No Bookmarks Exist.
Not agreement. | 00:00:00 | |
We'll see. | 00:00:07 | |
11 copies of this up at the podium, so we got. | 00:00:28 | |
A. | 00:00:37 | |
All right. Welcome everybody to the October City of Watkinsville Council meeting. We're excited to have such a great crowd here | 00:01:19 | |
tonight. | 00:01:23 | |
We have all of our council members here as well and just grateful to to have a room full of folks. We'll start off with the | 00:01:27 | |
pledge, Mica Dixon from Oconee Middle. If you could stand up and lead us in the pledge, Sir. | 00:01:33 | |
Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:01:44 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:01:50 | |
All right, tonight we, we have a big crowd here for a couple reasons, but one reason we have so many young citizens here tonight | 00:02:03 | |
is we have some outstanding students and athletes from Oconee County Middle School. | 00:02:08 | |
It's interesting middle school sports don't often get a lot of attention, and I understand a little bit why, but I also think | 00:02:16 | |
these kids work really hard, just as hard as kids do in high school and college, and put a lot into it. And we recently had. | 00:02:23 | |
A really remarkable, just last weekend, a really remarkable experience at the state middle school cross country meet. We had | 00:02:31 | |
Oconee County's teams and Coach Simpson, correct me if I get this wrong, but our boys finished first place in the state, our girls | 00:02:38 | |
finished second place in the state, our JV boys finished first place in the state, and our JV girls finished first place in the | 00:02:44 | |
state. So out of four chances to win, Oconee Middle won three races and took second and another, which is just unheard of. | 00:02:51 | |
In really in athletics. | 00:02:59 | |
And it's really exceptional. The coach of the program is a gentleman named Rob Simpson. Rob, wave your hand. I know. | 00:03:01 | |
Rob Rob is a Watkinsville resident, lives in Christian Lake. He's also been involved with us on some of the work that we've done | 00:03:15 | |
in Harris Shoals Park and at the new. | 00:03:19 | |
Roads here, there he is. OK, so coach, Roads, Coach Johnson, congratulations to you guys as well. And also thankful to the | 00:03:53 | |
leadership at Oconee Middle has apparently created a really great cross country course and training venue and I know that isn't | 00:03:59 | |
easy to do sometimes either. So big congratulations to you guys. What I'd love to do is have all of the athletes that are here | 00:04:04 | |
come up and stand in the middle, bring your trophies. The same with the coaches and the administrators and we'll take a couple | 00:04:10 | |
pictures and we'll let y'all get home. | 00:04:16 | |
A little bit longer. | 00:04:22 | |
There you go. | 00:04:43 | |
Rob, should we see you think so? | 00:04:54 | |
All right, everybody smile through the cameras. | 00:05:00 | |
Everybody look right here one time for school. | 00:05:05 | |
Mr. Robinson, did you get it all? | 00:05:15 | |
Right. | 00:05:18 | |
Yeah, Coach Simpson, anything you want to share or say? | 00:05:19 | |
I know you're. I know you're famous for your, for your. | 00:05:23 | |
I'll keep it short, I promise. | 00:05:34 | |
Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. I really appreciate this opportunity to be here and just really honor the work that | 00:05:37 | |
these young people have done. | 00:05:40 | |
Thank you guys very much. | 00:06:13 | |
All right. We will want to get one more picture without the mayor. That's fine. And then we will. And then we'll folks who are | 00:06:24 | |
here for this recognition and don't care to stay for the rest of the meeting, feel free to head out. We'll do give you all about a | 00:06:29 | |
couple minutes to get out of here and then we'll get started with the rest of the meeting. | 00:06:34 | |
I. | 00:06:48 | |
All right. Congratulations. | 00:06:52 | |
Thank you. | 00:08:22 | |
Right, we'll move on with the rest of the meeting, some of our normal reminders. | 00:08:45 | |
Yeah, let's shut the door for now. | 00:08:53 | |
Anyone with questions regarding accessibility, this meeting or the facilities should contact our Ad A coordinator, City Manager | 00:09:33 | |
Sharon Dickerson at 706-769-5161 or right now to allow the City the opportunity to make reasonable accommodations for them. In | 00:09:38 | |
addition, this meeting is being broadcast simultaneously via Suite 1 online. Those who are not able to attend the meeting may | 00:09:44 | |
access the public portal via link which has been posted on the City Council Meeting information page of the City website under the | 00:09:49 | |
Government tab, The Portal. | 00:09:54 | |
Allows the public to view and listen to the meeting in progress, along with the meeting materials associated with the items | 00:10:00 | |
Council will be considering tonight. | 00:10:03 | |
Y'all, at some point I'll be like those guys on the legal commercials and be able to read that as fast as they can. | 00:10:31 | |
With a few more months practice approval of the minutes, we should have our minutes from September 18th, 2024 regular meeting. Do | 00:10:36 | |
we have any amendments to those meetings, those minutes? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve. I make a motion to approve. | 00:10:42 | |
Do we have a second second. All in favor say aye aye. | 00:10:48 | |
Motion carries 5O. | 00:10:54 | |
All right. Approval of the agenda. I'd request that you guys amend the agenda by moving the mayor's report after administration. | 00:10:59 | |
Otherwise, unless anybody wants to remove an item or change anything, I'd ask for an approval with that amendment. | 00:11:06 | |
I make a motion to approve the agenda with that one change. | 00:11:16 | |
Do we have a second, second. Any discussion? | 00:11:20 | |
All in favor say aye aye. Any opposed? | 00:11:23 | |
All right, we'll move on to administration tonight. We do not intend to have public input during the administration portion. We'll | 00:11:27 | |
speak more about public input when we get to the public hearings. And with that, we'll move on to the financial reports. Manager | 00:11:32 | |
Dickerson. Thank you, Mayor. Everyone should have received the balance sheet revenues and expenditures. Everything is tracking | 00:11:37 | |
well. Just a reminder that because we still have to reverse back some of our because of audit, we have to reverse back some of the | 00:11:42 | |
expenses and revenues. | 00:11:47 | |
The numbers are not going to be exactly the same, but that is expected. Our audit should be presented next month. | 00:11:53 | |
At the council meeting. | 00:11:59 | |
For SPAS 3, you guys may recall SPA 3 is being used for Hair Shoals Park, Thomas Farm Preserve, Rocket Field improvements, the G | 00:12:01 | |
Tub, Mulberry pedestrian connector, some resurfacing projects and some storm water and drainage projects that have already | 00:12:09 | |
occurred within the city. Our average monthly revenues are about 82,000 and some change are currently we are, our bank balance is | 00:12:16 | |
a little bit more than $1,000,000 and you'll see that we over last year's time we were up about 6% over the monthly amount. | 00:12:23 | |
On T splast. | 00:12:32 | |
Our average monthly revenues to date are about around 72,000 and some change. Those projects include resurfacing projects, some | 00:12:34 | |
sidewalk projects and and the G Tib Mulberry pedestrian connector that's currently underway. Mayor, I'll talk a little bit about | 00:12:39 | |
that tonight. | 00:12:44 | |
And then you'll see here we have a balance of a little bit more, almost a little bit more than half $1,000,000 and again we're up | 00:12:50 | |
about 6% over the same time last year. | 00:12:55 | |
On the American Rescue Plan, you'll call this as money that was supposed to be used for transformative purposes here in the city. | 00:13:00 | |
Council has decided to use that money for a number of things. The only items that are outstanding right now are a little bit of | 00:13:06 | |
money left for Thomas Farm and for our retention program with our police officers. Any questions? | 00:13:12 | |
OK, move on to economic development. | 00:13:20 | |
So we have business license and alcohol licensing fees. I don't have any alcohol, but we do have some businesses, a couple of new | 00:13:24 | |
ones that came in. So we have those in there. Julie, our city clerk, will be sending out the business license renewals probably | 00:13:28 | |
next week. | 00:13:33 | |
And then our excise taxes both for alcohol and for a hotel motel are listed. Remember that we get them after the fact. So some of | 00:13:39 | |
those are posted, some have not been posted yet, but we seem to be tracking about what we expected. | 00:13:44 | |
And then finally, on the building permit side, we have 16 permits for six overall projects. The ones that are listed at the top | 00:13:51 | |
that say Blue Point Construction, those are all the townhomes at Wire Park. | 00:13:57 | |
Any questions? | 00:14:03 | |
OK. | 00:14:08 | |
All right. | 00:14:09 | |
All right, Christine, Downtown Development Authority report. All right, so. | 00:14:12 | |
We have our first two board of. | 00:14:17 | |
Reappointments, when you start the DDA, they stagger the terms so that it's not everybody changing out every four years. And so | 00:14:22 | |
our first two board members were up for renewal. One of them wanted to continue Brock Tool and the other one, Christy Donahue, | 00:14:30 | |
just from some work and some personal issues, unfortunately could not continue. She will be very missed. | 00:14:38 | |
And so we put out an alert and newsflash on the city website. | 00:14:48 | |
We sent emails directly to the businesses in the downtown development district. The application deadline was October 4th. We | 00:14:54 | |
received 3 applications and also we had Brock Tool who was a potential and so of those the board has a recommendation to council | 00:15:02 | |
that will be voted on later on. | 00:15:11 | |
It's oh, it's consent agenda, OK. And so. | 00:15:21 | |
The two people are brought Tool again, the owner of Satisfied Foods and then Erica Fluke who is the owner of Bird and Brass in | 00:15:25 | |
downtown Watkinsville. So that is our recommendation that is on the consent agenda. | 00:15:33 | |
We also have trick or treat downtown Watkinsville. I know traffic is going to be a hot button issue later on this evening. So | 00:15:44 | |
October 31st I would avoid Main St. in your car, but if you have little trick or treaters or a business, this is a really | 00:15:54 | |
wonderful community event and so just be very aware four to six Main Street there are going to be. | 00:16:03 | |
Children, a lot of children and a lot of businesses. And so obviously for safety things are very slow, but that's a lot of fun. So | 00:16:12 | |
coming up in just a couple of weeks. And then lastly, another one of our DDA board members, Melanie had her first baby, a little | 00:16:19 | |
girl, Kennedy Carter Atkins. And everyone is well and healthy. And Melanie actually emailed today she is on maternity leave but | 00:16:27 | |
was like, what can I do from home? And we're like. | 00:16:34 | |
Take care of a baby and run a business. She is the owner of Chops and Hops so she is hard at work even though she is actually not | 00:16:42 | |
is is mainly being a new Mama. So that's it for this month. | 00:16:49 | |
Thank you, Christine. | 00:16:57 | |
Sergeant Hibler. | 00:17:01 | |
Good evening, everybody. So for the police department's report. | 00:17:06 | |
We've got officers that are in training just as planned. We ran into some hiccups with the training center canceling some classes | 00:17:11 | |
on us, but we're getting our officers rescheduled for the classes they were supposed to be taking. The new patrol truck has been | 00:17:17 | |
delivered down to the Outfitters and they are in the process of upfitting it with all the emergency equipment and the lights and | 00:17:22 | |
making it look pretty for us. | 00:17:27 | |
Events that we've been dealing with, we attended the Georgia Home Partners 5th annual 5K Run for Responders, which was an amazing | 00:17:34 | |
success. I spent a long time in the dunk booth, which was tons of fun. And then the big thing is this Saturday we've got the 50th | 00:17:42 | |
annual Fall Festival, so I know like. | 00:17:50 | |
The Councilwoman said with traffic being a hot button topic, traffic will be will be tough this weekend. On Saturday, they're | 00:17:59 | |
expecting a lot of people, so keep that in mind as you're traveling around town. For us, the stats for the Police Department, we | 00:18:05 | |
had four arrests. Most of them were driving related, starting with speeding tickets and ending up with folks going to jail for | 00:18:11 | |
different things. We had 192 calls for service. | 00:18:18 | |
We had 768 property or security checks done. | 00:18:25 | |
By our officers, they're out in the community making sure that everything is safe and secure and where you guys left it. | 00:18:29 | |
For citations, we had 48, for warnings we had 62, which again is about what we're expecting to see. | 00:18:35 | |
Then we had 17 incidents and seven accident reports and then we added. | 00:18:42 | |
One more accident report on North Main Street today. There was a rollover accident involving a Georgia Department of | 00:18:47 | |
Transportation truck dump truck that hit an intoxicated motorist. So she she got taken to jail for that. So but other than that, | 00:18:52 | |
everything is a moving long swimmingly. | 00:18:58 | |
So any questions from anyone? | 00:19:06 | |
Thank you. One year it's going to be cold for a run for responders and you won't be so happy to be in the Duncan booth. You know, | 00:19:08 | |
I go first just for that reason. | 00:19:13 | |
All right, since we have so many people here, I thought it would be good to do the mayor's report. Usually it's kind of lonely | 00:19:20 | |
when when we do that. Now we have to do have a lot of good things going on. First of all, being remiss if we didn't mention | 00:19:26 | |
Hurricane Helene and what was the second one, Milton that have really dramatically affected a lot of our neighbors. We were what | 00:19:33 | |
happened in Augusta and Swainsboro is what we were expecting to happen here. So first of all, I want to thank CJ Worden and. | 00:19:39 | |
Manager and Kyle and company and Police Department everybody. Watkinsville who was prepared for the worst. Thankfully we didn't | 00:19:46 | |
get the worst Augustus Waynes Brothers areas. | 00:19:50 | |
We know that just like we've helped our neighbors, our neighbors would would come help us. | 00:20:24 | |
Cutting and painting as we call it to to hopefully knock that back a good bit, but that will likely take a couple years. We are | 00:20:56 | |
working on the boardwalk repair. A lot of progress is being made out there as you guys, some of you know. | 00:21:02 | |
Sadly, the the boardwalk was vandalized, the rails were pushed down, and that revealed some structural issues. In order to fix | 00:21:09 | |
that, we've had to go in and do a significant repair job, and so that work is ongoing. We hope that'll be completed in November. | 00:21:16 | |
So so but work is underway. Please don't try to go back there. You can see the condition the bridge is in right now. | 00:21:23 | |
Unless you're feeling really lucky, you don't want to be back there on that bridge right now, but they're working hard to get that | 00:21:30 | |
fixed. | 00:21:33 | |
Progress continues at Thomas Farm Preserve, still hoping to get that open by the end of the year. | 00:21:37 | |
We did install a 20 foot bridge out there so that we can provide access to the wetlands. | 00:21:42 | |
Other work that we anticipate having. | 00:21:48 | |
That's ongoing and happening. Our gravel parking lots have been installed. We're working on repairs to the structures out there. | 00:21:51 | |
We're burning some of the debris. We'll be doing some tree planting and finalizing work on the trails in the weeks ahead. Again, | 00:21:57 | |
the goal is to get that open before the end of the year. We'll be in touch once we do that. We're also making some significant | 00:22:03 | |
improvements at the cemetery. I don't know if you've been by lately, but it really looks. | 00:22:09 | |
Looks great out there. We had had a lot of trees volunteer on some fence lines and when trees volunteered on fence lines near | 00:22:16 | |
roads, the roads get buckled. So when we decided to repay the roads, we realized we needed to. | 00:22:21 | |
Clear off some of those volunteer trees. So we left. The better trees include the others off. We'll be repaving those roads what | 00:22:26 | |
the next few weeks and maybe hopefully by the end of the year in the cemetery. | 00:22:31 | |
And give that a fresh go to asphalt. That'll be the first time those roads have been repaved since the ladies who raised the money | 00:22:37 | |
to maintain the cemetery back in the 1950s and 60s originally got those roads paved. So we're glad to get that done for the | 00:22:43 | |
cemetery. Work has also begun on the. | 00:22:48 | |
The sidewalk that will connect Simonton Place eventually to downtown, the first phase of that will connect Simonton Place to the | 00:22:55 | |
sidewalk. The first visible sign you've seen of that is the extension of that culvert there on your right. That'll allow the | 00:23:02 | |
sidewalk to go over that culvert. There was also tree removal today adjacent to the cemetery to allow the sidewalk to be built | 00:23:09 | |
again without those roads, those routes affecting that. And we're hoping again to get that phase of work done this year. | 00:23:15 | |
We also plan to bury some of the power lines. | 00:23:23 | |
That are running between the cemetery and the park to create a nicer view shed there. So we're working with AT&T and Georgia Power | 00:23:26 | |
and the other utilities on that so that that area will be there will be construction ongoing. | 00:23:33 | |
For the next couple months to get that sidewalk installed. | 00:23:40 | |
Is Georgia pre-K week? I had the pleasure of reading it two different two different pre-K classes in the past past few weeks and I | 00:23:45 | |
had a lot of fun doing that. It's a great way to start the day. | 00:23:50 | |
And catch up on my upside down reading skills. | 00:23:56 | |
Rocket Field, this was a great event. Fields of Faith at Rocket Field on October 7th. This is what we one of the big reasons we | 00:24:00 | |
renovated Rocket Field was so people could still play ball on Rocket Field, but also so we could have special events out there. | 00:24:06 | |
Oconee County FCA coordinated this event, didn't cost the city anything. They put it all together, they cleaned it up, they put it | 00:24:12 | |
on and we had a wonderful turn out of our youth here in the community for that event. | 00:24:18 | |
Really a special night in a well done event. | 00:24:24 | |
Congratulations to the chamber. Christmas parade is scheduled for December 8th. Hope you'll all be there. It's a lot of fun. We'll | 00:24:55 | |
have the parade at 4, then we'll light the tree at six in front of the courthouse. Same formula as we've done before, but it's | 00:25:03 | |
always, always a blast. Hope everybody can be there and really excited to announce our grand marshals tonight, Colin Peppers and | 00:25:10 | |
Leah Johnson. Colin and Leah are both joy ristos with ESP. They also went with us. | 00:25:18 | |
Denver, and we're a big part of our All American City delegation. Leah lives here in Oconee County. Column lives in Oglethorpe | 00:25:25 | |
County. | 00:25:29 | |
And they are going to be lead the way for us as our grand marshals in the Christmas parade this year. And they have the best | 00:25:33 | |
smile, the best energy and I couldn't think of a better. | 00:25:38 | |
To better people to help us kick off the Christmas parade than Colin and Leah. They've got, they've got one of those smiles that | 00:25:43 | |
you just don't see, but you hear it almost the energy that they bring. So so they'll be wonderful, wonderful grand marshals and | 00:25:48 | |
we're excited to have them this year. | 00:25:53 | |
And with that, that wraps the mayor's report. We'll move on to the consent agenda. | 00:25:59 | |
Make sure that our local merchants have an opportunity to compete. So generally, as long as the product is the same quality of | 00:26:33 | |
what we find somewhere else, if it's within a 5% price range of what we would buy from somewhere else, we will buy those products | 00:26:39 | |
locally. And then manager and staff also understand that if the product is offered in the city, we need to get a bid from a | 00:26:45 | |
business in the city for anything that we're going to purchase moving forward. So those are on consent. I'll entertain a motion | 00:26:51 | |
regarding the consent agenda. | 00:26:57 | |
I'll make a motion that we approve the consent agenda. | 00:27:06 | |
As read. | 00:27:11 | |
Do I have a second? | 00:27:12 | |
2nd, we have a second all right, any conversation hearing none all in favor say aye, any opposed? | 00:27:14 | |
Motion carries 5. | 00:27:21 | |
All right, we will move on to our public hearing. This is, I'm not going to read what the public hearing is for is a lot of legal | 00:27:23 | |
issues. You guys can read that up there. This is for the pipe plant. In short, I will remind before we get going of a couple | 00:27:29 | |
things related to public input. First and foremost, really thrilled that all of you are here tonight. It's always great when we do | 00:27:34 | |
something where citizens frankly care enough to come in. So I think that says a lot about our city and our community that you all | 00:27:40 | |
are here. | 00:27:45 | |
Sometimes when we have fewer people here, we are a little less formal, but with a group this big tonight we're going to play it by | 00:27:52 | |
the book in terms of the public hearing. So here's how this is going to work. | 00:27:56 | |
Men's alarm go off so Joe will set an alarm and you'll hear a ringing at 3 minutes. We need you to wrap it up. Then if you | 00:28:31 | |
continue to talk we will ask you to stop and gavel you down if you want. | 00:28:37 | |
If you agree with what someone else has said, there's no need to stand up and use 3 minutes to restate it. It's not going to. Not | 00:28:43 | |
using 3 minutes is not going to reduce the impact of whether you're for or against this. So if you want to say I agree with such | 00:28:48 | |
and such or I agree with everything they said and I want to add on one more thing, that's totally fine. Julie will make a record | 00:28:52 | |
of that. Council will note that. | 00:28:57 | |
You know, so feel free to, you know, stand up and say I agree with Mrs. Such and such and I'm going to add that into the comments. | 00:29:03 | |
When you speak, you should address the council, not the audience, not the applicant. | 00:29:08 | |
After the public is done speaking, the issue will come back behind the rail. We're not going to entertain questions from the | 00:29:13 | |
audience to the applicant or anything like that. Council ask questions of the staff and the applicant. | 00:29:19 | |
And there won't be a give and take with the audience. | 00:29:25 | |
Based on what I've seen online, I know some of your emotions are high. It is one thing to write something online, but we're not | 00:29:29 | |
going to tolerate rude or disparaging remarks. In this meeting, I'm going to ensure a fair hearing for Mr. Keller and his project, | 00:29:35 | |
his supporters and everyone who's here for his proposal. A fair hearing, That's that's my job. If you attack, lie or threaten Mr. | 00:29:42 | |
Keller, his supporters or members of this council, I'll ask you to stop. And if you don't, I'll ask you to leave. | 00:29:48 | |
Same goes for if anyone raises their voice, yells, shouts, or generally acts inappropriately, we're not going to tolerate it. | 00:29:56 | |
We're a city of civility and we can disagree agreeably. OK, so that's how this is going to work tonight. Let me see if there's any | 00:30:01 | |
more legalese I need to read about public input. I need you to speak from the podium. No debate, argument, personal attacks are | 00:30:07 | |
irrelevant discussion. Address only the merits of the matter at hand and address your remarks to council. We can't speak to | 00:30:12 | |
litigation. We can't speak to attorney-client, or personnel matters. With that, we will begin the public hearing regarding the | 00:30:17 | |
rezone of 1180 Greensboro Highway. | 00:30:23 | |
And the other things that are up there. | 00:30:29 | |
We get going. Manager Mr. Reitman, is there anything else you want to ask? Relate. OK. All right. Manager Dickerson and Engineer | 00:30:32 | |
Campbell, again, the reminder of how this is going to go. We'll hear a staff report. We'll hear from the applicant. We'll open the | 00:30:36 | |
public hearing. You guys will be able to come forward for three minutes apiece at that point. All right, Manager Dickerson and | 00:30:41 | |
Engineer Campbell, if you want to offer your report. | 00:30:45 | |
Thank you, Mayor. So again, this is the rezoning request for 1180 Greensboro Highway. The. | 00:30:51 | |
Acreage is approximately 17 acres and the request is to become rezone to the downtown a zoning. So I think everyone has an idea of | 00:30:57 | |
where this property is located, but the next slide should give an idea there with the the area highlighted, it's bounded by | 00:31:05 | |
Greensboro Highway, also known as State Route 15 and Morrison St. is bounded on the northern side by the railroad tracks. | 00:31:12 | |
So these are views again from the from the South at the corner of Morrison and Hwy. 15 and then views from the the railroad tracks | 00:31:20 | |
as well looking kind of back into the property just to give an idea of what the the current state of the property looks like as | 00:31:25 | |
well. So. | 00:31:30 | |
We'll get to this in a moment. This is a concept plan that was submitted. This is fine, but the property is currently vacant. | 00:31:36 | |
There was demolition that occurred a few years ago as it came before this council was approved for the some remaining structures | 00:31:41 | |
for the previous. | 00:31:45 | |
Plant that's that's what if you've been in Watkins or long enough, you kind of know this is the pipe plant property. So what you | 00:31:51 | |
see before you is the most recent conceptual master plan that was submitted as part of the most recent rezoning package for | 00:31:57 | |
tonight's hearing. You were familiar that a previous innovation was presented that was scheduled for the May hearing that was then | 00:32:03 | |
subsequently tabled and and what you hear tonight is is this latest plan based on this so if you can go to. | 00:32:09 | |
The next slide, I know the applicant will have a chance to present further, but this is based on the information that was | 00:32:17 | |
submitted. So 126 apartment units, 43 townhomes and 16 detached cottages with associated parking and access as part of what the | 00:32:25 | |
rezone request included. Again, there was a traffic report that was done previously. Prior to that they had. | 00:32:33 | |
More information as related to more uses, more square footage. | 00:32:42 | |
More units, those types of things. So based on the most recent revised reasonable report that was submitted by the applicant in | 00:32:47 | |
September, it indicated a reduction to a projected 1310 daily trips based on the the traffic counts from the the traffic manual, | 00:32:53 | |
if you will, due to the revised numbers. The applicants also indicated areas of potential green space and potential public park of | 00:32:59 | |
approximately 1.5 acres. | 00:33:06 | |
On this property as well and and there has been some discussion and and the request for clarification along the the area that | 00:33:13 | |
would be directly adjacent to Greensboro Highway. | 00:33:18 | |
I'm sure that the the applicant can provide clarification to that as well and again I'll be happy to answer any questions and | 00:33:24 | |
manager has some further clarification. | 00:33:28 | |
So I'll, I'll speak to the wastewater capacity allocation request. This is just an excerpt because we have a really long | 00:33:35 | |
spreadsheet which is in packet everyone can look at. The applicant has requested roughly 48,000 gallons per day capacity for this | 00:33:41 | |
development. The Oconee County, sorry, water resources has agreed that that is the amount that they, you know, assume would be | 00:33:47 | |
needed. | 00:33:53 | |
For this development under the city's wastewater capacity allocation regulations, the purpose is to allow applicants for new | 00:33:59 | |
construction or redevelopment in the city to meet specific criteria. The applicant has met that criteria. They are within the | 00:34:05 | |
overlay zone, sort of see that purple spot with the X in it. That is where the property is. And the red boundary, the solid red | 00:34:11 | |
boundary is the is the main wastewater allocation boundary that outside areas 1/4 and there's other regulations for that, but they | 00:34:17 | |
are inside the. | 00:34:23 | |
Boundary So they have met those requirements and the only other thing I'll note is we do not currently have 44,000 or 48,100 | 00:34:29 | |
gallons per day. However, the county does anticipate they are in the process of upgrading their wastewater plant to 3,000,000 | 00:34:36 | |
gallons per day. Once that is done, the city will receive under our agreement with the with the county, another 100,000 gallons of | 00:34:43 | |
capacity that can be allocated by the council. | 00:34:49 | |
Any questions? | 00:34:58 | |
All right, at this point, I will open the public hearing again. Come to the podium when you want to speak. 3 minutes I. | 00:35:04 | |
You don't have to sign up in advance, but come up state your name, your address, whether you live in the city, and three minutes. | 00:35:13 | |
Mary may want to let the applicant speak. Apologies. Yeah, applicant first. I was getting getting to the fun part. All right, | 00:35:18 | |
Frank, you're speaking for the applicant. | 00:35:23 | |
I've got 10 minutes, right? You've got 10 minutes. Yep. | 00:35:29 | |
Am I good? OK. | 00:35:35 | |
Good evening. My name is Frank Pittman with Pittman and Gray Engineering. We're at 10:50 Barber Creek Drive in Watkinsville. Also. | 00:35:38 | |
I'm also a resident outside the city limits, but in South Oconee. I'm here representing the developer of 1180 Greensboro Highway. | 00:35:46 | |
As was mentioned in the staff report, the proposed zoning would be to take roughly 17 acres to a downtown zoning district. | 00:35:54 | |
Property surrounded by other commercial, industrial, residential properties. | 00:36:03 | |
We came to you guys a few months ago. | 00:36:07 | |
With a, with a project that was similar but had a lot more to it, we got a lot of feedback from from this body as well as the | 00:36:10 | |
public items we heard were traffic problems overloading the schools and we even heard we're turning Oconee into Gwinnett. So we, | 00:36:18 | |
we pulled the project at that time, tried to scale back to do what we could to, to alleviate some of these concerns. | 00:36:27 | |
The obviously we, we, we can't. | 00:36:36 | |
We're not trying to Gwinnett. They're, they're a million people. We're 41,000 in no county. So they're 24 times the size of Oconee | 00:36:40 | |
County. We did decrease the number of housing units by roughly 70 housing units. We removed the previous commercial as well as | 00:36:47 | |
office space. We had a, if you remember, we had a small grocery store on the hook. When we pulled it, they, they kind of pulled | 00:36:55 | |
the plug and walked away at that point too. They just couldn't wait. | 00:37:02 | |
To do their project. So they're going somewhere else. So we came back with this plan which, which decreased the projected traffic | 00:37:10 | |
by 70% from what the original project was. We, we've had meetings, we had a community input meeting at library a week ago. We, | 00:37:18 | |
we've tried to try to listen. We did do a little research on the schools. | 00:37:26 | |
And from from what we're told, schools are not overloaded, they're actually under capacity and enrollment has been decreasing | 00:37:35 | |
every year for last few years. | 00:37:39 | |
The the new plan I. | 00:37:44 | |
Is set up as you can see where there is some space along the highway that could potentially be up to about 10,000 square feet of | 00:37:48 | |
future commercial. You know, maybe if we win the bypass comes. I think there's been some discussion and maybe even some money | 00:37:54 | |
allocated by dot to to start those talks. | 00:37:59 | |
So. So we've set the plan up to to. | 00:38:07 | |
To be able to have some commercial in the future as far as benefits for the community. You know, I've, I've lived in South Oconee | 00:38:10 | |
for almost 20 years myself. And, and we try to, my wife and I try to go to restaurants in Watkinsville and other shops and, and it | 00:38:16 | |
seems like every time we get, we get where we like something that closes down because there's not enough people to support it. | 00:38:22 | |
Having more residents in town, what will help? We'll use these shops and these restaurants and create a vibrant downtown | 00:38:28 | |
community. I know. | 00:38:34 | |
A lot of you probably got into Madison and see how their downtown has has grown and and I think that more residents in in downtown | 00:38:40 | |
will do the same for Watkinsville. We are proposing dedicating some public space as shown on the plan that would be used by the | 00:38:46 | |
community for whatever that may be. And and also this project will be walkable to downtown. You know, it's been a lot of | 00:38:53 | |
discussion about the railroad that that runs along behind the property. | 00:39:00 | |
Hopefully one day that becomes a Greenway that you you could leave this project you get on your bicycle or. | 00:39:07 | |
Or jog and go down to wire park and support those businesses as well. We would be putting sidewalks along all Rd. frontage to | 00:39:13 | |
help, you know, people that they walk into downtown. | 00:39:19 | |
Another quick note, as mentioned this, this property is zoned today for for their a handful of of uses that are allowed by right | 00:39:26 | |
today, some of which such as convenience stores, restaurants, supermarkets, retail centers and even industrial would be | 00:39:32 | |
significantly more traffic than than what we're proposing. | 00:39:39 | |
For instance, as this project, I think it's Mark mentioned we're we're the projected traffic for this project is 1300 trips per | 00:39:46 | |
day. A convenience store is 3800 to 4200 trips a day, which would be on a roughly A2 acre part of this. So you'd be 15 more acres | 00:39:53 | |
of development on top of the 4000 from a convenience store. They can do that by right. A fast food restaurants, about 1500 trips a | 00:40:00 | |
day on a on about an acre. A supermarket could be 3 to 4000 trips a day, a retail center. | 00:40:08 | |
Almost 10,000 trips a day and industrial anywhere from 2 to 5000 trips per day. We our projection projection is significantly less | 00:40:16 | |
than that I. | 00:40:21 | |
I will, I will kind of wrap up and end with this. We spent a lot of time over the previous year planning, meeting with you guys, | 00:40:27 | |
listening, starting over, listening some more, meeting some more and and trying to come up with a development that we feel as a | 00:40:34 | |
quality development for Watkinsville, which Watkins will be proud of and will help support existing businesses. | 00:40:41 | |
There are obviously people that that we'll hear from tonight that don't want this and a lot of them don't want anything developed | 00:40:49 | |
in Watkinsville. And and though I understand that thought, it's unrealistic to think that that this property will not be developed | 00:40:54 | |
and it could be developed about some of those by right uses that I mentioned earlier. We've got the opportunity to create a | 00:41:00 | |
project that that everybody be proud of that will support local businesses and will be developed by a local Oconee County lifetime | 00:41:06 | |
resident. | 00:41:11 | |
I'll introduce you to the developer, Mister Jack Keller. He may want to speak. | 00:41:18 | |
And then otherwise, I would ask for your support and approval tonight and I'll save any additional time for for any rebuttal | 00:41:22 | |
feedback. Thank you. | 00:41:26 | |
Thank you council. Thanks for having me. My name is Jack Keller. I live at 1271 W Fitzgerald local resident, lived here my whole | 00:41:41 | |
life went off to school and came back here. And I just wanted to point out to the to the council that. | 00:41:47 | |
You know, the timing isn't great for this project, but I hope, and I ask that me being local, me being someone that's got vested | 00:41:55 | |
interest in this city and vested interest in this county, that we don't let timing interfere with what a great project can be. | 00:42:03 | |
I've met a lot of citizens and they live in the community that are all Watkinsville residents and I look forward to having a vote. | 00:42:11 | |
And getting this thing approved and working with them to deliver Rockinsville a project that we can be proud of. | 00:42:20 | |
A project that the citizens can use and a project that makes Watkinsville better. Thank you. And I yield the rest of our time for | 00:42:27 | |
for Frank. You all got about 3 minutes remaining. | 00:42:33 | |
All right, with that we will open. | 00:42:41 | |
Open the public hearing. As I said earlier, 3 minutes apiece. Please come forward. I'll tell you what. And if you want to go after | 00:42:45 | |
we get through, after the person is close to being done, if the next person wants to go ahead and stand up behind them and that | 00:42:50 | |
way we're not waiting for everybody to sit down and walk up. But let's, but if we could begin coming forward at this point, that | 00:42:54 | |
would be great. | 00:42:59 | |
Let's no, we'll just go, Yeah, we'll just go ahead. Dan, Dan, No way other than 10 2nd St. | 00:43:05 | |
Been here about 14 years. Been in Oconee County 35 years. | 00:43:12 | |
I have a rhetorical question. | 00:43:17 | |
So no answer is necessary. Do any of y'all ever drive through Watkinsville? | 00:43:20 | |
Ever. | 00:43:25 | |
Because it's horrible. | 00:43:26 | |
And he's right, timing is terrible. You don't have wire park open yet. So that's. | 00:43:29 | |
God only knows how many thousands of people trips a day. You don't have the trophy open yet, so you're adding all this stuff and | 00:43:35 | |
we don't have anything we can do with this problem right here in the paper it says. | 00:43:41 | |
People that I guess the mayor. | 00:43:48 | |
That is the county's responsible that somehow the county is responsible for, but that the county doesn't do anything. And they've | 00:43:51 | |
been talking about that for 35 years. They were going to make it out by my house when I live on Colin Ferry Road and everybody got | 00:43:56 | |
upset and they were going to make it by the, you know, you fix the problem first, then you add the traffic, you don't have the | 00:44:02 | |
traffic and then hope the problem gets fixed. | 00:44:07 | |
We've got thousands of people, cars, we coming from Raw Park, it's got to be. | 00:44:13 | |
100 cars at least coming from the trove. | 00:44:19 | |
And there's some other homes being built. You got to solve the traffic problem before you add any other things. I'm off of making | 00:44:22 | |
lots of whatever, but you got to solve your problem first. It seems to me that's all. | 00:44:29 | |
Next up. | 00:44:41 | |
I do have a. | 00:44:53 | |
If somebody would read this for Johnny Prescott, he, he asked me to have someone read this on his behalf. So if somebody would | 00:44:57 | |
read it, I'll leave it up here for you. | 00:45:01 | |
I come here tonight. | 00:45:07 | |
Trying to figure out how to get open and transparent government in Watkinsville. | 00:45:12 | |
As you all know, I've written. | 00:45:19 | |
Hundreds of open records requests. By law, you have to answer those things because it is a public forum. In this body, it's the | 00:45:21 | |
public's. Money is the public property. | 00:45:28 | |
I want to draw your attention to one open records request that I did about this particular pipe plant. | 00:45:36 | |
And then this. | 00:45:45 | |
E-mail that I received through open records. It is from Brian Broderick. | 00:45:47 | |
Copied the Christian Tucker. | 00:45:54 | |
Copy to Jeff Campbell. Copy to Joe Reitman, the city attorney, and others. | 00:45:58 | |
Thank you for your time Thursday to discuss your project. Jeff, Christine and I enjoyed more. | 00:46:06 | |
About your plans. | 00:46:14 | |
Now, years ago I used to do something at the state Capitol and I used to get mail from various and sundry people. And in this | 00:46:16 | |
particular case, I got one from the attorney general of the state of Georgia relating to open records. | 00:46:23 | |
And it says. | 00:46:32 | |
This is to a candy that I used to represent. | 00:46:34 | |
It was about the Open Meetings Act. This office has the authority to enforce that. | 00:46:39 | |
As you know, the 1999 amendment to the Open Meetings Act. | 00:46:45 | |
Broaden the scope of the ACT significantly. The definition of meeting there includes those gathering of a quorum at which any | 00:46:50 | |
public matter, official business or policy of the agenda is to be discussed representative or at which official actions to be | 00:46:57 | |
taken in the case of committee recommendation or any public matter. It goes on to say further, this office takes a position that | 00:47:05 | |
the efforts to sidestep the open. | 00:47:12 | |
By having only two members of a committee meet and conduct official business does not eliminate the requirement of the Open | 00:47:21 | |
Meetings Act. | 00:47:25 | |
The intent of the Legislature is clear that even meeting where any public matter is to be discussed or acted upon must be open to | 00:47:30 | |
the public. A meeting with less than a quorum conducts official business with the intent to circumvent the Open Meetings Act could | 00:47:38 | |
be a violation of the Act. That's your time. | 00:47:46 | |
If anybody wants to see it, I have it. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Next up. | 00:47:54 | |
Hello, good evening. | 00:48:06 | |
My name is Susanna Drennan. I live on South Main Street, so really close to where this proposed development is going. I do have a | 00:48:08 | |
question, a non rhetorical question it sounds like. | 00:48:13 | |
What is being decided tonight is just on the rezoning of this piece of property or does it go hand in hand with approving the this | 00:48:19 | |
particular development? That's a great question. If you'll pause for time it it does go hand in hand with this. So there's a | 00:48:27 | |
development agreement that goes along with this that will outline the standards that he'll have to build to if it's approved. | 00:48:35 | |
The provisions of things that he has to do, sidewalk connectivity, all the. | 00:48:43 | |
What we call mitigating measures. So it would that would travel with, if this is approved, then it would travel with the whether | 00:48:49 | |
Mr. Keller owned this or any subsequent owners of the project. So, so yeah, it does lock in this. Now the site plan could be | 00:48:56 | |
amended. It would have to come probably have to come back before council to be amended at a later date. But all the, you know, | 00:49:02 | |
the, the sewer connection, different things like that would all be locked in as part of the development agreement. | 00:49:09 | |
So if this. | 00:49:18 | |
The rezoning is not independent of this. It's not. So if if this doesn't pass tonight, the zoning, there's no way that the zoning | 00:49:21 | |
can change to this residential. I can't remember the official term, but the residential downtown, downtown, the downtown it | 00:49:29 | |
reverts or stays at commercial corridor. OK, so my concern is that we get another. | 00:49:37 | |
Building that looks like certified clean care. | 00:49:47 | |
Over there and I think we have plenty of that more than enough currently on 15 and I kind of take ownership of this piece of | 00:49:50 | |
property a little bit that it is part of downtown. And I would like the character to be downtown character and not this kind of | 00:49:56 | |
commercial corridor that we have running down 15 right now because we kind of go from cute Watkinsville to not so cute | 00:50:02 | |
Watkinsville and. | 00:50:08 | |
From a residential perspective of somebody who lives so close. | 00:50:15 | |
I think that it's great to have this residential area that expands a little bit the downtown borders. I think it's important to | 00:50:20 | |
have that density in a downtown. We're not plunking it out in the middle of nowhere, which might be preferential for some people. | 00:50:27 | |
But I think that actually having this density, having this, these options for residences, I do wish there was retail on there | 00:50:34 | |
still because I think that retail brings. | 00:50:42 | |
People in and you can't just assume that people who live in your complex are going to shop there. You do have to bring people in | 00:50:49 | |
and I think good retail will bring people in. I think that Mister Keller has been pretty open about discussing things like design, | 00:50:56 | |
look, feel, and I get the sense that he does want to integrate this project into the fabric of the community, but I think that it | 00:51:02 | |
is way better than having. | 00:51:08 | |
Some commercial convenience store. I don't think you could get another gas station on there, but maybe. | 00:51:15 | |
I know you can't do many storage units, but there are lots of other light industrial businesses that could go there that will also | 00:51:22 | |
increase traffic potentially but will be much less appealing. And I do think that we have to think long term and I know that | 00:51:29 | |
traffic is a concern, but I do think that long term we will get a bypass, we will get a Greenway and maybe that will even force G | 00:51:36 | |
dots and a little bit to move quicker if. | 00:51:44 | |
Traffic becomes a little bit more of a problem. I'm not saying that I want to invite that, but I I am in favor of it and I hope | 00:51:51 | |
that you approve it. Thank you, Mr. Adam. | 00:51:56 | |
Next up. | 00:52:01 | |
Mr. Ashford, then Mr. Lay. | 00:52:08 | |
I'm Will Ashford, I live in downtown Watkinsville. So Susanna said. A lot of the things I was going to say, so I won't repeat all | 00:52:13 | |
of them, but you know, I've heard a lot of people very concerned about the traffic and. | 00:52:20 | |
I drive downtown Watkinsville multiple times every day, so I'm very sympathetic to that concern. | 00:52:28 | |
However, you know, I feel like it's just a matter of time before the bypass comes. It will eventually happen and whatever gets | 00:52:36 | |
built on this site will be there 100 years from now. So I think, you know, I would second what Susanna said. If a gas station goes | 00:52:42 | |
there 100 years from now, there will be a gas station there and we'll have a bypass and traffic won't be the thing we're all | 00:52:49 | |
talking about. So I'll just, I'll leave it there. | 00:52:55 | |
Thank you. | 00:53:02 | |
Mr. Way. | 00:53:04 | |
My name is Johnny Lane, I live here since 1964. | 00:53:10 | |
You know I'm ***** so I maybe talk to loud no? | 00:53:14 | |
I'm going by this different. | 00:53:18 | |
I've been 2-3 years, 3 or 4 years real. I've been watching all the development, walking field, all the building and I haven't come | 00:53:21 | |
and been said anything. | 00:53:25 | |
Where we right now, we got free and we had four projects going. We got 3IN process right now I've got one in the planning stage. | 00:53:30 | |
Where all is taking place right here in Watkinsville. | 00:53:40 | |
That's two reason. | 00:53:43 | |
Developer know this is all my personal opinion, not not anyone of you. I've you've been thinking about it three months took me two | 00:53:45 | |
weeks. Write it down. | 00:53:49 | |
A developer can know if he can come into walking field. | 00:53:54 | |
Do what he won't, get away with what he wants and take it alone if he wanted to do it. | 00:53:57 | |
The second main reason is. | 00:54:04 | |
He gave birth priority and all the sewer capacity in walking field. | 00:54:06 | |
We need up through the compassion phase and I bet 90 percentage premiums really don't know what involved in getting sued in this | 00:54:11 | |
county. | 00:54:15 | |
So I'm going to start with why Paul? What Mario? | 00:54:20 | |
What part started what four or five years ago? I'm really excited too about the building, what it could be done. | 00:54:24 | |
And most that had come through the building has been used modified. | 00:54:31 | |
I guess what I did not realize was. | 00:54:36 | |
All the way building going to be sticking out flooring on the bonnet Show Rd. | 00:54:39 | |
You are there for men. Look like me, a bunch of bags and some nerd head bathroom. | 00:54:44 | |
I rested OK but my part of opinion why parking? | 00:54:51 | |
The big advisor we got in walking field. | 00:54:56 | |
Now what? Bring that on to me. | 00:55:00 | |
How are 15 property? It's going to be the same type development, maybe even worse. | 00:55:05 | |
Why did? | 00:55:15 | |
Don't get out there. What really made me get upset and get started was. | 00:55:17 | |
Y'all put that in the paper about 3 months ago. | 00:55:22 | |
City grant fair to allow zero foot setbacks at White Park. | 00:55:26 | |
The way I interpret that is OK. Why part? Just do what the hell you want to tell you. | 00:55:32 | |
Don't have to come back to us no more taking long as you want to keep on building may not be worried intended back what our | 00:55:36 | |
interpreter did. | 00:55:40 | |
So when you do away with variances. | 00:55:46 | |
You have business that sort of? | 00:55:49 | |
See what the results gonna be. | 00:55:52 | |
Set back from property line, other building and so forth. | 00:55:54 | |
Now you go to what I'm reading. | 00:55:59 | |
Go to that one plan right then. I don't pay no attention there 'cause you can make numbers say anything you want to. | 00:56:02 | |
So what I'm addressing to you, to the council tonight is that thing says 126 apartments. Let's wrap up Mr. Langley Townhouse. | 00:56:08 | |
And 16 touch units. | 00:56:17 | |
I know you can't. Time is up. | 00:56:20 | |
We'll finish up, just finish up, just finish up. | 00:56:24 | |
Just yeah, I know I'm not on the bottom, that Lewis can't go back. Put my name on the bottom. No, Sir, We're just three minutes a | 00:56:29 | |
person tonight. | 00:56:32 | |
I'll be back next month, OK? Yes, Sir. | 00:56:36 | |
So make sure you understand that this is going to be a problem up here. Thank you, Mr. Lee. | 00:56:39 | |
All right, next. | 00:56:45 | |
I'm trying to get my paper out of the way. | 00:56:48 | |
Hello, I'm Dwayne Bray. I live at 1060 Camden Park Drive in the city limits. | 00:56:57 | |
A couple things on this project. I'm for the project 1. | 00:57:02 | |
We've seen what Mr. Keller has developed. He's developed his property within the city limits, and I think that everyone I've | 00:57:07 | |
talked to has been pleased with it. And the second thing is I have a senior in college. | 00:57:13 | |
And yes, I'm a little selfish is I would love for her to move back here. And I think a development like this would absolutely | 00:57:20 | |
attract young professionals and younger people who are looking for a more walkable community and are looking for a development | 00:57:28 | |
like this. So I'm for it. And I think it would be good for the downtown district and good for our community. | 00:57:37 | |
Thank you, Mr. Bray. | 00:57:46 | |
Hello name is Richard Allen live at in Christian Lake. | 00:57:51 | |
To a lot of people, the whole don't Gwinnett R Oconee is a punch line. | 00:57:56 | |
To me it is. | 00:58:01 | |
A part of my life story, if you want to call it that. I grew up in Gwinnett. It was awesome. | 00:58:04 | |
When that's not so awesome anymore. | 00:58:11 | |
Through different twists and turns in life as a young person. Not to attack the gentleman who just spoke, but. | 00:58:13 | |
I lived in an apartment. It was in Athens. | 00:58:20 | |
I couldn't afford to live in Oconee at the time. I aspired to live in Oconee, eventually achieve that, but through those twists | 00:58:23 | |
and turns ended up in back in Gwinnett. | 00:58:28 | |
I loved it again because it was a mixture of suburban and rural and. | 00:58:33 | |
It was not loaded with apartments. | 00:58:41 | |
That has since changed. Now I know Gwinnett's large diverse, but the portion specifically I'm referring to is nearest Walton. | 00:58:44 | |
So there was a lot of rural areas, a lot of suburban areas and when the building. | 00:58:55 | |
Dynamic change to where they started taking every piece of vacant land. | 00:59:02 | |
And cramming really nice mixed-use communities, apartments, condos, townhouses. That's when it started to not be very enjoyable to | 00:59:06 | |
live in Gwinnett again. | 00:59:11 | |
So my wife. | 00:59:17 | |
Really wanted to move. | 00:59:20 | |
Idea of moving is excruciating just thinking of it. | 00:59:22 | |
But there was a day where I was driving to meet my wife and kids for dinner. | 00:59:28 | |
Took about 20 minutes to drive about 3 miles and I said I got to get the heck out of here. | 00:59:34 | |
We're pointing ourselves in that direction here. | 00:59:40 | |
In downtown Watkinsville. | 00:59:43 | |
I know we're not there yet, the traffic stakes and you got a lot of other things going on with the the expansion. | 00:59:46 | |
Over by 441 and that plays a role. But I'm warning you as a person who's lived through this, that is the direction this community | 00:59:52 | |
is being pointed in. It's and. | 00:59:57 | |
Not to attack anyone who doesn't live within the city limits, but if you live outside the city limits, it's real easy to drive | 01:00:03 | |
into town, enjoy what you want to enjoy, and then leave. But for those of us in city limits? | 01:00:09 | |
It's not that enjoyable to be in the heart of all that dense population that I think. | 01:00:15 | |
I don't have the data. I can certain certainly tell you many people that live within those city limits. | 01:00:23 | |
Don't want that level of density, so. | 01:00:30 | |
I suppose I made my point, but I hope you'll give consideration to. | 01:00:34 | |
The hand you have in shaping the type of construction and development that goes on, obviously I believe is one of the, the | 01:00:41 | |
speakers said. | 01:00:46 | |
It's foolish to think that land is going to sit vacant forever, obviously, but again, you guys have a hand in in shaping what it | 01:00:51 | |
becomes. It comes ultra dense. | 01:00:56 | |
The residential, I don't think the residents are going to be very happy with that. Thank you, Mr. Allen. | 01:01:01 | |
Thank you, Miss Marion Council. I appreciate the time. First, I want to say right up front for the record, we just need your name | 01:01:09 | |
and address. Mike Ratty and I live at 216 Concord Dr. in Bishops Vineyard. | 01:01:15 | |
And I just want to say that I have concerns also about the traffic in Bishops Vineyard. We have a hard time getting out of the | 01:01:20 | |
neighborhood at times currently. And I am a Forester, I think long term and I can see a disaster in the making. And I'm telling | 01:01:29 | |
you we need a solid transportation plan that's being implemented, not. | 01:01:37 | |
A hope, not a prayer, not a maybe something solid. | 01:01:46 | |
To take care of these issues before you start adding anymore projects. | 01:01:51 | |
That would be my. | 01:01:55 | |
Recommendation. And I second what the previous gentleman said. I don't want to see Watkinsville turned into just a hodgepodge of | 01:01:57 | |
construction. It's a beautiful city and it has been a wonderful place for 31 years. So thank you for the consideration. Thank you, | 01:02:05 | |
Mr. Grady. We will. When everybody's done speaking, we'll offer a more concrete update on the transportation stuff. | 01:02:13 | |
Hello Nancy McReynolds, I live within the city limits at 74 column ferry extension. I'm an introvert so bear with me, this is kind | 01:02:23 | |
of painful. | 01:02:27 | |
But my family will be directly impacted by this development at the end of Colin Ferry extension and I am in favor of it. This, I | 01:02:32 | |
feel like this development is going to add to the sense of community, why I enjoy living and Watkinsville and walking to all of | 01:02:40 | |
the entertainment we have now. It's going to obviously provide green space for us and also sidewalks to connect. | 01:02:49 | |
Other streets to downtown Watkinsville make it more walkable community. | 01:02:57 | |
Like was previously mentioned, currently this property is zoned industrial commercial. And so that opens it up if this doesn't | 01:03:03 | |
pass to that type of development. And my fear is if that type of industrial facility comes back into Watkinsville, you're bringing | 01:03:10 | |
in people who don't have that feeling of community. This is potentially just where they work, not where they live. They don't care | 01:03:16 | |
about the area. | 01:03:23 | |
And it also, depending on what the industrial development is, could bring negative environmental impacts to the residents who are | 01:03:30 | |
living around this development. | 01:03:35 | |
And I also feel due to the day-to-day impacts of the industrial or the commercial which the property is currently zoned for, the | 01:03:40 | |
residents are not going to want to live there if there's something major going on, you know, some sort of development, even if | 01:03:47 | |
it's just some sort of, you know, like what we have further down on Hwy. 15. | 01:03:54 | |
Commercial, residential, you know, we're not going to want to live by industrial development. | 01:04:01 | |
So that's all I have to say. Thank you. | 01:04:06 | |
Thank you, Mr. McReynolds. | 01:04:09 | |
Hello Helen Williams just outside of the city limits on 12/20 Station Dr. But you know, I am here in support of the project for a | 01:04:14 | |
number of different reasons, but one I've been lucky enough to be interested by Chad, the developer of this project to oversee the | 01:04:21 | |
management of his other development here in Watkinsville, Wisconsin Ridge that was referenced couple times earlier. And you know | 01:04:27 | |
I. | 01:04:34 | |
Just came on. | 01:04:41 | |
Taking up the management of Wisteria Ridge 4 weeks ago yesterday. Haven't been there a long time, don't have this, you know, long | 01:04:43 | |
standing relationship with Chad. But what I can say is it is amazing. | 01:04:50 | |
What he brought to Watkinsville in that community, I've got 20 years of experience in multifamily property management of managed | 01:04:58 | |
properties as small as you know, 2 units up to I think the largest one I've ever seen was 348 units. | 01:05:05 | |
And not once have I ever been involved in the oversight of a community. | 01:05:13 | |
That had built its own sense of community and I know that hasn't been spoke to as much tonight as it has been online or even last | 01:05:19 | |
week and that kind of thing. But I think it's very important to point out that those residents that are there, those that will | 01:05:27 | |
continue there, those that will hopefully have the opportunity to live here. | 01:05:34 | |
Are given that opportunity to. | 01:05:43 | |
Fill the sense of community that we all find so important here in Watkinsville and Oconee County. And you know, when we the first | 01:05:47 | |
day we took over that evening, myself and my team went to door to door with pizzas to introduce ourselves to the residents and, | 01:05:54 | |
you know, just providing dinner and that kind of thing, right? And, and it was amazing. | 01:06:00 | |
Go in there and meeting them and having them reference her neighbor across the way or downstairs or whatever it may be, you know, | 01:06:08 | |
represent my name and saying, oh, well, they're not home yet, but you know, they're gonna be home at such and such time. They're | 01:06:13 | |
still at work. So stop back by, you know. | 01:06:17 | |
It's not a simple wave as you as they're going in and out, which is sometimes what I don't get in my neighborhood. You know, they | 01:06:23 | |
care about each other, they're looking out for each other, they enjoy each other. It's one of our business practices to implement | 01:06:30 | |
resident life program and provide events every month for those residents that live in the communities we ever see. And and you | 01:06:36 | |
know, I don't. | 01:06:42 | |
All I'm going to do is build on what they already have. You can go there most Wednesday evenings. | 01:06:50 | |
Almost every Friday night and find groups of them in the pool house playing Yeah, playing trivia, doing karaoke. | 01:06:55 | |
And then also every Wednesday there is a group of past and current. | 01:07:04 | |
Residents of Wisteria Ridge that meet in at. | 01:07:12 | |
Rocket filled together and So what they provide and build is something that. | 01:07:17 | |
The residents of this community will also benefit from as well. Thank you, Miss Williams. | 01:07:23 | |
Good evening, my name is Danny Sutton and I live on Colin Ferry Rd. inside the city limits. | 01:07:34 | |
And I would just like to say so my husband and I have lived here for four years and have found a great sense of community and have | 01:07:40 | |
enjoyed. | 01:07:44 | |
Watching the community change and watching it grow and, and, and that's been great. We moved from Atlanta up here about 10 years | 01:07:49 | |
ago. And what I'm wondering is where is all this traffic everybody's complaining about? Because from where I come from, this is no | 01:07:56 | |
traffic at all. It's on Main Street. | 01:08:04 | |
30 minutes a day, give or take, you know, different sections of time. But I'm not seeing like this, this great gridlock. And so | 01:08:12 | |
for me the the traffic issue is a non issue. I don't even see it as an issue. But what I do see is like somebody said earlier, | 01:08:21 | |
this is going to be here 100 years from now, you know, do we want a gas station? What do we want the legacy to be and offering? | 01:08:30 | |
Housing to younger professionals who are leaving this area, you know, offering opportunities for people to move in and be able to | 01:08:42 | |
afford to live in Oconee County, I think is great and I support the the development, I support the. | 01:08:50 | |
You know, creating a little bit more density. | 01:08:59 | |
A little bit more diversity and a little bit more community. And so I think that that's what this brings to to the the area. So I | 01:09:02 | |
am again, I support it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sutton. | 01:09:07 | |
Hi, I'm Julie McNeese. I live at 1455 Silo Bend, which is in Trove, which is a new development. | 01:09:16 | |
I moved from a different county that was in the metro area. And kind of what I wanted to speak to is, you know, I moved here | 01:09:23 | |
because it was a smaller town. It was a community I could get involved with. And because I could kind of see the future of it | 01:09:29 | |
being within walking distance and being able to walk everywhere. So I didn't have to get in my car. I could ride my bike. And The | 01:09:35 | |
thing is that since I've moved here, I've been able to do all those things. And so a project like this that goes in this field, | 01:09:41 | |
which the first couple months I was here. | 01:09:47 | |
Kind of walk through with my dogs and see and imagine what could be there. And then once I got tuned into what was happening, I | 01:09:53 | |
realized like this could be a few more streets that I could walk down, a new park I could walk to and throw a frisbee with and | 01:10:01 | |
then still be able to make my way. Instead of on Morrison, which is kind of a country Rd. still. So like that's five in the | 01:10:08 | |
morning that's difficult to walk down. But with something like this, it would just improve that walkability. | 01:10:15 | |
Less cars. The other thing is with Trove, where I moved, you know, it's physicians, which I am. It's, you know, retired judges, | 01:10:23 | |
it's school principals. It's people have joined that on the Rotary Club. It's these are all people that have all moved from | 01:10:30 | |
outside of this county that live in Trove. So this is the kind of people that a new development like Trove or a new development | 01:10:38 | |
like this bring in to the area. It's people that care about the community that get involved, the community have the stickers. | 01:10:45 | |
On the back of their cars, the Watkinsville logo, which I like. And I can't help but seeing this, the slogan of the town, which | 01:10:53 | |
is, you know, it's small town, big story. And I think that sums it up so well because since I've moved here, my story is expanded. | 01:10:59 | |
I feel like everyone, all my neighbors that I've met, their stories are getting bigger and more interesting because there's being | 01:11:05 | |
thoughtful development. | 01:11:12 | |
Put in the within the confines of the history of this town, so. | 01:11:18 | |
I am excited about this possibly. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. McNeese. | 01:11:23 | |
I'm Jared McReynolds. I just want to say that I agree with my wife who spoke earlier. | 01:11:32 | |
Yeah. | 01:11:39 | |
But I I want to. | 01:11:43 | |
Can I ask you a question about the zoning? | 01:11:45 | |
So it's currently commercial corridor, yes. If somebody wanted to build a commercial thing on that, do they have to come before | 01:11:48 | |
City Council to build anything? Not for not for a reason. There's there's they may have to come through for different types of | 01:11:54 | |
plan approvals and different other procedures. Mark, do you want to address that? | 01:12:00 | |
So just in general terms, not this property, but just generally anywhere in the city, if you are disturbing more than one acre or | 01:12:07 | |
you're adding more than 5000 square foot of impervious area. So that could be a 5000 square foot building or a 3000 square foot | 01:12:13 | |
building with a parking lot or whatever that might total to. Then there is a site plan review process and a certain set of rules | 01:12:19 | |
and criteria that would have to be met. So even if somebody only wanted to put on this particular property that 17 acres, if they | 01:12:25 | |
only wanted to do something. | 01:12:30 | |
Within one acre of that there would still be a site plan review process, but it would be under a different set of circumstances | 01:12:36 | |
depending on if it's his own corridor, commercial or if it's rezoned to downtown. | 01:12:42 | |
And then frankly, our legal ability to say no to something when it's a use already in the zoning code is is more challenging to at | 01:12:50 | |
that point. So that's the point I wanted to make. | 01:12:55 | |
I mean, that's accurate, isn't it? Yeah. | 01:13:01 | |
Can I ask something with that? | 01:13:04 | |
Yeah. Now if it's quick, it's about this. So with with that with sewer capacity. | 01:13:07 | |
With because we haven't had done a lot with commercial sewer capacity. So would there be some degree of it coming before council | 01:13:14 | |
getting sewer capacity for any commercial court? Yeah, you've had, we've had several projects that come forward that haven't been | 01:13:19 | |
development projects. | 01:13:25 | |
Business Blvd. things like that. So they still have to come forward. They stopped to submit an application for wastewater. | 01:13:32 | |
Same. Council still has to approve it. I don't have authority which gives some oversight of the plan in general. Correct. OK. | 01:13:39 | |
OK. | 01:13:47 | |
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McReynolds. | 01:13:48 | |
Mr. Elder. | 01:13:51 | |
Good evening. My name is Dan Elder. I live outside the city limits at. | 01:13:53 | |
1701 Antioch Church Rd. | 01:13:58 | |
Watkinsville lived in Watkinsville 48 out of my Orino county county. Excuse me 48 out of my 53 years on this earth. It's a | 01:14:01 | |
wonderful place to live. Love Watkinsville owned businesses. One is which has been in Watkinsville for 80 years this year | 01:14:07 | |
originally on Main Street and now we're on Hwy. 15 since the late 1980s and Antioch Church road for those of you that don't know | 01:14:14 | |
is off of Hwy. 15 so I drive highway 15. | 01:14:21 | |
Every day. | 01:14:29 | |
To and from work and from work to job sites and other appointments I have during the day. So if you don't know where the traffic | 01:14:30 | |
is, come to Hwy. 15. That's where the traffic is and that's why I'm against this project now like Doctor Moy said. | 01:14:38 | |
Road infrastructure is in place to handle the increased traffic. | 01:15:17 | |
We have a lot of bottlenecks, as everybody knows with. | 01:15:22 | |
Simonton Bridge Rd. Barnet Shoals Rd. Highway 15 and Main Street all coming onto Main Street of Watkinsville. It's just more than. | 01:15:25 | |
It's just a bad design from the beginning and and we have to correct that somehow. I'm not a traffic engineer or any kind of Hwy. | 01:15:34 | |
Rd. buildings expert by any means. I. | 01:15:40 | |
But I think we have to fix and find solutions to the traffic problems before something like this can go in. Otherwise traffic is | 01:15:47 | |
just going to continue to get worse on Hwy. 15. We've been down there for over 30 years and I've seen it go from. | 01:15:53 | |
You know, moderate traffic to just. | 01:16:01 | |
Excessive traffic I guess would be the right word for at times of day, morning, noon and afternoon. | 01:16:06 | |
Sometimes we wait several minutes just to turn out of our driveway at work. And then when you come toward Watkinsville, traffic | 01:16:12 | |
backs up commonly to the railroad tracks here going into town and you sit through four or five lights just to get through town. So | 01:16:19 | |
I would just ask, you know, no for now, not no for never, because I think this will be a great project for walking. So I just | 01:16:25 | |
don't think the timing is right. And even the developer said that when he was up here. | 01:16:31 | |
So. | 01:16:38 | |
Thank you, Mr. Elder. | 01:16:40 | |
I have a excuse me? | 01:16:50 | |
Jackson Smith will open the city limits. | 01:16:52 | |
On page 374 of the agenda for tonight, he mentions a roundabout. | 01:16:55 | |
There's going to be as soon as possible begin construction on Hwy. 15 between this property and the one next door. | 01:17:00 | |
Is that correct? If G dot approved around about then we would do it and then we don't control whether G dot approves that or not. | 01:17:07 | |
It's a state road, OK. | 01:17:10 | |
So if possible, they'll put a roundabout in. | 01:17:14 | |
Which will limit their access to AD cell and a turning lane to about 300 feet. | 01:17:17 | |
Currently there's a traffic problem on Hwy. 15. | 01:17:23 | |
If you do all that, I believe there will certainly be a safety issue on Hwy. 15. | 01:17:26 | |
I understand about local city, that seems like a great idea. | 01:17:32 | |
I don't think this is what's going to be achieved here. | 01:17:36 | |
If you want to cross Highway 15 pedestrian exit, go ahead. You need to go down to Bar Shoals Rd. if you want to try to shoot the | 01:17:38 | |
gap. Good luck. | 01:17:41 | |
There's no plans for a crossing on the Greenway. Greenway is not actually even in existence yet. There are currently no plans to | 01:17:45 | |
buy that, according to the Board of Commissioners I talked to. | 01:17:49 | |
The other thing that concerns me is that they are going to try to build a roundabout to connect to the property next door. I can | 01:17:55 | |
only assume that they're going to want to put. | 01:17:59 | |
Residential units there as well. All this is known. Commercial corridor is currently industrial is being used for industrial | 01:18:04 | |
purposes. | 01:18:07 | |
I don't think it's fair for those guys have been here for a long time. | 01:18:11 | |
Mr. The weather has been eight years. I don't think it's right if somebody gets moving next to him and complained. Hey, man, I | 01:18:14 | |
don't like him banging on his ribs at night when I'm trying to sleep, OK? | 01:18:19 | |
To also say that. | 01:18:24 | |
For commissioners does not grant sewer capacity for residential development. | 01:18:26 | |
That might change in future, but currently that is our policy. So you walk so has the opportunity to do that. We have a finite | 01:18:30 | |
amount of that. We grant 48,000 gallons or 45, whatever it is to this development, we have to grant it to the one next door. | 01:18:36 | |
Eventually when they run the rest of the industry out of here, we won't have any sewer capacity to grant to them. We rent them out | 01:18:42 | |
and we left them with work this property. OK, that's not fair, that's not right. | 01:18:49 | |
There is a proposed development or a proposed bypass that is, that is coming eventually. I say we'll wait till it gets here. | 01:18:55 | |
Walk as it's been here for 150 years. It'll be a lot longer after all of us, OK? | 01:19:03 | |
I don't believe the timing is good for this. It's not good for Watkins. It's not good for the citizens of Watkinsville. We can | 01:19:09 | |
wait for this. We can come up with a better time and a better solution that fits the time and Watkinsville. | 01:19:15 | |
Thank you. | 01:19:21 | |
Thank you, Mr. Smith. | 01:19:22 | |
My name is Marvin. Only a little bit. | 01:19:31 | |
106 Morrison St. adjacent to this particular host project over here. | 01:19:33 | |
This project, I'm an economic development with Athens Technical College and we need to look at studies, we look at ways that | 01:19:40 | |
business can increase for the Northeast Georgia area and we can in Watkinsville. And of course, yes, I am like anybody else quite | 01:19:46 | |
concerned about the traffic flow. But again, I looked at this project, I sit down with the developer, several of us have sit down | 01:19:52 | |
with developers several times over and looked at this and talked about this, this new proposal now where he's condensed it with | 01:19:58 | |
regard to the commercial development. | 01:20:04 | |
Time at this time. | 01:20:10 | |
Windows my support for this particular project and looked at development. I've lived there all my life. Yes, I have to deal with | 01:20:14 | |
the traffic of people walking, driving their cars in the morning way to school. I walk about 5:00 every morning, cut across 15 | 01:20:19 | |
highway in the morning and walk. | 01:20:24 | |
And do my 5-6 miles and come back home, take a shot and go to work. | 01:20:29 | |
The amazing thing about this particular project, again, is sense of community, a sense of bringing people together. Yes, it can be | 01:20:33 | |
an opportunity for people who who who would normally leave Oconee County because they can't afford property of $500,000 house like | 01:20:39 | |
Detroit, which is right in front of my house. | 01:20:44 | |
OK. And that's against that. It's great, it's wonderful. But here's another opportunity for a businessman. | 01:20:50 | |
To put his foot, his stamp. He can't wait 150 years now. He won't be here 150 years from now. | 01:20:58 | |
To do this particular development. | 01:21:04 | |
And who knows what will come, Some guys come from Atlanta to develop this particular property, which would be out of the realms of | 01:21:07 | |
what we want, make it look like anything that we want here in Oconee County. I dare say that this, if not now, when now is the | 01:21:13 | |
time. And yes, the traffic the the, the outer perimeters are coming with regard to the outer bypass we've been talking about for | 01:21:19 | |
years is now finally on the way. Some money has been appropriated for that $20 million to be exact. | 01:21:26 | |
$20 million to be exact, to get this ball rolling with the outer furniture that's going to be here for Athens, but for | 01:21:32 | |
Watkinsville, Georgia. So now I say now is the time, City Council, now is the time to approve this particular project. And yes, | 01:21:40 | |
you know, again, it's part of growth. Growth is not always good with some things change, time changes. Why would you obviously | 01:21:47 | |
change? I've been here some 65 years and watched it change an awful lot. I say approve this project now. | 01:21:54 | |
Thank you, Mr. Nunn. | 01:22:02 | |
Hi, I'm Karina Martin. I live outside of the city, down the street in Pebble Creek subdivision. | 01:22:09 | |
I actually had three questions for the developer. Should I ask you guys? I would just ask as part of your comments. And then if he | 01:22:15 | |
chooses to address him, then I think I'm looking at the map correctly, it looks like there'll only be one entrance going into the | 01:22:23 | |
neighborhood off of 15. That's correct. OK. And then my second thing is plans change and right now I think there's 126 apartments. | 01:22:30 | |
Could this change overnight and they decide to pull some of the single family homes, any of the town? | 01:22:37 | |
And then double the size of the apartments, which would double families living there. They can't. The numbers are locked in with | 01:22:45 | |
the development agreement. And then my third thing is when you said that the schools are not being impacted right now, they're on | 01:22:52 | |
a decrease. Did you consider the Wire Park Community or does that include what we're projecting for the Wire Park Community? | 01:22:58 | |
Because I believe that once that is completed and we do understand how it's going to impact. | 01:23:04 | |
The schools. | 01:23:11 | |
Or does that include the projection of Wire Park Community? Chad and Frank, when y'all come back up, if y'all can address that | 01:23:14 | |
question, please. And then I do want to say, I think it's looking like a beautiful community. I've heard everyone here tonight and | 01:23:20 | |
I think it sounds great. But I also agree that the timing is just not right. I would like to see Wire part completed, see what | 01:23:25 | |
kind of impact is going to have. I'd love to see that bypass started and I think for a lot of people who are going through | 01:23:31 | |
traffic. | 01:23:37 | |
I'm from Atlanta, born and raised. I know what traffic is and I don't consider this to be horrible situation but. | 01:23:43 | |
We are perpetually in traffic a lot, a lot more now than we were five years ago. We are experiencing experience station right now. | 01:23:50 | |
And it just seems like I don't want to spend the next five years of my life trying to get to Publix or trying to get to, you know, | 01:23:57 | |
the park over at VP trying to get through all this traffic. So if we can minimize that, it would really bring a better quality for | 01:24:03 | |
those of us who are living here now. Thank you, Miss Martin. | 01:24:10 | |
Hi, I'm Susanna Hymel. I live at 1340 Twin Oaks Trail outside the city. | 01:24:21 | |
I wanted to come talk about form based zoning. There's been much discussion about the rezoned proposals for the old pipe plant. | 01:24:27 | |
Most people are confused about the rezoning plans and the increase in people and traffic and the development that will bring to | 01:24:34 | |
the city. Why the push? Push for high density and mixed-use development. We already have one one apartment complex and apartments | 01:24:40 | |
coming to Wall Park. | 01:24:46 | |
Wire Park. Pardon me, The answer is that the city's adoption of form based zoning, which promotes healthy equitable development | 01:24:53 | |
through high density housing. | 01:24:58 | |
Think apartments, flats, duplexes, cottages and away from single family homes. The city adopted form based zoning 16 years ago per | 01:25:03 | |
their residential corridor Design ordinance passed April of this year. | 01:25:10 | |
Form based zoning allowance. It allows any parcel in the community to be used for housing, quickly increasing housing development | 01:25:19 | |
in an area, unlike conventional zoning which we had before, which includes controls that dictate low density sprawl. | 01:25:26 | |
In addition, form based zoning encourages the shift away from driving and car ownership towards transit, biking and walking. | 01:25:35 | |
Form based zoning primarily regulates the form of the building. | 01:25:43 | |
The alert Theoretically any use can inhabit a building, only the exterior form of the building is restricted. In addition, form | 01:25:47 | |
based zoning removes the requirement for hearings on rezones for things like multi family housing as any housing type is allowed | 01:25:53 | |
in the structure. | 01:25:58 | |
What effect will this high density zoning have in our communities and schools? We are currently a single family owner occupied | 01:26:05 | |
city and county. What will our community look like when development is unbridled and any building can be used for housing? | 01:26:11 | |
The city approves this most recent rezone of the pipeline. We will find out. | 01:26:19 | |
Is this what we want for our city? I see small town charm evaporating with the continued passage of this type of development. | 01:26:25 | |
Thank you. | 01:26:33 | |
Thank you, Mrs. Heimlich. | 01:26:35 | |
Next up. | 01:26:38 | |
My name is Wyler Hecht and I live in the city limits. I moved here in the late 80s. | 01:26:44 | |
A couple of things. I understand where how people are saying that we don't have a terrible, terrible traffic problem, but do we | 01:26:51 | |
want to get there? We do have a traffic problem here. I know we do. | 01:27:00 | |
I don't want to end up with a traffic problem that's any bigger than the one we have now. | 01:27:09 | |
As far as Watkinsville becoming a more walkable town, I would love to see that happen. I would love to see it more walkable and | 01:27:15 | |
more bikeable, but we would need to pass. | 01:27:22 | |
Bike lanes, which we've tried to do, but we have failed to do that and we're not Watkinsville is never going to be a Madison. I | 01:27:30 | |
have a property in downtown Madison as well and I. | 01:27:36 | |
So I spend a good bit of time there and Madison is, is a square, a, an Old Town square with streets that go off the edges of the | 01:27:44 | |
square. And there's plenty of places to park and get out of your car and walk around. But Watkinsville is never going to look like | 01:27:52 | |
that because we just simply don't have that kind of. | 01:28:01 | |
We we don't, we don't have that that. | 01:28:10 | |
Design in Watkinsville and we do have bottlenecks already, so. | 01:28:13 | |
I agree with the people who have said. | 01:28:20 | |
It is about timing. We don't have wire. | 01:28:25 | |
It inhabited yet and I personally foresee a tremendous amount more traffic when I spoke to somebody months ago. | 01:28:30 | |
Someone said to me, well, it's not our traffic, it's traffic from other counties. And it's not fair, you know, to to say that we | 01:28:42 | |
can't make a development. But it doesn't matter where the cars are coming from, if they're here, they're here. We have to deal | 01:28:48 | |
with it. We've got to deal with it. | 01:28:54 | |
So that's my two cents. Thank you very much. Thank you, Doctor Heck. | 01:29:01 | |
Next up. | 01:29:07 | |
Is that it? | 01:29:14 | |
All right. | 01:29:17 | |
OK, we got OK. | 01:29:19 | |
Come forward. | 01:29:21 | |
What's that? | 01:29:27 | |
Kaylin Ashford. I live in within the city limits. | 01:29:29 | |
I am actually for the expansion of a downtown corridor and residential area. I enjoy a city being walkable. My husband and I have | 01:29:34 | |
lived in a lot of different areas that have been walkable and it's. | 01:29:42 | |
It does provide a sense of community I would say. The only question I have is. | 01:29:50 | |
About the density of the proposed plan, I think that's one thing that I'm concerned about. And then also. | 01:29:56 | |
If approved with this plan be final. I think the other thing I'm concerned with is while we increase the amount of people in | 01:30:06 | |
within downtown Watkinsville, we would not have. | 01:30:13 | |
More commercial space or retail space and I specifically think about. | 01:30:23 | |
I mean down the street nothings in five points the math is building for example. | 01:30:28 | |
Created some commercial space and then have they have apartments and it's great for that particular community. I think it's | 01:30:33 | |
expanded the area where people can. | 01:30:38 | |
Walk to and shop at and has provided value to the community. So I guess my question is, would this be the final plan, et cetera? I | 01:30:45 | |
think we'll probably address that through council questions and comments. But Yep, it's in in Chad and Frank, if you all want to | 01:30:51 | |
respond any of that when you all come up you can. | 01:30:57 | |
OK, any further? | 01:31:05 | |
Dana Blair I live in the city limits and obviously I would much rather see some kind of housing there probably instead of a. | 01:31:10 | |
Golden Pantry. | 01:31:22 | |
Or a car wash or a But my main thing is the density. I just think it's too many people squeezed into a small, you know, 17 acres | 01:31:23 | |
isn't that big for that many housing. | 01:31:31 | |
Things and so it's really, it's really for me it's just about the density. | 01:31:39 | |
Thank you. | 01:31:45 | |
All right. With that, I don't see anybody else stepping forward. We'll close the public hearing. We will move the question back | 01:32:17 | |
behind the rail. That will allow Mr. Pittman and Mr. Keller to come forward, address, use the last of your 3 minutes, then will | 01:32:22 | |
formally close the hearing and bring it back behind the rail for Q&A. | 01:32:27 | |
Thank you. I'm going to try to speak on on some of the comments I heard and if I miss somebody, I apologize. I tried to take as as | 01:32:38 | |
many notes as I could I. | 01:32:42 | |
We heard a lot about traffic in a bypass and and you know, there's been a lot of conversation about that. I do think that | 01:32:47 | |
obviously I think everybody in this room understands that a lot of a bypass around Watkinsville is very important. Whether or not | 01:32:54 | |
this project is approved here tonight, I think that everybody in this room needs to continue to to call this body to call county | 01:33:00 | |
commissioners, to call your state reps and push for this bypass because. | 01:33:07 | |
With or without this project, that bypass needs to happen. It needs to happen. It needs to happen fast. | 01:33:14 | |
And only way to get there is to is to be the the squeaky wheel. I do want to mention a couple of touch on a couple of of questions | 01:33:18 | |
and comments. | 01:33:24 | |
There was a comment, Mr. Leigh mentioned that that Wire Park was the biggest household in Watkinsville. I guess I would argue that | 01:33:30 | |
this existing site as it sits today is the biggest eyesore in Watkinsville. You've got an abandoned industrial site that's with a | 01:33:37 | |
with a chain link fence around it that is your entryway into Watkinsville. It should be nice to have a nice development there. | 01:33:44 | |
There was a bunch of comments on timing. As my client mentioned, timing isn't great. As I mentioned earlier there, there are a lot | 01:33:52 | |
of there are a lot of different types of developments that allow by right. They're not going to wait for a bypass to come in And | 01:33:59 | |
four, 5-6 years from now we've got the opportunity to to approve something nice on this property today that that may not be | 01:34:07 | |
allowed to be to come to you guys next time. And I understand they may have to ask for sewer they can. | 01:34:14 | |
Also do developmental septic without coming to you guys asking for sewer. So don't don't be I would ask that don't be blind by by | 01:34:22 | |
timing. Timing isn't always great, but but something's going to come here and it's not going to wait for a bypass the. | 01:34:30 | |
You know, Dan mentioned having to drive this corridor every day. I live in South Oconee also drive this corridor every day. It is | 01:34:42 | |
bad for about 30 minutes in the morning and it clears up. My school's not in. It's like Christmas Day going through downtown | 01:34:49 | |
Watkinsville again, the bypass is, is very, very important there. There's a question about school projections. The number, the the | 01:34:56 | |
data I threw out or actual numbers, not projections. So no, that does not take into account projections. | 01:35:03 | |
Of different projects, but it also doesn't take into account projections of people leaving the county, which has been happening | 01:35:10 | |
for school age families over the last few years. And that's that's a decrease in the number of students. | 01:35:15 | |
The. | 01:35:22 | |
That was a question about a roundabout and I know that's been talked about. We, we did not, we are not proposing a roundabout | 01:35:23 | |
here. I think everybody would probably like that, but that's not, that's not proposed for this project. | 01:35:29 | |
Can I make one quick statement? One quick statement and we'll have you back up. I'll end on this. We've heard from a lot of people | 01:35:37 | |
tonight. The people that that surround this property is the best I could hurt that. Live on Main Street, live on Marson St. live | 01:35:43 | |
on Colin Ferry and Colin Ferry extension have all spoken favor of this. They're the neighbors to this property. I would ask you | 01:35:49 | |
guys to listen to the neighbors and ask for y'all's motive of approval tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pittman. | 01:35:55 | |
All right now, I'll close our public hearing. At this point, I think if Mr. Pittman and Mr. Keller want to come forward, I imagine | 01:36:02 | |
Council will have some questions for y'all. | 01:36:06 | |
In a minute, I do want to offer. | 01:36:11 | |
Just some background, we've had a lot of comments made about traffic and other things. | 01:36:14 | |
You know, a lot of people said, well, what's the deal with the bypass? What's the update? | 01:36:20 | |
I do think it's important to note the Governor Kemp and G dot appropriated 14.5 million in July to accelerate engineering and | 01:36:25 | |
right away acquisition on that road. That's in addition to a previously some previous work. There's also additional dollars | 01:36:31 | |
committed through May court that may have been what Mr. Nunnally was referring to in terms of the 20 million that road is likely | 01:36:38 | |
to be done in the early twenty 30s. So and that would reduce traffic through Watkins followed by as much as 25 to 35%. | 01:36:45 | |
And I hear everybody here who said solve the traffic problem. The reality is there's not resources with this government to solve | 01:36:52 | |
that problem. | 01:36:56 | |
I understand what Doctor Heck was talking about too. That it's not. Some of us are traffic, most of it is not. | 01:37:01 | |
With a $3,000,000 budget there, there is nothing we can do to solve the traffic problem. Thankfully the state is committed at this | 01:37:07 | |
point to helping us and helping us solve that problem. When you remove that much traffic off of your Main St. corridor, it does | 01:37:13 | |
free up Simonton Bridge. It's going to free up a lot of those other the Barnett Shoals jams and the other thing. So that is that's | 01:37:19 | |
going to be really big for Watkinsville. I think this entire group is focused our attention aggressively on. | 01:37:25 | |
Encouraging that project to be passed. | 01:37:32 | |
Whether this is voted up or down tonight, again, that's been our prime transportation priority because we recognize without that. | 01:37:35 | |
So I hope when there are additional public meetings regarding the bypass that every one of you will be there to support that and | 01:37:41 | |
understand how important that is to the future of downtown Watkinsville because that there is frankly nothing more important to | 01:37:47 | |
the future health of our retailers and all of our sites than getting that road done. | 01:37:52 | |
I do think it's important to highlight what's changed and Mr. Keller's proposal. Almost all the commercial components did come | 01:37:59 | |
out. There's no market rate housing, there's no grocery store, there's no office. You guys touched on that. | 01:38:05 | |
Getting a sewer connection to our neighbors on column ferry extension is important. I don't think you guys directly address that, | 01:38:13 | |
but we do have a road that does not have access to sewer right now and has failing septic tanks. | 01:38:19 | |
The county has given us a huge number to connect that to sewer. As a reminder, we don't control sewer. We don't get revenue off of | 01:38:26 | |
sewer, but we've been asked to pay for that. And it's, it's a, it's a huge number for what we can do. | 01:38:31 | |
I don't anticipate us being able to do that. The developer has committed to sidewalks connecting all the way around Morrison St. I | 01:38:38 | |
don't think that was mentioned earlier, but that is that is in the development agreement, meaning you could walk safely from this | 01:38:44 | |
project all the way back around to Trove. | 01:38:49 | |
And I do think it's easy to overlook that this isn't it's, it's a little bit invisible right now to those of us who live here. I | 01:38:57 | |
can tell you to those who don't live here, this is an eyesore. | 01:39:01 | |
But there's a lot of unknowns. The South main access, the future of the rail line and what G dot will allow is unknown. | 01:39:06 | |
We're naive to think that this won't worsen traffic until the bypass opens. It will. And I don't like the way the apartments sit | 01:39:14 | |
on the site. I've told the developer that and I hope that if this passes tonight that the site plan would be modified. But at the | 01:39:20 | |
end of the day, I don't vote. Sometimes I miss it, sometimes I don't. Tonight I don't. This is this is a, this will be a tough, | 01:39:25 | |
this will be a tough vote for the council members. But ultimately you all have hit on the thing. This is a timing. It's a matter | 01:39:31 | |
of timing. | 01:39:36 | |
And council has several duties that go about go beyond worrying about anyone thing, whether it's traffic or design. | 01:39:43 | |
Council has to think about what's best for the long term. Something will be built on this site. | 01:39:48 | |
And several people have touched on it. A lot can be built under the current zoning. Retirement communities, daycare centers, gas | 01:39:53 | |
stations, industrial uses, warehouses, large scale light industry, large scale retail centers, nursing homes and more. | 01:39:59 | |
So a lot could happen here. | 01:40:06 | |
Then that that that does not count against our capacity allowance. So I did want to address that. There was discussion around form | 01:40:39 | |
based zoning that wasn't that was a process we did with tremendous input from people from across the city who participated in that | 01:40:46 | |
conversation and decided we do want to be walkable. We do want to be bikable. We do want to have buildings that respect the | 01:40:52 | |
street. We do want to have buildings that continue to look like our downtown. Is that quarters built out. | 01:40:59 | |
You know, and I do agree with what Miss Heck said, we won't ever be Madison. We love to look at Madison, but we don't have the | 01:41:07 | |
street grid. But we're going to be, we need to be the best Watkinsville can be. Usually this council is aligned on that. We may | 01:41:11 | |
not be tonight. That's OK. I think we're all thinking about it with our own perspective. So with that council, if you have | 01:41:16 | |
questions for the applicant or something you'd want to say, I'd encourage you to do that. Now. We'll move through that, then we'll | 01:41:21 | |
move to the vote. | 01:41:26 | |
So. | 01:41:34 | |
My understanding is that the. | 01:41:38 | |
Our vote tonight is rezoning to allow for something like this. | 01:41:44 | |
Agreeing on the development agreement and that the total number of units are. | 01:41:51 | |
Not going to be maximized. I'm sure they would could be is that? | 01:41:59 | |
This would be the maximum number of you. | 01:42:04 | |
The only flexibility is the potential for 10,000 square feet of right and that and that was one of the things because the so | 01:42:07 | |
because I did hear from some of the people who were. | 01:42:11 | |
In favor but we're disappointed that there wasn't commercial but they're actually it's not showing here but there is 10,000 of | 01:42:16 | |
commercial. After the Thursday night meeting the developer agreed that there could be the potential for 10,000 square feet of | 01:42:22 | |
commercial as a part of this. So not large scale commercial, but small little coffee shop that kind of stuff and that would be on | 01:42:27 | |
the front of. | 01:42:33 | |
At 15, is that how the development agreements worded? That's correct. It's correct. And also note to this, this site plan, we've | 01:42:40 | |
been working on this for a year. We we came back after we pulled this. I've spent a lot of money with designers and and Niles | 01:42:47 | |
Bolton and I asked them to to get me a site plan and and this isn't the final site plan. The numbers can't go up. I really want to | 01:42:55 | |
get engaged with the citizens of this community and talk to them on architectural design on on what. | 01:43:02 | |
Boutique shops, they want what kind of restaurants, boutique restaurants or coffee shops or bakeries that they would like to see. | 01:43:10 | |
And yes, all the commercial would be along the frontage. And one other thing real quick I wanted to point out as far as timing | 01:43:16 | |
goes, sewer capacity is not available to, I'm hearing December 25 end of the year. And so we wouldn't start. So we have a whole | 01:43:22 | |
year to, to get this right. We have a whole year to work with the citizens to get something that can be of value to this city and | 01:43:28 | |
we have a whole year. | 01:43:33 | |
To get the site plan right, so it doesn't look bad or doesn't. That pleases as many people as we can and we have a whole year to | 01:43:40 | |
figure it out, then six months to a year of design work with architecture firms and then 18 to 24 months of construction. So we | 01:43:46 | |
will not be open until 20, end of 2028, beginning of 29, probably the best case scenario. So that will play into and help with the | 01:43:53 | |
2030 projection of that traffic. | 01:43:59 | |
Help and and just this isn't going to start tomorrow. | 01:44:06 | |
So there is, there is a lot of design, a lot of architecture, a lot of stuff that the council members still have to vote on and | 01:44:10 | |
still approve before we can ever get a building permit. | 01:44:14 | |
Can you explain why you're doing this now? I think that's a question everybody has. | 01:44:20 | |
I don't think anybody up here wishes it was now so so I am not the owner of the property currently. | 01:44:26 | |
Mark Jennings owns the property and he's owned the property for quite some time. I've had it under contract for over a year now. | 01:44:34 | |
He's been gracious to give me extension after extension after extension and. And he told me when when I pulled the last project | 01:44:39 | |
because. | 01:44:45 | |
We didn't have the support and it wasn't what the city residents wanted, he said. | 01:44:50 | |
Come with a lower density project, see if you can work, have some town hall meetings, see if you can get a consensus. And that's | 01:44:56 | |
what we did. And so we got an extension till this month, but this was it. He wouldn't give me any more extensions if, if I could | 01:45:04 | |
lock this project up for two more years and not buy it, I'd love to because I can't start on this tomorrow anyway. And so really I | 01:45:11 | |
am taking a huge risk and, and banking money and land that's unbuildable for cents because the capacity is not there and so. | 01:45:19 | |
So I just feel like that this is a passion project for me. I feel like it's in my hometown and I feel like that it's something | 01:45:26 | |
that I want to be a part of. I want to be involved with the community and work to give something that the city of Watkinsville | 01:45:34 | |
loves. And that's why it's being pushed to vote now. He is not going to hold this project and property forever. | 01:45:41 | |
And I can't say that I'll blame him. He's definitely not gonna wait on me or or wait on the city. So this he will go a different | 01:45:49 | |
direction and, and rightfully so. | 01:45:53 | |
Thank you, Council. | 01:45:59 | |
So with the the the bit of commercial on 15 also residential could be above that. So if some of the commercial, some of the | 01:46:05 | |
residential is moved above the commercial. | 01:46:10 | |
It could lower the density inside of the. I mean, that would change, yes. So after Thursday's meeting when we when we heard from | 01:46:16 | |
the citizens and. | 01:46:21 | |
They really wanted some boutique commercial and coffee shops and stuff. I really envisioned some buildings being along 15 with | 01:46:25 | |
that 10,000 square feet and and the buildings that are centrally located here going away. More green space which will allow for | 01:46:31 | |
the buildings to be over the commercial. Use the space along the road. That's not great green space. Nobody wants their kids | 01:46:37 | |
running along the road or playing balls going into the road. Use that space for the building. Sort of like the old plan. | 01:46:43 | |
Something of a splash pad or or a. | 01:47:50 | |
A little small. | 01:47:54 | |
Thing that kids can play in on, on hot days, whether it's just a green turf, long to meet, throw the football, whatever, whatever | 01:47:56 | |
they decide is what we're going to do. We've got a lot of time to get this project right, which is exciting and and that's our | 01:48:01 | |
that's our intention. | 01:48:07 | |
And so obviously a year of, if this passes, of community input, but the design does come before Council for a vote. Is that also | 01:48:13 | |
clear in the development agreement? | 01:48:19 | |
There is there is some minimum standards if this thing changes one parking spot. | 01:48:25 | |
In other words, I want to add the commercial. So it's got to come back in front of and when it comes back in front of you guys to | 01:48:32 | |
approve where we're putting the commercial and the new locations, none of the quantities of any of the density changes. But when | 01:48:38 | |
it comes back in front of you to change that, then I expect to have samples of architecture, pictures, renderings, I expect to | 01:48:45 | |
have all of it. And that's what we'll present for you to vote when we make the change, so. | 01:48:52 | |
As far as anything goes along the front, if anything change on this plan, it's got to go back in front of you guys to vote on. The | 01:48:59 | |
only thing that's permitted that cannot change is any of the density. | 01:49:04 | |
Go up if you agree the development plan and it says there's 126 units, he can't go up now he could go down I mean, but he can't go | 01:49:40 | |
up. So there's certain things that are locked in, but there's still additional as I said, y'all done this many times already they | 01:49:46 | |
come back, they have to get your you have to give approval for all those things. So there's still additional this is just sort of | 01:49:52 | |
a conceptual so that he can move forward with additional design and more detail for the public so. | 01:49:58 | |
Council. | 01:50:09 | |
I guess this do you Sharon Little pointer for clarification. So if we get 100,000 gallons in 2025. | 01:50:14 | |
We give them 50,000 gallons. | 01:50:23 | |
That that gives us 50,000 gallons for the rest of. | 01:50:26 | |
Forever until they decide to build another sewer plant. | 01:50:31 | |
Yes, but also no. So if there is a development of regional impact, the agreement with the city, if there's something that came in | 01:50:37 | |
really large, let's say I am, I is going to vacate, they're going to come in and they create perhaps it there's a reason for that | 01:50:43 | |
property, who knows. I mean, anything could happen. We can still, we still have the option to go back to the county and work with | 01:50:49 | |
them on a project. So yes and no. You will only have 50,000 roughly. | 01:50:55 | |
Left I think. | 01:51:02 | |
It comes out of the counties only residential. | 01:51:34 | |
Hypothetical that this was to. | 01:51:38 | |
Become all commercial, all industrial. This would be free chicken. No, no, we would have to pay for this. This actual this lot is | 01:51:41 | |
not part of that of that area. It's only Jerry Smith on the on the. | 01:51:47 | |
Almost southwest side, West side of 15 and then the industrial park and water park. Those are the only three areas that were | 01:51:54 | |
agreed to for that and that was back in 20/20/2019. | 01:51:59 | |
Use that capacity because we don't have a lot of it. | 01:52:35 | |
Great question. | 01:52:39 | |
So is this time for comments too or just if we're done with questions, we can certainly move on to comments and then, then we can | 01:52:46 | |
call the vote. Do we have other questions? And I know if you have other questions after comments, that's fine too. So we could on | 01:52:51 | |
the wastewater capacity that's actually a. | 01:52:55 | |
Big concern I have. | 01:53:01 | |
Is that it can prohibit us from maybe there's some other smaller projects that add up that we think are good? | 01:53:03 | |
That we want to have, we're letting them. We can't do them if we don't have the capacity because we're talking about 48,500 here | 01:53:10 | |
and if we're going to add 10,000 commercial on top of that, that's going to take our wastewater to could be 60 yet. | 01:53:18 | |
I'm not sure what is that. | 01:53:25 | |
I'm just saying we've got the 48,000 we're committing and then if we're talking about. | 01:53:59 | |
Allowing an additional 10,000 square feet commercial that's going to take additional wastewater capacity. Yeah, absolutely. What | 01:54:05 | |
I'm getting at is that we're going to be at 50 or 60,000, which is since it's 100,000, that's easy. It's 50 to 60% of our future | 01:54:11 | |
capacity and then if other projects. | 01:54:18 | |
Come along that hey, maybe we think maybe they're in a. | 01:54:24 | |
Better location for for growth like Wisteria Ridge works out. I think it's an asset to the community even though I know at first a | 01:54:29 | |
lot of people thought it. But because of the location where it is, it has zero impact on the city of Watkinsville. Everyone in | 01:54:36 | |
there goes to a Publix direction or goes to Athens. And it's nice seeing, you know, 15 kids get off the bus. | 01:54:44 | |
So it's not the apartments for college students, it's families and. | 01:54:52 | |
I don't have an issue with it at all. The. | 01:54:58 | |
The concern I have here is that we've got. | 01:55:02 | |
Traffic, yes, but everyone has to turn left out of here. | 01:55:05 | |
And that's not easy to do. And that's your really only option if you turn, if you go north in the street. | 01:55:10 | |
I'm in a unique position. I live on Main Street and I have a business on Lewiston Street, so I'm on both sides of the equation | 01:55:17 | |
here or whatever and I'm not against it. I, I, I would like to see it be smaller. | 01:55:23 | |
And Lewis is not designed to have additional traffic. We've got a lot of homes and trolls. That neighborhood is doing great. It's | 01:55:30 | |
good to see what this neighborhood people are going to want to cut down Trove. It's going to be more soon to call them. Ferry to | 01:55:36 | |
Main Street is not designed to to handle that traffic at 90° corner is. | 01:55:42 | |
An obstacle course. | 01:55:49 | |
But the waste, what I think is, is a real big thing to think about as a community. Do you want to commit? | 01:55:53 | |
Probably 60% of our future wastewater capacity to 1 project. | 01:56:00 | |
You know, in a project, it's a. That's a big question for me. I. | 01:56:06 | |
So I kind of think about the project from the standpoint of wastewater capacity. | 01:56:12 | |
Could we? Is it a doable project if we say OK even we got? | 01:56:18 | |
35,000 gallons. Can you adjust it, maybe take the residential down? People have spoke about some like the idea of some commercial | 01:56:23 | |
or whether it's a restaurant, cafe or whatever, which I think would be an asset to this location. But I don't like the fact that | 01:56:30 | |
we're going to go from 48 and keep going up, adding more. | 01:56:36 | |
Because then we can't do anything else. | 01:56:43 | |
But I don't know if it's a viable project. If we say, OK, we're going to. | 01:56:46 | |
In one aspect, we don't care about the number of units. You've got this much water and that means you've got to divide between | 01:56:51 | |
residential and commercial. | 01:56:55 | |
How it makes the numbers work? | 01:57:00 | |
I don't know if that. | 01:57:03 | |
And that that's how I kind of look at it and I'm not against it, but I think it's too much of that location. | 01:57:05 | |
Spoken to that's kind of their concerns like well we don't I. | 01:57:12 | |
Not against development, we just think that's a little bit more than that location can handle. | 01:57:17 | |
So my thought is can we reduce it add the commercial because I'm able to use kind of mentioned that that that has come up at time | 01:57:23 | |
and time again that that was one component they kind of liked, but that it was way too dense. But I don't know is it a viable | 01:57:29 | |
project that. | 01:57:34 | |
A smaller wastewater capacity number. | 01:57:40 | |
So so the original plan was near 70,000 gallons per day, 69,070 thousand with 10,000 square feet of boutique commercials. Some of | 01:57:45 | |
the commercial spots may just have a bathroom, which would be 260 gallons or 200 and a gallon. So I think potentially the the | 01:57:52 | |
maximum if if all that was a 10,000 square foot restaurant would be a couple 1000 gallons towards the kitchen, 250 thousand. So a | 01:57:59 | |
quick, quick thing is we. | 01:58:06 | |
This thing down as low as we could drop it down based on the amount of money we're paying for the dirt. The only way we can lower | 01:58:13 | |
it down any more than that is if Mark. | 01:58:18 | |
Took less money because it just wasn't viable work and so we dropped this thing as low as we could go to come back to give the | 01:58:24 | |
city an opportunity to make a decision on a nice mixed-use development here or either or what they can or or a industrial what | 01:58:32 | |
what is zoned by right. And so that's that's what got us here. But I I completely agree with you that. | 01:58:39 | |
The limited sewer capacity is a good thing and it's a bad thing. But I will point out too, it is this is the last piece of | 01:58:48 | |
property of this size that of this magnitude in the city of Watkinsville. And and I don't see there being any more developments | 01:58:55 | |
more than than 10 or 12 units, these little infill one acre, 2 acre spots that's able to be developed and having 50,000 gallons of | 01:59:01 | |
sewer left. | 01:59:08 | |
You can put. | 01:59:15 | |
Almost another 250 units own infill. So I think that would that would take us a long way. As far as the agreement, yeah, I mean, I | 01:59:17 | |
struggle because I like the idea of someone who lives in Oconee County wanting to develop and improve Oconee County. So it's it is | 01:59:24 | |
a struggle from that standpoint. Jeff, let me mention this too. And and you know, we kind of touched on this, but if under the | 01:59:30 | |
existing zoning. | 01:59:37 | |
If an industrial project were to come there today, they they likely could easily use a whole 100,000 gallons to pay. | 01:59:44 | |
I'm sorry, I mean, they, an industrial project on the on the site this size is going to easily use all the 100,000 and may even | 01:59:50 | |
need more than that. So yes, I I understand the concern, but there, there's some by right projects that were to use even more than | 01:59:56 | |
what this is proposing, but they would have to get approval. It would, I mean, but I mean, if, if a project comes of an industrial | 02:00:03 | |
project comes along, I mean, that's, that's a discussion that I mean, do you want to have to turn that down too? | 02:00:10 | |
Because of sewer. So I mean, yeah, I, I, I kind of wish we had more time, which of course we don't, because I really thought, I | 02:00:18 | |
really thought I would. I was very happy I had that meeting Thursday. It was positive, it was respectful. There were people on | 02:00:23 | |
both sides and it was very nice to see. It was kind of the opposite of what I thought it was going to be going into it. | 02:00:29 | |
I wish we would have had that meeting three months ago. | 02:00:35 | |
I think we would be at a different location today had we had that meeting three months ago. I think this. | 02:00:38 | |
Plan could have been modified a little bit more and I think we'd have more. | 02:00:46 | |
Support here. This is my thought, but I thought that was a great meeting to have. I just wish it was through earlier. | 02:00:51 | |
Questions or comments? | 02:01:04 | |
I don't have any. I have a question still. So, so I know you have repeatedly said that you would take a year and then you wouldn't | 02:01:06 | |
start until the sewer capacity was actually online, even though you wouldn't actually be using the sewer capacity until it was | 02:01:14 | |
built out maybe 18 months later. Is that? | 02:01:21 | |
Is that, I mean, I know you're saying that, but is that set in stone? Like is that like in? | 02:01:29 | |
Like since you don't need and this is like might be an engineer question, I'm just not sure the order of it. Like are you allowed | 02:01:36 | |
to start building before it's there? Are you not even allowed to start? | 02:01:40 | |
All right, I wasn't clear on that. | 02:01:47 | |
That's my right. Say that, Mark. | 02:01:53 | |
Yeah. And I think even even if there's something was waived, again, you're in real estate as well, so you understand it. I don't | 02:01:56 | |
know of any developer that would take out a construction loan to spend millions of dollars when they couldn't flush the toilet, | 02:02:01 | |
right. So, so that I think the reality is until there's wastewater capacity. | 02:02:07 | |
There, there's not anything that can be constructed because you don't the last thing you want something done and built and sitting | 02:02:14 | |
until you can occupy it. | 02:02:17 | |
To still do that. | 02:02:52 | |
Questions or comments? | 02:03:21 | |
So I got a couple comments. | 02:03:27 | |
Just doing rough numbers here of current developments that we have wire part. We talked about that a lot. That's when everything | 02:03:30 | |
is built out. That's going to be 310 brand new doors. Waters Walk is going to have 99 new doors. Trove is going to have 56 doors. | 02:03:38 | |
I think we have roughly 10 left to build. That's 465 new doors in the next two to three years. | 02:03:46 | |
With using a 1.87 per door because that's the relative math. | 02:03:55 | |
That's 870 new vehicles that will be put on the. | 02:04:02 | |
On the road for the next couple of years for just those three, the pipe plant, if we go forth with that, that's 185 brand new | 02:04:07 | |
doors, 532 new vehicles. | 02:04:13 | |
Oh oh, parking spaces so. | 02:04:21 | |
That that's just rough math with the current projects that we have and and the. | 02:04:24 | |
To show you. | 02:04:31 | |
The next couple years of what? Watkinsville. I've lived here all my life. I disagree wholeheartedly that we don't have a traffic | 02:04:33 | |
problem. I go through Watkinsville every day. It's terrible. I I really wish Watkinsville was 30 years ago where I could drive | 02:04:38 | |
through Watkinsville. | 02:04:44 | |
It's terrible. It's horrible. I actually avoid Watkinsville like the plague. I really do. I will go every round about not to go | 02:04:52 | |
through downtown Watkinsville. | 02:04:57 | |
We're talking about industrial a little bit ago, how we, we hate or we, we despise industrial. I actually welcome industrial. I, I | 02:05:05 | |
saw several of our fellow friends here tonight. I am I Taylor's Iron Oconee, Will Drawlers, service Masters. Those guys have been | 02:05:11 | |
here for a long time. They've been down that corridor for a very long time. That's what that corridor was invented for. We | 02:05:18 | |
appreciate that corridor. We actually love that corridor because they they're the money makers. | 02:05:25 | |
City The money makers for the county houses don't make money, they actually spend a bunch of money. | 02:05:33 | |
We talked about Oconee County school system. I actually text a couple of two different ones tonight while we're sitting here about | 02:05:41 | |
capacity. Oconee County Primary School and Oconee County County Elementary School are both near capacity at 750 each. And Oconee | 02:05:49 | |
County, I'm sorry, Colin Ferry is at 600 of 800. So those are the schools that are immediately in our area. | 02:05:57 | |
Oconee County high schools got a capacity of 1500 and we're only at 1200 right now, so there's 300 additional schools for that, | 02:06:06 | |
but the primary and elementary schools are both near capacity. | 02:06:11 | |
So those those are my comments. I have a. | 02:06:18 | |
I truthfully wish that we could do more. | 02:06:22 | |
Commercial or industrial? | 02:06:28 | |
That's what that's for. I don't want to see. | 02:06:31 | |
Watkinsville I don't want to see Watkinsville add more high density homes. I just don't I. | 02:06:35 | |
I truthfully didn't approve of the wisteria. Nothing gets Chad. We went to school together. I didn't approve of the wisteria | 02:06:44 | |
Ridge. I went on the council back then, but I didn't approve of that back then. | 02:06:50 | |
And. | 02:06:56 | |
I really wish I'd have known when we approved water park that it was going to become apartments because that's not what I approved | 02:06:58 | |
before I left, so I understand why it changed, but that's not what I approved before. | 02:07:03 | |
I was going for a year so. | 02:07:10 | |
I think we got enough housing. I think we got enough housing to go for the next couple years and we got plenty of traffic. | 02:07:13 | |
So. | 02:07:20 | |
So I have a few things to add. | 02:07:24 | |
And the first thing is a little nitpicky, so I'm going to get it out of the way. But we keep talking about commercial and | 02:07:29 | |
industrial and talking about them as if they're the same thing and they are not the same thing and they are zoned differently. So | 02:07:34 | |
this is zoned corridor commercial, not industrial. So I but you can't have industrial in that zone. You can have industrial, you | 02:07:39 | |
can have light industry. | 02:07:43 | |
So yeah, you can have light industrial in that so. | 02:07:50 | |
So it is encouraging to hear that column theory, which is what this would be zoned for, not the elementary or primary school does | 02:07:55 | |
have some capacity. So thanks for checking on that. | 02:08:00 | |
And and one aspect that I haven't heard anybody speak to is the, the financial. I mean you just you touched on it. | 02:08:06 | |
But the financial impact on the city, because I take very seriously the the budget of the taxpayers. I am a taxpayer. I mean, | 02:08:16 | |
everybody sitting up here is going to be affected one way or another by this project. And that is to me the beauty of of small | 02:08:24 | |
government and small city government like I, none of us are going to be immune to whatever decision gets made. | 02:08:32 | |
And so I know everybody behind this is is thinking seriously about how to vote and what to do. | 02:08:41 | |
And yes, Brian, I think this is one of the times that you are in a lucky position to not not have a vote, but. | 02:08:48 | |
But that one of the things that we have worked hard to put in the development agreement and that I very much appreciate about what | 02:08:58 | |
Chad is willing to do is there is very little to no cost to the city for this, for these residents joining in general in the city. | 02:09:07 | |
The services that the city provides with leaf and limb and trash pickup costs more than the average property tax that a | 02:09:17 | |
Watkinsville citizen pays. And one of the things about this development is the city is not going to pay for any trash services. We | 02:09:25 | |
are not paying for any leaf or limb in this community. We are not paying for any of the roads. These will be private roads that | 02:09:32 | |
the HOA will be maintaining in the future. So those are the some of the big expenses that. | 02:09:40 | |
That he has is are those and and we will not we will not be incurring those. And then another thing financially as we look at this | 02:09:47 | |
is one of our biggest revenue streams are our lost our our sales tax dollars between lost boss and T spots. Those are some of | 02:09:55 | |
that's how we are doing major projects in our city, Thomas Farm preserve the sidewalks. I mean our operating budget on lost is | 02:10:02 | |
that in my that's a huge part of it and. | 02:10:09 | |
The way that we get that is not by the number of businesses that are actually operating in the city limits of Watkinsville. The | 02:10:17 | |
way we get those revenues is our percentage of the population in comparison to the percentage of the population of Oconee County | 02:10:23 | |
as a whole. | 02:10:29 | |
And so obviously there's there's factors in here we can't completely know. I don't know exactly how many people before the next | 02:10:36 | |
census is going to be in Oconee County as a whole. There's the one development out at 78 that's kind of high density. There's one | 02:10:43 | |
that's kind of on hold. I don't know what's happening with it. But other than that, there's actually not a lot of development when | 02:10:49 | |
when the county did the plan as a whole. | 02:10:56 | |
The the plan that the community as a whole came together and looked at. | 02:11:03 | |
Was density should be in Watkinsville, That is what it was designed to do. There were a few pockets so that we don't have the | 02:11:07 | |
urban sprawl, so we don't become Gwinnett, so we don't become all of those things and so we are supposed to have the density. | 02:11:15 | |
But with the sales tax, if you notice it, I don't know how much attention you spend on the wonderful financial reports that are | 02:11:23 | |
given every month but are lost. And our spa star, she's lost that. They're not all at the same percentage because one of our | 02:11:32 | |
SPLOST was done before the last census and we actually had a higher proportion of the population and then that has dropped and so. | 02:11:40 | |
You are more of the number person than I am, but it's about a percentage. | 02:11:49 | |
Difference and that is 10s of thousands a month difference in what Watkinsville actually receives to be able to not raise property | 02:11:54 | |
taxes, to be able to provide more sidewalks, provide police services, provide the services that we provide to our citizens. And so | 02:12:01 | |
there is a financial benefit to the city of Watkinsville to have some more residential. And that by itself is not the reason to do | 02:12:08 | |
anything or not do anything but I do think. | 02:12:16 | |
Important to note that that there is a financial component because it will, there's no guarantees that it will mean we'll get more | 02:12:23 | |
percentage of in, in 20-30 when the percentages are looked at again. But it will keep us from having less. I mean it will make a | 02:12:30 | |
difference in some of our major revenue so. | 02:12:37 | |
You know, coming in tonight, I did not have a clear like I'm going to vote this way or that way. From what I had heard from | 02:12:45 | |
citizens, I was, I was leaning towards voting no. | 02:12:51 | |
Because I do take very seriously. | 02:12:57 | |
That I am a representative of the people who elected me. And so when I hear from everyone in the community, no, no, no, no. It's | 02:13:01 | |
hard for me to vote yes. | 02:13:05 | |
Tonight I have heard more yeses than knows, and so I have a lot that I'm thinking about in this and in this vote. | 02:13:10 | |
But I do want to just point out that financial aspect to this for the city and I don't know if that got to in the weeds there, but | 02:13:20 | |
there is there is a financial benefit to the city with this project and not a financial detriment to the city. | 02:13:27 | |
Thank you, Christine. | 02:13:36 | |
Any other comments or questions? | 02:13:39 | |
All right. | 02:13:44 | |
You know, I think what may be built if Mr. Keller is not approved is isn't certain. You know, we don't know when anything would be | 02:13:46 | |
built. But I do want all of you to understand one of the things I love about this council is they aren't thinking about any one | 02:13:52 | |
thing. And I think you've heard that through the discussion. They're not focused on traffic design. They're really all thinking | 02:13:57 | |
about. They all have a perspective on what's best for Watkinsville. | 02:14:03 | |
A lot of times we align, a lot of times we don't. Tonight is one of those where we probably don't. But everyone of you applies | 02:14:09 | |
your conscience, your personal knowledge, takes into account input and makes a good decision. And in the end, we all want what's | 02:14:13 | |
best for Watkinsville. | 02:14:17 | |
Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. Sometimes y'all agree, sometimes you don't. | 02:14:23 | |
But I think that says a lot that all of y'all are here made time for this vote tonight. So thanks to all of you who are going to | 02:14:27 | |
vote. And with that, I'll call the question and entertain a motion one way or the other on this project. We will do a roll call | 02:14:31 | |
vote after that motion. | 02:14:35 | |
So we're looking for a motion to. | 02:14:44 | |
Approve or deny the rezone of 1180 Greensboro Highway and the Associated Development Agreement and wastewater capacity. | 02:14:47 | |
Can I say one other thing? I'm so sorry, I know this is very long but. | 02:14:58 | |
Let's have somebody second the motion and then we'll have. | 02:15:03 | |
So go ahead with your comment. | 02:15:08 | |
I I was sitting here when Wisteria Ridge Pass and we didn't have a, there was a lot of misinformation about it. We didn't really | 02:15:14 | |
have any say. It was grandfathered in. It was what it was. | 02:15:19 | |
I remember having a lot of fear and a lot of dread about what that would do to our community. And that is what I heard from | 02:15:25 | |
citizens too. And, and they didn't come really for a vote. We really didn't have control over it and. | 02:15:31 | |
I have been pleasantly surprised about the benefits and so and what that's been talked about tonight, so I won't go over that, | 02:15:39 | |
but. | 02:15:43 | |
I just think we don't need to make decisions out of fear. I think fear is never a good place to make decisions from SO. | 02:15:47 | |
Last last thought there. | 02:15:54 | |
All right. OK. So we do need 2 separate motions. The first one would obviously be zoning with development agreement, if that, if | 02:15:56 | |
that motion passes, then we would move to the wastewater capacity allocation request. If that one fails, then the second point | 02:16:01 | |
would be unnecessary. | 02:16:06 | |
I can't make a motion, Neil. | 02:16:17 | |
Y'all gonna make me do this? | 02:16:23 | |
I make a motion. We deny the zoning development agreement. | 02:16:25 | |
Vote for 1180 Greensboro Highway. | 02:16:30 | |
We have a motion to deny. | 02:16:34 | |
2nd we have a motion in a second. | 02:16:39 | |
Any further discussion? | 02:16:42 | |
All right, we have a motion and a second. We'll do a roll call. Vote Thomas. | 02:16:46 | |
Garrett No. | 02:16:52 | |
Wait a second. The motion is to deny. So you probably want to probably want to vote yes on your motion. So all right, so let's do | 02:16:54 | |
that again, Thomas. | 02:16:59 | |
Garrett Yes, Massey. | 02:17:04 | |
Campbell. | 02:17:07 | |
For the record, go ahead. And for the record then I I'll go. | 02:17:09 | |
No, you said no. | 02:17:15 | |
You're voting opposite of them. You're saying that. OK, Tucker. | 02:17:18 | |
I think for the record now, I mean, it's a moot point, but all right. So the motion to deny the rezone carries 3/2. | 02:17:22 | |
OK. I don't think we need to worry about wastewater capacity. I. | 02:17:33 | |
And if you want to leave, you're welcome to. We've got a very brief agenda before we wrap up tonight. | 02:17:38 | |
We'll move on to appearances. We have none scheduled. We'll move to old business approval of the Christian Church lease agreement. | 02:17:45 | |
Yes, I imagine you would all right. | 02:17:54 | |
Let's give about 30 seconds for everybody to get out of here. | 02:17:58 | |
Dwayne, thanks for coming man. | 02:18:17 | |
Feel bad if I leave. It happened. This is our normal crowd. Yeah. Don't feel like you got to hang around. | 02:18:20 | |
All right, we're going to keep rolling here. | 02:18:28 | |
If anybody wants to hang around, hang around. If you're headed out, head out. | 02:18:38 | |
Just the die hards. | 02:18:43 | |
All right, we'll move on to the Christian Church lease agreement manager Dickerson and or attorney Reitman if you want to offer us | 02:18:46 | |
your report. | 02:18:50 | |
Yes, I don't have anything on the screen, but you all may recall and I probably should have written down some a little bit better | 02:18:54 | |
notes. But the in I think it was in June perhaps that we came before you with church lease agreement. The church had notified us | 02:19:02 | |
prior to the June meeting that they did not want to continue the lease agreement unless it be renegotiated. | 02:19:09 | |
When it came on the agenda, and again, I'm sorry, I should have better notes, but when it came on the agenda it was going to be at | 02:19:18 | |
the $1600 a year rate and. | 02:19:22 | |
The council approved it and that that agreement had gone to the church, but apparently there was some miscommunication and so the | 02:19:28 | |
council approved it at 1600. The church then looked at it and said that's not agreeable to us. Came back with I think 4560. It | 02:19:35 | |
worked out to like 280 or 380 a month to go back and look but for the rental of the spaces. | 02:19:42 | |
And so council then back in, I want to say it was in August again, I apologize, I'm in August. I think council then said, well, | 02:19:49 | |
we'll consider I think 25 something. So we've gone back and forth a little bit. We went what what we try to do is since that last | 02:19:56 | |
meeting go back with the lease agreement talk about. | 02:20:03 | |
You know, maintenance of the, of the parking lot, the resurfacing of it, the landscaping of it, the the feed that we would have to | 02:20:11 | |
pay per parking space, which they're requesting $20 per parking space per month. And there's 19 parking spaces. | 02:20:18 | |
And I think signage and then some requirements by our Police Department to sort of monitor that. So all those things were wrapped | 02:20:27 | |
into an agreement. We got it back to them. We did hear I think yesterday, day before yesterday that they were good with the | 02:20:32 | |
agreement, tried to, you know, make sure they knew it was on there. | 02:20:36 | |
You guys, right now what we're looking at is 8 1/2 months. So the total cost, so we budgeted 1600, but we're looking at 8 1/2 | 02:20:42 | |
months would be 3230. So almost twice as much money just to get us 8 1/2 months and we can make it happen. I don't want anybody | 02:20:49 | |
thinking we can't make it happen. We'll make some adjustments. | 02:20:55 | |
But but for a full year, it would be, you know, it would be more than that. And then this would just be getting us through the end | 02:21:03 | |
of June. | 02:21:06 | |
The agreement would only be annual or it could be renewed annually at that rate. So you guys have some options. I believe it's | 02:21:10 | |
written that way. Don't have to look real quick, but I'm pretty sure it's a renewal. I think we can annually renew or they can or | 02:21:15 | |
you can or either party can get out. I think there's a. | 02:21:20 | |
Usually there's and I know we had it before. I think there's like a 90 day or 60 day opt out. I'll, I'll look through it while you | 02:21:26 | |
are. | 02:21:29 | |
Questions. All right. Just a little more context. So that the reason we're here is the church, we had an agreement with the | 02:21:34 | |
church. They essentially were allowing us to use that parking lot in exchange for us paving that. | 02:21:38 | |
I think back in maybe the Walter administration that have been a long time, the church went back and looked at that and realized, | 02:21:43 | |
hey, you know, we were not really. | 02:21:47 | |
Getting a lot of benefit from that paving job at this point, we'd like like the city to, you know, give this back to us or | 02:21:52 | |
consider what the options were. Our former DDA director spent a lot of time with them trying to negotiate an arrangement. We | 02:21:58 | |
couldn't work anything out. I spent time with them trying to negotiate an arrangement. This is where we've landed. | 02:22:04 | |
There, there's not a lot of parking downtown. | 02:22:11 | |
I think it would be TBD what they would do with this if we didn't agree to it. But they certainly have no need to continue to | 02:22:15 | |
allow people to park there and frankly would have a liability allowing people to park there if it's not with were it not for this | 02:22:21 | |
lease with us. So that's I'll share more as we move through this conversation if we need to. Sure. Yeah. So looking at this, it is | 02:22:26 | |
4560 a year. | 02:22:32 | |
You know and. | 02:22:41 | |
They're asking us to repave the parking lot. | 02:22:42 | |
Post guards at the parking lot, if we're utilizing it there, there's quite a bit of stuff. They're not asking us to repay that and | 02:22:46 | |
I don't know where that comes from, but there's no requirement that we repay that. | 02:22:51 | |
Yeah, it's actually in here. We would be responsible for repaving and lining, right? If it needs to be repaid, it does not need to | 02:22:58 | |
be repaid. | 02:23:02 | |
I mean, what's a one year lease? | 02:23:06 | |
Yeah, I don't know that I want that in that. | 02:23:09 | |
We are, we are responsible for paving their parking lot for them. That's I don't know. | 02:23:12 | |
All right, so let's play this out. If we don't pay them anything at all and we have this wonderful event this weekend, they just | 02:23:19 | |
going to block it off and nobody can park there. | 02:23:24 | |
I mean, I don't think we have access to it this weekend anyway. They block it off. They already get it up for special events. They | 02:23:31 | |
they don't give us access, but on the day-to-day. | 02:23:35 | |
A day-to-day, I mean, I'll let our downtown development chair speak, but I mean, one of the biggest complaints is there's no | 02:23:40 | |
parking. There's no parking downtown. So we looked at, we had our DDA board meeting today and we looked at the look through the | 02:23:48 | |
lease. And so the DDA board of course doesn't make decisions, but we have recommendations. So I will read the, the recommendation | 02:23:55 | |
of the DDA board is to not approve the current lease as written, but to continue negoti. | 02:24:03 | |
Because we are for more parking in downtown. So I think some of the consensus was in reading the. | 02:24:11 | |
Reading the terms, it's not so much that the amount of money is an egregious amount of money to pay, but it just seems very. | 02:24:18 | |
I mean. | 02:24:28 | |
It seems very demanding on their part when they get to keep it whenever they want it and they get to then we have to pay this | 02:24:31 | |
money and then we have to. | 02:24:35 | |
Pave it when it next time it needs to be paid and we have to maintain it and we have to police it and we have to it just. | 02:24:41 | |
Anyway, but I know that I have not been on the front lines of all the negotiations, um. | 02:24:47 | |
But it just seemed a little demanding. And I mean, do you think they're really going to just. | 02:24:52 | |
So I mean, are we just all might like? | 02:24:58 | |
On an average Monday, somebody can go park in the parking lot if they want to go. And that's what we're paying $4500 a month for | 02:25:01 | |
4500 and a year for anybody to be able to use it. Basically 360 days a year outside of Christmas parade, Fall festival. So you | 02:25:07 | |
think about those businesses down there Sunday mornings when the businesses aren't open, you know, those businesses down there, | 02:25:13 | |
there's very little parking, there's very little employee. What they wanted to do if we kept it for free, is they wanted to | 02:25:19 | |
prohibit employees from. | 02:25:25 | |
Parking there, they wanted to put controls on who could park there, who could use it and things like that. So I thought it was | 02:25:31 | |
worth paying a little bit more. So we don't have the church policing that they want to put up signs saying this is for visitors to | 02:25:37 | |
Watkinsville, not for employee parking, not for other things like that. Once we agreed to compensate them a little bit for that, | 02:25:43 | |
then that took off all those handcuffs that they wanted to put on us in terms of them placing limitations on the uses. | 02:25:49 | |
In the in the parking, which was much more aggressive, what they wanted to do if we didn't work out at least. | 02:25:56 | |
Just for the paved lot or is it for the gravel adjacent to that as well? | 02:26:00 | |
So Southern Spa owns the ground, but that building it is to the wall. So all of that grass. So apparently Southern Spa and the | 02:26:06 | |
church had a handshake agreement about because their trucks were often parked there, but I think the church might have been using | 02:26:13 | |
their dumpster. So I mean, I don't know the insurance and outs of that, but yeah, it is all. | 02:26:21 | |
All of that property is the church's property, but we're paying for the park, the paved parking lot that the city paved. Is there | 02:26:29 | |
a limit on how many times they can? | 02:26:34 | |
Use it. We know obviously Sunday mornings and but we. | 02:26:41 | |
In the agreement, is there a limit to how many? I mean, if they'd say everyone at every single day. | 02:26:45 | |
Well, I know that's not realistic, but I mean, we would exit the agreement, right? I mean, so we have a neutral termination, | 02:26:51 | |
right? I just didn't know there was a number. | 02:26:54 | |
They take control funerals or weddings. I mean, that's when they need it, right? Because if there's a funeral, if there's a | 02:26:58 | |
wedding, you know, so say you get to November and they've had. | 02:27:02 | |
And basically signaled they want to talk about it again. The point being. | 02:27:34 | |
What do we hear from our downtown retailers? What do we hear from others? Parking is limited. This gives us the ability to put | 02:27:38 | |
signs up, say hey, this is where your parking is and allows us to make sure those retailers can advertise and say this is where | 02:27:44 | |
shared parking is at a relatively low cost in my mind. So here here's another thought that I had with it is that if it. | 02:27:50 | |
What's what tends to happen with agreements like this? I mean, this rolled over for 20 years. | 02:27:57 | |
So my question is. | 02:28:05 | |
I have no problem paying this amount for us to be able to use it to help our retailers and our businesses in downtown have | 02:28:07 | |
parking. I am not OK with repaving it when it needs to be repaved again. So let's say we agree to this and it rolls over. | 02:28:14 | |
And in five years it needs to be repaved. Is it going to be a big stink and real tacky? If we're like, oh, 90 days, we're out | 02:28:22 | |
because we're not going to repave it. I mean, so yes, it doesn't need to be repaid right now, but eventually it will need to be | 02:28:28 | |
repaved. And so are we actually going to be bearing the brunt of that? And if we're not, because we're going to just take the 90 | 02:28:34 | |
day notice. That just doesn't seem good faith to me. And so I think that's part of my unless you're it's and I'm, I'm not a paving | 02:28:40 | |
person at all. Maybe it's. | 02:28:46 | |
25 years on it and it's silly for me to even bring that up, but I know paving is not cheap. So if we're paying all of that. So | 02:28:52 | |
anyways, what are thoughts on that? I mean, two thoughts. One is we renegotiated at the end of this year and we just say we just | 02:28:57 | |
want to scratch this line. We don't want to be responsible for paving. Second thought, as we, you know, hand it to ADDA and let | 02:29:02 | |
them negotiate it next year. That's what we tried that failed before. | 02:29:07 | |
Or, you know, or we can have. | 02:29:13 | |
Our favorite paving expert go out there and do an evaluation and say what's the likelihood that this needs to be repaved? I can | 02:29:17 | |
tell you it was gravel before. I don't think it's going to go back to gravel anytime soon out there given the amount of use that | 02:29:21 | |
it gets. It's not like it's got heavy traffic driving over it and and utilizing it. So I'm not really worried about that. But if | 02:29:26 | |
that's a hang up, then I would just suggest instead of just rolling it over. | 02:29:31 | |
We just put it on the, you know, put it on the list and we adjust the agreement when it's time for negotiation again. I think it | 02:29:36 | |
at this point it would be, you know, to kind of reopen that and go back. We've already had it on the agenda once with them would | 02:29:43 | |
be kind of, you know, I just think it would not be the way I'd prefer to operate, but I'm not voting on it. | 02:29:50 | |
Any other comments? | 02:30:06 | |
Let's do, let's go ahead and get a motion on that. | 02:30:08 | |
I make a motion to approve the agreement. Do we have a second? | 02:30:16 | |
2nd, we have a motion, we have a second. Any further discussion? | 02:30:24 | |
Hearing none, all in favor say aye, aye opposed. OK. | 02:30:30 | |
Motion carries for one. What'd you say? | 02:30:35 | |
But I want this, I do not want this to roll over and be on a consent agenda moving forward. So I'll let you know that. Well, so | 02:30:41 | |
the term is it can be extended for two successive one year increments. So what will happen is I'll put on the calendar for the | 02:30:47 | |
June meeting. You guys will decide, we'll do it through the budget, talk about it and you guys can decide in June if it, if you | 02:30:53 | |
know if there's any change, if you want to approve it or not, just like we do with all our other annual contracts. | 02:30:59 | |
And in the meantime, we can certainly, you know, talk to them about do they have any issue with us removing that provision if we | 02:31:05 | |
renew? I don't I'd be really surprised if that's a trigger for them. I don't think they're hoping to get a free paving job out of | 02:31:09 | |
us for this. And that wasn't the intent. I think it was probably some holdover language from before because that was the crux of | 02:31:14 | |
the original agreement. | 02:31:18 | |
OK. No new business public comments. | 02:31:25 | |
Three more minutes, 3 more minutes. Come on life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Greensboro Highway. I own the property adjacent to that pipe | 02:31:30 | |
plant. I appreciate this council listening to all of our issues with that. I couldn't speak during the time. I was so frustrated | 02:31:36 | |
with a lot of people from out of our community coming in wanting us to change our community. That's that's most of the people that | 02:31:42 | |
were for this project. | 02:31:49 | |
They move from a place, come here and want it to be like that. It really gets passionate for me. So I love this place. Appreciate | 02:31:56 | |
what y'all done. I'd rather wait for something else, maybe even something industrial is fine with me. You know, obviously we own | 02:32:02 | |
that property there. So you know, Bill is something like I think I'm done, it's been enough, but. | 02:32:08 | |
But yeah, so just thank you all for your vote on that and listening to all my comments throughout the time and leading up to it. | 02:32:16 | |
Thanks for your investment, Watkinsville. We appreciate it. | 02:32:20 | |
Johnny, you don't have to wait till next month, you have 3 more minutes right now. | 02:32:27 | |
They all get their turn in a second. | 02:32:34 | |
If y'all don't have anything to say. | 02:32:36 | |
All right. | 02:32:38 | |
We'll move on to council reports. This is their 3 minutes Johnny. They may not use it though. We'll see. | 02:32:39 | |
The man with the least words will sleeve well. Second lease tonight. We'll lead with Chuck Garrett. Nothing to report, all right. | 02:32:45 | |
Connie Massey, nothing to report. Brett Thomas, fall for Watkinsville. We're going to talk about it again until everybody in the | 02:32:52 | |
whole city put something up. So I need everybody to get out there, decorate your front porches and let's let's fall for | 02:32:59 | |
Watkinsville. We got these cool weathers. It's nice to be outside and let's enjoy it. Decorating. Mr. Lay's got decorations in his | 02:33:05 | |
yard. He could he could send it. | 02:33:11 | |
Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. | 02:33:22 | |
I think I've already had more than my 3 minutes tonight, so I'm good for this evening, Mr. Campbell. Nothing for tonight. All | 02:33:25 | |
right, Well, we don't often have meetings like this, y'all, but I do want to say I'm. I'm. I'm frankly, I'm. | 02:33:32 | |
Grateful for y'all, grateful for our citizens handled that conversation tonight. I thought that was that was very well done and | 02:33:40 | |
says a lot about this community. | 02:33:43 | |
You know, folks new and old, how they've, how they, how they handled themselves and grateful to be Mayor Watkinsville. With that, | 02:33:48 | |
no executive session, we're adjourned. No motion to adjourn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Motion, Christine. Second. All in favor | 02:33:54 | |
say aye. | 02:34:00 |
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Not agreement. | 00:00:00 | |
We'll see. | 00:00:07 | |
11 copies of this up at the podium, so we got. | 00:00:28 | |
A. | 00:00:37 | |
All right. Welcome everybody to the October City of Watkinsville Council meeting. We're excited to have such a great crowd here | 00:01:19 | |
tonight. | 00:01:23 | |
We have all of our council members here as well and just grateful to to have a room full of folks. We'll start off with the | 00:01:27 | |
pledge, Mica Dixon from Oconee Middle. If you could stand up and lead us in the pledge, Sir. | 00:01:33 | |
Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:01:44 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:01:50 | |
All right, tonight we, we have a big crowd here for a couple reasons, but one reason we have so many young citizens here tonight | 00:02:03 | |
is we have some outstanding students and athletes from Oconee County Middle School. | 00:02:08 | |
It's interesting middle school sports don't often get a lot of attention, and I understand a little bit why, but I also think | 00:02:16 | |
these kids work really hard, just as hard as kids do in high school and college, and put a lot into it. And we recently had. | 00:02:23 | |
A really remarkable, just last weekend, a really remarkable experience at the state middle school cross country meet. We had | 00:02:31 | |
Oconee County's teams and Coach Simpson, correct me if I get this wrong, but our boys finished first place in the state, our girls | 00:02:38 | |
finished second place in the state, our JV boys finished first place in the state, and our JV girls finished first place in the | 00:02:44 | |
state. So out of four chances to win, Oconee Middle won three races and took second and another, which is just unheard of. | 00:02:51 | |
In really in athletics. | 00:02:59 | |
And it's really exceptional. The coach of the program is a gentleman named Rob Simpson. Rob, wave your hand. I know. | 00:03:01 | |
Rob Rob is a Watkinsville resident, lives in Christian Lake. He's also been involved with us on some of the work that we've done | 00:03:15 | |
in Harris Shoals Park and at the new. | 00:03:19 | |
Roads here, there he is. OK, so coach, Roads, Coach Johnson, congratulations to you guys as well. And also thankful to the | 00:03:53 | |
leadership at Oconee Middle has apparently created a really great cross country course and training venue and I know that isn't | 00:03:59 | |
easy to do sometimes either. So big congratulations to you guys. What I'd love to do is have all of the athletes that are here | 00:04:04 | |
come up and stand in the middle, bring your trophies. The same with the coaches and the administrators and we'll take a couple | 00:04:10 | |
pictures and we'll let y'all get home. | 00:04:16 | |
A little bit longer. | 00:04:22 | |
There you go. | 00:04:43 | |
Rob, should we see you think so? | 00:04:54 | |
All right, everybody smile through the cameras. | 00:05:00 | |
Everybody look right here one time for school. | 00:05:05 | |
Mr. Robinson, did you get it all? | 00:05:15 | |
Right. | 00:05:18 | |
Yeah, Coach Simpson, anything you want to share or say? | 00:05:19 | |
I know you're. I know you're famous for your, for your. | 00:05:23 | |
I'll keep it short, I promise. | 00:05:34 | |
Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. I really appreciate this opportunity to be here and just really honor the work that | 00:05:37 | |
these young people have done. | 00:05:40 | |
Thank you guys very much. | 00:06:13 | |
All right. We will want to get one more picture without the mayor. That's fine. And then we will. And then we'll folks who are | 00:06:24 | |
here for this recognition and don't care to stay for the rest of the meeting, feel free to head out. We'll do give you all about a | 00:06:29 | |
couple minutes to get out of here and then we'll get started with the rest of the meeting. | 00:06:34 | |
I. | 00:06:48 | |
All right. Congratulations. | 00:06:52 | |
Thank you. | 00:08:22 | |
Right, we'll move on with the rest of the meeting, some of our normal reminders. | 00:08:45 | |
Yeah, let's shut the door for now. | 00:08:53 | |
Anyone with questions regarding accessibility, this meeting or the facilities should contact our Ad A coordinator, City Manager | 00:09:33 | |
Sharon Dickerson at 706-769-5161 or right now to allow the City the opportunity to make reasonable accommodations for them. In | 00:09:38 | |
addition, this meeting is being broadcast simultaneously via Suite 1 online. Those who are not able to attend the meeting may | 00:09:44 | |
access the public portal via link which has been posted on the City Council Meeting information page of the City website under the | 00:09:49 | |
Government tab, The Portal. | 00:09:54 | |
Allows the public to view and listen to the meeting in progress, along with the meeting materials associated with the items | 00:10:00 | |
Council will be considering tonight. | 00:10:03 | |
Y'all, at some point I'll be like those guys on the legal commercials and be able to read that as fast as they can. | 00:10:31 | |
With a few more months practice approval of the minutes, we should have our minutes from September 18th, 2024 regular meeting. Do | 00:10:36 | |
we have any amendments to those meetings, those minutes? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve. I make a motion to approve. | 00:10:42 | |
Do we have a second second. All in favor say aye aye. | 00:10:48 | |
Motion carries 5O. | 00:10:54 | |
All right. Approval of the agenda. I'd request that you guys amend the agenda by moving the mayor's report after administration. | 00:10:59 | |
Otherwise, unless anybody wants to remove an item or change anything, I'd ask for an approval with that amendment. | 00:11:06 | |
I make a motion to approve the agenda with that one change. | 00:11:16 | |
Do we have a second, second. Any discussion? | 00:11:20 | |
All in favor say aye aye. Any opposed? | 00:11:23 | |
All right, we'll move on to administration tonight. We do not intend to have public input during the administration portion. We'll | 00:11:27 | |
speak more about public input when we get to the public hearings. And with that, we'll move on to the financial reports. Manager | 00:11:32 | |
Dickerson. Thank you, Mayor. Everyone should have received the balance sheet revenues and expenditures. Everything is tracking | 00:11:37 | |
well. Just a reminder that because we still have to reverse back some of our because of audit, we have to reverse back some of the | 00:11:42 | |
expenses and revenues. | 00:11:47 | |
The numbers are not going to be exactly the same, but that is expected. Our audit should be presented next month. | 00:11:53 | |
At the council meeting. | 00:11:59 | |
For SPAS 3, you guys may recall SPA 3 is being used for Hair Shoals Park, Thomas Farm Preserve, Rocket Field improvements, the G | 00:12:01 | |
Tub, Mulberry pedestrian connector, some resurfacing projects and some storm water and drainage projects that have already | 00:12:09 | |
occurred within the city. Our average monthly revenues are about 82,000 and some change are currently we are, our bank balance is | 00:12:16 | |
a little bit more than $1,000,000 and you'll see that we over last year's time we were up about 6% over the monthly amount. | 00:12:23 | |
On T splast. | 00:12:32 | |
Our average monthly revenues to date are about around 72,000 and some change. Those projects include resurfacing projects, some | 00:12:34 | |
sidewalk projects and and the G Tib Mulberry pedestrian connector that's currently underway. Mayor, I'll talk a little bit about | 00:12:39 | |
that tonight. | 00:12:44 | |
And then you'll see here we have a balance of a little bit more, almost a little bit more than half $1,000,000 and again we're up | 00:12:50 | |
about 6% over the same time last year. | 00:12:55 | |
On the American Rescue Plan, you'll call this as money that was supposed to be used for transformative purposes here in the city. | 00:13:00 | |
Council has decided to use that money for a number of things. The only items that are outstanding right now are a little bit of | 00:13:06 | |
money left for Thomas Farm and for our retention program with our police officers. Any questions? | 00:13:12 | |
OK, move on to economic development. | 00:13:20 | |
So we have business license and alcohol licensing fees. I don't have any alcohol, but we do have some businesses, a couple of new | 00:13:24 | |
ones that came in. So we have those in there. Julie, our city clerk, will be sending out the business license renewals probably | 00:13:28 | |
next week. | 00:13:33 | |
And then our excise taxes both for alcohol and for a hotel motel are listed. Remember that we get them after the fact. So some of | 00:13:39 | |
those are posted, some have not been posted yet, but we seem to be tracking about what we expected. | 00:13:44 | |
And then finally, on the building permit side, we have 16 permits for six overall projects. The ones that are listed at the top | 00:13:51 | |
that say Blue Point Construction, those are all the townhomes at Wire Park. | 00:13:57 | |
Any questions? | 00:14:03 | |
OK. | 00:14:08 | |
All right. | 00:14:09 | |
All right, Christine, Downtown Development Authority report. All right, so. | 00:14:12 | |
We have our first two board of. | 00:14:17 | |
Reappointments, when you start the DDA, they stagger the terms so that it's not everybody changing out every four years. And so | 00:14:22 | |