No Bookmarks Exist.
Out of town Council Mayor Pro Tem Tucker will be joining us late. With that we'll stand and say the pledge. | 00:00:00 | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:00:09 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:00:15 | |
All right. The meeting is being broadcast simultaneously online via Suite one. That's our public portal, so people can follow | 00:00:31 | |
along from home. I'm sure we have a large audience tonight, given everything that's on the agenda. | 00:00:38 | |
I will note that we have that agenda and all those meetings are posted in advance. Citizens have the opportunity to send questions | 00:00:46 | |
in advance. | 00:00:50 | |
The other thing to note is it is fall and I am hoarse and I am not sick, but there is something going on with my voice so I'm | 00:00:54 | |
going to try not to cough into the microphone. | 00:00:57 | |
Too much. But if I do do have to cough a little bit, I apologize in advance, but welcome everybody to our meeting tonight. We're | 00:01:01 | |
glad that you're here. We'll start with the meeting minutes. Do we have any comments, changes on the minutes? If not, I'll | 00:01:07 | |
entertain a motion to approve please. | 00:01:12 | |
Make a motion to approve the minutes. | 00:01:18 | |
Right. Do we have a second? | 00:01:21 | |
We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion hearing? None. All in favor, say aye, Aye. Any opposed motion carries 3O. | 00:01:24 | |
We'll move on to approval of the agenda. | 00:01:32 | |
Got a couple changes we need to make there. With your approval, I would request that we table item 12 which is the G dot | 00:01:36 | |
Transportation Alternatives program grant. | 00:01:41 | |
That we add in item 13 under New Business, which is a report on public input meetings. | 00:01:46 | |
On the Thomas farm property and that we remove item 9, which is the trove. | 00:01:51 | |
Donation Deed of Acceptance and Donation Agreement from the Consent agenda. So on a table item 12, add a new item under New | 00:01:57 | |
Business and remove item 9. | 00:02:01 | |
Happy to entertain any discussion on that or entertain a. | 00:02:06 | |
At council's discretion. | 00:02:10 | |
Make a motion to approve the agenda with the changes. | 00:02:14 | |
Do we have? | 00:02:18 | |
Any discussion? Hearing? None. All in favor, say aye. | 00:02:21 | |
The agenda. | 00:02:25 | |
Every year I have an opportunity. | 00:02:31 | |
With council's input to recognize a community leader. | 00:02:34 | |
And I'm really pleased this year and that leader is typically recognized and they get to be the Grand Marshall in the Watkinsville | 00:02:38 | |
Christmas Parade. | 00:02:43 | |
And it's my pleasure tonight to share that our Grand Marshall for this year will be Marvin Nunnally, Junior. | 00:02:48 | |
Marvin is a Watkinsville native. He is the CEO of In Touch Ministries. He works at Athens Tech. He's a Deacon at Bethel Baptist | 00:02:55 | |
Church. | 00:03:00 | |
He is the 2020 UGA Presidents Fulfilling the Dream Award winner. | 00:03:07 | |
So he's got a lot of titles, but Marvin is more than. | 00:03:14 | |
Marvin is perhaps the most passionate person about Watkinsville that I know. | 00:03:17 | |
Marvin feeds the poor almost every weekend. | 00:03:23 | |
Marvin inspires the hopeless constantly. | 00:03:26 | |
Marvin energizes the Compl. | 00:03:29 | |
With a contagious amount of. | 00:03:32 | |
And he brings joy to all of us. If you're around him, His smile is contagious, his energy is contagious, and perhaps most | 00:03:34 | |
importantly, he is a tireless advocate for his hometown. | 00:03:38 | |
So I'm excited to share that Marvin Nunnally will be the Grand Marshall of the Watkinsville Christmas Parade this year. | 00:03:43 | |
And we'll look forward to celebrating Marvin on what is the date, Sharon. | 00:03:50 | |
December 3rd, OK, December 3rd, I'm going to have a sip of water. But if Marvin were here, we give him a round of applause. But | 00:03:54 | |
since he's not, we won't. But we will get plenty of collapse on December 3rd. So I'm excited. Marvin, if you're listening, we're | 00:03:59 | |
really excited and proud to have you as our Grand Marshall. | 00:04:04 | |
All right, Administration, Sharon, I think you can take this one away unless there's anything you need from me. Great. Thank you. | 00:04:13 | |
Mayor. Before I get started, I do want to introduce one of our new employees Started, I guess he started probably the week of your | 00:04:18 | |
last council meeting. So he's been here almost a month or right out of month. Casey wages Casey. Stand up and be introduced this. | 00:04:23 | |
Casey. | 00:04:28 | |
Originally from Watkinsville and moved back here. | 00:04:38 | |
Recently so happy to be on board. | 00:04:41 | |
Always had family tattoo. | 00:04:45 | |
Appreciate you having. | 00:04:48 | |
Absolutely, any question. So he's on our public works crew and they've been busy. Last week they were busy getting ready for the | 00:04:50 | |
Rocket Field grand opening, the rock and art activity and this week they're getting ready to help out with the fall festival | 00:04:55 | |
that's going on at Rocket Field on Saturday, so. | 00:05:00 | |
Definitely a baptism by fire. He came in right at the right time. So happy to have him. Thanks for coming tonight, Casey. | 00:05:05 | |
On the financial reports, you do have your balance sheet, general fund reserves and all that. Unless there's any questions, I'll | 00:05:13 | |
probably just run through that or let you know that we are on track with that. I don't have anything specific to share. Our | 00:05:19 | |
auditors have been in and we do anticipate the December meeting having them unless they happen to get the report done early, | 00:05:24 | |
probably be at the December meeting to present the. | 00:05:30 | |
Fiscal year 23 audit. | 00:05:36 | |
On the item two spots two report. This was the money that was left. You may recall it's boss one is FLOSS 2, the funds that were | 00:05:38 | |
left in those both. | 00:05:43 | |
Funds were for the sewer line, a construction project that has now the bank has now cleared that check, and so we have a little | 00:05:49 | |
under $2000.00 left. We'll figure out how to use the rest of that, along with whatever interest is accumulated so we can close out | 00:05:54 | |
both spots one and two together. | 00:06:00 | |
On Spice 3. | 00:06:07 | |
So this is Rec and Parks specifically. We have Rocket Field, all the improvements there, some of the improvements at Harris Shoals | 00:06:09 | |
Park, the renovation of restrooms, we've got some money set aside for the paving and parking at Harris Hills Park that we | 00:06:15 | |
currently have out for proposals. | 00:06:20 | |
The green space. The Thomas farm. | 00:06:26 | |
Or the Thomas Farm area. | 00:06:28 | |
We had some storm water upgrades out of this money ELMIG, that's our local maintenance improvement grant. Paving projects there | 00:06:30 | |
have been spent in this streetscape improvements including some of the lamps that you see St. lamps you saw downtown on. | 00:06:36 | |
School and 3rd and some drainage projects throughout the community as well as our wayfinding entrance signs and signs at the | 00:06:43 | |
parks. So that's what these funds have been used for. So we have encumbered, we've got 1.3 million encumbered. We have been | 00:06:52 | |
averaging about 79,000. We budgeted about 65. So we're well over right now projecting more, which is always a good thing. | 00:07:02 | |
Our balance though is only just a little under 700,000. Of course you know each month we get 80,000. So we're not spending it | 00:07:12 | |
faster than written and we just have set projects aside to start knocking out so. | 00:07:18 | |
And that's about a 12% increase over where we were last year. So that's always a good news. This is at 8.63%. That was our former | 00:07:24 | |
intergovernmental agreement with the county for that. | 00:07:29 | |
On T Spice, we actually have a different agreement and that's at 7.77%. Over time we anticipate the average will projection over | 00:07:34 | |
the length of the project will be about 78,000. Right now we're at about 69,000 a month. That's expected at the program will grow | 00:07:41 | |
as prices and everything go up. This is mostly right now this money has been spent, the money that has been spent 141,000 has gone | 00:07:48 | |
towards the new High Shoals Rd. | 00:07:55 | |
Sidewalk and the Industrial Blvd. Sidewalk. Right now those are the two projects and then the road resurfacing project is. | 00:08:03 | |
I think that money is part of what we've got set aside for Water St. | 00:08:12 | |
And then this is our T Splash report. Again, we've got a balance of about 152,000. I think we've got about 40,000 outstanding, but | 00:08:18 | |
that's still due on the Industrial Blvd. sidewalk project. But you'll see where you know we've already seen a little bit of an | 00:08:24 | |
increase just between July and August. Some of that's just cyclical. People spend more money in August than they do in July. | 00:08:31 | |
And then the AARP, this is our American Rescue Plan report. You may recall that last month we talked about how the council | 00:08:38 | |
approved 710,000 for the purchase. | 00:08:43 | |
Supporting the purchase of the Thomas family farm that is shown as an expense now and we have a balance of about 92,000 that's not | 00:08:48 | |
been appropriated. The other money that has been encumbered is for our retention program for our police officers. You may recall a | 00:08:55 | |
couple years ago the Chief brought forward a recommendation to try to retain and recruit officers to offer them $10,000 over a | 00:09:01 | |
three-year period and we are currently in our second year. So now some of our officers are getting their second payment, so it's | 00:09:07 | |
right around 3250 or 3500. | 00:09:13 | |
A year if they leave, and we did have an officer leave, if they leave during that three-year period, they do have to return the | 00:09:20 | |
money and that has occurred so. | 00:09:24 | |
Any questions on any of those? | 00:09:29 | |
On economic development, we had two business licenses actually for the same business that's CBW Unlimited that is. | 00:09:34 | |
Manner essentially whatever most people know is Ashford Manor, they have a special events facility, operator license and then they | 00:09:41 | |
have their business license and those are the two that came in. | 00:09:45 | |
In September on the excise collection report, remember most of our monies, we don't see those monies till the end of October | 00:09:49 | |
because they're brought in during September. We don't get the money until October. So you don't see a lot for September yet. You | 00:09:54 | |
see a little bit that trickled in. | 00:09:58 | |
And then? | 00:10:04 | |
The building permits, we had 12 permits for 11 projects. | 00:10:06 | |
You know, signs, decks, electrical repairs, that kind of stuff. A lot of work still over at Trove there on Silo Bend, Some housing | 00:10:11 | |
construction there. | 00:10:15 | |
Any questions on that? | 00:10:21 | |
All right. And I think just even though our mayor pretend has shown up, I've moved her slides to the end, so she's going to have | 00:10:25 | |
to wait till the end to do hers. Unless you want me to zip through. | 00:10:29 | |
So I think we'll skip if y'all are OK. I'll skip to the police report and we'll get to you at the end. How about that? We'll say | 00:10:35 | |
the best for last, right? | 00:10:38 | |
I'm going to be presenting the police report tonight and the mayor will explain a little bit later why I'm doing it and not the | 00:10:43 | |
chief. So officer activity, you'll see a lot of calls for service. | 00:10:48 | |
You. | 00:10:54 | |
You know, a lot of we do try to. I think the policy has been to try to warn, not ticket everybody, try to work on that. Try to | 00:10:56 | |
encourage people to comply instead of just slapping a ticket on them. So you'll see, But try to keep track of speeding activity as | 00:11:01 | |
well as our LPRS, our license plate readers. | 00:11:06 | |
On this. | 00:11:11 | |
You know, fair amount of we're still dealing with some fraud issues in the city that are occurring. I think this one in | 00:11:13 | |
particular. | 00:11:17 | |
It was something Oak County State Bank had happened and they they contacted us about have some DUI's. | 00:11:20 | |
Works out about four traffic stops a day. I think on the traffic stop security checks, I didn't figure that out in my head, but | 00:11:26 | |
obviously we still have a lot of calls for service, but they're not, you know, they're not traffic stop. So they may, you know, | 00:11:32 | |
welfare checks or whatever that may occur, officer training, continue to make sure our officers are trained properly and you'll | 00:11:38 | |
see we've got some DUI and some agency risk reduction training that has occurred. | 00:11:44 | |
Or did occur in September? | 00:11:51 | |
And then the rollover truck, you sort of see it at the top, there's a rollover truck. A lot kids wanted to get in it. That wasn't | 00:12:29 | |
the intention. That showed simply to show that people can come out of their vehicles if they're not strapped in safely. | 00:12:34 | |
And then an officer, Ron Angle was at the police car, letting kids, you know, getting the police car, check it out. All that and | 00:12:40 | |
Sergeant Hitler donated his time and effort to sit in the dump booth. So a lot of fun that day. The greatest news is that. | 00:12:48 | |
Georgia Home Partners made $30,000. They donated $30,000 to the first responders. They split that evenly between fire, sheriff and | 00:12:56 | |
the city Police Department. So we got a check or badges of Benevolence Law Enforcement Foundation got a check for $10,000. | 00:13:02 | |
So I thought. | 00:13:10 | |
Pretty exciting. | 00:13:12 | |
I think the balance, Councilman Garrett, I think y'all are your balance is somewhere on 50,000, I think in the law enforcement | 00:13:14 | |
foundation, so. | 00:13:17 | |
Councilman Garrett is on that on that foundation board. Couple other things to note. We do have a patent that's a Piedmont Area | 00:13:22 | |
Traffic Enforcement Network DUI safety belt checkpoint that will occur on October 27th on Greensboro Highway. So if you were | 00:13:27 | |
traveling Hwy. 15, make sure you are not drunk and you should have your seat belt on. There will be a lot of officers out and a | 00:13:32 | |
lot of activity. | 00:13:38 | |
And don't try to turn around because they will go after you if you show up and decide you don't want to go that way. So do you | 00:13:44 | |
have the trick or treat in downtown on the 31st? And there are some. There's a cemetery cleanup day prior to the veteran flag | 00:13:49 | |
placement. We have that clean up day on the 4th. Encourage everyone to come out and help us. And then the flag placement on | 00:13:54 | |
veteran's day or the day before veteran's day I think actually. And then cops and cones if you want to come out and get a scoop of | 00:13:59 | |
ice cream with the officers on the 18th. | 00:14:04 | |
And then I'm going to pass this to the mayor. Let him explain what's going on. | 00:14:10 | |
Thanks Sharon and the reason that. | 00:14:14 | |
Interim Chief Tedderton is not with us tonight. I'm pleased to announce that the Watkinsville Police Department is receiving the | 00:14:18 | |
Governor's Office of Hwy. Safety 2023 Agency of the Year Award for the Piedmont Area Region. | 00:14:24 | |
This is a big deal for our department as a lot of progress has been made over the past five years and a real credit to our | 00:14:31 | |
officers and the team. The city's been an active participant in the Governor's Office of Hwy. Safety Activities for the past three | 00:14:37 | |
years. We host the Piedmont Area Traffic Enforcement Network meetings. | 00:14:43 | |
Which bring law enforcement officers from across the region together to perform child safety, seat belt checks, DUI and other | 00:14:49 | |
things. It all supports the mission of the Governor's Office of Hwy. Safety, which is to educate the public on safe driving | 00:14:55 | |
behaviors and implement Hwy. safety campaigns and programs that reduce crashes and eliminate injuries and fatalities on Georgia | 00:15:00 | |
roadways. | 00:15:05 | |
Tristan, step in because we're going to give you a round of applause on behalf of the whole department. So Tristans here, Tristan, | 00:15:41 | |
thanks for all you've done and congratulations. | 00:15:45 | |
Anyone OK? | 00:15:53 | |
Perfect timing. So anyway, so that's exciting news. Sharon, did I miss anything there? Did I cover it? OK. | 00:15:55 | |
Pressure and all that. OK. OK. Perfect. Great. OK. Thank you, Tristan. | 00:16:01 | |
All right. Next up we have consent again noting that we removed item 9. Is there anything well with the opportunity to take | 00:16:09 | |
something off? Consent has passed at this point, so I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda please. | 00:16:15 | |
Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. | 00:16:24 | |
Do I have a second? I second the motion. We have a second. Any discussion? | 00:16:28 | |
Hearing none, all in favor, say aye, aye. | 00:16:32 | |
Any opposed motion carries 40. | 00:16:35 | |
And address remarks directly to the Council. | 00:17:09 | |
Council cannot speak to potential litigation, attorney-client or personnel matters. | 00:17:12 | |
And at that point, we'll move into the actual vote, which is a separate agenda item. Attorney right. Many local anxious I probably | 00:17:47 | |
missed something. Please fill in with anything I didn't say. | 00:17:51 | |
And if I didn't miss anything, we'll turn it over to engineer Campbell. | 00:17:56 | |
Thank you. | 00:17:59 | |
So this is a rezone request of the existing zoning of the property at 1080 experiment station Road is public institutional that's | 00:18:00 | |
because the it's the existing location of the Oconee County library. If you don't know where the library is first of all I'll say | 00:18:07 | |
shame on you but so so it is approximately 2.25 acres it's it's owned by the by Oconee County currently they have an agreement to | 00:18:14 | |
to sell that that property and so they've submitted the proper paperwork on behalf of the the pending sale for the applicant who | 00:18:20 | |
is AA and B Holdings LLC. | 00:18:27 | |
The request is to move from public institutional as it changes hands from a public entity into a private entity to a downtown | 00:18:34 | |
zoning. So hopefully have an idea of what downtown zoning would be. Again, there's aerial location of the the site. I will tell | 00:18:41 | |
you that downtown zoning is the the zoning of property that's directly adjacent to the north, which is where the Oconee County | 00:18:48 | |
Board of Education instructional support Center is being constructed currently and then across the street is actually also | 00:18:54 | |
downtown zoning as well. | 00:19:01 | |
Again, to the east and West, or left and right, if you're facing it from Experiment Station Road, that would be the Oconee County | 00:19:08 | |
Health Department and the post Office. Those remain zone Public institutional. | 00:19:13 | |
So that's a view kind of from the southern corner of the property. You can see a little bit of the area of the library or this | 00:19:18 | |
parcel that a lot of people aren't aware of or don't think about, which is the. | 00:19:24 | |
Access drive to the rear of the site, which would be engaged a little bit more in this rezone request. There you see the the rear | 00:19:30 | |
of the building where some of the friends of the library, library staff and some of the other things would enter the building, but | 00:19:35 | |
it's an area back there. | 00:19:39 | |
If you go to the next. | 00:19:45 | |
So this proposed plan, you can see the existing library building there highlighted in white and then the proposed attached | 00:19:47 | |
residential units that would be shown in yellow there with associated parking to that as part of the the conceptual plan that was | 00:19:53 | |
submitted here. For the rezoning itself, it also gives you an idea from an aerial overlay of both existing and proposed | 00:19:59 | |
conditions. | 00:20:05 | |
Information there I guess is the final, the narrative indicates that it would allow for adaptive reuse of the existing structure | 00:20:15 | |
which we know as the library as well as those new attached residential units to the Northside that we talked about and kind of | 00:20:20 | |
showed through some of those pictures as well. | 00:20:24 | |
And any proposed redevelopment would have to meet Watkinsville code, right? So. | 00:20:30 | |
Whether that's urban forestry, whether that's storm water, that's not what we're specifically discussing tonight. Tonight is for | 00:20:36 | |
the purposes of the rezone. It's that first step in the process before you go to any additional steps to change the zoning from | 00:20:42 | |
public institutional to downtown. If you got any questions, certainly happy to answer those. | 00:20:48 | |
All right. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Do we have any questions for Mr. Campbell at this point? | 00:20:58 | |
Yes. | 00:21:03 | |
If there's going to be housing and a big parking lot isn't up on that hill, isn't that going to affect water washing down to the | 00:21:06 | |
post office in the Police Department when it rains hard? | 00:21:12 | |
Absolutely so. So there is existing impervious area there now and so any site development plans would have to include a grading | 00:21:19 | |
and drainage plans, there is some. | 00:21:24 | |
Existing topography back in that area, outside of where it's already paved, it's not flat. So those plans would have to be | 00:21:30 | |
reviewed to make sure that they meet the code requirements. Thank you. | 00:21:35 | |
All right. At this point I'll call on the applicant and or their representatives to come forward and share anything else they want | 00:21:43 | |
to. | 00:21:46 | |
Thank you. | 00:21:54 | |
Presentation there from the engineering side. | 00:21:58 | |
This is my first meeting at the City Council, so please welcome. | 00:22:01 | |
Share with me I think what would? | 00:22:06 | |
Sure. What would probably be helpful, Michael, would be to give an overview of what your plans are. Council's probably seeing some | 00:22:09 | |
of that in their report, but for the benefit of the public, what you intend to do with the building. | 00:22:14 | |
Your thoughts on the residents, the opportunity you see there, you know, just maybe a little bit of a narrative around that and | 00:22:19 | |
then we'll have a little QA. | 00:22:22 | |
Sounds. | 00:22:29 | |
All right, Council, you've heard from Mr. Azalyn questions. | 00:26:26 | |
Is the residential going to? | 00:26:32 | |
Condos that you sell or apartments that you rent or what do you envision? | 00:26:35 | |
At this point, we don't have a answer to that question, but I will say that we have a very. | 00:26:40 | |
You know. | 00:26:48 | |
I think I can repeat everything I just said. | 00:26:51 | |
At this point, we don't have a definitive answer to that Devin. I'll I'll defer to you as well just to get give Andys thoughts on | 00:26:55 | |
it, but but what I will say is that we have a vested interest. We have a desire for this space to be a nice space we're going to | 00:26:59 | |
have. | 00:27:04 | |
We entertain. We have hospital administrators come to our offices all the time as well as other. | 00:27:09 | |
Members of the healthcare community to have discussions about what we do and to do the work that we do. So we need the space to | 00:27:16 | |
look very nice. We need the space to complement the quality of the work that we provide and as such, we want the residential | 00:27:21 | |
spaces to accommodate. | 00:27:26 | |
That same quality of perspective so lent itself to. | 00:27:32 | |
Probably more of a lease scenario because then we can control the quality a little bit better overtime and the upkeep of it. | 00:27:39 | |
So, but I'm not going to say that's definitively what we're doing at this point. | 00:27:46 | |
Devin, do you have any comments on that? | 00:27:50 | |
No, I think. | 00:27:52 | |
And if I, if I need to repeat anything I said earlier, sorry, I don't have much to add to that. Obviously anyone who's seen the | 00:27:57 | |
real estate market. | 00:28:01 | |
Knows that things are very unpredictable and crazy at the moment, so I think that. | 00:28:06 | |
We don't even know when the timing of these buildings would be built necessarily. Our priority is first and foremost our office | 00:28:10 | |
space in the library. | 00:28:14 | |
So when these come along. | 00:28:19 | |
Kind of be determined by what the market looks like at that time, kind of how we would would approach it. But as Michael said, | 00:28:22 | |
leaning towards probably that scenario if it even works out that way. | 00:28:27 | |
And echo what data? | 00:28:33 | |
Devin just said This is really going to work in two phases, right? We're going to build out our office space. That's first and | 00:28:35 | |
foremost. We've got to get out of the crunch that we're. | 00:28:39 | |
We need that additional space. So the first thing we'll be doing is rebuilding the interior of the building to accommodate the | 00:28:44 | |
needs of our business. | 00:28:46 | |
And we will be adding the parking because we will be needing that, which means the retention wall will go. | 00:28:50 | |
But, but as opposed to being a retention wall. | 00:28:54 | |
If the circumstances are. | 00:29:00 | |
The purpose of these plans are to allow for in the permit those residential buildings to be there. | 00:29:02 | |
Tell us a little bit about. | 00:29:11 | |
The, you know, the library is kind of a unique architectural style. I don't, I don't even know what you'd call it, but it | 00:29:14 | |
certainly speaks to when it was built, which I think is, what, the 70s, early 80s? | 00:29:18 | |
It's had a couple of modifications, yeah. I think it was originally built in the 70s, but. | 00:29:23 | |
Modified again in the 80s and even something else in the 90s. So do you intend to do much to the exterior? Do you want to? Are you | 00:29:27 | |
going to retain the look and modernize or what do you see it? What do you see us looking at as we go past it with the laundry? | 00:29:34 | |
Side clinics, I think the number one, number one in the exterior of the building will not change much at all. The biggest thing | 00:29:43 | |
you'll notice, and you correct me if I'm wrong, is there'll be a few traditional entrances to it, will have to accommodate ways | 00:29:48 | |
patrons and other people can enter the building. And then in addition to that, we're going to modify the road going around the | 00:29:53 | |
back. | 00:29:58 | |
And then the road right in the front, right where the current book drop up, the drop off is, we're going to bring that road closer | 00:30:04 | |
to the building. | 00:30:07 | |
Because in the event that we put a retail pharmacy in it, it's going to be on the left side of. | 00:30:11 | |
The white part of the library. | 00:30:16 | |
Where the current flip drop off, drop off period is and you'll be able to pull a car underneath the hauling. | 00:30:18 | |
Other than that, it won't be a lot of competition to the exterior. I think we'll probably change. We'll probably pay. | 00:30:29 | |
And. | 00:30:35 | |
Changed some of the. | 00:30:36 | |
Some exterior, clean it up a little bit. We will do new landscaping around. | 00:30:38 | |
The entirety of the impression. | 00:30:42 | |
Other questions? | 00:30:49 | |
All right. | 00:30:52 | |
It's six I think is the plan since you show 6 units there. Is that correct, residential? | 00:30:55 | |
It shows things. I've seen one with four, one with six, but I think they show 6 on what came to us. | 00:31:00 | |
And I hate to ask you to do this, but since you did offer, would you just because I want to make sure we capture what you're going | 00:31:08 | |
to do inside the building, if you would just go back over that one time, I've got somebody listening for me and for whatever | 00:31:12 | |
reason, we just completely, you know, we didn't get any any of that. | 00:31:16 | |
So just to recap briefly, you know our company was founded in 2006. | 00:31:24 | |
It started out as a remote pharmacy services company. Behind it is that in rural hospitals throughout the state, throughout the | 00:31:28 | |
country, we service 11 different states currently, mostly in Georgia, pharmacists leave at 5:00 and there's nobody there to review | 00:31:35 | |
medication orders after hours. And So what our business allows us to do is dial in. | 00:31:41 | |
Clarity in order to keep patients safe and we do that across Georgia as well as several other states. In fact, I didn't mention | 00:31:48 | |
this earlier. Devon's heard it. So it's entirely hearing in a few other people here heard it I think. But in 2020, the hospital | 00:31:53 | |
here in Jordan who didn't use a service like ours, my dad was in ICU. | 00:31:59 | |
Doctor ordered the laces, which is just a chemical that pulls fluid off your body. | 00:32:05 | |
Makes you go to the restaurant. | 00:32:11 | |
With that and giving it a sort of a new, a fresh look and then of course some of the modifications you see on the. | 00:33:17 | |
Thank you. We will count on repeating against your time limit. | 00:33:27 | |
In case we have a lot of people here that want to comment on it, so at this point we'll open the public meeting members of the | 00:33:33 | |
public. If you want to address the rezoning matter, this is your time to step forward. Public comments are limited to 4 minutes | 00:33:38 | |
per person. | 00:33:42 | |
While we wait on the people to come forward, Julie, did we receive any? | 00:33:50 | |
Queries in advance? No Sir. | 00:33:54 | |
I don't see anybody coming forward, so I'm going to close the public hearing and that'll wrap up the public hearing. We'll move on | 00:33:58 | |
to the vote on the same matter. | 00:34:03 | |
Council. I don't think we need to repeat anything, Engineer Campbell. Anything we need to hear that's different. Attorney. | 00:34:08 | |
Reitman. Anything else? | 00:34:12 | |
Well, Council, this is the time for a discussion or a motion. | 00:34:17 | |
I make a motion to approve the rezone from public institutional to downtown and also amend the zoning map. | 00:34:22 | |
Council, you've heard the motion. Do we have a second? | 00:34:30 | |
We have a second from Councilman Garrett. Any discussion? | 00:34:34 | |
Hearing none all in favor, say aye, aye. Any opposed motion carries unanimously before the applicant leaves I. | 00:34:39 | |
I think it's important to note this is how many employees do you have, Michael, that will be in that office. | 00:34:47 | |
In that particular building we currently have. | 00:34:52 | |
Around 15 years, eight one or two we are bringing all, there's several that work remotely currently because we just don't have the | 00:34:55 | |
space for them. They will be coming in at all so around 20, so in the in the beginning whenever we walk in so but I think it's | 00:35:01 | |
important to note that. | 00:35:06 | |
The library is still in Watkinsville, It's going to be at Wire Park. It's going to be amazing, but this is a wonderful reuse of | 00:35:12 | |
that space to have. | 00:35:16 | |
Have, you know, have a have a company invest in Watkinsville. Company of Y'all's caliber, a growing company. | 00:35:20 | |
Choosing to be in Watkinsville and choosing to be that close to downtown as a great vote of confidence and we're grateful for | 00:35:26 | |
that. So we look forward to seeing what your plans are. | 00:35:30 | |
As you come forward and. | 00:35:34 | |
Hopefully you've got good engineers and architects and it fits right in with what we're trying to do in the city, so welcome and | 00:35:35 | |
congratulations. | 00:35:38 | |
We'll move on under appearances. I don't think we have any. Is that right? | 00:35:43 | |
Item 12 We took off the agenda and moved to November. Item 13 we added the Thomas Farm property update, so I'll invite Wes Riles | 00:35:49 | |
from. | 00:35:54 | |
Smith Planning Group Excuse me again. I apologize for my cough to step up and give us the. | 00:35:59 | |
Results from our two public meetings that we've. | 00:36:07 | |
So the past two Mondays? Or was it Monday? No, it was not. | 00:36:10 | |
Past two Wednesdays, OK. I was thought it was not Monday. OK, So it all blends together. So we've had two public meetings. Sharon, | 00:36:14 | |
you want me to cover this? That's right. OK, This is our timing. | 00:36:19 | |
City Council meeting. We shared the timing in the process for planning this property. We had our Steering Committee kickoff | 00:36:24 | |
meeting on September 12th. On September 25th, the Steering Committee. | 00:36:30 | |
Visited the property, had a great visit. Reuben, I'm glad to see you here. Rubens, a member of the steering committee who's here | 00:36:36 | |
with us tonight. | 00:36:40 | |
And then on October 4th and October 11th, we hosted public input meetings here at City Hall. And tonight we're providing an | 00:36:44 | |
update. We'll have a few more steering committee meetings and in the meantime, we're going to be refining our concept design. | 00:36:50 | |
Ideally we're hoping to have that refined design back to council for review on December 21st and at that point we can begin to | 00:36:56 | |
actual schedule, budget the improvements and have an idea of when all that will begin so. | 00:37:03 | |
With that set up, Mr. Riles, I will turn it over to you. | 00:37:10 | |
In terms of forest, yeah, it's it's about 66 acres, I think, of pasture. | 00:37:54 | |
33 acres of forest and seven. | 00:37:59 | |
And hope my math is right. No, no, 33 and 66 is not 66 acres of pasture, 7 acres of water, and then the rest is the rest is woods. | 00:38:03 | |
So we submitted an initial master plan I guess about a year ago. | 00:38:13 | |
I've got somebody listening. I may be running on battery. You just make sure that light is on. | 00:38:30 | |
Do I need to step back? | 00:38:39 | |
OK. All right. | 00:38:41 | |
Everything's owned now. | 00:38:44 | |
Good. | 00:38:47 | |
These next efforts are really just to take into account public input and feedback. | 00:38:51 | |
In addition to information that we received from the the various committees they're working with, the city will refine the master | 00:38:58 | |
plan based on those efforts. | 00:39:02 | |
And should deliver those results in about a month. | 00:39:09 | |
So Sharon, if you want to. | 00:39:13 | |
In terms of the feedback that we've received, so based on the sign in sheet, I think we had 30 individuals that took part. | 00:39:16 | |
I understand that that was more that attended both the Harris Shoals and the Rocket Field public input session, so very well | 00:39:24 | |
attended. We got a variety of input from the the public this graph just kind of. | 00:39:31 | |
Speaks to the the programming opportunities that the public identified. | 00:39:39 | |
So the the framework for the public input was kind of an open floor. | 00:39:44 | |
Kind of discussion based, but. | 00:39:50 | |
We had a board with various programs that were identified that the public could go up and mark the program of their choice. | 00:39:53 | |
There were also options for writing in. | 00:40:03 | |
Programs that were not part of that, so this. | 00:40:07 | |
Move this whenever and we'll get that report right now, so try that. | 00:40:29 | |
All right. So what we're seeing first, first and foremost was a trail connectivity. | 00:40:34 | |
This is interconnectivity to the various neighborhoods that ring the. | 00:40:40 | |
A fishing do. | 00:40:45 | |
To take advantage of the wonderful positive on. | 00:40:47 | |
A myriad of different trail types. So mountain biking, hiking, walking, nature walks. | 00:40:51 | |
Also received high marks. | 00:40:58 | |
And then you know different ways to kind of use the space. | 00:41:01 | |
Native plant gardens and pollinator gardens. | 00:41:06 | |
So if you want to advance the. | 00:41:10 | |
This is feedback and notes that we received from the public. So the the ones that are highlighted are ones that we heard from more | 00:41:14 | |
than one individual. So we'll be looking into ways that we might preserve the existing barn or reuse the existing structures on | 00:41:19 | |
site. | 00:41:25 | |
We want to revisit circulation and and parking and access to the site. | 00:41:31 | |
They kind of pull away from some of the adjacent neighbors. We'll be looking into that. | 00:41:38 | |
You can advance. | 00:41:43 | |
Again providing connectivity to the various subdivisions that surround the property. | 00:41:45 | |
And then a consideration for how emergency vehicles might access the property. | 00:41:51 | |
There's also input on restrooms, and so not only clustering those at the entrance, but finding ways to spread those out across the | 00:41:59 | |
property. | 00:42:04 | |
As I mentioned it, it's rather large, so having some additional restrooms in the rear of the property would probably be well | 00:42:10 | |
received. | 00:42:14 | |
Bow hunting, Yeah, that was a that was a good one, too. That's the first time I've seen that, and I'm kind of, I'm laughing about. | 00:42:21 | |
I don't know if they mean thin the deer hurt, or if they're what they're referring to. I did not give the suggestion, but I didn't | 00:42:26 | |
hear. I was there. | 00:42:31 | |
OK. | 00:42:36 | |
It's all run around the area. | 00:42:40 | |
And so this is the master plan as it stands now. But as I mentioned, we're going to be revising this and revisiting. | 00:42:45 | |
The the use of, excuse me, the circulation of the site and how these various components are configured. | 00:42:54 | |
Is that it? I think that's it. All right. Thank you. | 00:43:06 | |
Council questions. I know some of you were at various meetings, but you have any questions for us or? | 00:43:09 | |
Any other items we want to discuss on the parks while we're on it? | 00:43:15 | |
This might be a question as much. | 00:43:21 | |
Mayor so in the timeline of. | 00:43:25 | |
The next the steering committee meeting. | 00:43:29 | |
Are y'all coming with a proposed? | 00:43:32 | |
Plan or is that more of a time where the steering committee is really going to have a lot of time to talk through things like I | 00:43:38 | |
guess I'm wondering what? | 00:43:41 | |
The You've gathered this information. | 00:43:46 | |
Do we know what? | 00:43:50 | |
And then again, this may be too specific for this Council meeting. That's what I was thinking is it might be rough, but maybe we | 00:43:52 | |
were able to come in with some looks at what are some refinements that we can make. | 00:43:57 | |
And then I think the other thing is we have the subcommittees and I need to get an e-mail out to them just saying here's clearly | 00:44:02 | |
what we need from you as subcommittees prior to November. | 00:44:07 | |
Prior to November 9th, IE the trail subcommittee needs to do some thinking and some planning, your Subcommittee on Buildings and | 00:44:13 | |
Structures probably needs to do some thinking and then the group that's working on. | 00:44:18 | |
Property maintenance and sustainability and things is going to. | 00:44:24 | |
Set some priorities out and circle back with us then, but I think in order to meet our goals, we're going to have to have some. | 00:44:28 | |
You know, we're going to have to think through what a refined plan looks like. | 00:44:34 | |
At that point, but Wes, I'm we're also at your, you know you guys are driving the bus on that. How do you feel about that? | 00:44:37 | |
No, I think some of the those aspects we can revisit now. I mean circulation access, I mean certainly we can look into you know | 00:44:43 | |
altering that. | 00:44:47 | |
And then some things we'll just we'll wait on I think feedback, trails and. | 00:44:53 | |
Circulation, and that's going to be more conducive to your your committees. | 00:44:58 | |
So for things like parking, because I know that was the I came to both of the public input and that's what you, I mean you | 00:45:03 | |
highlighted that that the the neighbors are a little concerned about the original parking spot so by the steering committee | 00:45:07 | |
meeting. | 00:45:12 | |
Is it appropriate to have like kind of mapped out looking at? Because I mean, I can have ideas, but I am not a land planner, I am | 00:45:17 | |
not an engineer. I have no idea what's actually practical for that kind of thing. | 00:45:23 | |
I think Wes and our meeting on Friday. | 00:45:28 | |
You know to kind of talk through that and kind of what what we can anticipate at the next committee meeting. So it's probably best | 00:45:31 | |
if we get aligned before we talk that through. | 00:45:36 | |
Any other questions? Updates. | 00:45:43 | |
You know one thing that I. | 00:45:47 | |
You know, bounce this around out of councils feedback and we might have to partner up with. | 00:45:49 | |
Somebody to do this, But I do think thinking through before spring, you know while it's falling reasonably warm, what we want to | 00:45:55 | |
try to do. | 00:45:59 | |
An opportunity for the public to see the facility as well you know whether we. | 00:46:04 | |
Almost did it, Hey, Rod style or, you know, whether it was a hike or something like that. | 00:46:09 | |
Under which all's reaction is to that, you know, trying to pull that together on. | 00:46:14 | |
Sunday afternoon or something like that, or Saturday afternoon. I know our Saturdays are busy with city activities, so sharing | 00:46:19 | |
closure years, we'll take care of this without you having to do anything. But I do think it might be helpful for members of the | 00:46:24 | |
public who want to see the property to be able to get out there before it's January, February. | 00:46:30 | |
So if you guys are interested in that. | 00:46:36 | |
You know, I'll work on putting something like that together and seeing if I can arrange it. If y'all think it's a good idea, well, | 00:46:38 | |
I think something like picnic at the park everyone. | 00:46:42 | |
You know, bring a meal. Personally, I believe anything that brings community together is a plus as long as it's not adding heavy | 00:46:46 | |
lifting to staff that already is doing a lot of heavy lifting if it can. | 00:46:52 | |
Yeah, pretty, yeah. Thinking this would have to be counseled, right? Because Staffs got Halloween, they've got Christmas parade, | 00:46:59 | |
they've got a million things going on right now. So I think if we do it, then we'll need to kind of. | 00:47:04 | |
Roll up our sleeves and sort of make that happen at whatever level we can, but I'll give that a little bit more thought and be in | 00:47:09 | |
touch. But I think I'd love for the public to begin to. | 00:47:13 | |
See it at this stage and understand what's going to happen and we need to think through the timing. It might make sense to do that | 00:47:17 | |
once that updated concept plan is available for us to kind of walk people through and they're there too, so. | 00:47:23 | |
OK. Thank you. Anything else on Thomas Farm? Wes, thanks for being here. We appreciate SPG and all your help on this project. | 00:47:29 | |
Please. | 00:47:38 | |
All right, public comments. This is that moment where anybody who's here can come up and say anything they want for almost as long | 00:47:41 | |
as they want 4 minutes per person. Same rules as before. So you know, don't insult each other, don't insult the council, speak to | 00:47:46 | |
the council. | 00:47:51 | |
Refrain from debate and argument if you get out of line. If Joe or I don't drag you out of here, the police officer as well. So | 00:47:58 | |
come on up 4 minutes. | 00:48:02 | |
And on cue, here they come. | 00:48:09 | |
All right. I'm not seeing anybody come forward. | 00:48:12 | |
Yes, everybody's OK You're just here. We're going to be done pretty soon. You also hang around. All right. Mayor's report, we'll | 00:48:17 | |
move pretty quickly through this, but a lot is happening in Watkinsville right now, so I have a lot to share. | 00:48:22 | |
Sunday we reopened Rocket Field and it was awesome. Y'all. | 00:48:28 | |
It was a fun day. We highlighted our history. We shared stories. We celebrated the new field. | 00:48:33 | |
And Adam Hammond was our MC. He led us through the program. We celebrated. We've got the plaques that'll go up on the concession | 00:48:40 | |
stand. We celebrated our donor, Kelly Mahoney, and his family. Mr. Mahoney has donated the majority of the funds that made that | 00:48:47 | |
level of revitalization possible. This is Kelly and his family here. And that plaque will go on the concession stand, along with | 00:48:54 | |
one that outlines the history of the project. This is the team that rolled up their sleeves to make it happen. | 00:49:02 | |
Marcus Weed Hour Sam Phillips KE. | 00:49:09 | |
And then Brock tool. | 00:49:12 | |
We made a joke that we ought to call it Rocket Field. As much time as he spent out there, But Brock Brock was a tireless advocate | 00:49:14 | |
for the city. Saved us. Saved. | 00:49:19 | |
Probably 10s of thousands of dollars with his his work with Kelly's team out there and value engineering and creating value. So | 00:49:24 | |
we're we're grateful to Brock for his leadership on that. | 00:49:30 | |
This is the first pitch. | 00:49:36 | |
So that's Kelly Mahoney, our donor, and his daughter plays for a travel team. Throw into Rebecca Verner Holcomb, who is the third | 00:49:42 | |
of five generations who have played on that field. Rebecca's I think it was. | 00:49:47 | |
And they were cute as a button. We only had one crier. Everybody else was pretty happy out there, so, but it's really great to | 00:50:25 | |
see. | 00:50:28 | |
Everybody out on the field and then we all gathered for a photo on the field, but it's just really great to see families using it | 00:50:32 | |
and frankly, you know, to see them enjoying it, to have clean restrooms. | 00:50:38 | |
And really nice facilities and also to see the public enjoying that space, which I'm sure Mayor Pro Tem will update us on what | 00:50:45 | |
happened on Saturday night during her report. | 00:50:50 | |
Banners and bleachers look great. The patent court still has some work to do. We had a great meeting with Lawrence and Laura Rose | 00:50:55 | |
out there on Monday. So that's you know, I'd say we're probably 50% there, but there's some work that we need to do around what's | 00:50:59 | |
the right. | 00:51:04 | |
What's the right? | 00:51:10 | |
Material in there that lets the baton equipment move as it should. We may have to do some tiers and some other things there. So | 00:51:13 | |
we're doing some work on that with to make sure that's right. | 00:51:18 | |
So big weekend at Rocket Field. We also had a big event on Sunday. We were talking about how busy it was. Ashford Memorial | 00:51:24 | |
Methodist Church celebrated its 40th year of ministry on Sunday. This is a picture from the event. They invited all their founding | 00:51:29 | |
members back. | 00:51:33 | |
Then had their full membership there. Ashford has Those are the people who came together to save that church 40 years ago. Y'all | 00:51:39 | |
when the Methodist Church is split in Watkinsville. Watkinsville First Methodist built its. | 00:51:45 | |
Church and they were going to sell this property and they were a group of members who said we want to remain Methodist and we want | 00:51:51 | |
to save this historic building and they did that and. | 00:51:56 | |
Did probably save the most architecturally significant building in the city of Watkinsville when they did. And so. | 00:52:02 | |
That church for 40 years has served and has been an anchor of downtown, and we're grateful to. | 00:52:08 | |
For everything they've done. So they had a wonderful gathering on Sunday, then they had two or three more nights of revival after | 00:52:13 | |
that. And I can say for the level of energy in the church, it is revived. There's a lot of good stuff happening there and we're | 00:52:19 | |
excited about what's happening there and then about a lot of our faith community in Watkinsville. | 00:52:24 | |
We were had our EPD folks come out and do their annual inspection. One of those things you've got to do for storm water needs and | 00:52:31 | |
I'm glad to say we passed check. Thank you Engineer Campbell for that and for taking care of them. | 00:52:37 | |
We built sidewalks on Industrial Blvd. to allow those folks to safely get from building to building and also access wire. | 00:52:44 | |
I think a lot of you know also when Wire Park has large events, the industrial park on the weekends can be overflow parking and so | 00:52:52 | |
this now creates a Safeway for people to get from the industrial area to Wire Park, whether it's people walking there for lunch. | 00:52:58 | |
Or walk in there for a special event or going from building to building. Speaking of water park, the Flats started framing this | 00:53:04 | |
week, so there is some horizontal vertical construction on the front of the property. | 00:53:10 | |
And that is coming along. That's good to see. And then advance voting has started, so we have. | 00:53:16 | |
That going on at the county administrative building right now until the actual election. | 00:53:23 | |
And I think we've had a grand total of 60 people vote so far in that election. | 00:53:29 | |
Fall festival is Saturday. | 00:53:38 | |
On the new Rocket Field, the Chamber has done an amazing job of managing through that change and getting ready 200 vendors. It's | 00:53:42 | |
always a blast. Come one, come all to the fall festival. And then on October 31st we'll have our downtown trick or treat. | 00:53:49 | |
Exciting for kids. A challenge for commuters, so please plan your schedule carefully if you're going to be driving through | 00:53:56 | |
Watkinsville on Halloween. Leave extra time or maybe travel around Main Street and I'm sure the Chief and his guys will have the | 00:54:03 | |
signs up. Or if you just want to watch cute kids in costumes on Main Street, come on through. Or city officials in costumes 4 to | 00:54:09 | |
6. | 00:54:15 | |
And then last you want to announce until November 10th, we're going to have a fall decorating contest for Watkinsville residents, | 00:54:22 | |
Decorate your porch. | 00:54:26 | |
And then e-mail the directions to and e-mail the pictures of the decorations to Angela and we're going to post it on the city's | 00:54:30 | |
Facebook page. And then we will vote. | 00:54:34 | |
Whoever gets the most. | 00:54:39 | |
Will get a prize and be recognized at our November meeting. So thank you again to Councilman Thomas. | 00:54:41 | |
For putting this together for us so far for Watkinsville Council, I expect robust participation. | 00:54:47 | |
From all of. | 00:54:52 | |
Christine So. | 00:54:54 | |
Council reports. Moving on. Councilman Garrett, you're up first, post one. | 00:54:56 | |
Not a whole lot to comment on other than as I've been out knocking on doors and talking to people that really excited about the | 00:55:03 | |
sidewalks. | 00:55:07 | |
And what they're seeing in town so right, Good to hear. | 00:55:12 | |
I hope all sixty of them were voted All right. Councilwoman Massey post 2. Nothing to report. | 00:55:17 | |
Councilman Thomas is not here. Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. | 00:55:26 | |
All right. So thank you for letting me go see my twins and their senior year the new. | 00:55:30 | |
New newly revived homecoming parade. So you may have said why? | 00:55:37 | |
Late, but that is why so fortunately are both at the very front. That's why it didn't take me very long. I got my picture, I got | 00:55:42 | |
my video and I said I'll see you later. | 00:55:46 | |
So yes, we have celebrated our first year as a downtown development authority, which is amazing and we are continuing to be led by | 00:55:52 | |
Kate, our Director who is doing a great job and also. | 00:56:00 | |
Are starting to see a little bit of momentum and. | 00:56:10 | |
I'm mainly and only hearing good feedback from people and seeing the changes in downtown and our goal is really to promote the | 00:56:15 | |
businesses that we have and encourage others that the community will enjoy. | 00:56:22 | |
We also we had y'all might have heard about this plenty now, but we got a grant. | 00:56:31 | |
To put on an event. | 00:56:38 | |
And that happened Saturday night at Rocket Field. | 00:56:41 | |
And we had a fantastic committee of volunteers that we have been meeting since, I think March or April to put this on. | 00:56:44 | |
We had public art that I saw many of y'all help paint. We have the splits band's and she moved the whole time. I was like wow, she | 00:56:56 | |
had a lot of energy, but here you'll see some of the art. These are five pieces that Francis Byrd was is you can see her up right | 00:57:05 | |
behind Brian up there in the upper right hand corner. | 00:57:13 | |
She created these five pieces that represent different aspects of Watkinsville. | 00:57:22 | |
And then the community painted them. She had them outlined. | 00:57:31 | |
Looks kind of like paint by numbers. The community painted them. She's going to clean up. We did have a few precious 3 year olds. | 00:57:34 | |
Some were a little more careful than others, so if she's going to, you know, just kind of clean up a little bit and then be | 00:57:41 | |
looking for these to be displayed and they're going to help activate a new little pocket park. | 00:57:47 | |
Which I feel strange saying the place across from what used to be Dobies. | 00:57:55 | |
And we also had food vendors. We had chops and hops we had. | 00:58:01 | |
Austin, who does BBQ from the farmers market and then also some amazing boiled peanuts and lemonade and then beer from our what | 00:58:07 | |
should I say? I guess I can say that we drank beer from our local brewery and it was a great crowd. I mean my overall. | 00:58:15 | |
I think they're about 150 people who came out. There were a lot of events going on this past weekend that kind of spread out | 00:58:24 | |
things, but. | 00:58:28 | |
It everybody was connecting with one another and it was great to see people that I haven't seen in five and six years and having | 00:58:33 | |
conversations. And then also it was an opportunity to meet new people. And so it really did meet our goal and our motto and | 00:58:40 | |
Watkinsville have come connect create all of that happened and we are hoping this will also compel future events. | 00:58:48 | |
And the new gathering space that we will be having that will help further connect downtown. So overall, I think great success. I | 00:58:57 | |
saw just about everybody. | 00:59:02 | |
Here there, thank you guys for coming out and and taking part and umm. | 00:59:08 | |
And you won't have to hear about the creative placemaking event every month now. So it is done. | 00:59:14 | |
At other deep. | 00:59:24 | |
All. | 00:59:30 | |
Councilman Campbell Post, 5. | 00:59:31 | |
On economic development this Saturday we have a new business opening up a Coney outpost. | 00:59:34 | |
And downtown in the former Welcome Center. So that's going to be a good retail business for the community. So please check them | 00:59:39 | |
out. That's exciting. We'll have a couple more retail style businesses opening soon. | 00:59:45 | |
Christine mentioned Dobies. They did close, but I know, I know quite a few people looking at it, so I don't think it'll stay empty | 00:59:53 | |
long at all, and couple people I know looking at it. | 00:59:59 | |
We'll be glad if either one of them moves in. And then historic preservation, we're meeting tomorrow with the class that is | 01:00:05 | |
working on that project for us. So Christine and I are going back to school at U. | 01:00:11 | |
And meeting with that class, they spent the last month kind of researching historic preservation in Georgia. Now we're meeting | 01:00:19 | |
them to kind of narrow or focus in on what we would like for the city of Watkinsville. So we'll have more to report next month on | 01:00:24 | |
that. That's it. | 01:00:29 | |
Christine, we can only hope that Jeff has some out of school, back to school level antics to repeat to report on next next week or | 01:00:35 | |
maybe old school, You know, let's see. Keep him under control down there. | 01:00:41 | |
All right. We, I think that's it for council reports. I don't think we have an executive session and I see heads shaking. Nobody | 01:00:48 | |
needs an executive session. | 01:00:51 | |
So with that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. So have a second. We have a second. All in favor, | 01:00:55 | |
say aye. Aye. | 01:00:58 | |
Thanks for coming. | 01:01:03 |
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Out of town Council Mayor Pro Tem Tucker will be joining us late. With that we'll stand and say the pledge. | 00:00:00 | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, | 00:00:09 | |
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | 00:00:15 | |
All right. The meeting is being broadcast simultaneously online via Suite one. That's our public portal, so people can follow | 00:00:31 | |
along from home. I'm sure we have a large audience tonight, given everything that's on the agenda. | 00:00:38 | |
I will note that we have that agenda and all those meetings are posted in advance. Citizens have the opportunity to send questions | 00:00:46 | |
in advance. | 00:00:50 | |
The other thing to note is it is fall and I am hoarse and I am not sick, but there is something going on with my voice so I'm | 00:00:54 | |
going to try not to cough into the microphone. | 00:00:57 | |
Too much. But if I do do have to cough a little bit, I apologize in advance, but welcome everybody to our meeting tonight. We're | 00:01:01 | |
glad that you're here. We'll start with the meeting minutes. Do we have any comments, changes on the minutes? If not, I'll | 00:01:07 | |
entertain a motion to approve please. | 00:01:12 | |
Make a motion to approve the minutes. | 00:01:18 | |
Right. Do we have a second? | 00:01:21 | |
We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion hearing? None. All in favor, say aye, Aye. Any opposed motion carries 3O. | 00:01:24 | |
We'll move on to approval of the agenda. | 00:01:32 | |
Got a couple changes we need to make there. With your approval, I would request that we table item 12 which is the G dot | 00:01:36 | |
Transportation Alternatives program grant. | 00:01:41 | |
That we add in item 13 under New Business, which is a report on public input meetings. | 00:01:46 | |
On the Thomas farm property and that we remove item 9, which is the trove. | 00:01:51 | |
Donation Deed of Acceptance and Donation Agreement from the Consent agenda. So on a table item 12, add a new item under New | 00:01:57 | |
Business and remove item 9. | 00:02:01 | |
Happy to entertain any discussion on that or entertain a. | 00:02:06 | |
At council's discretion. | 00:02:10 | |
Make a motion to approve the agenda with the changes. | 00:02:14 | |
Do we have? | 00:02:18 | |
Any discussion? Hearing? None. All in favor, say aye. | 00:02:21 | |
The agenda. | 00:02:25 | |
Every year I have an opportunity. | 00:02:31 | |
With council's input to recognize a community leader. | 00:02:34 | |
And I'm really pleased this year and that leader is typically recognized and they get to be the Grand Marshall in the Watkinsville | 00:02:38 | |
Christmas Parade. | 00:02:43 | |
And it's my pleasure tonight to share that our Grand Marshall for this year will be Marvin Nunnally, Junior. | 00:02:48 | |
Marvin is a Watkinsville native. He is the CEO of In Touch Ministries. He works at Athens Tech. He's a Deacon at Bethel Baptist | 00:02:55 | |
Church. | 00:03:00 | |
He is the 2020 UGA Presidents Fulfilling the Dream Award winner. | 00:03:07 | |
So he's got a lot of titles, but Marvin is more than. | 00:03:14 | |
Marvin is perhaps the most passionate person about Watkinsville that I know. | 00:03:17 | |
Marvin feeds the poor almost every weekend. | 00:03:23 | |
Marvin inspires the hopeless constantly. | 00:03:26 | |
Marvin energizes the Compl. | 00:03:29 | |
With a contagious amount of. | 00:03:32 | |
And he brings joy to all of us. If you're around him, His smile is contagious, his energy is contagious, and perhaps most | 00:03:34 | |
importantly, he is a tireless advocate for his hometown. | 00:03:38 | |
So I'm excited to share that Marvin Nunnally will be the Grand Marshall of the Watkinsville Christmas Parade this year. | 00:03:43 | |
And we'll look forward to celebrating Marvin on what is the date, Sharon. | 00:03:50 | |
December 3rd, OK, December 3rd, I'm going to have a sip of water. But if Marvin were here, we give him a round of applause. But | 00:03:54 | |
since he's not, we won't. But we will get plenty of collapse on December 3rd. So I'm excited. Marvin, if you're listening, we're | 00:03:59 | |
really excited and proud to have you as our Grand Marshall. | 00:04:04 | |
All right, Administration, Sharon, I think you can take this one away unless there's anything you need from me. Great. Thank you. | 00:04:13 | |
Mayor. Before I get started, I do want to introduce one of our new employees Started, I guess he started probably the week of your | 00:04:18 | |
last council meeting. So he's been here almost a month or right out of month. Casey wages Casey. Stand up and be introduced this. | 00:04:23 | |
Casey. | 00:04:28 | |
Originally from Watkinsville and moved back here. | 00:04:38 | |
Recently so happy to be on board. | 00:04:41 | |
Always had family tattoo. | 00:04:45 | |
Appreciate you having. | 00:04:48 | |
Absolutely, any question. So he's on our public works crew and they've been busy. Last week they were busy getting ready for the | 00:04:50 | |
Rocket Field grand opening, the rock and art activity and this week they're getting ready to help out with the fall festival | 00:04:55 | |
that's going on at Rocket Field on Saturday, so. | 00:05:00 | |
Definitely a baptism by fire. He came in right at the right time. So happy to have him. Thanks for coming tonight, Casey. | 00:05:05 | |
On the financial reports, you do have your balance sheet, general fund reserves and all that. Unless there's any questions, I'll | 00:05:13 | |
probably just run through that or let you know that we are on track with that. I don't have anything specific to share. Our | 00:05:19 | |
auditors have been in and we do anticipate the December meeting having them unless they happen to get the report done early, | 00:05:24 | |
probably be at the December meeting to present the. | 00:05:30 | |
Fiscal year 23 audit. | 00:05:36 | |
On the item two spots two report. This was the money that was left. You may recall it's boss one is FLOSS 2, the funds that were | 00:05:38 | |
left in those both. | 00:05:43 | |
Funds were for the sewer line, a construction project that has now the bank has now cleared that check, and so we have a little | 00:05:49 | |
under $2000.00 left. We'll figure out how to use the rest of that, along with whatever interest is accumulated so we can close out | 00:05:54 | |
both spots one and two together. | 00:06:00 | |
On Spice 3. | 00:06:07 | |
So this is Rec and Parks specifically. We have Rocket Field, all the improvements there, some of the improvements at Harris Shoals | 00:06:09 | |
Park, the renovation of restrooms, we've got some money set aside for the paving and parking at Harris Hills Park that we | 00:06:15 | |
currently have out for proposals. | 00:06:20 | |
The green space. The Thomas farm. | 00:06:26 | |
Or the Thomas Farm area. | 00:06:28 | |
We had some storm water upgrades out of this money ELMIG, that's our local maintenance improvement grant. Paving projects there | 00:06:30 | |
have been spent in this streetscape improvements including some of the lamps that you see St. lamps you saw downtown on. | 00:06:36 | |
School and 3rd and some drainage projects throughout the community as well as our wayfinding entrance signs and signs at the | 00:06:43 | |
parks. So that's what these funds have been used for. So we have encumbered, we've got 1.3 million encumbered. We have been | 00:06:52 | |
averaging about 79,000. We budgeted about 65. So we're well over right now projecting more, which is always a good thing. | 00:07:02 | |
Our balance though is only just a little under 700,000. Of course you know each month we get 80,000. So we're not spending it | 00:07:12 | |
faster than written and we just have set projects aside to start knocking out so. | 00:07:18 | |
And that's about a 12% increase over where we were last year. So that's always a good news. This is at 8.63%. That was our former | 00:07:24 | |
intergovernmental agreement with the county for that. | 00:07:29 | |
On T Spice, we actually have a different agreement and that's at 7.77%. Over time we anticipate the average will projection over | 00:07:34 | |
the length of the project will be about 78,000. Right now we're at about 69,000 a month. That's expected at the program will grow | 00:07:41 | |
as prices and everything go up. This is mostly right now this money has been spent, the money that has been spent 141,000 has gone | 00:07:48 | |
towards the new High Shoals Rd. | 00:07:55 | |
Sidewalk and the Industrial Blvd. Sidewalk. Right now those are the two projects and then the road resurfacing project is. | 00:08:03 | |
I think that money is part of what we've got set aside for Water St. | 00:08:12 | |
And then this is our T Splash report. Again, we've got a balance of about 152,000. I think we've got about 40,000 outstanding, but | 00:08:18 | |
that's still due on the Industrial Blvd. sidewalk project. But you'll see where you know we've already seen a little bit of an | 00:08:24 | |
increase just between July and August. Some of that's just cyclical. People spend more money in August than they do in July. | 00:08:31 | |
And then the AARP, this is our American Rescue Plan report. You may recall that last month we talked about how the council | 00:08:38 | |
approved 710,000 for the purchase. | 00:08:43 | |
Supporting the purchase of the Thomas family farm that is shown as an expense now and we have a balance of about 92,000 that's not | 00:08:48 | |
been appropriated. The other money that has been encumbered is for our retention program for our police officers. You may recall a | 00:08:55 | |
couple years ago the Chief brought forward a recommendation to try to retain and recruit officers to offer them $10,000 over a | 00:09:01 | |
three-year period and we are currently in our second year. So now some of our officers are getting their second payment, so it's | 00:09:07 | |
right around 3250 or 3500. | 00:09:13 | |
A year if they leave, and we did have an officer leave, if they leave during that three-year period, they do have to return the | 00:09:20 | |
money and that has occurred so. | 00:09:24 | |
Any questions on any of those? | 00:09:29 | |
On economic development, we had two business licenses actually for the same business that's CBW Unlimited that is. | 00:09:34 | |
Manner essentially whatever most people know is Ashford Manor, they have a special events facility, operator license and then they | 00:09:41 | |
have their business license and those are the two that came in. | 00:09:45 | |
In September on the excise collection report, remember most of our monies, we don't see those monies till the end of October | 00:09:49 | |
because they're brought in during September. We don't get the money until October. So you don't see a lot for September yet. You | 00:09:54 | |
see a little bit that trickled in. | 00:09:58 | |
And then? | 00:10:04 | |
The building permits, we had 12 permits for 11 projects. | 00:10:06 | |
You know, signs, decks, electrical repairs, that kind of stuff. A lot of work still over at Trove there on Silo Bend, Some housing | 00:10:11 | |
construction there. | 00:10:15 | |
Any questions on that? | 00:10:21 | |
All right. And I think just even though our mayor pretend has shown up, I've moved her slides to the end, so she's going to have | 00:10:25 | |
to wait till the end to do hers. Unless you want me to zip through. | 00:10:29 | |
So I think we'll skip if y'all are OK. I'll skip to the police report and we'll get to you at the end. How about that? We'll say | 00:10:35 | |
the best for last, right? | 00:10:38 | |
I'm going to be presenting the police report tonight and the mayor will explain a little bit later why I'm doing it and not the | 00:10:43 | |
chief. So officer activity, you'll see a lot of calls for service. | 00:10:48 | |
You. | 00:10:54 | |
You know, a lot of we do try to. I think the policy has been to try to warn, not ticket everybody, try to work on that. Try to | 00:10:56 | |
encourage people to comply instead of just slapping a ticket on them. So you'll see, But try to keep track of speeding activity as | 00:11:01 | |
well as our LPRS, our license plate readers. | 00:11:06 | |
On this. | 00:11:11 | |
You know, fair amount of we're still dealing with some fraud issues in the city that are occurring. I think this one in | 00:11:13 | |
particular. | 00:11:17 | |
It was something Oak County State Bank had happened and they they contacted us about have some DUI's. | 00:11:20 | |
Works out about four traffic stops a day. I think on the traffic stop security checks, I didn't figure that out in my head, but | 00:11:26 | |
obviously we still have a lot of calls for service, but they're not, you know, they're not traffic stop. So they may, you know, | 00:11:32 | |
welfare checks or whatever that may occur, officer training, continue to make sure our officers are trained properly and you'll | 00:11:38 | |
see we've got some DUI and some agency risk reduction training that has occurred. | 00:11:44 | |
Or did occur in September? | 00:11:51 | |
And then the rollover truck, you sort of see it at the top, there's a rollover truck. A lot kids wanted to get in it. That wasn't | 00:12:29 | |
the intention. That showed simply to show that people can come out of their vehicles if they're not strapped in safely. | 00:12:34 | |
And then an officer, Ron Angle was at the police car, letting kids, you know, getting the police car, check it out. All that and | 00:12:40 | |
Sergeant Hitler donated his time and effort to sit in the dump booth. So a lot of fun that day. The greatest news is that. | 00:12:48 | |
Georgia Home Partners made $30,000. They donated $30,000 to the first responders. They split that evenly between fire, sheriff and | 00:12:56 | |
the city Police Department. So we got a check or badges of Benevolence Law Enforcement Foundation got a check for $10,000. | 00:13:02 | |
So I thought. | 00:13:10 | |
Pretty exciting. | 00:13:12 | |
I think the balance, Councilman Garrett, I think y'all are your balance is somewhere on 50,000, I think in the law enforcement | 00:13:14 | |
foundation, so. | 00:13:17 | |
Councilman Garrett is on that on that foundation board. Couple other things to note. We do have a patent that's a Piedmont Area | 00:13:22 | |
Traffic Enforcement Network DUI safety belt checkpoint that will occur on October 27th on Greensboro Highway. So if you were | 00:13:27 | |
traveling Hwy. 15, make sure you are not drunk and you should have your seat belt on. There will be a lot of officers out and a | 00:13:32 | |
lot of activity. | 00:13:38 | |
And don't try to turn around because they will go after you if you show up and decide you don't want to go that way. So do you | 00:13:44 | |
have the trick or treat in downtown on the 31st? And there are some. There's a cemetery cleanup day prior to the veteran flag | 00:13:49 | |
placement. We have that clean up day on the 4th. Encourage everyone to come out and help us. And then the flag placement on | 00:13:54 | |
veteran's day or the day before veteran's day I think actually. And then cops and cones if you want to come out and get a scoop of | 00:13:59 | |
ice cream with the officers on the 18th. | 00:14:04 | |
And then I'm going to pass this to the mayor. Let him explain what's going on. | 00:14:10 | |
Thanks Sharon and the reason that. | 00:14:14 | |
Interim Chief Tedderton is not with us tonight. I'm pleased to announce that the Watkinsville Police Department is receiving the | 00:14:18 | |
Governor's Office of Hwy. Safety 2023 Agency of the Year Award for the Piedmont Area Region. | 00:14:24 | |
This is a big deal for our department as a lot of progress has been made over the past five years and a real credit to our | 00:14:31 | |
officers and the team. The city's been an active participant in the Governor's Office of Hwy. Safety Activities for the past three | 00:14:37 | |
years. We host the Piedmont Area Traffic Enforcement Network meetings. | 00:14:43 | |
Which bring law enforcement officers from across the region together to perform child safety, seat belt checks, DUI and other | 00:14:49 | |
things. It all supports the mission of the Governor's Office of Hwy. Safety, which is to educate the public on safe driving | 00:14:55 | |
behaviors and implement Hwy. safety campaigns and programs that reduce crashes and eliminate injuries and fatalities on Georgia | 00:15:00 | |
roadways. | 00:15:05 | |
Tristan, step in because we're going to give you a round of applause on behalf of the whole department. So Tristans here, Tristan, | 00:15:41 | |
thanks for all you've done and congratulations. | 00:15:45 | |
Anyone OK? | 00:15:53 | |
Perfect timing. So anyway, so that's exciting news. Sharon, did I miss anything there? Did I cover it? OK. | 00:15:55 | |
Pressure and all that. OK. OK. Perfect. Great. OK. Thank you, Tristan. | 00:16:01 | |
All right. Next up we have consent again noting that we removed item 9. Is there anything well with the opportunity to take | 00:16:09 | |
something off? Consent has passed at this point, so I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda please. | 00:16:15 | |
Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. | 00:16:24 | |
Do I have a second? I second the motion. We have a second. Any discussion? | 00:16:28 | |
Hearing none, all in favor, say aye, aye. | 00:16:32 | |
Any opposed motion carries 40. | 00:16:35 | |
And address remarks directly to the Council. | 00:17:09 | |
Council cannot speak to potential litigation, attorney-client or personnel matters. | 00:17:12 | |
And at that point, we'll move into the actual vote, which is a separate agenda item. Attorney right. Many local anxious I probably | 00:17:47 | |
missed something. Please fill in with anything I didn't say. | 00:17:51 | |
And if I didn't miss anything, we'll turn it over to engineer Campbell. | 00:17:56 | |
Thank you. | 00:17:59 | |
So this is a rezone request of the existing zoning of the property at 1080 experiment station Road is public institutional that's | 00:18:00 | |
because the it's the existing location of the Oconee County library. If you don't know where the library is first of all I'll say | 00:18:07 | |
shame on you but so so it is approximately 2.25 acres it's it's owned by the by Oconee County currently they have an agreement to | 00:18:14 | |
to sell that that property and so they've submitted the proper paperwork on behalf of the the pending sale for the applicant who | 00:18:20 | |
is AA and B Holdings LLC. | 00:18:27 | |
The request is to move from public institutional as it changes hands from a public entity into a private entity to a downtown | 00:18:34 | |
zoning. So hopefully have an idea of what downtown zoning would be. Again, there's aerial location of the the site. I will tell | 00:18:41 | |
you that downtown zoning is the the zoning of property that's directly adjacent to the north, which is where the Oconee County | 00:18:48 | |
Board of Education instructional support Center is being constructed currently and then across the street is actually also | 00:18:54 | |
downtown zoning as well. | 00:19:01 | |
Again, to the east and West, or left and right, if you're facing it from Experiment Station Road, that would be the Oconee County | 00:19:08 | |
Health Department and the post Office. Those remain zone Public institutional. | 00:19:13 | |
So that's a view kind of from the southern corner of the property. You can see a little bit of the area of the library or this | 00:19:18 | |
parcel that a lot of people aren't aware of or don't think about, which is the. | 00:19:24 | |
Access drive to the rear of the site, which would be engaged a little bit more in this rezone request. There you see the the rear | 00:19:30 | |
of the building where some of the friends of the library, library staff and some of the other things would enter the building, but | 00:19:35 | |
it's an area back there. | 00:19:39 | |
If you go to the next. | 00:19:45 | |
So this proposed plan, you can see the existing library building there highlighted in white and then the proposed attached | 00:19:47 | |
residential units that would be shown in yellow there with associated parking to that as part of the the conceptual plan that was | 00:19:53 | |
submitted here. For the rezoning itself, it also gives you an idea from an aerial overlay of both existing and proposed | 00:19:59 | |
conditions. | 00:20:05 | |
Information there I guess is the final, the narrative indicates that it would allow for adaptive reuse of the existing structure | 00:20:15 | |
which we know as the library as well as those new attached residential units to the Northside that we talked about and kind of | 00:20:20 | |
showed through some of those pictures as well. | 00:20:24 | |
And any proposed redevelopment would have to meet Watkinsville code, right? So. | 00:20:30 | |
Whether that's urban forestry, whether that's storm water, that's not what we're specifically discussing tonight. Tonight is for | 00:20:36 | |
the purposes of the rezone. It's that first step in the process before you go to any additional steps to change the zoning from | 00:20:42 | |
public institutional to downtown. If you got any questions, certainly happy to answer those. | 00:20:48 | |
All right. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Do we have any questions for Mr. Campbell at this point? | 00:20:58 | |
Yes. | 00:21:03 | |
If there's going to be housing and a big parking lot isn't up on that hill, isn't that going to affect water washing down to the | 00:21:06 | |
post office in the Police Department when it rains hard? | 00:21:12 | |
Absolutely so. So there is existing impervious area there now and so any site development plans would have to include a grading | 00:21:19 | |
and drainage plans, there is some. | 00:21:24 | |
Existing topography back in that area, outside of where it's already paved, it's not flat. So those plans would have to be | 00:21:30 | |
reviewed to make sure that they meet the code requirements. Thank you. | 00:21:35 | |
All right. At this point I'll call on the applicant and or their representatives to come forward and share anything else they want | 00:21:43 | |
to. | 00:21:46 | |
Thank you. | 00:21:54 | |
Presentation there from the engineering side. | 00:21:58 | |
This is my first meeting at the City Council, so please welcome. | 00:22:01 | |
Share with me I think what would? | 00:22:06 | |
Sure. What would probably be helpful, Michael, would be to give an overview of what your plans are. Council's probably seeing some | 00:22:09 | |
of that in their report, but for the benefit of the public, what you intend to do with the building. | 00:22:14 | |
Your thoughts on the residents, the opportunity you see there, you know, just maybe a little bit of a narrative around that and | 00:22:19 | |
then we'll have a little QA. | 00:22:22 | |
Sounds. | 00:22:29 | |
All right, Council, you've heard from Mr. Azalyn questions. | 00:26:26 | |
Is the residential going to? | 00:26:32 | |
Condos that you sell or apartments that you rent or what do you envision? | 00:26:35 | |
At this point, we don't have a answer to that question, but I will say that we have a very. | 00:26:40 | |
You know. | 00:26:48 | |
I think I can repeat everything I just said. | 00:26:51 | |
At this point, we don't have a definitive answer to that Devin. I'll I'll defer to you as well just to get give Andys thoughts on | 00:26:55 | |
it, but but what I will say is that we have a vested interest. We have a desire for this space to be a nice space we're going to | 00:26:59 | |
have. | 00:27:04 | |
We entertain. We have hospital administrators come to our offices all the time as well as other. | 00:27:09 | |
Members of the healthcare community to have discussions about what we do and to do the work that we do. So we need the space to | 00:27:16 | |
look very nice. We need the space to complement the quality of the work that we provide and as such, we want the residential | 00:27:21 | |
spaces to accommodate. | 00:27:26 | |
That same quality of perspective so lent itself to. | 00:27:32 | |
Probably more of a lease scenario because then we can control the quality a little bit better overtime and the upkeep of it. | 00:27:39 | |
So, but I'm not going to say that's definitively what we're doing at this point. | 00:27:46 | |
Devin, do you have any comments on that? | 00:27:50 | |
No, I think. | 00:27:52 | |
And if I, if I need to repeat anything I said earlier, sorry, I don't have much to add to that. Obviously anyone who's seen the | 00:27:57 | |
real estate market. | 00:28:01 | |
Knows that things are very unpredictable and crazy at the moment, so I think that. | 00:28:06 | |
We don't even know when the timing of these buildings would be built necessarily. Our priority is first and foremost our office | 00:28:10 | |
space in the library. | 00:28:14 | |
So when these come along. | 00:28:19 | |
Kind of be determined by what the market looks like at that time, kind of how we would would approach it. But as Michael said, | 00:28:22 | |
leaning towards probably that scenario if it even works out that way. | 00:28:27 | |
And echo what data? | 00:28:33 | |
Devin just said This is really going to work in two phases, right? We're going to build out our office space. That's first and | 00:28:35 | |
foremost. We've got to get out of the crunch that we're. | 00:28:39 | |
We need that additional space. So the first thing we'll be doing is rebuilding the interior of the building to accommodate the | 00:28:44 | |
needs of our business. | 00:28:46 | |
And we will be adding the parking because we will be needing that, which means the retention wall will go. | 00:28:50 | |
But, but as opposed to being a retention wall. | 00:28:54 | |
If the circumstances are. | 00:29:00 | |
The purpose of these plans are to allow for in the permit those residential buildings to be there. | 00:29:02 | |
Tell us a little bit about. | 00:29:11 | |
The, you know, the library is kind of a unique architectural style. I don't, I don't even know what you'd call it, but it | 00:29:14 | |
certainly speaks to when it was built, which I think is, what, the 70s, early 80s? | 00:29:18 | |
It's had a couple of modifications, yeah. I think it was originally built in the 70s, but. | 00:29:23 | |
Modified again in the 80s and even something else in the 90s. So do you intend to do much to the exterior? Do you want to? Are you | 00:29:27 | |
going to retain the look and modernize or what do you see it? What do you see us looking at as we go past it with the laundry? | 00:29:34 | |
Side clinics, I think the number one, number one in the exterior of the building will not change much at all. The biggest thing | 00:29:43 | |
you'll notice, and you correct me if I'm wrong, is there'll be a few traditional entrances to it, will have to accommodate ways | 00:29:48 | |
patrons and other people can enter the building. And then in addition to that, we're going to modify the road going around the | 00:29:53 | |
back. | 00:29:58 | |
And then the road right in the front, right where the current book drop up, the drop off is, we're going to bring that road closer | 00:30:04 | |
to the building. | 00:30:07 | |
Because in the event that we put a retail pharmacy in it, it's going to be on the left side of. | 00:30:11 | |
The white part of the library. | 00:30:16 | |
Where the current flip drop off, drop off period is and you'll be able to pull a car underneath the hauling. | 00:30:18 | |
Other than that, it won't be a lot of competition to the exterior. I think we'll probably change. We'll probably pay. | 00:30:29 | |
And. | 00:30:35 | |
Changed some of the. | 00:30:36 | |
Some exterior, clean it up a little bit. We will do new landscaping around. | 00:30:38 | |
The entirety of the impression. | 00:30:42 | |
Other questions? | 00:30:49 | |
All right. | 00:30:52 | |
It's six I think is the plan since you show 6 units there. Is that correct, residential? | 00:30:55 | |
It shows things. I've seen one with four, one with six, but I think they show 6 on what came to us. | 00:31:00 | |
And I hate to ask you to do this, but since you did offer, would you just because I want to make sure we capture what you're going | 00:31:08 | |
to do inside the building, if you would just go back over that one time, I've got somebody listening for me and for whatever | 00:31:12 | |
reason, we just completely, you know, we didn't get any any of that. | 00:31:16 | |
So just to recap briefly, you know our company was founded in 2006. | 00:31:24 | |
It started out as a remote pharmacy services company. Behind it is that in rural hospitals throughout the state, throughout the | 00:31:28 | |
country, we service 11 different states currently, mostly in Georgia, pharmacists leave at 5:00 and there's nobody there to review | 00:31:35 | |
medication orders after hours. And So what our business allows us to do is dial in. | 00:31:41 | |
Clarity in order to keep patients safe and we do that across Georgia as well as several other states. In fact, I didn't mention | 00:31:48 | |
this earlier. Devon's heard it. So it's entirely hearing in a few other people here heard it I think. But in 2020, the hospital | 00:31:53 | |
here in Jordan who didn't use a service like ours, my dad was in ICU. | 00:31:59 | |
Doctor ordered the laces, which is just a chemical that pulls fluid off your body. | 00:32:05 | |
Makes you go to the restaurant. | 00:32:11 | |
With that and giving it a sort of a new, a fresh look and then of course some of the modifications you see on the. | 00:33:17 | |
Thank you. We will count on repeating against your time limit. | 00:33:27 | |
In case we have a lot of people here that want to comment on it, so at this point we'll open the public meeting members of the | 00:33:33 | |
public. If you want to address the rezoning matter, this is your time to step forward. Public comments are limited to 4 minutes | 00:33:38 | |
per person. | 00:33:42 | |
While we wait on the people to come forward, Julie, did we receive any? | 00:33:50 | |
Queries in advance? No Sir. | 00:33:54 | |
I don't see anybody coming forward, so I'm going to close the public hearing and that'll wrap up the public hearing. We'll move on | 00:33:58 | |
to the vote on the same matter. | 00:34:03 | |
Council. I don't think we need to repeat anything, Engineer Campbell. Anything we need to hear that's different. Attorney. | 00:34:08 | |
Reitman. Anything else? | 00:34:12 | |
Well, Council, this is the time for a discussion or a motion. | 00:34:17 | |
I make a motion to approve the rezone from public institutional to downtown and also amend the zoning map. | 00:34:22 | |
Council, you've heard the motion. Do we have a second? | 00:34:30 | |
We have a second from Councilman Garrett. Any discussion? | 00:34:34 | |
Hearing none all in favor, say aye, aye. Any opposed motion carries unanimously before the applicant leaves I. | 00:34:39 | |
I think it's important to note this is how many employees do you have, Michael, that will be in that office. | 00:34:47 | |
In that particular building we currently have. | 00:34:52 | |
Around 15 years, eight one or two we are bringing all, there's several that work remotely currently because we just don't have the | 00:34:55 | |
space for them. They will be coming in at all so around 20, so in the in the beginning whenever we walk in so but I think it's | 00:35:01 | |
important to note that. | 00:35:06 | |
The library is still in Watkinsville, It's going to be at Wire Park. It's going to be amazing, but this is a wonderful reuse of | 00:35:12 | |
that space to have. | 00:35:16 | |
Have, you know, have a have a company invest in Watkinsville. Company of Y'all's caliber, a growing company. | 00:35:20 | |
Choosing to be in Watkinsville and choosing to be that close to downtown as a great vote of confidence and we're grateful for | 00:35:26 | |
that. So we look forward to seeing what your plans are. | 00:35:30 | |
As you come forward and. | 00:35:34 | |
Hopefully you've got good engineers and architects and it fits right in with what we're trying to do in the city, so welcome and | 00:35:35 | |
congratulations. | 00:35:38 | |
We'll move on under appearances. I don't think we have any. Is that right? | 00:35:43 | |
Item 12 We took off the agenda and moved to November. Item 13 we added the Thomas Farm property update, so I'll invite Wes Riles | 00:35:49 | |
from. | 00:35:54 | |
Smith Planning Group Excuse me again. I apologize for my cough to step up and give us the. | 00:35:59 | |
Results from our two public meetings that we've. | 00:36:07 | |
So the past two Mondays? Or was it Monday? No, it was not. | 00:36:10 | |
Past two Wednesdays, OK. I was thought it was not Monday. OK, So it all blends together. So we've had two public meetings. Sharon, | 00:36:14 | |
you want me to cover this? That's right. OK, This is our timing. | 00:36:19 | |
City Council meeting. We shared the timing in the process for planning this property. We had our Steering Committee kickoff | 00:36:24 | |
meeting on September 12th. On September 25th, the Steering Committee. | 00:36:30 | |
Visited the property, had a great visit. Reuben, I'm glad to see you here. Rubens, a member of the steering committee who's here | 00:36:36 | |
with us tonight. | 00:36:40 | |
And then on October 4th and October 11th, we hosted public input meetings here at City Hall. And tonight we're providing an | 00:36:44 | |
update. We'll have a few more steering committee meetings and in the meantime, we're going to be refining our concept design. | 00:36:50 | |
Ideally we're hoping to have that refined design back to council for review on December 21st and at that point we can begin to | 00:36:56 | |
actual schedule, budget the improvements and have an idea of when all that will begin so. | 00:37:03 | |
With that set up, Mr. Riles, I will turn it over to you. | 00:37:10 | |
In terms of forest, yeah, it's it's about 66 acres, I think, of pasture. | 00:37:54 | |
33 acres of forest and seven. | 00:37:59 | |
And hope my math is right. No, no, 33 and 66 is not 66 acres of pasture, 7 acres of water, and then the rest is the rest is woods. | 00:38:03 | |
So we submitted an initial master plan I guess about a year ago. | 00:38:13 | |
I've got somebody listening. I may be running on battery. You just make sure that light is on. | 00:38:30 | |
Do I need to step back? | 00:38:39 | |
OK. All right. | 00:38:41 | |
Everything's owned now. | 00:38:44 | |
Good. | 00:38:47 | |
These next efforts are really just to take into account public input and feedback. | 00:38:51 | |
In addition to information that we received from the the various committees they're working with, the city will refine the master | 00:38:58 | |
plan based on those efforts. | 00:39:02 | |
And should deliver those results in about a month. | 00:39:09 | |
So Sharon, if you want to. | 00:39:13 | |
In terms of the feedback that we've received, so based on the sign in sheet, I think we had 30 individuals that took part. | 00:39:16 | |
I understand that that was more that attended both the Harris Shoals and the Rocket Field public input session, so very well | 00:39:24 | |
attended. We got a variety of input from the the public this graph just kind of. | 00:39:31 | |
Speaks to the the programming opportunities that the public identified. | 00:39:39 | |
So the the framework for the public input was kind of an open floor. | 00:39:44 | |
Kind of discussion based, but. | 00:39:50 | |
We had a board with various programs that were identified that the public could go up and mark the program of their choice. | 00:39:53 | |
There were also options for writing in. | 00:40:03 | |
Programs that were not part of that, so this. | 00:40:07 | |
Move this whenever and we'll get that report right now, so try that. | 00:40:29 | |
All right. So what we're seeing first, first and foremost was a trail connectivity. | 00:40:34 | |
This is interconnectivity to the various neighborhoods that ring the. | 00:40:40 | |
A fishing do. | 00:40:45 | |
To take advantage of the wonderful positive on. | 00:40:47 | |
A myriad of different trail types. So mountain biking, hiking, walking, nature walks. | 00:40:51 | |
Also received high marks. | 00:40:58 | |
And then you know different ways to kind of use the space. | 00:41:01 | |
Native plant gardens and pollinator gardens. | 00:41:06 | |
So if you want to advance the. | 00:41:10 | |
This is feedback and notes that we received from the public. So the the ones that are highlighted are ones that we heard from more | 00:41:14 | |
than one individual. So we'll be looking into ways that we might preserve the existing barn or reuse the existing structures on | 00:41:19 | |
site. | 00:41:25 | |
We want to revisit circulation and and parking and access to the site. | 00:41:31 | |
They kind of pull away from some of the adjacent neighbors. We'll be looking into that. | 00:41:38 | |
You can advance. | 00:41:43 | |
Again providing connectivity to the various subdivisions that surround the property. | 00:41:45 | |
And then a consideration for how emergency vehicles might access the property. | 00:41:51 | |
There's also input on restrooms, and so not only clustering those at the entrance, but finding ways to spread those out across the | 00:41:59 | |
property. | 00:42:04 | |
As I mentioned it, it's rather large, so having some additional restrooms in the rear of the property would probably be well | 00:42:10 | |
received. | 00:42:14 | |
Bow hunting, Yeah, that was a that was a good one, too. That's the first time I've seen that, and I'm kind of, I'm laughing about. | 00:42:21 | |
I don't know if they mean thin the deer hurt, or if they're what they're referring to. I did not give the suggestion, but I didn't | 00:42:26 | |
hear. I was there. | 00:42:31 | |
OK. | 00:42:36 | |
It's all run around the area. | 00:42:40 | |
And so this is the master plan as it stands now. But as I mentioned, we're going to be revising this and revisiting. | 00:42:45 | |
The the use of, excuse me, the circulation of the site and how these various components are configured. | 00:42:54 | |
Is that it? I think that's it. All right. Thank you. | 00:43:06 | |
Council questions. I know some of you were at various meetings, but you have any questions for us or? | 00:43:09 | |
Any other items we want to discuss on the parks while we're on it? | 00:43:15 | |
This might be a question as much. | 00:43:21 | |
Mayor so in the timeline of. | 00:43:25 | |
The next the steering committee meeting. | 00:43:29 | |
Are y'all coming with a proposed? | 00:43:32 | |
Plan or is that more of a time where the steering committee is really going to have a lot of time to talk through things like I | 00:43:38 | |
guess I'm wondering what? | 00:43:41 | |
The You've gathered this information. | 00:43:46 | |
Do we know what? | 00:43:50 | |
And then again, this may be too specific for this Council meeting. That's what I was thinking is it might be rough, but maybe we | 00:43:52 | |
were able to come in with some looks at what are some refinements that we can make. | 00:43:57 | |
And then I think the other thing is we have the subcommittees and I need to get an e-mail out to them just saying here's clearly | 00:44:02 | |
what we need from you as subcommittees prior to November. | 00:44:07 | |
Prior to November 9th, IE the trail subcommittee needs to do some thinking and some planning, your Subcommittee on Buildings and | 00:44:13 | |
Structures probably needs to do some thinking and then the group that's working on. | 00:44:18 | |
Property maintenance and sustainability and things is going to. | 00:44:24 | |
Set some priorities out and circle back with us then, but I think in order to meet our goals, we're going to have to have some. | 00:44:28 | |
You know, we're going to have to think through what a refined plan looks like. | 00:44:34 | |
At that point, but Wes, I'm we're also at your, you know you guys are driving the bus on that. How do you feel about that? | 00:44:37 | |
No, I think some of the those aspects we can revisit now. I mean circulation access, I mean certainly we can look into you know | 00:44:43 | |
altering that. | 00:44:47 | |
And then some things we'll just we'll wait on I think feedback, trails and. | 00:44:53 | |
Circulation, and that's going to be more conducive to your your committees. | 00:44:58 | |
So for things like parking, because I know that was the I came to both of the public input and that's what you, I mean you | 00:45:03 | |
highlighted that that the the neighbors are a little concerned about the original parking spot so by the steering committee | 00:45:07 | |
meeting. | 00:45:12 | |
Is it appropriate to have like kind of mapped out looking at? Because I mean, I can have ideas, but I am not a land planner, I am | 00:45:17 | |
not an engineer. I have no idea what's actually practical for that kind of thing. | 00:45:23 | |
I think Wes and our meeting on Friday. | 00:45:28 | |
You know to kind of talk through that and kind of what what we can anticipate at the next committee meeting. So it's probably best | 00:45:31 | |
if we get aligned before we talk that through. | 00:45:36 | |
Any other questions? Updates. | 00:45:43 | |
You know one thing that I. | 00:45:47 | |
You know, bounce this around out of councils feedback and we might have to partner up with. | 00:45:49 | |
Somebody to do this, But I do think thinking through before spring, you know while it's falling reasonably warm, what we want to | 00:45:55 | |
try to do. | 00:45:59 | |
An opportunity for the public to see the facility as well you know whether we. | 00:46:04 | |
Almost did it, Hey, Rod style or, you know, whether it was a hike or something like that. | 00:46:09 | |
Under which all's reaction is to that, you know, trying to pull that together on. | 00:46:14 | |
Sunday afternoon or something like that, or Saturday afternoon. I know our Saturdays are busy with city activities, so sharing | 00:46:19 | |
closure years, we'll take care of this without you having to do anything. But I do think it might be helpful for members of the | 00:46:24 | |
public who want to see the property to be able to get out there before it's January, February. | 00:46:30 | |
So if you guys are interested in that. | 00:46:36 | |
You know, I'll work on putting something like that together and seeing if I can arrange it. If y'all think it's a good idea, well, | 00:46:38 | |
I think something like picnic at the park everyone. | 00:46:42 | |
You know, bring a meal. Personally, I believe anything that brings community together is a plus as long as it's not adding heavy | 00:46:46 | |
lifting to staff that already is doing a lot of heavy lifting if it can. | 00:46:52 | |
Yeah, pretty, yeah. Thinking this would have to be counseled, right? Because Staffs got Halloween, they've got Christmas parade, | 00:46:59 | |
they've got a million things going on right now. So I think if we do it, then we'll need to kind of. | 00:47:04 | |
Roll up our sleeves and sort of make that happen at whatever level we can, but I'll give that a little bit more thought and be in | 00:47:09 | |
touch. But I think I'd love for the public to begin to. | 00:47:13 | |
See it at this stage and understand what's going to happen and we need to think through the timing. It might make sense to do that | 00:47:17 | |
once that updated concept plan is available for us to kind of walk people through and they're there too, so. | 00:47:23 | |
OK. Thank you. Anything else on Thomas Farm? Wes, thanks for being here. We appreciate SPG and all your help on this project. | 00:47:29 | |
Please. | 00:47:38 | |
All right, public comments. This is that moment where anybody who's here can come up and say anything they want for almost as long | 00:47:41 | |
as they want 4 minutes per person. Same rules as before. So you know, don't insult each other, don't insult the council, speak to | 00:47:46 | |
the council. | 00:47:51 | |
Refrain from debate and argument if you get out of line. If Joe or I don't drag you out of here, the police officer as well. So | 00:47:58 | |
come on up 4 minutes. | 00:48:02 | |
And on cue, here they come. | 00:48:09 | |
All right. I'm not seeing anybody come forward. | 00:48:12 | |
Yes, everybody's OK You're just here. We're going to be done pretty soon. You also hang around. All right. Mayor's report, we'll | 00:48:17 | |
move pretty quickly through this, but a lot is happening in Watkinsville right now, so I have a lot to share. | 00:48:22 | |
Sunday we reopened Rocket Field and it was awesome. Y'all. | 00:48:28 | |
It was a fun day. We highlighted our history. We shared stories. We celebrated the new field. | 00:48:33 | |
And Adam Hammond was our MC. He led us through the program. We celebrated. We've got the plaques that'll go up on the concession | 00:48:40 | |
stand. We celebrated our donor, Kelly Mahoney, and his family. Mr. Mahoney has donated the majority of the funds that made that | 00:48:47 | |
level of revitalization possible. This is Kelly and his family here. And that plaque will go on the concession stand, along with | 00:48:54 | |
one that outlines the history of the project. This is the team that rolled up their sleeves to make it happen. | 00:49:02 | |
Marcus Weed Hour Sam Phillips KE. | 00:49:09 | |
And then Brock tool. | 00:49:12 | |
We made a joke that we ought to call it Rocket Field. As much time as he spent out there, But Brock Brock was a tireless advocate | 00:49:14 | |
for the city. Saved us. Saved. | 00:49:19 | |
Probably 10s of thousands of dollars with his his work with Kelly's team out there and value engineering and creating value. So | 00:49:24 | |
we're we're grateful to Brock for his leadership on that. | 00:49:30 | |
This is the first pitch. | 00:49:36 | |
So that's Kelly Mahoney, our donor, and his daughter plays for a travel team. Throw into Rebecca Verner Holcomb, who is the third | 00:49:42 | |
of five generations who have played on that field. Rebecca's I think it was. | 00:49:47 | |
And they were cute as a button. We only had one crier. Everybody else was pretty happy out there, so, but it's really great to | 00:50:25 | |
see. | 00:50:28 | |
Everybody out on the field and then we all gathered for a photo on the field, but it's just really great to see families using it | 00:50:32 | |
and frankly, you know, to see them enjoying it, to have clean restrooms. | 00:50:38 | |
And really nice facilities and also to see the public enjoying that space, which I'm sure Mayor Pro Tem will update us on what | 00:50:45 | |
happened on Saturday night during her report. | 00:50:50 | |
Banners and bleachers look great. The patent court still has some work to do. We had a great meeting with Lawrence and Laura Rose | 00:50:55 | |
out there on Monday. So that's you know, I'd say we're probably 50% there, but there's some work that we need to do around what's | 00:50:59 | |
the right. | 00:51:04 | |
What's the right? | 00:51:10 | |
Material in there that lets the baton equipment move as it should. We may have to do some tiers and some other things there. So | 00:51:13 | |
we're doing some work on that with to make sure that's right. | 00:51:18 | |
So big weekend at Rocket Field. We also had a big event on Sunday. We were talking about how busy it was. Ashford Memorial | 00:51:24 | |
Methodist Church celebrated its 40th year of ministry on Sunday. This is a picture from the event. They invited all their founding | 00:51:29 | |
members back. | 00:51:33 | |
Then had their full membership there. Ashford has Those are the people who came together to save that church 40 years ago. Y'all | 00:51:39 | |
when the Methodist Church is split in Watkinsville. Watkinsville First Methodist built its. | 00:51:45 | |
Church and they were going to sell this property and they were a group of members who said we want to remain Methodist and we want | 00:51:51 | |
to save this historic building and they did that and. | 00:51:56 | |
Did probably save the most architecturally significant building in the city of Watkinsville when they did. And so. | 00:52:02 | |
That church for 40 years has served and has been an anchor of downtown, and we're grateful to. | 00:52:08 | |
For everything they've done. So they had a wonderful gathering on Sunday, then they had two or three more nights of revival after | 00:52:13 | |
that. And I can say for the level of energy in the church, it is revived. There's a lot of good stuff happening there and we're | 00:52:19 | |
excited about what's happening there and then about a lot of our faith community in Watkinsville. | 00:52:24 | |
We were had our EPD folks come out and do their annual inspection. One of those things you've got to do for storm water needs and | 00:52:31 | |
I'm glad to say we passed check. Thank you Engineer Campbell for that and for taking care of them. | 00:52:37 | |
We built sidewalks on Industrial Blvd. to allow those folks to safely get from building to building and also access wire. | 00:52:44 | |
I think a lot of you know also when Wire Park has large events, the industrial park on the weekends can be overflow parking and so | 00:52:52 | |
this now creates a Safeway for people to get from the industrial area to Wire Park, whether it's people walking there for lunch. | 00:52:58 | |
Or walk in there for a special event or going from building to building. Speaking of water park, the Flats started framing this | 00:53:04 | |
week, so there is some horizontal vertical construction on the front of the property. | 00:53:10 | |
And that is coming along. That's good to see. And then advance voting has started, so we have. | 00:53:16 | |
That going on at the county administrative building right now until the actual election. | 00:53:23 | |
And I think we've had a grand total of 60 people vote so far in that election. | 00:53:29 | |
Fall festival is Saturday. | 00:53:38 | |
On the new Rocket Field, the Chamber has done an amazing job of managing through that change and getting ready 200 vendors. It's | 00:53:42 | |
always a blast. Come one, come all to the fall festival. And then on October 31st we'll have our downtown trick or treat. | 00:53:49 | |
Exciting for kids. A challenge for commuters, so please plan your schedule carefully if you're going to be driving through | 00:53:56 | |
Watkinsville on Halloween. Leave extra time or maybe travel around Main Street and I'm sure the Chief and his guys will have the | 00:54:03 | |
signs up. Or if you just want to watch cute kids in costumes on Main Street, come on through. Or city officials in costumes 4 to | 00:54:09 | |
6. | 00:54:15 | |
And then last you want to announce until November 10th, we're going to have a fall decorating contest for Watkinsville residents, | 00:54:22 | |
Decorate your porch. | 00:54:26 | |
And then e-mail the directions to and e-mail the pictures of the decorations to Angela and we're going to post it on the city's | 00:54:30 | |
Facebook page. And then we will vote. | 00:54:34 | |
Whoever gets the most. | 00:54:39 | |
Will get a prize and be recognized at our November meeting. So thank you again to Councilman Thomas. | 00:54:41 | |
For putting this together for us so far for Watkinsville Council, I expect robust participation. | 00:54:47 | |
From all of. | 00:54:52 | |
Christine So. | 00:54:54 | |
Council reports. Moving on. Councilman Garrett, you're up first, post one. | 00:54:56 | |
Not a whole lot to comment on other than as I've been out knocking on doors and talking to people that really excited about the | 00:55:03 | |
sidewalks. | 00:55:07 | |
And what they're seeing in town so right, Good to hear. | 00:55:12 | |
I hope all sixty of them were voted All right. Councilwoman Massey post 2. Nothing to report. | 00:55:17 | |
Councilman Thomas is not here. Mayor Pro Tem Tucker. | 00:55:26 | |
All right. So thank you for letting me go see my twins and their senior year the new. | 00:55:30 | |
New newly revived homecoming parade. So you may have said why? | 00:55:37 | |
Late, but that is why so fortunately are both at the very front. That's why it didn't take me very long. I got my picture, I got | 00:55:42 | |
my video and I said I'll see you later. | 00:55:46 | |
So yes, we have celebrated our first year as a downtown development authority, which is amazing and we are continuing to be led by | 00:55:52 | |
Kate, our Director who is doing a great job and also. | 00:56:00 | |
Are starting to see a little bit of momentum and. | 00:56:10 | |
I'm mainly and only hearing good feedback from people and seeing the changes in downtown and our goal is really to promote the | 00:56:15 | |
businesses that we have and encourage others that the community will enjoy. | 00:56:22 | |
We also we had y'all might have heard about this plenty now, but we got a grant. | 00:56:31 | |
To put on an event. | 00:56:38 | |
And that happened Saturday night at Rocket Field. | 00:56:41 | |
And we had a fantastic committee of volunteers that we have been meeting since, I think March or April to put this on. | 00:56:44 | |
We had public art that I saw many of y'all help paint. We have the splits band's and she moved the whole time. I was like wow, she | 00:56:56 | |
had a lot of energy, but here you'll see some of the art. These are five pieces that Francis Byrd was is you can see her up right | 00:57:05 | |
behind Brian up there in the upper right hand corner. | 00:57:13 | |
She created these five pieces that represent different aspects of Watkinsville. | 00:57:22 | |
And then the community painted them. She had them outlined. | 00:57:31 | |
Looks kind of like paint by numbers. The community painted them. She's going to clean up. We did have a few precious 3 year olds. | 00:57:34 | |
Some were a little more careful than others, so if she's going to, you know, just kind of clean up a little bit and then be | 00:57:41 | |
looking for these to be displayed and they're going to help activate a new little pocket park. | 00:57:47 | |
Which I feel strange saying the place across from what used to be Dobies. | 00:57:55 | |
And we also had food vendors. We had chops and hops we had. | 00:58:01 | |
Austin, who does BBQ from the farmers market and then also some amazing boiled peanuts and lemonade and then beer from our what | 00:58:07 | |
should I say? I guess I can say that we drank beer from our local brewery and it was a great crowd. I mean my overall. | 00:58:15 | |
I think they're about 150 people who came out. There were a lot of events going on this past weekend that kind of spread out | 00:58:24 | |
things, but. | 00:58:28 | |
It everybody was connecting with one another and it was great to see people that I haven't seen in five and six years and having | 00:58:33 | |
conversations. And then also it was an opportunity to meet new people. And so it really did meet our goal and our motto and | 00:58:40 | |
Watkinsville have come connect create all of that happened and we are hoping this will also compel future events. | 00:58:48 | |
And the new gathering space that we will be having that will help further connect downtown. So overall, I think great success. I | 00:58:57 | |
saw just about everybody. | 00:59:02 | |
Here there, thank you guys for coming out and and taking part and umm. | 00:59:08 | |
And you won't have to hear about the creative placemaking event every month now. So it is done. | 00:59:14 | |
At other deep. | 00:59:24 | |
All. | 00:59:30 | |
Councilman Campbell Post, 5. | 00:59:31 | |
On economic development this Saturday we have a new business opening up a Coney outpost. | 00:59:34 | |
And downtown in the former Welcome Center. So that's going to be a good retail business for the community. So please check them | 00:59:39 | |
out. That's exciting. We'll have a couple more retail style businesses opening soon. | 00:59:45 | |
Christine mentioned Dobies. They did close, but I know, I know quite a few people looking at it, so I don't think it'll stay empty | 00:59:53 | |
long at all, and couple people I know looking at it. | 00:59:59 | |
We'll be glad if either one of them moves in. And then historic preservation, we're meeting tomorrow with the class that is | 01:00:05 | |
working on that project for us. So Christine and I are going back to school at U. | 01:00:11 | |
And meeting with that class, they spent the last month kind of researching historic preservation in Georgia. Now we're meeting | 01:00:19 | |
them to kind of narrow or focus in on what we would like for the city of Watkinsville. So we'll have more to report next month on | 01:00:24 | |
that. That's it. | 01:00:29 | |
Christine, we can only hope that Jeff has some out of school, back to school level antics to repeat to report on next next week or | 01:00:35 | |
maybe old school, You know, let's see. Keep him under control down there. | 01:00:41 | |
All right. We, I think that's it for council reports. I don't think we have an executive session and I see heads shaking. Nobody | 01:00:48 | |
needs an executive session. | 01:00:51 | |
So with that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. So have a second. We have a second. All in favor, | 01:00:55 | |
say aye. Aye. | 01:00:58 | |
Thanks for coming. | 01:01:03 |