No Bookmarks Exist.
Thank. | 00:00:23 | |
All right, everybody quieted down right on time. So thanks, everyone, for coming to the March, Watkinsville. | 00:00:30 | |
City Council meeting Excited to see such a big crowd here tonight. I'm the mayor Brian Broderick joined by this August body up | 00:00:36 | |
here again. Thank you for being here tonight. We do have a quorum. | 00:00:41 | |
And to kick us off, I'm going to ask Braden and Hal Jackson to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please. | 00:00:47 | |
Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. | 00:00:56 | |
And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:01:01 | |
All right. Thank you, Hal and Brayden. Glad to have you all here tonight. | 00:01:16 | |
1st on the agenda for us tonight is the approval of the Minutes. We have two sets of minutes, one from the February 16th regular | 00:01:21 | |
meeting. | 00:01:24 | |
One from the March 1st special. | 00:01:28 | |
On the regular meeting, does anyone have any? | 00:01:31 | |
Edits or adjustments to those minutes. | 00:01:36 | |
All right. I did notice two things. One, it said there was a question mark after it noted Garrett opposed a motion related to the | 00:01:40 | |
special events facility. | 00:01:44 | |
I think we just need to cut out that question mark. You already caught that and then I think it was slightly unclear about the | 00:01:48 | |
entrance closest to Ashford Manor. | 00:01:53 | |
Also needs to be I think, right? | 00:01:59 | |
Right. Turn in only in that condition on that motion. That's the only two things I notice. Anybody else have anything else on the | 00:02:01 | |
Minutes? | 00:02:04 | |
OK, here. None. I'll entertain a motion to approve the February 16th minutes. | 00:02:08 | |
I make a motion to approve the February minutes. All right, we have a motion for Mr. Campbell. Do we have a second? | 00:02:15 | |
Motion in a second. All in favor, Say aye. Any opposed? | 00:02:22 | |
All. | 00:02:26 | |
You abstain. You weren't there. OK, so for a Christine abstains March 1st special called meeting do we have? | 00:02:27 | |
Any edits to those minutes? | 00:02:36 | |
That was relatively brief hearing. None. Can we have a motion to approve and make a motion to approve and a second. | 00:02:40 | |
We have a motion and a second all in favor. Say aye, aye. | 00:02:48 | |
All right, Motion carries 50. | 00:02:52 | |
All right. Approval of the agenda. We do have one item that we need to add to the agenda that would be under new business, the | 00:02:55 | |
purchase of Christmas lights at a non holiday discount. As you guys can imagine, things like Christmas lights get a little bit | 00:03:00 | |
cheaper in the spring. | 00:03:05 | |
And we've had some citizen requests for some additional Christmas lighting on some of our streets. So the manager has identified | 00:03:11 | |
an opportunity to purchase those. | 00:03:15 | |
At a discount, so I would entertain a motion to. | 00:03:19 | |
The Amend the agenda to add purchase of Christmas lights under new business, please. | 00:03:23 | |
You can say so moved, so moved and is there a second? | 00:03:31 | |
We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion. | 00:03:35 | |
All in favor say. | 00:03:38 | |
All right. We're going to move on to administration, just the rules of the road. For those of you who haven't been here before, we | 00:03:40 | |
are a little more casual about our public input process in Watkinsville. We typically will allow public comment at the mayor and | 00:03:46 | |
council's discretion on items that are on the agenda. We do have certain sections of the agenda where formal comment is always | 00:03:51 | |
allowed. That typically is on. | 00:03:57 | |
Land use matters, public hearings, different items like that. So Mr. Reitman will be our guide as we go through that. We do ask | 00:04:02 | |
that the comments that you make are directly related to those agenda items. If it's on an agenda item that does not have public | 00:04:08 | |
speaking automatically with that, you will need to be recognized by the Mayor and council before you address us. | 00:04:14 | |
When you step forward, state your name. State your address. Speak only from the podium. 4 minutes A person. Refrain from debate. | 00:04:21 | |
Argument. Personal attacks are irrelevant. Discussion. Address the merits of the pending matter again once we get to those points | 00:04:25 | |
during the agenda. | 00:04:29 | |
Mr. Reitman will be our guide. But what I'm excited about tonight. We have several exciting moments, but one of the first ones, | 00:04:34 | |
Umm. | 00:04:38 | |
That I'm really excited about. | 00:04:43 | |
Is a proclamation for Mr. Larry Weatherford. Mr. Weatherford. | 00:04:46 | |
Umm. | 00:04:52 | |
I've always been struck by Larry as a guy who when I first moved back to Watkinsville, I was like this guy. He doesn't even live | 00:04:55 | |
in Watkinsville, but I think he's at more events in Watkinsville than I am. | 00:05:01 | |
Everywhere I went, there was a there was Larry Weatherford. And come to find out, that's been the story of his life. | 00:05:07 | |
In this community that when something important was happening, Larry Weatherford was there. When there was a big moment for | 00:05:13 | |
Watkinsville, Larry Weatherford was there. | 00:05:17 | |
And he's been a wonderful. | 00:05:22 | |
Leader in this community for a long time, so we have a. | 00:05:25 | |
For Mr. Weatherford, I'm going to step to the podium up there and read that. I know we have a few other council members who may | 00:05:29 | |
want to make a comment. And then, Larry, if you're willing, when I'm done, we'd love to have hear from you. If you have a few | 00:05:34 | |
minutes, you want to make a few minutes of remarks about Watkinsville. | 00:05:39 | |
And then we'll take a couple photos after that. OK, but I'm going to step up to the podium and read this proclamation. | 00:05:44 | |
Lawrence Weatherford was born in Watkinsville, Georgia, and lived a brief time at the historic Eagle Tavern. | 00:06:04 | |
Lawrence's family has deep roots in the community, beginning with his father, who served as mayor of Watkinsville during the 1950s | 00:06:10 | |
after serving in the Army during World War 2. | 00:06:15 | |
His mother, who was the first visiting teacher in Oconee County in the 1930s after graduating from the University of Georgia, and | 00:06:19 | |
his grandfather, Dave Weatherford, who served as chairman of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners in the 1930s. | 00:06:26 | |
Lawrence grew up in Watkinsville playing basketball and graduating at age 16 from Watkinsville High School, now known as Oconee | 00:06:33 | |
County High School, attending Watkinsville Christian Church and working at Spec Downs grocery store and Joe McDonald grocery store | 00:06:37 | |
in downtown Watkinsville. | 00:06:42 | |
He went on to attend the University of Georgia and while enrolled, served in the ROTC before graduating with a Bachelor of Science | 00:06:47 | |
in Elementary Education. | 00:06:50 | |
He served in the 82nd Airborne Battalion during the Korean War, volunteering from the ROTC program at the University of Georgia. | 00:06:55 | |
He trained at Fort Knox and Fort Bragg before serving one year in Germany patrolling the Iron Curtain. | 00:07:01 | |
And after the Korean War, he joined the Army Reserves in 1953. | 00:07:07 | |
Ultimately retiring as a. | 00:07:11 | |
After graduation, Lawrence worked for the Georgia Department of Labor before moving on to the US Department of Labor, where he | 00:07:14 | |
served as regional director of financing and Administration in 1958 and eventually director of unemployment insurance and deputy | 00:07:19 | |
to the assistant secretary in the 1970s. | 00:07:24 | |
He came back home to work at the University of Georgia under President Charles Knapp as the vice president for government | 00:07:29 | |
relations, retiring in 1988. | 00:07:33 | |
Larry has continued to make meaningful contributions to the Watkinsville community through his service on the OCALAF board and his | 00:07:37 | |
restoration of a pre Civil War home on Main Street. | 00:07:42 | |
Larry is one of Watkinsville's most disting. | 00:07:47 | |
Citiz. | 00:07:51 | |
He's a tireless booster for his hometown. | 00:07:52 | |
And he continues to share his stories of Watkinsville past and believes in its future. | 00:07:55 | |
Now, therefore, I, Brian Broderick, Mayor of Watkinsville, do hereby recognize and honor Lawrence E Weatherford for his commitment | 00:08:02 | |
and public service accomplishments to the citizens of Watkinsville and so many others throughout Georgia and the United States, | 00:08:07 | |
and witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and cause to be affixed the Great Seal of the City of Watkinsville, Georgia, on | 00:08:12 | |
the 23rd day of March. | 00:08:18 | |
2020. | 00:08:23 | |
Now I know we have, I think we might have a few others who want to make some remarks about how Larry's impacted their lives. So if | 00:08:41 | |
those folks. | 00:08:44 | |
Share some remarks and then Larry will turn the microphone over to you briefly. We do have a reputation for long meetings that I'm | 00:08:48 | |
trying to trying to reduce. So, but we will turn the microphone over to you and then we'll get a picture with your family and then | 00:08:52 | |
with the folks, everybody who came here to celebrate you to you tonight. But Councilman Thomas, did you have something you want to | 00:08:56 | |
say? | 00:09:01 | |
I know him as Uncle Larry, but Uncle Larry, I really appreciate your leadership. You've taught me a lot. | 00:09:09 | |
From from your time in the military to your time in government relations, I just really appreciate all the stuff you've done for | 00:09:17 | |
this great community and your time coming back. | 00:09:22 | |
To Watkinsville. | 00:09:27 | |
You know, multiple times a week. | 00:09:30 | |
To see the residents here and visit the bank and you know, visit old friends and that's a hall for you. And we really appreciate | 00:09:32 | |
you coming. I greatly appreciate your leadership and it's something to model after. So thank you very much. | 00:09:39 | |
You can say. | 00:09:53 | |
Yeah, Mr. Weatherford, where? | 00:09:56 | |
One of the finest people I've ever met. | 00:09:59 | |
Marcie and I bought his house on Main Street 66 S Main. | 00:10:01 | |
1314 years ago Rough. | 00:10:06 | |
I had a problem though. I had to sell my other. | 00:10:10 | |
So, but Larry Weatherford had put a sign out there for sale, went in there, saw it, loved it. | 00:10:14 | |
I said, Mr. Weatherford, my problem is I got to sell my other house. | 00:10:19 | |
Can you give me a couple weeks to see if I can get mine sold? He said sure, no problem. | 00:10:23 | |
So sure enough, we were fortunate. But I sell our house at least under contract. A few weeks later, go back to Mr. Weatherford, | 00:10:28 | |
It's weather for to have a contract. | 00:10:32 | |
Now, can we talk about a price for your house? | 00:10:37 | |
I was not in a good, was not in a good negotiation point because I was in a contract. | 00:10:40 | |
But we reached a fair deal and and I really so also on the House it was mentioned in the proclamation is a pretty civil war home | 00:10:46 | |
that we bought. | 00:10:51 | |
That was in disrepair. | 00:10:56 | |
Mr. Weatherford. | 00:10:59 | |
Restored his family home. | 00:11:00 | |
At a great expense would have been easier I think to tear it down and cheaper. | 00:11:03 | |
But he restored it, and we thank him for that. Had he not restored it, we might not be living in Watkinsville. I'm thankful every | 00:11:07 | |
day that we are. So thank you, Mr. Weatherford. You're a wonderful human. | 00:11:13 | |
And I know we have a few other I don't know if Commissioner Hardin or Chairman Daniel, if y'all care to make any remarks. Do you | 00:11:24 | |
have anything you'd want to add about this gentleman? I see Amory giving him a side eye. He's probably got a story or two, but. | 00:11:29 | |
I welcome you to the podium if you all want to say a quick word, and then we'll turn it over to the guest of honor to say what he | 00:11:36 | |
has to say. But. | 00:11:40 | |
Yep. | 00:11:45 | |
And welcome back, former Mayor Hardin. I should say, too. It's not every day we get to turn the podium back over to a former | 00:11:48 | |
mayor. | 00:11:51 | |
Thank you, Mayor Broderick. I do appreciate this opportunity to congratulate you, Larry. | 00:11:56 | |
Course, Larry, as you say, I see more of. | 00:12:02 | |
Then I do a lot of people in this community and he lives in Oxford, GA And so we're so proud for Larry that you're being | 00:12:07 | |
recognized and to have your family with you here tonight and just want to thank you for all that you've done and continue to do | 00:12:13 | |
for a walk and spell. Thank you. | 00:12:18 | |
We'll say it's always a bright spot in my day when I see you. You're always upbeat and very cheerful and it's been great. | 00:12:36 | |
Getting to know you over the years and. | 00:12:42 | |
Unless we have anyone else, Larry, if you want to say a few words, you're come on up here and then we'll get. | 00:12:52 | |
We'll get some photos. | 00:12:58 | |
Thank you. Thank you. | 00:13:02 | |
I think he had talked. | 00:13:07 | |
Ahead of time by and by saying a few words. | 00:13:10 | |
Because I I guess as I was thinking about the history that Watkinsville and my time. | 00:13:14 | |
It'll probably take us through the next week. | 00:13:22 | |
But let me start my comments off about I brought somebody with me. | 00:13:26 | |
This is my sweetheart. We were together for a day or two and. | 00:13:33 | |
I come down to Watkinsville to visit with her. | 00:13:39 | |
And she was. | 00:13:43 | |
A great part of the reason why. | 00:13:45 | |
Invited me here tonight to say all these nice things about you. | 00:13:49 | |
But I think I carefully. | 00:13:54 | |
Repeat some things. | 00:13:58 | |
And leave out some things that Pattice said not to do. | 00:14:01 | |
No, I do. My family was has been said already a good part of the Watkinsville government and everything, and I have so many when | 00:14:10 | |
Captain Jake died. | 00:14:16 | |
Daddy, Dave died. I mean the channel of Commission that we had a little farm over here across the Creek and. | 00:14:23 | |
I remember I was working for the. | 00:14:30 | |
The couple the man that. | 00:14:33 | |
Work on, you know, I ain't gonna say was a slave, I said. But but Daddy worked in Watsonville and Henry worked up there, and I | 00:14:38 | |
that was my first time of having a supervisor. | 00:14:44 | |
And I remember the time when we would be out in the. | 00:14:51 | |
And a car would come from Athens to Watkinsville. | 00:14:56 | |
And we would tie the horse down, run out in the front yard to see who it was because that's about the way that the the the traffic | 00:15:00 | |
was Watkins. | 00:15:05 | |
And I'll tell you back then, those days, it was a great, great place. | 00:15:12 | |
And with all the people that that oversaw my life. | 00:15:18 | |
African Americans as well as all our. | 00:15:26 | |
And I just am so grateful for the opportunity to have grown uphill. | 00:15:33 | |
And then I when I left, as we talked about a while ago, I went to a lot of different places to work and. | 00:15:39 | |
Uh, stayed on the road and that's one of the reasons that this Lady Hill. | 00:15:48 | |
Is so important to me because when you look over here, these girls, she did it. | 00:15:55 | |
And I appreciated that. That's so very much. | 00:16:01 | |
I said one time, being in a cocktail party in Honolulu. | 00:16:06 | |
And the phone rang, and it was one day after the truck had brought Catherine. | 00:16:12 | |
Washington and hadn't unloaded the furniture. But I was in a cocktail party and I got a phone call and she said, what's the name | 00:16:19 | |
of the power company? | 00:16:24 | |
And I couldn't remember myself. | 00:16:30 | |
But nevertheless, I don't stand here by myself. She's in the corner right over here and I wouldn't be here if it was not for her. | 00:16:35 | |
And I have the greatest family. | 00:16:41 | |
That you could believe. | 00:16:48 | |
And as I go around and look at this room over all different times and things, that my life has been influenced by what Y'all did. | 00:16:50 | |
And I'm not going to go through that Patty's direction. | 00:16:59 | |
I'm not going to go through several things that I went through and growing up here. | 00:17:05 | |
And but if anybody is interested, we'll meet outside and. | 00:17:11 | |
Anyway, let me just say how proud I am to be from what could feel. | 00:17:19 | |
And also let me change that to really say that my heart is always in what could be and always will be. | 00:17:25 | |
And I wanted to ask y'all if that we could take a vote. | 00:17:34 | |
Because we'll still got my house appealing the corner that's built by Catherine's grandfather in 1908. | 00:17:40 | |
And I think it would be nice for me to have a place down here to spend the night. | 00:17:47 | |
Now if if I could take a minute and ask y'all if everybody's in favor of that, please say aye. | 00:17:57 | |
I'm not gonna ask. Those are the polls. | 00:18:08 | |
Because I know one or two of you around here to say that, so. | 00:18:11 | |
No, let me let me just say I I I can't tell you. Ever since I heard about the about the thing tonight, I can't tell you how. | 00:18:16 | |
Humbly proud, I guess, is the best way to. | 00:18:28 | |
I My family was so important to me. My mom was a strong lady. My dad was a great man. | 00:18:33 | |
Quiet didn't do a lot of talking. | 00:18:41 | |
And I have my sister Wilma who was a town singer, if y'all anybody here old enough to remember that but she sang it all the | 00:18:44 | |
weddings and funerals and things like that and my mom was the best and teacher and my dad worked in Athens and. | 00:18:54 | |
I'm not going to go into all the details because when I had them listed about my talk tonight. | 00:19:05 | |
I got it just cut. | 00:19:12 | |
So. | 00:19:16 | |
But in all sincerity, I'm so proud. | 00:19:17 | |
To be from Watkinsville, Georgia, and I thank you. Each one of you and I can look around this room and I can tell stories you | 00:19:20 | |
wouldn't believe and wouldn't want me to tell. So thank you so much. | 00:19:27 | |
All right. Thank you. So here's your proclamation. Let's come right up here to the middle, and we're going to have your family | 00:19:36 | |
come up and stand with you. | 00:19:39 | |
All right, Mary's family, if you all could come up together. | 00:19:43 | |
And all Y'all really. After hearing Larry speak. Probably all. | 00:19:53 | |
How many? OK, do the three and then y'all go ahead and then we'll bring up the rest of the family and then we'll do. | 00:19:58 | |
Now the rest of your families come on up and. | 00:20:13 | |
All right, y'all and all that and all that excitement. I forgot one more. | 00:21:45 | |
For Mr. Weatherford. | 00:21:49 | |
We don't give these out very often, but I do have a key to the. | 00:21:52 | |
And so also Larry wanted to, on behalf of all you've done for Watkinsville, I also want to give you a key to the city. | 00:21:57 | |
Confir. | 00:22:14 | |
Here. | 00:22:16 | |
I. | 00:22:25 | |
OK. All right. We have two more proclamations tonight. The next one is. | 00:22:42 | |
A little more, A little. | 00:22:48 | |
Is a proclamation in honor of child abuse. | 00:22:50 | |
Prevention Month. I don't think we're honoring that, but we're recognizing that that's something that we're striving to prevent. | 00:22:54 | |
Constantly in Watkinsville, I'm going to do an abridged version of this. Over 10,000 children are abused and or neglected in | 00:23:00 | |
Georgia each year. | 00:23:03 | |
And child abuse and neglect prevention as a community responsibility in preventing mistreatment of children depends on involvement | 00:23:07 | |
from all people. | 00:23:10 | |
I, Brian Broderick, Mayor of the City of Watkinsville, Georgia, do hereby proclaim the month of April as Child Abuse Prevention | 00:23:13 | |
Month in Watkinsville, Georgia, and encourage all citizens to volunteer their talents and energies. | 00:23:18 | |
On behalf of children in our community to reduce child abuse and neg. | 00:23:24 | |
Significantly in the years to come. I know that's an important priority for our chief of police and others. Is anyone here tonight | 00:23:28 | |
from the organization you are? Why don't you step forward, offer a few brief remarks, then we'll take a picture. And thank you for | 00:23:32 | |
providing this to us. | 00:23:36 | |
Hi, I'm Sally. Stare at my colleagues and I are with Bright paths. We are the local chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America and | 00:23:44 | |
Prevent Child Abuse Georgia and. | 00:23:49 | |
Have lived and worked and graduated from high school in Oconee County and Athens and my whole life. So I'm glad to be here. And I | 00:23:54 | |
also know what a lovely community this is and how it is really easy to think that all the families here are just like mine, which | 00:23:59 | |
were so great. But our most recent data actually shows that in Oconee County alone in the year of 2020, there were 168 children | 00:24:05 | |
who were the subject of a report of either abuse or neglect just in Oconee County just in 2020. And so at Bright Paths we are | 00:24:11 | |
working really hard. | 00:24:17 | |
To eliminate that, our mission is to prevent all forms of child abuse and neglect and our vision as a community free of that, and | 00:24:23 | |
so with your support. | 00:24:28 | |
So April will be Child Abuse Prevention Month in Watkins. | 00:25:04 | |
Dickerson and her staff. If you'll have information you'd like us to share, we have a newsletter Facebook page. We're happy to | 00:25:10 | |
share that and what people know everything that's going on here and how people can help to prevent child abuse. | 00:25:15 | |
Let's step here and take a picture. | 00:25:21 | |
We'll let you guys get on the way. Is there anybody else in the organization? | 00:25:23 | |
Fund continues. We have Danielle Greer here who is presenting A presenting a check to the Police Department. So missus Greer if | 00:26:03 | |
you could come forward make a few remarks and then Sharon and Chief if you all want to coordinate that presentation as well. And | 00:26:08 | |
Danielle I just, I do. | 00:26:13 | |
I see that you're constantly serving the community and working with our Police Department. I just want to thank you for. | 00:26:19 | |
Leaning into that and understanding that the role of a realtor and a business person in the community is more than just making | 00:26:26 | |
money, but it's about giving back. So we're very grateful to you guys for working with Chief Brock and his guys. | 00:26:31 | |
And I will say for anybody who doesn't know about bright paths, we just found out about them about this time last year. | 00:26:38 | |
They are phenomenal resource in this community. So we actually did a golf tournament for them last year and and it was it, it was | 00:26:44 | |
beyond amazing. We're actually doing another one for them this year too but. | 00:26:50 | |
Speaking of in the community, but. | 00:26:57 | |
Why I'm here so? | 00:27:00 | |
Thank you for everything that Y'all do and 1st responders are near and dear to my heart. Our schools are near and dear to my | 00:27:02 | |
heart. And So what we did was create a program through my real estate team that gives back to our community and then all of our | 00:27:08 | |
clients get to choose where it goes. And so each month we are able to go in and donate funds to the community that we live in. | 00:27:14 | |
Just a give where you live type thing. And so this month. | 00:27:20 | |
For February, we were able to give Chief Rock. | 00:27:27 | |
$1000. | 00:27:31 | |
So I know we got to do pictures, but. | 00:27:33 | |
And you have to come over here too. You're a huge part of. | 00:27:38 | |
Yes. | 00:27:41 | |
Are you? I was yielding to the mayor. That's a good idea. Are you going, are you just going to stay up there? We've got one or two | 00:28:15 | |
items before it's your turn. You just want to knock it all out right here. | 00:28:19 | |
I like improvising, Chief. Why don't you come on up here? And while we're focused on, while we're focused on law enforcement, why | 00:28:26 | |
don't you just. | 00:28:30 | |
Why don't you just go ahead and roll on? How about that? All right. | 00:28:34 | |
They. | 00:28:39 | |
All. | 00:28:48 | |
Good evening Mayor, Council evening, always a pleasure to be before. | 00:28:50 | |
Lads E All assembled. | 00:28:55 | |
I submitted a report actually week before last, during what would have been the regularly scheduled meeting. | 00:28:57 | |
Of last week, so I was well ahead of. | 00:29:03 | |
And from that report, does anybody have any questions over the material data that I provided? | 00:29:07 | |
Seeing none of hearing none. No questions. All right, so. | 00:29:13 | |
Through tremendous amounts of. | 00:29:20 | |
The LPR technology is on the poles. | 00:29:23 | |
And it was a very long and tenuous process to get through the mire, through the red tape and the. | 00:29:27 | |
Bureaucracy that comes with Georgia Power and Department of Transportation. | 00:29:35 | |
But they're up and they're operational and they are phenomenal. | 00:29:39 | |
Just in the last 24 hours we have had almost 300 hits of alerts of expired tags that are driving through the city pretty much | 00:29:44 | |
every day. | 00:29:48 | |
I mean expired and when. When tags are expired, there's usually reasons behind why they're expired. There's other things | 00:29:55 | |
underlying. | 00:29:58 | |
So those are the things that we're going to start looking to it to address as well. | 00:30:01 | |
You know the missing children and the missing adults and things like that is going to come across the system and our officers are | 00:30:05 | |
going to be able to better respond to those things as they travel through town. So I'm very happy to see that program up and | 00:30:11 | |
running and excited and the tech that came from Missouri to install the hardware who's been doing it all across the country says | 00:30:18 | |
that we are right now the premier location for Omni queue. | 00:30:24 | |
No other location has the extensive and robust system that we have in place, so I'm excited about that. | 00:30:31 | |
Chief, is that doing, is that doing a daily traffic count on those quarters as well, so that count, can you go back to that? | 00:30:39 | |
So that count you see up there in the top right hand corner of the screen of video, that's actually a screen? | 00:30:47 | |
Video image of it actually in operation. It's capturing cars and during. | 00:30:53 | |
Midday traffic time it's it's literally just, I mean, you barely have time to watch the cars screen across the screen. | 00:30:59 | |
But that count is all the cameras and the counts that the cameras are capturing. So all seven cameras that are in operation that | 00:31:08 | |
that's the account so you're gonna have. | 00:31:12 | |
Two, there's two locations. So there are going to be a car going through the South side and then through the Northside. So that's, | 00:31:16 | |
you know, getting twice. Unless they, you know, find their way around them, it's going to be hard to do. | 00:31:22 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:31:29 | |
Yep. | 00:31:30 | |
We have our Easter Egg hunt coming up April 16th Saturday. | 00:31:33 | |
At 10:00 AM. | 00:31:37 | |
We have 10,000 eggs waiting. | 00:31:38 | |
Staged by the Easter Bun. | 00:31:41 | |
Easter Bunny Will. | 00:31:43 | |
Danielle Greer and her team made funds available in addition to. | 00:31:48 | |
The money that. | 00:31:54 | |
To provide all the prizes and what else, Major? | 00:31:56 | |
What it makes? | 00:32:00 | |
The fries. | 00:32:04 | |
So I can't thank her and her. | 00:32:07 | |
Enough. She has been tremendous in in the program she's running and the assistance that she's offered. | 00:32:10 | |
Any questions over the Easter egg? No. Moving on to an old picture. Wow, where'd you drive that? | 00:32:18 | |
Wow. | 00:32:27 | |
Wow, that's amazing. | 00:32:29 | |
So this brings me to one of. | 00:32:32 | |
Favorite parts of the job of being the chief, and that's recognition of officers for. | 00:32:34 | |
Jobs that they do. | 00:32:40 | |
So if you didn't know that what this is about, this is about Sergeant Hitler. | 00:32:48 | |
It is a life saving accommodation, A life saving accommodation bar that I will award them tonight is awarded to Walkersville | 00:32:55 | |
Police Department member and appreciation for the prompt, no selfish act of rendering aid and assistance to another human being | 00:33:00 | |
that resulted in saving a life by the officers actions. | 00:33:05 | |
It is a red and white commendation bar that is nationally recognized in the public safety community and it's consistent mark of | 00:33:12 | |
distinction for the office. | 00:33:16 | |
For the office officer who wears. | 00:33:24 | |
On Saturday, March 12/20/22, Sergeant Handler responded to a call here in town. | 00:33:27 | |
One of our citizens felt it necessary to try to take extraordinary measures to remove his life from this world. | 00:33:34 | |
It's hard. | 00:33:44 | |
Sergeant Hitler without care. | 00:33:46 | |
Was able to beat down a door that this man was in front of. | 00:33:49 | |
And render a. | 00:33:54 | |
Which ultimately led to. | 00:33:56 | |
His. | 00:33:58 | |
And he is alive today because. | 00:33:59 | |
It was a pretty gruesome. | 00:34:03 | |
The. | 00:34:07 | |
Mine does not forget what the I see. | 00:34:08 | |
This honor is truly not enough to recognize the efforts that he put forth that. | 00:34:13 | |
Sergeant Kyle Hibbler, Watkinsville Police Department is hereby awarded the Life Saving Accommodation Bar for his actions on March | 00:34:18 | |
12th. | 00:34:21 | |
2022 while on duty in the city of Watkinsville. | 00:34:25 | |
When he responded to the attempted suicide. | 00:34:28 | |
In recognition of your courageous and life saving actions on the scene by putting yourself in harm's way to save another human | 00:34:31 | |
life. | 00:34:35 | |
With ded. | 00:34:38 | |
And courage, Sergeant. | 00:34:40 | |
Thank you for your service. | 00:34:58 | |
I'm trying to prep it for this spot up here. | 00:35:21 | |
He's hesitant. | 00:35:24 | |
But he'll. | 00:35:25 | |
Are there any? | 00:35:26 | |
Thank you for the opportunity to present that award and present the information to you this. | 00:35:28 | |
Before you leave, I think it goes without saying it's nice to have four of you here tonight. CJ Step in, Kyle. You know, I think I | 00:35:34 | |
just want to look all of you in the eyes and tell you how much we appreciate your dedication and your service and. | 00:35:41 | |
Um. | 00:35:48 | |
Putting your life on the line every single day for the citizens of Watkinsville to keep us safe. It. | 00:35:48 | |
Means the world to us. I hear so many great comments from the citizens about the way that you all serve. | 00:35:53 | |
Think about taking care of them first and not think about yourselves. And Kyle, that's a wonderful example of that. So thank you. | 00:35:58 | |
Thank you all and thank you, Kyle. | 00:36:02 | |
We're. | 00:36:07 | |
We're grateful. Thank you. | 00:36:08 | |
OK. We're going to move to item 6 on the agenda and we'll plow through this pretty quick. Manager Dickerson, if you want to give | 00:36:16 | |
us an update on our financial situation. | 00:36:22 | |
Thank you, Mayor. Everyone should have received the revenue and expense balance sheets in your packet. If there any questions, | 00:36:29 | |
please let me know. We are tracking. | 00:36:33 | |
Higher on the revenues and less on the expenses. So that's good at this point in the game. But things do come in at different | 00:36:39 | |
times, so not always always an accurate measure. | 00:36:43 | |
On spouse one report, just remind you that all that money in there right now is designated for the sewer line a construction. | 00:36:49 | |
That will be going through the industrial park. | 00:36:56 | |
Spots to report money is split. | 00:36:59 | |
Money is split on this report between hair Shoals park, the ABA playground and landscaping and possibly sidewalk work out front | 00:37:03 | |
and then the sewer line a construction. So that's the monies that are left. | 00:37:09 | |
In here and we are tracking a little bit. | 00:37:16 | |
On this. | 00:37:20 | |
But not much more than what we budgeted. | 00:37:21 | |
This boss three summary report. This is a new report last trying to make it. | 00:37:24 | |
Look similar to the other reports Y'all been looking. | 00:37:29 | |
What I think is important to notice here is. | 00:37:32 | |
That right now we're budgeting at 80% of the referendum, which is around 62,000. We're actually bringing in about 73,000. | 00:37:35 | |
So the you'll notice down here in the lower corner where it says difference between projects and anticipate projected and | 00:37:44 | |
anticipated we're about 45,000. | 00:37:47 | |
Over at this point, the projects underway. With this project, I'm sorry. My cursor won't come off of that screen up there. Sorry. | 00:37:52 | |
The projects that are underway right now are the branding effort. That's the multi-purpose government facilities of line that you | 00:38:00 | |
see down there, the bottom. | 00:38:04 | |
The projects that are completed, we've paved Leia Lane, the Chief has bought the variable message sign trailer. I don't think we | 00:38:10 | |
have it yet though, and he's walked away so I'm not I can't tell you for sure. We have ordered additional traffic calming signs | 00:38:16 | |
with some of the remaining money and then the fire department has I believe has already placed the order, although I haven't seen | 00:38:22 | |
the the invoice for it yet for the jaws of life that you approved. | 00:38:28 | |
And then encumbered right now are some public works and police equipment for future purposes. So that's sort of what that makes | 00:38:34 | |
up. | 00:38:37 | |
Uh. | 00:38:44 | |
We are. There's the monthly you can. | 00:38:45 | |
That I try to give you this just for comparison's sake so. | 00:38:48 | |
Where monies are coming in and of course it fluctuates each each month. | 00:38:51 | |
And then on the ARP, this is the American rescue plan money. Let me get my report so I can look at it. | 00:38:58 | |
So you may remember that we had a pass through with the. | 00:39:07 | |
State funds for the first responders, it was a supplement, so there's a pass through on there. We have right now 142,000 and some | 00:39:10 | |
change that has not been appropriated by the council. | 00:39:15 | |
We did come in under budget on what was expected for Hard. | 00:39:20 | |
And we have, I don't believe we haven't cut the checks yet. We should probably do that this week for the public safety officers | 00:39:25 | |
who signed three-year contracts to get the $10,000. Over the three years, we've gotten 4 contracts signed of the seven eligible | 00:39:30 | |
officers. | 00:39:35 | |
And that is the, those are the financial reports. I do want to remind everybody we did this during the work session, but for those | 00:39:42 | |
who were present and weren't here for that. | 00:39:46 | |
The budget process is underway. We had our work session tonight with the council to talk about. | 00:39:50 | |
The capital budget. | 00:39:56 | |
Which is a lead in into the operating budget, the count the mayor will receive the budget from me and my staff. | 00:39:57 | |
First part of. | 00:40:04 | |
Will have towards the end of April to make comments and and edit it and then we'll provide it to the council the 1st of May. | 00:40:06 | |
We do have three public hearings, two sets of public hearings, one for the mileage rate. Adoption of the mileage rate will take 3 | 00:40:13 | |
hearings and the adoption of or the opportunity to have public input into the budget, the first opportunity will be. | 00:40:19 | |
At the council meeting on April 20th. And that will simply be it won't be to respond anything because the mayor will have the | 00:40:27 | |
budget at that point. It will be simply to have input into what you would like the budget to include. | 00:40:32 | |
On May 18th, there will be opportunity to actually have input on the budget that has been presented to the Council for review and | 00:40:37 | |
consideration and then on June 15th, the final public hearing and hopefully the adoption of the budget. | 00:40:44 | |
Any. | 00:40:52 | |
All right. Thank you, Sharon. Let's move on to economic development reports. | 00:40:57 | |
So economic development we have our. | 00:41:02 | |
Deadline for business licenses is or was March 15th, so we had a little flurry. I'm sure next month's meeting will have a lot more | 00:41:05 | |
listed here, but we have 27 business licenses, 1 alcohol license, which actually will be before you tonight for consideration. | 00:41:12 | |
And on the permit side, most of these. | 00:41:19 | |
Renovations, updates, electrical updates, HVAC, just typical kind of stuff. So it's not there's a lot of them, but not a lot of | 00:41:24 | |
money in the in the grand scheme of things for these because they're not huge projects. So 11 building permits for 10 projects. | 00:41:29 | |
Any questions? | 00:41:34 | |
OK. | 00:41:42 | |
Get through. | 00:41:46 | |
All right. We have on consent 3 items. Tonight we have the appointment of Doctor Brett actually to the Oconee County Board of | 00:41:50 | |
Health for a six year term. | 00:41:53 | |
We have urban forest board appointments. We have consideration of a beer and wine retail license. | 00:41:58 | |
For Shino L. | 00:42:03 | |
If you wanted to talk about those, you should have spoke up earlier. Unless someone wants to argue, we need to take those off the | 00:42:06 | |
consent agenda. I'll take a motion to approve consent. | 00:42:10 | |
I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Do we have? | 00:42:16 | |
I'll second We have a motion, We have a second any. | 00:42:20 | |
All in favor, Say aye. | 00:42:24 | |
All right. Consent agenda pass. | 00:42:26 | |
We'll move on to public hearing, I think the first item that we have under public hearing. | 00:42:28 | |
Public hearing is the. | 00:42:34 | |
The amendment to the rezone and development Agreement related to Wisteria Ridge. | 00:42:38 | |
Mr. Reitman, if you could briefly offer a summary of the comment procedures for the public and then we'll move to discussing the | 00:42:44 | |
matter at hand. | 00:42:48 | |
Certainly, Mr. Mayor, thank you. As you stated previously, generally speaking, 4 minutes per person comments directly related to | 00:42:52 | |
what is at issue, no debate argument of personal attacks, addressing of course the merits of the pending matter. And please do | 00:42:59 | |
address remarks directly to the Council. At this time, we open the public hearing regarding 75 N Main St. Wisteria Ridge amendment | 00:43:05 | |
to rezone and development agreement. I understand the idea is to subdivide to take out I, I believe .55 acre parcel. We have a | 00:43:12 | |
staff report on that first. | 00:43:18 | |
All right, then we'll go directly to the applicant. | 00:43:25 | |
So the brief, the brief staff report is that. | 00:43:39 | |
Hang on a second. This was anticipated initially. It was never formally submitted, but it was anticipated for this to be | 00:43:44 | |
subdivided and so and you'll see in the in the two slides, this one you can see at the top. | 00:43:50 | |
Let's see if my cursor will go up there now. Now it won't now that I want it to go up there. | 00:43:57 | |
Let me. | 00:44:02 | |
There's a better picture you'll see if you if you look at this, you'll see the actual .55 acres, and then I'll go back and you can | 00:44:05 | |
see where it's at the top middle of the of the picture there. | 00:44:09 | |
So there was, there was a separate lot with an easement considered lot 2 and you could sort of see that there. | 00:44:14 | |
And then again, there's a larger picture of that. We also have a couple pictures of the existing building. | 00:44:22 | |
The. | 00:44:32 | |
Future concept. | 00:44:34 | |
And I will, I will yield to the right. Well, we've got Mr. Pittman here to speak. And then I think we also have Mr. Williams and | 00:44:39 | |
Miss Kashahara who may also want to take a few minutes to update us on the project. But we'll kick off with you, Frank, and then | 00:44:44 | |
we'll let anyone else who wants to step forward to speak, please do so. My name is Frank Pittman. I live at 1400 Saxon Rd. | 00:44:50 | |
Watkinsville. I'll be brief. I'm, I'm here representing the property owner who couldn't be here. He's in California this week. So | 00:44:56 | |
I. | 00:45:01 | |
As as. | 00:45:08 | |
As was mentioned, the the plan had been really to tear down this home. | 00:45:11 | |
And Miss Kasahara came along and wanted to purchase it and and and save this home. | 00:45:17 | |
To rehab it and I think I think it'd be great for the community. | 00:45:23 | |
And and I'll just kind of leave it at that that's that's the plan, that's the request and I'd be having for any questions. But I | 00:45:29 | |
think she could probably tell a better story of what she wants to do than than than I could. | 00:45:34 | |
All right. | 00:45:41 | |
Hi, I'm Suzanne Casajara and I am currently living at 52 Jackson St. | 00:45:53 | |
In Watkinsville and I just wanted to say thank you for this opportunity. | 00:45:59 | |
I I did send an e-mail to everyone. I'm I was hoping that you were able to read it because I wanted to really defer to what was | 00:46:06 | |
really attractive about the home besides. | 00:46:10 | |
Best friends of 30 years, living 250 yards from their back door. And she's a great cook, by the way. And he's a great gardener. | 00:46:15 | |
And I'm not good at any of those things. But I, you know, I left. | 00:46:22 | |
Here, well, Athens I was in Athens lived in five points. | 00:46:30 | |
And so it really excited me and the home kind of spoke to me and said hey, I have another life and so. | 00:47:06 | |
I'm not sure it will exactly look like this, so don't hold me to it. | 00:47:14 | |
Prices are going up as we speak, but the one thing Lowe's and Home Depot, they do give a wonderful veterans discount and I ask for | 00:47:20 | |
it every time. And so that's kind of working out. But I wanted to say thank you. I look forward to that being my forever home. I | 00:47:27 | |
was looking for a place to retire. My husband and I, we traveled actually in a motorhome for about a year and a half. | 00:47:34 | |
Around. Because we both work remotely And I thought, where do I want to live? And every holiday, every vacation to come see Chris | 00:47:42 | |
Russell, my closest friend, and Allison and Steve Arnold and. | 00:47:48 | |
Julie MacLean and all the people that Chuck knows, we all raise our kids together. I'm here every vacation. I'm also around | 00:47:54 | |
Airbnbs like constantly in in Watkinsville and so so anyway I'm really excited. I'm I'm I'm hoping this goes through. I'm having | 00:47:59 | |
it happens. | 00:48:05 | |
I'm working on getting the home ready to look like it's livable for my for my. I'm doing a loan in part cash. | 00:48:11 | |
We're buying the house for 200. I'm hoping to put another 150 into it. If I can stick to that. I might have to get a little few | 00:48:18 | |
extra jobs or things. But but and I know that's going to be great revenue and I really am excited about being a citizen of the | 00:48:25 | |
community. So and then I want to defer to Chuck Williams because he has some great stories about this family home. So thank you so | 00:48:31 | |
much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. | 00:48:38 | |
Suzanne, thank you Mayor and council. | 00:48:48 | |
Staff Chuck Williams I live at 2410 Old Watson Springs Rd. In the southern end. | 00:48:51 | |
County and one thank you for this opportunity to appear before you tonight. Want to thank you for your service. | 00:48:56 | |
I had the opportunity back in the 70s to serve on City Council, and my father actually served after I did. My most monumental step | 00:49:02 | |
as a council member was we bought a new pickup truck for the street department. | 00:49:08 | |
And when my dad was on the council after I was, his name is on the plaque out here. This building was built. Watkinsville put in | 00:49:16 | |
its. | 00:49:19 | |
Sewer system We lived on Cause Creek and we were very aware that Watkinsville. | 00:49:23 | |
Had a sewer collection system but no sewage treatment system. | 00:49:29 | |
When the commodes were flushed at the courthouse, we saw it a few minutes later coming down the Creek. And that was a big day when | 00:49:34 | |
Watkinsville put in a sewer system that is now owned and operated by the by the county. | 00:49:39 | |
I know, I know, Y'all's purpose here tonight and in general is to look ahead. | 00:49:46 | |
And this proposal that's in front of you is a forward-looking. | 00:49:51 | |
Proposal, but I thought it might be beneficial just to take a couple of minutes, Mr. Mayor, to. | 00:49:54 | |
Tell you how this property came to be in a little the history of it. Maybe that gives you a little insight into whether you want | 00:49:59 | |
to cast a yay or nay. Vote on this on this request. | 00:50:05 | |
If you will, if you go back to the to the 50s, my family was living on 3rd St. in Watkinsville, next door to where Mayor Lucan. | 00:50:11 | |
Lived and after we moved from there commissioner chairman Daniels grandparents moved there and and that's where his father was was | 00:50:21 | |
raised. Well that was pretty good. It was a two-bedroom 1 bath house. I had two older brothers and that was working out okay. But | 00:50:27 | |
when I came along there were three boys and parents in a two-bedroom house with one bathroom. So I think my mom lay down a lot of | 00:50:34 | |
my dad and said we've got to do something. | 00:50:40 | |
My dad bought 17 acres on North Main Street, where 75 N Main is now for Mr. Henry, Clayton Heinz and Mr. Heinsley, lived here in | 00:50:48 | |
Watkinsville and ran the local golf service station where Adobes is now. | 00:50:55 | |
That was in the mid 50s, my great uncle, Mr. Fred Ward, who built most of the homes in the Ivy Wood friendship community. | 00:51:02 | |
Built our new home at the time. It had some elements of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. | 00:51:11 | |
It had underground irrigation system feeding out of Cause Creek, so we got water and fertilizer free of charge. | 00:51:17 | |
It had an intercom system. It had a lottery shoot from the upstairs bedroom area down to the laundry room where you didn't have to | 00:51:24 | |
touch your laundry downstairs. You could stick it in the chute and it would go down. It was written up in Architectural Digest. If | 00:51:29 | |
Larry Weatherford was still here, he could tell you that it was the scene of a lot of social gatherings over the years, if you | 00:51:35 | |
will, for for Watkinsville. | 00:51:40 | |
My parents raised my two brothers and I. | 00:51:47 | |
There. And when my father passed away suddenly in 1980, that left my mother there and she continued to live. There is that was her | 00:51:49 | |
residence until she passed away in 2010. | 00:51:56 | |
Most of you know the history of the Whistier Ridge multifamily development and and and what's going on there. My oldest brother | 00:52:03 | |
and I had started developing that property in the mid around 2005. The Great Recession came along it it took the wind out of our | 00:52:10 | |
sails as well as the money out of our pocketbooks bus to continue that development and we mothballed it and it sat there | 00:52:16 | |
mothballed and the house sat there empty. | 00:52:23 | |
Until Chad Keller came along. | 00:52:31 | |
This request that you have in front of you to carve out that. | 00:53:05 | |
For someone that obviously has has deep feelings for it as we do and allow it to be remodeled and redeveloped into an asset. | 00:53:09 | |
For Watkins. | 00:53:18 | |
My I don't. I no longer own property in Watkinsville, nor to Northern. My brothers, we sort of all moved to the rural lower end of | 00:53:19 | |
the county. But we still have deep feelings for the for the city. And really, Mr. Mayor, want to want to thank you for what you | 00:53:26 | |
and council are doing to both move Watkinsville ahead, at the same time keeping a strong eye on the history. | 00:53:33 | |
Of our community here, and I to me, that's what this project really is all about, is looking back at history and yet looking | 00:53:40 | |
forward to what can be. | 00:53:45 | |
With an asset here. So with that, again, I appreciate y'all's consideration and any questions you have for me on the property's | 00:53:50 | |
history or anything, I'd be glad to try to answer those. Thank you. | 00:53:55 | |
Well, perfect. We'll have a seat right there just in case we have questions. But before we get to questions, is there anyone else | 00:54:00 | |
who wishes to speak in favor? | 00:54:03 | |
Of. | 00:54:07 | |
Application for change to the development. | 00:54:08 | |
Is there anyone who wishes to speak? | 00:54:12 | |
I see Steve looking around back there. We all, any anyone else? Neighbors? Y'all good with this. Give me a thumbs up or you can | 00:54:14 | |
speak OK? | 00:54:18 | |
Your friendship might be on the line here. | 00:54:24 | |
Throw her out? No. | 00:54:28 | |
I just want to say thanks for considering this too. | 00:54:30 | |
When we first moved in, we knew that there was Wisteria Ridge was coming sooner or later. We knew it was not completely off the | 00:54:34 | |
table. And of course we were a little apprehensive about this structure back there. What was going to happen to it certainly is a | 00:54:40 | |
house or a rental, you know that. | 00:54:46 | |
That would be acceptable. But then we heard some rumors that it might become a clubhouse. I'm thinking 150 people there, 2:00 in | 00:54:52 | |
the morning, you know, might not be the best thing in the world. So I mean, we just kind of are hanging out there and sort of as | 00:54:57 | |
an answer to prayer. Suzanne and Yoshi. | 00:55:03 | |
We're back in town at one time and took a look at it and asked a few questions. | 00:55:09 | |
If you knew all of the little, miraculous little things that have come about for we to be standing here tonight, you just you'd | 00:55:13 | |
probably just say I'll get on your knees if you believe God and just let it go. But anyway, we're very thankful. We hope. We love | 00:55:19 | |
this community. We've lived here. Now, what, three years in April? | 00:55:25 | |
Having moved over from high Shoals and. | 00:55:33 | |
We love being able to walk. We love being all over things and we think that would just be an awesome thing, to be able to look out | 00:55:37 | |
our back door and see this wonderful. | 00:55:41 | |
View back in the time a little bit. So we would be if you knew these people, you'd love them, you'll get to know them. But she is | 00:55:45 | |
a she is. | 00:55:49 | |
Disabled vet. | 00:55:55 | |
Yeah, you served in Gulf, first Gulf War, so you know she is what she is just a down to earth person which would fit in with a lot | 00:55:57 | |
of all the great. | 00:56:02 | |
Down to earth people that live in this community today, so thank you for hearing. | 00:56:07 | |
We hope to have Suzanne Yoshi as a. | 00:56:12 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:56:15 | |
Anyone else wish to speak in? | 00:56:17 | |
Anyone here wish to speak against? | 00:56:21 | |
Sufficiently exceeding the requirements as it is right now, so peeling this piece off will not impact that at all. | 00:56:54 | |
Yeah, I mean as you all know, if you're familiar with the area, it's fully wooded. So there's there's plenty of trees. I mean | 00:57:02 | |
they're they're they're way over the, the site density plan for the for the entire area. So them carving this .55 out doesn't | 00:57:08 | |
affect either parcel. And I know they're planting a lot of new trees over there too as they move along. OK, Council questions for | 00:57:14 | |
the applicant for Mr. Pittman, Mr. Williams. | 00:57:20 | |
We have any questions? | 00:57:27 | |
All right. I don't hear any questions. So with that, I will look for a motion. | 00:57:31 | |
Regarding the amendment to the rezone and development agreement for CKTK Capital, LLC. | 00:57:36 | |
I make a motion to approve. | 00:57:43 | |
Do we have a second? Second, We have a second for Mr. Campbell. Any further discussion? | 00:57:46 | |
All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? | 00:57:51 | |
All right, Motion carries 5 O welcome. It's an exciting project. Yep. | 00:57:55 | |
We We really do we. | 00:58:02 | |
We don't have the inventory of historic homes that some of our neighbors have and so. | 00:58:06 | |
When one is, when one is, someone chooses to invest in one of those and renew it. That's a big moment for us. So thank you. | 00:58:10 | |
OK. | 00:58:19 | |
I think that is it for the public hearings tonight. | 00:58:20 | |
We will move on. | 00:58:24 | |
The appearances. We have a 10 minute time limit on those appearances and the first thing that we'll cover under appearances is the | 00:58:27 | |
budget request for independent agencies. | 00:58:32 | |
Starting with the Oconee County Fire Department, first Chief Thaxton. | 00:58:38 | |
And if I can remind everyone these are you're not voting on these tonight, this is just simply for information that independent | 00:58:43 | |
agencies often come forward to the Council prior to the budget process so that we can fold that into our process and give it full | 00:58:48 | |
consideration. | 00:58:52 | |
Chief Mayor, Council, I appreciate the opportunity to be here again with you this year. Before I start with the budget, I would | 00:58:58 | |
like to say that. | 00:59:02 | |
Your chief up at Station 1, Watkins. | 00:59:07 | |
Was honored the other night with 50 years of service. So if you get an opportunity to thank Mike. | 00:59:11 | |
For his 50 years of volunteer service and is it? Does Mike considered a gift that you're going to send him to New York or not | 00:59:16 | |
because. | 00:59:20 | |
It's one way trip. | 00:59:25 | |
I'm just kidding. I hope not. We need Mike Link around here. All right. You're right. Well deserved. Thank you all for doing that. | 00:59:27 | |
Great group of volunteers at Station 1, so appreciate the opportunity to present a budget and basically the budgets the same as | 00:59:33 | |
last year's 14,000 light items were tweaked a little bit but. | 00:59:39 | |
I'm just here to ask and thank you for the opportunity to consider the $14,000 for Station 1. | 00:59:46 | |
OK. Any questions for the Chief? Now the jaws of life expense, that's separate from this, right, that comes out of us. That was a | 00:59:54 | |
Sloss and that's a capital item. These are operating expenses and chief facts. And I don't know if you want to explain a little | 01:00:00 | |
bit how you're using those operating funds just so the council knows we'll put it in the line items when they see the budget. But | 01:00:05 | |
it might be worthwhile to share that just briefly we put travel in and travel is basically a trip to Indianapolis. | 01:00:11 | |
Fire truck and equipment. | 01:00:17 | |
Expo where we send 8 to 10 firefighters. | 01:00:19 | |
His travel expenses for that trip. | 01:00:23 | |
General supplies equipment that could be anything like turn out gear. | 01:00:25 | |
Pagers. | 01:00:30 | |
Repairs to. | 01:00:32 | |
And then meals is where? | 01:00:34 | |
They have Thursday night meals at station every week and so it just helps pay for those meals. | 01:00:37 | |
Great. | 01:00:43 | |
All right. Any questions for Chief Thaxt? | 01:00:46 | |
I'll echo what I said about our law enforcement officers earlier. We really do appreciate you guys and everything you do. | 01:00:50 | |
I don't think there's a better volunteer. Fire Department, America, Thank you. | 01:00:57 | |
Yeah. | 01:01:03 | |
All right. Next up, Wendy Cooper from Oh Calf. Wendy, great to have you to council meeting. Thank you for being here and looking | 01:01:04 | |
forward to hearing from you. | 01:01:08 | |
For having me, very pleased to be here to represent Okath as its Executive director. Can you all hear me OK? | 01:01:18 | |
So as you can see, as requested. | 01:01:26 | |
7500 for commissioning some murals for the city. | 01:01:30 | |
In strategic places as discussed with the mayor and also. | 01:01:36 | |
To Commission a sculpture for the empty sculpture pad near the railroad. | 01:01:40 | |
And any questions? This will cover the commissioning of the artist as well as any supplies. | 01:01:45 | |
And let me let me, I want to make sure we're correct. So I think the idea was that that it would be setting up 100 for either the | 01:01:51 | |
murals or for this, this, this sculpture to Commission so. | 01:01:56 | |
We hope to have both done for that price, but pricing murals these days, they're very expensive. So I will do some research. It | 01:02:02 | |
may be for one or the other or hopefully both. | 01:02:07 | |
If that works. | 01:02:13 | |
And Wendy or Sharon, could y'all update us? I know that it sounds like y'all had a conversation about how to allocate the funds we | 01:02:15 | |
used last year. If you could update council on that as well. Yes, I have been talking to Sharon about that and we have a | 01:02:20 | |
continuation of this art panel project. | 01:02:25 | |
And some maintenance of that. We have new art panels that need to be reinstalled and we need some muscle for that. So I thought | 01:02:31 | |
that would be a good way to allocate is to get those changed out and to have those funds go toward that. | 01:02:38 | |
The city providing. | 01:02:45 | |
The maintenance crew. | 01:02:47 | |
And then you know as well as you know if that if there's anything leftover from that to contribute that to the public art projects | 01:02:50 | |
that. | 01:02:54 | |
Have that we've shown interest in. | 01:02:59 | |
All right. That's great. Just stay in touch with Sharon on that because if there it does become a matter of using this year's | 01:03:03 | |
funds to go into next, you know, we need to figure out the timing, would probably be better to allocate it to the art panels if | 01:03:08 | |
possible, OK, right. And our staff should be able to help you install them. I know there were some uprights that might have like | 01:03:13 | |
the one out here got removed and maybe. | 01:03:17 | |
Not damn, maybe damage may not be able to be reused. I know the guys move some of them down to the shop but but we'll we'll | 01:03:23 | |
provide the labor. That's certainly not a problem but any any material you may need or the varnish or the paint whatever what we | 01:03:28 | |
can use that we can get you the money for that and you can go ahead and start using that. | 01:03:34 | |
Because as you know, they need there quite a few that need to be changed out. | 01:03:41 | |
Due to wear and tear from. | 01:03:45 | |
OK, comments, questions from council. | 01:03:49 | |
Yes. | 01:03:51 | |
Umm love oh calf. Great resource for our community. Thank you so much for being here and for. | 01:03:53 | |
Leading that leading again, what a great resource we have so. | 01:03:59 | |
By definition, by nature, art is a very subjective thing. | 01:04:05 | |
How do you plan to decide what the murals will be or what the sculpture will be? That's a great question. | 01:04:10 | |
I'm going to do and working with the mayor and Sharon very closely doing I think the best thing to do be a do a call for proposal | 01:04:18 | |
that we could review and approve. | 01:04:23 | |
And work with the artist to see. | 01:04:29 | |
If that suits, yeah, I think you. | 01:04:32 | |
Christine, that's likely to float back to your committee for a little bit of a broader perspective on downtown and economic | 01:04:36 | |
development. So you and Jeff will probably. | 01:04:39 | |
Eyeball, as part of that process what we're doing and if the rest of council wants to see those two, we can. | 01:04:43 | |
Share that out and y'all can weigh in. But again, art subjective gets tricky when you start evaluating art. But. | 01:04:47 | |
If we're going to invest in something permanent, I think we all understand we used to have the ones that moved around. If it's | 01:04:53 | |
going to be something permanent, I think we, you know, we certainly need the folks who are paying for it to weigh in on that. So | 01:04:58 | |
yes, I agree and you know when looking at other cities, you've done these kinds of projects really well. | 01:05:03 | |
You know, like City of Monroe has done real projects, Athens has done them and they. | 01:05:09 | |
Done In a way, I think that's pretty subjective and has a wide appeal, let's just put it that way. | 01:05:15 | |
Yeah, so we're definitely attuned. | 01:05:21 | |
I have a question on the mural and you just mentioned Monroe, which maybe answer part of my. So your thought is like Monroe is | 01:05:24 | |
painted, you know, welcome to Monroe, inside of buildings, inside, outside of a wall. Or is that what you're thinking as far as a | 01:05:29 | |
mural on the side of a building or wall or is it a mural on? | 01:05:35 | |
You know it could be depending on the building we've we've discussed two different locations and I think one would be appropriate | 01:05:42 | |
perhaps for a welcome, but I think that you know it could also be very pictorial as well and we would certainly ask for you know | 01:05:47 | |
the input. | 01:05:52 | |
Of the appropriate people and the council, if you want to be a part of it, yeah, I mean, I think the ones, Monroe are fantastic. I | 01:05:58 | |
was thinking about that. | 01:06:01 | |
Yeah, but I could also. I could be whatever we want. | 01:06:06 | |
There's the beautiful one in Athens on the Epiphany. | 01:06:11 | |
Shop. I think. I love that one. Yeah. So there. I Yeah, there. | 01:06:15 | |
If the location for welcome wasn't good, there's yeah, good options. Exactly and. | 01:06:19 | |
You know that the welcome one is very strategic where they've placed it too. So we would just have to to look and see what's | 01:06:24 | |
available. | 01:06:27 | |
We also have a new county administrative building right on the edge of town that, you know, we could probably have some big walls | 01:06:32 | |
on it, you know? | 01:06:35 | |
Paint one side. | 01:06:41 | |
I. | 01:06:45 | |
All right. Any other questions for Wendy? | 01:06:48 | |
Thanks for what you do and thanks for your leadership at OK. We appreciate it. | 01:06:52 | |
All right. | 01:06:55 | |
And you won't hurt our feelings if you want to scoot out of here, so. | 01:06:57 | |
All right. Next up we have we have 1414 Jerry Smith Dr. 15 properties. | 01:07:01 | |
I see Mr. Bishop here. I'm not sure who's representing him, but we'll kick off. I think it's an urban forest protection plan | 01:07:09 | |
situation, so. | 01:07:12 | |
Councilman Thomas, unless there's a staff report, we'll let you. We'll let you go. | 01:07:16 | |
Yes. So if you're familiar with that that property it's right in front of what is now motors on main. It is a currently a blank | 01:07:20 | |
slate of. | 01:07:25 | |
There are a few trees that you'll notice on the On that picture, the bottom, bottom, quarters while I'm edges so it's a blank | 01:07:31 | |
slate. So they are having to plant a multitude of trees. | 01:07:36 | |
But they according to their their presented application they they're well above the. | 01:07:43 | |
Fight density plan. They got water oaks pecans, bunch of bunch of water oats and begins that they're they're playing so it's a | 01:07:53 | |
good good property. We approve. We recommend that we approve. | 01:08:00 | |
This. | 01:08:09 | |
OK. All right, great. The water oak water oaks are old, right? They're not new ones. OK, perfect. Yep. Great. All right. | 01:08:11 | |
OK. | 01:08:19 | |
That's the recommendation from the Urban Forest board. Is there any other comments that we need at this point? | 01:08:20 | |
OK, Council, you've heard the recommendation. I'll entertain a. | 01:08:25 | |
Entertain a motion. | 01:08:31 | |
To approve the recommendation of the Urban Forest Board and accept the. | 01:08:33 | |
Urban forest protection. | 01:08:37 | |
I make a motion to approve it. | 01:08:44 | |
We have a motion. Do we have a second? | 01:08:46 | |
2nd we have a motion, we have a second. All in favor, say aye. | 01:08:48 | |
All opposed like sign carries. | 01:08:52 | |
All right, we are up to #16. That is 41 Barnet Shoals Rd. Tax parcel, W 07016 Henrietta Patterson and Lisa Patterson Culbertson | 01:08:57 | |
for a demolition permit. I believe Mr. Campbell is going to give us a report and then we will hear from the applicant, Mr. | 01:09:04 | |
Campbell. | 01:09:10 | |
Thank you, Mayor. So 41 Barnett Shoals Rd. if you're not familiar it is at the corner, it's on the northern side of Barnett Shoals | 01:09:17 | |
Rd. You can see in the picture there. So it's the corner of Barnett Shoals Rd. and Lawanna Dr. the house, it's a little bit | 01:09:24 | |
further back away from Barnett Shoals Rd. It is detached residential structure. It's zoned detached residential. The the acreage | 01:09:31 | |
is, is a little bit between it's point 65.68, it's less than 7/10 of an acre total. | 01:09:38 | |
On that there's some pictures of the structure as well, so that it would be a picture from the Barnett Shoals roadside. Again it's | 01:09:45 | |
not from Barnett Shoals Rd. specifically because the picture is taken closer to the structure. So that's what I would call the | 01:09:51 | |
southern side and then on the opposite side of that so, so if you think about facing back towards Barnett Shoals Rd. is the the | 01:09:57 | |
orientation of that picture where Lawanna Dr. would be on your right that is the northern side of the structure, maybe the the | 01:10:03 | |
rear of that existing residence. | 01:10:09 | |
I think we have one more. There you go. So that is the western side. That would be the a picture of the structure from the Lawanna | 01:10:15 | |
Dr. side of the house. | 01:10:20 | |
Be happy to answer any other questions you might have. | 01:11:03 | |
All right. I think at this point it probably makes sense to have Mrs. Culbertson or her attorney, Mr. Berryman, come forward. | 01:11:08 | |
And then we'll. | 01:11:13 | |
We can ask our questions of staff or the applicant. | 01:11:15 | |
Thank you. I'm Bill Berryman. I'm an attorney with Fortunately and Griffin here in Oconee County. And I'm here on behalf of Lisa | 01:11:23 | |
Culbertson, who's here with us tonight. | 01:11:27 | |
Lisa is a long time resident of city of Watkinsville. She moved here when she was 5. | 01:11:33 | |
She lives with her mother just around the corner on the Walmart drive, actually that her mother's front door looks out to the back | 01:11:39 | |
of this house. Lisa has been a legal assistant with Fortune, Bentley and Griffin since 1984. | 01:11:45 | |
She works with Mark Hodge and has worked with Mark that whole time. They started together that same year. | 01:11:52 | |
Her aunt gave this property to her in 2005 and reserved a life estate. | 01:12:00 | |
Durant then died in 2000. | 01:12:05 | |
Lisa and other family members have lived in this property intermittently during the time, but the property has the house has no | 01:12:10 | |
systems in it. It has never really been improved since it was built around. | 01:12:17 | |
1920. | 01:12:25 | |
It's a 1423 square foot. | 01:12:26 | |
And it really has not had any significant improvements. | 01:12:30 | |
Lisa's husband died in 2004, leaving her an 11 year old son. So due to the fact that she was a single mother, she's just not been | 01:12:34 | |
able to put any significant investment in this house. | 01:12:40 | |
To to keep it up, and admittedly it is not in good condition. | 01:12:47 | |
In May and July of last year, Mr. Cartilage notified her that the house was in violation of city ordinances and the International | 01:12:53 | |
Property Maintenance Code. | 01:12:58 | |
And she then made an effort to see what it would take to bring the property back into compliance and she has decided that she is | 01:13:05 | |
just not financially able to do that. | 01:13:10 | |
Some of the citations in the letter or to the International Property Maintenance Code, which? | 01:13:17 | |
The city, like most other governments in Georgia, has Adop. | 01:13:23 | |
And section 110.2 of the property maintenance code gives the owner. | 01:13:27 | |
The. | 01:13:33 | |
To either tear the house down or bring it into compliance. Even if it would, if it could be done at a reasonable basis, it is the | 01:13:34 | |
legal option of the property owner to make that determination whether to tear it down. | 01:13:41 | |
And due to the cost. | 01:13:48 | |
Demolition project, I mean, I'm sorry, renovation project, she's elected to exercise that right and to demol. | 01:13:50 | |
So I believe based on the County South Code, the International Property Maintenance Code, she's entitled to a demolition permit. | 01:14:01 | |
Now before and when we file this application. We spoke with Mr. Whiteman, Miss Dickerson, and they asked us to get an estimate for | 01:14:08 | |
the cost to bring this property back up to code and the purpose was to see if the cost of repairs is reasonable in relation to the | 01:14:14 | |
present value of the structure. | 01:14:21 | |
And I furnished Mr. Reitman with a copy of an estimate from Clack Construction in Winder, and that's a registered general | 01:14:28 | |
contractor. | 01:14:32 | |
And they have an estimate for 345,000 to repair this structure and bring it back up to code. | 01:14:38 | |
Now that figure might seem high at. | 01:14:44 | |
But consider there's no usable plumbing, electrical, heating, and. | 01:14:47 | |
There's asbestos and there's significant structural problems. In several of these photos you can look at the foundation and see | 01:14:52 | |
that it's crumbling. And if you look at the renovation, it requires that the house is going to be jacked up. Structural repairs | 01:14:58 | |
are done and then completely gutted from the inside out. | 01:15:04 | |
And also from my personal experience in dealing with clients and personally and looking for. | 01:15:13 | |
First trying to find contractors in this market who are willing to make estimates and then those contractors who do make | 01:15:18 | |
renovation estimates. This really is not out of line. | 01:15:23 | |
I've looked at the tax assessors valuations for several similarly sized homes in the immediate area to look at how the tax | 01:15:29 | |
assessor is valuing. | 01:15:34 | |
These properties So if you look at 53 Luanna Dr. which is just down the wanna drive from this property, it's a 1300 square foot | 01:15:39 | |
house and it has a building value of $95,436. | 01:15:46 | |
51 Lawanna Dr. which is also just across the street from this property, has 1300 square feet with the building value of 108,996. | 01:15:54 | |
So clearly the cost of replacing and renovating this structure is not reasonable compared to its present value. | 01:16:05 | |
Even if you cut that estimate. | 01:16:13 | |
Say 172,000, it would still be far above. | 01:16:15 | |
The value of houses within a stone's throw of this. | 01:16:20 | |
And as I've said before, Lisa is just not in a position. | 01:16:25 | |
To take on the financial burden of renovating this house, she wants to have it demolished. This is not for speculation. She wants | 01:16:29 | |
to to retain that property, her son. She would love to have her son build a house on that property. | 01:16:36 | |
Grandmother's across the street, Lisa's across the street. The sun could be there and it would remain in the family, as it has for | 01:16:45 | |
decades. So this is not a speculative venture that she's going through. So we respectfully request that you approve this | 01:16:51 | |
demolition permit. | 01:16:56 | |
And if you don't, if you're not in a position to approve it tonight and feel that the structure should be retained. | 01:17:04 | |
And not Tor. | 01:17:11 | |
I ask you that you table this. | 01:17:13 | |
And let us enter into discuss. | 01:17:16 | |
Number one, so that we can understand what the. | 01:17:19 | |
For retaining this property would be under the current codes. And 2nd, just to be able to provide you with our response to that | 01:17:22 | |
and assert any constitutional and property rights that Lisa may have as a result of having to construct a property that she really | 01:17:29 | |
doesn't feel like she's financially able to do. | 01:17:35 | |
We welcome further in person discussions with the mayor, with council members. We welcome a site visit, go through the house and | 01:17:43 | |
look at it with us. We think that will be important to our discussion. | 01:17:49 | |
That's where. | 01:17:56 | |
And I'm happy to answer any. | 01:17:57 | |
All right. | 01:18:01 | |
Thank you, Mr. Berryman. I'm sure we will have questions on this one, so. | 01:18:03 | |
But I think that was very well reasoned response. And Miss Culberson, I don't I. | 01:18:08 | |
I don't probably fair to say I don't envy the situation that you're in having to deal deal with this home I get. I understand the | 01:18:14 | |
challenges Mr. Berryman is presented so well so council. | 01:18:18 | |
If you have some questions for the applicant, feel free to ask. | 01:18:22 | |
I see y'all smile at each other. Somebody ask a question or make a suggestion. | 01:18:32 | |
I, of course, would would love to see the house saved, I understand. | 01:18:39 | |
The situation you want to keep the property. The property has you know. | 01:18:44 | |
Personal value, I guess. | 01:18:49 | |
I totally respect that, but I would hate to see. | 01:18:51 | |
Historic. | 01:18:56 | |
And you can see the charm that it had in its. | 01:18:58 | |
I would like. I would really like to ex. | 01:19:02 | |
Everything we could to save the house if the only option is. | 01:19:06 | |
Selling it? | 01:19:12 | |
You know, I personally would love to say the house. We've had two examples tonight, Mr. Weatherford. | 01:19:14 | |
Saving his house, so I had the opportunity to live in Watkinsville and then. | 01:19:20 | |
Casa Hara. He wants to save that 1950s. | 01:19:26 | |
I just. | 01:19:31 | |
I would love to see us. See you. I guess I. | 01:19:33 | |
Further investigate the opportunity someone if it if something y'all's family can't. | 01:19:37 | |
Fix up. | 01:19:43 | |
Restore. | 01:19:45 | |
Maybe give someone else the opportunity to, because I feel like it could be a shining example of another resurrection in | 01:19:46 | |
Watkinsville. | 01:19:50 | |
But I totally understand. I respect where you're. | 01:19:54 | |
But I I personally would love to see the. | 01:19:58 | |
See what we could do to save. | 01:20:01 | |
And I'm an agreement and. | 01:20:03 | |
Right down the road, I'm your neighbor. I walk my dog by your house, this house and the one on Moana. | 01:20:07 | |
Daily and. | 01:20:14 | |
I have door env. | 01:20:17 | |
Of the front door of that house, I will just tell you that I love historic homes. I too would love to see a way to. | 01:20:18 | |
Make this a win. Win I. | 01:20:26 | |
Understand your position. | 01:20:28 | |
Wanting to have a place that your son can live near you. | 01:20:31 | |
And I respect that deep. | 01:20:37 | |
Having restored several older homes. | 01:20:44 | |
Even in this current market. | 01:20:48 | |
I think that there are ways to do it in a much more affordable manner than what was quoted by the company and Winder. And I also | 01:20:51 | |
would just say I mean professionally, I'm a realtor. | 01:20:57 | |
And so I'm I am familiar with this market and. | 01:21:03 | |
The the tax values are not really a fair assessment of what properties are at all worth. I mean for example. | 01:21:09 | |
The corner of Wilson and Jeremy. | 01:21:21 | |
Three years. | 01:21:24 | |
1100 square foot home sold for 275 and property values have gone up 15 to 20% pretty much over the last few years. | 01:21:25 | |
And this is a historic home with character still there. Like I said, I have door envy. I would love to get inside the house and | 01:21:36 | |
see what it's like. I know that. | 01:21:40 | |
Sometimes the outside can look prettier than the inside or vice versa, and so thank you for mentioning that as a possibility. I | 01:21:47 | |
think that would be an excellent idea, but I. | 01:21:52 | |
I mean I have had multiple people. | 01:21:59 | |
I would let me just say this is not about me in business in any way. I'm totally recusing, but I just know I've had multiple | 01:22:02 | |
people just asked me is this for sale, is this for sales or is this for sale? It is, it is a not to tear it down but to fix it up | 01:22:08 | |
and and make it yet again a jewel in Watkinsville, so. | 01:22:14 | |
I'll I'll just continue to add to it. You know, I know there's multiple people in in the city of Watkinsville that would love to | 01:22:23 | |
have this home. | 01:22:26 | |
So if if you know if you would be willing to part with the home not on its current location, there are multiple people in the in | 01:22:30 | |
this town that would love to restore that home to its its former state. | 01:22:38 | |
And so it could be a win, win for you, you know, somebody else take. | 01:22:46 | |
From your property and then you don't have and then we don't have to destroy the home as well. | 01:22:51 | |
Any other comments? | 01:22:58 | |
So my suggestion would be that we do, upon the advice of Mr. Berryman, table this. What I'd like to suggest is that. | 01:23:04 | |
Our Downtown and Economic Development Committee, which is Councilwoman Tucker and Councilman Campbell. | 01:23:12 | |
Communicate with you, With you, Mr. Culbertson. Set up a time to meet. I'll join if I'm available as well. If that's legal, Joe | 01:23:18 | |
will have to advise. | 01:23:22 | |
Yep. And you know, and and let's let's continue the conversation I think wherever we wind up as I said earlier about the other | 01:23:28 | |
home. | 01:23:32 | |
I didn't say that thinking about this home, but you know, we just don't have the number of historic homes that communities like | 01:23:37 | |
Madison and communities like Athens do, and everyone is somewhat precious to us. | 01:23:42 | |
As a collective community, so I'd like to have the opportunity to continue that conversation for another month, so if councils | 01:23:48 | |
will and I'd entertain a motion to table. | 01:23:51 | |
To table this until. | 01:23:56 | |
April, I think we do need to move with with some diligence here. So it's not just open-ended. So I'd entertain a motion to table | 01:23:58 | |
until April. | 01:24:02 | |
The the demolition permit request, I make a motion to table until April. | 01:24:07 | |
All right, we have a motion. We have. | 01:24:13 | |
Any further discussion all in favor, say aye. | 01:24:14 | |
Any opposed? | 01:24:18 | |
All right, Motion carries 50. Bill, should we just be in touch with you? | 01:24:19 | |
OK, perfect. We'll do that. Thank you. Yeah, Y'all move right down the road. OK. That's our final note. That's our final | 01:24:24 | |
appearance of the night. We do have a couple new business items. We've got an amendment to the alcoholic beverages ordinance by | 01:24:30 | |
the drink regulations and delivery of alcohol manager Dickerson, if you could offer a report. | 01:24:36 | |
Thank you. | 01:24:44 | |
So there's there are some housekeeping items that need to happen when we codified the code. | 01:24:46 | |
For. | 01:24:52 | |
The plan was to. | 01:24:54 | |
Fee schedules or fees in the code so that they could be changed with A1 vote on a fee schedule, inadvertently did that on some of | 01:24:56 | |
this. So we're going back and cleaning that up. So there's several. | 01:25:01 | |
Places in the code in this in this ordinance where we have to do. | 01:25:07 | |
We also under advisement of Mr. Marchman and Julie, what is Mr. Marksman's position? He's a he does training right. He does the | 01:25:11 | |
alcohol training. He's certified through the state right. So he does that for the for the county here. He may do several counties | 01:25:16 | |
around us, but for definitely for Oconee County county and he recommended. | 01:25:22 | |
Updating our code to require that alcohol training classes be be done within 45 days instead of six months, so we're making that | 01:25:29 | |
recommendation in the code to change that. | 01:25:34 | |
Again, fees. We also, although Julie remembers it clearly, as does the mayor. I was not here, we did not have. | 01:25:40 | |
Time, hours of operation when alcohol could be served until a time and a time it could be served till and and so we were putting | 01:25:48 | |
11:00 at night on in the code because it wasn't listed even though it was intended to be listed. I do want to point out that Julie | 01:25:55 | |
did receive an e-mail. The clerk received an e-mail today from Michael Collins with Classic City Eats. Julie, do you want to read | 01:26:02 | |
that e-mail to everybody just so we can share it? Make make sure that they're aware while we're on this subject. | 01:26:09 | |
He just says as following up on our conversation, can you please ask the board to consider revising the hours of operation for on | 01:26:17 | |
premise cells to midnight or just before midnight? | 01:26:23 | |
Prime time sporting events generally run later than 11:00 PM but are over by midnight so the extra hour would definitely help | 01:26:29 | |
business during these events and on special holidays or other annual events non sports related such as anniversaries and birthday | 01:26:36 | |
parties and things. A cut off at or near midnight would still deter late night establishments that run into early morning hours | 01:26:42 | |
but would support restaurant and family friendly sports bars. | 01:26:49 | |
He also added regarding training, his concerns with the requirements to train the entire staff on a specific itinerary would be | 01:26:56 | |
the availability of the training and being tied into a single source of the training from an availability and cost standpoint. He | 01:27:04 | |
was asking if there's an an online option if that that would be ideal to help alleviate those concerns, cost and timing or a train | 01:27:11 | |
the trainer type of training where Staffs would be trained internally. | 01:27:19 | |
And I don't think that putting in the code that the training has to be done within 45 days instead of six months really. I don't | 01:27:30 | |
think we'll get into how it's going to be provided. We'll look at online options. I think that's certainly within our purview to | 01:27:35 | |
do and we'll investigate that. But I don't think we have to do that in the code per SE. So if you don't mind, I also wanted to | 01:27:41 | |
know that that is for the 45 days is for new hires. | 01:27:46 | |
As far as new applicants or renewals, Mr. Marchman suggested that we asked for that before we even issue the license. So and I | 01:27:52 | |
think we included that wording in there as well. | 01:27:58 | |
So we'll, we'll continue on a couple other items. So this is actually a result of of COVID delivery of alcohol. We imagine that | 01:28:06 | |
it's probably going on right now even though it's not in our code. And so we're trying to legitimize it by putting it in the code | 01:28:12 | |
because it is allowed. | 01:28:18 | |
You do have to pass an ordinance so it is restricted to deliveries. Restricted to only those that are 21 years of age or older | 01:28:25 | |
have to be employed directly by the restaurant licensee. | 01:28:31 | |
Not a third party, so not a Grubhub or Ubereats or any of those and and then obviously just in accordance with any other aspects | 01:28:36 | |
of the official Code of Georgia. | 01:28:42 | |
The other piece of it is at the bottom, and this does not require. This piece is actually not require. | 01:28:48 | |
An ordinance, but it does. | 01:28:55 | |
It does complicate things so the a restaurant licensee can actually currently sell 2 drinks for every entree to. | 01:28:58 | |
Senate Bill 236 was signed by Governor Kemp, which allows beer, wine or distilled spirits for consumption on the premises. To to | 01:29:08 | |
be to, I'm sorry, to be sold and to go and approve containers, they have to be closed containers. | 01:29:15 | |
It doesn't require an ordinance, but our current ordinance actually said that you can't do it. So we're trying to clean it up by | 01:29:23 | |
putting in there that it could be done if you're if it's sold by a restaurant licensee. | 01:29:29 | |
So that we don't have a conflict. | 01:29:35 | |
And then the final thing is again, 21 years. | 01:29:39 | |
For those dispensing, serving or handling alcohol beverages. | 01:29:44 | |
All right, Council, Y'all heard the updates to the code in the way of background. I will say we've always been cautious and | 01:29:51 | |
incremental as it relates to alcohol policies in Watkinsville, which I think has been wise over the years. | 01:29:57 | |
You know, so there are some things in here that I'm sure our restaurants would wish we would be a little bit more liberal on, but | 01:30:03 | |
I think it's prudent to be cautious, for example, I appreciate. | 01:30:09 | |
The gentleman from Classic City. It's wanting to have alcohol till 12, but I don't think last call at 11:00 is unreasonable in any | 01:30:14 | |
way. | 01:30:17 | |
Because you're off site. So anyway, that's that's my take on it. You all are welcome to take what actions you see fit or recommend | 01:31:00 | |
changes, but this is what staff is presented. | 01:31:05 | |
Oh, I agree that there, I mean you can have last call at 11 doesn't mean you have to shut the doors. I mean if you're shutting the | 01:31:10 | |
doors at 12, you don't need last call at 12, so. | 01:31:15 | |
Yeah, I think this makes a lot of sense. | 01:31:19 | |
All right. Any further commentary? If not, we'll take a motion. | 01:31:25 | |
I make a motion. | 01:31:32 | |
To approve the ordinance amendments to Alcoholic beverage Ordinance by the Drink Regulations Delivery of alcohol. | 01:31:35 | |
2nd Right. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Any opposed, Aye. | 01:31:43 | |
Councilwoman Massey oppos. | 01:31:53 | |
Next item is approve and appropriate some of the special spots three funds for master plan improvements at Harris Hills Park. | 01:31:56 | |
Councilwoman Tucker, I believe you're going to give. | 01:32:00 | |
An update Is the Chair of the Parks, Green Space and Environment Committee? Yes, so. | 01:32:05 | |
I'm not going through all this history, OK? | 01:32:13 | |
Going through all that, let's not go through everything. | 01:32:17 | |
Can I just give an update on what what we're doing? | 01:32:21 | |
Yes, OK, so we have had some movement and some ideas with the old playground. | 01:32:24 | |
I had no idea when I became the chair of this committee, how many opinions and passions there are involved about Harris Shoals | 01:32:32 | |
Park. So. | 01:32:35 | |
We have a plan tentative to retain. | 01:32:40 | |
A few portions of the existing playground. They won't be a playground anymore. There'll be more of an observation area. Keep some | 01:32:46 | |
of the bridges. Lawrence Duke, who was the original designer of the playground, has been instrumental in coming up with a way to | 01:32:51 | |
repurpose it. | 01:32:56 | |
So. | 01:33:02 | |
Probably 2/3 of it will be demoed and then we are going to try to preserve some of the wood even as it's demoed to see if we can | 01:33:03 | |
repurpose it to make. | 01:33:10 | |
The remaining portions safer, so we are currently. | 01:33:16 | |
Working with members of the community, trying to get some volunteer efforts. Connie talked to the Lions Club and we think there | 01:33:21 | |
are some people there that can help. I spoke with Rotary this week and they may have a little bit of help with that. We're also | 01:33:28 | |
going to reach out to Boy Scouts and then we have staff that will be able to do that as well. We still have in the works of the | 01:33:34 | |
rest of the plan. I am trying to get an appointment with OCAF Director. We've both been busy and been been missing because we want | 01:33:41 | |
to. | 01:33:47 | |
Have the art land of Georgia be part of it as well as far as natural things. So more on that once I've talked to her to see what | 01:33:54 | |
the practicalities are. But. | 01:33:59 | |
The last portion of that old playground that will no longer be a playground is we are looking at doing a large topo map. | 01:34:05 | |
Of Harris Hills Park, where some of the demo part is going away. So again, the emphasis from all the feedback we got during the | 01:34:15 | |
Harrah's Park. | 01:34:19 | |
Restoration process was that. | 01:34:25 | |
People want it to be natural and about nature and so we are respecting that and that is. | 01:34:29 | |
What we are looking to do while still preserving the history, umm. | 01:34:34 | |
That people have. So in order to do that we are requesting, Oh yes, yes, and Lawrence put that together. | 01:34:39 | |
So thank you too. So these are the portions that are going to remain and Lawrence built this. Lawrence has put so much time into | 01:34:48 | |
this. He is a jewel in our community, so. | 01:34:54 | |
There will be. Obviously this is not complete. We aren't. We're not planning on having a death fall in the old playground, so a | 01:35:05 | |
few more of the bridges will be and then obviously they will have slats and things. So you know, small children can't just walk | 01:35:13 | |
straight out as they can at the moment, so it will be brought up to safety codes. | 01:35:20 | |
Thank you so much for getting that. | 01:35:29 | |
So we are requesting. | 01:35:31 | |
How much money are we requesting? | 01:35:35 | |
What, 100,000? Oh, we're asking for $100,000. | 01:35:37 | |
In order to complete this part and. | 01:35:45 | |
Also, that will include doing some upgrades to the bathroom right now, which that we definitely need to do. So staff has been | 01:35:50 | |
working hard on on getting quotes and things together for that. | 01:35:57 | |
And also professional engineering services removing waste generated from improvements and temporary construction signage so and | 01:36:05 | |
also paving the plan parking facilities which is those are more at the front of the park. So so and just make it clear, so this is | 01:36:12 | |
sort of start money we we are hopeful that it will be sufficient but you may recall that you did have a placeholder for about 3 | 01:36:19 | |
and a half $350,000. | 01:36:26 | |
In Sloss 3, but I think you. | 01:36:34 | |
We've got a few things that we can do ourselves that we're going to be doing, perhaps even with volunteers to try to save some | 01:36:37 | |
money. So we'll start moving through this, but if Y'all can approve an allocation of 100,000, we can earmark that money and get | 01:36:42 | |
the work underway. | 01:36:47 | |
And then Sharon does have a bid for some of the paving, but we're going to go out and get multiple bids on the paving contract to | 01:36:53 | |
make sure that we get the lowest price and get that moving. And that'll give us an opportunity to get some signs up and make sure | 01:36:58 | |
the public understands, hey works beginning. | 01:37:02 | |
Timing is really good. | 01:37:07 | |
The the new playground comes online. That's what we said all along. We want to get that online and then we want to get going with | 01:37:09 | |
some energy. | 01:37:12 | |
In hair Shoals and but we are going to need to communicate with people. Some things are going to change. Basketball court will go | 01:37:15 | |
away. The playground will begin being the old playground will be reimagined into something different. Thanks to Christine and | 01:37:21 | |
Brett for your conversation with Rotary on the BBQ pit. So there's a lot that'll have that they'll begin to happen. | 01:37:27 | |
And we want to be sure that the public understands what's happening because we know it's a jewel down there. So I'd like to get if | 01:37:33 | |
I can this isn't the the update on the BBQ pit especially with Chuck in the room he is one of the the the trucks just kept coming | 01:37:40 | |
on Tuesday morning when when I was meeting with the the Rotary members with the say in this. And so I think we have come up with a | 01:37:47 | |
happy medium. So the this is not any we will be asking for more money just know that this this is nothing to do with the BBQ pits | 01:37:54 | |
but. | 01:38:00 | |
The current. | 01:38:07 | |
Plan is to remove the pits where they are because that is the prettiest view in the park, to have picnic tables and benches and | 01:38:08 | |
stuff there instead. And then because it is essential for people doing BBQ to have access to the kitchen, instead create a | 01:38:14 | |
structure, a similar structure. | 01:38:20 | |
At the back end. So there's still access, but it's out of the way. And so that will be a partnership with Rotary. And so we're | 01:38:26 | |
they're working on quotes right now and maybe even by next month we'll be able to come before council with. | 01:38:33 | |
Ask for money. | 01:38:40 | |
So and I think you know technically what we're looking for here is 100,000 for hair Shoals in this 2400 we've talked before about | 01:38:42 | |
we've got, you know we have this horrifying mishmash of wires in the concession stand at Rocket Field. So this will also we'll go | 01:38:46 | |
ahead and get that tuned up. | 01:38:51 | |
At Rocket Field. So I think we're looking for 100. | 01:38:56 | |
$1400 if we could get a motion to that effect unless there's any questions for Councilwoman Tucker. | 01:39:00 | |
I'll make a motion that we approve $102,400.00 for the Hair Shoals master plan improvements. | 01:39:09 | |
And rocket. | 01:39:19 | |
All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second? | 01:39:20 | |
We have a second for Mr. Garrett. Any further discussions? | 01:39:23 | |
All right here. None. All in favor, say. | 01:39:26 | |
Any opposed? All right. Christine, thank you. And Connie, thank you for your work. I know that is that is hard work on the park | 01:39:29 | |
and as Christine said, everyone has is passionate about what's happening in the park. | 01:39:35 | |
But I think every, not everyone. I think 99% of people are going to be pleased when we're done. We know we can't make everybody | 01:39:40 | |
happy all the time. Chuck, thank you for leaning into that. For Rotary too as well. We appreciate Rotary's. | 01:39:45 | |
All right, we're almost done here, folks, at least for those of you who are joining us before we hit executive session amendments | 01:39:51 | |
to the urban forest plan manager, Dickerson. | 01:39:56 | |
Short and sweet here? Sure. Yeah. So the easy one is the second one. I'll do that first. We just simply had 4 1/2 inches instead | 01:40:01 | |
of 4 1/2 feet for the DBH. It's just a housekeeping item. The other item that we're asking to add and and perhaps Councilman | 01:40:07 | |
Thomas, I want to speak to their conversation is. | 01:40:14 | |
We have a lot of. | 01:40:21 | |
Built. We have a fair number of buildings that are existing and then they add square footage. And our concern is, is obviously | 01:40:23 | |
storm water issues and urban forest issues and the urban forest didn't address, it wasn't addressed at all, but stormwater is. And | 01:40:29 | |
so we're trying to tie those together with the same threshold that stormwater has, which is 5000 square feet. So anytime there's a | 01:40:34 | |
cumulative impervious surface of 5000 square feet or more than they're going to require an urban forest plan. And that's simply | 01:40:40 | |
what we're asking. | 01:40:46 | |
I think she covered. | 01:40:54 | |
All. | 01:40:55 | |
Council, any questions? | 01:40:57 | |
Hearing none, I'll take a motion. | 01:40:59 | |
I make a motion for the amendments to the. | 01:41:03 | |
To approve the amendments to the Urban Forest Protection Plan. | 01:41:06 | |
Do we have? | 01:41:10 | |
I. | 01:41:12 | |
All right. We have a motion. We have a second. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? No. All right. Item number 20, the new item | 01:41:13 | |
that we added, Christmas lights. Sharon, I know we don't have an item on this, but I think the estimate was $9000. If we waited | 01:41:18 | |
till next year, we anticipate a 15,000. | 01:41:24 | |
Reduction 15%, excuse me, reduction, if we go ahead with that purchase now, is that correct? Yeah, it's, I think it's a little bit | 01:41:30 | |
more than that. It's you may have done the math already, I was trying to figure it out. | 01:41:35 | |
It's actually about a 24% reduction. | 01:41:41 | |
If we do it before the end of this month so we can save $2015.00 on a on a $9000 purchase. If we move forward on purchasing those | 01:41:45 | |
additional Christmas lights, would your recommendation manager Dickerson, Would that come out of ARP or fund balance? | 01:41:51 | |
It can come out of ARP. I think it it's a it's. | 01:41:59 | |
The council has the authority, under the guidelines, U.S. Treasury guidelines, to spend that money for any government services. | 01:42:02 | |
It's a government service and it'll just be a line item in our report to the US Treasury. So I would use ARP money. We've got | 01:42:08 | |
$142,000 in ARP that has not been appropriated. OK, you've heard the recommendation to staff unless someone has. | 01:42:14 | |
Another idea, I'll accept a motion to approve purchase. | 01:42:21 | |
Holiday lights. | 01:42:25 | |
At Let's just authorize up to $7000 in case we need it from ARP funds. | 01:42:27 | |
I'd like to request that we purchase up to our allocate up to $7000 for the purchase of Christmas lights out of ARP funds. | 01:42:35 | |
All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? | 01:42:46 | |
All in favor. | 01:42:49 | |
Motion carries. | 01:42:52 | |
Public comments Anyone care to come forward with the public comment tonight? | 01:42:54 | |
We did get slim. We started started hot and and gotten a little cold. | 01:43:00 | |
All right, we have no public comments. We will move on to the mayor. | 01:43:04 | |
Do want to proud to share that we have our first CEO from Wire Park. | 01:43:09 | |
So excited that the first business is open and active there that's custom. | 01:43:14 | |
Solutions LL. | 01:43:19 | |
So we're excited to continue to see progress at. | 01:43:21 | |
We also continue to see progress next door. There's lights up now at the Miracle Week field. There's trees beginning to be | 01:43:25 | |
planted. There's a crew out there kind of raking out around the playground today, so I'd imagine they're getting ready to put the. | 01:43:31 | |
Surface down South work. | 01:43:37 | |
Proceeding at the Miracle League facility, which is great, I attended and, as did Councilwoman Tucker, the state of the county | 01:43:40 | |
today. | 01:43:44 | |
John, we're proud. Proud to be your partners, proud to live in this community. Y'all do a great job and I thought that was a great | 01:43:49 | |
session today. And kudos to you guys for proactively getting out and communicating with the public all the good things that y'all | 01:43:54 | |
do. So thank you, thank you for that and good job today. | 01:43:59 | |
And then the last thing, I don't think he's here. I think we've lost. | 01:44:05 | |
Law enforcement team. But I did want to highlight for all, y'all, if you have a chance to wish him well, Officer CJ Biddinger is | 01:44:08 | |
going to get married. | 01:44:12 | |
This weekend. | 01:44:15 | |
So. And if you don't follow him on social media, then you wouldn't know. But if you do, you certainly would. He's very excited | 01:44:18 | |
about starting the rest of his life with Bailey. | 01:44:22 | |
So if you have an opportunity, wish CJ well as he starts a new phase of life. | 01:44:28 | |
They'll be married Saturday afternoon in Oglethorpe County, so we're proud of CJ and proud of all of our officers, but we'll be | 01:44:34 | |
especially happy for him this weekend. | 01:44:37 | |
From there on, that's all I've got and we will move to council member, reports Councilman Garrett, what you got? | 01:44:42 | |
Nothing from Councilman Garrett, Councilwoman. | 01:44:50 | |
Nothing from Councilwoman Massey, Councilman. | 01:44:54 | |
Wow. We've all right. Is anybody going to break the streak? Councilwoman Tucker? | 01:44:57 | |
We're going to Madison on Monday as. | 01:45:10 | |
Is that still Monica Callahan there? | 01:45:21 | |
Great. | 01:45:26 | |
OK. All right. Great. OK. | 01:45:28 | |
All right. We'll keep up the good work. I'm going to Savannah for the. | 01:45:31 | |
The June. | 01:45:37 | |
OK. | 01:45:40 | |
Had vacation scheduled from the last day that class would start. | 01:45:43 | |
Downtown Development Authority. | 01:45:49 | |
So that's part of what their committees evaluating is DDA potentially making making whether that might make sense? | 01:45:52 | |
I did it online. | 01:45:59 | |
All right. | 01:46:02 | |
Awesome. So we're expecting to hear more from your committee in the months ahead. Thank you all for your work as you think about | 01:46:03 | |
master planning and and how to strengthen our downtown. | 01:46:07 | |
And I think that's it. Unless anybody else has has anything, we're going to have to have a brief executive session on on real | 01:46:14 | |
estate and potential litigation. So I'll entertain a motion to go into that before and and then we'll we'll take the briefest of | 01:46:20 | |
recesses and say goodbye to our guests and then we'll jump into that. So I'll entertain a motion. | 01:46:27 | |
To move into executive session for real estate and potential litigation, please I make a motion to move to executive session. | 01:46:34 | |
2nd And we have a second. All in favor? Say aye. All right, back to our seats in about 3 minutes. | 01:46:41 | |
All right. Welcome back, everybody. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. | 01:46:54 | |
I make a motion to adjourn. | 01:46:58 | |
We have a second all in favor, say. | 01:47:00 | |
Good night. | 01:47:03 |
* you need to log in to manage your favorites
* use Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac) to search in document
Loading...
Name | Document type | |
---|---|---|
Meeting Materials | General Document |
* use Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac) to search in document
Loading...
Thank. | 00:00:23 | |
All right, everybody quieted down right on time. So thanks, everyone, for coming to the March, Watkinsville. | 00:00:30 | |
City Council meeting Excited to see such a big crowd here tonight. I'm the mayor Brian Broderick joined by this August body up | 00:00:36 | |
here again. Thank you for being here tonight. We do have a quorum. | 00:00:41 | |
And to kick us off, I'm going to ask Braden and Hal Jackson to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please. | 00:00:47 | |
Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. | 00:00:56 | |
And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:01:01 | |
All right. Thank you, Hal and Brayden. Glad to have you all here tonight. | 00:01:16 | |
1st on the agenda for us tonight is the approval of the Minutes. We have two sets of minutes, one from the February 16th regular | 00:01:21 | |
meeting. | 00:01:24 | |
One from the March 1st special. | 00:01:28 | |
On the regular meeting, does anyone have any? | 00:01:31 | |
Edits or adjustments to those minutes. | 00:01:36 | |
All right. I did notice two things. One, it said there was a question mark after it noted Garrett opposed a motion related to the | 00:01:40 | |
special events facility. | 00:01:44 | |
I think we just need to cut out that question mark. You already caught that and then I think it was slightly unclear about the | 00:01:48 | |
entrance closest to Ashford Manor. | 00:01:53 | |
Also needs to be I think, right? | 00:01:59 | |
Right. Turn in only in that condition on that motion. That's the only two things I notice. Anybody else have anything else on the | 00:02:01 | |
Minutes? | 00:02:04 | |
OK, here. None. I'll entertain a motion to approve the February 16th minutes. | 00:02:08 | |
I make a motion to approve the February minutes. All right, we have a motion for Mr. Campbell. Do we have a second? | 00:02:15 | |
Motion in a second. All in favor, Say aye. Any opposed? | 00:02:22 | |
All. | 00:02:26 | |
You abstain. You weren't there. OK, so for a Christine abstains March 1st special called meeting do we have? | 00:02:27 | |
Any edits to those minutes? | 00:02:36 | |
That was relatively brief hearing. None. Can we have a motion to approve and make a motion to approve and a second. | 00:02:40 | |
We have a motion and a second all in favor. Say aye, aye. | 00:02:48 | |
All right, Motion carries 50. | 00:02:52 | |
All right. Approval of the agenda. We do have one item that we need to add to the agenda that would be under new business, the | 00:02:55 | |
purchase of Christmas lights at a non holiday discount. As you guys can imagine, things like Christmas lights get a little bit | 00:03:00 | |
cheaper in the spring. | 00:03:05 | |
And we've had some citizen requests for some additional Christmas lighting on some of our streets. So the manager has identified | 00:03:11 | |
an opportunity to purchase those. | 00:03:15 | |
At a discount, so I would entertain a motion to. | 00:03:19 | |
The Amend the agenda to add purchase of Christmas lights under new business, please. | 00:03:23 | |
You can say so moved, so moved and is there a second? | 00:03:31 | |
We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion. | 00:03:35 | |
All in favor say. | 00:03:38 | |
All right. We're going to move on to administration, just the rules of the road. For those of you who haven't been here before, we | 00:03:40 | |
are a little more casual about our public input process in Watkinsville. We typically will allow public comment at the mayor and | 00:03:46 | |
council's discretion on items that are on the agenda. We do have certain sections of the agenda where formal comment is always | 00:03:51 | |
allowed. That typically is on. | 00:03:57 | |
Land use matters, public hearings, different items like that. So Mr. Reitman will be our guide as we go through that. We do ask | 00:04:02 | |
that the comments that you make are directly related to those agenda items. If it's on an agenda item that does not have public | 00:04:08 | |
speaking automatically with that, you will need to be recognized by the Mayor and council before you address us. | 00:04:14 | |
When you step forward, state your name. State your address. Speak only from the podium. 4 minutes A person. Refrain from debate. | 00:04:21 | |
Argument. Personal attacks are irrelevant. Discussion. Address the merits of the pending matter again once we get to those points | 00:04:25 | |
during the agenda. | 00:04:29 | |
Mr. Reitman will be our guide. But what I'm excited about tonight. We have several exciting moments, but one of the first ones, | 00:04:34 | |
Umm. | 00:04:38 | |
That I'm really excited about. | 00:04:43 | |
Is a proclamation for Mr. Larry Weatherford. Mr. Weatherford. | 00:04:46 | |
Umm. | 00:04:52 | |
I've always been struck by Larry as a guy who when I first moved back to Watkinsville, I was like this guy. He doesn't even live | 00:04:55 | |
in Watkinsville, but I think he's at more events in Watkinsville than I am. | 00:05:01 | |
Everywhere I went, there was a there was Larry Weatherford. And come to find out, that's been the story of his life. | 00:05:07 | |
In this community that when something important was happening, Larry Weatherford was there. When there was a big moment for | 00:05:13 | |
Watkinsville, Larry Weatherford was there. | 00:05:17 | |
And he's been a wonderful. | 00:05:22 | |
Leader in this community for a long time, so we have a. | 00:05:25 | |
For Mr. Weatherford, I'm going to step to the podium up there and read that. I know we have a few other council members who may | 00:05:29 | |
want to make a comment. And then, Larry, if you're willing, when I'm done, we'd love to have hear from you. If you have a few | 00:05:34 | |
minutes, you want to make a few minutes of remarks about Watkinsville. | 00:05:39 | |
And then we'll take a couple photos after that. OK, but I'm going to step up to the podium and read this proclamation. | 00:05:44 | |
Lawrence Weatherford was born in Watkinsville, Georgia, and lived a brief time at the historic Eagle Tavern. | 00:06:04 | |
Lawrence's family has deep roots in the community, beginning with his father, who served as mayor of Watkinsville during the 1950s | 00:06:10 | |
after serving in the Army during World War 2. | 00:06:15 | |
His mother, who was the first visiting teacher in Oconee County in the 1930s after graduating from the University of Georgia, and | 00:06:19 | |
his grandfather, Dave Weatherford, who served as chairman of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners in the 1930s. | 00:06:26 | |
Lawrence grew up in Watkinsville playing basketball and graduating at age 16 from Watkinsville High School, now known as Oconee | 00:06:33 | |
County High School, attending Watkinsville Christian Church and working at Spec Downs grocery store and Joe McDonald grocery store | 00:06:37 | |
in downtown Watkinsville. | 00:06:42 | |
He went on to attend the University of Georgia and while enrolled, served in the ROTC before graduating with a Bachelor of Science | 00:06:47 | |
in Elementary Education. | 00:06:50 | |
He served in the 82nd Airborne Battalion during the Korean War, volunteering from the ROTC program at the University of Georgia. | 00:06:55 | |
He trained at Fort Knox and Fort Bragg before serving one year in Germany patrolling the Iron Curtain. | 00:07:01 | |
And after the Korean War, he joined the Army Reserves in 1953. | 00:07:07 | |
Ultimately retiring as a. | 00:07:11 | |
After graduation, Lawrence worked for the Georgia Department of Labor before moving on to the US Department of Labor, where he | 00:07:14 | |
served as regional director of financing and Administration in 1958 and eventually director of unemployment insurance and deputy | 00:07:19 | |
to the assistant secretary in the 1970s. | 00:07:24 | |
He came back home to work at the University of Georgia under President Charles Knapp as the vice president for government | 00:07:29 | |
relations, retiring in 1988. | 00:07:33 | |
Larry has continued to make meaningful contributions to the Watkinsville community through his service on the OCALAF board and his | 00:07:37 | |
restoration of a pre Civil War home on Main Street. | 00:07:42 | |
Larry is one of Watkinsville's most disting. | 00:07:47 | |
Citiz. | 00:07:51 | |
He's a tireless booster for his hometown. | 00:07:52 | |
And he continues to share his stories of Watkinsville past and believes in its future. | 00:07:55 | |
Now, therefore, I, Brian Broderick, Mayor of Watkinsville, do hereby recognize and honor Lawrence E Weatherford for his commitment | 00:08:02 | |
and public service accomplishments to the citizens of Watkinsville and so many others throughout Georgia and the United States, | 00:08:07 | |
and witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and cause to be affixed the Great Seal of the City of Watkinsville, Georgia, on | 00:08:12 | |
the 23rd day of March. | 00:08:18 | |
2020. | 00:08:23 | |
Now I know we have, I think we might have a few others who want to make some remarks about how Larry's impacted their lives. So if | 00:08:41 | |
those folks. | 00:08:44 | |
Share some remarks and then Larry will turn the microphone over to you briefly. We do have a reputation for long meetings that I'm | 00:08:48 | |
trying to trying to reduce. So, but we will turn the microphone over to you and then we'll get a picture with your family and then | 00:08:52 | |
with the folks, everybody who came here to celebrate you to you tonight. But Councilman Thomas, did you have something you want to | 00:08:56 | |
say? | 00:09:01 | |
I know him as Uncle Larry, but Uncle Larry, I really appreciate your leadership. You've taught me a lot. | 00:09:09 | |
From from your time in the military to your time in government relations, I just really appreciate all the stuff you've done for | 00:09:17 | |
this great community and your time coming back. | 00:09:22 | |
To Watkinsville. | 00:09:27 | |
You know, multiple times a week. | 00:09:30 | |
To see the residents here and visit the bank and you know, visit old friends and that's a hall for you. And we really appreciate | 00:09:32 | |
you coming. I greatly appreciate your leadership and it's something to model after. So thank you very much. | 00:09:39 | |
You can say. | 00:09:53 | |
Yeah, Mr. Weatherford, where? | 00:09:56 | |
One of the finest people I've ever met. | 00:09:59 | |
Marcie and I bought his house on Main Street 66 S Main. | 00:10:01 | |
1314 years ago Rough. | 00:10:06 | |
I had a problem though. I had to sell my other. | 00:10:10 | |
So, but Larry Weatherford had put a sign out there for sale, went in there, saw it, loved it. | 00:10:14 | |
I said, Mr. Weatherford, my problem is I got to sell my other house. | 00:10:19 | |
Can you give me a couple weeks to see if I can get mine sold? He said sure, no problem. | 00:10:23 | |
So sure enough, we were fortunate. But I sell our house at least under contract. A few weeks later, go back to Mr. Weatherford, | 00:10:28 | |
It's weather for to have a contract. | 00:10:32 | |
Now, can we talk about a price for your house? | 00:10:37 | |
I was not in a good, was not in a good negotiation point because I was in a contract. | 00:10:40 | |
But we reached a fair deal and and I really so also on the House it was mentioned in the proclamation is a pretty civil war home | 00:10:46 | |
that we bought. | 00:10:51 | |
That was in disrepair. | 00:10:56 | |
Mr. Weatherford. | 00:10:59 | |
Restored his family home. | 00:11:00 | |
At a great expense would have been easier I think to tear it down and cheaper. | 00:11:03 | |
But he restored it, and we thank him for that. Had he not restored it, we might not be living in Watkinsville. I'm thankful every | 00:11:07 | |
day that we are. So thank you, Mr. Weatherford. You're a wonderful human. | 00:11:13 | |
And I know we have a few other I don't know if Commissioner Hardin or Chairman Daniel, if y'all care to make any remarks. Do you | 00:11:24 | |
have anything you'd want to add about this gentleman? I see Amory giving him a side eye. He's probably got a story or two, but. | 00:11:29 | |
I welcome you to the podium if you all want to say a quick word, and then we'll turn it over to the guest of honor to say what he | 00:11:36 | |
has to say. But. | 00:11:40 | |
Yep. | 00:11:45 | |
And welcome back, former Mayor Hardin. I should say, too. It's not every day we get to turn the podium back over to a former | 00:11:48 | |
mayor. | 00:11:51 | |
Thank you, Mayor Broderick. I do appreciate this opportunity to congratulate you, Larry. | 00:11:56 | |
Course, Larry, as you say, I see more of. | 00:12:02 | |
Then I do a lot of people in this community and he lives in Oxford, GA And so we're so proud for Larry that you're being | 00:12:07 | |
recognized and to have your family with you here tonight and just want to thank you for all that you've done and continue to do | 00:12:13 | |
for a walk and spell. Thank you. | 00:12:18 | |
We'll say it's always a bright spot in my day when I see you. You're always upbeat and very cheerful and it's been great. | 00:12:36 | |
Getting to know you over the years and. | 00:12:42 | |
Unless we have anyone else, Larry, if you want to say a few words, you're come on up here and then we'll get. | 00:12:52 | |
We'll get some photos. | 00:12:58 | |
Thank you. Thank you. | 00:13:02 | |
I think he had talked. | 00:13:07 | |
Ahead of time by and by saying a few words. | 00:13:10 | |
Because I I guess as I was thinking about the history that Watkinsville and my time. | 00:13:14 | |
It'll probably take us through the next week. | 00:13:22 | |
But let me start my comments off about I brought somebody with me. | 00:13:26 | |
This is my sweetheart. We were together for a day or two and. | 00:13:33 | |
I come down to Watkinsville to visit with her. | 00:13:39 | |
And she was. | 00:13:43 | |
A great part of the reason why. | 00:13:45 | |
Invited me here tonight to say all these nice things about you. | 00:13:49 | |
But I think I carefully. | 00:13:54 | |
Repeat some things. | 00:13:58 | |
And leave out some things that Pattice said not to do. | 00:14:01 | |
No, I do. My family was has been said already a good part of the Watkinsville government and everything, and I have so many when | 00:14:10 | |
Captain Jake died. | 00:14:16 | |
Daddy, Dave died. I mean the channel of Commission that we had a little farm over here across the Creek and. | 00:14:23 | |
I remember I was working for the. | 00:14:30 | |
The couple the man that. | 00:14:33 | |
Work on, you know, I ain't gonna say was a slave, I said. But but Daddy worked in Watsonville and Henry worked up there, and I | 00:14:38 | |
that was my first time of having a supervisor. | 00:14:44 | |
And I remember the time when we would be out in the. | 00:14:51 | |
And a car would come from Athens to Watkinsville. | 00:14:56 | |
And we would tie the horse down, run out in the front yard to see who it was because that's about the way that the the the traffic | 00:15:00 | |
was Watkins. | 00:15:05 | |
And I'll tell you back then, those days, it was a great, great place. | 00:15:12 | |
And with all the people that that oversaw my life. | 00:15:18 | |
African Americans as well as all our. | 00:15:26 | |
And I just am so grateful for the opportunity to have grown uphill. | 00:15:33 | |
And then I when I left, as we talked about a while ago, I went to a lot of different places to work and. | 00:15:39 | |
Uh, stayed on the road and that's one of the reasons that this Lady Hill. | 00:15:48 | |
Is so important to me because when you look over here, these girls, she did it. | 00:15:55 | |
And I appreciated that. That's so very much. | 00:16:01 | |
I said one time, being in a cocktail party in Honolulu. | 00:16:06 | |
And the phone rang, and it was one day after the truck had brought Catherine. | 00:16:12 | |
Washington and hadn't unloaded the furniture. But I was in a cocktail party and I got a phone call and she said, what's the name | 00:16:19 | |
of the power company? | 00:16:24 | |
And I couldn't remember myself. | 00:16:30 | |
But nevertheless, I don't stand here by myself. She's in the corner right over here and I wouldn't be here if it was not for her. | 00:16:35 | |
And I have the greatest family. | 00:16:41 | |
That you could believe. | 00:16:48 | |
And as I go around and look at this room over all different times and things, that my life has been influenced by what Y'all did. | 00:16:50 | |
And I'm not going to go through that Patty's direction. | 00:16:59 | |
I'm not going to go through several things that I went through and growing up here. | 00:17:05 | |
And but if anybody is interested, we'll meet outside and. | 00:17:11 | |
Anyway, let me just say how proud I am to be from what could feel. | 00:17:19 | |
And also let me change that to really say that my heart is always in what could be and always will be. | 00:17:25 | |
And I wanted to ask y'all if that we could take a vote. | 00:17:34 | |
Because we'll still got my house appealing the corner that's built by Catherine's grandfather in 1908. | 00:17:40 | |
And I think it would be nice for me to have a place down here to spend the night. | 00:17:47 | |
Now if if I could take a minute and ask y'all if everybody's in favor of that, please say aye. | 00:17:57 | |
I'm not gonna ask. Those are the polls. | 00:18:08 | |
Because I know one or two of you around here to say that, so. | 00:18:11 | |
No, let me let me just say I I I can't tell you. Ever since I heard about the about the thing tonight, I can't tell you how. | 00:18:16 | |
Humbly proud, I guess, is the best way to. | 00:18:28 | |
I My family was so important to me. My mom was a strong lady. My dad was a great man. | 00:18:33 | |
Quiet didn't do a lot of talking. | 00:18:41 | |
And I have my sister Wilma who was a town singer, if y'all anybody here old enough to remember that but she sang it all the | 00:18:44 | |
weddings and funerals and things like that and my mom was the best and teacher and my dad worked in Athens and. | 00:18:54 | |
I'm not going to go into all the details because when I had them listed about my talk tonight. | 00:19:05 | |
I got it just cut. | 00:19:12 | |
So. | 00:19:16 | |
But in all sincerity, I'm so proud. | 00:19:17 | |
To be from Watkinsville, Georgia, and I thank you. Each one of you and I can look around this room and I can tell stories you | 00:19:20 | |
wouldn't believe and wouldn't want me to tell. So thank you so much. | 00:19:27 | |
All right. Thank you. So here's your proclamation. Let's come right up here to the middle, and we're going to have your family | 00:19:36 | |
come up and stand with you. | 00:19:39 | |
All right, Mary's family, if you all could come up together. | 00:19:43 | |
And all Y'all really. After hearing Larry speak. Probably all. | 00:19:53 | |
How many? OK, do the three and then y'all go ahead and then we'll bring up the rest of the family and then we'll do. | 00:19:58 | |
Now the rest of your families come on up and. | 00:20:13 | |
All right, y'all and all that and all that excitement. I forgot one more. | 00:21:45 | |
For Mr. Weatherford. | 00:21:49 | |
We don't give these out very often, but I do have a key to the. | 00:21:52 | |
And so also Larry wanted to, on behalf of all you've done for Watkinsville, I also want to give you a key to the city. | 00:21:57 | |
Confir. | 00:22:14 | |
Here. | 00:22:16 | |
I. | 00:22:25 | |
OK. All right. We have two more proclamations tonight. The next one is. | 00:22:42 | |
A little more, A little. | 00:22:48 | |
Is a proclamation in honor of child abuse. | 00:22:50 | |
Prevention Month. I don't think we're honoring that, but we're recognizing that that's something that we're striving to prevent. | 00:22:54 | |
Constantly in Watkinsville, I'm going to do an abridged version of this. Over 10,000 children are abused and or neglected in | 00:23:00 | |
Georgia each year. | 00:23:03 | |
And child abuse and neglect prevention as a community responsibility in preventing mistreatment of children depends on involvement | 00:23:07 | |
from all people. | 00:23:10 | |
I, Brian Broderick, Mayor of the City of Watkinsville, Georgia, do hereby proclaim the month of April as Child Abuse Prevention | 00:23:13 | |
Month in Watkinsville, Georgia, and encourage all citizens to volunteer their talents and energies. | 00:23:18 | |
On behalf of children in our community to reduce child abuse and neg. | 00:23:24 | |
Significantly in the years to come. I know that's an important priority for our chief of police and others. Is anyone here tonight | 00:23:28 | |
from the organization you are? Why don't you step forward, offer a few brief remarks, then we'll take a picture. And thank you for | 00:23:32 | |
providing this to us. | 00:23:36 | |
Hi, I'm Sally. Stare at my colleagues and I are with Bright paths. We are the local chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America and | 00:23:44 | |
Prevent Child Abuse Georgia and. | 00:23:49 | |
Have lived and worked and graduated from high school in Oconee County and Athens and my whole life. So I'm glad to be here. And I | 00:23:54 | |
also know what a lovely community this is and how it is really easy to think that all the families here are just like mine, which | 00:23:59 | |
were so great. But our most recent data actually shows that in Oconee County alone in the year of 2020, there were 168 children | 00:24:05 | |
who were the subject of a report of either abuse or neglect just in Oconee County just in 2020. And so at Bright Paths we are | 00:24:11 | |
working really hard. | 00:24:17 | |
To eliminate that, our mission is to prevent all forms of child abuse and neglect and our vision as a community free of that, and | 00:24:23 | |
so with your support. | 00:24:28 | |
So April will be Child Abuse Prevention Month in Watkins. | 00:25:04 | |
Dickerson and her staff. If you'll have information you'd like us to share, we have a newsletter Facebook page. We're happy to | 00:25:10 | |
share that and what people know everything that's going on here and how people can help to prevent child abuse. | 00:25:15 | |
Let's step here and take a picture. | 00:25:21 | |
We'll let you guys get on the way. Is there anybody else in the organization? | 00:25:23 | |
Fund continues. We have Danielle Greer here who is presenting A presenting a check to the Police Department. So missus Greer if | 00:26:03 | |
you could come forward make a few remarks and then Sharon and Chief if you all want to coordinate that presentation as well. And | 00:26:08 | |
Danielle I just, I do. | 00:26:13 | |
I see that you're constantly serving the community and working with our Police Department. I just want to thank you for. | 00:26:19 | |
Leaning into that and understanding that the role of a realtor and a business person in the community is more than just making | 00:26:26 | |
money, but it's about giving back. So we're very grateful to you guys for working with Chief Brock and his guys. | 00:26:31 | |
And I will say for anybody who doesn't know about bright paths, we just found out about them about this time last year. | 00:26:38 | |
They are phenomenal resource in this community. So we actually did a golf tournament for them last year and and it was it, it was | 00:26:44 | |
beyond amazing. We're actually doing another one for them this year too but. | 00:26:50 | |
Speaking of in the community, but. | 00:26:57 | |
Why I'm here so? | 00:27:00 | |
Thank you for everything that Y'all do and 1st responders are near and dear to my heart. Our schools are near and dear to my | 00:27:02 | |
heart. And So what we did was create a program through my real estate team that gives back to our community and then all of our | 00:27:08 | |
clients get to choose where it goes. And so each month we are able to go in and donate funds to the community that we live in. | 00:27:14 | |
Just a give where you live type thing. And so this month. | 00:27:20 | |
For February, we were able to give Chief Rock. | 00:27:27 | |
$1000. | 00:27:31 | |
So I know we got to do pictures, but. | 00:27:33 | |
And you have to come over here too. You're a huge part of. | 00:27:38 | |
Yes. | 00:27:41 | |
Are you? I was yielding to the mayor. That's a good idea. Are you going, are you just going to stay up there? We've got one or two | 00:28:15 | |
items before it's your turn. You just want to knock it all out right here. | 00:28:19 | |
I like improvising, Chief. Why don't you come on up here? And while we're focused on, while we're focused on law enforcement, why | 00:28:26 | |
don't you just. | 00:28:30 | |
Why don't you just go ahead and roll on? How about that? All right. | 00:28:34 | |
They. | 00:28:39 | |
All. | 00:28:48 | |
Good evening Mayor, Council evening, always a pleasure to be before. | 00:28:50 | |
Lads E All assembled. | 00:28:55 | |
I submitted a report actually week before last, during what would have been the regularly scheduled meeting. | 00:28:57 | |
Of last week, so I was well ahead of. | 00:29:03 | |
And from that report, does anybody have any questions over the material data that I provided? | 00:29:07 | |
Seeing none of hearing none. No questions. All right, so. | 00:29:13 | |
Through tremendous amounts of. | 00:29:20 | |
The LPR technology is on the poles. | 00:29:23 | |
And it was a very long and tenuous process to get through the mire, through the red tape and the. | 00:29:27 | |
Bureaucracy that comes with Georgia Power and Department of Transportation. | 00:29:35 | |
But they're up and they're operational and they are phenomenal. | 00:29:39 | |
Just in the last 24 hours we have had almost 300 hits of alerts of expired tags that are driving through the city pretty much | 00:29:44 | |
every day. | 00:29:48 | |
I mean expired and when. When tags are expired, there's usually reasons behind why they're expired. There's other things | 00:29:55 | |
underlying. | 00:29:58 | |
So those are the things that we're going to start looking to it to address as well. | 00:30:01 | |
You know the missing children and the missing adults and things like that is going to come across the system and our officers are | 00:30:05 | |
going to be able to better respond to those things as they travel through town. So I'm very happy to see that program up and | 00:30:11 | |
running and excited and the tech that came from Missouri to install the hardware who's been doing it all across the country says | 00:30:18 | |
that we are right now the premier location for Omni queue. | 00:30:24 | |
No other location has the extensive and robust system that we have in place, so I'm excited about that. | 00:30:31 | |
Chief, is that doing, is that doing a daily traffic count on those quarters as well, so that count, can you go back to that? | 00:30:39 | |
So that count you see up there in the top right hand corner of the screen of video, that's actually a screen? | 00:30:47 | |
Video image of it actually in operation. It's capturing cars and during. | 00:30:53 | |
Midday traffic time it's it's literally just, I mean, you barely have time to watch the cars screen across the screen. | 00:30:59 | |
But that count is all the cameras and the counts that the cameras are capturing. So all seven cameras that are in operation that | 00:31:08 | |
that's the account so you're gonna have. | 00:31:12 | |
Two, there's two locations. So there are going to be a car going through the South side and then through the Northside. So that's, | 00:31:16 | |
you know, getting twice. Unless they, you know, find their way around them, it's going to be hard to do. | 00:31:22 | |
All right. Thank you. | 00:31:29 | |
Yep. | 00:31:30 | |
We have our Easter Egg hunt coming up April 16th Saturday. | 00:31:33 | |
At 10:00 AM. | 00:31:37 | |
We have 10,000 eggs waiting. | 00:31:38 | |
Staged by the Easter Bun. | 00:31:41 | |
Easter Bunny Will. | 00:31:43 | |
Danielle Greer and her team made funds available in addition to. | 00:31:48 | |
The money that. | 00:31:54 | |
To provide all the prizes and what else, Major? | 00:31:56 | |
What it makes? | 00:32:00 | |
The fries. | 00:32:04 | |
So I can't thank her and her. | 00:32:07 | |
Enough. She has been tremendous in in the program she's running and the assistance that she's offered. | 00:32:10 | |
Any questions over the Easter egg? No. Moving on to an old picture. Wow, where'd you drive that? | 00:32:18 | |
Wow. | 00:32:27 | |
Wow, that's amazing. | 00:32:29 | |
So this brings me to one of. | 00:32:32 | |
Favorite parts of the job of being the chief, and that's recognition of officers for. | 00:32:34 | |
Jobs that they do. | 00:32:40 | |
So if you didn't know that what this is about, this is about Sergeant Hitler. | 00:32:48 | |
It is a life saving accommodation, A life saving accommodation bar that I will award them tonight is awarded to Walkersville | 00:32:55 | |
Police Department member and appreciation for the prompt, no selfish act of rendering aid and assistance to another human being | 00:33:00 | |
that resulted in saving a life by the officers actions. | 00:33:05 | |
It is a red and white commendation bar that is nationally recognized in the public safety community and it's consistent mark of | 00:33:12 | |
distinction for the office. | 00:33:16 | |
For the office officer who wears. | 00:33:24 | |
On Saturday, March 12/20/22, Sergeant Handler responded to a call here in town. | 00:33:27 | |
One of our citizens felt it necessary to try to take extraordinary measures to remove his life from this world. | 00:33:34 | |
It's hard. | 00:33:44 | |
Sergeant Hitler without care. | 00:33:46 | |
Was able to beat down a door that this man was in front of. | 00:33:49 | |
And render a. | 00:33:54 | |
Which ultimately led to. | 00:33:56 | |
His. | 00:33:58 | |
And he is alive today because. | 00:33:59 | |
It was a pretty gruesome. | 00:34:03 | |
The. | 00:34:07 | |
Mine does not forget what the I see. | 00:34:08 | |
This honor is truly not enough to recognize the efforts that he put forth that. | 00:34:13 | |
Sergeant Kyle Hibbler, Watkinsville Police Department is hereby awarded the Life Saving Accommodation Bar for his actions on March | 00:34:18 | |
12th. | 00:34:21 | |
2022 while on duty in the city of Watkinsville. | 00:34:25 | |
When he responded to the attempted suicide. | 00:34:28 | |
In recognition of your courageous and life saving actions on the scene by putting yourself in harm's way to save another human | 00:34:31 | |
life. | 00:34:35 | |
With ded. | 00:34:38 | |
And courage, Sergeant. | 00:34:40 | |
Thank you for your service. | 00:34:58 | |
I'm trying to prep it for this spot up here. | 00:35:21 | |
He's hesitant. | 00:35:24 | |
But he'll. | 00:35:25 | |
Are there any? | 00:35:26 | |
Thank you for the opportunity to present that award and present the information to you this. | 00:35:28 | |
Before you leave, I think it goes without saying it's nice to have four of you here tonight. CJ Step in, Kyle. You know, I think I | 00:35:34 | |
just want to look all of you in the eyes and tell you how much we appreciate your dedication and your service and. | 00:35:41 | |
Um. | 00:35:48 | |
Putting your life on the line every single day for the citizens of Watkinsville to keep us safe. It. | 00:35:48 | |
Means the world to us. I hear so many great comments from the citizens about the way that you all serve. | 00:35:53 | |
Think about taking care of them first and not think about yourselves. And Kyle, that's a wonderful example of that. So thank you. | 00:35:58 | |
Thank you all and thank you, Kyle. | 00:36:02 | |
We're. | 00:36:07 | |
We're grateful. Thank you. | 00:36:08 | |
OK. We're going to move to item 6 on the agenda and we'll plow through this pretty quick. Manager Dickerson, if you want to give | 00:36:16 | |
us an update on our financial situation. | 00:36:22 | |
Thank you, Mayor. Everyone should have received the revenue and expense balance sheets in your packet. If there any questions, | 00:36:29 | |
please let me know. We are tracking. | 00:36:33 | |
Higher on the revenues and less on the expenses. So that's good at this point in the game. But things do come in at different | 00:36:39 | |
times, so not always always an accurate measure. | 00:36:43 | |
On spouse one report, just remind you that all that money in there right now is designated for the sewer line a construction. | 00:36:49 | |
That will be going through the industrial park. | 00:36:56 | |
Spots to report money is split. | 00:36:59 | |
Money is split on this report between hair Shoals park, the ABA playground and landscaping and possibly sidewalk work out front | 00:37:03 | |
and then the sewer line a construction. So that's the monies that are left. | 00:37:09 | |
In here and we are tracking a little bit. | 00:37:16 | |
On this. | 00:37:20 | |
But not much more than what we budgeted. | 00:37:21 | |
This boss three summary report. This is a new report last trying to make it. | 00:37:24 | |
Look similar to the other reports Y'all been looking. | 00:37:29 | |
What I think is important to notice here is. | 00:37:32 | |
That right now we're budgeting at 80% of the referendum, which is around 62,000. We're actually bringing in about 73,000. | 00:37:35 | |
So the you'll notice down here in the lower corner where it says difference between projects and anticipate projected and | 00:37:44 | |
anticipated we're about 45,000. | 00:37:47 | |
Over at this point, the projects underway. With this project, I'm sorry. My cursor won't come off of that screen up there. Sorry. | 00:37:52 | |
The projects that are underway right now are the branding effort. That's the multi-purpose government facilities of line that you | 00:38:00 | |
see down there, the bottom. | 00:38:04 | |
The projects that are completed, we've paved Leia Lane, the Chief has bought the variable message sign trailer. I don't think we | 00:38:10 | |
have it yet though, and he's walked away so I'm not I can't tell you for sure. We have ordered additional traffic calming signs | 00:38:16 | |
with some of the remaining money and then the fire department has I believe has already placed the order, although I haven't seen | 00:38:22 | |
the the invoice for it yet for the jaws of life that you approved. | 00:38:28 | |
And then encumbered right now are some public works and police equipment for future purposes. So that's sort of what that makes | 00:38:34 | |
up. | 00:38:37 | |
Uh. | 00:38:44 | |