No Bookmarks Exist.
Good evening and welcome to the June Watkinsville City Council meeting. | 00:00:14 | |
We've got an exciting night ahead of us. It's been an exciting couple weeks for the city of Watkinsville. We're going to share and | 00:00:20 | |
recap some of that news in the in this meeting, so. | 00:00:24 | |
Share and make sure all the monitors are working. | 00:00:30 | |
Hopefully this is not on TV on Apologize, I thought it was on the newspaper. | 00:00:33 | |
People probably rather watch Netflix and City Council meeting right So. | 00:00:38 | |
Figure could be a reality show. | 00:00:43 | |
Sorry about that. | 00:00:48 | |
All right, OK, so we have a quorum here. It looks like we have perfect attendance. Always grateful for that. And we'll start with | 00:00:50 | |
the pledge. Let's all stand and address the flag. | 00:00:54 | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:00:59 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:01:06 | |
So Sharon, you might still have one monitor off over here. I don't know what's going on with it. | 00:01:21 | |
No, it just shows on screen. | 00:01:26 | |
But the other one. | 00:01:28 | |
There we go. OK. | 00:01:47 | |
So we're going to start off the meeting with a couple, couple moments recognitions that will that will that will dig into a little | 00:01:49 | |
bit. The first one of those and I'll have them come forward is the recognition of our all America city delegation. So if those who | 00:01:56 | |
are a part of that delegation could step forward. | 00:02:03 | |
Maybe gather up front and then we're going to share when you once everybody gets up here, we'll share a video and then I'll make | 00:02:10 | |
some remarks about that and take a photo. | 00:02:14 | |
And you can face either screen I guess. Face the audience. You can see it on the screen. | 00:02:21 | |
Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. | 00:02:35 | |
She got a T-shirt, she said. | 00:02:39 | |
Hey y'all about to be wheels up from Denver and excited to get out there and tell the Watkinsville story out to the world as we | 00:03:13 | |
get ready to compete for all American City Awards. I'm representing the WTK and I can't wait to see everybody in did. | 00:03:19 | |
Are you ready? Ready. You ready? We're going to see what happens here. | 00:03:32 | |
Folks getting here, getting ready and ESP folks about having a big adventure, right? Yeah, yeah. Off the red rocks. | 00:03:54 | |
Chief GAIL, pop it in. | 00:04:01 | |
If you have a story, why not tell it? | 00:04:15 | |
Hello Evans, how can we stated you are all winners, I mean get to this point. | 00:04:45 | |
This community uses public input to. | 00:04:57 | |
Community spaces. | 00:05:02 | |
This is concerning its natural surroundings and this community is training miracles possibilities the elementary city of walking. | 00:05:05 | |
So Sharon, does this work over here? | 00:06:04 | |
I will say this delegation was just a key. All of you played such an important part, our young leaders especially. | 00:06:39 | |
You know, you two young men, the way that you memorized your lines and nailed that talking about rocket field. I'll never forget | 00:06:48 | |
the crowd laughing when you talked about sliding into dog poop and getting the restrooms fixed up. Leah, you and Colin, I just | 00:06:54 | |
think you all were the heart and soul of of our group. Your smile, your hugs. I think they hugged y'all 200 people on the first | 00:07:00 | |
night when jittery Joes gave out coffee and hugs at at a big event. It was just, it was just wonderful. | 00:07:07 | |
Taxpayer dollars to do that. So tremendously excited and grateful for this team. Watkinsville is a small town that's not afraid to | 00:08:07 | |
dream big. | 00:08:11 | |
And that's what sets us apart. We're a small town that dreams big, and then we go push those dreams. And I'm grateful to each of | 00:08:16 | |
you for making time to do that and for being part of our team. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much. We'll be in | 00:08:20 | |
touch. I do want to have a meeting. | 00:08:25 | |
A brief meeting so we can talk about what we learned and what we might want in the future, what you guys saw that you liked about | 00:08:30 | |
it as we move ahead. But I'm extremely grateful to each of you for taking the time and the energy and time away from your families | 00:08:35 | |
and donating your talents and your treasure to Watkinsville for this trip to Denver. So this is our delegation now. Let's give | 00:08:40 | |
them a round of applause again. | 00:08:45 | |
And Sharon, I don't know that there's anything else we need to share about them. I will say, you know, we'll have, we have this | 00:08:59 | |
shield. You'll see all the city stuff pop up around the city. We're excited about the opportunities and what it's created for us | 00:09:04 | |
in the future. But we'll have a break in a few minutes. If you all want to saw it out of here, you're welcome to. You don't feel | 00:09:08 | |
like you have to stay and listen to us talk about budget and variances and all those kind of things. So. But thank you all for | 00:09:13 | |
coming tonight. So. OK, great. Yep. | 00:09:18 | |
I think while I'm up here, we'll just go ahead and move into, we'll move into our next item. Krisha, if you want to step forward, | 00:09:42 | |
am I saying that right? | 00:09:46 | |
Sorry. | 00:09:51 | |
Just step over here with me for now and then we'll give you a minute, Krisha. | 00:09:53 | |
Has done our art walk project Outback. And if you haven't been Outback, maybe those of you who are leaving, if you want to slide | 00:09:58 | |
out the back door, you can check it out, but we have a lot more people. | 00:10:03 | |
We have a lot more people now. | 00:10:08 | |
Through coming from Harris Shoals Park up to the new playground at ESP and so Christine Tucker, mayor Pro Tem, had a great idea of | 00:10:11 | |
let's use art to make that experience more compelling as you come to the new to the new play area there the playground of | 00:10:16 | |
possibilities, which is. | 00:10:21 | |
But we're thrilled, and I don't know if you want to take just a minute to say a little bit about, say a little bit about that | 00:11:02 | |
work. | 00:11:05 | |
Sure, it's been a wonderful opportunity to get to make these sculptures. I've have done a good bit of work around Athens. I'm in | 00:11:08 | |
the Athens native and I've been lucky to get to mosaic around the town of Athens, but I've never gotten to do mosaic sculptures, | 00:11:13 | |
and certainly not. | 00:11:19 | |
And so this, this opportunity gave me a chance to learn how to make these and, and support them with about 5 strong men. And, but | 00:11:26 | |
I appreciate getting to work with Christine and Sharon and then Toby and Mark were so great at getting the site all prepared. And | 00:11:35 | |
yeah, and the city of Watkinsville and OCAF also supported the project. So it's been a pleasure and it's part of my heart. They | 00:11:44 | |
actually, I have a little plaque on their, but they honor my sister Michelle, who is a veterinarian. | 00:11:53 | |
And then she loved reptiles and amphibians and had a giant Python for about 30 years that named Naomi. So I did a sculpture of | 00:12:02 | |
Naomi to learn how to do the sculptures. And that's three feet wide and that seemed pretty large, but those, you know, 6 feet, I | 00:12:09 | |
think the turtles, so. | 00:12:15 | |
You know, it's been a pleasure and, and, and there's so much fun and I hope the kids and everybody else enjoys them. Thank you, | 00:12:23 | |
Krishna. | 00:12:26 | |
Mayor, Mayor. | 00:12:30 | |
Why don't you join us? | 00:13:34 | |
You want to stand sort of in front of this so we can stand for the heartland side. | 00:13:36 | |
Hey, I'm not sure that makes on just right in the middle here now if you want to. | 00:13:43 | |
Steps. This is where. | 00:13:47 | |
All right, great. | 00:13:52 | |
All right, there you go. All right, here we go. | 00:13:53 | |
All right. | 00:13:57 | |
I. | 00:14:00 | |
OK, we'll move on into the business part of the meeting. This business, the meeting is being broadcast simultaneously online via | 00:14:19 | |
the Suite 1 Webcasting public portal. Those who can't attend the meeting are always welcome to watch at that link. It's on the | 00:14:25 | |
City Council information page on our website under the Government tab. The portal allows the public to view and listen to the | 00:14:31 | |
meeting in progress, along with the meeting materials associated with the items that Council will be discussing. | 00:14:37 | |
So with that, we'll move on to the meeting minutes. Council, you've had time to review the May 15th regular meeting minutes. Any | 00:15:18 | |
discussion? If not, I'll entertain a motion. I make a motion to approve. | 00:15:24 | |
We have a second. | 00:15:31 | |
Second, any discussion? | 00:15:33 | |
All in favor say aye aye. Motion carries unanimously. We'll move to approval of agenda. | 00:15:35 | |
One item I will need to remove off the table, our agreement with the Christian Church, which is listed under new business until | 00:15:42 | |
next month, but we are having positive conversations there regarding downtown parking. Any other amendments to the agenda? | 00:15:49 | |
OK, hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda with the change noted. | 00:15:57 | |
I make a motion to approve the agenda with the one change noted. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor say aye aye. | 00:16:01 | |
All right. I believe we have some new police officers here with us tonight, an attorney, right, man, You'll be handling the oath | 00:16:10 | |
of office. I'm not sure if there's any other discussion prior to that. | 00:16:14 | |
Had a chance to talk to one of them earlier. | 00:16:26 | |
Use the mic please, Joe. | 00:16:31 | |
That you are not the holder of any unaccounted for public money due this State or any political subdivision or authority thereof. | 00:17:08 | |
That you are not the holder of any office of trust under the Government of the United States, any other State or any foreign State | 00:17:14 | |
which you, by the laws of the State of Georgia, will be prohibited from holding. That you are otherwise qualified to hold set off | 00:17:20 | |
according to the Constitution and laws of Georgia, and that you will perform the duties of your office in the best city of | 00:17:26 | |
Watkinsville. | 00:17:32 | |
To the best of your ability, without fear, favor, affection, reward, or expectation thereof. If you that oath, you can say I do or | 00:17:38 | |
I do, so help me God. | 00:17:43 | |
All right. Congratulations each of you, your official now. | 00:17:49 | |
And if you could please administer the oath, I have copies right here for you to sign if you could do so at this time, please. And | 00:17:53 | |
I have blue pens for each of you to use. And if you all will do so, I would appreciate it. | 00:18:00 | |
I. | 00:18:17 | |
And gentlemen, if you'll. | 00:18:29 | |
Maybe stay where you are. I know we like to get photos with family if we can after the swearing in. And Chief, I didn't know if | 00:18:31 | |
you had anything you want to share about these gentlemen. I know you've got a report coming up as well. Is there anything? | 00:18:35 | |
Do that in the report. | 00:18:41 | |
OK, If we want to have Officer Williams, if you've got a family member here with you, why don't you step forward with the chief | 00:18:44 | |
and your family member and get a photo? | 00:18:48 | |
We need to the move to the middle. | 00:18:59 | |
All right. | 00:19:07 | |
Officer Wilburn, if you and your family want to come forward or do you want one with just your wife? Officer Williams, are you | 00:19:12 | |
good? You want me to just your wife or is it OK to have the chief and all your photos? | 00:19:17 | |
It's not going to start off on that. | 00:19:22 | |
Day. | 00:19:28 | |
Center up a little bit this way, yeah. | 00:19:32 | |
There you go, you'll take a picture before I can tell. | 00:19:38 | |
All right. | 00:19:40 | |
Got it. | 00:19:43 | |
Good officers. | 00:19:47 | |
Community policing team. | 00:20:32 | |
No pressure. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. | 00:21:39 | |
OK. We'll move into financial reports. Everyone should have received whoops, everybody should receive their balance sheet. We are | 00:21:45 | |
on par factory. We're exceeding our revenues by a fair amount. Some of that's due to different, different revenue sources that | 00:21:51 | |
came in, some unexpected ones, higher interest on some of our accounts than we expected to get. So that's good news. The expenses | 00:21:57 | |
are running lower, that's also good news. So of course, everything's not finalized till the audit is done. The auditors are coming | 00:22:02 | |
in. | 00:22:08 | |
July 11th I think and then back again in October. So process begins again. So any questions on the balance sheet or anything on | 00:22:14 | |
that general fund? | 00:22:19 | |
So Splash 3 reports a couple things to note on this. So the. | 00:22:25 | |
And then Thomas Farm, we've got phase one. We'll share some pictures of that fencing the bathroom renter, which is on the consent | 00:23:07 | |
agenda tonight, and some trail work, which is also one of the items on the agenda tonight. And then all the resurfacing projects | 00:23:14 | |
that we just recently had, again, they'll be pictures under the mayor's report. So that comes out of this bucket of money. | 00:23:20 | |
And then just a reminder, splash three started in October 21 at sunsets in September of 27. We're showing about a 5% increase over | 00:23:28 | |
the last fiscal year. So that's always good. And our bank balance is a little bit more than $1,000,000. | 00:23:36 | |
On T plus, that's our transportation special local option sales tax. Those funds right now have been encumbered for sidewalk | 00:23:45 | |
segments. There's a couple that we're still waiting on along Main Street. And then also something that will be that's on the | 00:23:52 | |
that's going to be discussed tonight is the a loan and a grant from the State Road Tollway Authority and from Georgia Transport | 00:23:59 | |
transportation infrastructure Bank. And so those we had we do have money that will be. | 00:24:07 | |
Expended in this account to pay back a loan, A10 year loan at 1.59%. So we're waiting on all that paperwork and hopefully tonight | 00:24:14 | |
you guys will move that, advance that forward. | 00:24:20 | |
So that is our tea SPLOST and then just a little info on that. So we are seeing over last year a 6% increase. Again, that's always | 00:24:27 | |
good and our bank balance is a little more than $720,000. | 00:24:32 | |
American Rescue Plan reports these are the funds that were given to communities in 2021 to try to help communities deal with a | 00:24:39 | |
multitude of issues that the COVID situation caused. The only. So right now we have encumbered funds for our police officer | 00:24:47 | |
retention initiative. We have a couple that are finishing up their payments. We have one outstanding opportunity for an officer to | 00:24:54 | |
obtain that. It's a $10,000 initiative or retention. | 00:25:01 | |
Bonus over a three-year period and then tonight and so the balance is around $96,000. So tonight on the consent agenda, which | 00:25:09 | |
apparently nobody's pulled anything off. So you guys will be voting on making that money available for the Thomas Farm Preserve | 00:25:15 | |
project. | 00:25:21 | |
Any questions on any of those? | 00:25:27 | |
OK, I'll move to economic development. | 00:25:30 | |
So we are Julia. How far are we 97%? | 00:25:34 | |
Getting all our business licenses, we got a few stragglers and some things we're trying to verify. Some of these businesses may | 00:25:38 | |
not still be around, but we we have you know, we're at the end, we start the cycle again in September, October. And just as we're | 00:25:45 | |
getting everybody cleaned up from the last year, we started New Year. So but everything seems to be moving ahead with that. And | 00:25:51 | |
then on our excise taxes, both alcohol and hotel, motel, we are on target. | 00:25:57 | |
A little bit low on hotel, then we budgeted a little bit more on alcohol than we budget. So, but it works out to the amount of | 00:26:04 | |
money that we anticipated. So there you go. | 00:26:08 | |
And then on our building permits, we've got 11 permits for six projects, several that are over at the Trove residential | 00:26:13 | |
neighborhood and then some other just, you know, HVAC, plumbing kind of renovations, things like that. Any questions? | 00:26:20 | |
Good day. | 00:26:29 | |
All right, so a few updates for the from the Downtown Development Authority. If you have not already marked your calendar for | 00:26:33 | |
August 3rd, please do. | 00:26:39 | |
Hopefully everyone will be back in town getting geared up for school and we are having a wonderful BBQ competition and Bake Off | 00:26:47 | |
tailgate party. Yeah, I see someone may be putting in their calendar right now. Way to go so. | 00:26:54 | |
It is also going to benefit Bethel Haven, which is a local nonprofit that helps with mental health issues and will just be a lot | 00:27:02 | |
of fun. That'll be a rocket field. More information will continue to come. We do have a few more entries for actually being part | 00:27:11 | |
of the competition for either BBQ or the Bake Off. And this is not for professionals, this is for amateurs. | 00:27:19 | |
Also a few months ago we talked about the poetry contest that we did in partnership with the library and the templates have been | 00:27:29 | |
successfully made on the 3D printer that the library has. If you have not yet checked out the library Little Plug, it is amazing. | 00:27:37 | |
Go to wire park, check out the library and so be looking for. I think Friday is when the stenciling are going to be done. It's | 00:27:45 | |
with chalk, so eventually it'll go away. However, with our no rain in the forecast forever, it might be there for a long time. | 00:27:53 | |
So it's going to be in downtown, one is going to be kind of in front of Blind Pig area and then ones on the opposite side of the | 00:28:02 | |
street kind of near Oconee Outpost. So it's a great excuse too if you have not been downtown recently to come check out the poetry | 00:28:09 | |
and check out some of our businesses and restaurants. And then lastly. | 00:28:16 | |
I have to share the sad news that our DDA director Kate Patterson has decided to step down from the position. | 00:28:25 | |
She needed to just have more time with her family and so she has done a tremendous job of really setting the foundation for our | 00:28:32 | |
DDA. She took our little fledgling group and for Ddas, Downtown Development Authority. I guess it does say that up there. | 00:28:44 | |
And really? | 00:28:55 | |
She's incredibly organized. | 00:28:58 | |
She has helped create a tremendous website. | 00:29:00 | |
Created events for our community that has helped our restaurants and our local retailers really thrive. | 00:29:04 | |
Help put on art events has done a tremendous amount and is actually going to even even though today was technically her last day, | 00:29:11 | |
is going to continue to help with the the tailgate party as well because she's just that kind of person that is going to start | 00:29:17 | |
what she finishes. So we are going to miss her. She has been a great asset to our city, but this does mean that there is a new | 00:29:23 | |
opportunity available. | 00:29:29 | |
For someone to come and take this role and the the job description is on our website and we are really looking for somebody that. | 00:29:36 | |
Is excited about our community, about our downtown, and really wants to help continue to see Watkinsville thrive. So if you know | 00:29:49 | |
of somebody that you think might be a good fit for this, please encourage them to take a look and to apply. | 00:29:57 | |
Thank you, Christine. We will move on to the Police Department, report Chief Gale. | 00:30:07 | |
Good evening again. I just, you know, I want to again introduce our two new part-time officers because they bring such a wealth of | 00:30:16 | |
experience. Joe Williams, he had many years on a DUI task force where he led many investigations. So we, we are building on our | 00:30:26 | |
professionalism and one it will increase our enforcement actions out there, but it will also impart. | 00:30:35 | |
The training and education for our younger officers. So I'm very excited. And Officer Wilburn, I worked with him at the | 00:30:44 | |
university, so he's got a wealth of experience in the military. So we draw on all experiences and I'm just thrilled about having | 00:30:51 | |
these gentlemen on our team and they will help on particular events. They're not going to be full time. | 00:30:58 | |
This Friday, hopefully they will help us. We are going to be hosting. | 00:31:06 | |
Governor's off honors or governor's office highway safety, traffic enforcement and education event. So here in the city. So drive | 00:31:11 | |
safely, follow the rules as you should always. But we are going to be hosting a training event and then we'll be going out and | 00:31:18 | |
doing some enforcement activities and our you know, as I noted in in the report, our officers are continuing with the training and | 00:31:26 | |
that it I, I rely heavily on that because it is building our. | 00:31:34 | |
Our credibility and our professionalism with the depth of training and now the experience that's going to be out there. We're just | 00:31:42 | |
building, building us stronger and we're going to be lean as always. But it, it just makes me very confident on our abilities and | 00:31:49 | |
keeping this community safe and moving down. You can see where officers have been very active with enforcement activities, writing | 00:31:56 | |
reports, citizen contacts, the security checks, you know, that's a large number. | 00:32:04 | |
And, you know, officers get out of the cars, not always, but many times they do. And they'll encounter citizens, they'll talk to | 00:32:12 | |
them, they provide assistance all the time. It really is something to be proud about. And, and I get up here every month and I say | 00:32:17 | |
it, but I mean it. | 00:32:22 | |
And so this week we, we hosted a meeting with the chiefs of our district. So from Gwinnett, there's some departments in Gwinnett, | 00:32:29 | |
smaller departments that are still in the kind of cuts off, but they're in our district. So we hosted a training event where we | 00:32:36 | |
brought in a resource here that they at the the same resource. I don't know if you all are familiar, but a wonderful, wonderful | 00:32:43 | |
resource for law enforcement in our area and for. | 00:32:51 | |
The victims of sexual assaults. And so it was wonderful to have that experience, incredible training. A lot of the chiefs didn't | 00:32:58 | |
know that all the services were available and now they are. So it served its purpose. And I'm proud that yes, we're small, but we | 00:33:05 | |
are bringing out the best of our community and and really bringing people to our community see what we have. So I hope you share | 00:33:12 | |
the pride, I know you do with me. So are there any questions? | 00:33:18 | |
So it doesn't back up down on experiment station. And so you, you keep your traffic focused in One Direction and keep it off of a | 00:33:57 | |
different way where if, if a car decides to turn left at rush hour in the morning, everybody's going to get backed up and it locks | 00:34:05 | |
everything down. And it has worked out quite well. So it seems to be working out great. Thank you for that. | 00:34:13 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:34:22 | |
All right, we'll now move into a public hearing. Thank you all for coming. Safe travels home. Yep. | 00:34:29 | |
2024 property tax mileage rate, is that what right, Manager Dickerson. OK. | 00:35:05 | |
Get this movement for here. | 00:35:12 | |
Then we also had a another work session, but we cancelled that because we're rolling back the mood, right, and didn't anticipate | 00:35:45 | |
any public feedback. So tonight will be our third public hearing on the budget and that's where we are. So manager. | 00:35:53 | |
Fill in whatever I missed, otherwise I'll let you take it. Right. So the first hearing is on the proposed property tax mileage | 00:36:02 | |
rate. As the mayor said, this is the announcement that was in the paper and basically the city's property. Next, sorry, the city's | 00:36:09 | |
property net tax digest for 2024 has been estimated a little bit more than $243 million. That's an increase of 6% or 13.8 million | 00:36:17 | |
/ 2023 property values and it pretty much reflects new development and or improvements to existing properties. | 00:36:25 | |
At the city's current mileage rate, which is 2.921, this would have resulted in an increase of .165 mills over the rollback rate | 00:36:33 | |
of 2.756 and would have generated roughly around $40,000. The mayor challenged me and my staff to not take that mileage increase. | 00:36:40 | |
And so we are keeping the the revenue, The proceeds from the property tax will remain the same as last year. So we've rolled back | 00:36:48 | |
the military we're recommending to rollback of 2.756. | 00:36:56 | |
And we'll talk. Just show you real quickly another little screen here, maybe hard for some people that are in the audience to see. | 00:37:04 | |
But basically what that means is for someone that is in a $300,000 home and has Homestead, they'll see about a $19.52 difference. | 00:37:12 | |
So it's a reduction. And if you're in a 500,000, you'll see about a $32.75 reduction on the commercial end because you don't have | 00:37:19 | |
Homestead. Those reductions are a little bit different. I think we've got 3333 O 8 for a $500,000. | 00:37:27 | |
Property. | 00:37:35 | |
40, I can't read it, 48 or 4962 for $750,000 property. And I'll point out that not only is the city rolling back their mileage | 00:37:36 | |
rate, but the county is too. I believe the Board of Education may be staying the same, but we'll talk a little bit in the budget | 00:37:44 | |
process. When we start talking about the budget in a minute, I'll share a little bit about how we compare to other communities in | 00:37:51 | |
the area. We've had a lot of citizen feedback about property taxes and we've kept them low historically last year. | 00:37:59 | |
We did, we were very open about that. We did bump them up a little bit to help pay for the Thomas Farm Preserve property very | 00:38:07 | |
specifically, but we're really pleased to be able to roll it back this year. And, and historically in Watkinsville, we've prided | 00:38:11 | |
ourselves on having low property taxes. | 00:38:16 | |
OK, so at this point, we'll open up a public hearing. | 00:38:25 | |
Anybody wants to step forward and address the property tax mileage rate, feel free. | 00:38:29 | |
Not seeing a bunch of people jump up, so I will close the public hearing on that. We'll move now to the public hearing regarding | 00:38:34 | |
the recommended fiscal year general fund capital and operating budget. | 00:38:39 | |
And now we'll get to talk a little bit about that. So the sorry so and then again maybe kind of difficult to see on that, but | 00:38:45 | |
we're we're recommending that 3.2 and some change $3.2 million. | 00:38:51 | |
Budget. | 00:38:59 | |
I think I've got that right and I'm the projected surplus at the bottom. Unfortunately, I was trying to a correction to this | 00:39:01 | |
spreadsheet for capital and it shows that we were projecting a deficit that is actually incorrect and that's because of a very | 00:39:08 | |
last minute change. But the capital request this year is for 119,000. That's what's showing up in that little spot. So we'll make | 00:39:14 | |
sure that's corrected. Julie may want to check Exhibit A. We may need to make it make sure it's clear how that was calculated. | 00:39:20 | |
So we'll talk a little bit about revenues. So general fund revenues we're projecting again 3.246 that's an increase of about 11%. | 00:39:28 | |
Our neighbors, I don't, I didn't check with the county, but I know Clark County is also seeing about 11% increase in their overall | 00:39:32 | |
budget. | 00:39:37 | |
Basically we're talking our three biggest revenue streams, our local options, sales tax, which is about 30%, property tax which is | 00:39:43 | |
21 and insurance premium tax which is 8%. That's a tax that each one of us pay. When you take out insurance just like your | 00:39:49 | |
franchise fees, those are charged to you and then pass through the through the utility to the city. I will point out again just | 00:39:55 | |
and I know it's always easy to compare with Clark County, but I know Clark County's property taxes as a percentage of their | 00:40:01 | |
general fund. | 00:40:07 | |
Is 51%. | 00:40:14 | |
So sort of point that out, we are doing a lot with very little. | 00:40:15 | |
Again, local option sales tax, that's 7.77% based on an agreement with the county. That is what it was agreed to. I think it was | 00:40:20 | |
last year, maybe the year before now I can't remember. It's 10 years and we are estimating that it will go up a little bit, not | 00:40:28 | |
much being very fairly conservative about what that will be over the next fiscal year. Again, property tax, we just talked about | 00:40:35 | |
that rolling it back. So we we decreased the revenues that were projected to so we would not have to take that $40,000 increase. | 00:40:43 | |
Again, it's important to understand property taxes are based on the value of that property come January 1. So anything that | 00:40:51 | |
happens we now January 1 and the end of the year doesn't get picked up for the for the tax bill that gets picked up next year when | 00:40:55 | |
they relook at your property in January. | 00:41:00 | |
And then just because I think it's always good for people to understand sort of what the value is. So again, property taxes are | 00:41:06 | |
fairly low consider, I mean, obviously citizens participate in the sales tax and they participate in in the insurance premium tax | 00:41:12 | |
and some of the other franchise fees and things like that. But but for the most part. | 00:41:17 | |
The city's revenues are coming from external sources, not from the citizens who live here. So, but it's important to see that. So | 00:41:23 | |
for instance, the fiscal year 25 cost for garbage is $23 a month per household or $276 a year. I know that it would be more like | 00:41:30 | |
$29.00 a month if you had to use a private hauler and and you were outside the city limits, probably not for and it would not | 00:41:36 | |
include leaf and limb service. So I think it's a great value that we're getting in addition public safety, which is a big part of | 00:41:43 | |
our budget. | 00:41:49 | |
That costs roughly each household cost us about $648 per household every year for this next fiscal year. So I think that's | 00:41:56 | |
important to to look at that. | 00:42:01 | |
As well, I already shared this, so I don't know that I need to go back through that, but that's that's our property tax. | 00:42:07 | |
Monies and then. This is a comparison I referred to earlier. | 00:42:14 | |
This is from 20/22. I couldn't find a 2023. They'll probably put it in their budget this year. I did go along to see if Clark | 00:42:18 | |
County had done this because this was something they generated, but I do think it's important to note the lowest mileage rate in | 00:42:24 | |
this general area is is Watkinsville and Oak County County. | 00:42:29 | |
And then if you look at. | 00:42:36 | |
Total taxes by market value. The stars are Watkinsville. | 00:42:38 | |
So higher property, lower taxes, higher property value. | 00:42:42 | |
And then on the expense side, it's always important to understand we do a lot, very little. I am so pleased and appreciative of my | 00:42:49 | |
staff who many of us were several different hats because that's what you do when you're a flat organization. You don't have a lot | 00:42:55 | |
of opportunity to to add people. So we have 21 full time employees, one part time employee now. | 00:43:01 | |
Engineering, attorneys fees, the things we have to do just to keep everything. | 00:43:42 | |
Working. | 00:43:47 | |
Point out the two largest expenditures, not looking at departments, but expenditures or police services and garbage and leaf and | 00:43:51 | |
limb. So again, these are right across the board. Every community. When you hear about communities that want to start, you know, | 00:43:56 | |
breakaway and become a city, the first thing they talk about is police and then the next thing to talk about is garbage. So not | 00:44:01 | |
unusual. These are very common in a lot of communities. | 00:44:06 | |
And then again, as I pointed out, a lot of what we do is people, we do use a lot of tools. We have a lot of resources, but our | 00:44:13 | |
biggest resource, most important resource or personnel. So 50% of our personnel are employed are direct employees of the city and | 00:44:20 | |
then another 20%, so 70% to another 20% of our contract labor. | 00:44:26 | |
And then on the capital side, so to understand pretty much anything valued at $5000 or more that will last, you know, five to | 00:44:36 | |
seven years is on our capital budget and we have an improvement plan that goes out roughly 20 years. We look at it every year. We | 00:44:41 | |
decide if we can move things forward or backward, if we need to move backwards. And typically we budget a depreciation expense in | 00:44:47 | |
the operating budget. We did not do that this year. We felt like what was on the table was not, it wasn't necessary to add | 00:44:53 | |
additional money. | 00:44:59 | |
To that fund, I think roughly we have around $300,000 in that account. We're fortunate to be able to use some of our splice money | 00:45:04 | |
or our special purpose local option sales tax money to supplement some of our capital purchases. And so that's why we did not do | 00:45:09 | |
it this year I. | 00:45:14 | |
And not by the capital fund that we have. | 00:46:52 | |
And then again, there is the worksheet and we will need to just make sure everybody understands there's not a deficit that is just | 00:46:56 | |
a calculation error because I was trying to correct something earlier tonight that it is a balanced budget with no, no fund | 00:47:02 | |
balance contribution or increase in property taxes. | 00:47:09 | |
Thank you, Manager Dickerson, very comprehensive report. At this point, we'll have a open it up for a public hearing. All the | 00:47:17 | |
people who want to step forward and address the budget, please do so. | 00:47:22 | |
Not everybody at once. | 00:47:28 | |
All right, we will close the public hearing. | 00:47:30 | |
On the budget, we vote on that later, correct? OK. | 00:47:34 | |
We'll now have a public hearing on the variance for 56 Dooley St. I see the Shays here and I think we'll probably hear from our | 00:47:39 | |
engineer 1st and then the applicant will come forward. Is that correct, Mr. Campbell? Yes, Sir, Thank you. Mr. Wright. OK, so 56 | 00:47:44 | |
Dooley Street is at the corner of Dooley St. and Jackson St. | 00:47:50 | |
The parcel is approximately 6/10 of an acre and it is owned detached residential. The request for this variance is to reduce the | 00:47:57 | |
side set back as dictated by the zoning code from 10 feet down to five feet. So if you go to the next slide that gives you an idea | 00:48:04 | |
from an aerial standpoint of of where the where the lot is located there at Dooley and Jackson St. the house actually faces again | 00:48:11 | |
Dooley St. has a Dooley St. access this particular. | 00:48:19 | |
Request, if you will, is actually for something that's accessed off of Jackson there on that that corner lot. So, so here's the | 00:48:27 | |
plat from 1995, I believe it is from Mr. Ray Woods that shows that location. This one's inverted from the aerial images that you | 00:48:34 | |
just saw, but it's where the the house has been obviously for for some time that is showing the platform 95 and where that you can | 00:48:41 | |
see that kind of horseshoe access from from either roadway there based on that recorded plat. | 00:48:48 | |
So there's the structure. | 00:48:57 | |
That is being requested, that is currently built, that is access from Jackson Street, that is within. | 00:49:00 | |
Five feet or less than 10 feet I should say, from that side property line so we can go to the next. | 00:49:07 | |
Again, there's a picture of the house from the corner. You can see that a front porch with the American flag that's facing Dooley | 00:49:15 | |
St. This picture was taken before Jackson St. was was repaved. So if you have a chance to go back out there that it doesn't look | 00:49:20 | |
the same as as when this picture was taken, but just gives you a little bit of a context there. So the applicant is requesting a | 00:49:26 | |
variance associated with the construction of that covered parking area there that is next to the adjacent property that is a long | 00:49:32 | |
Jackson Street and, and. | 00:49:38 | |
Be happy to answer any other questions. I do want to point out as as a city attorney usually points to, there is criteria | 00:50:16 | |
associated with a variance request. This is specifically listed within the code. You can see there that it is up to mayor and | 00:50:22 | |
council to review these readings requests, but you're supposed to review them based on those specific criteria. That is an A | 00:50:27 | |
through F criteria that is listed there. Just as a reminder, that's also in your council packet. But again, be be happy to answer | 00:50:33 | |
any questions you might have. | 00:50:39 | |
All right. Thank you. Mr. Campbell. If the applicants want to step forward and add anything, that's great. And then I'll open the | 00:50:47 | |
public hearing. | 00:50:50 | |
Yeah, I'm Josh Shea, and this is my wife, Jennifer, 56 Dooley St. About three years ago, We I. | 00:50:57 | |
Put a concrete parking pad at the end of our existing driveway, which we've been using for 10 years and leave next door and | 00:51:04 | |
everything so. | 00:51:08 | |
Back in March, I said, let's go ahead and put a carport on because we nothing to shelter our cars and she bought a new car. So so | 00:51:13 | |
we built both it and my bad small town, I did not get a building permit. So this is how this all came about. So I that that's to | 00:51:21 | |
be determined if this goes forward or not. But we built it when it was that Toby called us to say, hey, you need a building | 00:51:28 | |
permit. When that came about, we did all the things and we were. | 00:51:36 | |
Over the set back liner or building line if you would. So go with Lee and Melanie next door and they said they were OK with it. | 00:51:44 | |
Basically put the carport at the end of the existing driveway which we've been using for 10 years, which has been there probably | 00:51:50 | |
for the House of 1942. So I don't know how long has it been there. So we just use the existing driveway. We didn't alter anything | 00:51:56 | |
and it turns out. | 00:52:02 | |
Long story short, leave the fence line, which I assume is our property line is not our property line leaves to own both | 00:52:09 | |
properties. He just put the fence where it was convenient for him. So, so it looks, it looks like we got a lot more room than we | 00:52:15 | |
do. We actually have much less than we thought we had. So it's our mistake, our error. We just ask that and we're going to make it | 00:52:21 | |
and we'd like if we move forward, put a metal roof on so it ties in with the rest of the neighborhood. We shouldn't be the rest of | 00:52:27 | |
our house. We've built it to kind of. | 00:52:33 | |
Mirror what we've What is existing structure now? | 00:52:39 | |
I. | 00:52:45 | |
Existing one you see there off of Jackson at one point they did yes well and and. | 00:53:24 | |
Where this one is particularly tricky is because your your address is duly right and your front porch is duly. And so it could be | 00:53:31 | |
argued that this is not so is the variance just for the set back OK, because that also was a little unclear in the application. So | 00:53:38 | |
it's not front facing, it's only the then they have double jeopardy. Yeah. | 00:53:46 | |
Thank you. | 00:53:54 | |
Other questions from Council. | 00:53:57 | |
I don't want to stay there for a second. I think that's fine. At this point, we'll call the public hearings. Anybody want to come | 00:54:00 | |
forward and speak to this? | 00:54:04 | |
We received any comments from the public. | 00:54:09 | |
Other than the Morgans, OK. And that was in your packet. All right, hearing none, I'm going to close the public hearing at this | 00:54:11 | |
point. Council. Any other questions for the applicants? | 00:54:15 | |
OK y'all can take your seat. | 00:54:21 | |
A comments or I'll entertain a motion. | 00:54:25 | |
Or do we do a motion? OK, yeah, it's closed. Yeah, we're voting on the variance, so. | 00:54:33 | |
Yes, I'm just going to point out that if you do approve the variance, then they will be subject to a double building permit fee | 00:54:40 | |
because they did not receive a building permit that probably will only be like a total of $200.00. It's not a very expensive thing | 00:54:46 | |
and I think they're aware of that, so. | 00:54:51 | |
Point so we do want everybody to be treated fairly you know so if you. | 00:54:58 | |
Don't get that building permit done in time, then. Then there is a you know, don't get it in time, you know, you get the fine. So | 00:55:03 | |
I have a. | 00:55:07 | |
This is really maybe a question for our engineer and it seems to know our code very well. What is the the the code for? Like just | 00:55:12 | |
like a pavilion or a? | 00:55:20 | |
It's not well defined, so it, it kind of falls under the general accessory structure because it can be used for other things. But | 00:55:28 | |
in general terms, you know, the maybe the most dangerous word in all of Watkinsville code is the word garage. But that's probably | 00:55:36 | |
a good thing if, if there's nothing that's more contentious than that, this is this is not a garage, but it is an area that is | 00:55:43 | |
used for covered parking. But again, it's an accessory structure. | 00:55:51 | |
For the purpose of the code for the purpose of the variance tonight, any of those such structures are still subject to that. | 00:55:58 | |
Again, it's a 5 foot side set back that they're requesting code requires the side set back as it would be determined by this lot | 00:56:06 | |
as it was determined and the the code from or the platform 1995, it's 10 foot and so it's it's not a rear, it's not a front, it is | 00:56:13 | |
a side, but it would be subject to whatever we would choose to call the structure would fall under the the same terminology there. | 00:56:20 | |
So I think what I am before we make a motion that I'm just kind of. | 00:56:28 | |
Struggling with is this isn't really a garage and so. | 00:56:33 | |
I I feel weird voting on a variance about a garage when it's not a garage. Is that am I being should I not worry about that? I | 00:56:40 | |
mean This is why I'm asking the the powers that be here if that really matters just as far as like I have. | 00:56:47 | |
So let me ask you this way, if we approve this, does that then give them permission to close it in and create it an actual garage? | 00:56:57 | |
Or is it just, well, maybe an attorney could advise us? Yeah, there's a good point. You know, we make an accessory, make an | 00:57:03 | |
exception for, you know, the variance would be for an accessory structure rather than a garage. If, you know, if that's if that's | 00:57:08 | |
our preference. Raj says it has to be enclosed. | 00:57:14 | |
Right, this is not going to be enclosed. | 00:57:21 | |
Then they're asking for a variance to not enclose it set back in front facing, not front facing. | 00:57:24 | |
But it really is. But yeah, it is. But it doesn't matter. I don't believe on on the various requests at all. I ever wrote the word | 00:57:32 | |
garage. I don't believe that was any any of my verbiage at all. I don't know where that's what I see. I see what you're looking at | 00:57:38 | |
there. That did not come from from us. We don't we don't want a garage, OK. | 00:57:45 | |
Yeah, yeah. | 00:57:52 | |
All right. So does everybody come, are you comfortable that's using the structure around a detached, the variance would be for a | 00:57:56 | |
detached or an accessory structure. Excuse me, is that we're calling it Mark Joe? | 00:58:02 | |
I'm fine with that. And if you look at the photograph clearly, it looks much more like a picnic shelter, a pavilion or a gazebo. | 00:58:09 | |
It does not look like. | 00:58:13 | |
Right. Dangerous word in the Watkinsville code. So we don't want that word. We know it's a hot button. | 00:58:48 | |
A lot of folks, all right. | 00:58:56 | |
So if we're comfortable with that, that's a great call out, Christine emotion around. | 00:58:59 | |
Variance for the accessory structure at 56 Dooley St. | 00:59:04 | |
I make a motion to approve the variance for the accessory structure. | 00:59:10 | |
Well, my love to make a caveat with it. Go for it. Yeah. It it it's just that I I get it when you think your property line is | 00:59:17 | |
something in your neighbor who created that property line is fine with it. I mean, I I get it. It was it probably looked like it | 00:59:23 | |
was well over 10 feet. So and you're willing to. | 00:59:30 | |
I have to know that he's gone for 10 years. | 00:59:37 | |
All right, so the motion without all the extra stuff is for the variance variance to approve the variance for the accessory | 00:59:41 | |
structure that is not a garage with the with the side set back of five feet, right, with the side set back of less than 10 feet. | 00:59:49 | |
OK, that's your motion. Do we have a second? We have a second. Any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye, any opposed? | 00:59:58 | |
All right, motion carries 5. | 01:00:07 | |
Thank you both for coming under appearances we have known under. | 01:00:11 | |
Old business, we have none. Under new business we have some budget related items that will move quickly through. So we've as you | 01:00:16 | |
all know we have to do a public hearings and adopt A budget separately. So I'll entertain a resolution to adopt the 2024 property | 01:00:22 | |
tax mileage rate at this point unless there's any discussion. | 01:00:29 | |
To make a motion to accept the 2024 mileage rate. | 01:00:37 | |
We have a 2nd, 2nd. | 01:00:42 | |
All right, any discussion hearing none, all in favor say aye, aye. Any opposed? | 01:00:45 | |
All right, Item 13, this will be the adoption resolution for an adoption of the 2025 budget, noting that on Exhibit A and that I'm | 01:00:50 | |
sorry, mayor, this one didn't get switched again. This is last minute my fault to try to catch it. But the the one that the only | 01:00:56 | |
difference in this one and the other one is it should say 119,000 and some change for capital. So we'll we'll make sure it's | 01:01:01 | |
correct. | 01:01:07 | |
Copy of Exhibit A, which will reflect no deficit at the bottom, as this one does, but also an item in capital for $119,851. | 01:01:15 | |
Council, any discussion regarding the budget? | 01:01:23 | |
Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. | 01:01:27 | |
I'll make a motion that we. | 01:01:31 | |
Approve the budget. I have a motion amended. | 01:01:33 | |
Exhibit A. | 01:01:37 | |
Correct. Do we have a second? | 01:01:38 | |
2nd. | 01:01:41 | |
All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? | 01:01:43 | |
All in favor say aye aye. Any opposed? | 01:01:46 | |
Motion carries 5O. | 01:01:49 | |
All right. Yep. Next up, we have 1090 Business Blvd. I think Mr. Bell is here with us. If you want to step forward. We have a | 01:01:53 | |
wastewater capacity application request. Manager Dickerson will give a report and then we'll let the applicant offer his name and | 01:01:58 | |
address and he can share anything he wants to. Yeah. So very briefly, Mr. Bell needs sewer connection for commercial space. There | 01:02:04 | |
are. | 01:02:09 | |
1090 business Blvd. to service 2 bathrooms and two employee cat for two employment. I'm sorry A2 employee cabinet shop. | 01:02:15 | |
Oconee County Water Resources always has to review these, even though the council has the right to. | 01:02:24 | |
Approve the water, wastewater capacity. They do have to review the request. They have agreed that 260 gallons a day is what is | 01:02:31 | |
needed. And so that is what you see on your chart. We do have a balance available now that is either not been encumbered or that | 01:02:37 | |
has not been encumbered or not already approved and being used of a little bit more than 3600 gallons a day left until we get the | 01:02:43 | |
hopefully the next allotment at the end of the year. | 01:02:50 | |
And so that's what the county says. They're going to use two people. | 01:02:57 | |
A day, Yes. OK. | 01:03:01 | |
No. So the the question was where does that number come from? So the county isn't owns and operates the wastewater and water | 01:03:06 | |
system and they have policies and procedures and that's how they calculate. And we don't really don't have a lot to say about | 01:03:12 | |
that. It's a utility just like your power and your gas. So those questions probably be best directed to them. | 01:03:19 | |
But Mr. Bell, you're not doing, not installing anything that uses water. This is just for a bathroom. Is that correct? Correct. | 01:03:25 | |
OK. I mean, I'm going to note for the record that I'm going to note for the record, for the record, that's absolutely ridiculous. | 01:03:32 | |
260 gallons per day for a bathroom for two people. | 01:03:38 | |
But there's nothing we can do about at this point. But yes, it is ridiculous. All right, Mr. Bell, why don't you? If there's | 01:03:46 | |
anything else you want to share about your application, feel free. Otherwise, we'll move to a vote. Yeah, that should be. That | 01:03:50 | |
should be. | 01:03:54 | |
I have a new tenant that we are we had to use it as storage before. So a new tenant needed to access the bathroom. So there's not | 01:03:58 | |
there's not septic on that building. I'm familiar with the building in the no no septic. It's too small of a lot for. | 01:04:06 | |
Yep, unfortunate. Well, I make a motion to approve. I think these employees should get to use the bathroom a lot, apparently. | 01:04:16 | |
All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second? | 01:04:26 | |
Second, all right, we have a motion, we have a second. We assume that these numbers, the water will be running all day long there | 01:04:29 | |
and. | 01:04:33 | |
But all in favor say aye aye. And is there a any opposed hearing? None. Motion carries 5 O Thank you, Mr. Bell for coming in. | 01:04:37 | |
All right. Next up, we have approving an award for in contract for the aggregate trails at Thomas Farm Preserve. For those of you | 01:04:48 | |
have been following this project, this is these would be the portion of the trails that are not paved primarily towards the back | 01:04:53 | |
of the project. | 01:04:59 | |
Project and so Manager Dickerson, if you want to offer a report on that, that would be great. Well, thank you, Mayor. | 01:05:04 | |
So we're going to ask tonight that you award Mark Thomas Enterprises the contract for the construction installation of these | 01:05:12 | |
aggregate trails for amount not to exceed $90,000. That money will come right now as being earmarked out of the special purpose | 01:05:19 | |
local option sales tax three under roads, bridges and streets. Also ask that you agree that you approve the contract, which has | 01:05:26 | |
already been reviewed by the contractor as well and allow the mayor and city clerk to sign all those relevant documents. | 01:05:34 | |
Little history. In February of this year, the council approved reprogramming some funds so that we could do some improvements to | 01:05:41 | |
Thomas Farm Preserve, which was acquired in September of last year. Those improvements include adding restroom facilities, | 01:05:47 | |
fencing, lighting, signage and construction administration. | 01:05:54 | |
On April 18th we released an RFP for 3.46 miles of pedestrian trails, which would be aggregate trails. | 01:06:00 | |
And then on May 6th we received, we had the opening of those price proposals and the we received only one proposal that was from | 01:06:08 | |
Mark Thomas Enterprises for 117,000. | 01:06:12 | |
In addition to our posting on the website, which Council Councilman Garrett recommended last year, we've started doing fairly | 01:06:19 | |
regularly. It was also advertising the economy enterprise and provided directly to Todd Smith Grading and Mark Thomas Enterprises | 01:06:25 | |
as they had reached out to us hearing that when the park became available, you know when the park became active, they both those | 01:06:32 | |
entities said, hey, let us know you know when this opportunity arises. So we notified them directly. | 01:06:38 | |
In February of 24, we've got several, we had some volunteers that are helping with a Backcountry trial. Sorry, Backcountry trail | 01:06:46 | |
that is not part of this RRFP. The mayor and I met before this meeting. There's a little bit of confused, there was a little | 01:06:53 | |
confusion on what I put down. But as far as budget wise, everything I think works out fine and we won't have any issues. But the | 01:07:01 | |
30 inch back back trail is being done by volunteers and that's on the on the outskirts goes through the through the woods. | 01:07:09 | |
On February 15th, again Council approved a budget for these Thomas Farm improvements. | 01:07:17 | |
And. | 01:07:23 | |
These are the, these are the three, the six, six foot aggregate trail which is a little bit more than a mile, an 8 foot aggregate | 01:07:26 | |
trail which is a little more than 1/3 of mile and then 30 inch back back country trail which is not part of this. Now we did | 01:07:33 | |
receive a pricing for that from Mr. Thomas, but we back that out and that's how we come up with the not to exceed $90,000. | 01:07:40 | |
Happy to answer any questions. | 01:07:48 | |
Go back to that last trip so. | 01:07:51 | |
That we're doing the the 1st and the 2nd, correct? Yeah. And, and again, there's there's so there's a whole bunch of. | 01:07:53 | |
Request. | 01:08:34 | |
And then what about it? I know that Mister Thomas as part of his contract with us separately was doing some other work as as the | 01:08:36 | |
parking lot work and some of the grading around the circle, that kind of circle area by the house included in that other work that | 01:08:42 | |
he's doing. Yes, yeah. So, so I think that's, I mean, obviously he knows the property and he does this work for a living. He came | 01:08:48 | |
in. I mean, obviously I don't have a whole bunch to compare it with, but I did share it with one of the other contractors who's | 01:08:54 | |
interested in the other bid. | 01:09:00 | |
OK. Any other anything else to report? | 01:09:36 | |
OK, OK. | 01:09:39 | |
Council questions for the manager. | 01:09:41 | |
Alright, um. | 01:09:46 | |
In that case, I'll entertain a motion. | 01:09:48 | |
I make a motion to approve. | 01:09:52 | |
We have motion to approve. Do we have a second? | 01:09:54 | |
We have a motion, We have a second. All in favor say aye aye. We have an abstention. We have one recusal. | 01:09:57 | |
Council, I think it should be noted Councilman Thomas is recused throughout on financial matters related to the Thomas farm matter | 01:10:06 | |
given his. | 01:10:11 | |
Although he's not a direct family member, he is a descendant of the Thomas family, so. | 01:10:16 | |
All right, our next item and I think we'll talk a little bit more about this in the Mayor's report, but so I won't belabor it now, | 01:10:22 | |
but Chair, and if you just want to do the administrative part of the G Tib grant, Jennifer, I know you're a big Walker, you'll | 01:10:27 | |
appreciate this news. So Sharon, why don't you? | 01:10:32 | |
Let's see what we need to do here real quick. And you may you may want to do a little bit more here because I don't think we | 01:10:38 | |
planned in the banner support, but you can do. That's right. OK Comes up here. Yeah. So, So Councilman Thomas and I, a week ago, | 01:10:44 | |
two weeks ago Thursday. It was a week ago, Tom Flash, right. Two weeks ago. Yeah. It's been fast. We were. We got to go to | 01:10:50 | |
Atlanta. We got some great news from the governor's office that we had applied for a Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank | 01:10:56 | |
award. | 01:11:02 | |
To help us accelerate sidewalks along Simonton Bridge Rd. That's been a big requested item for our citizens for a long time. | 01:11:08 | |
But the cost to do that is tremendous given some of the right away challenges and wetlands and other things. So we learned that | 01:11:16 | |
we're getting a loan, a low interest loan of $2.2 million and a grant of $1.53 million to help us kick start that project. Based | 01:11:22 | |
on our numbers, we think that's going to enable us to build a sidewalk and pathway that will connect Rocket Field all the way to | 01:11:29 | |
Thomas Farm Preserve and on to Simonton Place subdivision, which is the most challenging part of of the Simonton Bridge quarter. | 01:11:35 | |
None of it's really easy but but. | 01:11:42 | |
Yeah, just that a whole lot of people applied and we were one of five. | 01:12:51 | |
That got it. So again, you know, great things are happening here in Watkinsville. So super glad that we were able to secure this, | 01:12:56 | |
this money to to build this project. | 01:13:02 | |
You do have exhibit A&B in the packet. That is something that we did have to complete this past week so that they could go ahead | 01:14:16 | |
and get the documents pulled together. We're going to nail down a date sometime probably after July 10th to close on the loan and | 01:14:22 | |
and handle the grant stuff and get all our paperwork started so we can get this project underway. And again, I think the date on | 01:14:29 | |
the contract is going to be we're shooting for January of 2026 to have this completed. So we'll see how that works. | 01:14:35 | |
So not allowed, you know, if you happen to run into any members of our local delegation, Representative Weed, our Senator Kouser, | 01:14:42 | |
Representative Houston Gaines or the governor, please thank them for their support for this. They were huge supporters of this | 01:14:48 | |
project and they understand what, what something like this means for Watkinsville. And, and we spent a fair time, amount of time | 01:14:53 | |
explaining to them the importance of this project. So please be, please express your gratitude when you run into them because this | 01:14:59 | |
is a game changer for us. | 01:15:05 | |
So OK. | 01:15:11 | |
All right, so I would ask for a motion to approve the G tab loan and grant awards and the amounts listed on the screen, and I'll | 01:15:13 | |
entertain a motion to that effect. I make that motion. We have a motion for mayor Pro Tem. Do we have a second? Second. We have a | 01:15:19 | |
second from Councilman Campbell. All in favor say aye. Any opposed motion carries 5O. | 01:15:25 | |
All right, Item 17 was tabled. | 01:15:34 | |
Consent agenda I will notice Note for the public, the consent agenda is in a different spot. | 01:15:36 | |
This time that it usually is, and that's because several of the items on there were impacted by the budget. So we couldn't approve | 01:15:42 | |
the consent agenda till the budget was approved. So that's why it's at the back end of the meeting. But seeing as council didn't | 01:15:46 | |
pull anything off, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. | 01:15:51 | |
I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right. Second. | 01:15:57 | |
2nd 2nd from Councilman Campbell. Any discussion? | 01:16:02 | |
Hearing none all in favor say aye. | 01:16:05 | |
Right, motion passes. We'll move on to public comments. | 01:16:08 | |
We've got a few guests here, if anybody wants to step forward, you're welcome to. | 01:16:13 | |
All right. | 01:16:21 | |
Do not have any. We'll move on to the mayor's report. | 01:16:22 | |
We were fortunate. We talked a month or two here, we approved significant funds for repaving and those projects are done and I | 01:16:29 | |
think they look great. Niagara Drive, Jackson Street and Simonton Way were all completed along with School St. one side of School | 01:16:35 | |
St. | 01:16:41 | |
I will note Jackson St. in particular had had some real challenges. | 01:16:48 | |
And School St. of course, we've been really battling some historical issues and that road was totally rebuilt as part of this | 01:16:53 | |
process. Pretty big lift. So grateful sharing to you and the staff for your work on that. Also didn't mention during the G tip | 01:17:00 | |
conversation, Sharon did that application and led the way and we're really grateful to you for your work on that. But on this as | 01:17:07 | |
well, looks really great. Big improvement. Hair Shoals. We finally got the old ball field fencing down. | 01:17:14 | |
And we are moving forward on our plans to begin hair Shoals work in earnest. I think the next slide shows a rendering of what we | 01:17:22 | |
want that space to look like when it's done. That's called, that was called Giardini Field, named after a former mayor. We intend | 01:17:29 | |
to call that the Giordini Green. So get that spruced up and reopened, probably have a package to go out to bid using splash | 01:17:36 | |
dollars in the future to get that area looking good. Harris Shoals is. | 01:17:43 | |
Has a lot of work down there. I just asked for patience. It's a bit of a work in progress in terms of how it looks right now. But | 01:17:52 | |
you have to understand we're slowly doing this construction project one piece at a time. But I've no doubt when it's done, it will | 01:17:56 | |
be, it'll be better than it's ever been. So we're grateful sharing to you and the staff work on that and keeping our call slow by | 01:18:01 | |
doing that in house, even if it takes a little bit longer. | 01:18:05 | |
We've done some additional improvements at Rocket Field. You may have noticed you've seen benches go in, picnic tables going in | 01:18:12 | |
for people to use at different spots. Public works, we appreciate them handling that. | 01:18:17 | |
Work has already started at Thomas Farm. You may notice the fence along Simonton Bridge Rd. We've also fenced off the old barn. | 01:18:24 | |
Someday we hope to fix up the old barn, but for now it's a rather attractive nuisance and we want to make it very clear to the | 01:18:30 | |
public that once they go out there, the barn is not a not a place to. | 01:18:36 | |
Not a place to play or, you know, to climb or to visit until we get that, until we get that ready for public use at a later date. | 01:18:42 | |
So excited to have work underway out there in addition to what we approve tonight. | 01:18:48 | |
We have one thing when you get legal equipment. | 01:18:56 | |
Can I rectify mention the holiday while we're. Yeah, One other thing I just want to recognize today is a day it's a federal | 01:19:02 | |
holiday, Juneteenth. I don't know that, you know, it's a relatively new, relatively new holiday, but it is a. | 01:19:08 | |
I think it's worth mentioning that you know Juneteenth is the date that I. | 01:19:15 | |
Enslaved people in Galveston, TX learned about their freedom June 19th, 1865. That's 89. You know, some people say, what's | 01:19:20 | |
Juneteenth? Why do you celebrate June 19th? We've got to remember when the US declared independence on July 4th, 1776, there was a | 01:19:27 | |
whole group of people in America who were not free, right? And they weren't free until 1863 when President Lincoln read the | 01:19:34 | |
Emancipation Proclamation. And then many of those people didn't even learn about that until June 19th, 1865. S. | 01:19:42 | |
I think it's important that. | 01:19:50 | |
That we recognize that, that we recognize that today is a federal holiday and council may want to discuss subsequently whether | 01:19:52 | |
that should be a holiday for City of Watkinsville employees. So I won't be, you know, if it's just something that we might want to | 01:19:57 | |
consider in February at our planning retreat, if that's something worth considering for next year's budget cycle. So that's all | 01:20:02 | |
the mayor has. | 01:20:07 | |
OK. | 01:20:14 | |
Yeah, so I. | 01:20:20 | |
Christina is not going to be here next month. She celebrates a big birthday. We won't say what the number is, but there is a | 01:20:22 | |
number on her cupcake there. And Mark, Mark, our city engineer Mark Campbell also celebrates birthday. That's actually this month. | 01:20:28 | |
And and because she lit that before the mayor started there. Are you starting to burn down? So you may want to. | 01:20:33 | |
Before you do that. | 01:20:40 | |
Yay. | 01:20:42 | |
So happy birthday, Mayor Pro Tem Tucker and Engineer Campbell. We're grateful for both of you and hope we get many more years of | 01:20:47 | |
having you in the chambers with us. So thank you for everything. Yep, and enjoy your. | 01:20:53 | |
Meeting away your time away next next month. | 01:20:59 | |
For those of you don't know, Mayor Pro Tem Tucker is one She once told me that she wasn't going to she wasn't going to travel for | 01:21:03 | |
the rest of the year. And I think she I think that resolution lasted for about one month and then she was she was off again. So | 01:21:10 | |
anyway, we're grateful, grateful that you can always make it back for our meetings and we'll miss you when next month and engineer | 01:21:16 | |
Campbell, we're grateful for you and when he has a milestone, Sharon, I think we we need to have a. | 01:21:23 | |
Keep an eye on that. Yep. | 01:21:31 | |
All right, Council, reports Councilman Garrett. | 01:21:34 | |
Nothing from Councilman Garrett County Massey. | 01:21:38 | |
All right, Mr. Thomas. | 01:21:41 | |
I just enjoy our small town of 3000 and hope that it stays to be a cute small town of 3000 for years to come. | 01:21:43 | |
All right, Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. So I was reflected. It was a real privilege to get to go to Denver with the delegation and got to | 01:21:53 | |
know some different members in our community and. | 01:21:59 | |
Was reflecting on that today at our DDA board meeting and I am just so impressed with the people in our community. | 01:22:06 | |
And. | 01:22:16 | |
The mayor and I have been talking about this. We, we want to make sure that everybody knows. | 01:22:18 | |
That. | 01:22:23 | |
There are ways for everyone to get involved. I mean, that's one of the things about being a small community. We need lots of | 01:22:25 | |
hands. We don't want the same people doing things all the time because people get burned out. And so I don't want anybody to to | 01:22:31 | |
see the things that the city is doing and think. | 01:22:37 | |
Oh, that's so great. And just kind of sit by the sidelines, like we need people to get involved and we want people to get | 01:22:43 | |
involved. This is a community where all voices are valued and heard, and I hope people always feel that way. So. | 01:22:49 | |
Thank you, Christine. That's a great perspective. Councilman Campbell. | 01:22:56 | |
The video that we frankly was a key to US winning the award that told the Watkinsville story. We probably, if that's not on our | 01:23:35 | |
website, we need to figure out how to get that on there. And then the recap video. And then from the city, Christine, Sharon and | 01:23:41 | |
Chief GAIL, thank you for being there. | 01:23:47 | |
You know, there was one person who never jumped on stage with us during that process, but she kept everything moving behind the | 01:23:53 | |
scenes, and that's manager Dickerson. She never wants a lot of attention. She never asked for it. But Sharon? | 01:23:58 | |
You know I. | 01:24:06 | |
As we won the grant, as we won that award, it may be once again realized that without a really talented city manager, none of that | 01:24:08 | |
would have happened. And I think it goes without saying how grateful we are to you and to all that you and your team do to to make | 01:24:14 | |
these things happen in Watkinsville. The the projects that we earn, the recognition that we even were chosen because of would not | 01:24:20 | |
have happened without you and your staff's work. So. | 01:24:26 | |
It goes without saying, I know how you kind of saw it in the background in these moments, but I think it goes without saying that | 01:24:33 | |
you and your team deserve a ton of recognition for everything that it took to make us an all American city too. So thank you so | 01:24:37 | |
much for that. | 01:24:41 | |
Yeah, you did, you did mention my team and I could not, it's not a one person here. I mean, there's all 21 of us are working hard | 01:24:50 | |
to make these things happen. But it it's great when you have a, you know, when you, when everybody understands their role. Y'all | 01:24:56 | |
role is to is set the vision and then to give it to us and tell us to make it happen. And everybody here, you know, values that | 01:25:03 | |
and is really appreciate your vision. We we love the vision. We think it's, I mean everybody that works here. | 01:25:09 | |
Embraces it and wants to make it happen and that's what we do on a daily basis. So we appreciate that very much. Thank you. I | 01:25:16 | |
don't think there's any need for an executive session tonight. So unless there's any other business to come before this group, we | 01:25:20 | |
will. | 01:25:25 | |
I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. All right. | 01:25:30 | |
All in favor say aye. | 01:25:36 |
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Good evening and welcome to the June Watkinsville City Council meeting. | 00:00:14 | |
We've got an exciting night ahead of us. It's been an exciting couple weeks for the city of Watkinsville. We're going to share and | 00:00:20 | |
recap some of that news in the in this meeting, so. | 00:00:24 | |
Share and make sure all the monitors are working. | 00:00:30 | |
Hopefully this is not on TV on Apologize, I thought it was on the newspaper. | 00:00:33 | |
People probably rather watch Netflix and City Council meeting right So. | 00:00:38 | |
Figure could be a reality show. | 00:00:43 | |
Sorry about that. | 00:00:48 | |
All right, OK, so we have a quorum here. It looks like we have perfect attendance. Always grateful for that. And we'll start with | 00:00:50 | |
the pledge. Let's all stand and address the flag. | 00:00:54 | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:00:59 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:01:06 | |
So Sharon, you might still have one monitor off over here. I don't know what's going on with it. | 00:01:21 | |
No, it just shows on screen. | 00:01:26 | |
But the other one. | 00:01:28 | |
There we go. OK. | 00:01:47 | |
So we're going to start off the meeting with a couple, couple moments recognitions that will that will that will dig into a little | 00:01:49 | |
bit. The first one of those and I'll have them come forward is the recognition of our all America city delegation. So if those who | 00:01:56 | |
are a part of that delegation could step forward. | 00:02:03 | |
Maybe gather up front and then we're going to share when you once everybody gets up here, we'll share a video and then I'll make | 00:02:10 | |
some remarks about that and take a photo. | 00:02:14 | |
And you can face either screen I guess. Face the audience. You can see it on the screen. | 00:02:21 | |
Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. | 00:02:35 | |
She got a T-shirt, she said. | 00:02:39 | |
Hey y'all about to be wheels up from Denver and excited to get out there and tell the Watkinsville story out to the world as we | 00:03:13 | |
get ready to compete for all American City Awards. I'm representing the WTK and I can't wait to see everybody in did. | 00:03:19 | |
Are you ready? Ready. You ready? We're going to see what happens here. | 00:03:32 | |
Folks getting here, getting ready and ESP folks about having a big adventure, right? Yeah, yeah. Off the red rocks. | 00:03:54 | |
Chief GAIL, pop it in. | 00:04:01 | |
If you have a story, why not tell it? | 00:04:15 | |
Hello Evans, how can we stated you are all winners, I mean get to this point. | 00:04:45 | |
This community uses public input to. | 00:04:57 | |
Community spaces. | 00:05:02 | |
This is concerning its natural surroundings and this community is training miracles possibilities the elementary city of walking. | 00:05:05 | |
So Sharon, does this work over here? | 00:06:04 | |
I will say this delegation was just a key. All of you played such an important part, our young leaders especially. | 00:06:39 | |
You know, you two young men, the way that you memorized your lines and nailed that talking about rocket field. I'll never forget | 00:06:48 | |
the crowd laughing when you talked about sliding into dog poop and getting the restrooms fixed up. Leah, you and Colin, I just | 00:06:54 | |
think you all were the heart and soul of of our group. Your smile, your hugs. I think they hugged y'all 200 people on the first | 00:07:00 | |
night when jittery Joes gave out coffee and hugs at at a big event. It was just, it was just wonderful. | 00:07:07 | |
Taxpayer dollars to do that. So tremendously excited and grateful for this team. Watkinsville is a small town that's not afraid to | 00:08:07 | |
dream big. | 00:08:11 | |
And that's what sets us apart. We're a small town that dreams big, and then we go push those dreams. And I'm grateful to each of | 00:08:16 | |
you for making time to do that and for being part of our team. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much. We'll be in | 00:08:20 | |
touch. I do want to have a meeting. | 00:08:25 | |
A brief meeting so we can talk about what we learned and what we might want in the future, what you guys saw that you liked about | 00:08:30 | |
it as we move ahead. But I'm extremely grateful to each of you for taking the time and the energy and time away from your families | 00:08:35 | |
and donating your talents and your treasure to Watkinsville for this trip to Denver. So this is our delegation now. Let's give | 00:08:40 | |
them a round of applause again. | 00:08:45 | |
And Sharon, I don't know that there's anything else we need to share about them. I will say, you know, we'll have, we have this | 00:08:59 | |
shield. You'll see all the city stuff pop up around the city. We're excited about the opportunities and what it's created for us | 00:09:04 | |
in the future. But we'll have a break in a few minutes. If you all want to saw it out of here, you're welcome to. You don't feel | 00:09:08 | |
like you have to stay and listen to us talk about budget and variances and all those kind of things. So. But thank you all for | 00:09:13 | |
coming tonight. So. OK, great. Yep. | 00:09:18 | |
I think while I'm up here, we'll just go ahead and move into, we'll move into our next item. Krisha, if you want to step forward, | 00:09:42 | |
am I saying that right? | 00:09:46 | |
Sorry. | 00:09:51 | |
Just step over here with me for now and then we'll give you a minute, Krisha. | 00:09:53 | |
Has done our art walk project Outback. And if you haven't been Outback, maybe those of you who are leaving, if you want to slide | 00:09:58 | |
out the back door, you can check it out, but we have a lot more people. | 00:10:03 | |
We have a lot more people now. | 00:10:08 | |
Through coming from Harris Shoals Park up to the new playground at ESP and so Christine Tucker, mayor Pro Tem, had a great idea of | 00:10:11 | |
let's use art to make that experience more compelling as you come to the new to the new play area there the playground of | 00:10:16 | |
possibilities, which is. | 00:10:21 | |
But we're thrilled, and I don't know if you want to take just a minute to say a little bit about, say a little bit about that | 00:11:02 | |
work. | 00:11:05 | |
Sure, it's been a wonderful opportunity to get to make these sculptures. I've have done a good bit of work around Athens. I'm in | 00:11:08 | |
the Athens native and I've been lucky to get to mosaic around the town of Athens, but I've never gotten to do mosaic sculptures, | 00:11:13 | |
and certainly not. | 00:11:19 | |
And so this, this opportunity gave me a chance to learn how to make these and, and support them with about 5 strong men. And, but | 00:11:26 | |
I appreciate getting to work with Christine and Sharon and then Toby and Mark were so great at getting the site all prepared. And | 00:11:35 | |
yeah, and the city of Watkinsville and OCAF also supported the project. So it's been a pleasure and it's part of my heart. They | 00:11:44 | |
actually, I have a little plaque on their, but they honor my sister Michelle, who is a veterinarian. | 00:11:53 | |
And then she loved reptiles and amphibians and had a giant Python for about 30 years that named Naomi. So I did a sculpture of | 00:12:02 | |
Naomi to learn how to do the sculptures. And that's three feet wide and that seemed pretty large, but those, you know, 6 feet, I | 00:12:09 | |
think the turtles, so. | 00:12:15 | |
You know, it's been a pleasure and, and, and there's so much fun and I hope the kids and everybody else enjoys them. Thank you, | 00:12:23 | |
Krishna. | 00:12:26 | |
Mayor, Mayor. | 00:12:30 | |
Why don't you join us? | 00:13:34 | |
You want to stand sort of in front of this so we can stand for the heartland side. | 00:13:36 | |
Hey, I'm not sure that makes on just right in the middle here now if you want to. | 00:13:43 | |
Steps. This is where. | 00:13:47 | |
All right, great. | 00:13:52 | |
All right, there you go. All right, here we go. | 00:13:53 | |
All right. | 00:13:57 | |
I. | 00:14:00 | |
OK, we'll move on into the business part of the meeting. This business, the meeting is being broadcast simultaneously online via | 00:14:19 | |
the Suite 1 Webcasting public portal. Those who can't attend the meeting are always welcome to watch at that link. It's on the | 00:14:25 | |
City Council information page on our website under the Government tab. The portal allows the public to view and listen to the | 00:14:31 | |
meeting in progress, along with the meeting materials associated with the items that Council will be discussing. | 00:14:37 | |
So with that, we'll move on to the meeting minutes. Council, you've had time to review the May 15th regular meeting minutes. Any | 00:15:18 | |
discussion? If not, I'll entertain a motion. I make a motion to approve. | 00:15:24 | |
We have a second. | 00:15:31 | |
Second, any discussion? | 00:15:33 | |
All in favor say aye aye. Motion carries unanimously. We'll move to approval of agenda. | 00:15:35 | |
One item I will need to remove off the table, our agreement with the Christian Church, which is listed under new business until | 00:15:42 | |
next month, but we are having positive conversations there regarding downtown parking. Any other amendments to the agenda? | 00:15:49 | |
OK, hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda with the change noted. | 00:15:57 | |
I make a motion to approve the agenda with the one change noted. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor say aye aye. | 00:16:01 | |
All right. I believe we have some new police officers here with us tonight, an attorney, right, man, You'll be handling the oath | 00:16:10 | |
of office. I'm not sure if there's any other discussion prior to that. | 00:16:14 | |
Had a chance to talk to one of them earlier. | 00:16:26 | |
Use the mic please, Joe. | 00:16:31 | |
That you are not the holder of any unaccounted for public money due this State or any political subdivision or authority thereof. | 00:17:08 | |
That you are not the holder of any office of trust under the Government of the United States, any other State or any foreign State | 00:17:14 | |
which you, by the laws of the State of Georgia, will be prohibited from holding. That you are otherwise qualified to hold set off | 00:17:20 | |
according to the Constitution and laws of Georgia, and that you will perform the duties of your office in the best city of | 00:17:26 | |
Watkinsville. | 00:17:32 | |
To the best of your ability, without fear, favor, affection, reward, or expectation thereof. If you that oath, you can say I do or | 00:17:38 | |
I do, so help me God. | 00:17:43 | |
All right. Congratulations each of you, your official now. | 00:17:49 | |
And if you could please administer the oath, I have copies right here for you to sign if you could do so at this time, please. And | 00:17:53 | |
I have blue pens for each of you to use. And if you all will do so, I would appreciate it. | 00:18:00 | |
I. | 00:18:17 | |
And gentlemen, if you'll. | 00:18:29 | |
Maybe stay where you are. I know we like to get photos with family if we can after the swearing in. And Chief, I didn't know if | 00:18:31 | |
you had anything you want to share about these gentlemen. I know you've got a report coming up as well. Is there anything? | 00:18:35 | |
Do that in the report. | 00:18:41 | |
OK, If we want to have Officer Williams, if you've got a family member here with you, why don't you step forward with the chief | 00:18:44 | |
and your family member and get a photo? | 00:18:48 | |
We need to the move to the middle. | 00:18:59 | |
All right. | 00:19:07 | |
Officer Wilburn, if you and your family want to come forward or do you want one with just your wife? Officer Williams, are you | 00:19:12 | |
good? You want me to just your wife or is it OK to have the chief and all your photos? | 00:19:17 | |
It's not going to start off on that. | 00:19:22 | |
Day. | 00:19:28 | |
Center up a little bit this way, yeah. | 00:19:32 | |
There you go, you'll take a picture before I can tell. | 00:19:38 | |
All right. | 00:19:40 | |
Got it. | 00:19:43 | |
Good officers. | 00:19:47 | |
Community policing team. | 00:20:32 | |
No pressure. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. | 00:21:39 | |
OK. We'll move into financial reports. Everyone should have received whoops, everybody should receive their balance sheet. We are | 00:21:45 | |
on par factory. We're exceeding our revenues by a fair amount. Some of that's due to different, different revenue sources that | 00:21:51 | |
came in, some unexpected ones, higher interest on some of our accounts than we expected to get. So that's good news. The expenses | 00:21:57 | |
are running lower, that's also good news. So of course, everything's not finalized till the audit is done. The auditors are coming | 00:22:02 | |
in. | 00:22:08 | |
July 11th I think and then back again in October. So process begins again. So any questions on the balance sheet or anything on | 00:22:14 | |
that general fund? | 00:22:19 | |
So Splash 3 reports a couple things to note on this. So the. | 00:22:25 | |
And then Thomas Farm, we've got phase one. We'll share some pictures of that fencing the bathroom renter, which is on the consent | 00:23:07 | |
agenda tonight, and some trail work, which is also one of the items on the agenda tonight. And then all the resurfacing projects | 00:23:14 | |
that we just recently had, again, they'll be pictures under the mayor's report. So that comes out of this bucket of money. | 00:23:20 | |
And then just a reminder, splash three started in October 21 at sunsets in September of 27. We're showing about a 5% increase over | 00:23:28 | |
the last fiscal year. So that's always good. And our bank balance is a little bit more than $1,000,000. | 00:23:36 | |
On T plus, that's our transportation special local option sales tax. Those funds right now have been encumbered for sidewalk | 00:23:45 | |
segments. There's a couple that we're still waiting on along Main Street. And then also something that will be that's on the | 00:23:52 | |
that's going to be discussed tonight is the a loan and a grant from the State Road Tollway Authority and from Georgia Transport | 00:23:59 | |
transportation infrastructure Bank. And so those we had we do have money that will be. | 00:24:07 | |
Expended in this account to pay back a loan, A10 year loan at 1.59%. So we're waiting on all that paperwork and hopefully tonight | 00:24:14 | |
you guys will move that, advance that forward. | 00:24:20 | |
So that is our tea SPLOST and then just a little info on that. So we are seeing over last year a 6% increase. Again, that's always | 00:24:27 | |
good and our bank balance is a little more than $720,000. | 00:24:32 | |
American Rescue Plan reports these are the funds that were given to communities in 2021 to try to help communities deal with a | 00:24:39 | |
multitude of issues that the COVID situation caused. The only. So right now we have encumbered funds for our police officer | 00:24:47 | |
retention initiative. We have a couple that are finishing up their payments. We have one outstanding opportunity for an officer to | 00:24:54 | |
obtain that. It's a $10,000 initiative or retention. | 00:25:01 | |
Bonus over a three-year period and then tonight and so the balance is around $96,000. So tonight on the consent agenda, which | 00:25:09 | |
apparently nobody's pulled anything off. So you guys will be voting on making that money available for the Thomas Farm Preserve | 00:25:15 | |
project. | 00:25:21 | |
Any questions on any of those? | 00:25:27 | |
OK, I'll move to economic development. | 00:25:30 | |
So we are Julia. How far are we 97%? | 00:25:34 | |
Getting all our business licenses, we got a few stragglers and some things we're trying to verify. Some of these businesses may | 00:25:38 | |
not still be around, but we we have you know, we're at the end, we start the cycle again in September, October. And just as we're | 00:25:45 | |
getting everybody cleaned up from the last year, we started New Year. So but everything seems to be moving ahead with that. And | 00:25:51 | |
then on our excise taxes, both alcohol and hotel, motel, we are on target. | 00:25:57 | |
A little bit low on hotel, then we budgeted a little bit more on alcohol than we budget. So, but it works out to the amount of | 00:26:04 | |
money that we anticipated. So there you go. | 00:26:08 | |
And then on our building permits, we've got 11 permits for six projects, several that are over at the Trove residential | 00:26:13 | |
neighborhood and then some other just, you know, HVAC, plumbing kind of renovations, things like that. Any questions? | 00:26:20 | |
Good day. | 00:26:29 | |
All right, so a few updates for the from the Downtown Development Authority. If you have not already marked your calendar for | 00:26:33 | |
August 3rd, please do. | 00:26:39 | |
Hopefully everyone will be back in town getting geared up for school and we are having a wonderful BBQ competition and Bake Off | 00:26:47 | |
tailgate party. Yeah, I see someone may be putting in their calendar right now. Way to go so. | 00:26:54 | |
It is also going to benefit Bethel Haven, which is a local nonprofit that helps with mental health issues and will just be a lot | 00:27:02 | |
of fun. That'll be a rocket field. More information will continue to come. We do have a few more entries for actually being part | 00:27:11 | |
of the competition for either BBQ or the Bake Off. And this is not for professionals, this is for amateurs. | 00:27:19 | |
Also a few months ago we talked about the poetry contest that we did in partnership with the library and the templates have been | 00:27:29 | |
successfully made on the 3D printer that the library has. If you have not yet checked out the library Little Plug, it is amazing. | 00:27:37 | |
Go to wire park, check out the library and so be looking for. I think Friday is when the stenciling are going to be done. It's | 00:27:45 | |
with chalk, so eventually it'll go away. However, with our no rain in the forecast forever, it might be there for a long time. | 00:27:53 | |
So it's going to be in downtown, one is going to be kind of in front of Blind Pig area and then ones on the opposite side of the | 00:28:02 | |
street kind of near Oconee Outpost. So it's a great excuse too if you have not been downtown recently to come check out the poetry | 00:28:09 | |
and check out some of our businesses and restaurants. And then lastly. | 00:28:16 | |
I have to share the sad news that our DDA director Kate Patterson has decided to step down from the position. | 00:28:25 | |
She needed to just have more time with her family and so she has done a tremendous job of really setting the foundation for our | 00:28:32 | |
DDA. She took our little fledgling group and for Ddas, Downtown Development Authority. I guess it does say that up there. | 00:28:44 | |
And really? | 00:28:55 | |
She's incredibly organized. | 00:28:58 | |
She has helped create a tremendous website. | 00:29:00 | |
Created events for our community that has helped our restaurants and our local retailers really thrive. | 00:29:04 | |
Help put on art events has done a tremendous amount and is actually going to even even though today was technically her last day, | 00:29:11 | |
is going to continue to help with the the tailgate party as well because she's just that kind of person that is going to start | 00:29:17 | |
what she finishes. So we are going to miss her. She has been a great asset to our city, but this does mean that there is a new | 00:29:23 | |
opportunity available. | 00:29:29 | |
For someone to come and take this role and the the job description is on our website and we are really looking for somebody that. | 00:29:36 | |
Is excited about our community, about our downtown, and really wants to help continue to see Watkinsville thrive. So if you know | 00:29:49 | |
of somebody that you think might be a good fit for this, please encourage them to take a look and to apply. | 00:29:57 | |
Thank you, Christine. We will move on to the Police Department, report Chief Gale. | 00:30:07 | |
Good evening again. I just, you know, I want to again introduce our two new part-time officers because they bring such a wealth of | 00:30:16 | |
experience. Joe Williams, he had many years on a DUI task force where he led many investigations. So we, we are building on our | 00:30:26 | |
professionalism and one it will increase our enforcement actions out there, but it will also impart. | 00:30:35 | |
The training and education for our younger officers. So I'm very excited. And Officer Wilburn, I worked with him at the | 00:30:44 | |
university, so he's got a wealth of experience in the military. So we draw on all experiences and I'm just thrilled about having | 00:30:51 | |
these gentlemen on our team and they will help on particular events. They're not going to be full time. | 00:30:58 | |
This Friday, hopefully they will help us. We are going to be hosting. | 00:31:06 | |
Governor's off honors or governor's office highway safety, traffic enforcement and education event. So here in the city. So drive | 00:31:11 | |
safely, follow the rules as you should always. But we are going to be hosting a training event and then we'll be going out and | 00:31:18 | |
doing some enforcement activities and our you know, as I noted in in the report, our officers are continuing with the training and | 00:31:26 | |
that it I, I rely heavily on that because it is building our. | 00:31:34 | |
Our credibility and our professionalism with the depth of training and now the experience that's going to be out there. We're just | 00:31:42 | |
building, building us stronger and we're going to be lean as always. But it, it just makes me very confident on our abilities and | 00:31:49 | |
keeping this community safe and moving down. You can see where officers have been very active with enforcement activities, writing | 00:31:56 | |
reports, citizen contacts, the security checks, you know, that's a large number. | 00:32:04 | |
And, you know, officers get out of the cars, not always, but many times they do. And they'll encounter citizens, they'll talk to | 00:32:12 | |
them, they provide assistance all the time. It really is something to be proud about. And, and I get up here every month and I say | 00:32:17 | |
it, but I mean it. | 00:32:22 | |
And so this week we, we hosted a meeting with the chiefs of our district. So from Gwinnett, there's some departments in Gwinnett, | 00:32:29 | |
smaller departments that are still in the kind of cuts off, but they're in our district. So we hosted a training event where we | 00:32:36 | |
brought in a resource here that they at the the same resource. I don't know if you all are familiar, but a wonderful, wonderful | 00:32:43 | |
resource for law enforcement in our area and for. | 00:32:51 | |
The victims of sexual assaults. And so it was wonderful to have that experience, incredible training. A lot of the chiefs didn't | 00:32:58 | |
know that all the services were available and now they are. So it served its purpose. And I'm proud that yes, we're small, but we | 00:33:05 | |
are bringing out the best of our community and and really bringing people to our community see what we have. So I hope you share | 00:33:12 | |
the pride, I know you do with me. So are there any questions? | 00:33:18 | |
So it doesn't back up down on experiment station. And so you, you keep your traffic focused in One Direction and keep it off of a | 00:33:57 | |
different way where if, if a car decides to turn left at rush hour in the morning, everybody's going to get backed up and it locks | 00:34:05 | |
everything down. And it has worked out quite well. So it seems to be working out great. Thank you for that. | 00:34:13 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:34:22 | |
All right, we'll now move into a public hearing. Thank you all for coming. Safe travels home. Yep. | 00:34:29 | |
2024 property tax mileage rate, is that what right, Manager Dickerson. OK. | 00:35:05 | |
Get this movement for here. | 00:35:12 | |
Then we also had a another work session, but we cancelled that because we're rolling back the mood, right, and didn't anticipate | 00:35:45 | |
any public feedback. So tonight will be our third public hearing on the budget and that's where we are. So manager. | 00:35:53 | |
Fill in whatever I missed, otherwise I'll let you take it. Right. So the first hearing is on the proposed property tax mileage | 00:36:02 | |
rate. As the mayor said, this is the announcement that was in the paper and basically the city's property. Next, sorry, the city's | 00:36:09 | |
property net tax digest for 2024 has been estimated a little bit more than $243 million. That's an increase of 6% or 13.8 million | 00:36:17 | |
/ 2023 property values and it pretty much reflects new development and or improvements to existing properties. | 00:36:25 | |
At the city's current mileage rate, which is 2.921, this would have resulted in an increase of .165 mills over the rollback rate | 00:36:33 | |
of 2.756 and would have generated roughly around $40,000. The mayor challenged me and my staff to not take that mileage increase. | 00:36:40 | |
And so we are keeping the the revenue, The proceeds from the property tax will remain the same as last year. So we've rolled back | 00:36:48 | |
the military we're recommending to rollback of 2.756. | 00:36:56 | |
And we'll talk. Just show you real quickly another little screen here, maybe hard for some people that are in the audience to see. | 00:37:04 | |
But basically what that means is for someone that is in a $300,000 home and has Homestead, they'll see about a $19.52 difference. | 00:37:12 | |
So it's a reduction. And if you're in a 500,000, you'll see about a $32.75 reduction on the commercial end because you don't have | 00:37:19 | |
Homestead. Those reductions are a little bit different. I think we've got 3333 O 8 for a $500,000. | 00:37:27 | |
Property. | 00:37:35 | |
40, I can't read it, 48 or 4962 for $750,000 property. And I'll point out that not only is the city rolling back their mileage | 00:37:36 | |
rate, but the county is too. I believe the Board of Education may be staying the same, but we'll talk a little bit in the budget | 00:37:44 | |
process. When we start talking about the budget in a minute, I'll share a little bit about how we compare to other communities in | 00:37:51 | |
the area. We've had a lot of citizen feedback about property taxes and we've kept them low historically last year. | 00:37:59 | |
We did, we were very open about that. We did bump them up a little bit to help pay for the Thomas Farm Preserve property very | 00:38:07 | |
specifically, but we're really pleased to be able to roll it back this year. And, and historically in Watkinsville, we've prided | 00:38:11 | |
ourselves on having low property taxes. | 00:38:16 | |
OK, so at this point, we'll open up a public hearing. | 00:38:25 | |
Anybody wants to step forward and address the property tax mileage rate, feel free. | 00:38:29 | |
Not seeing a bunch of people jump up, so I will close the public hearing on that. We'll move now to the public hearing regarding | 00:38:34 | |
the recommended fiscal year general fund capital and operating budget. | 00:38:39 | |
And now we'll get to talk a little bit about that. So the sorry so and then again maybe kind of difficult to see on that, but | 00:38:45 | |
we're we're recommending that 3.2 and some change $3.2 million. | 00:38:51 | |
Budget. | 00:38:59 | |
I think I've got that right and I'm the projected surplus at the bottom. Unfortunately, I was trying to a correction to this | 00:39:01 | |
spreadsheet for capital and it shows that we were projecting a deficit that is actually incorrect and that's because of a very | 00:39:08 | |
last minute change. But the capital request this year is for 119,000. That's what's showing up in that little spot. So we'll make | 00:39:14 | |
sure that's corrected. Julie may want to check Exhibit A. We may need to make it make sure it's clear how that was calculated. | 00:39:20 | |
So we'll talk a little bit about revenues. So general fund revenues we're projecting again 3.246 that's an increase of about 11%. | 00:39:28 | |
Our neighbors, I don't, I didn't check with the county, but I know Clark County is also seeing about 11% increase in their overall | 00:39:32 | |
budget. | 00:39:37 | |
Basically we're talking our three biggest revenue streams, our local options, sales tax, which is about 30%, property tax which is | 00:39:43 | |
21 and insurance premium tax which is 8%. That's a tax that each one of us pay. When you take out insurance just like your | 00:39:49 | |
franchise fees, those are charged to you and then pass through the through the utility to the city. I will point out again just | 00:39:55 | |
and I know it's always easy to compare with Clark County, but I know Clark County's property taxes as a percentage of their | 00:40:01 | |
general fund. | 00:40:07 | |
Is 51%. | 00:40:14 | |
So sort of point that out, we are doing a lot with very little. | 00:40:15 | |
Again, local option sales tax, that's 7.77% based on an agreement with the county. That is what it was agreed to. I think it was | 00:40:20 | |
last year, maybe the year before now I can't remember. It's 10 years and we are estimating that it will go up a little bit, not | 00:40:28 | |
much being very fairly conservative about what that will be over the next fiscal year. Again, property tax, we just talked about | 00:40:35 | |
that rolling it back. So we we decreased the revenues that were projected to so we would not have to take that $40,000 increase. | 00:40:43 | |
Again, it's important to understand property taxes are based on the value of that property come January 1. So anything that | 00:40:51 | |
happens we now January 1 and the end of the year doesn't get picked up for the for the tax bill that gets picked up next year when | 00:40:55 | |
they relook at your property in January. | 00:41:00 | |
And then just because I think it's always good for people to understand sort of what the value is. So again, property taxes are | 00:41:06 | |
fairly low consider, I mean, obviously citizens participate in the sales tax and they participate in in the insurance premium tax | 00:41:12 | |
and some of the other franchise fees and things like that. But but for the most part. | 00:41:17 | |
The city's revenues are coming from external sources, not from the citizens who live here. So, but it's important to see that. So | 00:41:23 | |
for instance, the fiscal year 25 cost for garbage is $23 a month per household or $276 a year. I know that it would be more like | 00:41:30 | |
$29.00 a month if you had to use a private hauler and and you were outside the city limits, probably not for and it would not | 00:41:36 | |
include leaf and limb service. So I think it's a great value that we're getting in addition public safety, which is a big part of | 00:41:43 | |
our budget. | 00:41:49 | |
That costs roughly each household cost us about $648 per household every year for this next fiscal year. So I think that's | 00:41:56 | |
important to to look at that. | 00:42:01 | |
As well, I already shared this, so I don't know that I need to go back through that, but that's that's our property tax. | 00:42:07 | |
Monies and then. This is a comparison I referred to earlier. | 00:42:14 | |
This is from 20/22. I couldn't find a 2023. They'll probably put it in their budget this year. I did go along to see if Clark | 00:42:18 | |
County had done this because this was something they generated, but I do think it's important to note the lowest mileage rate in | 00:42:24 | |
this general area is is Watkinsville and Oak County County. | 00:42:29 | |
And then if you look at. | 00:42:36 | |
Total taxes by market value. The stars are Watkinsville. | 00:42:38 | |
So higher property, lower taxes, higher property value. | 00:42:42 | |
And then on the expense side, it's always important to understand we do a lot, very little. I am so pleased and appreciative of my | 00:42:49 | |
staff who many of us were several different hats because that's what you do when you're a flat organization. You don't have a lot | 00:42:55 | |
of opportunity to to add people. So we have 21 full time employees, one part time employee now. | 00:43:01 | |
Engineering, attorneys fees, the things we have to do just to keep everything. | 00:43:42 | |
Working. | 00:43:47 | |
Point out the two largest expenditures, not looking at departments, but expenditures or police services and garbage and leaf and | 00:43:51 | |
limb. So again, these are right across the board. Every community. When you hear about communities that want to start, you know, | 00:43:56 | |
breakaway and become a city, the first thing they talk about is police and then the next thing to talk about is garbage. So not | 00:44:01 | |
unusual. These are very common in a lot of communities. | 00:44:06 | |
And then again, as I pointed out, a lot of what we do is people, we do use a lot of tools. We have a lot of resources, but our | 00:44:13 | |
biggest resource, most important resource or personnel. So 50% of our personnel are employed are direct employees of the city and | 00:44:20 | |
then another 20%, so 70% to another 20% of our contract labor. | 00:44:26 | |
And then on the capital side, so to understand pretty much anything valued at $5000 or more that will last, you know, five to | 00:44:36 | |
seven years is on our capital budget and we have an improvement plan that goes out roughly 20 years. We look at it every year. We | 00:44:41 | |
decide if we can move things forward or backward, if we need to move backwards. And typically we budget a depreciation expense in | 00:44:47 | |
the operating budget. We did not do that this year. We felt like what was on the table was not, it wasn't necessary to add | 00:44:53 | |
additional money. | 00:44:59 | |
To that fund, I think roughly we have around $300,000 in that account. We're fortunate to be able to use some of our splice money | 00:45:04 | |
or our special purpose local option sales tax money to supplement some of our capital purchases. And so that's why we did not do | 00:45:09 | |
it this year I. | 00:45:14 | |
And not by the capital fund that we have. | 00:46:52 | |
And then again, there is the worksheet and we will need to just make sure everybody understands there's not a deficit that is just | 00:46:56 | |
a calculation error because I was trying to correct something earlier tonight that it is a balanced budget with no, no fund | 00:47:02 | |
balance contribution or increase in property taxes. | 00:47:09 | |
Thank you, Manager Dickerson, very comprehensive report. At this point, we'll have a open it up for a public hearing. All the | 00:47:17 | |
people who want to step forward and address the budget, please do so. | 00:47:22 | |
Not everybody at once. | 00:47:28 | |
All right, we will close the public hearing. | 00:47:30 | |
On the budget, we vote on that later, correct? OK. | 00:47:34 | |
We'll now have a public hearing on the variance for 56 Dooley St. I see the Shays here and I think we'll probably hear from our | 00:47:39 | |
engineer 1st and then the applicant will come forward. Is that correct, Mr. Campbell? Yes, Sir, Thank you. Mr. Wright. OK, so 56 | 00:47:44 | |
Dooley Street is at the corner of Dooley St. and Jackson St. | 00:47:50 | |
The parcel is approximately 6/10 of an acre and it is owned detached residential. The request for this variance is to reduce the | 00:47:57 | |
side set back as dictated by the zoning code from 10 feet down to five feet. So if you go to the next slide that gives you an idea | 00:48:04 | |
from an aerial standpoint of of where the where the lot is located there at Dooley and Jackson St. the house actually faces again | 00:48:11 | |
Dooley St. has a Dooley St. access this particular. | 00:48:19 | |
Request, if you will, is actually for something that's accessed off of Jackson there on that that corner lot. So, so here's the | 00:48:27 | |
plat from 1995, I believe it is from Mr. Ray Woods that shows that location. This one's inverted from the aerial images that you | 00:48:34 | |
just saw, but it's where the the house has been obviously for for some time that is showing the platform 95 and where that you can | 00:48:41 | |
see that kind of horseshoe access from from either roadway there based on that recorded plat. | 00:48:48 | |
So there's the structure. | 00:48:57 | |
That is being requested, that is currently built, that is access from Jackson Street, that is within. | 00:49:00 | |
Five feet or less than 10 feet I should say, from that side property line so we can go to the next. | 00:49:07 | |
Again, there's a picture of the house from the corner. You can see that a front porch with the American flag that's facing Dooley | 00:49:15 | |
St. This picture was taken before Jackson St. was was repaved. So if you have a chance to go back out there that it doesn't look | 00:49:20 | |
the same as as when this picture was taken, but just gives you a little bit of a context there. So the applicant is requesting a | 00:49:26 | |
variance associated with the construction of that covered parking area there that is next to the adjacent property that is a long | 00:49:32 | |
Jackson Street and, and. | 00:49:38 | |
Be happy to answer any other questions. I do want to point out as as a city attorney usually points to, there is criteria | 00:50:16 | |
associated with a variance request. This is specifically listed within the code. You can see there that it is up to mayor and | 00:50:22 | |
council to review these readings requests, but you're supposed to review them based on those specific criteria. That is an A | 00:50:27 | |
through F criteria that is listed there. Just as a reminder, that's also in your council packet. But again, be be happy to answer | 00:50:33 | |
any questions you might have. | 00:50:39 | |
All right. Thank you. Mr. Campbell. If the applicants want to step forward and add anything, that's great. And then I'll open the | 00:50:47 | |
public hearing. | 00:50:50 | |
Yeah, I'm Josh Shea, and this is my wife, Jennifer, 56 Dooley St. About three years ago, We I. | 00:50:57 | |
Put a concrete parking pad at the end of our existing driveway, which we've been using for 10 years and leave next door and | 00:51:04 | |
everything so. | 00:51:08 | |
Back in March, I said, let's go ahead and put a carport on because we nothing to shelter our cars and she bought a new car. So so | 00:51:13 | |
we built both it and my bad small town, I did not get a building permit. So this is how this all came about. So I that that's to | 00:51:21 | |
be determined if this goes forward or not. But we built it when it was that Toby called us to say, hey, you need a building | 00:51:28 | |
permit. When that came about, we did all the things and we were. | 00:51:36 | |
Over the set back liner or building line if you would. So go with Lee and Melanie next door and they said they were OK with it. | 00:51:44 | |
Basically put the carport at the end of the existing driveway which we've been using for 10 years, which has been there probably | 00:51:50 | |
for the House of 1942. So I don't know how long has it been there. So we just use the existing driveway. We didn't alter anything | 00:51:56 | |
and it turns out. | 00:52:02 | |
Long story short, leave the fence line, which I assume is our property line is not our property line leaves to own both | 00:52:09 | |
properties. He just put the fence where it was convenient for him. So, so it looks, it looks like we got a lot more room than we | 00:52:15 | |
do. We actually have much less than we thought we had. So it's our mistake, our error. We just ask that and we're going to make it | 00:52:21 | |
and we'd like if we move forward, put a metal roof on so it ties in with the rest of the neighborhood. We shouldn't be the rest of | 00:52:27 | |
our house. We've built it to kind of. | 00:52:33 | |
Mirror what we've What is existing structure now? | 00:52:39 | |
I. | 00:52:45 | |
Existing one you see there off of Jackson at one point they did yes well and and. | 00:53:24 | |
Where this one is particularly tricky is because your your address is duly right and your front porch is duly. And so it could be | 00:53:31 | |
argued that this is not so is the variance just for the set back OK, because that also was a little unclear in the application. So | 00:53:38 | |
it's not front facing, it's only the then they have double jeopardy. Yeah. | 00:53:46 | |
Thank you. | 00:53:54 | |
Other questions from Council. | 00:53:57 | |
I don't want to stay there for a second. I think that's fine. At this point, we'll call the public hearings. Anybody want to come | 00:54:00 | |
forward and speak to this? | 00:54:04 | |
We received any comments from the public. | 00:54:09 | |
Other than the Morgans, OK. And that was in your packet. All right, hearing none, I'm going to close the public hearing at this | 00:54:11 | |
point. Council. Any other questions for the applicants? | 00:54:15 | |
OK y'all can take your seat. | 00:54:21 | |
A comments or I'll entertain a motion. | 00:54:25 | |
Or do we do a motion? OK, yeah, it's closed. Yeah, we're voting on the variance, so. | 00:54:33 | |
Yes, I'm just going to point out that if you do approve the variance, then they will be subject to a double building permit fee | 00:54:40 | |
because they did not receive a building permit that probably will only be like a total of $200.00. It's not a very expensive thing | 00:54:46 | |
and I think they're aware of that, so. | 00:54:51 | |
Point so we do want everybody to be treated fairly you know so if you. | 00:54:58 | |
Don't get that building permit done in time, then. Then there is a you know, don't get it in time, you know, you get the fine. So | 00:55:03 | |
I have a. | 00:55:07 | |
This is really maybe a question for our engineer and it seems to know our code very well. What is the the the code for? Like just | 00:55:12 | |
like a pavilion or a? | 00:55:20 | |
It's not well defined, so it, it kind of falls under the general accessory structure because it can be used for other things. But | 00:55:28 | |
in general terms, you know, the maybe the most dangerous word in all of Watkinsville code is the word garage. But that's probably | 00:55:36 | |
a good thing if, if there's nothing that's more contentious than that, this is this is not a garage, but it is an area that is | 00:55:43 | |
used for covered parking. But again, it's an accessory structure. | 00:55:51 | |
For the purpose of the code for the purpose of the variance tonight, any of those such structures are still subject to that. | 00:55:58 | |
Again, it's a 5 foot side set back that they're requesting code requires the side set back as it would be determined by this lot | 00:56:06 | |
as it was determined and the the code from or the platform 1995, it's 10 foot and so it's it's not a rear, it's not a front, it is | 00:56:13 | |
a side, but it would be subject to whatever we would choose to call the structure would fall under the the same terminology there. | 00:56:20 | |
So I think what I am before we make a motion that I'm just kind of. | 00:56:28 | |
Struggling with is this isn't really a garage and so. | 00:56:33 | |
I I feel weird voting on a variance about a garage when it's not a garage. Is that am I being should I not worry about that? I | 00:56:40 | |
mean This is why I'm asking the the powers that be here if that really matters just as far as like I have. | 00:56:47 | |
So let me ask you this way, if we approve this, does that then give them permission to close it in and create it an actual garage? | 00:56:57 | |
Or is it just, well, maybe an attorney could advise us? Yeah, there's a good point. You know, we make an accessory, make an | 00:57:03 | |
exception for, you know, the variance would be for an accessory structure rather than a garage. If, you know, if that's if that's | 00:57:08 | |
our preference. Raj says it has to be enclosed. | 00:57:14 | |
Right, this is not going to be enclosed. | 00:57:21 | |
Then they're asking for a variance to not enclose it set back in front facing, not front facing. | 00:57:24 | |
But it really is. But yeah, it is. But it doesn't matter. I don't believe on on the various requests at all. I ever wrote the word | 00:57:32 | |
garage. I don't believe that was any any of my verbiage at all. I don't know where that's what I see. I see what you're looking at | 00:57:38 | |
there. That did not come from from us. We don't we don't want a garage, OK. | 00:57:45 | |
Yeah, yeah. | 00:57:52 | |
All right. So does everybody come, are you comfortable that's using the structure around a detached, the variance would be for a | 00:57:56 | |
detached or an accessory structure. Excuse me, is that we're calling it Mark Joe? | 00:58:02 | |
I'm fine with that. And if you look at the photograph clearly, it looks much more like a picnic shelter, a pavilion or a gazebo. | 00:58:09 | |
It does not look like. | 00:58:13 | |
Right. Dangerous word in the Watkinsville code. So we don't want that word. We know it's a hot button. | 00:58:48 | |
A lot of folks, all right. | 00:58:56 | |
So if we're comfortable with that, that's a great call out, Christine emotion around. | 00:58:59 | |
Variance for the accessory structure at 56 Dooley St. | 00:59:04 | |
I make a motion to approve the variance for the accessory structure. | 00:59:10 | |
Well, my love to make a caveat with it. Go for it. Yeah. It it it's just that I I get it when you think your property line is | 00:59:17 | |
something in your neighbor who created that property line is fine with it. I mean, I I get it. It was it probably looked like it | 00:59:23 | |
was well over 10 feet. So and you're willing to. | 00:59:30 | |
I have to know that he's gone for 10 years. | 00:59:37 | |
All right, so the motion without all the extra stuff is for the variance variance to approve the variance for the accessory | 00:59:41 | |
structure that is not a garage with the with the side set back of five feet, right, with the side set back of less than 10 feet. | 00:59:49 | |
OK, that's your motion. Do we have a second? We have a second. Any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye, any opposed? | 00:59:58 | |
All right, motion carries 5. | 01:00:07 | |
Thank you both for coming under appearances we have known under. | 01:00:11 | |
Old business, we have none. Under new business we have some budget related items that will move quickly through. So we've as you | 01:00:16 | |
all know we have to do a public hearings and adopt A budget separately. So I'll entertain a resolution to adopt the 2024 property | 01:00:22 | |
tax mileage rate at this point unless there's any discussion. | 01:00:29 | |
To make a motion to accept the 2024 mileage rate. | 01:00:37 | |
We have a 2nd, 2nd. | 01:00:42 | |
All right, any discussion hearing none, all in favor say aye, aye. Any opposed? | 01:00:45 | |
All right, Item 13, this will be the adoption resolution for an adoption of the 2025 budget, noting that on Exhibit A and that I'm | 01:00:50 | |
sorry, mayor, this one didn't get switched again. This is last minute my fault to try to catch it. But the the one that the only | 01:00:56 | |
difference in this one and the other one is it should say 119,000 and some change for capital. So we'll we'll make sure it's | 01:01:01 | |
correct. | 01:01:07 | |
Copy of Exhibit A, which will reflect no deficit at the bottom, as this one does, but also an item in capital for $119,851. | 01:01:15 | |
Council, any discussion regarding the budget? | 01:01:23 | |
Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. | 01:01:27 | |
I'll make a motion that we. | 01:01:31 | |
Approve the budget. I have a motion amended. | 01:01:33 | |
Exhibit A. | 01:01:37 | |
Correct. Do we have a second? | 01:01:38 | |
2nd. | 01:01:41 | |
All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? | 01:01:43 | |
All in favor say aye aye. Any opposed? | 01:01:46 | |
Motion carries 5O. | 01:01:49 | |
All right. Yep. Next up, we have 1090 Business Blvd. I think Mr. Bell is here with us. If you want to step forward. We have a | 01:01:53 | |
wastewater capacity application request. Manager Dickerson will give a report and then we'll let the applicant offer his name and | 01:01:58 | |
address and he can share anything he wants to. Yeah. So very briefly, Mr. Bell needs sewer connection for commercial space. There | 01:02:04 | |
are. | 01:02:09 | |
1090 business Blvd. to service 2 bathrooms and two employee cat for two employment. I'm sorry A2 employee cabinet shop. | 01:02:15 | |
Oconee County Water Resources always has to review these, even though the council has the right to. | 01:02:24 | |
Approve the water, wastewater capacity. They do have to review the request. They have agreed that 260 gallons a day is what is | 01:02:31 | |
needed. And so that is what you see on your chart. We do have a balance available now that is either not been encumbered or that | 01:02:37 | |
has not been encumbered or not already approved and being used of a little bit more than 3600 gallons a day left until we get the | 01:02:43 | |
hopefully the next allotment at the end of the year. | 01:02:50 | |
And so that's what the county says. They're going to use two people. | 01:02:57 | |
A day, Yes. OK. | 01:03:01 | |
No. So the the question was where does that number come from? So the county isn't owns and operates the wastewater and water | 01:03:06 | |
system and they have policies and procedures and that's how they calculate. And we don't really don't have a lot to say about | 01:03:12 | |
that. It's a utility just like your power and your gas. So those questions probably be best directed to them. | 01:03:19 | |
But Mr. Bell, you're not doing, not installing anything that uses water. This is just for a bathroom. Is that correct? Correct. | 01:03:25 | |
OK. I mean, I'm going to note for the record that I'm going to note for the record, for the record, that's absolutely ridiculous. | 01:03:32 | |
260 gallons per day for a bathroom for two people. | 01:03:38 | |
But there's nothing we can do about at this point. But yes, it is ridiculous. All right, Mr. Bell, why don't you? If there's | 01:03:46 | |
anything else you want to share about your application, feel free. Otherwise, we'll move to a vote. Yeah, that should be. That | 01:03:50 | |
should be. | 01:03:54 | |
I have a new tenant that we are we had to use it as storage before. So a new tenant needed to access the bathroom. So there's not | 01:03:58 | |
there's not septic on that building. I'm familiar with the building in the no no septic. It's too small of a lot for. | 01:04:06 | |
Yep, unfortunate. Well, I make a motion to approve. I think these employees should get to use the bathroom a lot, apparently. | 01:04:16 | |
All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second? | 01:04:26 | |
Second, all right, we have a motion, we have a second. We assume that these numbers, the water will be running all day long there | 01:04:29 | |
and. | 01:04:33 | |
But all in favor say aye aye. And is there a any opposed hearing? None. Motion carries 5 O Thank you, Mr. Bell for coming in. | 01:04:37 | |
All right. Next up, we have approving an award for in contract for the aggregate trails at Thomas Farm Preserve. For those of you | 01:04:48 | |
have been following this project, this is these would be the portion of the trails that are not paved primarily towards the back | 01:04:53 | |
of the project. | 01:04:59 | |
Project and so Manager Dickerson, if you want to offer a report on that, that would be great. Well, thank you, Mayor. | 01:05:04 | |
So we're going to ask tonight that you award Mark Thomas Enterprises the contract for the construction installation of these | 01:05:12 | |
aggregate trails for amount not to exceed $90,000. That money will come right now as being earmarked out of the special purpose | 01:05:19 | |
local option sales tax three under roads, bridges and streets. Also ask that you agree that you approve the contract, which has | 01:05:26 | |
already been reviewed by the contractor as well and allow the mayor and city clerk to sign all those relevant documents. | 01:05:34 | |
Little history. In February of this year, the council approved reprogramming some funds so that we could do some improvements to | 01:05:41 | |
Thomas Farm Preserve, which was acquired in September of last year. Those improvements include adding restroom facilities, | 01:05:47 | |
fencing, lighting, signage and construction administration. | 01:05:54 | |
On April 18th we released an RFP for 3.46 miles of pedestrian trails, which would be aggregate trails. | 01:06:00 | |
And then on May 6th we received, we had the opening of those price proposals and the we received only one proposal that was from | 01:06:08 | |
Mark Thomas Enterprises for 117,000. | 01:06:12 | |
In addition to our posting on the website, which Council Councilman Garrett recommended last year, we've started doing fairly | 01:06:19 | |
regularly. It was also advertising the economy enterprise and provided directly to Todd Smith Grading and Mark Thomas Enterprises | 01:06:25 | |
as they had reached out to us hearing that when the park became available, you know when the park became active, they both those | 01:06:32 | |
entities said, hey, let us know you know when this opportunity arises. So we notified them directly. | 01:06:38 | |
In February of 24, we've got several, we had some volunteers that are helping with a Backcountry trial. Sorry, Backcountry trail | 01:06:46 | |
that is not part of this RRFP. The mayor and I met before this meeting. There's a little bit of confused, there was a little | 01:06:53 | |
confusion on what I put down. But as far as budget wise, everything I think works out fine and we won't have any issues. But the | 01:07:01 | |
30 inch back back trail is being done by volunteers and that's on the on the outskirts goes through the through the woods. | 01:07:09 | |
On February 15th, again Council approved a budget for these Thomas Farm improvements. | 01:07:17 | |
And. | 01:07:23 | |
These are the, these are the three, the six, six foot aggregate trail which is a little bit more than a mile, an 8 foot aggregate | 01:07:26 | |
trail which is a little more than 1/3 of mile and then 30 inch back back country trail which is not part of this. Now we did | 01:07:33 | |
receive a pricing for that from Mr. Thomas, but we back that out and that's how we come up with the not to exceed $90,000. | 01:07:40 | |
Happy to answer any questions. | 01:07:48 | |
Go back to that last trip so. | 01:07:51 | |
That we're doing the the 1st and the 2nd, correct? Yeah. And, and again, there's there's so there's a whole bunch of. | 01:07:53 | |
Request. | 01:08:34 | |
And then what about it? I know that Mister Thomas as part of his contract with us separately was doing some other work as as the | 01:08:36 | |
parking lot work and some of the grading around the circle, that kind of circle area by the house included in that other work that | 01:08:42 | |
he's doing. Yes, yeah. So, so I think that's, I mean, obviously he knows the property and he does this work for a living. He came | 01:08:48 | |
in. I mean, obviously I don't have a whole bunch to compare it with, but I did share it with one of the other contractors who's | 01:08:54 | |
interested in the other bid. | 01:09:00 | |
OK. Any other anything else to report? | 01:09:36 | |
OK, OK. | 01:09:39 | |
Council questions for the manager. | 01:09:41 | |
Alright, um. | 01:09:46 | |
In that case, I'll entertain a motion. | 01:09:48 | |
I make a motion to approve. | 01:09:52 | |
We have motion to approve. Do we have a second? | 01:09:54 | |
We have a motion, We have a second. All in favor say aye aye. We have an abstention. We have one recusal. | 01:09:57 | |
Council, I think it should be noted Councilman Thomas is recused throughout on financial matters related to the Thomas farm matter | 01:10:06 | |
given his. | 01:10:11 | |
Although he's not a direct family member, he is a descendant of the Thomas family, so. | 01:10:16 | |
All right, our next item and I think we'll talk a little bit more about this in the Mayor's report, but so I won't belabor it now, | 01:10:22 | |
but Chair, and if you just want to do the administrative part of the G Tib grant, Jennifer, I know you're a big Walker, you'll | 01:10:27 | |
appreciate this news. So Sharon, why don't you? | 01:10:32 | |
Let's see what we need to do here real quick. And you may you may want to do a little bit more here because I don't think we | 01:10:38 | |
planned in the banner support, but you can do. That's right. OK Comes up here. Yeah. So, So Councilman Thomas and I, a week ago, | 01:10:44 | |
two weeks ago Thursday. It was a week ago, Tom Flash, right. Two weeks ago. Yeah. It's been fast. We were. We got to go to | 01:10:50 | |
Atlanta. We got some great news from the governor's office that we had applied for a Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank | 01:10:56 | |
award. | 01:11:02 | |
To help us accelerate sidewalks along Simonton Bridge Rd. That's been a big requested item for our citizens for a long time. | 01:11:08 | |
But the cost to do that is tremendous given some of the right away challenges and wetlands and other things. So we learned that | 01:11:16 | |
we're getting a loan, a low interest loan of $2.2 million and a grant of $1.53 million to help us kick start that project. Based | 01:11:22 | |
on our numbers, we think that's going to enable us to build a sidewalk and pathway that will connect Rocket Field all the way to | 01:11:29 | |
Thomas Farm Preserve and on to Simonton Place subdivision, which is the most challenging part of of the Simonton Bridge quarter. | 01:11:35 | |
None of it's really easy but but. | 01:11:42 | |
Yeah, just that a whole lot of people applied and we were one of five. | 01:12:51 | |
That got it. So again, you know, great things are happening here in Watkinsville. So super glad that we were able to secure this, | 01:12:56 | |
this money to to build this project. | 01:13:02 | |
You do have exhibit A&B in the packet. That is something that we did have to complete this past week so that they could go ahead | 01:14:16 | |
and get the documents pulled together. We're going to nail down a date sometime probably after July 10th to close on the loan and | 01:14:22 | |
and handle the grant stuff and get all our paperwork started so we can get this project underway. And again, I think the date on | 01:14:29 | |
the contract is going to be we're shooting for January of 2026 to have this completed. So we'll see how that works. | 01:14:35 | |
So not allowed, you know, if you happen to run into any members of our local delegation, Representative Weed, our Senator Kouser, | 01:14:42 | |
Representative Houston Gaines or the governor, please thank them for their support for this. They were huge supporters of this | 01:14:48 | |
project and they understand what, what something like this means for Watkinsville. And, and we spent a fair time, amount of time | 01:14:53 | |
explaining to them the importance of this project. So please be, please express your gratitude when you run into them because this | 01:14:59 | |
is a game changer for us. | 01:15:05 | |
So OK. | 01:15:11 | |
All right, so I would ask for a motion to approve the G tab loan and grant awards and the amounts listed on the screen, and I'll | 01:15:13 | |
entertain a motion to that effect. I make that motion. We have a motion for mayor Pro Tem. Do we have a second? Second. We have a | 01:15:19 | |
second from Councilman Campbell. All in favor say aye. Any opposed motion carries 5O. | 01:15:25 | |
All right, Item 17 was tabled. | 01:15:34 | |
Consent agenda I will notice Note for the public, the consent agenda is in a different spot. | 01:15:36 | |
This time that it usually is, and that's because several of the items on there were impacted by the budget. So we couldn't approve | 01:15:42 | |
the consent agenda till the budget was approved. So that's why it's at the back end of the meeting. But seeing as council didn't | 01:15:46 | |
pull anything off, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. | 01:15:51 | |
I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right. Second. | 01:15:57 | |
2nd 2nd from Councilman Campbell. Any discussion? | 01:16:02 | |
Hearing none all in favor say aye. | 01:16:05 | |
Right, motion passes. We'll move on to public comments. | 01:16:08 | |
We've got a few guests here, if anybody wants to step forward, you're welcome to. | 01:16:13 | |
All right. | 01:16:21 | |
Do not have any. We'll move on to the mayor's report. | 01:16:22 | |
We were fortunate. We talked a month or two here, we approved significant funds for repaving and those projects are done and I | 01:16:29 | |
think they look great. Niagara Drive, Jackson Street and Simonton Way were all completed along with School St. one side of School | 01:16:35 | |
St. | 01:16:41 | |
I will note Jackson St. in particular had had some real challenges. | 01:16:48 | |
And School St. of course, we've been really battling some historical issues and that road was totally rebuilt as part of this | 01:16:53 | |
process. Pretty big lift. So grateful sharing to you and the staff for your work on that. Also didn't mention during the G tip | 01:17:00 | |
conversation, Sharon did that application and led the way and we're really grateful to you for your work on that. But on this as | 01:17:07 | |
well, looks really great. Big improvement. Hair Shoals. We finally got the old ball field fencing down. | 01:17:14 | |
And we are moving forward on our plans to begin hair Shoals work in earnest. I think the next slide shows a rendering of what we | 01:17:22 | |
want that space to look like when it's done. That's called, that was called Giardini Field, named after a former mayor. We intend | 01:17:29 | |
to call that the Giordini Green. So get that spruced up and reopened, probably have a package to go out to bid using splash | 01:17:36 | |
dollars in the future to get that area looking good. Harris Shoals is. | 01:17:43 | |
Has a lot of work down there. I just asked for patience. It's a bit of a work in progress in terms of how it looks right now. But | 01:17:52 | |
you have to understand we're slowly doing this construction project one piece at a time. But I've no doubt when it's done, it will | 01:17:56 | |
be, it'll be better than it's ever been. So we're grateful sharing to you and the staff work on that and keeping our call slow by | 01:18:01 | |
doing that in house, even if it takes a little bit longer. | 01:18:05 | |
We've done some additional improvements at Rocket Field. You may have noticed you've seen benches go in, picnic tables going in | 01:18:12 | |
for people to use at different spots. Public works, we appreciate them handling that. | 01:18:17 | |
Work has already started at Thomas Farm. You may notice the fence along Simonton Bridge Rd. We've also fenced off the old barn. | 01:18:24 | |
Someday we hope to fix up the old barn, but for now it's a rather attractive nuisance and we want to make it very clear to the | 01:18:30 | |
public that once they go out there, the barn is not a not a place to. | 01:18:36 | |
Not a place to play or, you know, to climb or to visit until we get that, until we get that ready for public use at a later date. | 01:18:42 | |
So excited to have work underway out there in addition to what we approve tonight. | 01:18:48 | |
We have one thing when you get legal equipment. | 01:18:56 | |
Can I rectify mention the holiday while we're. Yeah, One other thing I just want to recognize today is a day it's a federal | 01:19:02 | |
holiday, Juneteenth. I don't know that, you know, it's a relatively new, relatively new holiday, but it is a. | 01:19:08 | |
I think it's worth mentioning that you know Juneteenth is the date that I. | 01:19:15 | |
Enslaved people in Galveston, TX learned about their freedom June 19th, 1865. That's 89. You know, some people say, what's | 01:19:20 | |
Juneteenth? Why do you celebrate June 19th? We've got to remember when the US declared independence on July 4th, 1776, there was a | 01:19:27 | |
whole group of people in America who were not free, right? And they weren't free until 1863 when President Lincoln read the | 01:19:34 | |
Emancipation Proclamation. And then many of those people didn't even learn about that until June 19th, 1865. S. | 01:19:42 | |
I think it's important that. | 01:19:50 | |
That we recognize that, that we recognize that today is a federal holiday and council may want to discuss subsequently whether | 01:19:52 | |
that should be a holiday for City of Watkinsville employees. So I won't be, you know, if it's just something that we might want to | 01:19:57 | |
consider in February at our planning retreat, if that's something worth considering for next year's budget cycle. So that's all | 01:20:02 | |
the mayor has. | 01:20:07 | |
OK. | 01:20:14 | |
Yeah, so I. | 01:20:20 | |
Christina is not going to be here next month. She celebrates a big birthday. We won't say what the number is, but there is a | 01:20:22 | |
number on her cupcake there. And Mark, Mark, our city engineer Mark Campbell also celebrates birthday. That's actually this month. | 01:20:28 | |
And and because she lit that before the mayor started there. Are you starting to burn down? So you may want to. | 01:20:33 | |
Before you do that. | 01:20:40 | |
Yay. | 01:20:42 | |
So happy birthday, Mayor Pro Tem Tucker and Engineer Campbell. We're grateful for both of you and hope we get many more years of | 01:20:47 | |
having you in the chambers with us. So thank you for everything. Yep, and enjoy your. | 01:20:53 | |
Meeting away your time away next next month. | 01:20:59 | |
For those of you don't know, Mayor Pro Tem Tucker is one She once told me that she wasn't going to she wasn't going to travel for | 01:21:03 | |
the rest of the year. And I think she I think that resolution lasted for about one month and then she was she was off again. So | 01:21:10 | |
anyway, we're grateful, grateful that you can always make it back for our meetings and we'll miss you when next month and engineer | 01:21:16 | |
Campbell, we're grateful for you and when he has a milestone, Sharon, I think we we need to have a. | 01:21:23 | |
Keep an eye on that. Yep. | 01:21:31 | |
All right, Council, reports Councilman Garrett. | 01:21:34 | |
Nothing from Councilman Garrett County Massey. | 01:21:38 | |
All right, Mr. Thomas. | 01:21:41 | |
I just enjoy our small town of 3000 and hope that it stays to be a cute small town of 3000 for years to come. | 01:21:43 | |
All right, Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. So I was reflected. It was a real privilege to get to go to Denver with the delegation and got to | 01:21:53 | |
know some different members in our community and. | 01:21:59 | |
Was reflecting on that today at our DDA board meeting and I am just so impressed with the people in our community. | 01:22:06 | |
And. | 01:22:16 | |
The mayor and I have been talking about this. We, we want to make sure that everybody knows. | 01:22:18 | |
That. | 01:22:23 | |
There are ways for everyone to get involved. I mean, that's one of the things about being a small community. We need lots of | 01:22:25 | |
hands. We don't want the same people doing things all the time because people get burned out. And so I don't want anybody to to | 01:22:31 | |
see the things that the city is doing and think. | 01:22:37 | |
Oh, that's so great. And just kind of sit by the sidelines, like we need people to get involved and we want people to get | 01:22:43 | |
involved. This is a community where all voices are valued and heard, and I hope people always feel that way. So. | 01:22:49 | |
Thank you, Christine. That's a great perspective. Councilman Campbell. | 01:22:56 | |
The video that we frankly was a key to US winning the award that told the Watkinsville story. We probably, if that's not on our | 01:23:35 | |
website, we need to figure out how to get that on there. And then the recap video. And then from the city, Christine, Sharon and | 01:23:41 | |
Chief GAIL, thank you for being there. | 01:23:47 | |
You know, there was one person who never jumped on stage with us during that process, but she kept everything moving behind the | 01:23:53 | |
scenes, and that's manager Dickerson. She never wants a lot of attention. She never asked for it. But Sharon? | 01:23:58 | |
You know I. | 01:24:06 | |
As we won the grant, as we won that award, it may be once again realized that without a really talented city manager, none of that | 01:24:08 | |
would have happened. And I think it goes without saying how grateful we are to you and to all that you and your team do to to make | 01:24:14 | |
these things happen in Watkinsville. The the projects that we earn, the recognition that we even were chosen because of would not | 01:24:20 | |
have happened without you and your staff's work. So. | 01:24:26 | |
It goes without saying, I know how you kind of saw it in the background in these moments, but I think it goes without saying that | 01:24:33 | |
you and your team deserve a ton of recognition for everything that it took to make us an all American city too. So thank you so | 01:24:37 | |
much for that. | 01:24:41 | |
Yeah, you did, you did mention my team and I could not, it's not a one person here. I mean, there's all 21 of us are working hard | 01:24:50 | |
to make these things happen. But it it's great when you have a, you know, when you, when everybody understands their role. Y'all | 01:24:56 | |
role is to is set the vision and then to give it to us and tell us to make it happen. And everybody here, you know, values that | 01:25:03 | |
and is really appreciate your vision. We we love the vision. We think it's, I mean everybody that works here. | 01:25:09 | |
Embraces it and wants to make it happen and that's what we do on a daily basis. So we appreciate that very much. Thank you. I | 01:25:16 | |
don't think there's any need for an executive session tonight. So unless there's any other business to come before this group, we | 01:25:20 | |
will. | 01:25:25 | |
I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. All right. | 01:25:30 | |
All in favor say aye. | 01:25:36 |