, places like that. A lot of | 01:22:39 | |
contractors work out of town, Gwinnett County, Johns Creek, places like that. | 01:22:44 | |
And and they're quite happy to do it because they don't want to live here. They want to live here or they want to live there. | 01:22:49 | |
Excuse me, they want to live here. | 01:22:52 | |
And why wouldn't they? | 01:22:56 | |
Is that wonderful place? It's a great place. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with the late Dave Sharon and he told me if we | 01:22:58 | |
are not careful. | 01:23:02 | |
Watkins will no longer be a great place to live. It'll just be a place to live. | 01:23:07 | |
And I urge you to exercise caution. | 01:23:12 | |
Please. | 01:23:15 | |
Thank you. | 01:23:16 | |
If a guy wanted time to practice, you did pretty good. All right? Anyone else? | 01:23:23 | |
Kathleen, you're coming back for more? | 01:23:32 | |
Well, I think he got about 90 seconds left. | 01:23:35 | |
I'm not going to talk about the project. I wanted to talk about the dog park, which we're still waiting for. My little dog still | 01:23:38 | |
waiting for the dog park. That's one thing. The second thing is I thought Brent Thomas brought up a really good point about the | 01:23:46 | |
design corridors and the wording in the design corridor regulations, and he pointed out a lot of issues with a lot of places where | 01:23:54 | |
the word is should and in technical writing it should be shall. So I would hope that you would. | 01:24:02 | |
Have a conversation with Mr. Brett and talk about changing the shoulds to shells. Thank you. Thank you, Kathleen. | 01:24:10 | |
He didn't pay me to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure if everybody knew what they were clapping for there, Kathleen. But. But. But | 01:24:21 | |
good. Good on it. Yeah. Yeah. | 01:24:26 | |
All right, Who else? | 01:24:32 | |
Good evening. | 01:24:37 | |
My name is Jack Keller. I live at 1271 W Fitzgerald Lane in Watkinsville, Georgia. So not inside the city limits of Georgia or in | 01:24:39 | |
Watkinsville, but I am in the county so I grew up here my whole life and I currently live here with a 5 year old and seven-year | 01:24:47 | |
old. So just wanted to make it public record that the council insisted that we bring this to the public eye a month before we | 01:24:54 | |
decided to to bring this for a vote. We we did that so we could reach out to the community. | 01:25:02 | |
That's got some skin in the game and it's going to raise his kids in this county and come to this project. He's got more of a | 01:25:45 | |
vested interest than anyone else from Atlanta or anybody else. So I encourage anyone that's that's opposed this. I would love to | 01:25:52 | |
meet with you. 101. We have a website upitsinfo@15s.com. My e-mail address is on there. My cell phone number is on there. So I am | 01:25:59 | |
willing and would meet with anybody and just wanted to make sure that was probably known and and put out there that I would love | 01:26:06 | |
to discuss this. | 01:26:13 | |
And see if there's anything we could do to make it a win. Win for everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Chan. | 01:26:20 | |
All right. Any other comments tonight? | 01:26:26 | |
All right. You've probably gotten maybe 30 seconds. Mr. Phillips, you used a lot of time when you were up before. Go ahead. | 01:26:30 | |
I'm beginning to regret that the that the library is in Wire Park because I couldn't even get in the parking lot a week ago on a | 01:26:39 | |
Thursday night. | 01:26:43 | |
And the library was open. There was no parking places. There was some kind of middle school. | 01:26:49 | |
Performance or something? | 01:26:53 | |
And I guess I'm saying is too late, but again, it should have been a probably. | 01:26:55 | |
Freestanding building with its own parking lot so everybody could access it because once they're built out over there, I don't | 01:27:01 | |
know if we'll have access to it. They'll add parking for everything else. And I think it's, you know, look there's, you know. | 01:27:07 | |
First of all, I want to thank all of you. You know, this is, this is what local government should be about, right? We're not all | 01:27:15 | |
going to agree or disagree every time, but I'm always really proud when folks come in and and speak with a lot of dignity and | 01:27:20 | |
respect. | 01:27:24 | |
About projects and I heard a lot of that tonight and I'm grateful to those of you who did that and and conducted yourselves that | 01:27:30 | |
way. We value that. | 01:27:35 | |
Was to make sure the public was aware of this project and they had an opportunity to get engaged and give us feedback on it and | 01:28:14 | |
y'all did and and and it's clearly impacted what's happening here and what will happen with the site eventually for good or ill So | 01:28:20 | |
we're we're we're grateful for that that's how the process is supposed to work. | 01:28:26 | |
And that's what you're going to find here with us tonight. So I'm appreciative of that. | 01:28:33 | |
And in their homes. But we want y'all to meet your neighbors and to get to know each other and to create those opportunities for | 01:29:14 | |
that consistently around this town. Whether that's a sidewalk, whether that's a playground, whether it's Rocket Field, whether | 01:29:20 | |
it's Thomas Farm Preserve, whether it's water Park, there's going to be different ways that it happens. | 01:29:25 | |
This is not a council that's in favor of unbridled growth, but this is a council that loves Watkinsville and that wants to build a | 01:29:31 | |
community that people choose to come back to and choose to reside in and choose to stay in. | 01:29:38 | |
I want all of you to know that your voices were heard tonight. It means a lot to me that Y'all chose to give up an hour. And are | 01:29:46 | |
we at an hour and a half of your time on a Wednesday night? | 01:29:51 | |
That you were right, that you're willing to come in here and do that. So I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful to hear from all | 01:29:56 | |
of you. | 01:29:59 | |
We have been named as a finalist for the All American City Award. We are taking a delegation to Denver June 7th and 9th to compete | 01:30:34 | |
with 20 other communities Watkinsville as a baby in that we're competing with cities, places like Louisville, places like New | 01:30:40 | |
Orleans and others for that. | 01:30:46 | |
But we're excited about that opportunity. So we're taking a delegation out there. We have several private sector sponsors who have | 01:30:52 | |
stepped up and helped us cover a significant portion of those costs to do that. And we're grateful for all of them as well to help | 01:30:57 | |
us take a group of folks from Watkinsville. We're going to have the opportunity to learn and the opportunity to compete and | 01:31:02 | |
hopefully bring home a nice honor for our city. | 01:31:07 | |
Laura Claire Jackson, You know, y'all were talking about what you like about a small town. This is a great example of a small town | 01:31:42 | |
and of a young leader. We had an old well house on Hardin Hill that we had just painted in La Clare. She's a fifth grader at | 01:31:48 | |
Column Ferry Elementary School and she decided just had an idea that we needed to do something with it. And so she took it upon | 01:31:54 | |
herself to design the drawings and do this painting she did this last weekend. It looks really great. | 01:32:00 | |
On Hardin Hill Rd. So check that out the next time you drive down Hardin Hill Rd. But that's a great example of a young, energized | 01:32:07 | |
young citizen doing something great, along with Amelia Emerson, who you all saw tonight who started our inaugural Watkinsville | 01:32:11 | |
litter pickup program. | 01:32:16 | |
We're going to begin. We have some trail work already underway out there on mountain bike trails. This summer. We'll begin working | 01:32:52 | |
on other trails in earnest. Damn fixing the dam. The fences are starting to come out. We hope to have that open in November to the | 01:32:58 | |
public, and that's going to be a tremendous, tremendous asset. | 01:33:03 | |
The Oconee County Schools. If you've gone down N Main St. lately, you've seen their building wrapping up and the landscape going | 01:33:11 | |
in. It's looking good. They're having a grand opening on June 10th. | 01:33:15 | |
And the public is welcome to join and attend that event. | 01:33:20 | |
This is my son. I don't know why he's up here, but I'm grateful if we had the Oconee County High School track team had a great | 01:33:25 | |
performance and finished third in the state at the at the class Class AAA state meet and Councilwoman Tucker Mayor Pro Tem Tuckers | 01:33:32 | |
daughter Faith was there and competing in two events. Congratulations to Faith. | 01:33:39 | |
And we have some exciting graduates who are members of city the children of city staff Jackson and Faith Tucker. That's Mayor Pro | 01:33:48 | |
Tem's Tucker's twins. Faith is your valedictorian at Oconee County High School this year. I was at honors night last night and her | 01:33:55 | |
legs had to have been sore. She was getting up and down so much. Jackson Tucker and Ellen Patterson were also recognized. Ellen is | 01:34:03 | |
the daughter of Kate Patterson, who leads our DDA and and then William Dickerson, manager Dickerson's son. | 01:34:10 | |
Has graduated. | 01:34:18 | |
From the University of Alabama. And sometimes we like to say, well, it's not rocket science with this guy. It is rocket science. | 01:34:19 | |
He is going to go work. He's got a degree in engineer and he's going to be working for SpaceX in Texas. So Sharon, I know you're | 01:34:24 | |
proud and congratulations to William and to all of you who've got graduates or children who are graduating in the next few days, | 01:34:29 | |
congratulations. I know it's a big milestone. | 01:34:34 | |
And then this guy has a birthday. So happy birthday, Joe. We're 49. | 01:34:40 | |
Joe, thank you for your service to Watkinsville. I think that's all I have. And we'll move to council reports. We'll go to | 01:34:49 | |
Councilman Garrett for the post. One report, nothing to share. Councilwoman Massey. | 01:34:55 | |
I just wanted to say I went to the cops and bobbers and that is such a fun event. I'm glad the Police Department is doing that. | 01:35:02 | |
The expression on those kids face when they pull. | 01:35:06 | |
A fish, doesn't matter how big it is out of that water, It's just amazing. It's it's it's great. Thank you for going. | 01:35:11 | |
Councilman Thomas, I just want to thank all the citizens for being here. I hope you come back next month. It's a lot more fun when | 01:35:19 | |
you all are here and they are engaged. When you're not here and you're not engaged, we tend to make decisions on our own. So we | 01:35:25 | |
encourage you to please come back every month for hopefully an hour and a half long meeting. | 01:35:32 | |
Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. | 01:35:39 | |
Nothing more this month. | 01:35:42 | |
All right, Councilman Campbell. | 01:35:44 | |
I'd just like to say we lost a lifelong resident of Watkinsville the Elder a week and a half ago. He was 99 years old, possibly | 01:35:46 | |
the oldest resident in Watkinsville. I don't know that for sure, but. | 01:35:53 | |
That's my guess. He was a self-made man. I was very fond of him. | 01:36:01 | |
For those that don't know that you drive on Morrison St. at the 90° elbow, he always had the vegetable garden. | 01:36:07 | |
You would have tomatoes for sale. Best tomatoes in the county. My mom always asked me please bring some of those tomatoes. My mom | 01:36:15 | |
lives in Marietta, so. | 01:36:20 | |
He also he moved the two houses that he has. They are on Wilson St. | 01:36:27 | |
Can leave them from Atlanta. When they built Hartsville Airport, he didn't have someone move him, he moved them. | 01:36:32 | |
Wonderful person. I've learned a lot from him and he will be missed. | 01:36:41 | |
Yeah, yeah, that's great, Jeff. I should have mentioned that Mister Elder was was absolutely a legend in Watkinsville and I know | 01:36:48 | |
you were close with him and he will be missed. | 01:36:53 | |
All right. Apparently we have an executive session, but what I'm going to suggest is we take a 10 minute break and that way if | 01:36:59 | |
people do want to talk a little bit before that executive session, we'll have that opportunity and then council will reconvene and | 01:37:04 | |
we'll start that executive session. Thank you all for coming tonight. | 01:37:08 | |
I have no idea. Motion, somebody? | 01:37:16 | |
Christine, I make a motion moved executive session. | 01:37:25 | |
Litigation. | 01:37:30 | |
Consultation with legal counsel. | 01:37:32 | |
All in favor. | 01:37:37 | |
And I dropped put mine down. But the irony is we had to have a all right, I make a motion to adjourn second, all in favor. | 01:37:42 |
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Sharon, we ready? | 00:00:00 | |
All right. Welcome everybody, to the May Watkinsville City Council meetings. Great to have a packed house here tonight. We're | 00:00:05 | |
grateful for that and also grateful to have a quorum here. Tonight. We have everybody here, everybody here from City Council. The | 00:00:12 | |
microphone is on. | 00:00:19 | |
OK. | 00:00:27 | |
Can you hear me now? There we go. OK. | 00:00:30 | |
So we will start as we normally do with the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. | 00:00:37 | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:00:43 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:00:49 | |
All right. Couple things before we get going in earnest tonight. I'm not sure what's brought such a big crowd in here tonight, but | 00:01:02 | |
I do want to point out, I do anticipate several items being tabled tonight, including the pipe plant project. It doesn't mean if | 00:01:08 | |
you came for that, that you can't speak, but you will need to wait until the public comment period of the meeting to speak to | 00:01:14 | |
that. We won't have a unless council sees otherwise. I anticipate us tabling that until August. | 00:01:20 | |
The gentleman involved with that project are here tonight and I'm sure if you've got thoughts or want to have a conversation with | 00:01:27 | |
them too, they're happy to engage in that and at at the appropriate point I'll encourage Mr. Keller to introduce himself, but we | 00:01:32 | |
will not be having that as a formal item on the agenda tonight unless council chooses to do so, but the developer has requested | 00:01:37 | |
that that be tabled tonight. | 00:01:42 | |
For those of you who haven't been here before, we're pretty, I won't say, loose with the rules. We do allow public comment at | 00:01:49 | |
council's discretion at moments where where some other governments may not. That said, we do have standards and expectations in | 00:01:54 | |
terms of how we do communicate. | 00:02:00 | |
Your comments will always need to be addressed to the council, not to the crowd. They will need to be respectful. They will need | 00:02:06 | |
to be focused on the matter at hand, unless it's during public comment. During public comment, you can comment on matters that are | 00:02:12 | |
wide-ranging, but you cannot insult or attack anyone in this room, or you will be asked to leave and shut down, OK? | 00:02:19 | |
So that'll be the way that that works that I'll provide some more clarity as we move through the agenda tonight. | 00:02:27 | |
I am your mayor, Brian Broderick. The other council members names are up here in front of you tonight. So we will start off with a | 00:02:32 | |
proclamation tonight. And that proclamation is for Municipal Court Corps Week and we have a very good Municipal Court clerk and | 00:02:38 | |
that's Miss Lee Black and we're grateful to her. | 00:02:44 | |
And all Municipal Court clerks for the vital services they perform in their exemplary dedication to the communities they represent | 00:03:54 | |
and serve. Lee, thank you. | 00:03:58 | |
Our finance director. | 00:04:18 | |
All right. I'm going to move to the microphone for our next. | 00:04:38 | |
Love it. We have. | 00:04:43 | |
Amelia Anderson. | 00:04:48 | |
And Cindy Pritchard, if you could come up here with me. | 00:04:52 | |
Amelia, how are you? This is your third council meeting in a row. Isn't that crazy that you're here? | 00:04:58 | |
A few months ago Amelia wrote me a letter and that was prompted by a project at her school and asked suggested that we have a | 00:05:03 | |
litter cleanup contest in Watkinsville. And we love that idea so much that we. | 00:05:09 | |
Had that contest and we are Amelia has been our leader and we're grateful to her. And then Cindy, right Oconee County clean and | 00:05:16 | |
beautiful and we're grateful for Cindy for her support. So we've had people all during the month of April during Earth month | 00:05:21 | |
cleaning up the streets around Watkinsville and the streets look great. So Amelia thank you for your work there. And so we had a | 00:05:27 | |
contest to see who could pick up the most trash during that month and I'm really pleased to announce the winners of that contest | 00:05:33 | |
tonight so. | 00:05:39 | |
In first place with $100.00 gift certificate to Athens running company we have. | 00:05:45 | |
Rosalind. Romano. Rosalind, come on up here. | 00:05:53 | |
$25 the cost that Allegra as well. | 00:06:06 | |
OK, there you go. How many bags of trash did you pick up? | 00:06:09 | |
Tell these people. | 00:06:12 | |
You don't remember? | 00:06:15 | |
Let's see. It looks like you picked up 5 to 9 bags of trash. | 00:06:20 | |
So Roslyn picked up 5 to 9 bags. So congratulations, Stay up here with me, all right? And then our next winner, our second place | 00:06:24 | |
winner is. | 00:06:29 | |
Alexander Emerson, do you know this guy? OK, Alexander, come on up here. Alexander is going to get. | 00:06:35 | |
70 He's going to get a $75.00 gift certificate to Mama Ning. So that could pay for the whole family, I think. So congratulations, | 00:06:44 | |
Alexander. | 00:06:48 | |
That's exciting. And then I understand, is today your birthday too? Is that right? Well, happy birthday. | 00:06:53 | |
All right. | 00:06:59 | |
Our third place winner is Dan Matthews, who picked up it looks like Dan did. You pick up 8 bags, 8 bags of trash. So Dan is going | 00:07:03 | |
to get fattened up at scoops. | 00:07:10 | |
Got a $50.00 gift stick? Get the scoops. | 00:07:19 | |
Dan also found our weirdest object, Which was which? Yeah, which I think was. | 00:07:22 | |
A. A piece of the library? Something from the library. | 00:07:33 | |
The door to the little Free Library Dan found. OK, so, so Dan, thank you for that. And then the last person I want to recognize is | 00:07:38 | |
Amelia. Amelia, thank you for thank you for what you've done and and your leadership. | 00:07:45 | |
So we're going to also going to give you a $25.00 gift card to Costa Allegra as well, so that's for you. | 00:07:52 | |
So thank you, Amelia. | 00:07:57 | |
Yeah, oops. Hang on a. | 00:08:25 | |
Yeah, yeah. | 00:08:33 | |
All right, we've had a lot of young leaders stepping up in Watkinsville lately, and Amelia Emerson is a great one. I know some | 00:08:47 | |
people were having trouble finding seats. If you're out in the hall, we do have seats available in here now as some people have | 00:08:51 | |
departed. Sophie. | 00:08:55 | |
Feel free to come on in. | 00:09:00 | |
A couple other quick announcements. May is April is Mental Health Month, and one in five at US adults experience mental illness | 00:09:02 | |
each year and only half of them receive treatment. So we'll remind people, if you have a mental health issue, Please remember to | 00:09:09 | |
call 988 if you need a help with. Need help with that. | 00:09:16 | |
So for a live meeting, the user must click the CC icon in the lower right corner of the video window. | 00:09:54 | |
When the video from tonight's meeting is posted online, closed captioning will automatically appear. Interested parties can also | 00:09:59 | |
view a transcript of the meeting under the tab titled Transcript As A Reminder. A notice of the council meeting, along with the | 00:10:04 | |
current month's agenda, is posted one full week before the meeting to allow the public sufficient time to provide comments and | 00:10:08 | |
writing to the clerk if they choose to do so. | 00:10:13 | |
I'll move on to the meeting minutes from the April 17th, 2024 Meeting Council. I'll entertain a motion to amend or approve the | 00:10:18 | |
minutes as necessary. | 00:10:23 | |
I make a motion to approve the minutes. Second we have a motion, we have a second. We have Any comments? | 00:10:29 | |
Hearing none all in favor, say aye. Any opposed motion carries 50. | 00:10:38 | |
We'll now move to the approval of the agenda. We are going to make the following amendments to the agenda. | 00:10:43 | |
We're going to table items 10 and 11. The applicant I'm requesting that we table items 10 and 11. The applicant has requested that | 00:10:48 | |
for the variance for 56 Dooley St. to the June 19th meeting. I'm also requesting that we table items 12 and 13, the rezone of 1180 | 00:10:54 | |
Greensboro Highway to August 21st meeting. | 00:11:00 | |
As I said earlier, if you're here to talk about that tonight, you can certainly mention, give us your thoughts during the public | 00:11:07 | |
comments portion of the meeting. And I do anticipate the meeting being relatively brief tonight other than the budget. So if you | 00:11:12 | |
want to hang around and comment, that's fine. | 00:11:17 | |
We also want to table item 16 per staff, request the contractor for trail work at the Thomas Farm Preserve to June 19th and then | 00:11:22 | |
I'd like to request that we add under old businesses item 14 a revision to approve the selection of the contractor related to our | 00:11:28 | |
work on School St. and Simonton Way. | 00:11:34 | |
So if anybody could make a motion to that effect I would appreciate it. So moved. | 00:11:40 | |
Sorry, we have a motion. We have a second. Any comments? | 00:11:45 | |
Hearing none, all in favor, say aye, aye. | 00:11:49 | |
The motion, the agenda is amended. | 00:11:53 | |
And that will be our agenda tonight. | 00:11:55 | |
Right. We'll move through administration. Well, that'll be our financial reports, economic development, Police Department reports. | 00:11:57 | |
Miss Dickerson, if you want to kick us off with administration, please. Thank you, Mayor. Everybody should have received and these | 00:12:03 | |
are available online as well, a balance sheet, the general fund revenues and expenses, right now we are at 98% revenues when we | 00:12:08 | |
should be closer to 83. So that's good news. On our expense side, we should be close to 83 and we're actually at 76%. So that's | 00:12:14 | |
even better news. | 00:12:19 | |
Any questions in general about those? | 00:12:26 | |
OK. Talk about a little bit about our SPLOST. | 00:12:29 | |
So Splice 3 this these projects include the improvements at Hair Shoals Park, including the recent paving down there as well as | 00:12:32 | |
the bathroom renovation. We have some work on a boardwalk that we're currently working on with a consultant. We also have some | 00:12:40 | |
work in this in this budget that covers Thomas Farm Preserve that has been encumbered and some work that's currently underway. | 00:12:47 | |
It also included some work on Jackson Street with some drainage improvements, downtown streetscape, some sidewalks, work at Rocket | 00:12:55 | |
Field and our entryway signs. And we still have a fair amount of money left in the budget that has that has not been spent, that | 00:13:01 | |
will be spent on some of these projects. The average monthly revenue is around 81,000. | 00:13:08 | |
And we budgeted around 60, I think 68,000. This floss is collected at 8.63% under agreement with Oconee County and it will sunset | 00:13:16 | |
on September 30th of 2027. We have a little bit more than $1,000,000 in this account. | 00:13:23 | |
On T's bosses, our transportation special purpose local option sales tax that began in April of last year. It ends in March of | 00:13:32 | |
2028. It is calculated 7.77% with the county. Right now our average revenues are right around 71 and some change projects under | 00:13:38 | |
this I. | 00:13:44 | |
Program or sidewalks and paving of roads, those are ones that are currently under. In fact, one of the items on your agenda | 00:13:51 | |
tonight that we're going to be talking about deals with some money is out of this, out of this program. | 00:13:56 | |
And we have a little bit more than $655,000 in that account. | 00:14:03 | |
Seen a growth of about 6%. | 00:14:07 | |
Any questions on any of that? | 00:14:45 | |
OK, whoops. | 00:14:48 | |
Hang on a second. | 00:14:49 | |
Economic development. So business licenses were probably about 92% complete. We've got some that are waiting on some fire | 00:14:52 | |
inspections and some others that we're trying to clarify if they're still in business or not. | 00:14:57 | |
So that that's a good number to be at just a month after the deadline on excise tax collections. We have alcohol excise tax and | 00:15:03 | |
our short term vacation rental or hotel motel tax. Those are tracking as we anticipated. | 00:15:09 | |
And on building permits, we have 24 permits for 20 projects. Our biggest one on here dollar wise is the Waters Walk project that | 00:15:17 | |
has been outstanding that is a low income housing tax credit funded. | 00:15:24 | |
Project that will provide for its age restricted, so 55 plus or older people will live in that in that complex. It'll be located | 00:15:31 | |
behind a county State Bank off of water and Durham St. So they've paid this fees and they're working to demo those buildings which | 00:15:37 | |
all that all that has been approved. They're just finally at the point where they can start triggering that work. So any questions | 00:15:43 | |
on those? | 00:15:49 | |
All right. I have one more thing that I normally don't only do this once a year. This is our annual review with Civic Plus. They | 00:15:56 | |
maintain our website. | 00:16:00 | |
We've been working with them since 2018 and just some interesting stats that I wanted to share I. | 00:16:05 | |
So our website, if nobody knows, it's cityofwatkinsville.com. | 00:16:12 | |
So we had 30. Over the past year we've had 33,000 plus users, a total of 77,716 page views and an average time of two minutes and | 00:16:17 | |
20 seconds. Our population is a little bit more than 2800 according to the census, the top listed pages. I'm not surprised by this | 00:16:24 | |
Christmas festivities that always gets a big push. Hair Shoals, Park Police Department and then Thomas Farm City Council meeting, | 00:16:30 | |
which was good to see and just general information about the city. | 00:16:37 | |
And then our top search items, paying a ticket or paying miscellaneous items. So we do also don't want everybody thinking that's | 00:16:46 | |
just tickets. That also includes anybody want to rent the parks or whatnot, they can use that as well. | 00:16:51 | |
And then, of course, Christmas festivities and building permits. | 00:16:57 | |
And then these are the top downloaded documents, our occupational tax application affidavits which are required for contractors, | 00:17:00 | |
information about garbage and recycling and other items. So it's always interesting to see what we get each year, what the | 00:17:05 | |
analytics are. So any questions about any of that? | 00:17:11 | |
OK. | 00:17:17 | |
All right. So I I don't know how many of y'all participated in our first ever annual burger week that the DA put on with some of | 00:17:21 | |
our local restaurants. | 00:17:28 | |
And also partnered with the Georgia Beef Board. But it was an exciting week. I personally ate way more hamburgers than I normally | 00:17:35 | |
would, probably in a month, and they were excellent. | 00:17:41 | |
We sold over 1000 total burgers, approximately 414 lbs of beef, 423 total votes and $55 was raised for O arc. 7 restaurants in | 00:17:49 | |
downtown participated. | 00:17:57 | |
And the winners were Best Burger, Blind Pig Tavern. | 00:18:05 | |
The most creative burger. And it was, and it was delightful. And I've heard that even though it's not officially on the menu, you | 00:18:13 | |
can actually request it if you go to Kiki's Kitchen. | 00:18:18 | |
And then the last one, best collaboration with some great. | 00:18:23 | |
Great businesses and people here was Wing House Grill. So that was a lot of fun and today and our DDA meeting we talked through | 00:18:30 | |
some tweaks and some improvements. Anytime you do something there's always you know room for changes and improvements and we do | 00:18:37 | |
think that is the that this was the first annual and so something to be looking forward to in the future. It also just in general | 00:18:44 | |
that obviously the point of doing these things is to help bring more business to downtown into our restaurants and. | 00:18:52 | |
They really did see increased sales overall and increased business and I heard a lot of people try places that they hadn't tried | 00:18:59 | |
before. So again, that's the the reason we do these things and it really was a success. The next big thing that DDA has coming up | 00:19:07 | |
is right, it's going to be a kickoff right before school starts. August 3rd is a BBQ competition and Bake Off and we are still | 00:19:16 | |
taking entries. We are still looking for sponsors. We actually have a fair amount of sponsorship, which is excellent. | 00:19:24 | |
This is all a fundraiser. It's appropriate for me to talk about it right now as this is Mental Health Awareness Month and this is | 00:19:32 | |
going to be going to help support Bethel Haven, which is a local nonprofit that has mental health services available to | 00:19:40 | |
individuals and families. So mark your calendar. I know August 3rd sounds like it's forever away, but we are all going to blink | 00:19:47 | |
and it's going to be there and it is Kathleen's birthday, so we will all go and set. | 00:19:55 | |
Which birthday? Seven. OK, so we're going to have a big party. | 00:20:03 | |
At Rocket Field. So all exciting things to look forward to. | 00:20:08 | |
All right. With that, we'll turn it over to Chief GAIL for the Police Department report. | 00:20:17 | |
Thank you. | 00:20:27 | |
Got to bring it down from my short self. That's OK. The police department's been very busy over the past month with lots of good | 00:20:29 | |
things. I I take no credit for this. These officers have been working their tails off and as citizens, you all should be very | 00:20:37 | |
proud. They're doing the property checks. They're they're, you know, they're citing people for violations on vehicles that are | 00:20:44 | |
safety issues. And that's the thing we try to emphasize. Yes, it might be equipment, but there's also usually some. | 00:20:52 | |
Safety event going on. That catches our attention. So I just want to keep that in mind. But they're getting out there checking | 00:21:00 | |
property checks. That's a big #675 property checks. So they're getting out of their cars, they're walking around, they're driving | 00:21:06 | |
it around the property. So very meaningful activities. We're also amping up our training and so several officers have gone to | 00:21:12 | |
different classes. | 00:21:19 | |
We've had an officer complete family violence and those laws are always changing, so it's a constant need. | 00:21:26 | |
We went, we had another officer go to criminal procedure. So that goes with your legal foundation and our city attorney can | 00:21:33 | |
appreciate that. I I appreciate it. I'll tell you that for sure. And there we have several classes still lined up at our state | 00:21:40 | |
training facility. So there is minimal cost to the department or the city. But we're, you know, I'm trying to reach out to | 00:21:47 | |
agencies close to us so that we are perpetually training our officers to be confident at what they're doing. | 00:21:55 | |
And safety is always an emphasis. So we're we're doing training on our tactics and such. | 00:22:03 | |
We are still dealing and will be dealing with the police vehicle recall issues. They're only doing one car at a time. So it's a | 00:22:10 | |
slow process and it's a multiple multi pronged process because we can take a car for one issue and then we'll have to take it back | 00:22:16 | |
for a separate recall. And that's just the story of our life and moving on to the next slide. We've been busy with community | 00:22:23 | |
events and that is, that's what drives us. You all drive us and it's been thrilling. It's been wonderful. I sent a ton of | 00:22:29 | |
pictures. | 00:22:35 | |
To manager Dickerson and you know it's it's just. | 00:22:43 | |
That's how we get to know you and that's how you all our community get to know us, so we will continue to do this. | 00:22:46 | |
And and so with that I'm going to ask two officers to and they they really don't want to do this, but we need to recognize the | 00:22:54 | |
time and effort that these officers put in to you, to our community and our children. So we've had two, we've had multiple events, | 00:23:02 | |
but two of them were done really. The officers take the lead on planning this and they do it in their off time, so. | 00:23:11 | |
Doing a majority of this work when they're not here, so it takes a lot of effort and then when they're on midnight shift it it's | 00:23:20 | |
painful to see them get up or stay over to continue to get everything planned and organized for our incredible event. So we did | 00:23:28 | |
cops and bobbers. We've done an event at a adult elderly facility, residential facility for Valentine's Day. We've hard agree | 00:23:36 | |
Fishing sanctuary allowed us to use it. We partnered with them. | 00:23:44 | |
And we had an incredible event with our kids and that's where our kids, you all get to know us as humans not wearing the uniforms | 00:23:52 | |
and we're out there. So I'd like to recognize two of our officers that really took the lead on these events. So I'd ask for | 00:24:00 | |
Officer creation, Officer Anglin to go ahead and stand up here. And these are commendations. | 00:24:09 | |
So these are accommodation bars and I guess. | 00:24:30 | |
Do the circle for their uniforms. | 00:24:33 | |
But these are community service. | 00:24:36 | |
Hands and arms, work hours that are included in these things. And so again you know, I applaud them. I applaud their dedication to | 00:24:39 | |
our community and to our kids, our youth and our adults, everybody. And so I think, you know we then need to get them around and | 00:24:47 | |
and officers that are here, they're supporting their teammates because they care and and this is how you all get to know us and | 00:24:55 | |
know that we are engaged with our community and we want to hear from you. We want to see what you all want us to do. | 00:25:03 | |
So thank you. | 00:25:12 | |
If the rest of the officers, if all of y'all could come in since we've got such a crowd here tonight, I think it'd be great for | 00:25:19 | |
the I think it looks like we've got a couple out in the hallway if y'all could all come in. | 00:25:23 | |
Come on in. | 00:25:28 | |
We've got such a group here tonight, that's umm, I think it's important for us to. | 00:25:29 | |
In law enforcement in Watkinsville and continue to invest there. And you guys are a core part of making this community what it is | 00:26:11 | |
and making it one of the safest communities in Georgia and America. And we're grateful to you guys. So thankful. | 00:26:17 | |
So that pretty much sums up what the police departments been up to. We're busy. We enjoy being busy and we will continue to be | 00:26:31 | |
busy, but in a good way. So do are there any questions? | 00:26:37 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:26:44 | |
All right. | 00:26:48 | |
All right, under consent agenda, we've got a resolution to approve a grant application from the Georgia Recreational Trail program | 00:26:52 | |
and authorize the city's financial commitment. You know, we typically don't discuss consent agenda items, so I'll entertain a | 00:26:57 | |
motion to approve the consent agenda. | 00:27:02 | |
I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right, do we have a second? Second. | 00:27:09 | |
Any discussion? Hearing none all in favor say aye. Any opposed like sign motion carries 5 O. | 00:27:14 | |
All right. We will now move into our public hearing, our public hearing tonight. I think the only one that we have will be on the | 00:27:23 | |
budget I. | 00:27:27 | |
We'll let folks who need to slide out of here, slide out of here. While they do that, I'll remind remind you about our budget | 00:27:37 | |
public hearing procedures. | 00:27:41 | |
For for public hearing, for public hearing, we have Joe's at. | 00:27:49 | |
To make any public comments or suggestions or thoughts on what you want to see in the budget for the City of Watkinsville for | 00:29:00 | |
Fiscal year 25, a couple notes that I'll make as we get started. | 00:29:05 | |
The net tax digest has increased more than 13 million. | 00:29:11 | |
Between the past two years to Net Tax Digest in Watkinsville is just over $230 million in 2023. Now it's 243,000,000. And I'm | 00:29:17 | |
sorry this is a bit of an eye chart up here, but this is on on the website. So even though the property digest did increase, the | 00:29:23 | |
city manager and I are recommending that we roll back the mileage rate, meaning that there will not be a property tax increase | 00:29:29 | |
from the City of Watkinsville this year. | 00:29:36 | |
You'll see the top three revenues, our property taxes, local option sales tax and the insurance premium tax. | 00:30:50 | |
On our expense side, we have a lot of services that the city provides. We have 21 staff member, full-time staff members and one | 00:31:00 | |
part time employee that's in our Police Department. We do a lot of the same municipal services that a lot of communities around us | 00:31:06 | |
provide, but we end up doing a lot of contracting for services such as our garbage and leaf and limb, our city engineer, our | 00:31:13 | |
attorney, our building permits and inspections. That keeps the cost of personnel and benefits and whatnot at a lower price, plus | 00:31:19 | |
we get the benefit of having. | 00:31:26 | |
Have gotten much older and they don't use that technology anymore. They're actually using like tablets, which we're not, we're not | 00:32:40 | |
interested in moving towards. And so we put in in the budget for that and we also have to replace our City Hall server. We should | 00:32:45 | |
have replaced it a couple years ago, but we've been pushing it out as long as we could and we've got we're at the point where we | 00:32:50 | |
need to replace it now. | 00:32:56 | |
And that is it. I can answer questions if there any, but I think we'll let you turn over the public hearing. | 00:33:02 | |
All right, Council, any questions or comments you want to make before we start the public hearing? | 00:33:09 | |
All right. Hearing none, I'm going to open the public hearing. As a reminder, you have 4 minutes to step forward and make your | 00:33:16 | |
comments about the budget. | 00:33:19 | |
I'm Bob Smith. | 00:33:29 | |
Excuse me just a second, I hope this isn't kept my time I've got. | 00:33:32 | |
Turn this off. | 00:33:36 | |
I'm Bob Smith, former mayor of Watkinsville, for one year and three months before I resigned for a number of reasons I wanted to | 00:33:39 | |
point point out. | 00:33:43 | |
That there are three lawsuits pending against this city. One in the United States District Court, Middle District Court of | 00:33:47 | |
Georgia. I have a copy that I think you need to see. And one of the reasons there's a microphone is never close to your mouth. | 00:33:53 | |
That's one of the one of the reasons that I could not hear. | 00:33:58 | |
Before, during mayor and after mayor. I'm gonna pass this out when I when I get through. All right, We're here to talk about the | 00:34:04 | |
budget. Are you gonna talk about the budget? Sure. | 00:34:08 | |
The cost of the 100 acre park that Y'all just purchased for $1 million more than the appraisal, I'd like to see in that budget how | 00:34:13 | |
that's going to be maintained 100 acres #2. How you going to maintain hairstyles park that's right behind us here that's loaded up | 00:34:21 | |
with Kudzu, can't even maintain the park that we have, but you're buying 100 acre park. | 00:34:28 | |
Open records clerk. Perhaps you need to get an open records clerk to handle the records of people that want to know. Open and | 00:34:37 | |
transparent, Honest government. | 00:34:41 | |
And it's not funny, Mr. Mayor. It's not funny when when I have to do an open records for secret emails, 2147 pages are in the | 00:34:46 | |
response for a secret e-mail to this city and you read it. | 00:34:56 | |
$100,000 in budget. | 00:35:08 | |
For building permits, it looks like the pipe plant property is already a done deal. Is that correct? Is it not? Then? I know | 00:35:11 | |
smiles are wrong along the table here, but this is a serious matter that that you've already foregone. Looked like you put 100,000 | 00:35:18 | |
according to some people I've talked with already in next year's budget for building permits. | 00:35:25 | |
But then. | 00:35:34 | |
I'd like to know in the budget that 100% of all the taxpayer money that used to be 6,000,000 when I was a Mayor Nash about | 00:35:35 | |
4,000,000 is all in the Mayor Broderick's bank. I want to know how much interest is getting paid for last year and this year's | 00:35:41 | |
budget. | 00:35:46 | |
And then last thing would be. | 00:35:53 | |
When I was mayor the budget was $1.7 million and I think I've just heard, I think I just heard 3.2 million. I'm going to double in | 00:35:57 | |
three years and all and the top five people that get paid in this city, right here, the top five people. | 00:36:06 | |
Don't even live in Oak County County. | 00:36:16 | |
There's some talented people in Watkinsville and Oconee County, but they don't even live in Oconee County. | 00:36:19 | |
And. | 00:36:26 | |
I just want some answers on on how you're going to pay for all these things to park. | 00:36:27 | |
How you got paid for the three lawsuits, 2IN Superior Court and one in a federal court for Americans with Disabilities Act, that | 00:36:33 | |
those are the things I did not see in the budget. So I'm going to leave now and pass out the the suit that was filed. | 00:36:40 | |
All right. Would anyone else like to step forward and make a comment on the budget? | 00:36:50 | |
All right, hearing none. I will close the public hearing. | 00:37:01 | |
Seeing none, but I will respond to what Mr. Smith had to say. I think it's important that the guests here hear the truth. We have | 00:37:05 | |
increased our parks budget. We're going to add an additional employee for our parks. The addition of the lawn mower that we've | 00:37:11 | |
anticipated is going to help us out a second crew to take care of the mowing. So we're pretty confident we can take care of | 00:37:17 | |
things. | 00:37:23 | |
In the way that we're doing on the parks, your second question was open records. Mr. Smith, as you probably know, the vast | 00:37:29 | |
majority of those come from you. We probably have gotten maybe 20 in the past two weeks. That takes a tremendous amount of time. | 00:37:37 | |
The lawsuits also come from you. Our estimated expense on those is an excessive 20 to $25,000 This year alone outside of our | 00:37:44 | |
insurer, our insurer has dealt with 22, two $100,000 plus of legal fees, again due to your lawsuit. | 00:37:51 | |
We anticipate an amount of building permits that we get every year and those building permits, if we get a fee from a developer | 00:38:34 | |
then a portion of that I think 75% what's that Sharon, 67% of that goes to Bureau Veritas, 33% of that comes back to the city to | 00:38:40 | |
bear our cost for those If we do, if those building permits don't come through, we simply lose the revenue and we lose the | 00:38:46 | |
expense. So they offset, but we do make an estimate of what we anticipate in terms of building permits each year when they come | 00:38:51 | |
through. | 00:38:57 | |
The interest rates, I'll let Manager Dickerson respond to. I think she's got those. I think they flex up and down every month per | 00:39:03 | |
our agreement with the bank. But again, I won't comment on banking matters. Yeah, and I don't have the exact number, but I know | 00:39:08 | |
we're somewhere between 4 and 5% on our money right now. We are way over on our revenues of what we thought we were going to | 00:39:13 | |
receive this year because we didn't anticipate that high of an interest rate. | 00:39:17 | |
Yeah. So we have a formal agreement with the bank that Manager Dickerson negotiated, that I recused myself from and that council | 00:39:23 | |
approved, I think approved when actually the previous mayor may have been here for the first time. | 00:39:29 | |
We're all ears and we want to answer those. So we want you to know what's going on with your local government. | 00:40:09 | |
All right. Moving on from that, The next item is appearances. We have none. The next item is old business. Do we need to discuss | 00:40:15 | |
the? | 00:40:20 | |
The consent agreement with Green River Builders and Construction for the green space, no update on that. So we will not take any | 00:40:27 | |
action on that. That means we move to 14 a under old business which is a contract amendment related to ELMIG and Paving which | 00:40:34 | |
impact school St. Simonton Way. | 00:40:42 | |
Niagara Drive and Jackson St. | 00:40:50 | |
And so the decision was made, recommendation is being made that that road be demoed that we define a culvert on the Northside to | 00:41:26 | |
help with the flow of water to install a curb. The better direct the flow of water from the roadway into our catch basins and | 00:41:32 | |
construct the road based if needed. We're not 100% sure that road is so old. We're not sure if it has a road base, but if it | 00:41:38 | |
doesn't that will have to be constructed. So there is a difference of $25,000 an estimate but not to exceed $25,000 to do that | 00:41:44 | |
work. | 00:41:50 | |
The difference the 25,000 will come out of the TS blast which is a requirement. There's 30% of the T spots referendum is supposed | 00:41:57 | |
to be used on roads resurfacing and rehabilitation. I just use the exact same report you had last month and just added Redline | 00:42:04 | |
where we needed to have it. So the update on that is again Engineer Campbell met on the May 9th. I believe that was a Thursday | 00:42:11 | |
with the contractor to discuss our desire to address to change the scope of work as I explained to you. | 00:42:18 | |
And Tony Smith, the owner of Tony Smith and kind of, sorry, Cut Smith and Company said that he estimates the additional work at | 00:42:26 | |
cost not to exceed $25,000. So that's what we're asking. I don't know if the city engineer wants to offer any additional. | 00:42:32 | |
Input or feedback on that, Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to answer questions. The original scope on School St. if you'll remember we | 00:42:39 | |
worked on Water St. to really address some drainage issues there. That seems to be working very well on School St. The the | 00:42:46 | |
original plan was to middle School St. I don't have any documentation of the last time School St. was milled. If you go out there, | 00:42:52 | |
you can see that that paving has been added on top over and over over a period of time. So the original plan was to Middle School | 00:42:59 | |
St. before new pavement was added. | 00:43:05 | |
Upon further examination specifically during rain events, I think the better course of action is going to be the salt cut and | 00:43:13 | |
remove to go back to start from a firm foundation. We can patch it and we can certainly save money in the short term to patch it. | 00:43:19 | |
I think that the better opportunity would be to fix it. And so that was the discussion that took place. That's the new number you | 00:43:25 | |
see there. | 00:43:32 | |
All right. Questions from council to staff. | 00:43:41 | |
Hearing none. | 00:43:47 | |
All right, Council, I'll entertain a motion. | 00:43:52 | |
I make a motion to approve. | 00:43:55 | |
We have second. | 00:43:57 | |
All right, we have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion. | 00:43:59 | |
All in favor, say aye aye. Any opposed All right. The motion carries to adjust the paving scope on. | 00:44:02 | |
School St. the portion near the courthouse, not east of Main Street but West of Main Street. All right under New Business. We have | 00:44:10 | |
three items under new business and we'll be at public comments. | 00:44:16 | |
The Approve a contractor for the bathroom renovation at Thomas Farm Preserve. | 00:44:22 | |
Invasive removal and such. On April 18th we released it a request for proposal for the renovation of the bathroom. On May 6th we | 00:45:02 | |
received one proposal from Smith and Co for $39,877 in addition to a post on the city's website. It was advertised in Oconee | 00:45:09 | |
Enterprise and provided directly to three companies, Martin Pell, Free Handyman, Smith and Co, and Triple J Construction. Based on | 00:45:17 | |
the council's approved budget for the Thomas Farm Preserve, we have $50,000 available for that renovation. | 00:45:25 | |
All sorts of things we have to do to make sure that it is accessible. And so we are negotiating with the contractor to bring it | 00:46:08 | |
down. But we are asking you go ahead and approve the contractor for an amount not to exceed 40,000. We anticipate it will be much | 00:46:13 | |
lower than that. | 00:46:17 | |
All right, Council, you've heard the recommendation from staff. Any questions? | 00:46:23 | |
Hearing none, do we have a motion. | 00:46:29 | |
Make a motion that we approve the bid and the project. | 00:46:33 | |
All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Any further discussion? | 00:46:39 | |
All in favor, say aye, aye. All right. As we discussed that was previously budgeted and it's coming out of SPLOST funds. | 00:46:43 | |
We'll move on to item 17. Item 16 was tabled and this is the Watkinsville Warehouse District LLC, Wastewater capacity allocation | 00:46:50 | |
request and all that staff introduced that and Mr. Bishop, you can come on up and stand while staff does the introduction. | 00:46:57 | |
Thank you, Mayor. So this applicant has a project that has been approved by the City Council. We were under the impression, I | 00:47:09 | |
believe he was as well, that he would be able to use an existing guaranteed sewer capacity from the county when we do. Further | 00:47:15 | |
that agreement realized that the agreement was only for guarantee and reserve for sewer collection and pumping and not for | 00:47:22 | |
capacity. So he is requesting for the capacity for that front building, which is 290 gallons a day. | 00:47:28 | |
That has been confirmed. That amount has been confirmed by Oconee County and he is here to request that. | 00:47:35 | |
Good evening, everybody. | 00:47:41 | |
Just requesting the 290, I think it's the minimum amount. Yeah, 290. So just for the project at 1260 Greensboro Highway. | 00:47:42 | |
All right. Mr. Bishop, will you give an overview of the project just for our guests here so they understand what's going. So the | 00:47:51 | |
building is 7100 square feet, is located directly in front of what everybody knows is the Core Blend building. | 00:47:56 | |
Corbin is actually going to move out of their current location into the new location. So they'll just use minimal amount of sewer | 00:48:02 | |
for just four bathrooms, single hole bathrooms. And so that's pretty much just the scope of the projects, basically office, | 00:48:08 | |
warehouse space, OK. | 00:48:14 | |
Council, any questions? | 00:48:21 | |
Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the wastewater capacity allocation request. | 00:48:24 | |
I make a motion to approve the wastewater allocation request. | 00:48:29 | |
Do we have a second? | 00:48:33 | |
2nd. | 00:48:36 | |
Mr. Thomas, you'll get in at some point. All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further comments or questions? | 00:48:37 | |
Hearing none all in favor say aye Any opposed like sign. | 00:48:43 | |
Motion carries 50. Mr. Bishop, are you staying for the next one, too? That's not me. OK, all right. Address is similar. | 00:48:47 | |
Oh, yeah, that's right. OK, now, now it's all clear. All right. So we have a wastewater capacity allocation request for 12:40 | 00:48:56 | |
Greensboro Highway. Welcome back, Dax and Life. If you could introduce yourselves and maybe remind everybody what you have going | 00:49:02 | |
on. Well, before we do that, why don't we let staff talk and then I'll let y'all talk. | 00:49:08 | |
That remind you that the property owner was recently approved for seven hundred 780 gallons per day for three buildings at that | 00:49:14 | |
location. They're requesting an additional capacity for building 200 which they're preparing for an event space, restaurant and | 00:49:21 | |
Oconee Water Resources has indicated they would need an additional 28165 gallons a day. | 00:49:28 | |
All right. So if you want to walk us through what y'all have planned and and then council will take a look at this. Sharon, was | 00:49:37 | |
there anything else you needed to offer that? It looks like you've got the chart up there in terms of our capacity, is that | 00:49:41 | |
correct? | 00:49:44 | |
OK. So we keep up for the benefits of those who aren't here. We keep up with our sewer capacity there in certain parts of the | 00:49:49 | |
city. We have an allocation of 100,000 gallons per day, but we have another 100,000 gallons coming when the county expands its | 00:49:56 | |
sewer plant in the next few years. This is this is approved, not actually you know in use sewer capacity at this point. So it | 00:50:03 | |
includes future development projects. So if y'all want to introduce yourselves and give us a quick overview, that'd be great. | 00:50:10 | |
Right. I'm life Hansford and. | 00:50:17 | |
Right. OK. So we're rebuilding the property that burned on our property, the building that burned building 200 and we started with | 00:50:20 | |
minimum capacity. But as we've gone along and we've had interest, we've had a restaurant reach out to us and an event space that | 00:50:26 | |
we'd like to put up there. And those require I think 50 seats per and there's allocation of gallons per use per day. That's what | 00:50:31 | |
we got to this number to be able to do those things in that building. OK. | 00:50:37 | |
All right, Council. Questions for Dachshund Life. | 00:50:45 | |
All right, I'll entertain a motion to. | 00:50:51 | |
Entertain a motion. | 00:50:54 | |
I'll make a motion that we approve the wastewater capacity. | 00:50:57 | |
All right. We have a motion to approve. We have a second from Councilman Garrett. All right. Good. The left side speaks up. All | 00:51:00 | |
right. Any questions or comments from council hearing none. All in favor. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign motion carries 5 O. | 00:51:07 | |
Thank you all for coming. I'd like to say just real quick that this is the third meeting that Lake and I've been at and we really. | 00:51:14 | |
I do appreciate everything that you guys do. I don't think you guys think get thanked enough. So just from he and I would just | 00:51:21 | |
like to say thank you for everything. Well, thanks for your investment in Watkinsville. We appreciate it. Yeah. | 00:51:26 | |
Mr. Lay, welcome back. | 00:52:02 | |
Thank you. Always good to have a former Council member back with us. | 00:52:04 | |
My name, Johnny Wright. I've been living The Walking business in 1964. | 00:52:08 | |
I've always been very concerned about Walking Field Hub. | 00:52:14 | |
I got the admit that was in the last. | 00:52:19 | |
I got mixed emotions by right now so. | 00:52:21 | |
You know, we got too much development going on, We got too much bending going on. | 00:52:25 | |
I I have this impression to develop the company to town, take it over and just do what you want. I know it sounds ugly, but I | 00:52:32 | |
don't even feel it that way. | 00:52:35 | |
By the same token. | 00:52:40 | |
The three developments that we already had, you know who three I'm talking about? | 00:52:41 | |
I got me there first. They look like a first class development to me. I'd use it with just read. That's why I didn't call from my | 00:52:47 | |
house. | 00:52:52 | |
Oh, it's nice, neat. I couldn't say nothing negative about it. So when I say I think we got too much building going on, they nice | 00:52:57 | |
building, they nice development. | 00:53:02 | |
So. | 00:53:08 | |
I'm going to lead up to the, one of Y'all said. It's been postponed and not the concrete pipe place. | 00:53:09 | |
By the same token, I say something about the development. | 00:53:16 | |
Building UH? | 00:53:19 | |
I'll go ahead and throw this in. And this wasn't in my speech. I've been practicing for three weeks and since newspaper come out. | 00:53:21 | |
At the same time, the stuff y'all doing, I may not agree with a lot of it. I'm going to take rocket for you all the paving down | 00:53:28 | |
here at the park. | 00:53:32 | |
Everything you're doing so far looks nice. I call it quality work. Down the road it going to be worse. | 00:53:37 | |
I'm just, I'm telling old fashioned, don't like to spend money. | 00:53:44 | |
But but it's looking good. | 00:53:47 | |
What I'm concerned about the concrete pipe development is. | 00:53:52 | |
The fact that. | 00:53:57 | |
I think at the time. | 00:53:59 | |
I think you're too larger to development. | 00:54:02 | |
If you really look at the way I looked at it, I have been in the paper and. | 00:54:05 | |
All the way from the railroad down to Marshall St. that's a lot of development. | 00:54:09 | |
That's a lot of traffic. | 00:54:15 | |
There's a lot of footwork, a lot of protesting congestion. | 00:54:17 | |
So to me, I'm saying that particular project need to be put on hold. There's simply that. | 00:54:22 | |
I narrowed all that. Then in one word, that's traffic. | 00:54:29 | |
Traffic Rockin Field who hasn't ever been in? | 00:54:32 | |
And not gonna get no darling better. | 00:54:36 | |
I don't see nothing changing, Nick. 1015 years. | 00:54:38 | |
We don't need to meet you that loaded from Greensboro Road to the bypass where you can bypass Wardenville Hill Bypass ain't moved | 00:54:43 | |
in 20 years. | 00:54:47 | |
He's still around life we've been getting going to Bishop yet. | 00:54:51 | |
So I don't see any help in traffic in downtown Walking field. | 00:54:55 | |
And nobody don't get our heads haven't told me this past week and I'm not going to get into it, not just because y'all talking | 00:55:01 | |
about it. | 00:55:05 | |
Sure, I said something, that guy said. You know why so much building going on in the city, don't you? Not really. | 00:55:11 | |
He said it cost developer his first priority to sewing water. | 00:55:20 | |
I don't want a true or none. I'm not a new asset I won't try to find out for. | 00:55:25 | |
But if that's right. | 00:55:31 | |
It seemed like me this whole development bad concrete pipe place. It don't seem like a little Shorty there. You talking about 400 | 00:55:33 | |
toilet 4500 faucets people? | 00:55:38 | |
So what's the big deal to sewer connection? | 00:55:45 | |
When we developed them coming in here, no problem with it. | 00:55:49 | |
That's another story. | 00:55:52 | |
I don't want to get my tooth in about the concrete pipe place where I don't have to come back next month. I'm against it. | 00:55:54 | |
Thank you, Mr. Way. Appreciate you being here. | 00:56:01 | |
And Julie, we have Mr. Lays address on file, is that correct? OK, remember to please state your address and your name when you | 00:56:08 | |
come up. | 00:56:11 | |
Mr. Smith, Mayor, I didn't intend to come before, right, but. | 00:56:15 | |
Because you tabled this, this project are great for Hwy. There are a number of people that wanted to talk about. | 00:56:21 | |
Traffic, traffic and traffic and more traffic. | 00:56:29 | |
And that's an issue. | 00:56:34 | |
We're continuing to do this until we have a plan for truck bypass that was in the works at one time. Where's the truck bath | 00:56:36 | |
bypass? | 00:56:40 | |
But most importantly, what I will understand here and talk about is no laughing matter about this federal lawsuit that's filed for | 00:56:44 | |
the American Disabilities Act. It's not laughing. | 00:56:50 | |
Are coming here again and I have to look around to see who's making the motion and the microphone is about a 14, three feet away | 00:56:56 | |
from your mouth. | 00:57:01 | |
And if I can't hear it? | 00:57:07 | |
And this has been going on since before I was mayor, while I was mayor, and after I was mayor. Otherwise I would never have filed | 00:57:09 | |
a federal lawsuit against his body. | 00:57:14 | |
But you continue to do it even tonight. Now why am I doing this? | 00:57:20 | |
It's because almost 60 million people in America have a hearing issue. That's about 18 to 20%. And if we keep people out of this | 00:57:26 | |
body from running for office or participating in the process, that the the political process, the smart people that can't hear. | 00:57:36 | |
We need to pay attention to those smart people that can't hear and include them in the process, but otherwise you're precluding | 00:57:47 | |
them. | 00:57:50 | |
What? Excluding him? Whatever you want to say. But this is a not a laughing matter like I have seen here. | 00:57:55 | |
That the microphone is 234 feet away from your face and you're making motions, and I couldn't hear who made the motion. | 00:58:03 | |
This is a serious, serious matter, you know. | 00:58:13 | |
That hearing impaired people I walked through here. | 00:58:16 | |
I'm not handicapped. | 00:58:20 | |
But I'm 80% hearing loss. I've lived with this since the 4th grade. You have to work hard to live with it. | 00:58:22 | |
And when I was in the legislature, we passed and I offered this a Commission on the here impaired. We went to the Georgia Lines | 00:58:30 | |
Lighthouse because I care about the hearing impaired. I can find the money to help myself. But there are people that don't have | 00:58:36 | |
the money, they don't have the resources, they don't have the knowledge to find out how to hear and participate in the American | 00:58:42 | |
experiment. | 00:58:47 | |
We went to the Georgia Lions White House with a public private partnership. | 00:58:54 | |
And a year ago, I called them. How many people in Georgia have been affected by this legislation? 25,000 Georgians. That's not | 00:58:59 | |
enough, but it's a good start. | 00:59:05 | |
But this is a serious matter and I passed out. | 00:59:12 | |
That federal lawsuit to you, because I don't know if you've ever gotten it. I don't know if, if, if the legal counsel has even | 00:59:16 | |
given you that, but you now have it. | 00:59:21 | |
And you'll see in there why without it. | 00:59:26 | |
And statute of limitations kept me from going further back when one member of this body, when I was outside this body, not as a | 00:59:30 | |
mayor, mocked me for my hearing. | 00:59:35 | |
On this council. It's unacceptable. But thank you for listening. It's a very, very serious matter. And I hope that you'll look | 00:59:42 | |
forward to what's happening in this, this, this lawsuit. It's very serious. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith. | 00:59:49 | |
As a reminder, for anyone who's hearing impaired, there is a hearing loop installed in City Council in the City Council chambers. | 01:00:01 | |
So if you do have a hearing impairment, I would encourage you to use that. We also have headphones. | 01:00:07 | |
Over here that we make available and that's why we stress that our meetings are captioned and closed, captioned and available and | 01:00:13 | |
easily accessible for anybody who chooses to use those. But again, thank you Mr. Smith for your comments, Mr. Prescott, please | 01:00:17 | |
come forward. | 01:00:21 | |
Anyone to hear when you're not. | 01:00:27 | |
Can you hear me right now? Can, can you hear, can you hear me, Julie, can you hear me? | 01:00:30 | |
I didn't. I haven't. I haven't changed where I'm sitting. Can you hear me? | 01:00:36 | |
I live at 1090 Simonton Drive. I've lived in Oconee County for almost 50 years and in Watkinsville for approaching 25 years. Mr. | 01:01:09 | |
Mayor and members of the Council, I thank you for the opportunity to address you, address you on the rezone request for 1180 | 01:01:15 | |
Greensboro Highway. If approved without major changes, this project would certainly shape the future of Watkinsville in a | 01:01:22 | |
detrimental way, in my opinion. In the opinion of many others who I believe are here to comment on that project tonight, as well | 01:01:28 | |
as others I have seen commenting. | 01:01:34 | |
Robustly. | 01:01:42 | |
On various social media platforms about the project. | 01:01:43 | |
In thinking about this project, I was reminded of a news story from July 2019 authored by Lee Becker in Oconee County | 01:01:47 | |
Observations, where he described this council's past efforts to seek citizen input, both city and county voters, on possible | 01:01:55 | |
upgrades to hair Shoals. Park surveys were created and reviewed to prioritize the wishes of park users on its future. | 01:02:03 | |
While much could be said about the state of Harris Shoals Park almost five years later. | 01:02:11 | |
My real point is that the Council has shown a willingness to hear from citizens in the planning stages of past projects, at least | 01:02:17 | |
projects the Council believes may have a great deal of support. | 01:02:22 | |
I first heard of the 1180 Greensboro Highway proposed rezone in the Oconee Enterprise. When I last drove by the site, there was no | 01:02:29 | |
signage posted to notify the citizens of the pending project. | 01:02:34 | |
I believe the council knows that this project has very little support among the citizens of Watkinsville in Oconee County and for | 01:02:40 | |
some reason has decided to quietly pursue it knowing the ire that it will raise. Anyone who travels through Watkinsville daily is | 01:02:46 | |
aware of the traffic issues in need of abatement, not increase. We don't need a near 300 page traffic study of downtown traffic to | 01:02:53 | |
tell us what we already know through daily experience. Further, the project will have serious consequences, in my opinion, related | 01:02:59 | |
to our schools. | 01:03:06 | |
Public safety, infrastructure and ever increasing taxes. | 01:03:12 | |
This council seems intent on paving the way for apartments and other rental units at the gateway of every entry point to our city. | 01:03:17 | |
We now have apartments at the North End of Main Street, Barnett Shoals and this proposed project on Hwy. 15 at 1180 Greensboro | 01:03:25 | |
Highway. My question is, what's next? Raising something on Experiment Station or the South end of Main Street to usher in more and | 01:03:32 | |
more rental units for our small community? I implore you to listen to the voters. | 01:03:39 | |
And open this up for discussion and major changes to what is appropriate for our small town. I thank you for the opportunity to | 01:03:47 | |
speak with you tonight. | 01:03:51 | |
Thank you, Mr. Prescott. | 01:04:02 | |
Next up. | 01:04:05 | |
Yes, Sir. Come on. | 01:04:09 | |
I just want. | 01:04:13 | |
Back up what he just said. My family's been here since 1870. I've lived it in my got my grandfather's, my great grandfather's | 01:04:15 | |
property. | 01:04:19 | |
Back in 1990. | 01:04:24 | |
And I lived in Lawrenceville. | 01:04:27 | |
I actually bought a house there, me my wife back in 1982 I guess and it was a one acre house and a small rural area and I wanted | 01:04:29 | |
to be out in the country, but anyway. | 01:04:35 | |
This property found my lap. | 01:04:41 | |
And I'm seeing and you remember the signs were don't turn Oconee into Gwinnett, I believe it was about a year ago. | 01:04:44 | |
The traffic we're losing our small town charisma. | 01:04:53 | |
And I hope to God that you all will listen to what he just said, the people, and it's all over on. I guess I don't get on | 01:04:58 | |
Facebook, but I've heard it's consumed with a lot of people complaining about this 1180. | 01:05:04 | |
So please reconsider. | 01:05:11 | |
And listen to the people for that. We don't need that. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. | 01:05:13 | |
Hi, I'm Susanna Heiml. | 01:05:28 | |
I'll give my address afterwards if you need it. Just go ahead and do it now, please. I live in Watkinsville. I don't want to say | 01:05:31 | |
it in front of everybody. I'll be glad to write it down and give it to you. | 01:05:36 | |
I've got questions about this project. I'm not necessarily against it, but I do have questions about how many people will bring | 01:05:43 | |
in. I do see that it lists 203 apartments, studios, 123 bedrooms, but it doesn't specifically say how many of each there are, as | 01:05:49 | |
well as 24 townhomes. What's the makeup of those? | 01:05:55 | |
6 detached cottages So I'm kind of curious as to how many, how many people this will bring and I think we already have traffic | 01:06:01 | |
congestion on 15 on Main Street. I do love off Barnett Shoals and I've seen a considerable increase in traffic turning left from | 01:06:08 | |
Main Street to Barnett Shoals since Wire Park is opened. So that would be my my first concern. Second concern is. | 01:06:15 | |
What these apartments rent for, what are the townhomes and cottages sell for? Because I feel like the things that are opening | 01:06:23 | |
around her that the rents, the rents on the prices like on townhomes at Wire Park are so high. I just feel like our our jobs | 01:06:29 | |
around here are not supporting those kind of rents and those kind of property prices. So I feel like we we need to figure out a | 01:06:34 | |
way to keep. | 01:06:40 | |
Prices for the townhomes, I'm sure they must have been established when this project was presented. So I'd love to hear those | 01:07:21 | |
numbers and I'm sure that everybody else would too. I haven't seen the paper. I don't know where they where to find them, so. | 01:07:27 | |
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yep. | 01:07:33 | |
All right. | 01:07:41 | |
Hi, my name is David Phillips. | 01:07:45 | |
My wife and I lived at 1321 Beechnut Lane. That's off of Elder Mill Rd. which is off of Hwy. 15. | 01:07:47 | |
So we've been out there for 45 years. | 01:07:55 | |
And we moved to Oconee. | 01:07:59 | |
Because it was rural. | 01:08:02 | |
And I'm one of those people that sort of believes that. | 01:08:04 | |
The Gwinnett thing is happening. I've seen it. That's not like I just heard it or read it in the paper. | 01:08:08 | |
And I'm really concerned about the Highway 15 development. | 01:08:15 | |
The. | 01:08:20 | |
I think everything on 15 S of the railroad track is commercial. | 01:08:22 | |
I don't see. | 01:08:27 | |
Moving that many people into it, getting through Watkinsville now is a chore. | 01:08:28 | |
Linda and I we. | 01:08:35 | |
We support Watkinsville businesses. | 01:08:37 | |
We shop in Watkinsville Butlers Crossing Epps Bridge. She's not going to stop at a strippers to do her shopping offense to | 01:08:41 | |
strippers. | 01:08:46 | |
But she shops at Publix Earth Fair, Trader Joe's. | 01:08:52 | |
We bank at two banks in Watkinsville. | 01:08:59 | |
We we go to Walgreens. I mean that's that's our business. I I remember the Athens I. | 01:09:02 | |
Health and fitness gym which is at managers crossing. | 01:09:13 | |
I'm there every day. | 01:09:16 | |
So we're going through the traffic every day. | 01:09:19 | |
And we're retired, but we're still going through every day because we live here and this is where we want to do our business. | 01:09:22 | |
So we came to to support voting no, to rezone that there's a residential area. I guess that's what you're thinking about doing. | 01:09:30 | |
Thank you. | 01:09:41 | |
Say I'm Dana Blair. I live on School St. in Watkinsville and we're here tonight for a. | 01:09:50 | |
The pipe plant. | 01:10:00 | |
Discussion and I just think it's a horrible idea to have any more high density housing within the city. | 01:10:03 | |
It's my opinion, but traffic and the impact on schools, I just think we need to slow down a little bit and. | 01:10:11 | |
And think. | 01:10:20 | |
What do we want? What quality of life? | 01:10:21 | |
What atmosphere? | 01:10:23 | |
Anyway, thanks. | 01:10:25 | |
Thank you, Mr. | 01:10:27 | |
Right. | 01:10:32 | |
Mr. Blair, I just see things that that come to the top of my mind when we're talking about. | 01:10:35 | |
More traffic. | 01:10:44 | |
Traffic down Main Street and 15 is horrible. | 01:10:46 | |
But we're not talking about everybody who doesn't go down 15, but they cut through our neighborhoods that are line Main Street and | 01:10:50 | |
15. We live on School St. and 2nd St. | 01:10:56 | |
Is constant traffic all day long. | 01:11:03 | |
I'm sure that it's the same thing on the other side of the street. And the second thing is that the apartments and whatever | 01:11:07 | |
housing at Wire Park isn't even open yet. | 01:11:12 | |
So we're not even seeing the the height of the traffic. | 01:11:18 | |
Until that happens. So once that gets open, it's going to, you know, I don't know who knows how bad it's going to be, but in | 01:11:21 | |
talking about adding 200 apartments, I can't help but think that they're saying 200 apartments so they can settle for 100 | 01:11:28 | |
apartments or whatever. But is tends to be the type of way that people approach that when they're trying to get rezoned. So | 01:11:34 | |
anyway, that's all I have to say. I just wanted to add these guys did a great job. | 01:11:41 | |
Thank you, Charlie. | 01:11:49 | |
Mr. Popov. | 01:11:52 | |
Good evening everyone. Thank you for your service and being here. | 01:12:00 | |
I'm not going to talk about 1180 since it's taken off the official for tonight. I didn't want to discuss why our park in the | 01:12:04 | |
condominiums going in front of it. When it was initially presented to us, the people of Watkinsville, it was supposed to be, quote | 01:12:11 | |
UN quote small, a few condos or something for people that worked here that couldn't afford to live here. And it said it was | 01:12:18 | |
nonprofit. I think we all know that's BS. They are for profit, OK? They're really nice. I have a friend of mine who's extremely | 01:12:25 | |
wealthy and he's got one on the list. | 01:12:32 | |
So I'm seeing here on our part, 56 condos, 60 flats, 21 townhomes, how many single family I can't read, moon riding, 54, I think. | 01:12:40 | |
I mean, how many people are y'all trying to cram in there and what is the purpose? I mean, who benefits? It's not us. You guys are | 01:12:47 | |
for us, OK? You're supposed to be for the people of Watkinsville. In other words, represent our interest, what we wanted, a life, | 01:12:54 | |
what we want our city to be like. Not a person here wants our city to be inundated with a whole bunch of more people to deal with | 01:13:01 | |
traffic. | 01:13:08 | |
No answer for it. So you're making it worse. You lied about the condos to begin with. A major in business geography at UGA. | 01:13:15 | |
Location principles of business. Water park needs to be seen from the road for people drive by to go, man, that's gold. Let me | 01:13:23 | |
stop in there. Condos in front of it. I mean, come on. Do you ever see that anywhere, Anywhere. I've been all over America. I've | 01:13:31 | |
never seen them all condos blocking it or, you know, any retail place with condos blocking it. | 01:13:39 | |
I can't fathom the logic or decision behind that, not even mention 1180. And the bottom line is from everyone, we don't want the | 01:13:48 | |
growth. | 01:13:53 | |
We want proper growth. We want calculated, rational, logical growth that we can handle. Our infrastructure can handle our streets | 01:13:58 | |
and traffic can handle. We're overloaded already, traffic's bad. So with this in mind, do you guys understand we don't want growth | 01:14:05 | |
and there's a better way to spend our money and govern our city than to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow with these businesses and in | 01:14:12 | |
my opinion, our park putting the condos in front of us, a huge mistake. | 01:14:20 | |
You don't do that, man. People need to see that. I'd like to see it succeed. Honestly, I really would. Putting condos in front of | 01:14:27 | |
it cuts out the attraction. People driving by and seeing this beautiful, nice new place, all they're going to see is condos and | 01:14:33 | |
oh, well, I guess that's just condos and it's not going to draw the people in. So, you know, I I guess do we need to have some | 01:14:39 | |
kind of a serious citizen meeting to discuss growth, proper growth and what we want here in Watkinsville? Because I think we're | 01:14:45 | |
getting it. | 01:14:51 | |
I don't think a person here can say we really feel that you guys represent our best interest. Because I don't. I don't think you | 01:14:57 | |
do. I really don't. | 01:15:01 | |
Bids I'd like to know you know, are you getting a professional engineer to write specs for a job before it's released for billet? | 01:15:07 | |
Are y'all letting you know this guy quote this. That guy quote this. | 01:15:12 | |
Like the sidewalk back on Hardin Hill, this should have been one engineer that designed the whole thing. He got paid for the | 01:15:18 | |
design, and guess what? If there's any problems to design, he pays for it out of his pocket. | 01:15:23 | |
We paid for that huge mistake. I mean, why wasn't it done by an engineer that stamped it and said, OK, boom, I dare you to find | 01:15:29 | |
something wrong with it. Well, double the cost of it, I guess. There's a few little things, but my God, doubling the cost of that | 01:15:35 | |
project, that's inexcusable. Whoever engineered that project should be responsible for that mistake and that overrun of the | 01:15:41 | |
budget. | 01:15:47 | |
So, I mean, I'd really like to know how does this process work when you all have big projects that want to be done other than just | 01:15:54 | |
putting them in the county enterprise, which admittedly a ton of contractors in the state of Georgia don't use. I used to go to | 01:15:59 | |
the bedroom in Atlanta and there was everything under the sun. Thank you, Mr. Papa. Yep. | 01:16:05 | |
Just for the record, before the next person comes up, there was no promise of a nonprofit, condominium or homes ever made at Wire | 01:16:19 | |
Park and the Harden Hill thing we've discussed. | 01:16:24 | |
For months and months of the scope of the project changed. It was not a cost overrun. All right, next person please. | 01:16:29 | |
Kathleen Kristen, 13 S Corner. | 01:16:42 | |
I thought it was a beautiful project. | 01:16:46 | |
The fellow had a nice designs for the buildings. It was kind of him to consider the low income for some of the back cottages. | 01:16:49 | |