Commission - Special Meeting

These three petitions here are petitions of opposition going to three federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, a couple divisions of the Department of Natural Resources as well as the Savannah District of Army Corp of Engineers that manages natural waterways etc. Um, so if you wouldn't mind signing each of the individual documents. I know uh our commissioner comes to take over. So I'm going to pause this for a second and I'll be around as long as you got and if someone can teach me on Facebook or something.

So hey, thank you. I appreciate Yeah, we don't we know we don't normally allow petitions, but hey, everybody sign it. But it's his deal. if you would not sign anymore, if everybody would kind of take their places. We're going to go ahead and get our meeting started. Our special call meeting for Brian County Board of Commissioners um to get it started. We appreciate everybody coming. You know, as the events happened last night at the meeting that most of us were at, uh some things came to light that we really want to look at. That's why we called this emergency special call meeting, which we normally have to give 24 hours to do. But since this is the events from last night, we thought it very important to go ahead and do this special call meeting before our uh pre-aggenda meeting, which is our workshop, which we're doing right after this. This shouldn't take too long, but uh we'll go ahead and get started. Uh first off, uh we want to recognize Christy Cox, the mayor of uh Richmond Hill, Jeff Glazier, which is the chairman of the development authority. And we want y'all to know that we are working on this together. We hear you. We're with you. you know, we're elected to represent the people and that's what we're going to do. So, we are working together on this and there's a lot of things that have are going on that people don't see, but we want you to know there's a a lot of things behind the scenes that are going on that we really can't comment, but we're working together as a team for the people of Richmond Hill and Bryant County. So, with that being said, Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And we we do take this very seriously. Our board takes it very seriously. It's it's it's it's the most important thing that I think we may have done since I've been on this board for eight 12 years now. So, as chairman, so I turn it over to uh Aaron. He'll explain our our special called meeting, our emergency special called meeting and just kind of some circumstances around that. Aaron is our uh county attorney by the way, too.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, good afternoon. Thank you for calling this special called meeting. Under Georgia law, we can have a special called meeting with less than 24 hours notice. Only if special circumstances exist and only if notice is properly given, which means posting it where we can and notifying the media. Those requirements were done. The agenda was published, posted, and the media was notified. So, the first question is, well, what are those special circumstances that warranted this specially called meeting? Well, there's property that is commonly known as one CE Caesar Stone Drive, which is parcel 049005. That's the old Caesar Stone plant. At West Winds conference or town hall as it were, yesterday evening, the CEO made several comments that were quite concerning. Those comments included, quote, there is substantial silica contamination, close quote, on that site. She also said, quote, "There were elevated levels of arsenic today," which would have been last night. Close quote. Then she said that there were hazardous waste barrels strewn about the facility. And she even intimated that perhaps they were outside the building. Those are new facts, new circumstances, and new allegations that have not yet been brought to this board or to me or anybody else within the Ryan County administration. So I believe those are special circumstances that warranted an immediate meeting less than 24 hours notice and then item number two with my plan of action. So I would ask you all to make a motion to approve that declaration of special circumstances as I have presented it.

Mr. Chair, I make a motion to approve the declaration of special circumstances to authorize a special called meeting with less than 24 hours notice as presented. A second. Second. Any discussion on that? All in favor say I. I. We are currently in our special called meeting. Thank you.

So at the end of the meeting, Miss Long asked a rhetorical question. She said, "If it's not going to be remediated by Westwind, then by who?" Which of course is rhetorical. Well, the good thing is the law explains that. Georgia law has what's called a public nuisance statute, which means if there's a nuisance located on a property that's causing a public hazard, if it's impacting the public health, if it's impacting the public welfare, if it's impacting the public safety, there are two officers that can bring an action for public nuisance other than the district attorney or the attorney general. Those officers are the county attorney and or the city attorney. So, I want to first before we get into those details and what that means, I do want to explain this board's role in this process because I think it's confusing. And I think it's confusing because there's all these different entities involved. The board of commissioners, which are elected, the development authority board, which is appointed by this board, and then of course the city council and mayor of the city of Richmond Hill. This board does not have zoning authority over that property. This board does not have permitting authority over that property. Okay? The city of Richmond Hill does. They have permitting authority. They have zoning authority. The development authority does not have zoning authority over that property. Only the city of Richmond Hill does. So, one of the things that I think is a common concern for y'all and the public is why aren't you speaking to the public? Why aren't you commenting on this presentation before now? And the reason is quite simple once you get to understand it. Unlike federal politicians who get on their soap boxes and talk about and pontificate. This board is not authorized to do that. This board must consider things when they are presented. This board must consider those things impartially, which means you can't say what you're going to do in advance. You can't forecast your vote in

advance because then those applicants who are coming to you seeking a request do not have due process. they do not have an opportunity to present their case in front of you before a decision is made. That rule applies to you. It applies to the city of Richmond Hill and it also applies to the development authority. You are not allowed to forecast your vote on things before it's presented to you. I know that's troublesome. I know y'all have wanted to say things. I know everybody has wanted to say things and the public has wanted y'all to comment. You can't. So next week we were going to have something potentially presented. Westwood had asked the development authority to induce bonds. Those bonds were a special type of bonds. They're called TERA which is a federally taxexempt bond. I'm not going to get into the details, but a bond like that would first be induced by the development authority. Then eventually it would percolate its way to this board to approve that plan of finance. We didn't know that was even happening until that January 13th meeting in Penrook last month. Since that time, Westwind has withdrawn their request to be on the development authorities's agenda. So, it is evidently they're not going to be asking for the development authorities approval in February, which means you're not going to be having an opportunity to vote on that in March. So, that's off the table for now. If it were to come back up, the public hearings would recommence. You would have to consider the evidence presented at that time and make a decision at that time. Not forecast it in advance, not voting by email or comments to the media. So, what can we do? Well, I alluded to the statute of public nuisances. And again, a public nuisance is something that causes a public hazard. It means it's not just an individualized harm. You know, I I stubbed my toe on the

property. It's something that impacts the public as a whole. Brian County has some very limited jurisdiction over that site under the public nuisance statute. The city of Richmond Hill has jurisdiction specifically. We are working together with the city of Richmond Hill on this process which is going to be very important as we move forward. So what does that look like? Well, as Miss Long asked last night, she said if not remitted by Westwind by who? The answer, the person who caused the alleged contamination. So my next item that I'm asking for permission and authority from y'all to do is multiple steps. The first step is authority to work with me, the city of Richmond Hill, county staff, and city staff and the development authority to investigate what is going on of that site. It's private property. We can't just walk on it and start drilling holes or anything else. Okay? So we need to do an investigation, find out what's on that site. If it's contaminated as Miss Long claims it to be, we have a remedy for that. It's a public nuisance action. And if I were to determine the public nuisance is appropriate, we file a lawsuit. And that property is not going to be transferred or sold until it's remediated. That's the law and that's how it's going to work until it's cleared that there's no environmental contaminants on that site. So that's my second ask for authority to proceed in that manner. Okay, we need a motion for that. Mr. Chairman, I make the motion to approve and authorize county staff and county attorney to proceed with all investigations necessary to determine whether a public nuisance exists on one Caesar Stone Drive, parcel 049, 0005, and such other joining adjacent or nearby properties as necessary. evaluate the findings of those investigations and

if warranted, proceed with public nuisance proceedings. Second. Second. Any other discussion on that? Again, I will say we take this very serious of what happened last night. We we hear you. Uh we want to get this resolved and uh again working for the people again along with Christy and Jeff uh the chairman of the uh development authority and Christy the mayor. So that's my comment. Hearing no other comments. Anybody else have any comments? Nope. All in favor? Commissioner Floyd, Mr. Attorney, as I work for the company that monitors the whale on that site, do you think I should abstain from this motion? I think you should. Yes, sir. All right. Okay.

Okay. All right. Uh, thank you for that, Jim. Um, all in favor, raise your right hand. All opposed. Okay. That motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Kappler. And that's all we have for our meeting. We will take a motion to adjourn our special called meeting and then I'll have a comment after if we make a motion to Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion to adjourn the special called meeting. Second. All in favor say I. Okay, we are adjourned. We're going to take about a 10-minute break. Uh we're going to have our our workshop. Anybody's welcome to stay for our workshop if you want to watch paint dry, but you're welcome to stay.