Commission - Special Meeting

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Madam Clerk, it appears that we do have a quorum. I'm going to call this meeting to order. The time is now 11.04 a.m. Attorney Plunkett.

Mr. Mayor, we request a motion to go into executive session to discuss personnel, real estate, and pending and threatened litigation.

Thank you, Attorney Plunkett. Is there a motion? There's a motion by the Commissioner Tony Lewis. Is there a second? I'll second. Seconded by Commissioner from the 3rd, Commissioner Catherine Smith-Rice. Madam Clerk, we're voting. System is not working.

Show of hands, please. Okay. That would be Commissioner Scott voting yes, Mr. Lewis, Ms. Slendek, Mayor Johnson, Mr. Wimbley, Ms. Rice, and Mr. Johnson.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. That motion passes. We're now suspended to executive session. Thank you. Colleagues, the time is now 1.05 p.m. for this committee session. We're going to try to start on time, but not on time. We're five minutes late, but we're going to try to start at a decent time today. Madam Clerk, it appears that we have a quorum. I'll call this session back to order. Attorney Plunkett.

Mr. Mayor, we'd request a motion to authorize you to execute the closing meeting affidavit. So moved.

There is a motion by the Commissioner from the 7th, Brandon Garrett, and I heard a second by Commissioner... I'm sorry, Commissioner from the 8th, and a second by the Commissioner from the 7th, Commissioner Tina Slendak. Madam Clerk, seeing no colleagues in the queue for discussion, we're prepared to vote.

No, there are five and two. Of course, he's coming in. your voting, Commissioner Clark. Thank you. That motion carries with Mr. Guilfoyle out.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Attorney Plunkett, are there any motions as a result of our executive session?

There's one, sir. We request a motion to approve the expenditure of $250,000 of SPLOST 7 funds to reimburse SEK Jimmy D LLC for overages in connection with road improvements at the Jimmy Dias Parkway and Franklin Harper and the Jimmy Dias and George Franklin intersections.

So moved. There's a motion by Commissioner Catherine Smith-Rice and the third. Is there a second? Come on, guys. Second. There's a second by Commissioner from the fourth, Alani Wimberly. Madam Clerk, I don't see any colleagues in the queue. We're voting. Ladies and gentlemen, this was for road improvements for the, it's not new anymore, but for the Kroger on Jimmy Dias Parkway. We're voting.

Voting present. That motion carries with committee voting present.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. Attorney Plunkett, does that conclude our motions for today?

It does.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, before I turn this over to the committee cycle, I want to use a point of personal privilege to congratulate the Commissioner from the 4th. As I understand, at 12.01 a.m., he welcomed a new great-grandson. Commissioner Wimbley, do you want to tell us a name and the Wade and mother and father are doing well? Would you like to add anything additional? Got to turn your mic on. Caught you off guard, didn't I?

Totally off guard.

Congratulations, sir.

His name is Moon Harris. Oh. I don't have the stats. Okay. I just got the name. You got the name. The date. Okay. And the time. And you did tell me he's got 10 fingers and 10 toes. 10 fingers, 10 toes. I was told that. And he was yelling. And it was yellow. Yellow.

ladies and gentlemen yelling okay yelling yelling all right ladies and gentlemen can we give a round of applause the commission from the fourth congratulations sir and i'm going to use a second brief point of personal privilege they're going to be coming up in a second our ema director kimmer keaton has a new employee, a new intern. Her name is Ms. Jayla Early. Jayla, stand up. I know we're gonna have you come up to welcome her to the city of Augusta. Ms. Jayla, can you stand up? Welcome to the city of Augusta. Madam Clerk, I yield to Public Services Chairwoman, Chairwoman Catherine Smith-Rice.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would now like to welcome Public Services. Madam Clerk, do we have any additions or deletions?

No, ma'am. Okay.

If my colleagues on Public Services do not object, I would like to consent item number four. and eight. And I would like to table item number five to further notice.

Without objection from you.

Yes, without objection from my colleagues on the yellow. Okay. Okay.

Can we add that to the consent, Madam Chair?

Yes, ma'am, we can do that. As a deletion? Yes, delete. A table, madam. A table, well, right. Okay, Madam Chair.

Yes, thank you. Madam Chair.

Yes, I'm sorry, Commissioner. Let's go and order. We've got Commissioner Wimbley in the queue.

Unless that's, you didn't mean to.

I didn't mean to.

That's all right.

That's okay. Okay. Commissioner Johnson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know I'm not on this committee, but as far as item five is concerned, is there a reason why we're going to table this into further notice, or is this a departmental request, or can you add some content?

This is one that I, you know, I feel like we need to put measures in place for future data centers, but I'm personally, and this is something not in favor of a moratorium on the data centers. As we know, the I know that data centers have been a hot topic but I do feel like that we need further conversation on this so-called moratorium and I think that that's something that we need to table and come back with more information as to to doing this. I need more information on this before I just sit here and favor some moratorium. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. And again, I know I'm not on the committee, but the Planning and Development Department recommends this temporary moratorium? Is this a recommendation from the department?

So it seems that it is from what I'm reading, but I do feel that there are, and I respect their recommendations, but I feel like that we need to have more conversation on this before I just vote on more, consider voting on a moratorium today.

Madam Chair, can I ask the legal or Ms. Bonner a follow-up question on that? Absolutely. Thank you. Legal, with this motion being that it's being tabled, it's currently being suggested as tabled without... opposition, would I still be able to add this on the next full commission agenda to have the conversation about what a moratorium could look like? You could. Okay. I want to do that at our next full commission meeting, Ms. Bonner.

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

You are welcome. Okay. Commissioner Scott. Thank you.

Madam Chair, I was going to ask some questions under the same line as Commissioner Johnson. I guess I want to know if this item was something that the planning department.

It seems to be and I knew that it popped on the agenda. I just have not had enough. I feel like we need more time to discuss this as a body. And today I feel with it being on committee, I just feel like it needs to be tabled and deferred to another time. I'm not ready to make any kind of vote decision on some moratorium today. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Slindak.

thank you excuse me yeah I think the word moratorium right now is it's a strong word I personally I do want to thank Planning and Development for the work that they do I really appreciate that however You know, I wanna see some progress on that zoning ordinance that pertains to the data centers. I'm not ready myself either to just say we're going to adopt a temporary moratorium. I really would like to see some more movement and information from the zoning ordinance, the new ordinance for the data centers. So I would like to say I'm in agreement. I'd like to table or move this until... We have a little more information on the zoning ordinance for the data centers. I saw this, a headline popped up on a local news page which Everybody knows what I'm talking about, but I'm not going to give them free advertising, you know, about we were just going to, we were ready to, we're getting ready to propose it. And, I mean, I was a little taken aback because I don't feel like this commission is anywhere near ready to propose it because, I mean, it just kind of hit me out of the blue a little bit. So I would like to say I'm in favor of tabling this until we get more information on the zoning ordinance for the data centers.

Thank You Commissioner Slindak and I do think that the reworking of the ordinance can be done concurrently without a moratorium but there again I do want to thank Planning and Zoning Planning and Development Department they do a good job but I just would like to hear more about it and see what we can do with the ordinance before you know that strong word moratorium so I We can move this to what next? Commissioner Johnson wants to move it to full commission next week. Okay. All right. Madam Clerk, we're going to move that to the full commission next week.

So we're not tabling it from the committee? We're just going to forward it to the next commission meeting?

Correct. Without objection or are you going to take a vote? I'm going to let my colleagues on public services. Are y'all without objection? Okay. Without objection. Okay. With that being said, we'll move on to item number one.

You need a motion to take those items that you have for consent.

Yes, ma'am. Sorry about that. Items 4, 5, and 8.

All right.

You need a motion. Yeah, I got a motion. I can't, yeah, I can't motion. All right, got a motion. And Commissioner Scott seconded. Okay.

You're voting now, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. Lewis.

Shenanigans. Okay, thank you. Going from top to bottom, Madam Clerk.

We have license and inspection. We'll address our alcohol petitions.

The first one, and good afternoon, the first one's alcohol number 26-28. This is an existing location with a new ownership. Carmilla Hughes is requesting consumption on premise liquor, beer, and wine license used in connection with 722 Broad Street, Augusta, Georgia 30901. This is in District 1, Super District 9, Augusta Planning and Development, and the Sheriff's Office recommend approval. Do we have any objectors?

Hello, my name is Carmela Hughes and my name or my address is 1182 George W. Crawford Drive, Augusta, Georgia, 30909.

Got a motion. Do I have a second? Got a motion and a second. Voting.

It's unanimous. All right.

Madam Clerk, item number two.

Yes, ma'am. Miss Cecilia.

Item number two is alcohol number 26-29. This is an existing location, new ownership. Retail package beer and wine. Omprakash Vimula, applicant for Maruthi Foods 2026 Incorporated, will be used in connection with 2443 Peach Orchard Road, District 2, Super District 9. Planning and development and the Sheriff's Office recommend approval. Do we have any objectors?

yeah it's my name is om prakash vimula two four four three p chacha road maruti food mart okay yeah two one four five ridley's drive thank you uh got a motion motion and i've got a second okay

It's unanimous.

Item number three. All right, item number three is in alcohol number 26-30. This is an existing location. This is a request from Ginger Thomas for a hybrid license to be used in connection with Cliffism's LLC located at 2416 Windsor Spring Road, District 6, Super District 10. Unfortunately, Planning and Development had to deny this application due to Section 6-2-52 in our ordinance, and it's on the last page of your packet. But this is to qualify them as an eating establishment. They have to derive 50% of their sales from food. And at this time, they cannot. With that being said, the applicant would like to address the commission and for their concerns on this decision, if possible.

Can they do this? I'm going to go real quick to Commissioner Johnson. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the department, is the 50% of sales coming from food, is that a local ordinance or is that a state thing? Okay. But could the city override, like could the city like forgive that portion or waive that portion or do like a special consideration?

normally most places who do hybrids start off as a restaurant first and they go six months and then once they do that and they can prove that they have the 50 sales then they go ahead and apply for the hybrid in this case we already have an establishment that already had the license for a drinking establishment and they kind of want to do the vice versa you do it's up to the commission if you do want to give him like a six-month probationary period so that way he can prove to you but right now he his hours does um don't allow him to be able to generate that kind of money because they don't open until later in the evening and they cannot let anyone under 21 in their establishment but just for just from my understanding we do have the ability to still grant the request from my understanding yes sir okay thank you okay with conditions sir hello my name is clifton thomas

2023 Fordham Drive, Graniteville, South Carolina. I'm addressing this committee because I've been fighting this fight for about six years. When I first opened up Cliffism Sports and Spirits, I went to the planning department before we got our liquor licenses and everything and told her that I wanted to be a sports bar. That's what we are, okay? When I told her that she was like, are you sure? I was like, we intend to have the 50-50 sales by the end of the year. So when we got here, we were only listed as a bar. which in turn killed about $700,000 worth of our revenue that we could have made in that time. Ms. Julietta, I have back and forth emails from Ms. Julietta. And one of them says that I believe during one of the times that you all came in to discuss the alcohol processes, we explained to you that you had must be food service sales must be 50% and also alcohol sales. I explained to both of you that being open for 12 months, you could come back. And see, that's where the problem becomes. According to the paperwork from the alcohol, we shouldn't have been told that we had to go 12 months and then come back. According to the alcohol pamphlet, it says, I'm sorry, guys. It says that if an existing business derives 50% of its annual income gross food and beverage sales, let me take these off, from the sale of prepared foods during the preceding calendar year. See, that's what we were put in. We were put in as we were already existing. We were brand new when we asked for this. And then it also goes on to say that if a new business fully intends and expects to derive at least 50% of its total annual gross food and beverage sales from the sale of prepared foods or food on premises during the remainder of the current year, such an affidavit must be submitted annually with each establishment. We were never given that chance. That's my problem. We were supposed to, at day one, We were supposed to be able to show you guys that we could have a 50-50 split. We never got that opportunity. And every year I try to come back before you and try to figure out something. I appreciate the planning department for even giving me some kind of road, but We have food trucks. We have everything. We are food dominant. And I want you guys to consider allowing us to be a hybrid bar so we can continue on the current path.

Okay. Do I have anybody? Mr. Scott, do you have anything?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like for Attorney Plunkett and planning to respond to this. And also, I think it's some kind of conflict because the state is saying there's no law. Or allegedly, they are saying that they don't know what we are talking about in terms of that is a state law and a county law. Attorney Plunkett, are you familiar with any of this? Do we need to get the state to be a part of it? And as soon as Attorney Plunkett speak, then I would like for planning to come up. Because you're right, Ms. Dunham, you have been here, I know, at least five years. Every year you come and ask us to help you out in some kind of way. And you have been a very good person. community partner you do well in the community helping community activities and I think we need to bring a resolution one way or the other to help community-oriented establishment in our community.

Attorney Pluckett.

Ms. Pulliam, directly, I don't know the answers to what you're asking. I mean, I'm sorry, Ms. Scott. I was looking at this direction initially. Ms. Scott, I apologize. I don't know the answer about the state law issue, but since this is at a committee level, I can have an answer to you before it comes up for a final vote next week. But I'd be more than happy to look into it and get you some information on that. I just don't know right off the top of my head that... that relationship that I can find that for you very quickly.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. And I think that's something that we do need to see if we can get some resolution by next week or by tomorrow.

Okay. Okay, attorney. Thank you, attorney. And thank you, Commissioner Scott. Commissioner Slendak.

Thank you. This question may be directed, I guess, maybe somebody with the planning department. And this is, I guess, I just don't know this, but he made the comment that there are food trucks at his establishment. Now, under my understanding, Does that count toward, I mean, it doesn't because they're different companies. So, I mean, he's saying that at his bar, sports bar, that there is an opportunity for people to buy food, but it's, that doesn't fall. It's supposed to be food prepared in his establishment by him. Okay. Okay. I've never been to your bar, but I've seen your post on Facebook. It looks like you run a really tight ship, but people have a lot of fun there.

So I do. And I just mentioned the food truck to just let the committee know that we're not just about alcohol. That's the only reason I mentioned the food truck because the food truck is a separate entity and it does its own thing. But that's the point. I'm food driven. Everything about me, everything I've done is food driven and I have not gotten the opportunity that I should have gotten from day one. That's my issue.

Okay, thank you for that.

I would like to ask if we can go ahead and make a motion to approve, given Mr. Thomas's hybrid license. He has been here in good faith over the past couple of years, and I want to see if we could go ahead and make a motion on this committee to approve him the hybrid license today. Is that doable? motion to approve okay great we got a motion do we have a second motion a second respond thank you yes ma'am oh yeah it was um yes ma'am in good faith he has been here and i'm have a couple of years so okay go ahead thank you that motion carries three to one with miss slendek loading no

takes us to item six, Madam Chair.

Okay, wait a minute.

Madam, I'm sorry.

Number six, will that take us there? opinion then we at first we were talking about it but now we're going to do we're going to just do item number six okay and i wanted to let um mr um thomas know that he he's approved today to come back before the commission next week for a full vote okay yes sir

He brought his posse, right?

Congratulations to him. All right. Okay, Madam Clerk, that takes us out to item number six. Yes, ma'am.

Item number six is to address illegal dumping and our current code.

Commissioner Pulliam, you have the floor. Thank you, Madam Chair. You're welcome. We're going to be talking about illegal dumping. This has been an ongoing discussion, and the last time we had this discussion, the Marshal's Office, as well as the Administrator, were going to get together and that time frame has not ended yet for them to come back with their report however uh i have received probably about six to ten more illegal dumping emails i haven't counted them i'm looking at administrator allen for her too Because she gets every email I get. But with that being said, I wanted an update from Administrator Allen. I wanted her to provide what we're working on. And when I say we, what her office has started working on, just to give the public that information as we are working through the illegal dumping, how we are also looking at addressing those ordinances as well. So... Chairwoman, is it okay for us to pass this over to Administrator Allen just for her to give that update?

Yes, it is. Administrator Allen, yeah.

Yes, ma'am. So as Commissioner Pulliam has stated, we have worked in conjunction with the Clean City Initiative. We brought the various departments to include administration, the marshal's office, Richmond County Sheriff's Office, code enforcement, information technology, our environmental services. RCCI and 311, not only to look at our actual illegal dumping, but to look at vacant lots, dilapidated buildings, anything that is really an eyesore for Augusta. So as part of that, we actually went out on a tour to look at each of some of the sites that we have. And we do have a number of ungodly looking sites that need to be addressed. And Commissioner Pulliam is exactly right. We have a number of illegal dumping situations. We also met, all of us met in a training room just to go over everybody's processes to make sure that we didn't have a duplication of effort to see how we can streamline processes. And as part of that, we also looked at our ordinances and our code and found out many of those codes have not been modified or revised for about 10 or more years. Some of them refer to people or positions that are no longer in the government. It's a number of things that need to be updated. So right now we are all in the process of updating those ordinances, seeing how we can make it better in what we're doing, making sure that we can do a better service to the constituents because as commissioner Pulliam has stated she gets a number of those calls and you know and she makes sure she passes it on us to address and what we want to do is make sure that we are actually addressing them timely so we're continuing to work on those ordinances I know Chief Probst is here as well that can speak to it because illegal dumping, majority of it falls in the Marshall's office. However, the vacant lots and everything else falls in other departments. So we're just looking at it all to make sure that we address all of those needs in our community. so with that being said commissioner pulliam we're working to hopefully have something to you guys within the next 60 days or so because we want to get with our legal team as well before we bring that recommendation to the governing body for approval as part of our ordinance updates

may i continue yeah sure go ahead okay thank you so much administrator allen and the reason i wanted to bring this up again is because um exactly what i said i am still consistently getting emails almost on a daily basis i don't know about every commissioner up here but illegal dumping is a it's a problem in district 2 and district 1 i know because those are the areas that i ride through frequently And so please know that we are addressing the issue and we are working, even if it looks like the work is slow. So please continue to send in your emails, continue to send in your text messages, but we are in fact addressing the issue and we're cleaning up our city as quickly as we possibly can. Also, if you see someone illegally dumping, if I, Attorney Plunkett, if I'm not supposed to say this, just stop me. But if you see someone illegally dumping, please report it. I was not out of line. So please report any illegal dumping that you see. I have been tackling this issue since day one, 2023. It's a problem, but we need you to report it. That way we can deal with it properly. So Administrator Allen, thank you for what you and the team are doing. And also to our marshal's office. to our engineering department for the vacant lots, for everyone that is involved, our sheriff's office, planning and development. Thank you all for everything that you're doing to make sure that we get on track with getting our city cleaned up. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Pulliam. Yes, I get it over, especially in the Powell Road area of District 3. I get emails and calls about the illegal dumping. I know that there, it's in every district. Unfortunately, there is illegal dumping in every district, and we do need to make sure that we stay on top of this so that we can have a clean city. And yeah, if you see anybody, write the tag number down, report them. I feel like there's some signs out there that say if illegal dumping, you find, what is it, $1,500? I've seen a sign here or there. Maybe I'll talk about a different county.

I think it's $1,000.

okay that well we might want to push it up but anyway just making sure that we do clean up and and catch dump illegal dump and turn them in thank you and let's see is that it anybody commissioner garrett thank you last but not least she's still in the queue too i'm gonna go ahead with you okay i try um this question is for ms bonner that's okay madam chair

Ms. Bonner, it looks like this is a very similar item to one on my agenda as well in administrative services, number seven. Just kind of curious why two similarly themed on administrative services.

reason being commissioner pulliam had asked that her item be placed on the agenda and item number seven is an agenda item request from commissioner clark so i'll let you all decide i just honor the request i understand would it would it be appropriate to companion this one with the current discussion since everybody's in the room and i mean just in an effort to prevent this from spreading out over I'm going to allow our esteemed parliamentarian to address that issue. Attorney Plunkett.

Commissioner, what I think is a better point would be to have it at both committees since it's noticed, and then at the commission level, you could combine them at that time. All right. Thank you.

All right.

All right, Commissioner Pulliam. Thank you, Chairwoman Rice. Since you accidentally brought up the point of increasing the fine, may I address Attorney Plunkett? Attorney Plunkett, is that something that can be done during our ordinance discussions looking at increasing the fines of the legal dumping?

We can look at what the current fines are and then see how, basically, whether or not it's a misdemeanor or it's a felony issue is what you're getting to, is the amount of the fine. Some fines, I believe, are like $100 and things of that nature. You could increase that. But if it's $1,000, I think we'd have a problem going above that. Okay. But we'll be happy to work with the administrator on it. If they get to legal, we'll be happy to.

take a look at all the things they want to propose okay thank you okay thank you and let's item number we got item number seven so item number six just receive his information right number six receive his information and we'll come back in 60 days

okay if we can do that please 60 days yes ma'am and then can we say without objection so we won't yes ma'am without objection colleagues okay without objection okay all right item number seven yes ma'am item number seven discussion regarding business operating hours and shutdown operations okay commissioner clark you have the floor

Madam Chair, thank you for this one. I like to push this one back. I'm still waiting on some additional information for this one so that we can have a full conversation.

All right. Madam Clerk, we're going to push that one back. You want to push it to the next committee or next committee?

Two weeks. Thank you, Commissioner Clark.

and without objection colleagues is that okay that's without objection madam clark yes ma'am and that concludes public services for the day okay all right Next is Public Safety. Public Safety.

Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, Madam Clerk. Do we have any addition or deletion? No, ma'am. If it's the will of the committee, I would like to consent 1, 2, 4, and 6 without objection.

Thank you.

Without objection.

So moved.

Second. Voters? Oh, we don't have the votes. Without objection. Yeah, I'll ask the director for you may come up and give us a A BRIEF UPDATE.

A BRIEF UPDATE. YEAH, I'LL JUST QUICKLY YEAH, I'LL JUST QUICKLY GO OVER WHAT SHE'S HANDING GO OVER WHAT SHE'S HANDING TO YOU. TO YOU. HI, EVERYONE. HI, EVERYONE. MY NAME'S KIMBER KEATON. MY NAME'S KIMBER KEATON. I'VE MET A FEW OF YOU. I'VE MET A FEW OF YOU. I'M THE NEW EMA DIRECTOR FOR I'M THE NEW EMA DIRECTOR FOR AUGUSTA-RICHMOND COUNTY. AUGUSTA-RICHMOND COUNTY. I HAVEN'T HAD THE PLEASURE OF I HAVEN'T HAD THE PLEASURE OF MEETING EVERYBODY, BUT I WANT MEETING EVERYBODY, BUT I WANT TO TAKE A QUICK SECOND TO LET TO TAKE A QUICK SECOND TO LET YOU GUYS KNOW kind of spent that time doing a general assessment and audit of what augusta has and how their processes are for emergency management and everything like that we also had a couple of winter storms and hazardous material responses that we responded to and created after action reports we took all that information and kind of drilled down on some of the things that we should focus on SOME OF THOSE THINGS ARE UPCOMING EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PLANS LIKE OUR HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN THAT'S DUE NEXT FALL. IT IS WORKING ON BUILDING US A LIVE DATA DASHBOARD SO WE CAN KIND OF GET A COMMON OPERATING OF AUGUSTA SO IF THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WE CAN SEE ALL ON ONE MAP AT ONE TIME. So those were the first three months. On the second page, the last three months, we took those assessments and we kind of built on them, and we decided, okay, so if these are the things that we can improve upon, what does that look like? And the things we did is, general regulatory planning for GEMA and we developed a countywide emergency response guide that was with all the department heads we worked with them they've been super great and we kind of developed something so that if there is a disaster we know how to respond lastly next month we have our first emergency management preparedness summit I'm looking forward to it and I would hope that you guys come and that's where we're at

Any questions from our committee? Well, thank you. Thank you for coming for us and welcome to your deputy and welcome both of you. Thank you so much for your work. Ms. Bunn, I think we're at three.

Item number three, discuss Barnchapel Village ongoing safety issues described as a constant disruption of the peace, repeated gunfire, loud music, physical fights, and activity that resemble open drug trafficking.

I believe this is Commissioner Wimberly.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, sir. You want to address item number three?

I do.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, ma'am. Let's get started with what the big problem is, is that I think very little attention has been paid to this area of our county. I personally, so I'm not giving secondhand, I'm giving you some firsthand as in my experience in that community. I would like for this not to be for information, it need to be for action that we do this right here. When you have a elderly lady that have to fall to the floor, because a gunfire going off in our community is not something that we just need to accept. We need to have some real concrete procedures. I think there need to be more patrolling of the area. That was one of the most repeated comment that the residents of Barton Chapel made to me when I was going through there was the constant gunfire that take place. I saw somebody from housing, that's Augusta Housing Authority. I saw some of the residents there and I had to figure out what I was looking at until I realized what that red stick on those windows were meant. That was a Housing Authority house. And as far as them having pride in the neighborhood, that was very lacking evidence of that. So housing authority, in my opinion, is also adding to the distress of the community because they're not policing their own property. As I stated earlier about patrolling, that was some speed humps within the um on some of the streets i'll put it like that but they have very little effect uh even as i walk the streets there's no sidewalks even as i walk the street i had to pay real close attention to the traffic it's horrible we had a a gentleman coming here rightfully so a couple of weeks ago about the same issue in our community. And we appear to want to take immediate action to help resolve that. I expect the same quick reaction to Barton Chapel when it comes to trying to calm that traffic down. So I'm actually requesting immediate coordination between the Sheriff's Department, Housing Authority, and this body to come up with what is a valid definition of our effort to provide security and safety in all of our communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Wimbley. What I would like to suggest, if we have a community meeting with the Housing Authority, the Sheriff Department, by the way, do we have anyone here from the Sheriff Department? Okay. We have a community meeting with the appropriate parties, and then we could come up to see what we can do about the, the issues at hand about traffic flow and all of that. So if it's okay with you, we will receive this. Ms. Bond, help me with this. Receive it as information, but also plan a community meeting with the said parties.

Okay. Is there someone going to spearhead organizing your community meeting? I will. I will. Okay.

I was just a question had had these departments been contacted or know about this this particular issue yes they have the sheriff has the sheriff department has responded to gunfire in a particular location that was identified housing has responded IN THE TERMS OF POSSIBLE EVICTION OF SOME OF THE RESIDENTS FROM THAT AREA BASED OFF THIS REQUEST. SO THEY ARE AWARE OF WHAT'S GOING ON.

OKAY. MR. JOHNSON, COMMISSIONER JOHNSON.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. TO THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT, CODE ENFORCEMENT, ARE THERE ANY CODE VIOLATIONS? or any kind of record that you all are aware of on file from Barton Chapel Village?

I have 57 open cases in the neighborhood.

57 open cases since when?

I don't have that.

Has it been fairly recent?

This is spanning, I would assume, over a couple years.

Okay. 57 open cases. And is this particular property owned by housing or is it privately owned? This is throughout the whole neighborhood. Throughout the whole neighborhood. Okay. Can you also provide us a report of that? the properties, the cases that are pending and those types of things. Can you provide that to this body just so that we'll have an understanding of what are some of the issues that we're facing over here?

Got it.

Thank you.

I say we have Mr. Freeman at the point you would like to speak to. the discussion.

I can. I can wait till he's done or I can go now if you'd like. Yes, ma'am. My name is Douglas Freeman. I'm the Executive Director of the Augusta Housing Authority and I'd like to address some of the comments Commissioner Wembley made. So I received an email from him on May 8th, on Friday May 8th, regarding three specific issues that he raised. He reported significant criminal behavior coming from a specific address, 2421 Amsterdam Drive, which is one of our properties. He reported a substantial number of Augusta Housing Authority properties not being adequately maintained and reported, and I'll use his language there, broken window syndrome on those properties. and then his request for coordination between the Richmond County Sheriff's Office and Augusta Housing Authority to address these concerns. And so obviously those issues are very concerning. And so we did immediate site visits at Barton Village at our properties there. One of the things I'd like to mention though, we have approximately 155 units at Barton Village out of, I believe it's close to 550 total properties at Barton Village. SO IT'S A VERY BIG MIX OF PRIVATELY OWNED VERSUS HOUSING AUTHORITY PROPERTIES. I HAD MY STAFF TAKE A PICTURE OF EVERY SINGLE PROPERTY THAT WE OWN AT BARTON VILLAGE. AND WITH YOUR PERMISSION, I'VE GOT A SLIDE SHOW THAT I'LL RUN WHILE WE'RE OKAY. I'll just let this run while I address his comments. While we did find a couple of units that needed some attention, overall I would put to you that the vast majority of our properties out there are not in the condition that has been described. We do have some issues that we need to address, and I appreciate him bringing that up so that we can take care of that. Some of those have already been addressed as of today, as well as some have work orders open with our maintenance department to take care of. Specifically, the address that he referred to that had a lot of criminal activity, we reached out to Richmond County Sheriff's Office and asked for a list of all reports over the last 24 months at that property. And Richmond County replied back that there had been no calls for service at that particular address. So I'm not sure if there was a different address that should have been looked up, but that particular one had no calls for service at it. One of the things that he mentioned on there was the call for us to coordinate with Richmond County Sheriff's Office. And I would say that we do that on a regular basis. Richmond County Sheriff has staff that have cell phone numbers for my management staff, as well as my management staff have phone numbers for several Richmond County Sheriff's lieutenants and deputies. and when there's an issue at one of our properties almost always we are notified pretty quickly of that we'll get a copy of the police report and then enforce our lease as appropriate depending on the severity of the incident I WILL SAY THAT DURING TAKING THESE PICTURES, WE DO HAVE A LIST. I DIDN'T GO THROUGH EVERY PROPERTY, ALL 550 PROPERTIES THERE, BUT THERE ARE A NUMBER OF UNITS IN THE BARTON CHAPEL NEIGHBORHOOD THAT WERE IN SERIOUS DISREPAIR, HOLES AND ROOFS. LOOKS LIKE SOME HAD BURNT OR HAD FIRES AND HAD NOT BEEN REPAIRED, THAT SORT OF THING. A LOT OF OVERGROWN CONDITIONS. THOSE PROPERTIES WERE NOT AUGUSTA HOUSING AUTHORITY PROPERTIES. Again, we did identify some issues that we needed to deal with, but there were no broken windows on our properties. There were no holes in our roofs. The roofs have been repaired after the hurricane damage, so there are no blue tarps remaining on any of our roofs. There were a couple of yards that needed the grass cut in them, but it wasn't overgrown as such. And every picture that's going through the screen now is a picture of every one of our units. I did not cherry pick any one of our units to show. So if you see something that needs work, you can rest assured that we've already identified that and are taking care of it. But by and large, we stand by the properties that we have out at Barton Village.

Mr. Freeman, I have one question. The ones that's on the screen now, those are the ones that you all manage yourself. This does not include Section 8 housing.

That is correct.

Okay. Commissioner Wimbley.

What's the date of these photos?

These were dated May 8th and I think the 10th or the 11th. So the Friday that you sent me the email and then the Monday and or Tuesday directly following.

So when I see that little red sticker in the window, that has that housing authority warning about smoking. Is that your property?

Generally, yes.

Generally, yes, right. So what I'm seeing here is not necessarily what I saw when I walked the grounds. I never saw these manicured yards, even the one that looked like they were well-maintained. I never even saw these manicured yards. So I'm not sure what you're trying to show with these photos, but it's definitely not what is in Barton Village. And when I saw that red sticker in the window, And I read that sticker that indicated to me that that was a housing authority property. I didn't see these manicured yards that you're showing now. So you're here to tell me that if I get in my vehicle and go to Bond Village and drive through there, this is the only thing that I will see.

No, sir. I'll remind you that of the 500.

But you didn't show me any of the ones that have problems.

this is every one of the properties that the Augusta Housing Authority owns in Barton Village. So there are 550 properties. We own about 155 of them in that development. So there are, what, 400 additional properties that are not owned by the Augusta Housing Authority in that development. If you recall, when we sent the emails back and forth, I asked you if there were other addresses and you said, if I just drive through, then I'll see what you're talking about. So again, I had a picture of every one of our units in this slideshow and I can provide a copy of it to you, or if you'd like, we can meet and go drive out those properties.

I don't even need to meet and drive through and then I'll stand corrected on the property that I'm talking about. But if I drive through and that red sticker's on that window, then that's your property, am I correct?

So we do put a red sticker on each of our properties, yes sir. It's a warning about smoking because the federal law says that we can't smoke.

Exactly.

Yes sir. But if you give me a specific address, then I can look at that particular address or I can pull up that picture on the slideshow and you can see what the building looks like as of two weeks ago when these photos were taken.

So the sheriff's department based off that street address had no complaints on that street?

That's correct. They replied that they had no information in their database for that address at 2421.

But they didn't say they had no complaints on that street?

No, sir. That's not what I asked. You gave me a specific address that there were complaints.

I didn't do that. I didn't do that because it was given to me as a specific address.

I understand.

Okay. Thank you. So there's no issue with any of your housing, any of your houses there. No complaints from any of the property that you own.

No, sir, I won't say that at all. So we did identify some physical issues that we needed to take care of. For example, I don't know if it's already gone by or not, there were two units where the shutter had fallen askew on the front of the house and needed to be addressed. There are some issues with cars that are parked in the grass that is against our lease. We don't allow cars to park in the yard and we're addressing those issues. And from a crime standpoint, When we receive reports, I think in that email I gave you the address of the unit of the people we're evicting due to criminal activity. When we receive those reports, we enforce our lease.

Okay. When Planned was talking about they had a code enforcement violation, some cars that was moved, there was a move from a house that had that red sticker in it.

I'm not aware of any code violations that planning has given the Augusta Housing Authority for any of our properties at Barton Village.

I don't know how they report it, but they removed those vehicles. So I'm not walking through and just hallucinating on what I see.

I understand.

So you're telling me none of those are your property, even the one that I saw that had issues, that had the little red stick on it, That might not be your property.

Again, if you can give me the address, I can verify that it is or is not our property.

All right. So we'll do that ride through.

Okay.

Okay. Oh, and by the way, I don't think I ever told you in a... Oh, somebody got my... What? Look at that. No.

There was a campaign sign in the yard.

No, what am I... Commissioner Johnson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Doug, good to see you. Question for you. Of the properties that you all own, do you also have a number of properties that you've applied vouchers to? Section 8 vouchers that you've given out from the Housing Authority in this neighborhood?

Yes, sir. I'm sure there are.

Okay, how does that work? So if you have, if the Housing Authority applies a voucher to, or grants a voucher to a family in this neighborhood, and let's just say, for instance, they are one of the families that's contributing to what Commissioner Wimbley is speaking of, how does that work on the Housing Authority's part of where enforcement is concerned?

So a couple of things. So if it's a behavioral issue, then that is a lease violation between the tenant and the landlord or the owner of the property. And we do not get involved in those types of violations. So it would be up to the landlord to process evictions, just like we do for our properties. If there's damage to the property, then when we do our annual inspections, we give an owner an initial 30 days to correct. If they don't correct in the first 30 days, they're given a notice that if they don't correct in the second 30 days, that all payments to them will stop. And if they don't correct by the end of that time, we stop all half payments to that landlord until either the property is corrected and it passes inspection or the contract is terminated with the owner.

Okay, what recourse would we have? I mean, what tools would we have at our disposal in the event that this was happening and it's not a property that you all own, but it's a property that receives a Section 8 voucher? How do we go about finding some type of resolve for the community? I mean, is that a policy that you all adopted? Or I guess my question is if we're not able to get the property owner's attention or get the property owner to do something about the issue, how could the city perhaps partner with the housing authority to get someone's attention other than sticking code enforcement on them?

That would be your primary tool. It would just be like any other private owner that did not comply with code enforcement. You would follow those same rules and regulations.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Commissioner Williams, you have one more comment?

Based on you, you also made a comment that I was talking about damaged roofs and broken windows. Was that in my email?

In your email, you referred to a broken window syndrome when you were... No, that's a syndrome, not actually broken window.

That's a syndrome.

I understand.

You know what a broken window syndrome is? Yes, sir.

I'm familiar with the term.

If you don't maintain your property, then the community can suffer from that. Right. Yes, sir. That's a syndrome.

Thank you. Before we move from, I just want to clarify the meeting that Ms. Bonner, that I would like to have, would you please make sure Administrator Allen is a part of it, the planning and development, the sheriff department, of course, Mr. Wembley. And can we receive this as information without objection to convene a community meeting with those that I just mentioned and the Housing Authority? And as soon as possible.

Yes. Madam Chair, would you make sure the Sheriff's Department is a part of that?

Thank you. They're included. I think the only person I did not.

Planning and Development, the Sheriff's Department, Commissioner Wembley, the Administrator's Office, and the Housing Authority. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, Madam Chair, did you have a specific date or time you wanted this meeting to be convened? As soon as possible. As soon as possible. Okay. Okay, so that takes us to number five, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Item number five is addressing homelessness in South Augusta, Commissioner Wembley. Commissioner Wembley.

This is one that I actually help with because I've been asked what to do about homelessness. I know we do the point in time where we take census of how many homeless people we have, but when I'm asked what do we do about it, I don't know what to say. Right now, South Augusta, which have no resources for homeless folks, We don't have no shelter. We don't have no soup kitchen. We don't have anything to support homelessness. So what we have is we have homeless folks that are camping out in drive-through businesses behind establishment, next to telemachines that are out in the open and they just laying there in the grass. trying to protect themselves best they can. This is in deep South Augusta. When I approached them and asked them, how do you get support? Have you tried getting someplace to sleep overnight? Well, the thing about it is, they have to get that down, for example, Salvation Army. Well, we don't have no bus service out in South Augusta, so they can't get down public transportation. And again, we have no resources for them. So how are we supposed to handle this? And what agency that is the one that we report to and how can we get these folks moved to a better place?

Well, Ms. Commissioner Wembley, I believe Commissioner Johnson and I have been saying that for the last five years. What do we do? How do we do? with our outside neighbors. I see Commissioner Johnson is in the queue. I don't know if this is something, Commissioner Johnson, we need to put on the task force agenda, which meet every month. I know it's on a Thursday, but I just forgot what Thursday, but it's truly something that we've been talking about for a while. Commissioner Johnson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Wimbledon for raising this issue. First, I'll start by saying that I will personally get you connected to the leadership of the Homeless Task Force because they have a number of resources that they can connect you with where this is concerned. I mean, even with how transit has been gracious with providing transportation to our unhoused communities, I think this is good to start there. But I also wanna take this as an opportunity to raise this issue again, is that we've been talking about the issue of homelessness in our community since 2021, when we established the task force. And while we have federal dollars at our disposal, we have some federal dollars in our coffers. We ought to use them to make sure that folks have places to go. That's why it bothers me a lot when we talk about certain aspects of services that some departments offer. We talk about them as if they're not important or as if they're not critical to our community. We have to make sure that we're leveraging our federal dollars and leveraging any kind of opportunities like SPLOST and other dollar opportunities to address this community. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, we're probably at about maybe 1400 people who are considered unhoused in our community. That could change, that could fluctuate from here to there. But I say this, and I say it very proudly, is that we are not so far gone yet as a community to where we can't reel this issue in. And if we continue to do nothing or if we continue to act as though this is someone else's issue or we continue to overlook the homeless issue in our budget or in our SPLOST or in any other area like we did in previous SPLOST and in previous budget years, we're gonna continue to have this issue. 1400 is gonna turn into 1800 and 1800 is gonna turn into 2500 and it's gonna grow out of control. I also wanna say that we can't just say, that the Salvation Army, and this is not to, because I know I agree with you 100% on what you're saying, but this is just Jordan Johnson's soapbox, I gotta get it off my chest. We can't just say the Salvation Army's gonna handle it because if they could, they wouldn't have people laying in hallways because they're overcrowded. We can't say that the rescue mission can because if they could, they would. we have to be more intentional about following the strategic plan that the Homeless Task Force created almost six years ago and fund what we expect. So what I would suggest we do is reconnect with the task force, but I will also say, let's get them up here to give a presentation And to make an ask of this body. And I think it would also be helpful for this body, for the commission, to revisit that strategic plan. And if we need to make tweaks, let's make tweaks with the task force at the table. Because I see the people at the 520 and Windsor Spring I see them there. I see them on Washington Road. I see them everywhere. And what that shows us is that there's a need in the community. So two things. I will connect you personally to the task force leadership, but I will also continue to make a plea to this body is that when we have an opportunity to set aside funds or we have an opportunity in packages like SPLOST or other areas to invest in addressing this issue, we shouldn't pass up on the opportunity to do so. AND SO I'LL ADD THE TASK FORCE AND SOME TYPE OF REVISIT OF THAT STRATEGIC PLAN TO THE AGENDA SO WE CAN ALL BE ON THE SAME PAGE AS TO WHAT DIRECTION THAT AGENCY OR THAT COMMITTEE IS TRYING TO TAKE OUR COMMUNITY. BUT YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, COMMISSIONER WIMBERLEY, THERE ISN'T REALLY ANYTHING THAT THIS COMMISSION CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE HEAD ON BUT WE HAVE COMMUNITY PARTNERS AND WHATEVER RESOURCES WE DO HAVE, I SUGGEST THAT WE COME TO THE TABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THEM PROPERLY. So that's my support for you on that one, sir. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair. Yes. Well, I appreciate that from my colleague. Who does this task force, homeless task force, fall under, and what does this body have to do with it?

I believe we always have a chair at the table. They do not report to us, but they are in partnership with us. I try to go to the meetings. I don't go every meet. If I don't go once a month, I go every other month. So we are engaged at the table, but this is a volunteer meeting. community-led organization that has been around for I believe for a while but it was officially came on board with Commissioner Johnson came aboard and we had it for a while but now it is a community-based organization that we do have a seat at the table.

so i'm going to interpret that my way is that this body since there's there's a volunteer organization out there they're trying to handle our homelessness that we could wash our hands of the whole deal and we have no responsibility to our residents as a body to ensure that we're maintaining their idea of a pleasant, or we happen to maintain the idea of a pleasant community. they're reporting to me that they're, the residents are reporting to me that they're having concerns when they drive down that street and they see these folks laying out by a bank teller machine. They're concerned when they go to a supermarket and there's these homeless folks with these carts. And this is in South Augusta now. So to them, especially when you talk about April, when we're saying we're cleaning up Washington Road because of the master, and then pop, there's a fluctuation, a homeliness in South Augusta. To them, it appears that you're pushing them there. You meaning our law enforcement that is trying to move them from an unpleasant site to somewhere else, and somewhere else appear to be South Augusta. So that is how they're putting it to me. And that is by what you just said, that this body is doing nothing about it.

No, sir, I did not say that. I said that we don't have the authority. They are not regulated with us. We are in partnership with them. And what you just said, Commissioner Wimbledon, I think that's more of a law enforcement thing. more so than a commission issue. Commissioner Johnson, you are back in the queue.

Yes, ma'am. To add additional clarity, with the Homeless Task Force, there's a street outreach team. The Sheriff's Office also has a homeless outreach team. And so I understand when people say they feel concerned about when they go certain places and they see folks who are experiencing homelessness, they can call the sheriff's office and the sheriff's office will send their homeless outreach team out and encourage that person or those people to, you know, get in the car, let's go find some services. They will work with those individuals to find a better option versus laying on the street or something like that. I get it. When I step outside of my house at 5 o'clock in the morning, they're on my front stoop. They're on my porch every morning. I say, good morning, have a wonderful day, and I keep it moving. So I understand it. But again, it shows us that Augusta, Richmond County has more work to do in this area, in this arena. But I would just suggest that if anyone is having issues or if anyone is not even just having issues, if they just feel concerned, about the visible presence of someone who is homeless, right? Just give the homeless outreach team through the sheriff's office a call and say, there's a male here who needs help, or there's a mom and a child here who needs help. They will go out, they will help. they will not arrest these people. They will not be sent to jail for being homeless, but they will be diverted into having resources. Now, some folks, depending on the response or depending on what the issue is, you just really can't control that portion of it. But the commission created the task force to go do the work I think that our responsibility is to help connect the community to that task force and to help connect the community to the sheriff's office so that those resources that they've built can be put to use. I mean, it is not to police the issue, but it's to actually literally go out and hand it out. I mean, I've seen the homeless outreach team and the street outreach team go into encampments with service providers and resource pamphlets, right? So that work is being done, but it's just a matter of being connected to them.

Madam Chair, all that was really good. Matter of fact, my first effort to deal with the homelessness, a call was made and I'm driving up and down the street and I see this person that is actually in this one position, one location rather. I come back by that same location, I see a sheriff called out. And I think, oh man, did they move fast? Now they're gonna resolve this issue. Later I came, matter of fact, I made a phone call to tell one of the residents that, hey, that's been taken care of. I came back later and I saw this individual there again and I asked him some question, not probing him and not prodding him, wanted to know if I could help. and my first question was when the sheriff was here what the sheriff's department was here what did they do she said all they talked about was that shopping cart that i had that i'm not supposed to take shopping carts that was the contact that was made with that person according to that person okay so it wasn't like let's get you somewhere for safekeeping or for service or support it was about a shopping cart Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bonner. We received this discussion as information, and there's truly more work we need to do with our homeless, our outdoor neighbors. It's not a quick fix. I know for the last five years, we've been talking about it diligently, and maybe it's something that we need to... look closely at and make sure that when we budget time this Administrator Allen and the next blocks where we do something for housing. There's something we have to do. And on a personal note, you know, some people, as my brother for a while did not want to be, he wanted time off from society and he wanted to live that type of life. So you do have people that's going to be constant home, outdoor neighbors.

So we have to continue

we have to consider that as well and i know for me i'm familiar with the one lady that you reference uh because several people have called me on that particular one but i get homeless um outdoor neighbors issue almost on the daily period so uh daily basis so uh let's continue to work with our um sheriff department who has a department and also let's remember that bring suggestions or idea to the Homeless Task Force. Commissioner Johnson, do you have the date, what Thursday the Homeless Task Force and what time? And I think they meet down at the South...

I will send that information to Ms. Bonner to disseminate to the commission. Thank you. And I'll get it to Ms. Allen so that it can be put on our social media accounts as well.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

With that, Ms. Bonner, I think public safety is concluded.

On your finance committee, while we posted the agenda, the supporting documentation was not included. I've spoken with Attorney Plunkett, our parliamentarian, and he has given us the recommendation that you can discuss this matter today, if you'd like. Or if not, we can reschedule it to your next meeting.

Okay. We can reschedule it to the next meeting. That way I'm able to know what I'm talking about. Okay.

Well, yeah, it's a budget calendar. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Yeah. From the administrator. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Ms. Allen, would that be okay? Any deadlines you have to...

Yes, ma'am, because it coordinates with certain dates that we're trying to meet. Put it on the commission. Can we just take it to the full commission?

We can take it to the full commission. Attorney Plunkett, you have something.

I was going to suggest let it roll without recommendation.

Yes. If we could without, you said without recommendation, without objection. Is that correct?

I think either one would be fine.

Okay. ALL RIGHT. YES, SIR. JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I WAS BEING CORRECT IN HOW I STATED IT. YES, IF WE COULD HAVE THAT ROLL OVER TO THE FULL COMMISSION WITHOUT OBJECTION.

THANK YOU, COMMISSIONER PULLEY.

YES, MA'AM. THAT CONCLUDES FINANCE.

Yes, ma'am. I'd like to bring Engineering Services Committee to order. Madam Clerk, do we have any additions or deletions?

No, sir, but we have an amendment to item number five.

Yes, ma'am. Can you clarify the amendment?

Yes, sir. On item number five, proposed condition, the second sentence in that section would like to modify it to say the condition shall also be included as a zoning exception requirement for the use of this site as a transfer station. Additionally, authorize the Augusta Engineering and Environmental Services Director to provide the request consistency letter to AWS, Augusta Engineering.

All right. Committee, it was just read in. Are there any objections with including that proposed change to that proposed language? All right. Without objection? good commissioner okay all right cool all right um madam um clerk i'm gonna propose um items one through six for consent one two six yes ma'am one through six for consent uh committee members are there any questions or concerns or is there one that you would like pooled for discussion would just like to ask for some clarity on the on the transfer station okay so number five number five all right madam uh yep madam clerk we're gonna pull number five for discussion items one two three four and six um we're gonna move those for consent okay all right ready to vote madam uh we need a motion you have something can i hear a motion second got a motion in a second let's vote mr johnson and Commissioner Wimbley second. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that.

That motion carries with Mr. Guilfoyle absent.

Yes, ma'am. You want to read the... Number five in again with the new language.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Item number five is to consider discussing and conditionally approving Atlantic Waste Services request for a consistency letter related to the construction and operation of a solid waste transfer station facility at 927 Molly Pond Road, Augusta, Georgia. The proposed condition shall also be included No, okay, the proposed condition also solid waste accepted or collected at the transfer station shall be disposed of at the Augusta Dean's Bridge Road landfill. This condition shall also be included as a zoning exception requirement for the use of this site as a transfer station. Additionally, authorized the Augusta Engineering and Environmental Services Director to provide the requested consistency letter to AWS.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. We're going to bring up our engineering director, Dr. Malik. Commissioner Wimberly, you had some question on this, so go ahead and take it away, sir.

My question is why the need for the transfer station?

Good afternoon. I think this is a business opportunity for them to use this facility. It's an industrial area. My understanding is it's not under use. So they wanted to bring it back into use and provide the opportunity to maybe small haul or something, bring it there. And then they will kind of put it in a big roll-off container and bring it to the disposal side. And that's what the requirement. And they are agreeing to this condition that they will bring that waste to our landfill. So there's no negative impact to the Augusta landfill revenue.

So would this assist with the traffic at the landfill by having smaller haulers to go down?

Yeah, well, it will help out from that, not only from the traffic, but sometimes, you know, those like pickup trucks and all, they have difficulty to get on to the hill and, you know, on that road. But they're represented there in more question.

I just wanted to know, what was causing this to be a transfer station, since the waste itself is going to wind up at the landfill. So that's why I asked.

Yeah, it's a business decision, so whatever model they are using, you know.

I got it. Thank you.

Thank you. For us, you know, we're looking at the impact to our landfill, to the environment, to the nature resource. So it's already in the area, which is already industrial. Got it.

Thank you.

You yield, Commissioner Wimbley? I do. All right. There's a question Commissioner Scott has. I'm going to let her word that, Dr. Malik, she's relaying some concerns from the community.

uh commissioner scott mr chairman i would like to address dr malik please yes ma'am dr malik i've gotten some this is an existent um site correct they're already um doing this waste

No, it's not. It's an existing industrial size, Molly Pond Road, but it was a different operation. Correct. Representative can explain more, but it's in that area. They're already recycling facility and all other things, so they just want to use this facility and convert it into the transfer stations.

is because Turpin Hill community have called me a couple of times about, I think they saw it in a paper or something, and they was asking me about this. And have anybody reached out to the community to make them aware that this is an existing site? Or have they had any contact at all with anyone?

This is one of the requirement before they go to the zoning. So they're gonna go to Planning Commission to get the exception and that time I'm assuming the community will be informed and all but we as engineering can also make effort to inform them. So that's what I'm proposing that condition with that exception of the Planning Commission approve it THAT CONDITION, IF THEY'RE NOT BRINGING WASTE TO OUR LANDFILL, THEN THEY'LL BE OUT OF COMPLIANCE, SO THEY CANNOT OPERATE. BUT BACK TO, COMMISSIONER, YOUR QUESTION, I'M NOT AWARE OF IT, BUT I CAN WORK WITH OUR PLANNING, BECAUSE STILL THIS HAS TO GO FOR EXCEPTION TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION THROUGH PLANNING REPORTING.

Okay, I just kind of did to them that they need to make sure the community is involved in this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Scott. That's a good point. I'm assuring that the community is ready and but this is one step in the process before it goes to plan and zone in which that will be notification as well. And Commissioner Scott, I guess we can, you know, make sure that we do a left for that to give specific word to the community members. Um, when it comes before playing his own as well.

Yes, ma'am, and I also see our president of our neighborhood association sitting in the back, too, so we'll make sure that we get the word out to the community.

Yes, ma'am. Yep, great point to bring up. All right, committee members, any, oh, I'm sorry, Dr. Lee.

sorry I forgot to mention there is a requirement to have a public meeting before we issue the letter so sorry I forgot to mention that so yeah that's the requirement of this letter too so okay so is the public meeting supposed to happen before this is issued or is the plan and zoning meeting a part of that

Because if that's the case, then we're kind of putting the cart before the horse.

So the planning and zoning exception is different on that, you know. So this building meeting, the way it is, you know, department make recommendation to the engineering services, then engineering services make recommendation to the full commission, and then the process starts.

Okay. Do we have a public meeting scheduled? Have we gone to that phase of it? Because if this comes to the commission, with that being a requirement and that not happening, how does that work? Because you're saying we're supposed to have that before we approve it?

With the committee approval and the commission approval, then we'll go through the rest of the requirements before the latter. That's the way it's kind of written. I know it's a little bit but I'm probably not in an order the way it is.

Okay, so I think to the point so that we can make sure to address the concerns of the community and that we can be transparent in this process. Please work with the administrator's office and then so that we can work with our public affairs team so that we can get some something out if we're gonna have a meeting we need to be able to get some notification out but more importantly we need to be able to alert the folks impacted if not then we're just kind of speaking in a vacuum and we're intentionally doing it because we don't want folks to show up so let's put everything in place and I'm not saying that's what you're doing or your intentions but that's will be perceived if we don't appropriately announce this okay

Yes, sir. Yeah. And we work with the planning to, because that exception will come back to this body.

Yeah. So if you can work with the administrator, matter administrator, you send us out the notification so that we can help ensure community members are informed and are attending at the meeting. And then of course we have the neighborhood association president back there who's always on point with alerting folks. But yeah, I think it's important though that we make folks informed of this, okay?

Yes, sir.

The gentleman standing with you, did they have something that you wanted them to present or they were just here for moral support if we had any additional questions?

If any question, more detailed question about the plan and all that.

He said he had some clarification. Yes, sir, come on up. Please give your name, who you represent.

My name is Curtis Reynolds with Harbin Engineering. and I'm representing the Atlanta Waste Services. Ben Wall is here as the president and owner of Atlanta Waste Services. They're the company wishing to site this facility. The current facility is a, I guess, was a fertilizer facility, fertilizer building. It is currently... kind of damage from hurricane and is no longer in use. So it is currently not used as a transfer station at this time. The proposed project is to reconstruct or improve that facility in order that it may be able to be used as a transfer station. And then upon receiving this consistency would move forward in that process as was discussed. We'll be happy to answer any additional questions that there is any, but the desire is to support Augusta, the Augusta landfill. in providing solid waste collection and transfer services, we would be combining the waste in roll-off container, from roll-off containers and residential COLLECTION INTO A TRANSFER TRAILER SUCH THAT TAKE EIGHT OR THREE TO 10-TON LOADS AND COMBINE IT INTO A 22-TON LOAD ON A TRANSFER TRAILER AND TAKE THAT SEMI TO THE LANDFILL. THE LAND AWAY SERVICES OFFERS TO ASSIST IN INSTALLING A TIPPER TO UNLOAD THOSE TRAILERS AT THE LANDFILL EFFICIENTLY. to cut down traffic to the landfill and to work as a partner with the city of Augusta. Land and Waste Services started in 1999 in Savannah and has worked as a partner there. With that city, they currently operate a transfer station in Pooler. And so they're just looking to expand their business area into the Augusta region.

right sir i appreciate that committee members uh colleagues i don't see anyone in the queue so i don't see any additional questions um if there's no uh additional questions uh do i have a motion to approve this conditionally approved based on the community meeting um go ahead and turn your mic on sir

Sorry, Mr. Chairman. A motion to approve as stated on the screen. Second.

Right. Modify it to include the... Postcondition.

That's going to be modified. Right.

From what she had read out. It's different from what's on the screen. That's what she's clarifying.

All right. So motion to approve based off of the infinite wisdom of Ms. Bonner.

I don't think that's legal. just joking just joking but based on the modification read by the clerk um we're making the motion for that do i hear a second second please miss bonner let us vote i know right that motion carries with mr guilfoyle out all right thank you madam clerk that um concludes engineering services thank you all very much thank you

Ms. Bonner, I'd like to call administrative services to order, if you're ready.

Yes, sir, I am.

Are there any additions or deletions?

No, sir.

All right, all right. If there are no objections, I'd like to consent items one, two, three, four, and six. You want to fight about it? One, two, three, four, and six. I'll entertain a motion towards that. So moved. Second. Ms. Slendak and Mr. Clark. Voting Ms. Bonner. Show up. You telling me to shut up? No, I said, did it show up?

It's unanimous.

All right, Ms. Bonner, we will go top to bottom.

Okay, that takes us to item number five, receive presentation regarding the class and compensation study conducted by Siegel and provide directions on the next steps for implementation.

All right. Ms. Rookert, how are you? Good.

Good afternoon, Commission, Mayor and Commission. Today, we are here. Siegel is here, Patrick Brecken, our representative who participated in the class and compensation study with us is here to present to you our findings and their recommendations. Patrick.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. JUST NEED TO WAKE UP MY LAPTOPS. JUST NEED TO WAKE UP MY LAPTOPS. ONE SECOND. ONE SECOND.

WHILE WE'RE WAITING, CAN YOU WHILE WE'RE WAITING, CAN YOU INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO COMMISSION AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO COMMISSION AND MS. BONNER? MS. BONNER? SURE CAN. SURE CAN.

SORRY, I HAVE TO DO BOTH SORRY, I HAVE TO DO BOTH THINGS. THINGS. MY NAME IS PATRICK BRACKEN. MY NAME IS PATRICK BRACKEN. I'M A SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT WITH I'M A SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT WITH SIEGEL. SIEGEL. WE ARE HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE WE ARE HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE COMPREHENSIVE CLASSIFIC

uploaded apologies i just need to you don't want to share your password i do not thank you for picking up on that while mr brick and does that you all should have a handout that commissioner garrett gave to all of you so that is what you're going to use to follow along

HOPEFULLY THAT SHOULD TRANSFER BACK OVER. For today, we have a fairly, I wouldn't say aggressive agenda, but we do have a lot of topics to cover. Just to give us some footing for what we want to talk about, we want to address first our study methodology, second, jump into the classification analysis phase, then talk about the total compensation study survey process, move into the study findings, and conclude with the salary structure design and next steps. So for study methodology, this is a slide that we shared very early on in the engagement that really gives us a sense of why do this study and why do it now. And I'm just going to read the study goal because I think it is worth the audience hearing that the overarching goal of all of these work streams was to determine the relative worth of Augusta's job titles within the organization, what we in HR call internal equity, as well as determine Augusta's market position for pay and benefits, which we refer to as external equity, and develop the job classification and compensation structures that are sustainable and applicable to both. Augusta wants to ensure that first, positions, so those are employees, that they are appropriately classified, meaning they are in the right job title, that the position descriptions, also known as job descriptions, are accurate and reflect the work that are performed by employees, that the compensation and benefit systems that are offered to employees are competitive with the local labor market, and that Augusta can continue to recruit and retain high performing talent. SOME OVERARCHING PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND PRINCIPLES ON THE LEFT. SOME OF THE OBJECTIVES THAT WERE GUIDING OUR WORK ALONG THE WAY WERE TO MAKE SURE THAT IN ALL OF OUR COMMUNICATIONS BOTH WITH THE HUMAN RESOURCES TEAM AND THEN THE WORKFORCE AT LARGE, THAT THE INTENT WAS TO COLLECT INFORMATION SO THAT OUR RECOMMENDATIONS AND OUR OUTPUT COULD BE A CLEAR DEFINITION OF ALL THE JOB ROLES, THAT WE ALSO HAVE DONE THE WORK TO UNDERSTAND WHERE COMPENSATION MAY BE ADEQUATE OR WHERE THERE MAY BE OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT. USE THAT INFORMATION TO PROVIDE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REVISIONS TO THE EXISTING STRUCTURES THAT AUGUSTA DOES MAINTAIN AND THEN WE UPDATED ALL OF THE CORRESPONDING JOB DESCRIPTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH THE JOBS WE REVIEWED. A COUPLE OF THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES, I WON'T READ ALL OF THESE, BUT JUST TO GIVE YOU A FLAVOR, WE REALLY WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT OUR WORK IS EASILY UNDERSTOOD, THAT IT'S FLEXIBLE AND MEETS THE VARIETY OF DIFFERENT NEEDS THAT AUGUSTA'S DEPARTMENTS HAVE, THAT IT COMES AT THIS FROM A FINANCIALLY SOUND PERSPECTIVE, AND IT HAS AN EYE TOWARDS BEING DESIGNED SUCH THAT IT CAN BE EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY ADMINISTERED IN THE FUTURE. A COUPLE THINGS THIS IS NOT ABOUT. WE WERE NOT LOOKING AT HEAD COUNT OF EMPLOYEES, MEANING WE WERE NOT ASKED TO OPINE ON THE NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES THAT ARE REQUIRED TO PERFORM A PARTICULAR JOB FUNCTION. ADDITIONALLY, WE WERE NOT ASKED TO EVALUATE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE. SO THIS IS NOT ABOUT JOB PERFORMANCE OR HOW WELL OR NOT WELL AN EMPLOYEE IS PERFORMING THEIR JOB. and accordingly we were not asked to opine on staffing levels for job classifications our project has spanned a couple years now and it's broken down primarily into the five silos here starting from the left the project initiation phase really is a kind of a getting to know you um part of the process where we do a lot of interviews and direct liaisonship with stakeholders both within hr and outside of hr to make sure that we understand the the playing field that our proposed work plan is going to be actionable and workable for how augusta communicates and interacts with its workforce And once we got those parameters in place, we then moved on to the classification analysis, which fundamentally related to what we call a job description questionnaire process, a JDQ. That helped us understand the duties, responsibilities, knowledge, skills, abilities, minimum job requirements, kind of everything you would need for a comprehensive and well-written job description to be able to do that classification architecture work. Once we concluded with that, we moved on to the total compensation market assessment, then used that to develop the recommendations and now are today presenting our final results. And I've got more details on each of these phases on the subsequent slides. With regard to the classification analysis, one of the main goals here was to take the variety of different forms of job documentation that Augusta maintains in the form of position postings, job descriptions, and the like, and use the job description questionnaire process, which solicited feedback directly from employees and then validated by their managers and or reviewers. to confirm the accuracy of the information but all of this work really is aimed at developing a revised classification architecture that in some cases develops new job titles in other cases recommends the combination of job titles for redundancy purposes or minimizing duplication is another way to say that, or we created brand new classifications based on the work that we saw from the JDQs. And in all that effort, it was a very iterative process of going back and forth with HR and the Segal team, we were able to propose a revised classification structure that looked at 836 initial JDQs covering about 728 job titles. And within each of those job titles, we recommended what we call a job family overlay. So these are, if you think of job families as similarly situated jobs, so things like administrative support or IT or HR or finance, the jobs are grouped in those families and that can help the organization look at jobs that are similarly situated when needed in future evaluations. After all was said and done in the various permutations, we ended up with 572 unique job titles that then we were able to document a complete and accurate job description and those have been delivered to Augusta. Once we completed that phase of the work, we then moved on to the compensation study portion, which was a custom survey process. So this was a total compensation study, meaning that we were looking at both pay. So when we think about pay, we think about the pay ranges associated with each of the Augusta positions, as well as benefit offerings, specifically paid leave, health, and retirement. A couple of the first foundational steps are to what we call identify the benchmark jobs. So we don't survey every job title. It's not best practice in compensation benchmarking to do so. So we identified benchmark jobs that are representative of the variety of departments, pay grades, levels, and functions throughout the organization. We then worked with the HR team to identify the public sector peer employers that we would survey directly. And we distributed that survey. We Siegel collected that information. We had direct engagement with the survey participants. In some cases, in many cases, we have to clean up their data or ask follow-up questions. And we used all of that to inform our recommendations and findings. With regard to the custom survey market survey document, for those who might not have seen a custom survey process before, what we use in the identification of the benchmark job titles is the information coming from the job classification phase. So I talked earlier about the job descriptions and the work to update those. Once we have that done, we then feel more confident to go out to the marketplace and accurately and more completely describe the current job responsibilities when we're asking for peer employers to provide answers to what their corresponding job match may be. And so when we send that survey document out, we recognize that job matching, so the exercise of comparing one Augusta job to a peer employer's job is not an exact science. It is part art and part science. But we have a threshold of at least 75% of the duties and responsibilities should be similar between the Augusta job and the peer job for it to be considered a valid match. And we also include the minimum job requirements in terms of education and experience as part of these instructions for job matching, as that's a relevant feature of accurate job matching. As I mentioned before, the surveys also included information, sorry, questions on FLSA, which is Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime exemption status, pay progression, paid leave, retirement, and health. Just to drill down a little bit more on the selection of the benchmark jobs, our survey and our scope included 112 benchmark positions were part of the custom survey process. There are a couple features that we bring to our clients when we talk about the benchmark job selection. First, we want to make sure that the overall goal is that the benchmarks are representative of the totality of the workforce. But there's a couple other features that we want to overlay with that. And first, we want to make sure that the peer employers that are being selected and the benchmark jobs that we're selecting, that they're representative of the types of services that Augusta provides to its constituents. We also want to stay focused where we can on those jobs that are hard to fill or difficult to retain. And we also want to make sure that they are jobs that we are likely to find comparable matches among peer employers. So for example, Augusta may have a very uniquely defined hybrid type job function that may be just unique to how Augusta sets things up. We wouldn't recommend including that as benchmark as it might and probably be unlikely to find a comparable among the peers. So with those parameters in place, we selected the 112 benchmark jobs and then distributed the custom survey. We distributed the custom survey to 13 public sector peer employers per the Segal contract. The identification of the peer employers was a combination of both stakeholder feedback that we received at the beginning of the project, as well as liaisonship with HR and leadership about those public sector peers that are most likely to represent the Augusta's local labor market. AND YOU CAN SEE THEM ON THE TABLE HERE. THE ASTRICS MEANS THAT THE PEER EMPLOYER DID NOT ACTIVELY RESPOND TO OUR SURVEY REQUEST BUT WE WERE ABLE TO EITHER THROUGH DIRECT DATA REQUESTS OF THEM OR MINING INFORMATION THAT WAS AVAILABLE ON THEIR WEBSITES BE ABLE TO COMPLETE A RESPONSE ON THEIR BEHALF. And I'm pleased to report that we were able to collect data for all of the 13 peers, which is 100% participation rate, which is outstanding. Most of our surveys usually are in the high 80s in terms of completion rates. So to have 100% here, we think gives Augusta a robust data set upon which to make decisions. In addition to the custom survey data, which is the public sector peers, we also surveyed what we call published survey sources. And these are private sector dominant compensation data sources that Segal purchases access to and licenses for. This information was collected, but not relied on when developing the salary structure phase, which I'll talk about later, but it really was an informational point for Augusta to understand for the benchmark jobs, how do they compare to private sector data and to public sector data? And the three sources that we listed here were Economic Research Institute, Comp Analyst, and Pay Factors. So with all of the information collected from the market study analysis, the first phase was to design a recommended salary schedule. The second was to recommend the placement of the job titles on those salary structures. We then conducted compression analysis and then have helped Augusta with building a model that can help them with estimating the implementation scenarios. So moving on to study findings, after we did our compensation study, this is our kind of first finding slide as it relates to both the pay comparisons and the total compensation comparisons. And I'll just take a minute to break this down because there's a bunch of numbers on here and there's some color coding. So I think it'll be helpful to just explain how this is set up because we will see some of that same comparison and coding in subsequent slides. So when we think about the data sources, I explained that there were two main cuts of data. There was the public sector peers, the 13 peer employers, and there are the published data sources which is predominantly the private sector information. You'll see in the columns on the right of the table where we have base pay minimum, sorry, base pay range minimum, base pay range midpoint, and base pay range maximum, what we are measuring here are Augusta's formal pay ranges compared to the pay ranges at the peer employers. This is an important distinction, because what we are not measuring here is individual employee compensation. We are measuring pay ranges. So we want to understand the minimum and the maximum pay associated with a job title. And that's what we categorize as pay range information. The market percentages, this is the ratio of Augusta to the market average. So to take an example, if we look at the public sector peers under the base pay range midpoint, 94%. What that means is that for all of the public sector peer employers for which we had a market match, if you average all of Augusta's pay range midpoints and compare that to the average of those public sector peers, you would be at 94% of the market average. Or in other words, Augusta is 94% of the average pay range midpoint among public sector peers. Additionally, if you look at the row below this on the published data sources, it's the same market percentages, but just compared to private sector information. And so taking that same column, the example there shows that Augusta's pay range at midpoints compared to private sector pay range midpoints are 75% of the average. But when you combine the two markets, the public sector and the private sector, from a pay comparison perspective, Augusta is at 84% of the pay range midpoint. I should have worked left and right, sorry. 88% at the pay range minimums, 84% from the pay range midpoints, and 81% of the market average at the pay range maximums. And then the last piece of information on this table are the total compensation comparisons. And I'll show those on the next slide. But in this case, the total compensation, at least at the parent midpoint doesn't change all that much moves from 84% of the average to 85% of the average. just as a technical note the total compensation market position is impacted by the peers higher total contribution for health benefits and for their defined benefit plans compared to augusta's lower premium costs and lower defined benefit contributions and we can see that information broken out a little more clearly on the bar chart that compares the total compensation findings for uh and this is only for the public sector peers i mentioned that early for earlier for total compensation it's only relying on the the the public sector compensation information but the stacked bars here um if you look at the the chart the the first column to the left is for augusta and this is again across all benchmark jobs for which we had sufficient data you've got pay range midpoint in the teal AND THEN KIND OF ADDED ON TO THAT AS A LAYER OF THE CAKE IS THE HEALTH BENEFIT COST, THE RETIREMENT COST THEN IN DARK BLUE FOR A TOTAL AT THE TOP OF 82,978 COMPARED TO THE PUBLIC SECTOR PEER OVERALL MARKET AVERAGE OF 97,835. AND I CAUTION YOU, THIS IS IN AGGREGATE, SO THIS IS FOR ALL OF THE BENCHMARK JOBS TOGETHER, BUT WHEN WE TAKE THAT LOOK OF HOW DOES AUGUSTA COMPARE TO THE TOTAL COMPENSATION INFORMATION, WE CAN SEE THAT THERE IS A GAP BOTH AT THE PAY RANGE SIDE AND THEN AT THE HEALTH BENEFIT SIDE, THERE IS A LOWER CONTRIBUTION FOR AUGUSTA. RETIREMENT IS LESS, BUT NOT THAT MUCH MORE LESS THAN WHAT WE SEE ON THE HEALTH SIDE. So what I've been talking about so far is all in the aggregate, meaning that when looking at all of the 112 benchmark jobs together, but there is variety when you break down the findings by the market competitive corridors. And so what we define as market competitive is, and I should have done this, I apologize, the color coding. The color coding is the definition of our market competitive corridors. So the red indicates less than 95% of the average, which is below market. If it's a black text point, it is a market competitive finding, meaning it's between the 95% and 105% of the average. And if it's blue, it's above 105%. So anywhere in the Segal reporting, when you see that color coding, that same framework applies in terms of the color coding of the market percentages. I was mentioning earlier that there is variety. So based on those corridors, the below market, market competitive and above market categorizations, we have 59 job titles that are below market. We have 21 job titles that are market competitive and 17 job titles that are above market. We then wanted to provide a little more of a breakdown of the information for the market comparisons for pay compared to the peer organizations. So these are the 13 peers that we were either received a survey response or we mined their information. We do adjust the information for any geographic differences. And we use an economic research institute ECONOMETRIC TOOL TO DERIVE THOSE DIFFERENTIALS, BUT THE DATA THAT WE'RE SEEING TODAY IN THE PRESENTATION HAS BEEN ADJUSTED FOR ANY GEOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WHERE THE PEER IS LOCATED AND AUGUST, GEORGIA. AND YOU CAN SEE THAT THE SAME COLOR CODING APPLIES AS BEFORE, WHERE WE HAVE THE MARKET PERCENTAGES FOR EACH OF THE PEER EMPLOYERS FOR THE JOBS FOR WHICH THEY HAD MATCHES. The study did also include some pay policies. And just to highlight some of our key findings on the salary structure increase questions we asked, although Augusta does not increase your salary structure from the last fiscal year that when we did our study, there was a market average salary structure increases out there of anywhere from 2.7 to 4.44%. AGAIN, ALTHOUGH AUGUSTA HADN'T INCREASED ACTUAL EMPLOYEE PAY, THERE WAS ALSO MARKET AVERAGE PAY INCREASES IN THAT LAST FISCAL YEAR RANGING FROM 3.9 TO 4.7%. On the health and dental and vision comparisons, Augusta's total health plan, so this is the medical, dental, and vision employer costs combined, the monthly premium costs are much lower than the market averages across the other tiers of coverage. And that contributes to that lower total compensation cost we saw earlier. ON PAID TIME OFF, AUGUSTA PROVIDES ON AVERAGE FOUR MORE TOTAL PAID TIME OFF DAYS THAN THE MARKET AVERAGE, ALTHOUGH WHEN COMPARED TO, AND THIS IS FOR A PTO PLAN WHICH COMBINES ALL TYPES OF LEAVE, FOR A TRADITIONAL PAID LEAVE DURING YEAR ONE, AUGUSTA PROVIDED APPROXIMATELY FIVE FEWER DAYS THAN THE AVERAGE. And then lastly on the voluntary benefits, we just have some prevalence here in terms of how many peers offered those types of policies. so with all of this in hand we embarked on the exercise of reimagining what a revised salary structure could look like for augusta and for folks that aren't familiar with the the phrase a salary structure this is just more of a definitional slide but it is it is important to keep in mind that it is it is meant to be a A STANDALONE PAY TABLE THAT HAS PAY GRADES, THEY'RE TYPICALLY CALLED PAY GRADES, AND ENUMERATES THE SPECIFIC VALUES ASSOCIATED WITH EITHER IF IT'S A STEP STRUCTURE OR AN OPEN RANGE STRUCTURE, THE MINIMUM, THE MIDPOINT, AND THE MAXIMUM. A STRUCTURE CAN BE REALLY HELPFUL. AUGUSTA HAS A STRUCTURE ALREADY SO THIS WASN'T REVOLUTIONARY, BUT THE DESIGN OF THE STRUCTURE DID PROVIDE US SOME OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENHANCEMENTS AND REFINEMENT. And before I talk in too much detail about those recommendations, I do want to distinguish the difference between paying for a job versus paying for an individual. When we talk about the salary structure and we talk about a pay grade placement, we're talking about the pay range associated for that job. And that usually should be focused on considerations like the market competitiveness of that job, how that job interrelates to other jobs within the organization, and that balance of internal and external equity. Paying for the individual, however, is paying for the people that hold that job. And that typically is a construct of employee credentials, employee demographic information in terms of experience, education, certifications, length of service, So we wanted to just help distinguish those two concepts because we're talking about today when we talk about the salary structures, we're talking about the left side of this chart. We're talking about the salary structure and the pay grades associated with it. There is this other piece that Augusta will have to think about in terms of the individual side, but for purposes of today's presentation, we're really focused on the structure and the jobs. SO WE TITLED THIS SLIDE MODERNIZING AUGUSTA'S SALARY STRUCTURE. ALTHOUGH THERE WEREN'T MAJOR ISSUES WITH THE EXISTING SALARY STRUCTURE, WE DID FIND SOME KEY ISSUES THAT WE WANTED TO TRY TO RECTIFY. WE DID, OF COURSE, AND WE SAW ON THE SLIDES EARLIER, THAT THERE IS A MARKET GAP WHEN IT COMES TO THE PAY RANGE INFORMATION. SO WE THINK THAT THAT IS INDICATING THAT IT'S NOT ALIGNED WITH MARKET CONDITIONS. THERE IS A MULTIPLE PAY SCHEDULE APPROACH NOW THAT WE MAINTAINED PORTIONS OF THAT BUT WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT IN A MINUTE. THERE ARE SOME FLAT PAY RANGES THAT DID NOT REFLECT THE MARKET THAT WE WANTED TO ADDRESS. WHEN YOU DO THE MATH ON THE CURRENT PAY RANGES, WHAT WE CALL THE PAY RANGE MIDPOINT PROGRESSIONS OR THE DIFFERENTIALS, THEY WERE VARYING AND IN SOME CASES DIDN'T MAKE 100% sense. So we wanted to try to clean that up and that the opportunity to explain sort of a logic and how the pace scale is structured because that was lacking in some cases, it can become difficult to recruit some new employees. So some of our new features, we wanted to first and foremost make sure that the pay scale was market competitive. Secondly, we did think there was an opportunity to streamline the number of pay grades. However, adding additional pay grades if Augusta needs to in the future is part of the model and not difficult. We wanted to clean up some of the math progression for the range spreads and the midpoint differentials. And we think that all of that work will help clarify the intent and the logic behind how the pay structure is organized. This is Augusta's current salary schedule. There are 34 grades, and you can see what I was talking about earlier. If you look at the midpoint differential column, in some cases, it's as little as 1%. In some cases, it jumps up to 4%, then back down to 3%, and then kind of jumps all around. AND THAT CAN MAKE IT REALLY DIFFICULT, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT PROMOTIONAL PATHS AND IF EMPLOYEES ARE MOVING FROM ONE GRADE TO ANOTHER, BUT THAT PERCENTAGE IS A DIFFERENT PERCENTAGE THAN SOME PLACE ELSE ON THE PAY SCALE. SO WE THINK THAT FOR CLARITY AND FOR PAY ADMINISTRATION PURPOSES, HAVING A PAY STRUCTURE THAT ADDRESSES SOME OF THOSE MATHEMATICAL FEATURES WOULD BE HELPFUL. And so that was one of the things that we kept an eye on. We did discuss with Augusta different types of pay structures that exist and the open range structure, meaning just an expressed minimum and maximum and employees can be paid at any value in between those two extremes. It makes the most sense and gives Augusta the most flexibility to differentiate employee compensation based on appropriate credentials. And we did, and it's actually easier to see in the graphic, but talk about a midpoint differential that we think makes a little more sense. And so what we did here is we actually created kind of a pyramid approach to the page structure, meaning that when you think about the midpoint progression, the starting pay grades of the structure have at least a seven percent midpoint differential and then that grows to either between eight to ten percent as you work kind of through the middle portion of the structure and then to twelve percent at the top which is very common for for large organizations where they want to especially at the top end of the pay scale have a wider range of employee compensation availability just because of the variety of jobs and the variety of different candidates that are needed to be attracted in those positions. So with that in mind, this was the proposed general salary structure. This structure goes from grade 10 to 28. So there's 18 grades here. We have that midpoint progression we talked about earlier. It's at 7%, then 8%, then 10, then 12. So there's much more logic to how the structure is oriented. And when you take this structure and apply it to the market data that we collected, what I'm showing in the far right table is you'll remember those market percentages from before the 94% at the market midpoint. Now under this structure recommendation, you would move to 106% of the market average. But there was another approach that Augusta wanted us to model for them. And so we kept the same idea here with regard to the, I'm sorry, the same idea within terms of the structure, but we, oh, I should, yeah, here it is, sorry. Just so we're clear, this was the first one I just showed you. And then the request was to see an alternate version. And that alternate version was 3.5% less than that last one. And so when you do that and apply the comparisons, the current comparison stays at 94%. BUT NOW THE PROPOSED STRUCTURE AGAIN ACROSS ALL BENCHMARK JOBS DROPS FROM THE 106% TO THE 104% OF THE PAY RANGE MIDPOINT WHICH IS RIGHT WITHIN THAT MARKET COMPETITIVE CORRIDOR. And I just wanna point out, because I talked earlier about the difference between paying for the job versus paying for the person, that these structures are not the employee increases that would be associated with adoption of these scales. These are simply the tables that would be put in place. The mechanism for assigning people to those pay ranges is a separate process. We maintained the fire salary structure as a separate structure. And in this case, I don't recall if we changed the number of grades, but the structures here as part of the proposed fire salary structure and um that is the only separate structure so we have the general scratch the general structure with two versions and then the proposed fire structure which is also though a cleaned up midpoint differential from that you'll see that in the third column from the left the seven percent eight percent and ten percent now with regard to implementation um this was a a lot of kind of iterative modeling work but the idea for this slide is to kind of give the thinking around how you tackle phasing, the implementation of a new pay structure. And the first option slash phase that we wanna talk with clients about is what we call bringing employees to the new minimum. And so in our model, we first did that because we believe that all employees under the new structure should at least be paid at the minimum of the new pay range. And then there's a whole variety of other factors that go into what could be option two, option three on ad infinitum with regard to other decisions based on the comp philosophy of the organization on how then employees get placed within their new pay range. So at this point, what we had done was provide some initial options for HR's consideration. I believe that information is still being reviewed and next steps are being determined in terms of the implementation options. But for today's purposes, we were really focusing on the overall study methodology, our findings, and then the revised pay structure approaches. Some considerations, though, we've talked with Augusta about. One, we do think it's really important that as best you can, you maintain the salary structure at least every year, at the most, sorry, at a minimum every year, you take a look at what's happened in the marketplace and determine if the pay structure needs modification or adjustment. At least every three years, think about doing some type of compensation benchmarking work. Doesn't have to be as exhaustive as the Siegel study was, but even just a smaller targeted study of your peers, just to get a sense of what's happening in the marketplace really goes a long way to making sure that all the hard work that's been put in over the last 18 months, two years, doesn't go to waste in terms of a pay structure that then languishes or stays behind market. WE DO THINK THAT THERE'S OPPORTUNITIES TO ADDRESS SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES IN RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION THROUGH THE PAY GRADE ASSIGNMENT PROCESS AND SO WE'VE HIGHLIGHTED THOSE POSITIONS THAT WE THINK AUGUSTA SHOULD IF THEY NEED TO PRIORITIZE IN TERMS OF ENSURING THAT THOSE POSITIONS ATTRACT THE MOST QUALIFIED CANDIDATES AND CAN ENGAGE THAT APPLICANT POOL So I talked a little bit about the ongoing salary structure maintenance. In addition to doing the mini market surveys, there are other human resource professional associations out there that do salary budget planning surveys. We noted one here, World at Work. We use, with a lot of clients, the federal government through the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes what's called the Economic Cost Index. That can be a valuable reference point for organizations BUT THE REAL KEY POINT I WANT TO MAKE HERE IS THAT THE IT'S NOT A ONE AND DONE WHEN IT COMES TO A PAY STRUCTURE MAINTAINING THE PAY STRUCTURE KEEPING AN EYE ON IT IS A CRITICAL FEATURE TO MAKING SURE THAT YOUR PAY STRUCTURE AND YOUR PAY ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO OPERATE SMOOTHLY. So a couple of important communication considerations, and we've talked a little bit with leadership about this so far, so I won't read through all of these, but we do think that there's some principles here, most notably using straightforward and understandable language when you're talking about these changes for the workforce, be honest about what the organization can and can't tolerate in terms of change management, those are important features and making a commitment to having timely updates so that the workforce feels like the competition and benefit systems are something that are actively monitored and important to what we call the employee value proposition right the the various reasons that employees common stay and work for augusta so with that i'll conclude and take any questions that you all might have

All right. Thanks, sir, for all of this. That was pretty impressive in 27 minutes.

Was I talking too fast? Sorry. No, you're good. I'm a recovering New Yorker, I tell people.

So I have a few questions, and I see some of my colleagues dropping into the queue as well. So exactly how long have you been working on this study?

That's a very good question. I might need some help from my HR friends.

I know it's been a long time.

It's been a long time, so I don't want to misspeak.

I think this study has been discussed like my entire two terms in office. So I know the last compensation study that we implemented was back in 2017 or 18. Is that correct, Ms. Rueckert? okay um so in doing this study over these last few years and i'm not sure if you've been part of this the entire time or not i haven't oh wow and bless your heart um have there been any obstacles that you've faced like in our organizations in getting this information together or what has been like what took so long to get this back to us

So I would say that we were able to get the information we needed from Augusta to get started. The market survey portion, I think the information was collected and digested within our proposed timetable. I think there's been a decision-making mechanism that in terms of me getting here and being able to talk with you about results, I can't really speak to, but the information has been out there for a little while.

Okay. So I don't think this is a question for you. Ms. Rookard, looking at his recommendations, I know there's three different recommendations here. Well, actually, I think I'm going to ask this to the administrator. Administrator, in order to implement this, what do you need from us? Or is this something that I know he said he's been talking to leadership. What is it that we can expect?

Yes, sir. So what we would like to do today is for you guys to accept this as information, but we bring you the recommendation during our budget retreat.

Okay. And so with the recommendation, do we have an estimate, and maybe HR can answer this, of what would the cost be to implement this with our current staff in order to

know just kind of looking at the different tiers um getting you know going from 34 to 19 and different things like that so that's something i can't answer directly with a number at this time because i'm still working with finance and we're still moving models to see what we can present to you at the budget retreat so i can't give you a number today okay all right um

Commissioner for the night, you have a question?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to ask the same question, too, about where we are and how we get to where we need to go. And I'm not sure if this...

I think I can answer it alone. And what I want to say is what we are hoping to do, we finance and HR, is present to you some options, some scenarios of what we could do. What we have to do is look at the numbers, though, and we are still working with finance and we just don't have a solid number that we can throw out there. So what we are doing HR is creating different scenarios and then working with finance to see how they match up. And then we want to be able to bring all of that back to you at the budget retreat and give you something to it's tangible that you can look at and then say, okay, this is viable or this isn't viable. And then say, can we implement here or can we implement in next year?

So would a tiered approach to this be, you know, probably more easily palatable or is it something that you think we should do all at one time?

I think a tiered approach would be, is going to be my recommendation when we put something together.

But even with that, doesn't that put Augusta at a bit of a disadvantage to get behind as we're slowly implementing this? Because we know Augusta moves slow.

Actually, if we go with a hybrid approach where we do a little bit of this and a little bit of this all at the same time, we won't be in a disadvantage and we'll still be in a good position to do two things. Keep the people we have and recruit better.

Okay. I'm sorry, I jumped in there. All right. Well, I don't see anybody else in the queue. Committee, I will... I suppose that we do as leadership has requested and we accept this as information pending an update at our budget retreat with no objections. Hearing none, Ms. Bonner. Thanks, sir.

Thank you.

Number seven, sir.

Yes, number seven.

Number seven, clarification of Richmond County Marshal's Office support activities. Request for the Richmond County Marshal's Office to provide clarification regarding prescribed support activities identified with Augusta Richmond County Charter and to identify opportunities for collaboration with code enforcement to address trash, illegal signage, and community cleanup concerns.

feel like this agenda item was written by the apostle paul just in the senate structure okay but uh commissioner clark i know this is your agenda item so i'm gonna let you kick it off and then it looks like we have a few in the room who are ready to speak towards this

you for that comment that com compliment um i appreciate that i was just talking about the lack of punctuation yeah i got you um hey so i i um this one's kind of been pushed back a couple times um but it is a vitally important um discussion for our community And I think it's even more important that we identify all the different components of this. This within itself is not just a one department solution. This is a combined effort that is broken down into enforcement capacities and also into the service actual component of it as well. So the three entities that we have for Augusta-Richmond County that support collectively in this effort are the Richmond County Marshal's Office, Code Enforcement, which is under planning zoning, and of course environmental services which is under engineering so dr malik if we can bring you up as well director cameron and team are prepared and of course the marshall's office is prepared to speak to their different components i do want to make sure that everyone understands up front led by our illustrious administrator she is also leading the effort towards revitalizing and refreshing a lot of our dated ordinances, which also add some different limitations with this. So I wanna make sure that everyone understands, you're gonna hear some outputs of metrics, you're gonna hear some information about what the individual teams do, but understand that this is a collective priority, not effort, but this is a collective priority by all involved to ensure that we keep this as a prioritized issue in our community. So we're going to start with the marshal's office. Sir, if you can. Yes, the chairman, the chairman is going to suggest that. Oh, thank you, Mr. Chairman, that we are so joined at the hip and I'm doing this. But if we can go ahead and have the department present their information as stated. Sir.

Good evening. Good afternoon. It just felt like evening. I told Steve in the back after the salary survey, I felt like I should have got three semester hours. college credit. That was some incredible stuff. A lot of work went into that.

Apparently you could have gotten your doctorate in the time it took to get that.

I guess let me know if you've got questions for me or otherwise I can go straight into some of the data. I'd love to first give some serious props to the administrator because shameless, absolutely shameless stuff right there. WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON WITH THE CLEAN CITY INITIATIVE IS INCREDIBLE. YOU'VE GOT ALL OF THE PLAYERS INVOLVED THAT NEED TO BE INVOLVED AT THE TABLE UNDER HER LEADERSHIP, A COUPLE OF ELECTED OFFICES ALL WORKING TOGETHER COLLABORATIVELY FOR THE VERY SAME THING WHICH IS TO MAKE AUGUSTA CLEAN, TO KEEP AUGUSTA SAFE. We took a little different approach, or I should say, she has taken a little different approach that we have all bought into very, very dearly. And that is that not only are all of these entities, these offices, these departments at the table, but we're explaining, we're explaining, I'm sorry.

Okay.

We're explaining at the table what we all do, what our timelines are, and how those timelines intersect. Not only that, but we're diving very deeply into what needs to be fixed this time, what needs to be different this time. So I think I do need to start off appropriately and just give Administrator Allen proper kudos for that. This is not going to be one of these, this is not a sprint. We all need to understand that this is a marathon. We didn't get like this in 10.2 seconds, and we're not going to fix it in 10.2 seconds. It's going to take a while, but it's on the right track. And the marshal's office, obviously we play a part in that. And I can start with my 26 numbers if you want and go back a couple years and just kind of let you know what part we play in that. SO WHAT I HAVE FOR 2026 NUMBERS ARE YEAR TO DATE UP TO THE END OF APRIL BECAUSE MAY IS NOT A COMPLETE MONTH SO I DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE YOU SOME STRANGE NUMBER THERE. SO FAR IN 2026, WE HAVE INVESTIGATED 233 ILLEGAL DUMPINGS. 158 in-op vehicles, another 76 litter complaints, along with many, many, many other things outside of the purview of what you're asking me about today. So we've investigated a total of 901 complaints up to this point. We've held 86 individuals accountable via citation or arrest.

Can I pause you there? Absolutely. I know that the citations and once it gets to court has been an ongoing issue, even from the time when I was able to attend many of your meetings. So has that part gotten any better, or are we still seeing judges that are letting people go for 90 and six months again like we're seeing?

I think that we see the judiciary exercise their discretion. I think that's probably about the best answer that I could give you at this time.

You're not running for office. I'm just saying.

No, I am not. But I do want to be fair. And one of the things that Administrator Allen has decided would probably be best for this entire process is once we have all of our... processes and systems in place that we bring the judiciary on board and say, this is what we face. This is how you can help us put a little more teeth into what we have done. So I think that's, Commissioner, I think that's a piece that we've needed to do. I hope that was a complete enough answer. So by comparison, if I go to 2025, And I look at our total numbers, 2,972 cases of which 670, I'm sorry, yeah, 673 of those were illegal dumping cases. Another 548 in-op vehicles. We held 153 people accountable via citations and arrests in 2025. 2024 numbers. 3,021 cases of which 691 of those were illegal dumpings, 266 individuals held accountable. That's the big, that's the macro view. I hope that's a good start. Now I'll entertain any other questions that anyone might have.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, if I could proceed. Thank you. Yeah, Chief, I think that's a great start, number one, towards really kind of clarifying the work that the Marshal's office is doing. I think there was question, you know, because of some manning limitations from your standpoint, but it looks like we're executing some work in there. We've identified some gaps from an ordinance improvement standpoint. And then of course the administrators looking to bring in the judicial component of it. I think the biggest thing with this one is this is not a one tiered approach. The other approach is in concert with code enforcement, correct?

That is correct. We have a tremendous working relationship with the new planning director. I figured it might be time for them to explain what they do.

Well, before they come up, just clarify from your vantage point, and then we'll, with the approval of the chair, kind of wean in the code enforcement piece. Just clarify how you all interact, the code enforcement and the marshal's office.

Well, it really, it's dependent upon what the case may be. You figure, the case, if the case involved anything from the street the property itself, up to the structure of a property, that would generally be in our purview. There are gonna be some instances, such as vacant lots, when it would be in the purview of engineering. But for the most case, those would be ours. The structure itself would belong to code enforcement for enforcement and any violations therein. But it's very typical for a case to involve both of our agencies. And so we were working simultaneously under two different sets of codes, which were needed, obviously, one being criminal codes, one being county codes.

Got it. Okay.

You ready for code enforcement? Yes, sir. All right. So code enforcement, I'm not sure who's going to speak on your behalf, but...

yeah just fill us in on where you are and i'm sure commissioner clark has some more questions so just before i start we do share a lot of the ordinances together which is why this is important that's right when we look at the the trash and debris they have a mechanism so do we when we look at inoperable vehicles they have a mechanism and then so do we so but for our metrics I don't speak as eloquently as him, so I've made a slide.

He's had a lot of experience.

Like you guys, we were also connected at the time.

Yeah, but you have a pretty slide. We didn't see his. Yeah.

So as it pertains to our metrics, how code enforcement operates with the clean city, we've pulled our numbers since 2024. Right. And we have 104 demolition orders signed by a judge. The homeowner demolitions are 163. In this time, we've also opened 10,535 code enforcement cases. And for our trash and debris side, not including theirs, that's 3,800 roughly cases. And then we've pulled almost 4,800 sites.

There's probably that many right now that you can pull.

We also are, speaking of that, we are coordinating with the Marshalls Department. I think it's June 5th is our sign pull.

Yeah, I was going to ask that piece because that is so relevant at this point.

Well, not only that, but I mean, so I'm just curious. We all drive around this county all day long. Can anybody just stop and yank up a sign when they see them on the right-of-way?

I posed that question to our legal team and was told no.

Why is that? Attorney Plunkett. Why is it that when we have illegal signage on right of ways, and I'm not talking about just during political season, I'm talking about year round, why is it that we're not able to collect those?

I don't believe I gave that direct to Mr. Benjamin. It's probably someone on the law department staff that I could probably give you.

As a private citizen.

But what I'm saying is I don't think I, he and I specifically, I think someone in the law department staff, basically it's a question of, Is that, in fact, an infringement? And that property, that sign is private property. And so you kind of get into these questions of uniformity. You know, someone just picking up certain signs. You have someone who may be authorized to... Someone thinks it's on the right of way, but it's not. So you're trespassing. So I would think that it was more of a cautionary advice that going out there and taking up signs that this kind of, and besides the fact that it could also be considered a little bit of a police action. You know, in other words, the taking up the signs that are inappropriately out there, we generally don't allow citizens to take the law into their own hands. So I think there's several reasons why.

So even people out doing cleanups, they shouldn't pick them up?

Well, if they're doing a cleanup that is, if it's clearly up and standing, that's one issue. If it's like thrown in the gutter, it's always going to gut that. But I think it is a safer and better purpose if code enforcement or someone else like that picks it up under the government authority as opposed to an individual doing it.

Okay. Well, I'm going to agree to disagree with you on that one.

I'm not surprised.

Well, I'm just saying that it's a constant nuisance, and I'm sure that our code enforcement and everybody else is tired of calls coming in about them. I think that if you place them on the right way, you are surrendering them to whatever happens to them because that is definitely public property and illegal.

not an attorney and as the former commissioner marion williams said i'm not even a junior attorney so i'm sorry to interrupt go ahead oh all right uh mr chair if i can continue um so clarify for me and and i guess this is for you and the marshall's office so this the the metrics are great to see how many cases are being worked, how many citations are being issued and otherwise. How do you all track these? Are these tracked through 311? Are these tracked somewhere else? How are they tracked so that if the general public wants to know what's going on with this, that they have a way to follow up?

We internally track all of our labor through City Works from beginning to end, which has its inception at 311 usually, unless it's a self-generated case. And IT specifically right now is working on a public dashboard that they would be able to see anything and everything that we're doing.

There you go. And I think that's the point that we need to make sure, along with you all doing this right here, like this is what's needed. The community at large needs to understand and us up here as well need to understand what's actually going forward towards doing this. We can talk about this over and over and make assumptions, but the numbers really speak to what the effort is yielding. But the other component is, like you just stated, if the community doesn't know where to go to see the numbers in action or even know how to report it, then that piece is where we need to also make some additional improvement. So with that piece that Mr. Benjamin was talking about with the signs, you all assist with that enforcement as well, correct?

Absolutely, and I actually neglected to tell you the number of signs that we had picked up in the independent of the area. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So far this year, 332. In 25, it was 1,900. And in 24, it was 2,042. Yeah. I mean, you're right, Commissioner. It's a constant. And I hope that we have a very, very strong turnout on June the 5th so that we can hit all the gateways, especially the places that are most seen and are most egregious.

Yeah. And I would like to see where... We kind of dual effort this with Travis Dawson team on sending this out to these campaigns and these teams of, hey, all right, your campaign has concluded, your clock has started. and then ensuring that you all as the enforcement arms of this kind of put some because because the thing about it is that's where a lot of this is coming from right now our city is overloaded right now with signs understandably so because you know uh the season is coming to an end but you all's job is just beginning right so the candidate's job is over those campaigns that have concluded but now you all have to say all right listen get it done Because if we go to a phase of finding two cycles of political science still out there, somebody needs to be held accountable to this kind of stuff. And at the end of the day, you all can only enforce what we have in place to ensure that we're informing folks of their responsibilities as well. So I hope this is something that we're including in this refresh and this cleanup because I think all of us are seeing it to the point of like, wow, this is a lot. So are you all including that component in the cleanup? Absolutely. Okay.

Absolutely.

All right. And thank you for clarifying where these metrics are actually found. I like to make sure that if you all can send these metrics to Ms. Bonner so that she can share with all of us, I think it's important that we see and know the numbers that you all are yielding from a component of support and enforcement. All right. Mr. Chair, we also have another component of this. Well, I think that before we move on, I see a few in the queue.

Oh, I didn't see that. Yep. I'll stand down. Thank you. All right. Commissioner Pulliam, I see you're up first and have some questions.

Yes, sir. I wanted to... My apologies. That's why I was trying to say I want to wait until the entire... I just wanted to make sure I was in the queue.

Okay. I'll come back.

Thank you, sir.

All right. Commissioner Wimberly, did...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just got a question for Code Enforcement. I see you got 109 demolition order granted. That means you got 109 new structure on the list.

Am I correct? That's correct. That's on the list. That's not included in Marches. And we're getting ready to go again in June with 50-something new cases.

So, 50-something, so that'd be 159.

If it works out correctly, yes.

Okay. And then, oh, and the other one, you got 163 demolition by homeowners. That's the owner, you took the court and then they took them down?

That's a homeowner coming into planning and development and pulling a demolition permit and then demolishing the structure.

Would that include any that you may have got court orders on?

Some of them, yes. I don't have those exact numbers.

So, final question, Mr. Chair. How many of those demolition order-granted houses have you received notice that have been completely taken down?

Through homeowners or through the city?

Through the city.

That would be...

I think that's the next comment.

Can I report it back to you?

But Dr. Malik is.

I understand that process. I just asked him a question. I didn't ask Dr. Malik.

I can't remember when the city, I can't remember the exact time frame when they stopped doing it due to funding.

So we have no funding, Dr. Malik?

We'll come through the chair.

Oh, excuse me. Mr. Chair, may I ask Dr. Malik a question?

Go ahead.

Do we have any funding, Dr. Malik, to take everything down?

Yeah, good afternoon. So there was no funding in 2025. That was why no demolition activity occurred, you know. After a lot of discussion for 2026, Commission did approve some funding for this year, but it's very limited. So... I think it's around maybe $500,000 or something we're working through in the budget. So we already started the process to get the bid out and do that. But, you know, it's around $8,000 roughly cost to one structure. So if you divide $8,500, it's not going to get us, you know, very close by we're adding more than might be demolishing. It's gonna need a lot more funding, at least, you know, you can call it out of the crash, whatever one time search to get all these out of the way and then just keep up as we add, you know, but the current process really, I don't see we're gonna catch up.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

All right. Commissioner from the third.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to keep this short. I was out of the room for a minute, but the grocery carts, who's in charge of picking up these grocery carts that you see from Walmart down on the, you got them all over the road from Target, Walmart. Who's in charge of getting grocery carts off right of ways? I mean, it's a nightmare. Did I miss? I must have been out. Maybe I missed.

No, you haven't. They haven't discussed that one.

And they have grocery carts. These grocery carts sit along Jackson Road and Boy Scout Road full of junk, full of junk thrown in them. And I'm just curious as to how we can get these grocery carts, the people that own the stores, what can they do to keep them from having people take the carts out of the parking lots and dropping them off on the side of the road? Who handles all that?

I'm not sure that there's anybody specifically destined to do that, but I'll definitely take a look at it. If you will send me, if you've got some specific locations.

I guess here's a question. If a request comes in through 311, who do they send it to? I don't know if the administrator can answer that one or not. Oh.

These are right-of-ways. Every one of them. I don't see the carts on private property. These are right-of-ways. I'm just curious.

Are we allowed to pick up the carts on the side of the road and take them to the dump, attorney? You don't have to answer that. I'm just being a smart aleck. I'm sure the answer is going to be the same, especially since they have a name on the side of them.

I think it depends on who the we is. It's Augusta, and it's on the right-of-way. I think Augusta could pick it up. Pick it up. In the past, I believe that they were picked up, and then if they had a store sign, the store would be called to ask them if they would like to retrieve them before they're disposed of. I don't know if that's still the case.

All right. Commissioner, what third are you done?

I am, yes, sir.

All right, Dr. Malik, I know you were speaking in regards to a few things, and I think Commissioner Clark had some questions for you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Malik, so we've talked about the enforcement aspects of it, and you actually go to the actual service piece of it. And you have a pretty robust kind of task with all of this. So based on what the two entities spoke about with Colton Enforcement and the Marshal's Office towards enforcement, can you clarify your component that you play in this or the role you play in this? Excuse me.

Yes, sir. So we are the receiving and really, you know, let's go and clean it up. So our resources are really limited to the operational funds for that particular year. There are several concerns which we have. There are location where we have repeated problem, illegal dumping. IN MY OPINION, THAT SHOULD BE ADDRESSED IN A MORE ENFORCEMENT WAY THAN FOR ENGINEERED AMOUNT OF SERVICES TO GO CLEAN IT UP ALL THE TIME. AND, YOU KNOW, FOR EXAMPLE, DIVISION STREET, WHICH IS BACK OF THE BROAD CENTER, ONE LOCATION IS REPEATEDLY OVER THERE. THE OTHER CHALLENGE I CANNOT SEND STUFF THERE BECAUSE IT'S A LOOSE WASTE. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IS IN IT. THE NEEDLES, ALL OTHER THINGS. SO WE USE THE CONTACT SURFACES. BUT YES, IF WE WILL CALL OR SOMETHING, THEY WILL PICK IT UP ON THAT. THERE'S ONE RIGHT HERE AT THE 14 AND GREEN IN FRONT OF THE SIGMA COGS. IT'S ALL LOOSE WASTE AND IT'S A REPEATED THING. BUT ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT SERVICES, BOTH OPERATIONS, BECAUSE IN THE RIGHT OF WAY, YES, YOU KNOW, WE ARE THE PRIMARY DEPARTMENT TO HANDLE THE RIGHT OF WAY, SO WE'RE DOING AS MUCH AS WE CAN. So during COVID and ARP funds, the commission did allocated funds for this purpose. The engineering services has around half a million dollars. So we spent around $900,000 just to picking up illegal waste and auto compliance. Really, they are intermingled now. Auto compliance, illegal, we don't know which one is which. So we're just picking up. But that fund dried out. So this year, you know, it's coming out of the operation budget. Only allocation is around 292. So that is the bottom line for me to operate under. Yes, sometimes, you know, we as a department push back that really it needs more law enforcement to see what can be done. I'm not going to bring up again this deviant street, which is repeatedly, you know, we clean up multiple times. And actually I have pictures here how bad it is. You know, it is not only in the right of way, it goes all the way to the structure, you know, I THINK IT'S THE BACK YARD FROM THE BACK STREET, ALL THE THINGS. BUT YES, YOU KNOW, WAKING LOT IS THE SAME THING. WAKING LOT HAS FUN AND CONTRACT SERVICES. THEY DO PICK UP SOME OF the waste, which is manageable, but like fallen trees and all that, you know, that's really program doesn't cover it. It just, you know, sometimes it's stretched when we've been told, oh, no, it's a vacant lot, go ahead and do all that. So that, you know, to me, there are codes already in place, really, you know. IT'S JUST A MATTER OF HOW WE WANTED TO USE THOSE CODES IN ADDITION TO THE VACANT LOT. THE FOCUS SEEMS LIKE IT'S MORE ON THE CODE THAT DEALS WITH THE VACANT LOT, BUT ANOTHER CODE IS REALLY, I HAVE RIGHT HERE, IT'S CALLED THE LITTLE CONTROL. THAT'S THE TITLE OF THE CODE. IT COVERS ALL PROPERTIES, YOU KNOW, PRIVATE, PUBLIC, COMMERCIAL, ALL, AND IT'S ACTUALLY PUT A BURDEN ON THE PROPERTY OWNER. clean up or make sure the property, not only the owner property, but the surrounding is presentable, all of the things. There's a lot more work need to be done for engineering services. We are working with the limits of the annual operation fund. Yes, I have to make sure that I have to stretch out throughout the year how I want to use this fund.

Yeah. Well, and looking at the amount of cases that both of the departments that spoke about, I mean, there's a lot of identifying of these, but it looks like we have a limitation of resources to facilitate the support towards those as well, correct?

Yes, sir. And also, you know, I think there's some additional mayor need to be taken, you know, I'm going to bring up again, this deviant street, really that property Either we had to put a fence or do something to prevent. You've been spending more money just cleaning up.

Just cleaning up.

Maybe, you know, one time there'd be more expense, but the long term might be better, you know. address those to some of the location. I think we had to look at some out of the box thing, how we can minimize the dumping on certain location, you know, same as this Boy Scout Road, you know, back of McDonald and Circle K, that's where most of the courts are, you know, those are the homeless gathering places, daytime, bring all of the stuff. So we repeatedly, really we're going almost on average every week on that corner, but it's a repeated expense for the same activity at the same location.

Yeah. All right. Mr. Chair, I just got one question for the administrator and then I'll relinquish to my colleagues. He stepped out.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm supposed to take over.

All right. Madam Administrator. So, you know, we got a lot of efforts in place already. It sounds like a lot of this is we need to really kind of make sure that our efforts are aligned. I know we're talking about some realignment of positions and efforts as well. Is that included in all of this?

So the first step, Commissioner, is to look at the ordinances and the codes and see what we need to do because, you know, Dr. Malik is correct in regards to the funding. However, even our code right now states that they have positions in environmental services that can also do citations. But they have not their titles have been changed since that ordinance or since that policy has been put in place. So they don't do that anymore. So those are the things that they used to be the resources that would assist us in holding people accountable. But they're no longer the resource to do that. So that's a lot of the things that we found in the outdated. documents that we have in place that we're utilizing right now to do our operation right so that's one of the things that we definitely going to be looking at secondly we when we do look at it you're right we will look at what positions are needed um because one of the questions that we had when we all came together is what is necessary for us to do better and identifying what kind of situations or issues that we have. So as Chief Provost stated, we've gone through everybody's process and looked at it and see how it kind of duplicates or causes any repetition and how we're doing things as we noticed with the code enforcement and the Marshal's office. And ultimately it ends up in Dr. Malik's area, but seeing how we can modify those operations to do it better.

Yeah. And try to streamline it as easy as possible, because right now, I mean, we have a lot of resources in place to support, but it looks like we need to really.

And one thing we also noticed and at our last meeting that for some reason, RCCI was taken out of the equation. And Mr. Jackson and all of them, we discussed that. We didn't know why. But Mr. Jackson, as of today, showed me an area of an encampment that was out there that RCCI crew went and cleaned. And it is spectacular. They did a phenomenal job because they made sure, of course, they had their respective safety measures in place because we definitely checked with RCCI because they said during that meeting they were the group that used to go out and do that. But, of course, it became a resource problem when we could not find officers to take them out, officer detail. So it's nothing that... any of these departments did is just that we didn't have the staffing to take those resources out so we're looking at that so they're in the meetings with us as well trying to see how we can get those resources so that we can get more crews because we don't want anything that's going to affect what engineering has to do with the crews that they have assigned

Right. Especially because they're leveraging some of those same resources for landscaping and other things as well. So, all right. Can you kind of give us a timeline of when we can kind of expect something? I mean, this is, you know, it's a hot topic for the community. And I know it's something that we're going to utilize as some momentum with this separate division that we're talking about as well, I'm assuming, right?

Yes. We're hoping to have something back to you, as I stated previously, Commissioner Pulliam's item within 60 days.

Okay. All right. I relinquish. Madam Vice Chair?

Okay. Commissioner Pulliam, did you want to speak?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. My question, Dr. Malik said, Is there an actual forecasted amount from here until the end of the year that needs to be available for your department to do all of the cleanup and all those efforts that you all are doing?

It's very challenging to put the number off for illegal dumping because there are a lot of repeated ones. For the demolition, Previously, you know, when we were discussing the budget, it was close to 2.5 million or something. But the number grow now is how to look at that. But that would have taken care of what was on the list when we were discussing the budget late last year, you know, on that. Earlier dumping, you know, I just said in 24, 25, roughly half a million was spent. And that's what I think one of the expectation is the same level of service. It's not going to happen because those funds are gone. So definitely, I would say around that number, you know, 500, 600,000, if really we wanted to clean it up. The other challenge is sometimes this illegal dumping is very scary, you know, scary. So really you cannot do mechanized way. You have to use the labor or something to kind of, and that's what inmate force can come. But, you know, missile administrator stated the challenge is the same workforce, you know, where, how you want to do it. You know, it's good engineering or good to pick up the later pickup. So like recently we're getting only one or two crew. So that's, yeah. But the contract services, yes. You know, if there is funds available, then yes, we can get it done through the contract services. But definitely, you know, at a minimum, at least, you know, $500,000 and anything.

Okay.

Yeah.

How much is left in your budget as of right now for illegal dumping? Okay.

I HAVE NOT CHECKED THAT. WE STARTED WITH 2982. AND ON AVERAGE WE'RE SPENDING AROUND FIVE OR SIX. A MONTH OR A WEEK. THIS YEAR A MONTH. with four, maybe we spend maybe somewhere 25 to 30,000 out of that, you know, I can double check on that, but yeah, so still probably, but it also includes auto compliance ways. It's really both are intermingled right now because they're in the right of ways and hard to, IDENTIFY WHETHER IT'S ILLEGAL OR OTHER COMPLIANCE, OTHER COMPLIANCE YOU HAVE TO IDENTIFY THE OWNER OF THAT WASTE AND THEN YOU HAVE TO WORK WITH THAT OWNER TO BRING IT BACK EITHER IN THE COMPLIANCE IT CAN BE PICKED UP EITHER THROUGH CONTRACT SERVICES OR OTHER MEANS. SO, YEAH, SO I'LL SAY MAYBE SOMEWHERE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF Lower 200, maybe still there, you know, but still we got a long way to go.

Right. So roughly about $250,000 to $300,000 if we're looking at the fact that we're halfway through the year.

Yeah.

Because if you have about $200,000 left and we're averaging $500,000 to $600,000 a year and doing these cleanups, then that would roughly leave about $250,000 to $300,000, correct? Correct.

Yeah, I would say probably leave around 2.30 or something. I have to look at the numbers. I'd rather be on the conservative side, lower side than the higher side.

Yes, sir. So with that, my ask, I'm not on this committee at all, but that I know we start our new department. May I address the administrator?

Yes.

Oh, the chairman's back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Administrator Allen, our new department, I'm not sure of what all of their tasks are going to be, but they kick off January 1. Is that correct?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So up until that point, because we know we have these illegal dumpings and all of these cleanups that we're going to have to do, can we identify a source where we may be able to pull in the additional funding that could potentially be needed? Because historically we know that we've been doing these cleanups. and it's being pulled from the budget of what I'm hearing, engineering, is that correct? Yes, ma'am. But there's not been money that's allocated to it past the money that we were using before. So can we come up with and identify a source so that if we in fact do go over the $200,000 that they have left, we are able to put our hands on that and we know where that is going to come from?

Yes, ma'am. We could bring back a recommendation on Tuesday.

Okay. Thank you. I'm not on your committee, but I would like to see that happen. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Administrator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Commissioner Clark. Thank you. Hey, I just want to tell all the teams, thank you for the metrics. Thank you for really giving some clear understanding of what's actually going on. A lot of times we have narratives that kind of speak otherwise. And I just want to thank everyone for everything that's happening. Commissioner, Dr. Malik, thank you as well on just really kind of bringing your points together. Administrator Allen, looking forward to seeing the output of this.

all right i'm just going to say ditto to what he said because all right ms bond we're going to receive this as information with the request added from miss pooling for the information on tuesday with no objections the last item now that commissioner clark's voice is warmed up this one is also his

Item number eight, update regarding housing authority development on Deansbridge Road, receive as information and update regarding the Augusta Housing Authority's development project located on Deansbridge Road, including current status, community impact, and anticipated next steps.

Commissioner Clark, this is your item, and sir, I see you coming up, so you can go ahead and approach the podium.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we're bringing up Mr. Doug Duncan, who, of course, is the Freeman. I'm sorry. Wrong county thinking about something totally different. Sorry about that. Mr. Doug Freeman, who, of course, leads the Augusta Housing Authority. so um mr freeman thanks for coming up and providing an update um i think we're all seeing you know the progress but it'd be good to hear from you directly um where we stand on it and um a couple other questions okay yes sir uh may i start a powerpoint presentation yes sir got a couple of images on there that that might be useful all right

So first off, the overall status. As of right now, this project is divided into two phases. Phase one is the family side, which has five buildings plus leasing office. And phase two is an elderly building. So phase one is approximately 70% complete today. There are 236 units in that phase one. And if you're looking on the screen, it's all the buildings to the left of this. So this is Dean's Bridge Road all the way here on the left. So these four buildings in the middle, the leasing offices, which is the pink building there, and then a smaller building here. So again, we're about 70% complete. And one of the things I very rarely get to say is we are ahead of schedule and under budget on that project, which is unusual for large construction projects, but I like it when it happens. We anticipate being complete with construction and moving people in starting this fall. So October or November of 2026, we'll begin moving families in. Phase two is the elderly building, which is 75 units. That's the building towards the back of the property. That's that one long building running up and down on the screen there. That one we have been awarded low-income housing tax credits for and are working on finalizing all the financing on that. We anticipate closing on that financing in August of this year. And then construction would begin immediately after that closing. Because we're doing a lot of the site work in phase one, that should only take about 18 months to complete that building and start moving people in. So we'd be looking at sometime in the first quarter of 2028 to begin occupying that building there. That's the overall status of the project right now. So I've got a little bit more information I can provide, but if there's a question specific to that, I'll take those now.

Yes, sir. So looking at the site, I'm looking at the left portion of this, the east or the western portion of it, that's where Dean's Bridge is. So the eastern portion, is that the side that backs up to the subdivision? I'm trying to blank right now the name of the subdivision. The Hamptons. The Hamptons, yeah, thank you. This entry exit, I know we had talked about this at length with the public about not having an opening that pours into the neighborhood since it's such a small street and overrunning that street. Those were the concerns that came from the constituents. Can you give me some clarity on that piece?

That's correct. We're still required to have that street there. It would be a gated street, but we're required there for public safety reasons.

There has to be a second entrance into the property. So that'll be kind of like an emergency? That's exactly right. Okay, perfect.

Our entrance is on Deansbridge Road. In fact, I think they just started construction of the turning lanes that are in the median and the right turn into the property itself on Deansbridge.

okay what about the buffers i know it was a lot of conversation um that went with uh different commerce different uh options of buffers what do we uh fall in on okay i'm gonna go a couple of slides ahead real quick so that's the property as it stands about a month ago okay um

If you'll notice on the, again, that's laid out the same way. Here's Deansbridge Road on the left. Over here on the right, there's the retention pond, some empty land. The Phase 2 building will be constructed right about here on the site plan. So the buffer would be from that point back. And then I'm going to jump a couple more slides to a... This is a site plan for the landscaping plan. This is the back edge of that property. So here's where that 75 unit elderly building would go. There's the detention pond. Here are the properties that are behind ours over here. And I know it's a little hard to see on here, but if you look along the property line, all these tree markings that FOLLOW ALONG THAT PROPERTY LINE. THOSE ARE WHAT ARE CALLED NELLY STEPHENS HOLLY AND GREEN GIANTS. THE HOLLY WILL BE ABOUT 6 FOOT TALL WHEN IT'S FIRST PLANTED BUT THEY GROW TO 15 TO 25 FEET TALL. And then the green giant will also be six feet at planting, but grows to 40 or 60 feet in height. So that'll be a noise and a visual barrier along those lines. In addition, all of these circles that are in this open area and line the retention pond and this side, those are loblolly pines that will be planted. Those I think will go in at four to six feet in height, and those go 60 to 90 feet, if I'm not mistaken. So there'll be a lot of landscaping along this back area to buffer that. In addition, on the original plans, we have a six foot privacy fence that runs the back of all of these properties here. Our project superintendent has been trying to meet with residents the past few weeks to get that set up. I think he dropped letters off for the families that he was not able to get in contact with so that they can contact him to start the planning of, because that fence will actually be on their property line, we have to coordinate with them to, but that was based on the conversation we had with the neighborhood that they wanted that fence back there. one of the things i'd like to bring up just now is i believe the ordinance requires a maximum height of six foot on a privacy fence on a back end of a residential i i believe we intend to ask for a variance on that to put an eight foot fence up i don't think we'd have any opposition from the neighborhood on doing that but we'll go through that process to to find out if we can put an eight foot tall privacy fence along that just to give another additional amount of buffer for

Yeah, I know they were looking for something a little bit more higher and a little more point of separation. I know when we were talking with the residents and the developer, there was some contention about some of the yards that were open and exposed and some kind of concession being made for that. Did we ever follow up with that piece?

I think the first part of that is the fence that we agreed to put up there, the privacy fence. But also the other concession is the large amount of trees, the buffer that we're going to put in. Those are all evergreen trees, so leaves won't fall off during the winter once they grow up. And it'll take a couple of years for them to get tall enough, but once they grow up, there'll be plenty of visual and noise barrier between them.

Right, yeah. And I think as a concessionary good faith effort, the developer was saying that they would assist with the yards that did not have fencing and that were previously kind of blocked from existing trees and foliage but now exposed and working with them about some level of fencing um around their yards as well right yes sir that's the fencing we're talking about it'll start right here on this corner which is the very first property of that neighborhood continue all the way along our property line to this corner and then come back down uh to at least down here which is the last property for that neighborhood but you'll notice the trees continue even past that yeah um and have you all had another conversation with uh the neighborhood um regarding you know any additional concerns or even just say uh update um for them

So the project superintendent has been having those conversations. Yes, sir.

Yes. Okay. If you can keep me informed, I'm sure Commissioner Scott probably want to know as well since he's in District 5 so that we can stay abreast of it and try to be a part of the communication with it. The last question, the detention. I don't know if I want to say detention or retention because I hear so many different ways of calling it. Who's maintaining that? Is that the developer or is that something through an agreement with the county?

No, that's the developer.

So the developer will maintain that?

That's my understanding. That's on our property. It's not an easement that I'm aware of.

All right. Okay. Just wanted to ask that because somehow we always roll up with having to own those and maintain them. It's on the record now.

I will verify that and double check it, but I'm pretty sure because we do the ones at Walton Green and Walton Oaks as well, we maintain those.

Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to ask because those seem to be a rotating thing. And the businesses surrounding, we have communication with them as well, and the church, because I know Pastor Angel's church is butted up against this. Any issues, any concerns, constant communication going on?

Yes, sir, they get along, Jay and the pastor get along very well. I think they work together to widen his entrance into the church to assist his congregation with getting in and out. They'll also enjoy the new turning lanes on Dean's Bridge for getting in and out as well. Um, there were some, I'll say interesting conversations with the tire shop that's next door on the side of us, um, because there were quite a few tires that were on the property when we started clearing it. So, uh, but we've had lots of communication with him as well and gotten those tires taken care of.

Wow. Amazing. Um, last, uh, last thing, I know I said that before, um, the, uh, we had talked about a street light um right there on dean's bridge that's pretty busy thoroughfare right there um did we ever settle on that on um proposing a street light for that intersection not that i'm aware of all right um dr uh mr chair can i bring up uh engineering real quick yes thank you sir Dr. Malik, I know when we brought this up initially, we had talked about, just from a safety standpoint, because right now the only thing is a cut in the median for folks to cross over, which is pretty dangerous with the amount of traffic and the speed that goes up and down there. We talked about proposing a stoplight, and this has been last year sometime when we talked about it. Is there... a feasibility study we can do to determine, you know, from a safety perspective, putting some level of stoplight. I mean, we have a, now we're gonna have a full blown subdivision or complex, housing complex and the church and those businesses. Not having something there, I think there's gonna be some safety concerns. Can you kind of add some clarity to that?

Yes, sir. So nothing in plan, but if the wish of this body, you know, we can, engineering can initiate the traffic, basically traffic signal. Yeah. And this being a stair route, so we have to go through GDOT process and approval and may take time, you know, like Bill Evans took us almost three years to get the permit. Yeah. Yeah, if that's the desire, at least I can issue a task order to another on-call to see if it meets the signal warrant.

Okay. Mr. Chair, I know I put this on here as receiving an update, but I'd like to make a motion so that we can get engineering started on that piece of it. I think it's important from a safety standpoint. So I make a motion for us to get engineering the green light to move forward with doing a study.

Second. All right. All right. Still see Commissioner Wimbley is in the queue as well as Commissioner Scott. And we will vote after their comments or questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Freeman. Yes. Since you're going to be doing this beautiful development on those first structures, and you're going to do the senior last, are you going to use the rear entrance for your construction entrance and exit?

No, sir. The construction is coming in off of Dean's Bridge Road.

Going to still come off Dean's Bridge Road?

Yes, sir.

All right. Okay. Well, Dr. Malik has sat down, but I was going to ask him, is GDOT, gonna be the one that pay for the light or will we pay for the light?

That's not a question for me. Dr. Malik.

Dr. Malik. Will we be asking GDOT to pay for the installation or just to approve it to put a light there?

um just to approve the permit so we have to pay for it yeah yeah that's what we did i know we 11 is the recent one that's also on golden highway i mean it's straight around yeah we have to pay but you know sometimes you know judah give us money every year so we may ask for some help if it's more into you know okay

Please do.

Thank you.

All right. Commissioner from the 9th.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to say thank you, Mr. Freeman, for your due diligence in this process, because it was a fighting battle. But I think we're all in on one accord now. But we need to just over-communicate where we are. And thank you, Commissioner Clark, for saying to include us in your conversations and in the media. in your meetings as well also i'm not sure if we are engaging the school system especially since you're saying that we'll they'll be up and probably ready to go was it this fall or next fall, that means that there's going to be some coordination to get the children, the students that will be going to school in that area on school routes and that kind of thing. So make sure you're touching bases or including the school system in our conversation as well. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. I have a conversation with them almost every month. Ms. Kane calls me to get an update before the next Board of Education meeting on all our projects.

Mr. Freeman, thank you for this update and for coming. And I know it's been a long meeting, but at least we did get you in for a couple of different items. With no further comments, Ms. Bonner, we're going to vote on Commissioner Clark's motion.

That motion carries.

Thank you, Ms. Bonner.

With Mr. Lewis out.

Thank you. If there is no further actions, then I will call this committee to a close. And I did not win the prize today.

No, you didn't.