City Council Regular Meeting
Transcript
| All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the November Watkins City Council meeting. We're pleased to have everyone here | 00:00:05 | |
| tonight. We have a quorum. We have a great crowd and we're excited about what's ahead of this meeting. So with that, we will start | 00:00:10 | |
| with the Pledge of Allegiance, former Police Chief Shannon Walker to see you. If you'll lead us in the police, please. | 00:00:15 | |
| I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God. | 00:00:21 | |
| Thank you. We're glad to have here. This meeting is being broadcast simultaneously online. We use a software called Suite 1 | 00:00:35 | |
| webcasting public portals who can attend meeting may access the public portal via a link which is posted on the City of | 00:00:41 | |
| Watkinsville website. The information packet associated the meeting also available to that site and can be viewed temporarily. | 00:00:47 | |
| That's under the government tab on the website. Anybody who's Ken is available to listen along with that. | 00:00:54 | |
| Have posted a agenda in advance one full week in. The materials are posted on Fridays allowing people provide on this advance. | 00:01:00 | |
| With that I will ask for approval of the minutes from October the 18th. | 00:01:06 | |
| Council, unless you have any suggestions or edits, I'll look for emotion please. | 00:01:12 | |
| Is there a second, second. Any discussion? | 00:01:17 | |
| None. All in favor say aye any opposed that motion carries. I vote move on to approving the agenda. We have a few items to add | 00:01:21 | |
| under administration before item two. We have a presentation of city's ability designation. We appoint approach for the city | 00:01:27 | |
| manager and then we have the announcement for the fall for Watkins. All decorating contest. All those which are under | 00:01:32 | |
| administration for item two. If council's agreeable with those and all I'll accept a motion to amend agenda. | 00:01:37 | |
| I make motion that we amend the agenda as just outlined and approve. Do we have a second, Second, any comment, any opposed? | 00:01:43 | |
| We have an individual and so we will move to administration. | 00:01:56 | |
| Just remind the public input members of the public looking to address Mayor Council may do so. The noted times on the agenda or | 00:02:00 | |
| upon request of description of the City Council comments shall refrain for it will wait to the items and four minutes per person. | 00:02:05 | |
| A debate argument, personal actual, relevant decision, address merits a matter under discussion. Please address council, not the | 00:02:10 | |
| audience. Council will not speak to potential addition to the client or personnel matters. | 00:02:15 | |
| So with that, we will turn to the presentation of the city's ability designation from the Georgia Municipal Association. | 00:02:21 | |
| I'll step up here and we'll picture that and I'll speak up for you. | 00:02:27 | |
| I'm going to talk for just a minute about why this is important. So these are what we don't use a lot of these days. Last Friday | 00:03:02 | |
| actually, opportunity to go through the 1st. | 00:03:06 | |
| Annual Johnny Isaacson Sympathy Monstability University of Georgia really made reflect on our journey as a city over the past five | 00:03:10 | |
| years. And we've had we've had our challenges with ability some previous council members and other leaders here and maybe right on | 00:03:17 | |
| how I am that we have council just that treats each other civilly but actually took steps last February to pass. | 00:03:24 | |
| A. It's an ordinance. What was it? | 00:03:32 | |
| Resolution around what? Conductee and that would agree. That and how we would treat each other and treat members of public | 00:03:34 | |
| civilities seem to be a start in politics today. And that makes me sad. I don't think anybody wins when we. | 00:03:39 | |
| Civility matter last year, All right. Next on the agenda is a point of privilege. | 00:04:09 | |
| For our city manager, thank you Mayor, for allowing me so officially next Tuesday, the 21st will my fifth year with the city of | 00:04:15 | |
| Watkinsville. It's really hard to believe. I mean, you guys, I'm going to read my stuff because I'm afraid I will. | 00:04:22 | |
| Everybody sitting here knows how much we've accomplished and it wasn't done by me, but I do think it's we take a minute to | 00:04:30 | |
| celebrate and look at what we accomplished in five years. But I think that what I'd like to share first though is something found | 00:04:35 | |
| when I was going through files probably more a year ago now from former mayor in March of 8/19/86 when I was actually getting to | 00:04:40 | |
| graduate high school. | 00:04:44 | |
| He had asked for a moment to have some additional remarks with the council and said we're trying to think about budget for next | 00:04:50 | |
| year and I'd like for you to start start having input. I have one suggestion. | 00:04:55 | |
| And I think my suggestion is I wish to leave you is one party you need to sit that the town need is a future administrator or | 00:05:00 | |
| manager. That was in 1986 and you guys hired me in 2018, so. | 00:05:05 | |
| But when I arrived, I'm in 2010, there were a lot of things that were being done that should have been to be done, and a lot of | 00:05:13 | |
| things were not being done that should have been done. I think it's important to point out that it wasn't an intent of anybody to | 00:05:17 | |
| do the things wrong or not do the things. I think it's just you didn't know what you didn't know. | 00:05:22 | |
| So this is not just my father anniversary, this is just the mayor of the council, all the employees and stuff. | 00:05:28 | |
| And much smaller. We had learned how to walk, you know, and defeat under this. And I think we're there. We're starting to really | 00:05:33 | |
| figure out how to make this machine work and I think we did this as a team. | 00:05:38 | |
| I put together 5 slides that attempt about hours that actually just try to pick the heights because this is not a thing we've | 00:05:43 | |
| done, this is just the highlights. So I want to go through this. I'll try to read every single one. I'll let y'all read some of | 00:05:48 | |
| them. I'll hit some of the highlights on each one. | 00:05:52 | |
| We have completed a community grant effort which is serving us very well in signage and I tree way well signs. We one of the first | 00:06:32 | |
| things that I did when I got here and I always just say God had his humor. | 00:06:38 | |
| I have a Master's degree in Hulk administration, but I. | 00:06:45 | |
| Really, the Police Department or planning department, those are two issues that city had to address and survive Gate. We had to | 00:06:48 | |
| reassess the Police Department and that was at the request of the public. I mean we had citizen do you want to have a Police | 00:06:52 | |
| Department or do you not? And what did they did? They had to figure out how to make it happen. | 00:06:56 | |
| We personalized Municipal Court, appoint our first our solicitor and public defender. We established process for the budget which | 00:07:01 | |
| had not existed. We create capital imprint plans. We knew sort of the plan ahead what what capital items we needed. We worked our | 00:07:06 | |
| finances got. | 00:07:10 | |
| Pull together we've established some contractual relationships with third part Enders to help the building permits and | 00:07:16 | |
| inspections. The four big developments, three of which are currently underway, one is completed Wisteria Ridge Water Park, Otters | 00:07:21 | |
| Walk and Trove that's going to probably be 1000 people added to population and that was as a result of the sewer wastewater | 00:07:26 | |
| capacity for the county. | 00:07:31 | |
| We might open through the Cronus Corona Panama Coronavirus pandemic on one day. We'll close. | 00:07:36 | |
| And help protect our police officers. | 00:08:18 | |
| They make Madden, Athens Clarke, OK, regional transportation system. I think I began opening for the front bypass, which will | 00:08:21 | |
| impact us greatly and we've done a lot of work around here at City Hall. | 00:08:26 | |
| Which I've got a question spread tree lighting Police Department through. | 00:08:33 | |
| Tournament interact and have more community participation between the officers and on enforcement situation we've we've signed | 00:08:39 | |
| agreement on EQ license plate readers which you have to capture and register and uninsured vehicles that they all sell us with | 00:08:44 | |
| blue alerts over alerts, Amber alerts and Kimberly's call which are all their important safety. | 00:08:50 | |
| Initiatives we've completed Rd. Objects, some other projects surface number of roads in the city and I believe one more created | 00:08:57 | |
| facilities authority which will give city a little more ability for financing opportunities. We activate the Watsonville Down | 00:09:02 | |
| Development authority, created a board to find the district and part of. | 00:09:08 | |
| Updated the official voting map of protecting minutes for breweries and for special event facilities. Approved of county, county, | 00:09:14 | |
| school district plans for their instructional support center, which is currently under construction. | 00:09:19 | |
| And collaborated the DA are on artists on our. | 00:09:24 | |
| Cemetery. | 00:09:28 | |
| So as I said earlier, now what I've shared is because me, I just wanted the members and it's because everybody's been focused and | 00:09:29 | |
| and dedicated working together to sort of citizens of Watkins. | 00:09:34 | |
| When I was five years ago, there were temploids filling 13 capital authorized positions. We now 20 authorized positions with 18 | 00:09:40 | |
| for employees. | 00:09:43 | |
| Are those original 10 employees. Only three remain. Julie Klein Black Kyle Hitler, who's Police Department. | 00:09:47 | |
| The original 6 Mayor Council members to remain Connie, sorry Councilman Massey, Mayor Ryan Broderick and Councilwoman Mayor | 00:09:52 | |
| Pretend Christine Tucker. And obviously the Mayor has been from account number to mayor during the time frame in the last four | 00:09:57 | |
| years. With that council members Garrett, Thomas and Campbell. | 00:10:02 | |
| And with elections every year and there's right every other year over the past five years, the city's had three mayor's in the in | 00:10:08 | |
| five years. | 00:10:10 | |
| That a lot of turnover for a city of our size and I think it's a testament to the leadership of our council and the tenacity and | 00:10:13 | |
| determination of our employees that we not only made it through all the changes, but we've also been successful in during those | 00:10:17 | |
| services to our citizens. | 00:10:20 | |
| The city's infinite responsibilities but finite resources. We also rely on contractors. As mentioned earlier, our auditors on our | 00:10:24 | |
| first collection services, building permits and sections, our IT or our computer services, Music or Dutch solicitor, public | 00:10:29 | |
| defender, the jail, the Oconee County Sheriff's Office, Water Sewer, Oconee County water resources, Main Street, Rocket field | 00:10:34 | |
| maintenance with precision landscaping and the York Water Park. | 00:10:39 | |
| Other services that are brought about contractors, legal and professional, specifically our city attorney and our city engineer. | 00:10:45 | |
| Are then key to our success and we feel like full time employees are part of our family. | 00:10:53 | |
| There's a sign you cannot team with an eye, absolutely eyes here, and what made this successful is our things, willingness to work | 00:10:57 | |
| together toward our common goals. | 00:11:01 | |
| If you give me one more minute, I would like to ask to recognize each of my core team members. This is not all the employees. We | 00:11:04 | |
| have public works employees and police officers that are not here. These are my department heads and the leaders of your city | 00:11:09 | |
| employees and I'd like to ask them if they would just stand. And then I'll get a draft Julie Klein, our city clerk and a charter | 00:11:13 | |
| coordinator. | 00:11:17 | |
| Lee Black, Our Financial Municipal Court. | 00:11:22 | |
| Ted Cartlidge, who has three jobs, solicit planning, building inspections, code and public works. | 00:11:25 | |
| Shannon Buck retired. But I was here that time. | 00:11:31 | |
| Chief Mark Novak, who is our parks facility operator going to be or parks Facilities Director in in the. | 00:11:35 | |
| And Kate Harrison, our downtown development director, and then attorney Joe Whiteman and Mark Campbell, our city engineer. | 00:11:43 | |
| I just like to say honored to serve alongside you guys that I could do it without you. I certainly appreciate all your efforts | 00:11:54 | |
| and. | 00:11:57 | |
| I don't know what else to say it's really a privilege really appreciate it and the mayor and council you know five years ago they | 00:12:01 | |
| took the hits on me he introduced me to several yell four he brought me on board enter that at a time that was done account the | 00:12:06 | |
| mayor brought someone for the council approved it a year later you guys need to change this to the to the code for a city manager | 00:12:12 | |
| and I became the city manager and and so now there's you know now the now the responsibility for having fires I'm on my shoulder | 00:12:17 | |
| said. | 00:12:22 | |
| It's made all difference. Able to have your leadership and your support and your council. During that time. We couldn't have done | 00:12:28 | |
| it. I can't have done it without them. So I would like to picture get a picture of council. I'd get a picture with my staff | 00:12:33 | |
| separately. So you all should have a little cookie. A little cookie. And each y'all had, I think, my head next I left you all so. | 00:12:38 | |
| OK. | 00:12:46 | |
| Let's do. | 00:12:47 | |
| All right. Ready, 123. | 00:13:30 | |
| Right. Best we are. Thank you very much, so much. | 00:13:39 | |
| What agenda? The past five years. What a great list of accomplishments. Sharon, thank you for your leadership. | 00:13:57 | |
| You're right, there's no I and T, but there always has to be team captain and without the team captain, a strong leadership team | 00:14:02 | |
| still perform well and we are incredibly grateful for you for what you done to continue Legacy of Care financial management, but | 00:14:08 | |
| also exceptional formats in Watkinsville. | 00:14:13 | |
| Right person at the right down, at the right place. We're working for you. So thank you for everything. Yeah. And thank you the | 00:14:19 | |
| opportunity to reflect on everything that was done. It was awesome. | 00:14:22 | |
| OK. | 00:14:27 | |
| We're gonna go on to the fall of Watkins. | 00:14:28 | |
| Decorating contest winners this was we had citizens submit their photos to the city posters on Facebook and he had a popular vote | 00:14:31 | |
| for for the winners So we had top for vote getter here then no results yet they not know the results so. | 00:14:39 | |
| We're Fennison Wattsville for a close election. Jill and that tradition tradition continued with this. So I'm gonna step up and | 00:14:47 | |
| then call up our call up our our folks here. | 00:14:52 | |
| Yeah. | 00:14:59 | |
| All right. So can you hear me? | 00:15:11 | |
| OK, we have. | 00:15:15 | |
| 3rd place. | 00:15:16 | |
| You put them in. | 00:15:19 | |
| 1st place meaning by exactly 1 vote. | 00:15:22 | |
| Larvae. | 00:15:26 | |
| Listen, always sociality of Wattsville Carol, congratulations. You can have your choice of a Kikis Gift Card, Traveling Hobo gift | 00:15:29 | |
| card or Bird Blast, which is our new downtown retailer. | 00:15:34 | |
| There you go. Congratulations. | 00:15:42 | |
| Thank you all. | 00:15:51 | |
| Second by. | 00:15:58 | |
| By one light, I think. Is that right, Chair Becca? The second by. | 00:16:01 | |
| I'm right. So. So you might have caught yourself. Cut yourself the. | 00:16:06 | |
| It is the the awards. The awards are all the same. So come on up Echo. What do you want to come with you? That's awesome. | 00:16:10 | |
| You're bringing the dog, but you brought the aircraft. | 00:16:17 | |
| OK, all right. Kiki Travel about Britain Blast. | 00:16:21 | |
| All right, all right. Y'all going up. | 00:16:28 | |
| All right. | 00:16:35 | |
| And wow. | 00:16:47 | |
| I don't think this new how they had to happen. But next year, you know, maybe we can do that. So welcome on Up on the Road and | 00:16:50 | |
| that's awesome. So. So congratulations, Bird laughs. Have you been there yet? I've heard great things. I've heard great things. So | 00:16:56 | |
| you'll have been here just right in the middle on the future, Mayor. All right, here we go. | 00:17:02 | |
| Read. | 00:17:09 | |
| Good job, graduate job. If you double down come Ferry Rd. when it's holiday I guess you know if you have kids at all. But if you | 00:17:10 | |
| don't it is awesome. I mean there's some kind of crazy one up and ship going on the holidays for houses of calling the road is | 00:17:15 | |
| super fun to see. So thank you all for thank you all for that traffic. | 00:17:20 | |
| Yeah. | 00:17:31 | |
| Right now, the good news for all of you who just came. | 00:17:35 | |
| Because Sharon asked to. Or did you reward? You don't have to hang around? I don't think so. So, so. | 00:17:39 | |
| This need to turn to your picture, all right? Why buddy? Ladies when you get a picture. | 00:17:48 | |
| All right. | 00:17:56 | |
| All right. | 00:18:26 | |
| This is the moment that. | 00:18:30 | |
| This moment others of you are. | 00:18:34 | |
| Hearings or the old business dread, which is a report of our order. But Mr. Pilgrim is noted for his quick dispatch about reports | 00:18:36 | |
| and his efficiency and how he did that. So I will proceed in the direction right so welcome. | 00:18:41 | |
| Welcome Clay. Glad you're here. Introduce yourself and what's rock'n'roll this thing? Yes Sir. Thank you Mayor, and thank you. | 00:18:47 | |
| Council rushed back to the audit for 50 year 23. | 00:18:52 | |
| Quick before I start on numbers, I just want to say it's it's it's always fine when I come to present these all, there's always | 00:18:57 | |
| great things that happened before and everybody leaves for my reading presentation. It's not just Wattsville, Last week I | 00:19:03 | |
| presented the county up in North Georgia. They had a rescue and I'm talking about the half room was signed and I get up here. | 00:19:09 | |
| How do you follow that? It's always something great, so I'm thankful for that. I get to witness that, but at the same time. | 00:19:15 | |
| Here I am, my my, bring me, you know, and it's just. But anyway, that's exactly. | 00:19:20 | |
| Staff time now was a great job in putting. | 00:19:57 | |
| All right. So a few numbers here and a few things just to report. So the the result of audit the main, the main part of our | 00:20:01 | |
| auditor, I guess the the final result is our independent auditors report is found on pages 133 of the reports you all have in | 00:20:05 | |
| front of you. | 00:20:09 | |
| That report spells out the responsibilities of the City of cities. Management is responsible for your financial statements. We | 00:20:14 | |
| are, as you're there, are responsible for hiding on an opinion as to whether the financial statements are tier misstated, whether | 00:20:18 | |
| due to air fraud. | 00:20:22 | |
| I'm pleased present that for 23 we have an unmodified or clean depending on financial statements. Nothing can wire tendering on it | 00:20:27 | |
| that would prohibition that opinion. We do because it is a will cause your city. We follow them in all the standards and perform | 00:20:32 | |
| that. | 00:20:36 | |
| Position or equity of the city got a three-year Paris if we get their screen just looking there in 23 as you can see you had that | 00:21:12 | |
| investment capital assets that's going to be your land building equipment equipment less any debt utilized acquired. As I said it | 00:21:16 | |
| was all amount this year just you doing standard I'll mention your moment but you had an investment capital I said the five | 00:21:20 | |
| million 204620. | 00:21:25 | |
| Had restricted that position 1,000,005 three 761. | 00:21:30 | |
| Understood. In that position three million 8914 still in that position 10 million four 37495 for the other you'll see there was a | 00:21:34 | |
| use in that position of decrease 35603 and I should have been restricting that position. Just kind of further clarify that it's | 00:21:40 | |
| going to be like an example would be splice funds that you're holding and not yet in Spanish funds that you're in. | 00:21:46 | |
| All right. Looking next at your general fund, I mentioned course the property fund here. The general fund statements are found on | 00:21:54 | |
| page 1517, but I've put a few to sign a comparative prior to your current your information and also mention a few things as well. | 00:21:59 | |
| But you're ready for the year increased 54186 about 25%. | 00:22:04 | |
| Contribute to that increase. You see you've got property taxes were up 75,000 your option sales tax which we're seeing this really | 00:22:10 | |
| across the board. We're having a little slowing here lately, but your sales taxes were up 9879 five season 41756 ten large large | 00:22:17 | |
| part of that the players that you mentioned earlier, you got interest up 1/12/86 with rising rates there. That's a good news in | 00:22:23 | |
| that regard. On the expenditure side, there's also increased 83372 or about less than 40%. | 00:22:30 | |
| Sometimes when I stand up, talk about revenue increase but defenders increase much more. It's important to note that you plan that | 00:23:18 | |
| that's not not if that's always the case. It's not always negative and you don't want it, but in this case, you didn't utilize | 00:23:21 | |
| some of your funds. | 00:23:25 | |
| And we're doing so your time for an outstanding year increasing there from 2 million, 9404980 million, 945 or 33, the reason | 00:23:28 | |
| they're being that the planned use. | 00:23:33 | |
| With last year unassigned when you budget to utilize finances out of a sign for the next fiscal year. So. | 00:23:38 | |
| And you take out your readings of two minutes 94 that was exactly the the decrease in fundamentally there are a few other below | 00:24:21 | |
| the line item things that affect that. | 00:24:25 | |
| All right, yours lost funds. Looking at your I mentioned earlier your special folks localized sales tax. There are significant | 00:24:29 | |
| details on these expenditures, but you can see there still spending a couple different references there. You got the 2009 | 00:24:35 | |
| referendum 251-731-2050, referendum 562021, referendum 73582 for a total expendable million 58099. Additional details for our | 00:24:40 | |
| specific projects, 9 items of all following are found on the page 53 of the report. | 00:24:46 | |
| We also have this year on page 54, a brand new schedule and that. | 00:24:54 | |
| Projects, Finance with transportation, special purpose local office, sales tax, T plus for short. That's found on page 54. I'll | 00:24:57 | |
| just get started that year and you see there's a dollars into there from that new referendum. | 00:25:02 | |
| All right. I in an hour's work, the other product isn't topic down this way. Our product did not necessarily yours is our report. | 00:25:08 | |
| This is where we look at processes of the city, make recommendations for things, you know for improvement. And so we have no tier | 00:25:17 | |
| witnesses, we have certificate deficiencies and we have one appliance this year. | 00:25:24 | |
| We're going to actually deal with those fines and where those are due to and getting us paid out. I know you're probably familiar | 00:25:32 | |
| with that. | 00:25:34 | |
| That's good even though it's a, it's a finding such a good thing that resolved that move forward correct. So always some positives | 00:25:37 | |
| come out of of of the audit process. I feel like in all of that seems negative. I think it's a good thing to get that resolved | 00:25:43 | |
| before I always like to keep you. | 00:25:48 | |
| Aware of what's happened and what is happening, I mentioned a moment ago we talked about that cities never really have a debt | 00:25:54 | |
| significant. There was a but I wouldn't really call it necessarily that does fall in their long term liabilities and that's | 00:26:00 | |
| Abita's if you're all, I'll probably talk to you about this last year this was coming talked about this is last year. | 00:26:05 | |
| So it is recorded. | 00:26:44 | |
| On the financial, so it defect these these kind of your financial statements you have here as far as future port? | 00:26:46 | |
| This is one that's only significant. It's actually kind of a positive thing to change how we account for. | 00:26:51 | |
| I said absences, not significant change, but it is going to lessen some of the they're looking Consistency here is going to let | 00:26:56 | |
| some of their farmers. As far as some closure and such related to your composite absence is going to be vacation that's been | 00:27:01 | |
| accrued, but not either you're in. | 00:27:05 | |
| And I think that concludes my the numbers and that's what I do have more quick thing to remind you that you have there with you. | 00:27:11 | |
| We also provide a copy of those management. | 00:28:49 | |
| Mr. And thank you for such a thorough report. Council, do you have questions? | 00:29:19 | |
| Do you need a? | 00:29:25 | |
| Yeah. Any questions on, Questions on? | 00:29:27 | |
| OK. All right. Thank you. By all means, if you have questions after the fact, we're looking through the year for going down deep | 00:29:31 | |
| in this report. If you have questions, all means to reach out to, you have to be just necessary. All right. Thank you, Mr. | 00:29:36 | |
| Pilgrim. And with that, we have some budget of minutes that we have to make, Mr. Romano, to explain council while we can make | 00:29:41 | |
| this. Yes. So Paul? | 00:29:45 | |
| Is typically part of the beginning of fiscal year and you have a budget process which you talked about necessarily you have a | 00:29:52 | |
| budget process, budget you all approve obviously throughout the year. | 00:29:56 | |
| Use vitals that we assist with as far as you know where all the results are, but management's having budgets that need to be made | 00:30:29 | |
| and the reason for that the city Georgia Department accounts. | 00:30:34 | |
| Looked at saying that 3% not $3,000,000 not $3000 on $300,000, it's 3% over budget. Any specific apartment general fund or any | 00:30:39 | |
| special revenue fund as a whole or that's fun they deem it to be materially not plant. So in order state they comply with that you | 00:30:44 | |
| are you know you have to amend those those five budgets. So that's what these budget members amendments are out and again it could | 00:30:50 | |
| be a. | 00:30:55 | |
| You could have 100 Buzz line item apartment before I'll be $100. You spent this $4.00. That's still imperial because it's more | 00:31:01 | |
| than 3% of a budget. It's kind of a crazy number, but that's that has to happen. These are about. | 00:31:08 | |
| OK. Thank you. Andrew Dickerson, anything you want to add to that? | 00:31:14 | |
| Any questions on the budget minutes? | 00:31:18 | |
| None retain a much to approve budget amendment for fiscal year 2023. | 00:31:21 | |
| We have a second second. | 00:31:26 | |
| Any discussion? | 00:31:28 | |
| One and two this year and close those out which is good because one is from 2009 was from 2015 so. | 00:32:06 | |
| A splash read to this project right now. Underwear She'll part improvements, some amenities that we're working on, some parking | 00:32:12 | |
| and painting, Rocket Field, Thomas Farm, Drench, work on water St. Streetscaping, Downtown City Santos or some of the projects | 00:32:16 | |
| that are currently underway. | 00:32:21 | |
| We are about $800,000 in the bank for that account and we're averaging more a little bit. You make all this with 8.63%, which is | 00:32:26 | |
| our 7.77%, so a little bit higher than we'll see on the next report. | 00:32:33 | |
| And T's lost the only exhibition road and the Industrial Blvd. sidewalk. We are working towards trying to get some movement on the | 00:32:42 | |
| South South side of the South Main Street sidewalk working to that design right now that will come out here as well. Those were | 00:32:49 | |
| appropriated back earlier this year and there's something else on that one we had. | 00:32:56 | |
| Something from that one. | 00:33:07 | |
| I researching at the end of school St. affected St. around Rocket that was so many came up to that we did to help improve the area | 00:33:10 | |
| that around Rocket Field. So and then that one like I said we're up 2% of what we average monthly last year we began so it's kind | 00:33:17 | |
| of our last fiscal year and it was hard to tell and it'll trend overtime it will get higher but right now we're at about 70. | 00:33:24 | |
| 70,000 or so a month on average. | 00:33:32 | |
| What did the end of June and then you guys can be back business I think about 90,000 roughly $92,000 that has not been | 00:34:04 | |
| appropriated by you guys that could be used on some of your projects? | 00:34:08 | |
| So any questions on? | 00:34:12 | |
| OK. We'll move on economic development. | 00:34:15 | |
| There we go. We've attended licenses when I'll call license for the month of October. | 00:34:21 | |
| And you guys may recall, we don't see those numbers for over on taxes after they collect them. So we'll see October when we get to | 00:34:27 | |
| next, we'll see. | 00:34:31 | |
| Well, we'll see this for October. Some of the numbers are out still but a 14,000 total. So we're we're actually training pretty | 00:34:35 | |
| well on that. I think we're going to budget. | 00:34:39 | |
| On permits and other projects, we 9 permits or seven products. The 40 of the full of them are drove subdivision off the column | 00:34:44 | |
| three Rd. | 00:34:48 | |
| Any questions on any of those? | 00:34:53 | |
| 15 And I'll go to the next believe that is yours. | 00:34:55 | |
| All right. Do I have? | 00:35:00 | |
| I've never given this report with our downtown development director in room, so she did all the hard work on this. But I'm really | 00:35:04 | |
| excited to announce that we have been designated a role zone. Only 10 cities a cycle get this designation kind of a big deal. | 00:35:13 | |
| And it we're still finding out more information about what means you'll be going to train in a few weeks so we'll have more | 00:35:24 | |
| details but essentially it is going to given businesses in our downtown development the math the roles are map different. | 00:35:30 | |
| Tax credit incentives. So it's going to help with rehabilitation projects, investment projects. | 00:35:37 | |
| And also just in promoting more jobs and positions. So that is a very short answer to it is of a big goal that we got at last for | 00:35:44 | |
| five years. It starts January 1st. So more details will be come forth coming on this. Again big deal. Thank you Kate so much for | 00:35:50 | |
| all of your hard work. I know it. | 00:35:56 | |
| Was not, you know, think of your worst report in school ever. You to do this, probably let this alike. So it's great opportunities | 00:36:02 | |
| for Waters. | 00:36:06 | |
| OK, so we are in the process of creating a pocket park at the Heartache lot, which is right where Experiment Station hits Main | 00:36:16 | |
| Street. If you may have noticed the five pieces of art that were created and our base main creative placing event Rockfield back | 00:36:23 | |
| in October, those are up there temporarily there. They will eventually go to the businesses that sponsored them and we hope in the | 00:36:30 | |
| next week or two to have the Adirondack Terrace table trash cans and things that. | 00:36:37 | |
| To make a little pocket park and there is also a little path behind. | 00:36:45 | |
| OK. It's going to be a great connection as we are trying to make use of all of downtown. We have Sunshine Cycles. We have the | 00:36:51 | |
| record store, we have like Tiger, we have things further down Main Street. And so the pocket park is part of how it can heavily | 00:36:59 | |
| connect our downtown. So this is all possible because a grant that we received and I'm going to get acronym wrong the Georgia. | 00:37:07 | |
| What? Georgia Cultural Arts Foundation. So thank you. | 00:37:15 | |
| OK. And also the EV chargers are in at the downtown comfort station, so this is no cost to the city, but it's convenient to our | 00:37:22 | |
| citizens that electric vehicles, they can charge them there and that is down off of Water St. | 00:37:29 | |
| All right and all right. I've started. | 00:37:39 | |
| I've started. I'm going to make sure it's on, but I think it's. | 00:37:43 | |
| That got it up. Give me one second. Let's make sure. | 00:37:53 | |
| Alright, we're back. OK. All right. Thank you. Interim chief Tedderton, that was a great report. We will move on to the consent | 00:37:59 | |
| agenda. | 00:38:03 | |
| We've approved the agenda, so at this point I will just entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. | 00:38:08 | |
| Looking for a motion? | 00:38:18 | |
| To approve the consent agenda. Do we have a second, Second, All in favor, say aye. All right, we'll move on to public hearing the | 00:38:20 | |
| rules that I outlined. | 00:38:24 | |
| Before speakers come to the podium and state to address, the only thing that's different is we get 10 minutes per side for the | 00:38:29 | |
| zoning procedures law. So we're going to move pretty quickly through these while making sure we do everything that we need to. | 00:38:36 | |
| From a legal standpoint, to work through these requests #9, the first one that is up is Parcel Co, 3022. | 00:38:43 | |
| And that's the annexation request, manager Dickerson, if you could give us. | 00:38:53 | |
| Staff report on this, attorney Reitman Legal points. The short version of this is about 20 acres of the Thomas Farm property is in | 00:38:58 | |
| Oconee County, not in the city. And we want to annex that. And so we're going to as quickly as possible do what we need to do | 00:39:04 | |
| legally and then vote on that I don't anticipate. | 00:39:09 | |
| Objections. But if members of the public choose to speak, they will have the opportunity. | 00:39:15 | |
| Thank you, Mayor. So as the mayor pointed out, there's 20 acres, approximately 20 acres. The arrows are pointing on the either | 00:39:20 | |
| side of that, 20 acres bound by the blue line on three sides and the yellow line on the South side. | 00:39:25 | |
| I. | 00:39:31 | |
| For the most part, the mayor's already told you we closed on the property in September and October. The attorney sent information | 00:39:32 | |
| to the county requesting annexation and the resolution, which they'll probably consider, I guess, next month at their voting | 00:39:37 | |
| meeting. | 00:39:41 | |
| The property, as the Mayor mentioned, is on Simon Bridge Rd. There's let's see it will be there is a permanent deed restriction on | 00:39:47 | |
| the for development, so it will in perpetuity be as it is now for the most part. | 00:39:53 | |
| And I think that is pretty much it for the report and I failed to mention we're due, we've got to zone it and then annex it as | 00:40:01 | |
| well, so. | 00:40:05 | |
| Is our that we would be designating. This would be Parks, recreation and Conservation, which is in line with future use of the | 00:40:41 | |
| property. | 00:40:44 | |
| The member The public wants to speak to the. | 00:40:47 | |
| Of this parcel that's to be annexed. Please do so. | 00:40:52 | |
| Court client if we receive any comments in advance, Sir. | 00:40:56 | |
| Seeing no one come forward and no comments in advance, I'll close the public hearing. | 00:41:00 | |
| Our next public hearing be related to the annexation of said property. Again, if any member of the public would want to come | 00:41:04 | |
| forward and speak to that, please do so now. | 00:41:08 | |
| Court client, if we receive any commentary on that. | 00:41:12 | |
| Seeing no members of the public will close, the public hearing will now move to the vote on the annexation. | 00:41:16 | |
| You all have seen that ordinance that was in your packet. So I would request a motion to approve the annexation of the 20 acres of | 00:41:22 | |
| Thomas Farm property presently outside the city limits. | 00:41:27 | |
| And make a motion to approve the annex. | 00:41:36 | |
| And. | 00:41:40 | |
| Reason. | 00:41:42 | |
| Annexation first. Annexation. All right. Do we have a second second? All right, this is the time to ask any questions. Council. I | 00:41:43 | |
| know we went quickly. Any questions? | 00:41:48 | |
| All right. Can Councilman Thomas vote on this, that city property at this point? So he can. OK, great. All right, so we have a | 00:41:54 | |
| motion. We have a second. We have no further discussion. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? | 00:42:01 | |
| All right. And now for the zoning again to the Parks, Recreation and Conservation, I would entertain a motion. | 00:42:08 | |
| To make that amendment to the zoning map. | 00:42:13 | |
| I make that motion. We have the motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion, We have a second. Y'all keep up with me. | 00:42:18 | |
| I'm going to try to move us pretty quickly through the rest of this. We have a motion, We have a second. Any discussion. | 00:42:24 | |
| Hearing none. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. Motion carries 5. | 00:42:30 | |
| All right, now we are two appearances. | 00:42:35 | |
| Can I ask to change? We have a guest here who wants to speak in public. Comment. We have one guest here. | 00:42:46 | |
| Can I have her come forward or am I totally messing things up on the agenda? | 00:42:51 | |
| Can we amend the agenda to move public comment? First, I make a motion that we amend the agenda to have public comments now. | 00:42:57 | |
| Second, Second, all in favor, say aye, The reason I'm doing that is going to probably take us. | 00:43:03 | |
| Maybe 30 minutes to work through the rest of this stuff. You've sat through a long meeting. Why don't you come forward and tell | 00:43:10 | |
| us, give us your perspective on an issue that we're dealing with in the city right now. Thank you. Thank you. State your name and | 00:43:16 | |
| address, please. I will. I appreciate making that, that time commitment, especially with my children at home. My name is Kedren | 00:43:21 | |
| Nicholson and I am at 1845 S Barnett Shoals Rd. We are about a mile and 1/2 from downtown. | 00:43:27 | |
| I am not only reside there, that's also the home of my farm. I'm a cut flower farmer, twin run flower farm. We are about to enter | 00:43:33 | |
| at year four and I say that with pride, starting to have from a hay field, which many of you I'm sure know what that was before we | 00:43:38 | |
| moved here. | 00:43:43 | |
| I rise tonight to speak to something that I believe is on the agenda, but I see that I was mistaken. But again, thank you, Mayor, | 00:43:49 | |
| for allowing me just a minute to speak. And that is making a provision for mobile businesses to operate legally within the city | 00:43:53 | |
| limits. | 00:43:58 | |
| I not only undercut fire farm but we have just recently added Buttercup the flower truck and thank you for smiling because you | 00:44:04 | |
| cannot say Buttercup or see her without without a little bit of joy. And which is exactly the reason that we added that to our | 00:44:10 | |
| farm lineup. Also for the economic benefit of that as well which is also one of the reasons that I'd like to speak to having | 00:44:15 | |
| mobile businesses. Because the last pop up that we had, I'd like to share with you just a couple of the things that were said to | 00:44:21 | |
| me as folks walked up to the truck. | 00:44:27 | |
| The first person who came up said I drove from Snellville to see Buttercup and to buy flowers. | 00:44:34 | |
| And as she finished buying flowers, she said. Now, what else should I do in Watkinsville? | 00:44:40 | |
| The next person that came up, she said I've lived in Watkinsville for 32 years and she said you have just up the cuteness factor | 00:44:44 | |
| by 1000%. And then I had two other folks who separately, honest, I swear they said the exact same thing and they came up and they | 00:44:49 | |
| said. | 00:44:54 | |
| This is why I love a small town, because you never know what you're going to. | 00:45:00 | |
| But I also believe that that is really important in the joy factor, because from what else do we need? What more do we need in | 00:45:39 | |
| life right now, especially with the state of our world? Then a little bit of happiness, a little bit of joy. So I rise to speak | 00:45:45 | |
| and ask that you would, and whatever the legal ways, you need to do it for the city and for for all of your constituents, that you | 00:45:51 | |
| would think about how to move forward. So excuse me that those of us who have mobile businesses can operate those in a legal | 00:45:57 | |
| manner and not receive. | 00:46:03 | |
| Criticism from other businesses or feel that we're threatening them because I have no desire to threaten anyone else's business, | 00:46:10 | |
| but certainly a desire to to strengthen the city as well as my own business. And I think that there's a lot to be said for that. I | 00:46:16 | |
| think that there's charm and I think that there's character that can be added by mobile businesses coming into town. But I think | 00:46:22 | |
| more importantly, what you're doing is supporting a small business when you make allowances for that. | 00:46:28 | |
| Thank you for your time. | 00:46:35 | |
| Well, thank you, Mrs. Nicholson. That's that's great. | 00:46:38 | |
| Council, we don't have to react to that. What I will say is we are, I think we have got a draft ordinance that we're working on. | 00:46:42 | |
| We want to address this quickly so you have clarity. Other mobile businesses have clarity in our existing businesses. Understand | 00:46:46 | |
| where we stand on that issue. | 00:46:51 | |
| But I will have to agree that Buttercup the Flower Truck is one of the cutest little things I've seen in my. | 00:46:56 | |
| Time on Main Street which is which has been a long time so so anyway so appreciate what you're doing and the fire form and we | 00:47:03 | |
| might need your advice at the Thomas Farm Park to on some beautification. I walked the site the other day with. | 00:47:10 | |
| Some of the southeastern grass folks who want to do native return native meadows out of hay fields and we don't have the resources | 00:47:18 | |
| to do everything they want to, but there might be a way that. | 00:47:23 | |
| We can be kind of a starter partner or a seed partner for them, which is kind of cool. | 00:47:28 | |
| We're taking a look at how we can take something that's already beautiful and maybe just with a little bit of few light touches | 00:47:33 | |
| make it even more beautiful. So if you have suggestions for us, we're all ears. So happy to partner with all in any way that we | 00:47:39 | |
| can. We love being here. We chose Oconee, for what it's worth. We chose this from anywhere else. We could have lived in the | 00:47:44 | |
| country and settled our family and this is where we chase and we want to be here. Say thank you. Awesome, right? | 00:47:50 | |
| Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being here. | 00:47:56 | |
| Any other members of the public. | 00:47:59 | |
| Doesn't look like they're here. Did we receive anything via e-mail? | 00:48:01 | |
| No, Sir. All right. OK. We will move on now to appearances. Thank you for your patience, gentlemen. I know you both have exciting | 00:48:05 | |
| projects and we're ready to hear from you. So up first we have 1080 Experiment Station Rd. commonly known as the library and we | 00:48:11 | |
| heard last. | 00:48:17 | |
| Last month from the team at A&B Hold Co, a little bit about what they were doing. It was a different face. It was Michael Aslan. | 00:48:23 | |
| It looks like we have Andy Bars here this month to give us an overview of what they're doing. But first we'll have Manager | 00:48:28 | |
| Dickerson or Engineer Campbell give us our staff report. Andy will have you come up after that and speak to the request, cover | 00:48:33 | |
| anything that they don't do and then we'll look at a discussion or a motion there. So with that, we will turn it over to Engineer | 00:48:38 | |
| Camp. Thank you, Mayor. | 00:48:43 | |
| So yes, this 1080 experiment Station Road, you should be very familiar with not only this partial but this project because it was | 00:48:49 | |
| on the agenda last month. So it is currently zoned downtown based on the the decision by the council to rezone it last month. It's | 00:48:57 | |
| a little over 2 acres in size. So this site development plan includes the adaptive reuse of the existing building, which you heard | 00:49:05 | |
| some more about in detail last month, as well as the new construction of attached residential. | 00:49:12 | |
| On the northern portion of the property. So if you can kind of move through these slides, again you're familiar with where the | 00:49:22 | |
| location is, some pictures of the existing location and then the next slide would be a a copy of the the proposed site plan. So | 00:49:28 | |
| the existing building is relatively light there in that image that's a copy of the site plan. You can see some of the asphalt work | 00:49:33 | |
| that's there on the southern side of the lower portion of that drawing if you're familiar with where the book drop is now as you | 00:49:39 | |
| heard described by. | 00:49:45 | |
| One of the members of the the team that's working with the applicant last month. | 00:49:52 | |
| So there's an opportunity, I think there to slightly change that asphalt and what I would suppose would be a pharmacy drop off or | 00:49:57 | |
| pick off, pick up area as opposed to a book drop off and pick up. And then you can see the, the darker hatched area that goes to | 00:50:05 | |
| the rear of the northern side of the existing building. And what is shown would be 6 attached residential units with the | 00:50:12 | |
| associated parking. One of the questions last month was about. | 00:50:20 | |
| Stormwater runoff. | 00:50:28 | |
| These submitted site development plans includes details related to that. That would be an underground storm water management | 00:50:30 | |
| system for any of that proposed impervious area, so. | 00:50:36 | |
| That detail was included in the documentation that was submitted the system to meet the the state requirements which are part of | 00:50:43 | |
| the city requirements as well for water quality, channel protection and stormwater management through the 100 year storm events. | 00:50:48 | |
| So we did have comments on that. | 00:50:53 | |
| So there was a letter that was dated November 9th that included, you see the totality of the 10 comments there. The last two | 00:50:59 | |
| should be very familiar because there is disturbance greater than one acre, which means you have to go to the Georgia Water | 00:51:05 | |
| Conservation Commission. To my knowledge, those plans have been delivered, but that review on the state side takes a little bit | 00:51:12 | |
| longer than it does on the City side. Likewise, Oconee County Water Resources would have a say on any details as it relates to the | 00:51:18 | |
| water and sewer system for this. | 00:51:24 | |
| The other comments there are really about some clarifications and a little bit more detail oriented as it relates to stormwater, | 00:51:30 | |
| nothing that would be preventative for. | 00:51:35 | |
| Approval of the site development plans, as you see, presented here before you tonight. And again, I'm happy to answer any | 00:51:41 | |
| questions that you might have. | 00:51:45 | |
| All right. We've heard from Mr. Campbell. Mr. Bars, if you want to come up, if you have anything you want to add, just introduce | 00:51:51 | |
| yourself off your address and share anything you want to welcome. | 00:51:56 | |
| Thank you. Appreciate it, Andy. Bars address 1607 Lea Haven way here, Athens address Oconee County. | 00:52:01 | |
| Yeah. My partner and I, Michael Aslan, he and I have been in business 16 years in the healthcare side and. | 00:52:11 | |
| Have been fortunate enough to grow and need additional space and. | 00:52:17 | |
| Really. | 00:52:21 | |
| Feel intrigued by the opportunity to purchase the library inside the city and be a part, you know, partner with Y'all and helping | 00:52:23 | |
| develop. | 00:52:26 | |
| Assets not only for our company but but hopefully resources that can further provide services to the city so. | 00:52:30 | |
| Engineer Campbell shared. | 00:52:39 | |
| Currently our plan is to open a small pharmacy relatively 1500 to 2000 square feet on the left hand side of the library using the | 00:52:41 | |
| existing overhang. | 00:52:46 | |
| As a drive through where the book drop off. | 00:52:52 | |
| Middle portion of the building, building, 17,000 square feet in total. Middle portion of the building maybe 6000 feet or so. We're | 00:52:56 | |
| hoping to find a medical tenant that could pair with our pharmacy there and then we would use the remainder 6 to 8000 feet on the | 00:53:02 | |
| right hand side to serve as our corporate offices there. | 00:53:07 | |
| Currently there's a little over 30 parking spaces, which is. | 00:53:13 | |
| Per code 1 per 500 square feet or so. We need a little more parking. And so we, you know. | 00:53:17 | |
| Resources of the engineers to see what we could do with the 3/4 of the acre that was behind that space. It kind of tucks up | 00:53:24 | |
| against the Board of Education building there. It's about a 10 foot drop off roughly. | 00:53:30 | |
| Our grade back there. | 00:53:38 | |
| In order to put a. | 00:53:40 | |
| Parking lot or something. There, we'd still have to put a retaining wall. | 00:53:41 | |
| He said, well, why couldn't? | 00:53:45 | |
| Make use of that infrastructure and put residential back there because our our goal is to try not to be a an end point as where | 00:53:46 | |
| the library is now, but really be. | 00:53:51 | |
| A continuation and so if we could. | 00:53:57 | |
| Have activity. | 00:54:00 | |
| You know, qualified activity behind us. It would help us be more of a community. | 00:54:01 | |
| Resource I think as opposed to a drive by. So that could help us offset some expenses to get additional parking back there as well | 00:54:05 | |
| as maybe connect to some of the adjacent parcels without being an isolated. | 00:54:11 | |
| Three quarter acre. | 00:54:18 | |
| Wasn't usable for the city, but be glad to answer any questions or comments, and if I don't know the answer, I'll do my best to to | 00:54:20 | |
| get you feedback. | 00:54:24 | |
| All right, Christine. | 00:54:31 | |
| I have old eyes. | 00:54:37 | |
| And obviously it's hard to tell from scale, but the back of the six units look awfully close to the property line on. | 00:54:39 | |
| The other side is they all in the set back, the correct setbacks and everything, or is that a different? | 00:54:46 | |
| Downtown, there's not any significant set, so there's not that's a residential. | 00:54:53 | |
| Thank you. | 00:55:00 | |
| All right. | 00:55:04 | |
| Let's see, I was gonna, I had something in my head but I've lost it because it is getting like I will comment this may have been | 00:55:06 | |
| said previous. | 00:55:10 | |
| Currently there's only about a. | 00:55:14 | |
| Width to travel around the backside of the. | 00:55:16 | |
| I was fortunate to get the right gentleman on the phone. | 00:55:20 | |
| That recently their company purchased the Post Office is a real estate investment trust out of New York. | 00:55:23 | |
| I didn't know what I was going to get on the other end of that phone, but I got a very nice and welcoming. | 00:55:29 | |
| Man said. You know you're welcome to extend that driveway. I'll call it the wraps around so it can be a. | 00:55:34 | |
| Two cars can travel it simultaneous. | 00:55:41 | |
| So he we're working on a memorandum of understanding that will support our agreement with them to build a retaining wall that will | 00:55:45 | |
| give us another 10 to 12 feet that will provide enough. | 00:55:50 | |
| Space for two cars to pass each other back there, that that. | 00:55:57 | |
| Otherwise we wouldn't really have a lot of practical access to the rear. | 00:56:01 | |
| This was my question. Is the tree protection plan incorporated by reference into all this markers that need any sort of separate | 00:56:05 | |
| not protection plan with the tree plan urban forest plan? | 00:56:09 | |
| Is that already done or does that come later? | 00:56:14 | |
| So the the Urban forest plan, my recollection is that was included in the site plans that have been submitted. But I don't believe | 00:56:19 | |
| the urban Forest Committee has met to discuss the details of that. I do know they have some other things that would likely be on | 00:56:24 | |
| the next month's agenda. So that's likely to come back to us. OK, All right. Just wanted to understand because I did see the | 00:56:30 | |
| materials that came to us. All right. Unless there's any further questions, I'll entertain a motion to approve the site | 00:56:36 | |
| development plan for A&B Holtco. Sorry. | 00:56:42 | |
| Subject to the yeah, subject to the conditions for the engineer. Christine, did you have another question? I did. I'm sorry. So. | 00:56:48 | |
| So I don't know where it would go. I mean I've been driving by this, but I know we're wanting to extend sidewalks and such is. | 00:56:56 | |
| A way to have a sidewalk at the front of the property there is, but it wouldn't connect anything because you have the health | 00:57:04 | |
| department and the. | 00:57:10 | |
| But we welcome the opportunity to have sidewalks because that would be an asset to our businesses that this. | 00:57:17 | |
| That was what was shared with me. Yeah, that's what I would think that. I mean, obviously I would love. I mean, it's a goal of the | 00:57:24 | |
| city to have a lot of pedestrian infrastructure. | 00:57:29 | |
| Absolutely. So you would be open to, even though currently it's a sidewalk to nowhere, but you would that's not the end game. You | 00:57:34 | |
| would be open. We would be very open to that, Yes, ma'am. | 00:57:39 | |
| All right. I think what Andy, what she's asking, I think we need to go ahead and approve the site plan. But Andy, I think what | 00:57:46 | |
| Christine's asking is, could you go ahead and would you be willing to install them on your property? | 00:57:50 | |
| Understand that we may have them eventually as other properties transition and need to connect to you. | 00:57:55 | |
| Or do you want to think about that? I'd like to think about that. I don't mind agreeing to connect once they're put in place, it | 00:58:01 | |
| would just. I think it would be. | 00:58:05 | |
| Awkward looking. | 00:58:10 | |
| To be an existing sidewalk without anything connecting to it would definitely be awkward for a little. | 00:58:12 | |
| I don't know that. | 00:58:18 | |
| The timing on what there's and whether those other properties will transition in any kind of time period, but let's let's talk | 00:58:21 | |
| about, let's approve the site development plan, but then maybe. | 00:58:25 | |
| If your plan can be such that you could accommodate that and you agree to do that at a later date should there be an opportunity | 00:58:29 | |
| that would be, that would be great. | 00:58:33 | |
| Certainly, willing to consider that, absolutely. OK. Yeah. I just bring it up now with the site development plan because I would | 00:58:37 | |
| think it would be relevant to the site development plan, right, because if you drop a bunch of trees there and then I mean it's | 00:58:42 | |
| something that has to do, you all have an idea of time frame to to offer. | 00:58:48 | |
| Yes. | 00:58:55 | |
| Experiment. Station Road is upgraded. It'll probably be at that time. Well, it will be. It'll just be. | 00:58:57 | |
| It'll probably be a long time. | 00:59:04 | |
| I think things might happen, or at least places things might happen. | 00:59:07 | |
| And even if it is not like a total through sidewalk, if your property has that sidewalk there, it might help with connectivity | 00:59:11 | |
| even if people have to for the parcel beforehand, like make their own way so. | 00:59:19 | |
| Umm. | 00:59:27 | |
| I know we can't make it contingent on that, but just as you're, I imagine that as you're pouring concrete and doing changes, | 00:59:27 | |
| there's probably times where it would be less expensive to do it than other times too so. | 00:59:35 | |
| Well, and also with it being part of the downtown, now we want to be connected. Let's do this. | 00:59:42 | |
| Let's go ahead and approve this Andy Noodle on that a little bit and then let's sort of talk offline about what may make sense | 00:59:47 | |
| with your site plan or not make sense with your site plan on it. | 00:59:52 | |
| Not comfortable putting a condition on related to that tonight given how much uncertainty there is in that quarter, if you're OK | 00:59:56 | |
| with that. But Mr. Bars has certainly expressed his interest in doing that potentially if we can work it out and you've got a | 01:00:01 | |
| bunch of sidewalks running around the other sides of the building too, I see rendering. So, yeah, we welcome the opportunity to | 01:00:06 | |
| allow foot traffic to exist around the building. Yeah. | 01:00:11 | |
| All right. | 01:00:17 | |
| Thank you, Christine. All right, we'll be. I'll entertain a motion to approve the site development plan. | 01:00:19 | |
| I'll make a motion. | 01:00:28 | |
| I'll make a motion to approve the site development plan with the conditions from the engineer. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Councilman | 01:00:31 | |
| Thomas, we have a second. | 01:00:35 | |
| All right. We have a second from the left side. Thank you, guys. All right, any conversation about this project? | 01:00:41 | |
| Hearing none all in favor, say aye Aye. Any opposed. The motion carries 5. | 01:00:48 | |
| Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Great. Next up we have some more investment in Watkinsville. We have. | 01:00:53 | |
| Expansion of. | 01:01:05 | |
| Industrial businesses, Taylor Iron and I think we have Justin Greer here representing them tonight. But As for the last one, we. | 01:01:07 | |
| City staff, give us the staff report and then we'll have Mr. Greer come forward. | 01:01:16 | |
| And we'll go from there. So, staff, thank you, Mayor. | 01:01:20 | |
| So this is Taylor's iron. What you would probably know is Taylor's iron 1041 industrial drive the the total acreage of that parcel | 01:01:24 | |
| is a little over 5 acres. This should be familiar for other reasons. It was not here last month, but this property has continued | 01:01:30 | |
| to develop and expand over the last. | 01:01:36 | |
| Five years or so. So this is an addition on the northern side of the property. So it's a proposed 18,000 square foot additions if | 01:01:44 | |
| we go to the next slide. | 01:01:50 | |
| If this is facing it from Industrial Drive again, Industrial Blvd. connects from Hwy. 15 to Barnett Shoals Rd. Industrial Drive | 01:01:58 | |
| comes off of Industrial Blvd. but this is some of the existing facilities. There is existing storm water facility that's there on | 01:02:04 | |
| the property that was constructed. | 01:02:09 | |
| During a previous iteration of expansion of the Taylor's iron property and this gives you an idea of what that looks like today. | 01:02:15 | |
| So. | 01:02:19 | |
| What is highlighted in red, if you can see that is the proposed 18,000 square foot expansion again on the northern side and then | 01:02:25 | |
| on what would be kind of the right hand portion of your page there. The eastern side that is the existing pond that you saw in the | 01:02:31 | |
| picture that is being modified, reformatted in a way in order to be able to handle the additional storm water flows that are being | 01:02:38 | |
| created as part of this. | 01:02:44 | |
| So the the next slide kind of gives another brief overview. Similarly, there was a letter that was sent to the engineering group | 01:02:53 | |
| of regarding comments on this. Some of the comments are the same. Again, you're disturbing more than one acre. You have to deal | 01:02:59 | |
| with Oconee County water resources for water and sewer. There's a few details as it relates to clarification of those engineering | 01:03:04 | |
| and stormwater plans. | 01:03:09 | |
| If you will recall, sewer line A traverse through the northern portion of this property. As a result, there's no longer any need | 01:03:16 | |
| for any septic facilities. | 01:03:21 | |
| On this property. So I think that's part of what allows the opportunity for this additional expansion of a business within the | 01:03:26 | |
| city of Watkinsville. There's. | 01:03:31 | |
| The the detailed comments that were issued there again no things that would be preventative for approval of the site development | 01:03:36 | |
| plan and we'll be happy to answer. | 01:03:41 | |
| Any questions? | 01:03:47 | |
| All right. Thank you, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Greer. | 01:03:49 | |
| Good evening. Thank you. Mr. Mayor Council, my name is Justin Greer, Pittman and Greer Engineering. Mark pretty much covered | 01:03:53 | |
| everything 18,000 square foot addition and the sewer line really did open up where we could do some additional development growth. | 01:03:59 | |
| They're going to use it for additional space for equipment. We did receive the comments that Mark mentioned. We've been looking | 01:04:05 | |
| through those and I think we can address everything there. The urban forest plan, it was approved back in 05 and we're not we're | 01:04:12 | |
| not impacting that in any way the. | 01:04:18 | |
| Our improvements don't touch anything that was approved before on that plan. So I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. | 01:04:25 | |
| Thank you. We have an urban forest ordinance, an O5. | 01:04:29 | |
| I think you've been five years ago, five years ago. | 01:04:35 | |
| OK, so are they having any jobs because of this just? | 01:04:41 | |
| I don't know the answer that I could find that out. You said it's gonna store equipment. Are they gonna do additional equipment? | 01:04:47 | |
| Additional equipment, Sir, Are they gonna use it for manufacturing? And my understanding. All right. OK. | 01:04:52 | |
| Right. Other questions. | 01:04:57 | |
| I do want to point out here a lot of times we got, we got a lot of questions through the years about why we invested. | 01:05:00 | |
| Sewer lines in the industrial area and Sharon mentioned. | 01:05:06 | |
| We pay for those. Ultimately the county owns controls those gets most of the revenue. But this is exactly what we wanted to see, | 01:05:09 | |
| right? It gives existing industry who are out of space. | 01:05:14 | |
| The opportunity to use that space where they had septic tanks to. | 01:05:19 | |
| Without that those sewer. | 01:05:23 | |
| This wouldn't be happening. Wire Park wouldn't be happening. A lot of good stuff. | 01:05:26 | |
| I know those were expensive, expensive and investments, but again we're starting to see that pay off and I think that'll be those | 01:05:30 | |
| will continue to pay off overtime with additional jobs, business retention and in tax revenue. So we're excited about seeing this | 01:05:36 | |
| project come through and and grateful. | 01:05:42 | |
| If there's no other questions, Sharon, you have a I was just going to point out, so because this is in the industrial park, the | 01:05:49 | |
| city is not involved with our wastewater capacity at all. It's handled by the county That was part of our amendment to the | 01:05:54 | |
| agreement we had with the county in 1991. So any wastewater they need will go through the it'll come out of their bucket, not out | 01:05:59 | |
| of ours today. | 01:06:04 | |
| OK, All right. We've heard from the staff. We've heard. | 01:06:10 | |
| The applicant with that, I'll entertain a motion to approve with the conditions specified by the engineer. | 01:06:14 | |
| I'll make a motion to approve this project with the conditions specified by the engineer. | 01:06:23 | |
| Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further comment hearing? None. All in favor, say aye. | 01:06:30 | |
| All right. We will move on to old business. And that old business involves continuing our efforts to improve Harris Shoals Park. | 01:06:38 | |
| So Sharon, I think you have a report for us on that. Thank you, Mayor. | 01:06:44 | |
| We're going to be asking you tonight to approve or award a contract to Garrett Paving Company. | 01:06:52 | |
| For Mount Knot to see 200,000 for the parking and paving improvements to Harris Shoals Park. | 01:06:59 | |
| We did release an RFP earlier this year. We only received 11 bid back that that RFP is a little bit different than this one that | 01:07:06 | |
| was amended. That one actually called for pedestrian pathways and landscaping. We got one vendor to to bid on it or provide a | 01:07:13 | |
| price proposal. It was way over what we had. So we sort of sat on it. We had also had an opportunity at the time to submit for the | 01:07:20 | |
| Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program grant and also for the congressional directed spending for both Warnock and. | 01:07:28 | |
| Ossoff and of course we heard back. We didn't get that. So we released in October, released another RFP. At the time we released | 01:07:36 | |
| it just as we'd released the one in February, but then. | 01:07:41 | |
| Took a step back and after talking to the mayor and and whatnot, we decided let's just do the paving. Would come back and decide | 01:07:47 | |
| if we want to still do the pedestrian sidewalks or pathways and the landscaping. Some of that we might be able to value engineer | 01:07:51 | |
| that on our own. | 01:07:56 | |
| And so we on October 27th received 2 proposals. Garrett Paving came in significantly less. It would make sense Smith and company's | 01:08:01 | |
| a contractor. Garrett's just straight up Paving. | 01:08:06 | |
| So they were, you know, having to do a little bit more work on that. So we did post it on our website. That was a recommendation | 01:08:11 | |
| from Councilman Garrett. We posted our website advertising Oconee Enterprise and provided direct mail request to five companies to | 01:08:17 | |
| which like I said, did respond. | 01:08:22 | |
| We have. | 01:08:29 | |
| Pretty much advanced all the short term projects, low cost projects that we can't can and phase 1A master plan and this really is | 01:08:31 | |
| going to help trigger some of the phase two mid, mid long term type projects once we get that settled. We do have 225,000. The | 01:08:38 | |
| very last line on this very detailed spreadsheet is other Rd. maintenance projects. So we do have $225,000 can be appropriated. | 01:08:45 | |
| I'm going to ask though in your in your motion if you motion to approve it that. | 01:08:52 | |
| And I think I've got it. I gotta go backwards. | 01:09:00 | |
| That you encourage staff to negotiate on the traffic management because we can shut down the park for a few days, we won't need to | 01:09:03 | |
| pay 10 or $15,000 for them to deal with traffic management. | 01:09:08 | |
| So I've already reached out to their contact and asked him. I haven't received response, but you know, my goal would be to try to | 01:09:14 | |
| reduce it by, you know, by that amount, because we can just simply shut down the park for those days and let the public know. | 01:09:20 | |
| Would we completely shut down the park or would we just shut down? | 01:09:30 | |
| As it's getting colder and so I'm not sure what the time frame is, we haven't negotiated. I mean, we haven't set that out, but my | 01:10:01 | |
| hope is we can do that before the weather gets. | 01:10:05 | |
| You know, too cold for them to be able to pave it? Yeah, let's just be sure to coordinate with the ESP. And absolutely, the | 01:10:09 | |
| playground up here does get crowded enough. People use it for parking, so on nice days. | 01:10:14 | |
| OK. You've heard the report from Sharon from the manager. Any questions or comments? | 01:10:20 | |
| All right here. None. Do we have a motion. | 01:10:28 | |
| And make a motion to approve the to award. | 01:10:31 | |
| It's a Garrett paving company and also to manage the. | 01:10:35 | |
| Traffic ourselves to save money, all right. | 01:10:41 | |
| So the managers authorized to negotiate on traffic control in that motion. Do we have a second? | 01:10:45 | |
| Second. All right. We have a motion. We have a second from the right side. | 01:10:50 | |
| Any comments? | 01:10:54 | |
| Hearing none all in favor, say aye. Motion carries 5. | 01:10:56 | |
| All right. G dot Transportation Alternatives Program. TAP. | 01:11:01 | |
| Thank you, Mayor. Did everybody read their report on this? If you read the report then that'll save sharing some time in terms of | 01:11:07 | |
| doing the deep history on this. Yeah. So the the brief piece of it is we. | 01:11:14 | |
| Tried for this grant as a small community don't have as many resources as some of the other communities do as far as managing | 01:11:22 | |
| federal money that's flowing through the state and so. | 01:11:27 | |
| Quicker and this will help connect to Thomas Farm. | 01:12:06 | |
| And that's in it. That's a huge project for y'all wanting to try to get everybody connected to downtown. So. So if you do decline | 01:12:09 | |
| it, then we will simply fill out a piece of paper telling them that we're just not going to do this project, really is not with | 01:12:16 | |
| them and and then we'll get to work on figuring out how we can pay for this a different way. | 01:12:22 | |
| And I just, you know, you guys aren't up here as much as I am, but I want to give Sharon and staff a lot of credit. It's it's not | 01:12:30 | |
| every day you have an opportunity to get a grant like this, but this is 1 where it was. | 01:12:35 | |
| Um. | 01:12:41 | |
| The amount of additional work that the staff was going to have to. | 01:12:42 | |
| In exchange for, you know, a project that would. | 01:12:46 | |
| You know, may have been a little bit fancier, but would have taken years longer and probably not saved as much money in the end. | 01:12:50 | |
| So as tempting as it was to sort of take that grant and run with it, a lot of credit due to Sharon and staff for the research that | 01:12:59 | |
| they did to understand is. | 01:13:03 | |
| Not the most efficient process for us, so I just want to thank you because I knew that took a good bit of time and we certainly | 01:13:08 | |
| don't. | 01:13:11 | |
| You know, we're grateful that we won the grant, but at the end of the day it's just not the right fit for Watkinsville right now, | 01:13:14 | |
| so thank you. | 01:13:18 | |
| All right, so Sharon's looking for a. | 01:13:23 | |
| A motion to decline the $240,000 G dot TAP TAP grant. | 01:13:26 | |
| As much as it pains me to decline a grant, I make a motion that we decline this grant. We have a motion to decline. Do we have a | 01:13:32 | |
| second? Second. | 01:13:37 | |
| Discussion or. | 01:13:42 | |
| Hearing none all in favor of declining the grant, say aye. | 01:13:43 | |
| OK. | 01:13:48 | |
| Thank you. | 01:13:50 | |
| Looks like we have no new business. We've already done public comments. We're on to the mayor's report. Given the size of the | 01:13:51 | |
| audience, I'll be brief. You guys know a lot about this stuff. Had a very successful fall festival that. | 01:13:58 | |
| That seems pretty simple, but it's really not. I think several of you volunteered and supported that, Had huge crowds. Interim | 01:14:05 | |
| Chief Tetherton mentioned it, I felt like. | 01:14:11 | |
| Despite all of our concerns about what happened at Rocket Field and the vehicles on the field, I think it was a tremendous | 01:14:17 | |
| success. | 01:14:20 | |
| We have already met with the Chamber on a follow up on things that can be tweaked and improved and they're working on that. But a | 01:14:23 | |
| real credit to the Chamber of Commerce, they quietly they don't look for credit, they don't ask for credit and they put this thing | 01:14:29 | |
| together every year and it is jammed up. So we're grateful for them. | 01:14:34 | |
| For leading the way on that and proud to be their partner and grateful to their team for doing that. Next year will be the 50th | 01:14:39 | |
| Fall Festival. | 01:14:43 | |
| So they will be there looking for creative ideas and ways to celebrate big. So wrap your brain around that a little bit. If you | 01:14:47 | |
| have good ideas, feel free to let Courtney and the team at the chamber know, or Sharon or me, and we'll suggest those. So, great | 01:14:51 | |
| event. | 01:14:55 | |
| Downtown trick or treating was very successful, despite some crazy guy with a mullet sketching everybody out. | 01:15:00 | |
| But we had a we had a great time. There were some great costumes down there and that that continues just to be. | 01:15:08 | |
| A great event. It's not. It's really interesting. It's a different group of folks than you see at most events in Watkinsville, and | 01:15:14 | |
| I think that's great. | 01:15:18 | |
| It's it's not sort of the usual suspects that you see everywhere else. It's a really interesting crowd that has that as part of | 01:15:22 | |
| their tradition and I'm always excited to see them downtown and to see our businesses participate. Sharon, thanks to you and staff | 01:15:27 | |
| for putting all that together. | 01:15:31 | |
| Our Oconee County cross country team, the boys, they are the first ever boys team at Oconee County to repeat in any sport our | 01:15:36 | |
| cross country team. So there were several Watkinsville residents on that team. | 01:15:42 | |
| My son was one of them along with. | 01:15:50 | |
| Lost the boy's name but one of our new residents at Trove Jonah Ferguson, Ferguson's moved moved Oconee County for the schools but | 01:15:54 | |
| also to be a part of that and they are enjoying life at Trove. They have a young his little brother walks to column fairies are | 01:15:59 | |
| one of. | 01:16:03 | |
| School walkers every day, which is kind of cool to see that happening over there from that neighborhood. I know we really wanted | 01:16:09 | |
| that. | 01:16:11 | |
| Really wanted that to happen, so we have several Watkinsville kids who are. | 01:16:14 | |
| We're part of that, we're part of that team, so we're proud of those boys and their hard work. | 01:16:18 | |
| Results are in. Congratulations. | 01:16:23 | |
| Councilman Garrett and Councilwoman Massey, great job. We're glad to have you all with us, but. | 01:16:27 | |
| I think it is important to note that everybody who chooses to offer for office deserves a lot of credit for their. | 01:16:34 | |
| Hard work and courage. You know, there's a lot of people who choose to complain and never take any action, and there's others who | 01:16:39 | |
| want to make their. | 01:16:43 | |
| Want to make a mark? And kudos to Rebecca and Carolyn for both offering for office. They deserve credit for that, even if they | 01:16:47 | |
| didn't win the race. But Connie and Chuck, welcome back and excited to have you with us for another two years. | 01:16:53 | |
| Have several veterans on our team, Alan and Elena, Krish and Chief Tetterton. We're grateful for their service. I. | 01:17:00 | |
| And Councilman Thomas, you as well, grateful for. | 01:17:08 | |
| Your service. | 01:17:11 | |
| Just to update on Thomas Farm Park, we are going to, this is going to be a little. | 01:17:15 | |
| Looks like Sharon might have already updated that timeline a little bit, estimated timeline, we'll probably bring it hope to bring | 01:17:20 | |
| a plan in here in January. It may push to February for you guys to approve. | 01:17:25 | |
| Councilman Campbell and Mayor Pro Tem Tucker very involved with that committee. | 01:17:31 | |
| Umm. | 01:17:38 | |
| I am. I took my first walk out there the other day and I driven around it in vehicles primarily. It hits a little different on | 01:17:39 | |
| foot, Jeff, I think you've walked it, haven't you? Did you walk it with the trail committee or did y'all drive? | 01:17:45 | |
| We drove and got out and walked, yeah, so I'm going to try over the next next few weeks on nice days when I have a little bit of | 01:17:51 | |
| warning, you know, maybe just to get out there and invite some citizens to walk it. You guys are welcome to do the same thing, but | 01:17:56 | |
| it really is. It's well, well mowed right now. The grass isn't too high, the animals are pretty friendly, so, but it's really | 01:18:02 | |
| lovely, so. | 01:18:08 | |
| So we'll try to do that, but I'm excited about where the committees are taking this. | 01:18:14 | |
| You know what they're planning and everything that they're doing. So thank you all for your leadership on that. Really excited to | 01:18:19 | |
| see what we come back with. | 01:18:22 | |
| This guy had a birthday. | 01:18:27 | |
| So happy birthday, Jeff. | 01:18:30 | |
| Did you get some free ice cream? | 01:18:32 | |
| The joys of being a small business center. Yeah. Yeah. So happy birthday, Jeff. Yeah. | 01:18:41 | |
| And with that I'm done, so we'll go to post. | 01:18:46 | |
| Councilman here Nothing Post 2, Councilman Massey. All right, Post 3 Councilman Thomas. | 01:18:49 | |
| All right, post for mayor Pro Tem. | 01:18:56 | |
| So we y'all or we as a group put some money towards some interactive art that is kind of in the general area that the old | 01:19:01 | |
| playground used to be. And so our first piece was installed, yes, and this is the artist who created it. | 01:19:11 | |
| And it's the we have the the little, the drawing, the little stick man and the model. But here's the the real life thing and the I | 01:19:22 | |
| actually have not seen it in person. It gets dark, 'cause it's freaking early, but maybe, I don't know if there are there flood | 01:19:27 | |
| lights back. | 01:19:31 | |
| That we can experience that so it just got installed. | 01:19:36 | |
| And I'm excited. And then the the other two pieces that are like the ladybug. | 01:19:41 | |
| At the bot gardens, but it obviously it's not a ladybug, it's a turtle and a snake lizard. Those should be in in the spring, I | 01:19:48 | |
| think looking at the timeline. So the the ultimate goal is, you know with all the other projects we have going on is that the | 01:19:56 | |
| sidewalk linking Harrah's Shoals up to the playground of possibilities. | 01:20:03 | |
| Will. | 01:20:11 | |
| Sculptures and and pieces of art. | 01:20:12 | |
| Winding along and compelling people to walk back and forth. | 01:20:16 | |
| What's? Do you remember the artist name? | 01:20:21 | |
| Dietrich Dietrich, he speaks. He is probably a first generation. I mean, he's his. | 01:20:24 | |
| He was not born in this country, most likely. | 01:20:34 | |
| It's heavily accented, but is a delight. | 01:20:38 | |
| Yeah, I can't remember his last time either I could look up the is that the location there or is that. Yes, it is. So. It is So if | 01:20:42 | |
| you go, yes, so it's. | 01:20:46 | |
| And we actually have Lawrence Duke, who was part of the subcommittee help figure out where to place it so that it is you can kind | 01:20:52 | |
| of see it down below, but not because you're seeing the back of it, but it, it has the beauty of the park behind it. | 01:21:00 | |
| But you can kind of see it coming up around and back, so the other ones will be closer to City Hall. | 01:21:09 | |
| Kind of maybe in between the swing, the handicap swing that is out there. So that's most likely. | 01:21:17 | |
| Where they'll be and then also just an update with the Thomas Fun Park, I will be going out with the architect. | 01:21:24 | |
| Tomorrow with my subcommittee. Cool. So we will. | 01:21:32 | |
| See where that leads? Yeah, our consultant Smith Planning Group or SPG now, they're doing a great job and they've. | 01:21:36 | |
| Actually found an architect that fits into the scope that they gave us and so. | 01:21:42 | |
| Young architect who grew up in Oconee and has moved home and he is super creative and energetic about how what we can do with | 01:21:46 | |
| those structures out there and how we might be able to use and reuse them in some creative way. So it's kind of fun to have. | 01:21:52 | |
| Architect that can put some great ideas into action with our team so. | 01:21:58 | |
| Thank. | 01:22:03 | |
| Councilman Campbell. | 01:22:05 | |
| New report, All right. No report, All right. I don't think we have a need for executive session. | 01:22:06 | |
| And unless there's anything else, then we will entertain a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? | 01:22:12 | |
| All in favor, Say aye. | 01:22:19 |
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Transcript
| All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the November Watkins City Council meeting. We're pleased to have everyone here | 00:00:05 | |
| tonight. We have a quorum. We have a great crowd and we're excited about what's ahead of this meeting. So with that, we will start | 00:00:10 | |
| with the Pledge of Allegiance, former Police Chief Shannon Walker to see you. If you'll lead us in the police, please. | 00:00:15 | |
| I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God. | 00:00:21 | |
| Thank you. We're glad to have here. This meeting is being broadcast simultaneously online. We use a software called Suite 1 | 00:00:35 | |
| webcasting public portals who can attend meeting may access the public portal via a link which is posted on the City of | 00:00:41 | |
| Watkinsville website. The information packet associated the meeting also available to that site and can be viewed temporarily. | 00:00:47 | |
| That's under the government tab on the website. Anybody who's Ken is available to listen along with that. | 00:00:54 | |
| Have posted a agenda in advance one full week in. The materials are posted on Fridays allowing people provide on this advance. | 00:01:00 | |
| With that I will ask for approval of the minutes from October the 18th. | 00:01:06 | |
| Council, unless you have any suggestions or edits, I'll look for emotion please. | 00:01:12 | |
| Is there a second, second. Any discussion? | 00:01:17 | |
| None. All in favor say aye any opposed that motion carries. I vote move on to approving the agenda. We have a few items to add | 00:01:21 | |
| under administration before item two. We have a presentation of city's ability designation. We appoint approach for the city | 00:01:27 | |
| manager and then we have the announcement for the fall for Watkins. All decorating contest. All those which are under | 00:01:32 | |
| administration for item two. If council's agreeable with those and all I'll accept a motion to amend agenda. | 00:01:37 | |
| I make motion that we amend the agenda as just outlined and approve. Do we have a second, Second, any comment, any opposed? | 00:01:43 | |
| We have an individual and so we will move to administration. | 00:01:56 | |
| Just remind the public input members of the public looking to address Mayor Council may do so. The noted times on the agenda or | 00:02:00 | |
| upon request of description of the City Council comments shall refrain for it will wait to the items and four minutes per person. | 00:02:05 | |
| A debate argument, personal actual, relevant decision, address merits a matter under discussion. Please address council, not the | 00:02:10 | |
| audience. Council will not speak to potential addition to the client or personnel matters. | 00:02:15 | |
| So with that, we will turn to the presentation of the city's ability designation from the Georgia Municipal Association. | 00:02:21 | |
| I'll step up here and we'll picture that and I'll speak up for you. | 00:02:27 | |
| I'm going to talk for just a minute about why this is important. So these are what we don't use a lot of these days. Last Friday | 00:03:02 | |
| actually, opportunity to go through the 1st. | 00:03:06 | |
| Annual Johnny Isaacson Sympathy Monstability University of Georgia really made reflect on our journey as a city over the past five | 00:03:10 | |
| years. And we've had we've had our challenges with ability some previous council members and other leaders here and maybe right on | 00:03:17 | |
| how I am that we have council just that treats each other civilly but actually took steps last February to pass. | 00:03:24 | |
| A. It's an ordinance. What was it? | 00:03:32 | |
| Resolution around what? Conductee and that would agree. That and how we would treat each other and treat members of public | 00:03:34 | |
| civilities seem to be a start in politics today. And that makes me sad. I don't think anybody wins when we. | 00:03:39 | |
| Civility matter last year, All right. Next on the agenda is a point of privilege. | 00:04:09 | |
| For our city manager, thank you Mayor, for allowing me so officially next Tuesday, the 21st will my fifth year with the city of | 00:04:15 | |
| Watkinsville. It's really hard to believe. I mean, you guys, I'm going to read my stuff because I'm afraid I will. | 00:04:22 | |
| Everybody sitting here knows how much we've accomplished and it wasn't done by me, but I do think it's we take a minute to | 00:04:30 | |
| celebrate and look at what we accomplished in five years. But I think that what I'd like to share first though is something found | 00:04:35 | |
| when I was going through files probably more a year ago now from former mayor in March of 8/19/86 when I was actually getting to | 00:04:40 | |
| graduate high school. | 00:04:44 | |
| He had asked for a moment to have some additional remarks with the council and said we're trying to think about budget for next | 00:04:50 | |
| year and I'd like for you to start start having input. I have one suggestion. | 00:04:55 | |
| And I think my suggestion is I wish to leave you is one party you need to sit that the town need is a future administrator or | 00:05:00 | |
| manager. That was in 1986 and you guys hired me in 2018, so. | 00:05:05 | |
| But when I arrived, I'm in 2010, there were a lot of things that were being done that should have been to be done, and a lot of | 00:05:13 | |
| things were not being done that should have been done. I think it's important to point out that it wasn't an intent of anybody to | 00:05:17 | |
| do the things wrong or not do the things. I think it's just you didn't know what you didn't know. | 00:05:22 | |
| So this is not just my father anniversary, this is just the mayor of the council, all the employees and stuff. | 00:05:28 | |
| And much smaller. We had learned how to walk, you know, and defeat under this. And I think we're there. We're starting to really | 00:05:33 | |
| figure out how to make this machine work and I think we did this as a team. | 00:05:38 | |
| I put together 5 slides that attempt about hours that actually just try to pick the heights because this is not a thing we've | 00:05:43 | |
| done, this is just the highlights. So I want to go through this. I'll try to read every single one. I'll let y'all read some of | 00:05:48 | |
| them. I'll hit some of the highlights on each one. | 00:05:52 | |
| We have completed a community grant effort which is serving us very well in signage and I tree way well signs. We one of the first | 00:06:32 | |
| things that I did when I got here and I always just say God had his humor. | 00:06:38 | |
| I have a Master's degree in Hulk administration, but I. | 00:06:45 | |
| Really, the Police Department or planning department, those are two issues that city had to address and survive Gate. We had to | 00:06:48 | |
| reassess the Police Department and that was at the request of the public. I mean we had citizen do you want to have a Police | 00:06:52 | |
| Department or do you not? And what did they did? They had to figure out how to make it happen. | 00:06:56 | |
| We personalized Municipal Court, appoint our first our solicitor and public defender. We established process for the budget which | 00:07:01 | |
| had not existed. We create capital imprint plans. We knew sort of the plan ahead what what capital items we needed. We worked our | 00:07:06 | |
| finances got. | 00:07:10 | |
| Pull together we've established some contractual relationships with third part Enders to help the building permits and | 00:07:16 | |
| inspections. The four big developments, three of which are currently underway, one is completed Wisteria Ridge Water Park, Otters | 00:07:21 | |
| Walk and Trove that's going to probably be 1000 people added to population and that was as a result of the sewer wastewater | 00:07:26 | |
| capacity for the county. | 00:07:31 | |
| We might open through the Cronus Corona Panama Coronavirus pandemic on one day. We'll close. | 00:07:36 | |
| And help protect our police officers. | 00:08:18 | |
| They make Madden, Athens Clarke, OK, regional transportation system. I think I began opening for the front bypass, which will | 00:08:21 | |
| impact us greatly and we've done a lot of work around here at City Hall. | 00:08:26 | |
| Which I've got a question spread tree lighting Police Department through. | 00:08:33 | |
| Tournament interact and have more community participation between the officers and on enforcement situation we've we've signed | 00:08:39 | |
| agreement on EQ license plate readers which you have to capture and register and uninsured vehicles that they all sell us with | 00:08:44 | |
| blue alerts over alerts, Amber alerts and Kimberly's call which are all their important safety. | 00:08:50 | |
| Initiatives we've completed Rd. Objects, some other projects surface number of roads in the city and I believe one more created | 00:08:57 | |
| facilities authority which will give city a little more ability for financing opportunities. We activate the Watsonville Down | 00:09:02 | |
| Development authority, created a board to find the district and part of. | 00:09:08 | |
| Updated the official voting map of protecting minutes for breweries and for special event facilities. Approved of county, county, | 00:09:14 | |
| school district plans for their instructional support center, which is currently under construction. | 00:09:19 | |
| And collaborated the DA are on artists on our. | 00:09:24 | |
| Cemetery. | 00:09:28 | |
| So as I said earlier, now what I've shared is because me, I just wanted the members and it's because everybody's been focused and | 00:09:29 | |
| and dedicated working together to sort of citizens of Watkins. | 00:09:34 | |
| When I was five years ago, there were temploids filling 13 capital authorized positions. We now 20 authorized positions with 18 | 00:09:40 | |
| for employees. | 00:09:43 | |
| Are those original 10 employees. Only three remain. Julie Klein Black Kyle Hitler, who's Police Department. | 00:09:47 | |
| The original 6 Mayor Council members to remain Connie, sorry Councilman Massey, Mayor Ryan Broderick and Councilwoman Mayor | 00:09:52 | |
| Pretend Christine Tucker. And obviously the Mayor has been from account number to mayor during the time frame in the last four | 00:09:57 | |
| years. With that council members Garrett, Thomas and Campbell. | 00:10:02 | |
| And with elections every year and there's right every other year over the past five years, the city's had three mayor's in the in | 00:10:08 | |
| five years. | 00:10:10 | |
| That a lot of turnover for a city of our size and I think it's a testament to the leadership of our council and the tenacity and | 00:10:13 | |
| determination of our employees that we not only made it through all the changes, but we've also been successful in during those | 00:10:17 | |
| services to our citizens. | 00:10:20 | |
| The city's infinite responsibilities but finite resources. We also rely on contractors. As mentioned earlier, our auditors on our | 00:10:24 | |
| first collection services, building permits and sections, our IT or our computer services, Music or Dutch solicitor, public | 00:10:29 | |
| defender, the jail, the Oconee County Sheriff's Office, Water Sewer, Oconee County water resources, Main Street, Rocket field | 00:10:34 | |
| maintenance with precision landscaping and the York Water Park. | 00:10:39 | |
| Other services that are brought about contractors, legal and professional, specifically our city attorney and our city engineer. | 00:10:45 | |
| Are then key to our success and we feel like full time employees are part of our family. | 00:10:53 | |
| There's a sign you cannot team with an eye, absolutely eyes here, and what made this successful is our things, willingness to work | 00:10:57 | |
| together toward our common goals. | 00:11:01 | |
| If you give me one more minute, I would like to ask to recognize each of my core team members. This is not all the employees. We | 00:11:04 | |
| have public works employees and police officers that are not here. These are my department heads and the leaders of your city | 00:11:09 | |
| employees and I'd like to ask them if they would just stand. And then I'll get a draft Julie Klein, our city clerk and a charter | 00:11:13 | |
| coordinator. | 00:11:17 | |
| Lee Black, Our Financial Municipal Court. | 00:11:22 | |
| Ted Cartlidge, who has three jobs, solicit planning, building inspections, code and public works. | 00:11:25 | |
| Shannon Buck retired. But I was here that time. | 00:11:31 | |
| Chief Mark Novak, who is our parks facility operator going to be or parks Facilities Director in in the. | 00:11:35 | |
| And Kate Harrison, our downtown development director, and then attorney Joe Whiteman and Mark Campbell, our city engineer. | 00:11:43 | |
| I just like to say honored to serve alongside you guys that I could do it without you. I certainly appreciate all your efforts | 00:11:54 | |
| and. | 00:11:57 | |
| I don't know what else to say it's really a privilege really appreciate it and the mayor and council you know five years ago they | 00:12:01 | |
| took the hits on me he introduced me to several yell four he brought me on board enter that at a time that was done account the | 00:12:06 | |
| mayor brought someone for the council approved it a year later you guys need to change this to the to the code for a city manager | 00:12:12 | |
| and I became the city manager and and so now there's you know now the now the responsibility for having fires I'm on my shoulder | 00:12:17 | |
| said. | 00:12:22 | |
| It's made all difference. Able to have your leadership and your support and your council. During that time. We couldn't have done | 00:12:28 | |
| it. I can't have done it without them. So I would like to picture get a picture of council. I'd get a picture with my staff | 00:12:33 | |
| separately. So you all should have a little cookie. A little cookie. And each y'all had, I think, my head next I left you all so. | 00:12:38 | |
| OK. | 00:12:46 | |
| Let's do. | 00:12:47 | |
| All right. Ready, 123. | 00:13:30 | |
| Right. Best we are. Thank you very much, so much. | 00:13:39 | |
| What agenda? The past five years. What a great list of accomplishments. Sharon, thank you for your leadership. | 00:13:57 | |
| You're right, there's no I and T, but there always has to be team captain and without the team captain, a strong leadership team | 00:14:02 | |
| still perform well and we are incredibly grateful for you for what you done to continue Legacy of Care financial management, but | 00:14:08 | |
| also exceptional formats in Watkinsville. | 00:14:13 | |
| Right person at the right down, at the right place. We're working for you. So thank you for everything. Yeah. And thank you the | 00:14:19 | |
| opportunity to reflect on everything that was done. It was awesome. | 00:14:22 | |
| OK. | 00:14:27 | |
| We're gonna go on to the fall of Watkins. | 00:14:28 | |
| Decorating contest winners this was we had citizens submit their photos to the city posters on Facebook and he had a popular vote | 00:14:31 | |
| for for the winners So we had top for vote getter here then no results yet they not know the results so. | 00:14:39 | |
| We're Fennison Wattsville for a close election. Jill and that tradition tradition continued with this. So I'm gonna step up and | 00:14:47 | |
| then call up our call up our our folks here. | 00:14:52 | |
| Yeah. | 00:14:59 | |
| All right. So can you hear me? | 00:15:11 | |
| OK, we have. | 00:15:15 | |
| 3rd place. | 00:15:16 | |
| You put them in. | 00:15:19 | |
| 1st place meaning by exactly 1 vote. | 00:15:22 | |
| Larvae. | 00:15:26 | |
| Listen, always sociality of Wattsville Carol, congratulations. You can have your choice of a Kikis Gift Card, Traveling Hobo gift | 00:15:29 | |
| card or Bird Blast, which is our new downtown retailer. | 00:15:34 | |
| There you go. Congratulations. | 00:15:42 | |
| Thank you all. | 00:15:51 | |
| Second by. | 00:15:58 | |
| By one light, I think. Is that right, Chair Becca? The second by. | 00:16:01 | |
| I'm right. So. So you might have caught yourself. Cut yourself the. | 00:16:06 | |
| It is the the awards. The awards are all the same. So come on up Echo. What do you want to come with you? That's awesome. | 00:16:10 | |
| You're bringing the dog, but you brought the aircraft. | 00:16:17 | |
| OK, all right. Kiki Travel about Britain Blast. | 00:16:21 | |
| All right, all right. Y'all going up. | 00:16:28 | |
| All right. | 00:16:35 | |
| And wow. | 00:16:47 | |
| I don't think this new how they had to happen. But next year, you know, maybe we can do that. So welcome on Up on the Road and | 00:16:50 | |
| that's awesome. So. So congratulations, Bird laughs. Have you been there yet? I've heard great things. I've heard great things. So | 00:16:56 | |
| you'll have been here just right in the middle on the future, Mayor. All right, here we go. | 00:17:02 | |
| Read. | 00:17:09 | |
| Good job, graduate job. If you double down come Ferry Rd. when it's holiday I guess you know if you have kids at all. But if you | 00:17:10 | |
| don't it is awesome. I mean there's some kind of crazy one up and ship going on the holidays for houses of calling the road is | 00:17:15 | |
| super fun to see. So thank you all for thank you all for that traffic. | 00:17:20 | |
| Yeah. | 00:17:31 | |
| Right now, the good news for all of you who just came. | 00:17:35 | |
| Because Sharon asked to. Or did you reward? You don't have to hang around? I don't think so. So, so. | 00:17:39 | |
| This need to turn to your picture, all right? Why buddy? Ladies when you get a picture. | 00:17:48 | |
| All right. | 00:17:56 | |
| All right. | 00:18:26 | |
| This is the moment that. | 00:18:30 | |
| This moment others of you are. | 00:18:34 | |
| Hearings or the old business dread, which is a report of our order. But Mr. Pilgrim is noted for his quick dispatch about reports | 00:18:36 | |
| and his efficiency and how he did that. So I will proceed in the direction right so welcome. | 00:18:41 | |
| Welcome Clay. Glad you're here. Introduce yourself and what's rock'n'roll this thing? Yes Sir. Thank you Mayor, and thank you. | 00:18:47 | |
| Council rushed back to the audit for 50 year 23. | 00:18:52 | |
| Quick before I start on numbers, I just want to say it's it's it's always fine when I come to present these all, there's always | 00:18:57 | |
| great things that happened before and everybody leaves for my reading presentation. It's not just Wattsville, Last week I | 00:19:03 | |
| presented the county up in North Georgia. They had a rescue and I'm talking about the half room was signed and I get up here. | 00:19:09 | |
| How do you follow that? It's always something great, so I'm thankful for that. I get to witness that, but at the same time. | 00:19:15 | |
| Here I am, my my, bring me, you know, and it's just. But anyway, that's exactly. | 00:19:20 | |
| Staff time now was a great job in putting. | 00:19:57 | |
| All right. So a few numbers here and a few things just to report. So the the result of audit the main, the main part of our | 00:20:01 | |
| auditor, I guess the the final result is our independent auditors report is found on pages 133 of the reports you all have in | 00:20:05 | |
| front of you. | 00:20:09 | |
| That report spells out the responsibilities of the City of cities. Management is responsible for your financial statements. We | 00:20:14 | |
| are, as you're there, are responsible for hiding on an opinion as to whether the financial statements are tier misstated, whether | 00:20:18 | |
| due to air fraud. | 00:20:22 | |
| I'm pleased present that for 23 we have an unmodified or clean depending on financial statements. Nothing can wire tendering on it | 00:20:27 | |
| that would prohibition that opinion. We do because it is a will cause your city. We follow them in all the standards and perform | 00:20:32 | |
| that. | 00:20:36 | |
| Position or equity of the city got a three-year Paris if we get their screen just looking there in 23 as you can see you had that | 00:21:12 | |
| investment capital assets that's going to be your land building equipment equipment less any debt utilized acquired. As I said it | 00:21:16 | |
| was all amount this year just you doing standard I'll mention your moment but you had an investment capital I said the five | 00:21:20 | |
| million 204620. | 00:21:25 | |
| Had restricted that position 1,000,005 three 761. | 00:21:30 | |
| Understood. In that position three million 8914 still in that position 10 million four 37495 for the other you'll see there was a | 00:21:34 | |
| use in that position of decrease 35603 and I should have been restricting that position. Just kind of further clarify that it's | 00:21:40 | |
| going to be like an example would be splice funds that you're holding and not yet in Spanish funds that you're in. | 00:21:46 | |
| All right. Looking next at your general fund, I mentioned course the property fund here. The general fund statements are found on | 00:21:54 | |
| page 1517, but I've put a few to sign a comparative prior to your current your information and also mention a few things as well. | 00:21:59 | |
| But you're ready for the year increased 54186 about 25%. | 00:22:04 | |
| Contribute to that increase. You see you've got property taxes were up 75,000 your option sales tax which we're seeing this really | 00:22:10 | |
| across the board. We're having a little slowing here lately, but your sales taxes were up 9879 five season 41756 ten large large | 00:22:17 | |
| part of that the players that you mentioned earlier, you got interest up 1/12/86 with rising rates there. That's a good news in | 00:22:23 | |
| that regard. On the expenditure side, there's also increased 83372 or about less than 40%. | 00:22:30 | |
| Sometimes when I stand up, talk about revenue increase but defenders increase much more. It's important to note that you plan that | 00:23:18 | |
| that's not not if that's always the case. It's not always negative and you don't want it, but in this case, you didn't utilize | 00:23:21 | |
| some of your funds. | 00:23:25 | |
| And we're doing so your time for an outstanding year increasing there from 2 million, 9404980 million, 945 or 33, the reason | 00:23:28 | |
| they're being that the planned use. | 00:23:33 | |
| With last year unassigned when you budget to utilize finances out of a sign for the next fiscal year. So. | 00:23:38 | |
| And you take out your readings of two minutes 94 that was exactly the the decrease in fundamentally there are a few other below | 00:24:21 | |
| the line item things that affect that. | 00:24:25 | |
| All right, yours lost funds. Looking at your I mentioned earlier your special folks localized sales tax. There are significant | 00:24:29 | |
| details on these expenditures, but you can see there still spending a couple different references there. You got the 2009 | 00:24:35 | |
| referendum 251-731-2050, referendum 562021, referendum 73582 for a total expendable million 58099. Additional details for our | 00:24:40 | |
| specific projects, 9 items of all following are found on the page 53 of the report. | 00:24:46 | |
| We also have this year on page 54, a brand new schedule and that. | 00:24:54 | |
| Projects, Finance with transportation, special purpose local office, sales tax, T plus for short. That's found on page 54. I'll | 00:24:57 | |
| just get started that year and you see there's a dollars into there from that new referendum. | 00:25:02 | |
| All right. I in an hour's work, the other product isn't topic down this way. Our product did not necessarily yours is our report. | 00:25:08 | |
| This is where we look at processes of the city, make recommendations for things, you know for improvement. And so we have no tier | 00:25:17 | |
| witnesses, we have certificate deficiencies and we have one appliance this year. | 00:25:24 | |
| We're going to actually deal with those fines and where those are due to and getting us paid out. I know you're probably familiar | 00:25:32 | |
| with that. | 00:25:34 | |
| That's good even though it's a, it's a finding such a good thing that resolved that move forward correct. So always some positives | 00:25:37 | |
| come out of of of the audit process. I feel like in all of that seems negative. I think it's a good thing to get that resolved | 00:25:43 | |
| before I always like to keep you. | 00:25:48 | |
| Aware of what's happened and what is happening, I mentioned a moment ago we talked about that cities never really have a debt | 00:25:54 | |
| significant. There was a but I wouldn't really call it necessarily that does fall in their long term liabilities and that's | 00:26:00 | |
| Abita's if you're all, I'll probably talk to you about this last year this was coming talked about this is last year. | 00:26:05 | |
| So it is recorded. | 00:26:44 | |
| On the financial, so it defect these these kind of your financial statements you have here as far as future port? | 00:26:46 | |
| This is one that's only significant. It's actually kind of a positive thing to change how we account for. | 00:26:51 | |
| I said absences, not significant change, but it is going to lessen some of the they're looking Consistency here is going to let | 00:26:56 | |
| some of their farmers. As far as some closure and such related to your composite absence is going to be vacation that's been | 00:27:01 | |
| accrued, but not either you're in. | 00:27:05 | |
| And I think that concludes my the numbers and that's what I do have more quick thing to remind you that you have there with you. | 00:27:11 | |
| We also provide a copy of those management. | 00:28:49 | |
| Mr. And thank you for such a thorough report. Council, do you have questions? | 00:29:19 | |
| Do you need a? | 00:29:25 | |
| Yeah. Any questions on, Questions on? | 00:29:27 | |
| OK. All right. Thank you. By all means, if you have questions after the fact, we're looking through the year for going down deep | 00:29:31 | |
| in this report. If you have questions, all means to reach out to, you have to be just necessary. All right. Thank you, Mr. | 00:29:36 | |
| Pilgrim. And with that, we have some budget of minutes that we have to make, Mr. Romano, to explain council while we can make | 00:29:41 | |
| this. Yes. So Paul? | 00:29:45 | |
| Is typically part of the beginning of fiscal year and you have a budget process which you talked about necessarily you have a | 00:29:52 | |
| budget process, budget you all approve obviously throughout the year. | 00:29:56 | |
| Use vitals that we assist with as far as you know where all the results are, but management's having budgets that need to be made | 00:30:29 | |
| and the reason for that the city Georgia Department accounts. | 00:30:34 | |
| Looked at saying that 3% not $3,000,000 not $3000 on $300,000, it's 3% over budget. Any specific apartment general fund or any | 00:30:39 | |
| special revenue fund as a whole or that's fun they deem it to be materially not plant. So in order state they comply with that you | 00:30:44 | |
| are you know you have to amend those those five budgets. So that's what these budget members amendments are out and again it could | 00:30:50 | |
| be a. | 00:30:55 | |
| You could have 100 Buzz line item apartment before I'll be $100. You spent this $4.00. That's still imperial because it's more | 00:31:01 | |
| than 3% of a budget. It's kind of a crazy number, but that's that has to happen. These are about. | 00:31:08 | |
| OK. Thank you. Andrew Dickerson, anything you want to add to that? | 00:31:14 | |
| Any questions on the budget minutes? | 00:31:18 | |
| None retain a much to approve budget amendment for fiscal year 2023. | 00:31:21 | |
| We have a second second. | 00:31:26 | |
| Any discussion? | 00:31:28 | |
| One and two this year and close those out which is good because one is from 2009 was from 2015 so. | 00:32:06 | |
| A splash read to this project right now. Underwear She'll part improvements, some amenities that we're working on, some parking | 00:32:12 | |
| and painting, Rocket Field, Thomas Farm, Drench, work on water St. Streetscaping, Downtown City Santos or some of the projects | 00:32:16 | |
| that are currently underway. | 00:32:21 | |
| We are about $800,000 in the bank for that account and we're averaging more a little bit. You make all this with 8.63%, which is | 00:32:26 | |
| our 7.77%, so a little bit higher than we'll see on the next report. | 00:32:33 | |
| And T's lost the only exhibition road and the Industrial Blvd. sidewalk. We are working towards trying to get some movement on the | 00:32:42 | |
| South South side of the South Main Street sidewalk working to that design right now that will come out here as well. Those were | 00:32:49 | |
| appropriated back earlier this year and there's something else on that one we had. | 00:32:56 | |
| Something from that one. | 00:33:07 | |
| I researching at the end of school St. affected St. around Rocket that was so many came up to that we did to help improve the area | 00:33:10 | |
| that around Rocket Field. So and then that one like I said we're up 2% of what we average monthly last year we began so it's kind | 00:33:17 | |
| of our last fiscal year and it was hard to tell and it'll trend overtime it will get higher but right now we're at about 70. | 00:33:24 | |
| 70,000 or so a month on average. | 00:33:32 | |
| What did the end of June and then you guys can be back business I think about 90,000 roughly $92,000 that has not been | 00:34:04 | |
| appropriated by you guys that could be used on some of your projects? | 00:34:08 | |
| So any questions on? | 00:34:12 | |
| OK. We'll move on economic development. | 00:34:15 | |
| There we go. We've attended licenses when I'll call license for the month of October. | 00:34:21 | |
| And you guys may recall, we don't see those numbers for over on taxes after they collect them. So we'll see October when we get to | 00:34:27 | |
| next, we'll see. | 00:34:31 | |
| Well, we'll see this for October. Some of the numbers are out still but a 14,000 total. So we're we're actually training pretty | 00:34:35 | |
| well on that. I think we're going to budget. | 00:34:39 | |
| On permits and other projects, we 9 permits or seven products. The 40 of the full of them are drove subdivision off the column | 00:34:44 | |
| three Rd. | 00:34:48 | |
| Any questions on any of those? | 00:34:53 | |
| 15 And I'll go to the next believe that is yours. | 00:34:55 | |
| All right. Do I have? | 00:35:00 | |
| I've never given this report with our downtown development director in room, so she did all the hard work on this. But I'm really | 00:35:04 | |
| excited to announce that we have been designated a role zone. Only 10 cities a cycle get this designation kind of a big deal. | 00:35:13 | |
| And it we're still finding out more information about what means you'll be going to train in a few weeks so we'll have more | 00:35:24 | |
| details but essentially it is going to given businesses in our downtown development the math the roles are map different. | 00:35:30 | |
| Tax credit incentives. So it's going to help with rehabilitation projects, investment projects. | 00:35:37 | |
| And also just in promoting more jobs and positions. So that is a very short answer to it is of a big goal that we got at last for | 00:35:44 | |
| five years. It starts January 1st. So more details will be come forth coming on this. Again big deal. Thank you Kate so much for | 00:35:50 | |
| all of your hard work. I know it. | 00:35:56 | |
| Was not, you know, think of your worst report in school ever. You to do this, probably let this alike. So it's great opportunities | 00:36:02 | |
| for Waters. | 00:36:06 | |
| OK, so we are in the process of creating a pocket park at the Heartache lot, which is right where Experiment Station hits Main | 00:36:16 | |
| Street. If you may have noticed the five pieces of art that were created and our base main creative placing event Rockfield back | 00:36:23 | |
| in October, those are up there temporarily there. They will eventually go to the businesses that sponsored them and we hope in the | 00:36:30 | |
| next week or two to have the Adirondack Terrace table trash cans and things that. | 00:36:37 | |
| To make a little pocket park and there is also a little path behind. | 00:36:45 | |
| OK. It's going to be a great connection as we are trying to make use of all of downtown. We have Sunshine Cycles. We have the | 00:36:51 | |
| record store, we have like Tiger, we have things further down Main Street. And so the pocket park is part of how it can heavily | 00:36:59 | |
| connect our downtown. So this is all possible because a grant that we received and I'm going to get acronym wrong the Georgia. | 00:37:07 | |
| What? Georgia Cultural Arts Foundation. So thank you. | 00:37:15 | |
| OK. And also the EV chargers are in at the downtown comfort station, so this is no cost to the city, but it's convenient to our | 00:37:22 | |
| citizens that electric vehicles, they can charge them there and that is down off of Water St. | 00:37:29 | |
| All right and all right. I've started. | 00:37:39 | |
| I've started. I'm going to make sure it's on, but I think it's. | 00:37:43 | |
| That got it up. Give me one second. Let's make sure. | 00:37:53 | |
| Alright, we're back. OK. All right. Thank you. Interim chief Tedderton, that was a great report. We will move on to the consent | 00:37:59 | |
| agenda. | 00:38:03 | |
| We've approved the agenda, so at this point I will just entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. | 00:38:08 | |
| Looking for a motion? | 00:38:18 | |
| To approve the consent agenda. Do we have a second, Second, All in favor, say aye. All right, we'll move on to public hearing the | 00:38:20 | |
| rules that I outlined. | 00:38:24 | |
| Before speakers come to the podium and state to address, the only thing that's different is we get 10 minutes per side for the | 00:38:29 | |
| zoning procedures law. So we're going to move pretty quickly through these while making sure we do everything that we need to. | 00:38:36 | |
| From a legal standpoint, to work through these requests #9, the first one that is up is Parcel Co, 3022. | 00:38:43 | |
| And that's the annexation request, manager Dickerson, if you could give us. | 00:38:53 | |
| Staff report on this, attorney Reitman Legal points. The short version of this is about 20 acres of the Thomas Farm property is in | 00:38:58 | |
| Oconee County, not in the city. And we want to annex that. And so we're going to as quickly as possible do what we need to do | 00:39:04 | |
| legally and then vote on that I don't anticipate. | 00:39:09 | |
| Objections. But if members of the public choose to speak, they will have the opportunity. | 00:39:15 | |
| Thank you, Mayor. So as the mayor pointed out, there's 20 acres, approximately 20 acres. The arrows are pointing on the either | 00:39:20 | |
| side of that, 20 acres bound by the blue line on three sides and the yellow line on the South side. | 00:39:25 | |
| I. | 00:39:31 | |
| For the most part, the mayor's already told you we closed on the property in September and October. The attorney sent information | 00:39:32 | |
| to the county requesting annexation and the resolution, which they'll probably consider, I guess, next month at their voting | 00:39:37 | |
| meeting. | 00:39:41 | |
| The property, as the Mayor mentioned, is on Simon Bridge Rd. There's let's see it will be there is a permanent deed restriction on | 00:39:47 | |
| the for development, so it will in perpetuity be as it is now for the most part. | 00:39:53 | |
| And I think that is pretty much it for the report and I failed to mention we're due, we've got to zone it and then annex it as | 00:40:01 | |
| well, so. | 00:40:05 | |
| Is our that we would be designating. This would be Parks, recreation and Conservation, which is in line with future use of the | 00:40:41 | |
| property. | 00:40:44 | |
| The member The public wants to speak to the. | 00:40:47 | |
| Of this parcel that's to be annexed. Please do so. | 00:40:52 | |
| Court client if we receive any comments in advance, Sir. | 00:40:56 | |
| Seeing no one come forward and no comments in advance, I'll close the public hearing. | 00:41:00 | |
| Our next public hearing be related to the annexation of said property. Again, if any member of the public would want to come | 00:41:04 | |
| forward and speak to that, please do so now. | 00:41:08 | |
| Court client, if we receive any commentary on that. | 00:41:12 | |
| Seeing no members of the public will close, the public hearing will now move to the vote on the annexation. | 00:41:16 | |
| You all have seen that ordinance that was in your packet. So I would request a motion to approve the annexation of the 20 acres of | 00:41:22 | |
| Thomas Farm property presently outside the city limits. | 00:41:27 | |
| And make a motion to approve the annex. | 00:41:36 | |
| And. | 00:41:40 | |
| Reason. | 00:41:42 | |
| Annexation first. Annexation. All right. Do we have a second second? All right, this is the time to ask any questions. Council. I | 00:41:43 | |
| know we went quickly. Any questions? | 00:41:48 | |
| All right. Can Councilman Thomas vote on this, that city property at this point? So he can. OK, great. All right, so we have a | 00:41:54 | |
| motion. We have a second. We have no further discussion. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? | 00:42:01 | |
| All right. And now for the zoning again to the Parks, Recreation and Conservation, I would entertain a motion. | 00:42:08 | |
| To make that amendment to the zoning map. | 00:42:13 | |
| I make that motion. We have the motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion, We have a second. Y'all keep up with me. | 00:42:18 | |
| I'm going to try to move us pretty quickly through the rest of this. We have a motion, We have a second. Any discussion. | 00:42:24 | |
| Hearing none. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. Motion carries 5. | 00:42:30 | |
| All right, now we are two appearances. | 00:42:35 | |
| Can I ask to change? We have a guest here who wants to speak in public. Comment. We have one guest here. | 00:42:46 | |
| Can I have her come forward or am I totally messing things up on the agenda? | 00:42:51 | |
| Can we amend the agenda to move public comment? First, I make a motion that we amend the agenda to have public comments now. | 00:42:57 | |
| Second, Second, all in favor, say aye, The reason I'm doing that is going to probably take us. | 00:43:03 | |
| Maybe 30 minutes to work through the rest of this stuff. You've sat through a long meeting. Why don't you come forward and tell | 00:43:10 | |
| us, give us your perspective on an issue that we're dealing with in the city right now. Thank you. Thank you. State your name and | 00:43:16 | |
| address, please. I will. I appreciate making that, that time commitment, especially with my children at home. My name is Kedren | 00:43:21 | |
| Nicholson and I am at 1845 S Barnett Shoals Rd. We are about a mile and 1/2 from downtown. | 00:43:27 | |
| I am not only reside there, that's also the home of my farm. I'm a cut flower farmer, twin run flower farm. We are about to enter | 00:43:33 | |
| at year four and I say that with pride, starting to have from a hay field, which many of you I'm sure know what that was before we | 00:43:38 | |
| moved here. | 00:43:43 | |
| I rise tonight to speak to something that I believe is on the agenda, but I see that I was mistaken. But again, thank you, Mayor, | 00:43:49 | |
| for allowing me just a minute to speak. And that is making a provision for mobile businesses to operate legally within the city | 00:43:53 | |
| limits. | 00:43:58 | |
| I not only undercut fire farm but we have just recently added Buttercup the flower truck and thank you for smiling because you | 00:44:04 | |
| cannot say Buttercup or see her without without a little bit of joy. And which is exactly the reason that we added that to our | 00:44:10 | |
| farm lineup. Also for the economic benefit of that as well which is also one of the reasons that I'd like to speak to having | 00:44:15 | |
| mobile businesses. Because the last pop up that we had, I'd like to share with you just a couple of the things that were said to | 00:44:21 | |
| me as folks walked up to the truck. | 00:44:27 | |
| The first person who came up said I drove from Snellville to see Buttercup and to buy flowers. | 00:44:34 | |
| And as she finished buying flowers, she said. Now, what else should I do in Watkinsville? | 00:44:40 | |
| The next person that came up, she said I've lived in Watkinsville for 32 years and she said you have just up the cuteness factor | 00:44:44 | |
| by 1000%. And then I had two other folks who separately, honest, I swear they said the exact same thing and they came up and they | 00:44:49 | |
| said. | 00:44:54 | |
| This is why I love a small town, because you never know what you're going to. | 00:45:00 | |
| But I also believe that that is really important in the joy factor, because from what else do we need? What more do we need in | 00:45:39 | |
| life right now, especially with the state of our world? Then a little bit of happiness, a little bit of joy. So I rise to speak | 00:45:45 | |
| and ask that you would, and whatever the legal ways, you need to do it for the city and for for all of your constituents, that you | 00:45:51 | |
| would think about how to move forward. So excuse me that those of us who have mobile businesses can operate those in a legal | 00:45:57 | |
| manner and not receive. | 00:46:03 | |
| Criticism from other businesses or feel that we're threatening them because I have no desire to threaten anyone else's business, | 00:46:10 | |
| but certainly a desire to to strengthen the city as well as my own business. And I think that there's a lot to be said for that. I | 00:46:16 | |
| think that there's charm and I think that there's character that can be added by mobile businesses coming into town. But I think | 00:46:22 | |
| more importantly, what you're doing is supporting a small business when you make allowances for that. | 00:46:28 | |
| Thank you for your time. | 00:46:35 | |
| Well, thank you, Mrs. Nicholson. That's that's great. | 00:46:38 | |
| Council, we don't have to react to that. What I will say is we are, I think we have got a draft ordinance that we're working on. | 00:46:42 | |
| We want to address this quickly so you have clarity. Other mobile businesses have clarity in our existing businesses. Understand | 00:46:46 | |
| where we stand on that issue. | 00:46:51 | |
| But I will have to agree that Buttercup the Flower Truck is one of the cutest little things I've seen in my. | 00:46:56 | |
| Time on Main Street which is which has been a long time so so anyway so appreciate what you're doing and the fire form and we | 00:47:03 | |
| might need your advice at the Thomas Farm Park to on some beautification. I walked the site the other day with. | 00:47:10 | |
| Some of the southeastern grass folks who want to do native return native meadows out of hay fields and we don't have the resources | 00:47:18 | |
| to do everything they want to, but there might be a way that. | 00:47:23 | |
| We can be kind of a starter partner or a seed partner for them, which is kind of cool. | 00:47:28 | |
| We're taking a look at how we can take something that's already beautiful and maybe just with a little bit of few light touches | 00:47:33 | |
| make it even more beautiful. So if you have suggestions for us, we're all ears. So happy to partner with all in any way that we | 00:47:39 | |
| can. We love being here. We chose Oconee, for what it's worth. We chose this from anywhere else. We could have lived in the | 00:47:44 | |
| country and settled our family and this is where we chase and we want to be here. Say thank you. Awesome, right? | 00:47:50 | |
| Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being here. | 00:47:56 | |
| Any other members of the public. | 00:47:59 | |
| Doesn't look like they're here. Did we receive anything via e-mail? | 00:48:01 | |
| No, Sir. All right. OK. We will move on now to appearances. Thank you for your patience, gentlemen. I know you both have exciting | 00:48:05 | |
| projects and we're ready to hear from you. So up first we have 1080 Experiment Station Rd. commonly known as the library and we | 00:48:11 | |
| heard last. | 00:48:17 | |
| Last month from the team at A&B Hold Co, a little bit about what they were doing. It was a different face. It was Michael Aslan. | 00:48:23 | |
| It looks like we have Andy Bars here this month to give us an overview of what they're doing. But first we'll have Manager | 00:48:28 | |
| Dickerson or Engineer Campbell give us our staff report. Andy will have you come up after that and speak to the request, cover | 00:48:33 | |
| anything that they don't do and then we'll look at a discussion or a motion there. So with that, we will turn it over to Engineer | 00:48:38 | |
| Camp. Thank you, Mayor. | 00:48:43 | |
| So yes, this 1080 experiment Station Road, you should be very familiar with not only this partial but this project because it was | 00:48:49 | |
| on the agenda last month. So it is currently zoned downtown based on the the decision by the council to rezone it last month. It's | 00:48:57 | |
| a little over 2 acres in size. So this site development plan includes the adaptive reuse of the existing building, which you heard | 00:49:05 | |
| some more about in detail last month, as well as the new construction of attached residential. | 00:49:12 | |
| On the northern portion of the property. So if you can kind of move through these slides, again you're familiar with where the | 00:49:22 | |
| location is, some pictures of the existing location and then the next slide would be a a copy of the the proposed site plan. So | 00:49:28 | |
| the existing building is relatively light there in that image that's a copy of the site plan. You can see some of the asphalt work | 00:49:33 | |
| that's there on the southern side of the lower portion of that drawing if you're familiar with where the book drop is now as you | 00:49:39 | |
| heard described by. | 00:49:45 | |
| One of the members of the the team that's working with the applicant last month. | 00:49:52 | |
| So there's an opportunity, I think there to slightly change that asphalt and what I would suppose would be a pharmacy drop off or | 00:49:57 | |
| pick off, pick up area as opposed to a book drop off and pick up. And then you can see the, the darker hatched area that goes to | 00:50:05 | |
| the rear of the northern side of the existing building. And what is shown would be 6 attached residential units with the | 00:50:12 | |
| associated parking. One of the questions last month was about. | 00:50:20 | |
| Stormwater runoff. | 00:50:28 | |
| These submitted site development plans includes details related to that. That would be an underground storm water management | 00:50:30 | |
| system for any of that proposed impervious area, so. | 00:50:36 | |
| That detail was included in the documentation that was submitted the system to meet the the state requirements which are part of | 00:50:43 | |
| the city requirements as well for water quality, channel protection and stormwater management through the 100 year storm events. | 00:50:48 | |
| So we did have comments on that. | 00:50:53 | |
| So there was a letter that was dated November 9th that included, you see the totality of the 10 comments there. The last two | 00:50:59 | |
| should be very familiar because there is disturbance greater than one acre, which means you have to go to the Georgia Water | 00:51:05 | |
| Conservation Commission. To my knowledge, those plans have been delivered, but that review on the state side takes a little bit | 00:51:12 | |
| longer than it does on the City side. Likewise, Oconee County Water Resources would have a say on any details as it relates to the | 00:51:18 | |
| water and sewer system for this. | 00:51:24 | |
| The other comments there are really about some clarifications and a little bit more detail oriented as it relates to stormwater, | 00:51:30 | |
| nothing that would be preventative for. | 00:51:35 | |
| Approval of the site development plans, as you see, presented here before you tonight. And again, I'm happy to answer any | 00:51:41 | |
| questions that you might have. | 00:51:45 | |
| All right. We've heard from Mr. Campbell. Mr. Bars, if you want to come up, if you have anything you want to add, just introduce | 00:51:51 | |
| yourself off your address and share anything you want to welcome. | 00:51:56 | |
| Thank you. Appreciate it, Andy. Bars address 1607 Lea Haven way here, Athens address Oconee County. | 00:52:01 | |
| Yeah. My partner and I, Michael Aslan, he and I have been in business 16 years in the healthcare side and. | 00:52:11 | |
| Have been fortunate enough to grow and need additional space and. | 00:52:17 | |
| Really. | 00:52:21 | |
| Feel intrigued by the opportunity to purchase the library inside the city and be a part, you know, partner with Y'all and helping | 00:52:23 | |
| develop. | 00:52:26 | |
| Assets not only for our company but but hopefully resources that can further provide services to the city so. | 00:52:30 | |
| Engineer Campbell shared. | 00:52:39 | |
| Currently our plan is to open a small pharmacy relatively 1500 to 2000 square feet on the left hand side of the library using the | 00:52:41 | |
| existing overhang. | 00:52:46 | |
| As a drive through where the book drop off. | 00:52:52 | |
| Middle portion of the building, building, 17,000 square feet in total. Middle portion of the building maybe 6000 feet or so. We're | 00:52:56 | |
| hoping to find a medical tenant that could pair with our pharmacy there and then we would use the remainder 6 to 8000 feet on the | 00:53:02 | |
| right hand side to serve as our corporate offices there. | 00:53:07 | |
| Currently there's a little over 30 parking spaces, which is. | 00:53:13 | |
| Per code 1 per 500 square feet or so. We need a little more parking. And so we, you know. | 00:53:17 | |
| Resources of the engineers to see what we could do with the 3/4 of the acre that was behind that space. It kind of tucks up | 00:53:24 | |
| against the Board of Education building there. It's about a 10 foot drop off roughly. | 00:53:30 | |
| Our grade back there. | 00:53:38 | |
| In order to put a. | 00:53:40 | |
| Parking lot or something. There, we'd still have to put a retaining wall. | 00:53:41 | |
| He said, well, why couldn't? | 00:53:45 | |
| Make use of that infrastructure and put residential back there because our our goal is to try not to be a an end point as where | 00:53:46 | |
| the library is now, but really be. | 00:53:51 | |
| A continuation and so if we could. | 00:53:57 | |
| Have activity. | 00:54:00 | |
| You know, qualified activity behind us. It would help us be more of a community. | 00:54:01 | |
| Resource I think as opposed to a drive by. So that could help us offset some expenses to get additional parking back there as well | 00:54:05 | |
| as maybe connect to some of the adjacent parcels without being an isolated. | 00:54:11 | |
| Three quarter acre. | 00:54:18 | |
| Wasn't usable for the city, but be glad to answer any questions or comments, and if I don't know the answer, I'll do my best to to | 00:54:20 | |
| get you feedback. | 00:54:24 | |
| All right, Christine. | 00:54:31 | |
| I have old eyes. | 00:54:37 | |
| And obviously it's hard to tell from scale, but the back of the six units look awfully close to the property line on. | 00:54:39 | |
| The other side is they all in the set back, the correct setbacks and everything, or is that a different? | 00:54:46 | |
| Downtown, there's not any significant set, so there's not that's a residential. | 00:54:53 | |
| Thank you. | 00:55:00 | |
| All right. | 00:55:04 | |
| Let's see, I was gonna, I had something in my head but I've lost it because it is getting like I will comment this may have been | 00:55:06 | |
| said previous. | 00:55:10 | |
| Currently there's only about a. | 00:55:14 | |
| Width to travel around the backside of the. | 00:55:16 | |
| I was fortunate to get the right gentleman on the phone. | 00:55:20 | |
| That recently their company purchased the Post Office is a real estate investment trust out of New York. | 00:55:23 | |
| I didn't know what I was going to get on the other end of that phone, but I got a very nice and welcoming. | 00:55:29 | |
| Man said. You know you're welcome to extend that driveway. I'll call it the wraps around so it can be a. | 00:55:34 | |
| Two cars can travel it simultaneous. | 00:55:41 | |
| So he we're working on a memorandum of understanding that will support our agreement with them to build a retaining wall that will | 00:55:45 | |
| give us another 10 to 12 feet that will provide enough. | 00:55:50 | |
| Space for two cars to pass each other back there, that that. | 00:55:57 | |
| Otherwise we wouldn't really have a lot of practical access to the rear. | 00:56:01 | |
| This was my question. Is the tree protection plan incorporated by reference into all this markers that need any sort of separate | 00:56:05 | |
| not protection plan with the tree plan urban forest plan? | 00:56:09 | |
| Is that already done or does that come later? | 00:56:14 | |
| So the the Urban forest plan, my recollection is that was included in the site plans that have been submitted. But I don't believe | 00:56:19 | |
| the urban Forest Committee has met to discuss the details of that. I do know they have some other things that would likely be on | 00:56:24 | |
| the next month's agenda. So that's likely to come back to us. OK, All right. Just wanted to understand because I did see the | 00:56:30 | |
| materials that came to us. All right. Unless there's any further questions, I'll entertain a motion to approve the site | 00:56:36 | |
| development plan for A&B Holtco. Sorry. | 00:56:42 | |
| Subject to the yeah, subject to the conditions for the engineer. Christine, did you have another question? I did. I'm sorry. So. | 00:56:48 | |
| So I don't know where it would go. I mean I've been driving by this, but I know we're wanting to extend sidewalks and such is. | 00:56:56 | |
| A way to have a sidewalk at the front of the property there is, but it wouldn't connect anything because you have the health | 00:57:04 | |
| department and the. | 00:57:10 | |
| But we welcome the opportunity to have sidewalks because that would be an asset to our businesses that this. | 00:57:17 | |
| That was what was shared with me. Yeah, that's what I would think that. I mean, obviously I would love. I mean, it's a goal of the | 00:57:24 | |
| city to have a lot of pedestrian infrastructure. | 00:57:29 | |
| Absolutely. So you would be open to, even though currently it's a sidewalk to nowhere, but you would that's not the end game. You | 00:57:34 | |
| would be open. We would be very open to that, Yes, ma'am. | 00:57:39 | |
| All right. I think what Andy, what she's asking, I think we need to go ahead and approve the site plan. But Andy, I think what | 00:57:46 | |
| Christine's asking is, could you go ahead and would you be willing to install them on your property? | 00:57:50 | |
| Understand that we may have them eventually as other properties transition and need to connect to you. | 00:57:55 | |
| Or do you want to think about that? I'd like to think about that. I don't mind agreeing to connect once they're put in place, it | 00:58:01 | |
| would just. I think it would be. | 00:58:05 | |
| Awkward looking. | 00:58:10 | |
| To be an existing sidewalk without anything connecting to it would definitely be awkward for a little. | 00:58:12 | |
| I don't know that. | 00:58:18 | |
| The timing on what there's and whether those other properties will transition in any kind of time period, but let's let's talk | 00:58:21 | |
| about, let's approve the site development plan, but then maybe. | 00:58:25 | |
| If your plan can be such that you could accommodate that and you agree to do that at a later date should there be an opportunity | 00:58:29 | |
| that would be, that would be great. | 00:58:33 | |
| Certainly, willing to consider that, absolutely. OK. Yeah. I just bring it up now with the site development plan because I would | 00:58:37 | |
| think it would be relevant to the site development plan, right, because if you drop a bunch of trees there and then I mean it's | 00:58:42 | |
| something that has to do, you all have an idea of time frame to to offer. | 00:58:48 | |
| Yes. | 00:58:55 | |
| Experiment. Station Road is upgraded. It'll probably be at that time. Well, it will be. It'll just be. | 00:58:57 | |
| It'll probably be a long time. | 00:59:04 | |
| I think things might happen, or at least places things might happen. | 00:59:07 | |
| And even if it is not like a total through sidewalk, if your property has that sidewalk there, it might help with connectivity | 00:59:11 | |
| even if people have to for the parcel beforehand, like make their own way so. | 00:59:19 | |
| Umm. | 00:59:27 | |
| I know we can't make it contingent on that, but just as you're, I imagine that as you're pouring concrete and doing changes, | 00:59:27 | |
| there's probably times where it would be less expensive to do it than other times too so. | 00:59:35 | |
| Well, and also with it being part of the downtown, now we want to be connected. Let's do this. | 00:59:42 | |
| Let's go ahead and approve this Andy Noodle on that a little bit and then let's sort of talk offline about what may make sense | 00:59:47 | |
| with your site plan or not make sense with your site plan on it. | 00:59:52 | |
| Not comfortable putting a condition on related to that tonight given how much uncertainty there is in that quarter, if you're OK | 00:59:56 | |
| with that. But Mr. Bars has certainly expressed his interest in doing that potentially if we can work it out and you've got a | 01:00:01 | |
| bunch of sidewalks running around the other sides of the building too, I see rendering. So, yeah, we welcome the opportunity to | 01:00:06 | |
| allow foot traffic to exist around the building. Yeah. | 01:00:11 | |
| All right. | 01:00:17 | |
| Thank you, Christine. All right, we'll be. I'll entertain a motion to approve the site development plan. | 01:00:19 | |
| I'll make a motion. | 01:00:28 | |
| I'll make a motion to approve the site development plan with the conditions from the engineer. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Councilman | 01:00:31 | |
| Thomas, we have a second. | 01:00:35 | |
| All right. We have a second from the left side. Thank you, guys. All right, any conversation about this project? | 01:00:41 | |
| Hearing none all in favor, say aye Aye. Any opposed. The motion carries 5. | 01:00:48 | |
| Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Great. Next up we have some more investment in Watkinsville. We have. | 01:00:53 | |
| Expansion of. | 01:01:05 | |
| Industrial businesses, Taylor Iron and I think we have Justin Greer here representing them tonight. But As for the last one, we. | 01:01:07 | |
| City staff, give us the staff report and then we'll have Mr. Greer come forward. | 01:01:16 | |
| And we'll go from there. So, staff, thank you, Mayor. | 01:01:20 | |
| So this is Taylor's iron. What you would probably know is Taylor's iron 1041 industrial drive the the total acreage of that parcel | 01:01:24 | |
| is a little over 5 acres. This should be familiar for other reasons. It was not here last month, but this property has continued | 01:01:30 | |
| to develop and expand over the last. | 01:01:36 | |
| Five years or so. So this is an addition on the northern side of the property. So it's a proposed 18,000 square foot additions if | 01:01:44 | |
| we go to the next slide. | 01:01:50 | |
| If this is facing it from Industrial Drive again, Industrial Blvd. connects from Hwy. 15 to Barnett Shoals Rd. Industrial Drive | 01:01:58 | |
| comes off of Industrial Blvd. but this is some of the existing facilities. There is existing storm water facility that's there on | 01:02:04 | |
| the property that was constructed. | 01:02:09 | |
| During a previous iteration of expansion of the Taylor's iron property and this gives you an idea of what that looks like today. | 01:02:15 | |
| So. | 01:02:19 | |
| What is highlighted in red, if you can see that is the proposed 18,000 square foot expansion again on the northern side and then | 01:02:25 | |
| on what would be kind of the right hand portion of your page there. The eastern side that is the existing pond that you saw in the | 01:02:31 | |
| picture that is being modified, reformatted in a way in order to be able to handle the additional storm water flows that are being | 01:02:38 | |
| created as part of this. | 01:02:44 | |
| So the the next slide kind of gives another brief overview. Similarly, there was a letter that was sent to the engineering group | 01:02:53 | |
| of regarding comments on this. Some of the comments are the same. Again, you're disturbing more than one acre. You have to deal | 01:02:59 | |
| with Oconee County water resources for water and sewer. There's a few details as it relates to clarification of those engineering | 01:03:04 | |
| and stormwater plans. | 01:03:09 | |
| If you will recall, sewer line A traverse through the northern portion of this property. As a result, there's no longer any need | 01:03:16 | |
| for any septic facilities. | 01:03:21 | |
| On this property. So I think that's part of what allows the opportunity for this additional expansion of a business within the | 01:03:26 | |
| city of Watkinsville. There's. | 01:03:31 | |
| The the detailed comments that were issued there again no things that would be preventative for approval of the site development | 01:03:36 | |
| plan and we'll be happy to answer. | 01:03:41 | |
| Any questions? | 01:03:47 | |
| All right. Thank you, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Greer. | 01:03:49 | |
| Good evening. Thank you. Mr. Mayor Council, my name is Justin Greer, Pittman and Greer Engineering. Mark pretty much covered | 01:03:53 | |
| everything 18,000 square foot addition and the sewer line really did open up where we could do some additional development growth. | 01:03:59 | |
| They're going to use it for additional space for equipment. We did receive the comments that Mark mentioned. We've been looking | 01:04:05 | |
| through those and I think we can address everything there. The urban forest plan, it was approved back in 05 and we're not we're | 01:04:12 | |
| not impacting that in any way the. | 01:04:18 | |
| Our improvements don't touch anything that was approved before on that plan. So I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. | 01:04:25 | |
| Thank you. We have an urban forest ordinance, an O5. | 01:04:29 | |
| I think you've been five years ago, five years ago. | 01:04:35 | |
| OK, so are they having any jobs because of this just? | 01:04:41 | |
| I don't know the answer that I could find that out. You said it's gonna store equipment. Are they gonna do additional equipment? | 01:04:47 | |
| Additional equipment, Sir, Are they gonna use it for manufacturing? And my understanding. All right. OK. | 01:04:52 | |
| Right. Other questions. | 01:04:57 | |
| I do want to point out here a lot of times we got, we got a lot of questions through the years about why we invested. | 01:05:00 | |
| Sewer lines in the industrial area and Sharon mentioned. | 01:05:06 | |
| We pay for those. Ultimately the county owns controls those gets most of the revenue. But this is exactly what we wanted to see, | 01:05:09 | |
| right? It gives existing industry who are out of space. | 01:05:14 | |
| The opportunity to use that space where they had septic tanks to. | 01:05:19 | |
| Without that those sewer. | 01:05:23 | |
| This wouldn't be happening. Wire Park wouldn't be happening. A lot of good stuff. | 01:05:26 | |
| I know those were expensive, expensive and investments, but again we're starting to see that pay off and I think that'll be those | 01:05:30 | |
| will continue to pay off overtime with additional jobs, business retention and in tax revenue. So we're excited about seeing this | 01:05:36 | |
| project come through and and grateful. | 01:05:42 | |
| If there's no other questions, Sharon, you have a I was just going to point out, so because this is in the industrial park, the | 01:05:49 | |
| city is not involved with our wastewater capacity at all. It's handled by the county That was part of our amendment to the | 01:05:54 | |
| agreement we had with the county in 1991. So any wastewater they need will go through the it'll come out of their bucket, not out | 01:05:59 | |
| of ours today. | 01:06:04 | |
| OK, All right. We've heard from the staff. We've heard. | 01:06:10 | |
| The applicant with that, I'll entertain a motion to approve with the conditions specified by the engineer. | 01:06:14 | |
| I'll make a motion to approve this project with the conditions specified by the engineer. | 01:06:23 | |
| Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion. We have a second. Any further comment hearing? None. All in favor, say aye. | 01:06:30 | |
| All right. We will move on to old business. And that old business involves continuing our efforts to improve Harris Shoals Park. | 01:06:38 | |
| So Sharon, I think you have a report for us on that. Thank you, Mayor. | 01:06:44 | |
| We're going to be asking you tonight to approve or award a contract to Garrett Paving Company. | 01:06:52 | |
| For Mount Knot to see 200,000 for the parking and paving improvements to Harris Shoals Park. | 01:06:59 | |
| We did release an RFP earlier this year. We only received 11 bid back that that RFP is a little bit different than this one that | 01:07:06 | |
| was amended. That one actually called for pedestrian pathways and landscaping. We got one vendor to to bid on it or provide a | 01:07:13 | |
| price proposal. It was way over what we had. So we sort of sat on it. We had also had an opportunity at the time to submit for the | 01:07:20 | |
| Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program grant and also for the congressional directed spending for both Warnock and. | 01:07:28 | |
| Ossoff and of course we heard back. We didn't get that. So we released in October, released another RFP. At the time we released | 01:07:36 | |
| it just as we'd released the one in February, but then. | 01:07:41 | |
| Took a step back and after talking to the mayor and and whatnot, we decided let's just do the paving. Would come back and decide | 01:07:47 | |
| if we want to still do the pedestrian sidewalks or pathways and the landscaping. Some of that we might be able to value engineer | 01:07:51 | |
| that on our own. | 01:07:56 | |
| And so we on October 27th received 2 proposals. Garrett Paving came in significantly less. It would make sense Smith and company's | 01:08:01 | |
| a contractor. Garrett's just straight up Paving. | 01:08:06 | |
| So they were, you know, having to do a little bit more work on that. So we did post it on our website. That was a recommendation | 01:08:11 | |
| from Councilman Garrett. We posted our website advertising Oconee Enterprise and provided direct mail request to five companies to | 01:08:17 | |
| which like I said, did respond. | 01:08:22 | |
| We have. | 01:08:29 | |
| Pretty much advanced all the short term projects, low cost projects that we can't can and phase 1A master plan and this really is | 01:08:31 | |
| going to help trigger some of the phase two mid, mid long term type projects once we get that settled. We do have 225,000. The | 01:08:38 | |
| very last line on this very detailed spreadsheet is other Rd. maintenance projects. So we do have $225,000 can be appropriated. | 01:08:45 | |
| I'm going to ask though in your in your motion if you motion to approve it that. | 01:08:52 | |
| And I think I've got it. I gotta go backwards. | 01:09:00 | |
| That you encourage staff to negotiate on the traffic management because we can shut down the park for a few days, we won't need to | 01:09:03 | |
| pay 10 or $15,000 for them to deal with traffic management. | 01:09:08 | |
| So I've already reached out to their contact and asked him. I haven't received response, but you know, my goal would be to try to | 01:09:14 | |
| reduce it by, you know, by that amount, because we can just simply shut down the park for those days and let the public know. | 01:09:20 | |
| Would we completely shut down the park or would we just shut down? | 01:09:30 | |
| As it's getting colder and so I'm not sure what the time frame is, we haven't negotiated. I mean, we haven't set that out, but my | 01:10:01 | |
| hope is we can do that before the weather gets. | 01:10:05 | |
| You know, too cold for them to be able to pave it? Yeah, let's just be sure to coordinate with the ESP. And absolutely, the | 01:10:09 | |
| playground up here does get crowded enough. People use it for parking, so on nice days. | 01:10:14 | |
| OK. You've heard the report from Sharon from the manager. Any questions or comments? | 01:10:20 | |
| All right here. None. Do we have a motion. | 01:10:28 | |
| And make a motion to approve the to award. | 01:10:31 | |
| It's a Garrett paving company and also to manage the. | 01:10:35 | |
| Traffic ourselves to save money, all right. | 01:10:41 | |
| So the managers authorized to negotiate on traffic control in that motion. Do we have a second? | 01:10:45 | |
| Second. All right. We have a motion. We have a second from the right side. | 01:10:50 | |
| Any comments? | 01:10:54 | |
| Hearing none all in favor, say aye. Motion carries 5. | 01:10:56 | |
| All right. G dot Transportation Alternatives Program. TAP. | 01:11:01 | |
| Thank you, Mayor. Did everybody read their report on this? If you read the report then that'll save sharing some time in terms of | 01:11:07 | |
| doing the deep history on this. Yeah. So the the brief piece of it is we. | 01:11:14 | |
| Tried for this grant as a small community don't have as many resources as some of the other communities do as far as managing | 01:11:22 | |
| federal money that's flowing through the state and so. | 01:11:27 | |
| Quicker and this will help connect to Thomas Farm. | 01:12:06 | |
| And that's in it. That's a huge project for y'all wanting to try to get everybody connected to downtown. So. So if you do decline | 01:12:09 | |
| it, then we will simply fill out a piece of paper telling them that we're just not going to do this project, really is not with | 01:12:16 | |
| them and and then we'll get to work on figuring out how we can pay for this a different way. | 01:12:22 | |
| And I just, you know, you guys aren't up here as much as I am, but I want to give Sharon and staff a lot of credit. It's it's not | 01:12:30 | |
| every day you have an opportunity to get a grant like this, but this is 1 where it was. | 01:12:35 | |
| Um. | 01:12:41 | |
| The amount of additional work that the staff was going to have to. | 01:12:42 | |
| In exchange for, you know, a project that would. | 01:12:46 | |
| You know, may have been a little bit fancier, but would have taken years longer and probably not saved as much money in the end. | 01:12:50 | |
| So as tempting as it was to sort of take that grant and run with it, a lot of credit due to Sharon and staff for the research that | 01:12:59 | |
| they did to understand is. | 01:13:03 | |
| Not the most efficient process for us, so I just want to thank you because I knew that took a good bit of time and we certainly | 01:13:08 | |
| don't. | 01:13:11 | |
| You know, we're grateful that we won the grant, but at the end of the day it's just not the right fit for Watkinsville right now, | 01:13:14 | |
| so thank you. | 01:13:18 | |
| All right, so Sharon's looking for a. | 01:13:23 | |
| A motion to decline the $240,000 G dot TAP TAP grant. | 01:13:26 | |
| As much as it pains me to decline a grant, I make a motion that we decline this grant. We have a motion to decline. Do we have a | 01:13:32 | |
| second? Second. | 01:13:37 | |
| Discussion or. | 01:13:42 | |
| Hearing none all in favor of declining the grant, say aye. | 01:13:43 | |
| OK. | 01:13:48 | |
| Thank you. | 01:13:50 | |
| Looks like we have no new business. We've already done public comments. We're on to the mayor's report. Given the size of the | 01:13:51 | |
| audience, I'll be brief. You guys know a lot about this stuff. Had a very successful fall festival that. | 01:13:58 | |
| That seems pretty simple, but it's really not. I think several of you volunteered and supported that, Had huge crowds. Interim | 01:14:05 | |
| Chief Tetherton mentioned it, I felt like. | 01:14:11 | |
| Despite all of our concerns about what happened at Rocket Field and the vehicles on the field, I think it was a tremendous | 01:14:17 | |
| success. | 01:14:20 | |
| We have already met with the Chamber on a follow up on things that can be tweaked and improved and they're working on that. But a | 01:14:23 | |
| real credit to the Chamber of Commerce, they quietly they don't look for credit, they don't ask for credit and they put this thing | 01:14:29 | |
| together every year and it is jammed up. So we're grateful for them. | 01:14:34 | |
| For leading the way on that and proud to be their partner and grateful to their team for doing that. Next year will be the 50th | 01:14:39 | |
| Fall Festival. | 01:14:43 | |
| So they will be there looking for creative ideas and ways to celebrate big. So wrap your brain around that a little bit. If you | 01:14:47 | |
| have good ideas, feel free to let Courtney and the team at the chamber know, or Sharon or me, and we'll suggest those. So, great | 01:14:51 | |
| event. | 01:14:55 | |
| Downtown trick or treating was very successful, despite some crazy guy with a mullet sketching everybody out. | 01:15:00 | |
| But we had a we had a great time. There were some great costumes down there and that that continues just to be. | 01:15:08 | |
| A great event. It's not. It's really interesting. It's a different group of folks than you see at most events in Watkinsville, and | 01:15:14 | |
| I think that's great. | 01:15:18 | |
| It's it's not sort of the usual suspects that you see everywhere else. It's a really interesting crowd that has that as part of | 01:15:22 | |
| their tradition and I'm always excited to see them downtown and to see our businesses participate. Sharon, thanks to you and staff | 01:15:27 | |
| for putting all that together. | 01:15:31 | |
| Our Oconee County cross country team, the boys, they are the first ever boys team at Oconee County to repeat in any sport our | 01:15:36 | |
| cross country team. So there were several Watkinsville residents on that team. | 01:15:42 | |
| My son was one of them along with. | 01:15:50 | |
| Lost the boy's name but one of our new residents at Trove Jonah Ferguson, Ferguson's moved moved Oconee County for the schools but | 01:15:54 | |
| also to be a part of that and they are enjoying life at Trove. They have a young his little brother walks to column fairies are | 01:15:59 | |
| one of. | 01:16:03 | |
| School walkers every day, which is kind of cool to see that happening over there from that neighborhood. I know we really wanted | 01:16:09 | |
| that. | 01:16:11 | |
| Really wanted that to happen, so we have several Watkinsville kids who are. | 01:16:14 | |
| We're part of that, we're part of that team, so we're proud of those boys and their hard work. | 01:16:18 | |
| Results are in. Congratulations. | 01:16:23 | |
| Councilman Garrett and Councilwoman Massey, great job. We're glad to have you all with us, but. | 01:16:27 | |
| I think it is important to note that everybody who chooses to offer for office deserves a lot of credit for their. | 01:16:34 | |
| Hard work and courage. You know, there's a lot of people who choose to complain and never take any action, and there's others who | 01:16:39 | |
| want to make their. | 01:16:43 | |
| Want to make a mark? And kudos to Rebecca and Carolyn for both offering for office. They deserve credit for that, even if they | 01:16:47 | |
| didn't win the race. But Connie and Chuck, welcome back and excited to have you with us for another two years. | 01:16:53 | |
| Have several veterans on our team, Alan and Elena, Krish and Chief Tetterton. We're grateful for their service. I. | 01:17:00 | |
| And Councilman Thomas, you as well, grateful for. | 01:17:08 | |
| Your service. | 01:17:11 | |
| Just to update on Thomas Farm Park, we are going to, this is going to be a little. | 01:17:15 | |
| Looks like Sharon might have already updated that timeline a little bit, estimated timeline, we'll probably bring it hope to bring | 01:17:20 | |
| a plan in here in January. It may push to February for you guys to approve. | 01:17:25 | |
| Councilman Campbell and Mayor Pro Tem Tucker very involved with that committee. | 01:17:31 | |
| Umm. | 01:17:38 | |
| I am. I took my first walk out there the other day and I driven around it in vehicles primarily. It hits a little different on | 01:17:39 | |
| foot, Jeff, I think you've walked it, haven't you? Did you walk it with the trail committee or did y'all drive? | 01:17:45 | |
| We drove and got out and walked, yeah, so I'm going to try over the next next few weeks on nice days when I have a little bit of | 01:17:51 | |
| warning, you know, maybe just to get out there and invite some citizens to walk it. You guys are welcome to do the same thing, but | 01:17:56 | |
| it really is. It's well, well mowed right now. The grass isn't too high, the animals are pretty friendly, so, but it's really | 01:18:02 | |
| lovely, so. | 01:18:08 | |
| So we'll try to do that, but I'm excited about where the committees are taking this. | 01:18:14 | |
| You know what they're planning and everything that they're doing. So thank you all for your leadership on that. Really excited to | 01:18:19 | |
| see what we come back with. | 01:18:22 | |
| This guy had a birthday. | 01:18:27 | |
| So happy birthday, Jeff. | 01:18:30 | |
| Did you get some free ice cream? | 01:18:32 | |
| The joys of being a small business center. Yeah. Yeah. So happy birthday, Jeff. Yeah. | 01:18:41 | |
| And with that I'm done, so we'll go to post. | 01:18:46 | |
| Councilman here Nothing Post 2, Councilman Massey. All right, Post 3 Councilman Thomas. | 01:18:49 | |
| All right, post for mayor Pro Tem. | 01:18:56 | |
| So we y'all or we as a group put some money towards some interactive art that is kind of in the general area that the old | 01:19:01 | |
| playground used to be. And so our first piece was installed, yes, and this is the artist who created it. | 01:19:11 | |
| And it's the we have the the little, the drawing, the little stick man and the model. But here's the the real life thing and the I | 01:19:22 | |
| actually have not seen it in person. It gets dark, 'cause it's freaking early, but maybe, I don't know if there are there flood | 01:19:27 | |
| lights back. | 01:19:31 | |
| That we can experience that so it just got installed. | 01:19:36 | |
| And I'm excited. And then the the other two pieces that are like the ladybug. | 01:19:41 | |
| At the bot gardens, but it obviously it's not a ladybug, it's a turtle and a snake lizard. Those should be in in the spring, I | 01:19:48 | |
| think looking at the timeline. So the the ultimate goal is, you know with all the other projects we have going on is that the | 01:19:56 | |
| sidewalk linking Harrah's Shoals up to the playground of possibilities. | 01:20:03 | |
| Will. | 01:20:11 | |
| Sculptures and and pieces of art. | 01:20:12 | |
| Winding along and compelling people to walk back and forth. | 01:20:16 | |
| What's? Do you remember the artist name? | 01:20:21 | |
| Dietrich Dietrich, he speaks. He is probably a first generation. I mean, he's his. | 01:20:24 | |
| He was not born in this country, most likely. | 01:20:34 | |
| It's heavily accented, but is a delight. | 01:20:38 | |
| Yeah, I can't remember his last time either I could look up the is that the location there or is that. Yes, it is. So. It is So if | 01:20:42 | |
| you go, yes, so it's. | 01:20:46 | |
| And we actually have Lawrence Duke, who was part of the subcommittee help figure out where to place it so that it is you can kind | 01:20:52 | |
| of see it down below, but not because you're seeing the back of it, but it, it has the beauty of the park behind it. | 01:21:00 | |
| But you can kind of see it coming up around and back, so the other ones will be closer to City Hall. | 01:21:09 | |
| Kind of maybe in between the swing, the handicap swing that is out there. So that's most likely. | 01:21:17 | |
| Where they'll be and then also just an update with the Thomas Fun Park, I will be going out with the architect. | 01:21:24 | |
| Tomorrow with my subcommittee. Cool. So we will. | 01:21:32 | |
| See where that leads? Yeah, our consultant Smith Planning Group or SPG now, they're doing a great job and they've. | 01:21:36 | |
| Actually found an architect that fits into the scope that they gave us and so. | 01:21:42 | |
| Young architect who grew up in Oconee and has moved home and he is super creative and energetic about how what we can do with | 01:21:46 | |
| those structures out there and how we might be able to use and reuse them in some creative way. So it's kind of fun to have. | 01:21:52 | |
| Architect that can put some great ideas into action with our team so. | 01:21:58 | |
| Thank. | 01:22:03 | |
| Councilman Campbell. | 01:22:05 | |
| New report, All right. No report, All right. I don't think we have a need for executive session. | 01:22:06 | |
| And unless there's anything else, then we will entertain a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? | 01:22:12 | |
| All in favor, Say aye. | 01:22:19 |