Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

can take a seat.

What's the name of that road that goes past the old First Baptist Church? What's that? It's four lane. Kind of parallels 140. Connects Amos to Peary Ridge. Goes by Teasley. First Baptist goes to Great Sky. Is that Reservoir? Reservoir. Reservoir. Thanks. Reservoir.

Welcome all. And thank you for being here. I will call to order this work session of the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners for September 15, 2026. Let the record show all commissioners are present. We have a very long agenda, and especially for this evening. We're going to try to make the best of it and move as quickly as we can. So first order of business is a report on Georgia and police and fire games. of them. Communications and Parks, folks. An exciting event. Good afternoon.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. We've been delaying this a little bit. There's been other things on the agenda, so we wanted to make sure we got everything up and running for you guys. Okay. Obviously... Obviously, just a brief history. Chief James Perry started these games in 84 when he was with the Carrollton Police. It was just a mission to bring police and fire together and other emergency management people together to build camaraderie through friendly competition. It's hosted in different cities every two years. In November, you guys elected or signed the agreement for us to do the games for 26 and 27, which did not leave us a whole lot of time. So under, I guess, my watch somehow, I got tasked to do this with the Sheriff's Office, the fire, and Destination Cherokee. So on this planning committee, like I said, you had me, Erica Neldner with communications, Angela McDaniel with Destination Cherokee, Lieutenant Thompson with the Sheriff's Office, and Chief Clow with Cherokee Fire. We had to secure locations. We had to develop a lot of the rules. We really got handed nothing. And it was like, put on the games. And so with all of us working together, we did all this stuff. We raised funds, managed social media, recruited volunteers, partnered with different people, and secured site directors for all the different events. So once again, this was hosted in June. We actually had to move the dates around, which made it even tougher for us because of the World Cup. I guess there was a soccer match going on here in Atlanta. I saw it in the news or something.

It was on ESPN.

Anyways, we held it over six days. We had 23 events. We had 580 different participants come out. 77 different agencies represented in these games and had six different states represented, all in Cherokee County that week. I'll turn it over to Erica to talk a little bit about the community support we had during the games.

Okay, so when we got assigned this project, we had no general fund budget to put it together. So we went out to the sponsorship route with Destination Cherokee. Thankfully, Northside Hospital, Cherokee signed on to be our title sponsor. Quite frankly, without them, we probably couldn't have done what we did. In total, we had 24 sponsors and 75 volunteers who signed up to support event staffing and the public information function. I think this is kind of important to note because it really shows how strong our community is. 90% of the participants from the Community 5K that really culminated the week-long events were members of the Cherokee County community. So here are some of our sponsors, obviously, Northside Hospital, Cherokee, and a lot of the higher level sponsors, Paul Davis Restoration, CTEL, Legacy, Cross Family Ford, and Hyundai of Kennesaw. And then some of the lower level sponsors, some put in like $250, some did like $500. But all together, it really helped us put this event on successfully.

So you can see we We collected $52,000 in sponsorship revenue. And then through registration fees, we collected another $27,117.50. Overall, our expenses were $33,974.80. Most of that was supplies like the T-shirts for all the competitors, stuff like that that we had to get. Facilities rentals were up there too, but a lot of that, it's a little misleading because a lot of the places... gave their spots for free. That was for the golf events. And as most of you are aware, golf events are never cheap. So we did use three different courses throughout Cherokee County. And what was one of the big things, and she'll talk a little bit about the the positive remarks that we got from the contestants or the competitors was one of the things about the golf that they liked was they got to see three different courses in Cherokee County. And I said, well, just you wait. When we do it again next year, I'll have three different courses. So you're going to see six different courses in Cherokee County. So that was great. Like I said, we had some, the food, once again, food, that was a lot of that was due to the golf event. We currently have $40,000 earmarked for the 27 games from the leftover revenue that we will be ready to use for the 27 games.

And I think it's important to note that the sponsorship and the registration fees covered everything.

Correct. We didn't come out of pocket anything. Everything was done through sponsorships and through the registration process. The 26 games, we had about 505 staff hours with that with parks, SO, and fire. General staffing with volunteers, we had about 136 volunteer hours. The PIO teams, they had about 234 hours. And they did a great job because if anybody followed our social media for that event, Erica and her team in the PIOs, they did a great job capturing stuff while events were going on. Things were being updated. as soon as events were over. So it was really great. And it was probably the most exposure the games has received in a long time. We had about 90 volunteer hours. So we had a couple of workers that were from the film industry and professional photographers that came out and volunteered their time to do stuff for us, take pictures and do video. So we spent a lot of time with this event that week. I was ready to go on vacation after it was over with, that's for sure.

Most definitely. I'll let you talk about the surveys. And after the games that Sunday, we put out a survey. And the majority of the responses indicated that everybody enjoyed it. We had some feedback about bowling. They do want to see some other golf courses. We only had a few people stay overnight. So some stayed overnight, but they stayed with friends. Hotel nights weren't as high as we had hoped they'd be. And then our open-ended responses really gave our planning team some good insight into next year. So lessons learned, we have social events every night. We need to not put some time between the last event and the social event. We need to couple those. Next year was an event. One host hotel needs to be chosen. And we need to advertise earlier. Obviously, we had about six months to plan this. So we did our best, but we're already starting the marketing for 2027. We're building out new touch points through email notifications, some national public safety organizations to help get the information out.

So like I said, we've already started planning for 27. We've actually moved the dates to June 14 through the 21, which is actually Father's Day weekend. And part of that was due to the fact that Parks and Rec also has the big outdoor festival that weekend. So once again, trying to tie things in, get people to stay, get heads in beds. So that's one of the things that we're doing. We're looking at some new events. Chief Lanier promised to get me a new fire event so that fire has another event to do. And so we're working on that, probably a barbecue competition. Commissioner Weatherby, I know you like some free food, so come on out. We'll get you some food at that barbecue competition.

Sounds good. Count me in.

Absolutely.

Is that cooking or eating? You might sign me up for the eating part.

Commissioner Weatherby, you could be the judge on that one. So we're also looking at different ways to bring in different people along with the fire, having co-angular competitions for a civilian and a fire, kind of like we did, just making it different classifications, just to get more people involved. And like I said, part of this just came about through our surveys and kind of figuring out what we didn't know about the games. Like I said, I had no idea what to expect. I heard a lot of horror stories from other Parks and Rec professionals out there. But to be honest with you, and I told Erica this as we talked throughout the week, It actually was, although I spent a lot of time and we spent a lot of time doing stuff that week, it was actually probably my favorite week of the summer next to the 250 bash. I thought that was the best weekend, but it was a great week. It was very rewarding and I felt a lot of

Accomplishment from what we were able to do for the first responders in Cherokee County and throughout the state in the country So looking forward to doing it again next year with that if you have any We were exhausted at the end of that week There are a handful of us that probably put in 80 to 90 work hours in one week to make this happen but the people who came up to us and you know were telling us what a great time they were having and the community members who came to watch and made it all worth it.

So tell me again, how many participants?

We had over 560 participants.

OK. And this is a Georgia thing, so mostly within Georgia.

Correct.

And I guess I was thinking, would we even have the hotel capacity? But you're saying, really, not only did we have enough, we didn't get as many people in hotels as we hoped for.

And when I make a mistake, I'll sit here and tell you I made a mistake. And part of it was putting the schedule together. Like I said, didn't know what I didn't know. But knowing now what the competition kind of looks like and what these people expect, I can tailor that competition to have where I know I'm going to have more people staying and piggybacking things where it almost forces them to stay because I know what events people are doing multiples of.

Yeah. And sure, you know, Atlanta and North Georgia, it's pretty easy to drive in for the day, go home at night. But you've got South Georgia, that's a haul.

Right. And we did. We had a lot of people from, like, Albany. The bowling event was, you know, the bowling event was a one-day event. We had a lot of people bowling. We made it a one-day event, but they came to us and were like, hey, we want another section of bowling. We have people from Albany, so Columbus. So those are people that have heads in beds. So like I said, a lot of it was a learning experience, just putting it on. You just kind of had to.

How many different events? I know you've told us, but. How many different events were there?

We had 23 different events. We had probably about four or five that didn't make. Just didn't have enough participation to cancel those. Just didn't have enough participants and stuff like that. Like I said, I know it's been a while. We did this back in June. It's been a while to get up here and talk to you guys about it.

Real round numbers, about 20 events, about 600 participants, ballpark.

We think it'll grow, too, because we actually have a database now. Like I said, we had nothing to go with. I mean, it was... Put this on.

And we're like, OK. And do the counties and cities that these participants work for, do they pay for it? Or is it all on everybody's own dime?

So everybody's a little bit different. There are some communities that they paid for their fire or their police to come and compete. And others were on their own dime. So it was a hodgepodge. And so we worked with them on the registration process to get that in. But it was a fun week. It really was. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun at the same time.

Most important thing, how did our guys do? Did we win anything? We won a couple. We caught on a couple.

Chief Lanier kind of stacked the deck in the toughest firefighter.

I'd be disappointed if he didn't. Exactly. That's what it's about.

And registrants for toughest firefighter broke the game's records. Whoa. Highest number we've ever had. And I would be remiss. We have Chief Stens here. We have Captain Baker. We have Andrea Barker. And then, of course, we had Brantley Johnson with the Sheriff's Office and Matthew Perry with FIRE. A lot of people on the PIO team worked a lot to capture pictures, videos, build an archive, share the story. And so some of them are here. So I just wanted to say thank you to them.

Wow. You think about the all-time statewide toughest firefighter in Georgia. He's a guy you want on your side no matter what you're doing.

That's right. And he lives right here in Cherokee County.

Whether it's a bar fight or a house fire or anything.

Any other questions? Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you so much. What a great event. It's awesome. All right. We've got another great presentation coming up about Destination Cherokee Tourism. Mr. Reynolds and Ms. Carnes.

Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to briefly introduce it and cover a couple of details on the hotel-motel tax for our benefit. But then I'm going to turn it over to Angela and to Pam for their presentation. I'm sure the board's aware, but just to remind everyone, Cherokee County collects hotel motel tax in unincorporated portions of the county. Each city is responsible for collecting that tax within their own jurisdiction. And each city in Cherokee County, with the exception of Waleska, does charge the hotel motel tax. We currently levy a rate of 8%. And under state law, HMT revenue is partially restricted. The largest portion of that is TCT, or Tourism Convention and Trade Shows. which Angela and Pam will primarily report on here in a moment. The other restricted portion is the tourism product development, or TPD. And the final one is the non-restricted. That's the portion that the county can spend on any eligible general fund purpose. So at 8%, under state law, 43.75% or about 3 and 1 half pennies of the 8 pennies must go to TCT. Up to, which means the maximum, up to 18.75% can be spent on TPD. And up to 37 and 1 half percent can be spent unrestricted. So tourism conventions and trade shows, there is a state law definition. It is the planning, conducting, or participating in programs of information, publicity to attract and advertise for tourism convention and trade shows. In short, it's tourism marketing. It's what it is. This money must be expended by a DMO. The county cannot spend that money directly. We must contract with that DMO. That DMO is generally a private sector nonprofit organization, a 501C6. Most of the time, it's going to be your Chamber of Commerce, your CVB, or a regional tribal association. Cherokee County has contracted with Destination Cherokee, i.e., the Chamber of Commerce, to be our DMO. So they are our DMO of record. Tourism product development is restricted as well, and it must fit into the definition, but basically it is the creation or expansion of physical attractions, and those expenditures can include both capital and operating expenses. There is no restriction on who can spend the TPD money, as there is with TCD, so the county can spend that money directly, and we do, and we can also partner with other organizations to spend some of that TPD money as well. Examples of this include convention facilities, sports complexes, signage, museums, art galleries, parks, trails, et cetera. And then I don't have a slide for the non-restricted funds, but as I said, non-restricted is any eligible general fund purpose. So how does Cherokee County use our hotel-motel tax dollars? Well, as I said, we support Destination Cherokee tourism marketing efforts. You'll hear about that in just a moment, what they've done this last year. For the TPD funds, we support History Cherokee and the Woodstock Arts programs. We provide support to recreation and parks, which in turn decreases the burden on the general fund. So we put a little bit of our money there that requires Recreation and Parks to draw less from the general fund. And from our non-restricted funds, we provide support to the conference center, which allows us to lower those conference center rates primarily for our nonprofit affiliates. We also provide, again, support for recreation parks. Yes, it's in both buckets. That's just a mechanism of some of that restricted funding. Some of it's non-restricted. And then we also provide support for the Cherokee Office of Economic Development. So that's how we utilize those funds in our budget. And year to date, the county has collected about $800,000 and hotel-motel tax revenue with still two months to go. We haven't received the report for August, and we'll stop September, of course.

So pushing 100,000, not quite 100,000 a month.

Yes, sir, which is in line with what we thought it would be once we moved to 8%.

And we get that not just from hotels and motels, but from the... That's correct.

VRBOs, anything. Yes, sir, that's correct. They changed the law on that a couple years ago, and that made a significant difference in the revenue. Any other questions for me? If not, I'll turn it over to Pam and Angela and let them provide you with the update on Destination Cherokee.

Welcome, Pam and Angela. Thank you for being here.

Thanks so much for having us. It seems like that, in a sense, we were just here yesterday, which was actually June of 2025, when we talked through the process and you all approved for us to receive the additional funding so that we could continue to grow Destination Cherokee so that it is a destination for those that do want to come and visit our area. Angela is going to give the full report. And I think you'll be pleased with what you see. I know that you received that in advance. And so, of course, we won't answer any questions that you have. But I did want to mention that since we were here last year, in fact, this just happened last week, Angela has completed her program to be a certified travel marketing professional. Not only did she finish the training, but only three of the 86 graduates were asked to present at the annual conference in Richmond, Virginia. And she was one of them. So I think that that should add, even though we feel as if that you are trusting in our credibility as the Cherokee County Chamber and as the initiator of Destination Cherokee, I hope that that gives you even more thought as far as our ability to manage this program. So we're very pleased for the outcome, very excited and proud of her, and then I don't want to steal her thunder by anything that she's going to add, but we've been definitely able to grow our efforts in this past year, and we couldn't have done that without you all and your support and the funding. So thank you so much, and Angela will take it from here.

All right. Thank you, Pam. Welcome, Angela.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. As they have said, Destination Cherokee GA is the tourism arm through the chamber for the county. And I just feel very privileged to be able to talk about Cherokee County. And anyone that knows me knows that I do that quite often. Every chance I get, I'm talking about all the different things going on in Cherokee County. So let me tell you a little bit about tourism and what we've seen in our growth this last year. Brian was mentioning that we are a destination marketing organization. We don't host very many events. But what we do is promote not only the incorporated areas of Cherokee, but all of Cherokee. So we promote all five cities. We promote the short-term rentals, as Mr. Johnson was saying, and the hotels and the campgrounds, that type of thing. So all of the different areas. We're working with our stakeholder relations, building our group sales pipeline, and having visitor services. So as conventions come in or if there's different meetings that are going on, we try to support them in any information they need, any bookings. If they need a connection, then that's what we're here to do, is to promote all the things that Cherokee County offers. With that, we also do event promotions. So local festivals, we try to support that in all the different cities in the area. One of the things that we work with is our social media. It's a very inexpensive way to grow and learn about and to share the information about Cherokee County with a wide variety of people. You can see that our growth has been very nice in both Instagram and Facebook, which are the two platforms that have been in our Destation Cherokee grouping for a long time. And just this past year, we've added LinkedIn. And then since May, we've added TikTok and Pinterest. It's been interesting to see. I am not a TikTok person, but my kids are. And then some of the people on our team that are new to our team are younger, and they are onto TikTok too. And that growth has been phenomenal, as you can see, with the 252.8% growth just from May to June. We have seen lots of views, 4,000 views on TikTok and 9,000 views on TikTok just in a couple of months, which is fantastic. So that's just more people learning more about Destination Cherokee GA and Cherokee County and what we have to offer. One of the things that I'll point out in our audience up here with Instagram and Facebook, a lot of people will talk to you about their followers and how proud they are of the followers that they have. And we are also proud. But one of the numbers that I look for for Destination Cherokee GA is the non-followers. It's important because that means we're reaching new people that have never heard about Cherokee County and telling them about Cherokee County and our story so that we can invite them to come into Cherokee County, visit, stay for a while. So I thought that was really important to mention to you guys as well. Oh, went the wrong way there. Let's see. For our website growth, that's another way that we have been growing our interest in finding ways to reach out to different areas. The growth for our annual website growth, you can see there's three different arrows for each block. And I'm just trying to show you how we've grown every category for three years. So we're looking at 2023, 2024, and 2025 so that we can see the complete years. And that growth has been across that area for our website. One of the things that didn't grow, per se, is the referrals. But what we found when we dug into this number is the difference between 2024 and 2025 is that we started tracking how we get the referrals so that we were giving them landing pages instead of just inviting them to come to Destination Cherokee. And that referral rate changed a little bit. So I'm curious to see over the end of this year how that rate can grow. But even in 2026, from January to June, you can see that the total number of users for our website just in the six months had grown by 38%. The other thing that we're looking at is where those visitors are coming from. We are mostly a day trip destination, but we are seeing a lot of growth in a few other areas that were a surprise to me. Florida, we would think, yes, Florida would come to Georgia. They may be going through Cherokee County to other places, stop and stay a couple of days. But what we're also seeing is that Virginia, California, and New York are people that are staying in our county as well. And they are visiting our website and finding out more information through our blogs and through the different information that we share on our website.

So that's how you know they're coming is through the social media, or do you have another way to...

So this is our website, the back end of our website. So they are coming that way. But we are also confirming that with Placer AI, which is one of the new tools that we were able to add with the new funding that we received. And I will talk about that a little bit further on. So thank you for the question. This is one of the things that we did in the end of 2025. Because we were able to get additional funding, we were able to host a FAM tour for some of our partners with Explore Georgia. So my representative with the state of Georgia's... with Explore Georgia, the tourism arm for the Department of Economic Development, came into Cherokee County, and we visited 31 partners. That is a huge task, and she was a great trooper to be able to go to all of those different places. She was very familiar with Woodstock. Woodstock's tourism effort has been out there a little bit longer than ours, and they are a great partner to us as well. So she was very familiar with them, and she was familiar with Gibbs Gardens, but she wasn't as familiar with things that were going on in Walesco, with the FPAC, with the Garland sporting clays, with all of the different things that are happening with Dixie Speedway, all of the different tourism opportunities that we have. So I was able to take her around and share some of those stories and have her meet Alma Coffey, one of the up and coming things to talk about in our community. So that was a lot of fun. I was also able to do the Georgia Motor Coach Association, go to their operators association meeting and meet 20 different ones there. I'm sorry, 39 different ones there. And they were from across the southeast. So it was Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana. in North Carolina. So we were able to talk with all of the different groups there to try to build that pipeline to bring them in to visit our different tourism destinations. Entertainment Tourism Alliance of Georgia is about the filming. and the gaming industry. And that is one of the new and upcoming tourism things that we're participating in. And I'm an ambassador for them. I work with Molly Mercer on the filming stuff. She does all the filming. And I just try to promote what they've done with the Filmed in Cherokee app and those type of things. For 2026, the first part of this year, we have a brand new visitor's guide that came out at the middle of April that we wanted to promote. And then our social media has taken off with us doing some different series. Those different series are event venues, behind the scenes, road trip series. So we've done, we're working on doing each city as a road trip and then we'll have some other things that we'll do with that as well. We've worked with all the different farmers markets to promote the different farmers markets and then we're also working with like Farm to Cup for Alma Coffee and Farm to Table like Frick and Frack where they have different options that they offer, different experiences that they offer to a visitor. We added an email newsletter, and you'll see some of those statistics in just a little bit. But it's been really fun to add itineraries and have some different things that we can show the visitor, hey, this is things that you can do in our area. For the group sales and business development, I was able to go to Savannah in May and be part of the Georgia Media Marketplace. That's where 20 different media personalities from around the Georgia, Charleston, Greenville area were at that event. And they represented magazines, radio, TV, podcasts, influencers, and journalists. That gets Cherokee County's name out there to all of those different personalities. And from that, we have three stories in process, Alma Coffee, Restoration Farms, and Funk Heritage Center. So those are some of the things that we're trying to make sure that we're looking at, not only the individual visitor, but getting the media involved so that we can promote Cherokee County through the media as well. In addition to that, Explore Georgia, which is the tourism arm through the Georgia Department of Economic Development, we worked with them this year to do some of the featured partner emails and partner spotlights. And these are some of our incredible numbers through working with them. We had a 25% open rate and a 26% click rate. So before I was working in social media, I had no idea what any of those numbers meant. It just looked like huge percentages. But I'll tell you that the average click-through rate for social media, for newsletters and stuff, is like 1.8. So those numbers are really good. In addition to that, the April partner spotlight, again, we had 7.9% open rate. And the click-through was 6.8%, which was fantastic. In addition to the email marketing, we did some social media posts with them. And their reach helped us reach new people, which is fantastic. And it gave us a lot of interactions. And that was something that I was curious about, is finding out who was interested in learning more about Destination Cherokee GA. Another thing that we tried this year is working with Northeast Georgia. There are two different travel associations in North Georgia. One is Northwest Georgia, which is one we are a part of. And we are starting a co-op in that area. And there will be billboards in Blue Ridge that will have Destination Cherokee on them, which is very exciting, because Blue Ridge is going to have a ton of people come into their area in the fall. And now they're going to learn about Destination Cherokee GA, which will be fantastic. But in the meantime, before that came into play, the Northeast Georgia Co-op, it's a $95,000 multimedia campaign, but our effort was $5,500. So co-oping means that it's a little bit less expensive for us to do it together, which is fantastic. And that had billboards, social media, there's print ads, radio, mail, television, and PR stuff. So that was fantastic. Again, just trying to make sure that not only are we here Northwest Georgia region and reaching out to Atlanta, which is our two primary things that were happening before I came on board in 2023, but gradually growing that to the Southeast and then again across the United States. Some of the ways that we've expanded is with our email newsletter. And you can see here we've had $99,160. And then opened, we have a 57% open rate. The average is 28%. And the click-through rate is 4%, where the average is 1% usually on newsletters. That's a 386% increase in our visitor guide downloads. The reason that that's important is because if they download the visitor guide, they're very interested in learning more about Cherokee County and coming here. So that's one of our metrics that we want to make sure that we're getting our visitor guide out there and making sure that we're having all of those experience available with our itineraries, which in our new visitors guide there are lots of itineraries too. Some of our community partnerships, it has been a very fun year. We were able to work with the Georgia Craft Brewers Festival and invited, welcomed 1,200 attendees. We had four influencers come into Gibbs Garden and Ball Ground area. From those influencers, we had 16,400 views. 63% non-followers, 67% new followers. So that was a really great thing for me to see, is seeing their connection with their audience, and then they are transferring that to us, which is fantastic. I also host destination networking meetings for the tourism partners in our local area. We do that every other month. And that's been fun too, because it gets the hoteliers involved, and it has the hoteliers working with different partners in our area. so that they can meet and grow their businesses too. Sean had invited me to help with the GHSA slow pitch playoffs. So we offered them some of our swag, which is what we call it. We had cooling towels with Destination Cherokee GA on it. There were four teams, I'm sorry, eight teams that came in. Two of the teams are here, Cherokee and Creek View, were at that. So they were local and didn't stay in a hotel. But the other six were far enough away that then they might come stay. So we did blocked rooms for them and did the cooling towels that then they take back and everyone sees it when they are using that, that Destination Cherokee welcomed them into our community. I worked with Visit Woodstock on a PTA conference for 250 attendees and then of course Sean and the wonderful people at the Sheriff's Office, Fire and Emergency Services, all of the Parks and Rec and the county working with Sean and Miss Erica has been a joy. So that was a lot of fun having 580 attendees. come to the Georgia Police and Fire Games. The outdoor festival and expo that the recreation and parks put on was a lot of fun. And then Georgia Impact was able to host the playoffs for the WPSL, which is the semi-pro league. There were four teams that came in, and we had hotel blocks for them and also did some different swag for them. The America 250 in Cherokee County, we promoted that out. And then a 3v3 soccer international cup. And then just this past weekend, we had 600 people come in for the Georgia Child Care Association. And they were able to learn more about Cherokee County as well. So doing those community partnerships has been a lot of fun. And it's grown our name, which is awesome. Now, this is data that our most current statewide data was from 2024. At the end of this month, I'll get the most current data for 2025. So it's usually the September after the year end when we receive the data. Explore Georgia, which is our economic development partner for tourism, they are the ones that pay for this data. economic development information from tourism economics and the visitor spending. So they give us all of this information per county. So what I want you just to see is that tourists spend $215,800,000 in Cherokee County in 2024. That's amazing.

And how do you know that?

That is from Tourism Economics. It's one of the data sets that the state of Georgia uses for all of the counties.

Okay.

And then you can see here how we are growing. So 2018, 2019, and then we dropped off in 2020, as everyone did. But now we're steadily growing again, which is encouraging. So I'm looking forward to seeing those 2025 numbers as well. So from these numbers, one of the things I wanted to point out is the tourist dollars, because they're dollars from visitors, they're not dollars from Cherokee County residents, this is $170 per household that our residents don't have to pay in property taxes because the visitor has already paid that toward the county. So that's encouraging. And then our daily tourist spend was up 4.7% in 2024 from 2023. Okay. And then the placer information that we were talking about a little bit earlier, this is the placer data gives you information per city or per county. And one of the reasons that it's important for me as a marketer is to see where the people are coming into, so which cities are they participating in, and day trips versus overnight trips. And then what markets are they coming from? Good data is data that tells you what happened. Great data is data that tells you how to market for the future. And so we want to use this great data so that we are making smart choices on where we're putting our marketing dollars. So seeing that, of course, Atlanta day trip, Chattanooga, Macon, but then Tampa and New York, Birmingham, those are all places that we want to market so that more people from that area learn about Cherokee County and come visit us. And then this graph here shows the growth of the hotel motel tax over the last four, five years. And in 2025, it was like 780. And then our visitor nights was 2,700,000. And that was all from placer data. And that was a new tool that we were able to get. For our strategic expansion in 2027, we're looking at refreshing our website. We're going to have a new website that updates the photography and video, plus enhancing the visitor's experience on the site, allowing them to find information about all five cities, about the county in general, about the different activities, things to do, and itineraries, trip planning, that kind of thing. In addition to that, we have different marketing avenues that we're looking at Jacksonville and Orlando magazines We currently advertise a blast with Atlanta magazine and have done a few print ads with them But we're looking to expand that to different markets for Jacksonville Orlando and then perhaps Greenville We did do some paid Facebook ads, which was I haven't even told Pam this number But this last month, we did Facebook ads and our impressions, which is not meaning that they came to our site. But the people that we shared the information with was 181,000 people in a month about Cherokee County. So from that, we're looking to see, OK, who dove into our website? Who clicked on the link to download our guide? Because those kind of things are indicators that they're going to visit. And that's what we're most interested in, is them coming and spending their money here with Cherokee County. In addition to that group sales pipeline, we're working with the Georgia Motor Coach operators, travel media familiarization tour, and with some of our local senior groups just to try to get an idea of how do people move through our town, what do they like the most, what's things that we can improve on. And then our visitor experience, we have digital passports, different trails and itineraries, and then we're co-hosting the Georgia Police and Fire Games with the county again in 2027. And that's everything. What questions can I answer for you guys?

I've got a couple.

Sure.

If we go back to the visitor nights, 2.7 million.

OK.

So that's saying there's an average of 7,500 people that don't live here that are staying here every night? Is that right?

The dump annually. Yeah, across 2.7 million for the whole year.

And does that include people that come here to see friends, relatives from New York come down?

Yes. So some of that is not commercial tourism.

It's just people in general. There's an average of 7,500 people here a night that don't live here. That's a lot.

The other thing that I found interesting when we were looking at the data is that there was a bump of higher numbers in December and January. And I thought, well, we have some cool stuff going on, but we don't have a lot of stuff going on. What's going on with that? But it looks like it's college students coming back to Cherokee County for the holiday. And that bumps our numbers because their phones, the way Placer tracks data is through the phones. And their phones don't live here. Their phones live in Milledgeville or a different state or Athens or Statesboro. So that was interesting to see too. But that means, hey, we've got to have things for them to do. When they come visit, let's have some fun things like the ice skating that's popular and different things like that. So I think it's interesting. Data is very interesting.

And then one more, or maybe two more. Tourist spend. So that's not necessarily a tourist and what we would think a tourist would want on vacation, but it could be they live in Cobb County and they come here and go to the outlet malls and spend money, right? That's still tourist spend?

That's correct. OK. That's correct. So that is how they spend. And then it's broken down into food and beverage, retail, transportation, lodging, and entertainment and recreation. Yep. OK. Yep.

Those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Any others? It's great information. Thank you for bringing it to us.

Thank you.

All right. Okay. So we, at this point, we'll move to just walk through of our agenda for this evening. This could be a record long meeting tonight.

We had one more item on there.

Oh, did we have? Oh, yeah. Yeah, planning commission hearing dates. Sorry. I was about to leave you guys out.

Yeah, the Planning Commission has been talking about the length of the meetings and the fact that we're struggling to start close to our advertised start time. And so I wanted to bring Dr. Whiteside up, because he's the chairman, and give you some insight on conversations that we've been having about this issue. All right.

Welcome, Rick. Well, thank you for allowing me to come forward. Again, I'm just trying to get a conversation started, and I appreciate you letting me be here. As you prepare for the calendar for 2027, I'm asking for your consideration to make some movement on our date or time or both on our public hearing planning commission meeting. Again, I'm respectfully requesting that. I've had some discussions individually with Planning Commission members, and then we, at the work session, we talked about it as a group. And there is an overwhelming support to make some changes. And I hope, again, you'll consider that. So I want to put this in context for you. I've been on the Planning Commission. This is my 16th year. And I have seen changes in length of meetings over that period of time. Some of them are in response to the economy, interest rates, what is going on, and so forth. But in the past 18 months or so, we've seen a creative bit of getting well beyond our 7 o'clock start time. And I know you all know that because you all are there. So again, this is not as exciting as the numbers you just went through and so forth. But I want to give you a little context. And also, as we go forward, as you go forward in 2027, you've got a lot of issues on your plate. Obviously, prioritizing TSPLOS, and there can be a lot of public input on that, of course. You'll hear a lot of that, which takes time, and it should happen. You may have other things that come about. The LHOST comes on and so forth. Again, these things take time to go forward. But if you step back and look at January of this year up to current September, our average start time is 7.45. That's 45 minutes beyond the scheduled date. There's a range there from one time we actually started on time, and then all the way to almost 9.30 we started. So if you consider what our average start time is 7.45, and our meetings last roughly 90 minutes over that same period of time, We're concluding our meetings at 915, thereabouts. Again, I'm speaking in round numbers, so not to get into, I can certainly provide the statistics if you wanted, but I just want to talk in round numbers. So I would like for you to consider moving our date and or time to something that's obviously convenient for you, but also convenient for the public. Also, we'd like to just remind you, we've got staff here that have already put in a full day. And then they're not getting home. I don't know what time they get home. I get home 10 o'clock thereabouts, obviously, after they've been here since 8 o'clock. So I can imagine the stress on them and their families, and perhaps you yourself. Also, the public. We have to make people have to be here for a long period of time, particularly if they're the last case. And folks have to make arrangements for child care in some cases, elderly care in others. It's also a work day for those folks the following day. And we have a lot of, not a lot, we have on occasion dismissed or postponed cases that we have folks here that just get basically dismissed, don't even need to be here sometimes. So I'm just trying to get a little better handle on all of this. And again, it's also taxing to the Planning Commission members. While you're seeing we're here for basically 90 minutes, we have the work sessions, of course. Thereabouts an hour or so. But a lot of us do independent research. We go to the sites that we're being asked to evaluate. We do web searches on data to kind of understand what we're being asked to do and historically. So we're putting a lot of time into this. And again, I just hope that you feel like we're doing a good job for you. and that you will help us make a better use of our time if we can. That's all I have. If there's questions, I'll be glad to answer.

So you're talking about doing it not on our meeting nights, shift it to a different?

It could be on your day, obviously. As you know, we tried a 7.30 start at one time, and that worked, and then it didn't work. And again, a lot of that may have been right at the time that There was some economic pressures outside. There was less zoning cases that came in that particular month. And we ended up going past. Y'all would conclude at 7 o'clock, and we'd be sitting around 30 minutes waiting to start a meeting. So I don't know if there's other days that you may find yourselves here. I'm not opposed to starting earlier in the afternoon if you needed to. to clear it out earlier. I mean, I'm just throwing ideas out. This is absolutely just a throw out. A 4 PM start. You have your work session at 6. I mean, we've already concluded. We get out of your way before your 6 o'clock meeting. Again, our meetings are roughly 90 minutes. That's what they have been this past year. So I think it would give you time. I mean, obviously I don't want to put a burden on you to have additional work effort as well. But I imagine you would like to get home earlier than you've been getting home as well.

So my initial thought is, could we start earlier? I don't know if 6 o'clock is a law. I don't think it is. But I think for your group, Rick, it's more important to be available after hours so that the public can join. Because the whole point of your meeting is the public hearing. So if we started at 4, a lot of people would have to take off work, or make it, or kids aren't out of school yet. Yeah, again, my initial thought is, could we start a half hour earlier on those nights?

Yeah, I mean, what if we start at 5?

5, yeah.

Well, just asking, is there some kind of reason we couldn't do it on a totally separate day? Because we don't understand if we, as long as we don't advertise it as a joint meeting, then legally we don't have to have a quorum here. I think there's some debate about that. Well, I think it's definitely worth looking into, but...

If it's not a joint public hearing, then I believe we'd have to have a second public hearing before the Board of Commissioners for each case.

For instance, Woodstock does that. They hear every case twice.

Many of our cities do that.

Yeah, once before the Planning Commission and a second time before the Board of Commissioners. We could do that, but I don't think we want to go there. Then our meetings go from three hours to six hours.

This seems to me like maybe a separate day. to give them time to go through all the cases. To me, that makes the most sense to have a separate day. for Planning Commission to have their meeting.

We've talked in the past, and I know we do that now, and tonight is a great example, putting all the public hearings on the second meeting for us so that we can try to get through our first meeting quickly. And maybe it's just we have to do a better job of being done at 7. I mean, that may be the answer is we have to move quickly through our agenda.

Well, I like the earlier idea. And I'm not opposed to a separate night. It'd be once a month. We'd just do this once a month, right?

Strictly for the public hearing.

Yeah, we could do it on an evening that's adjacent to one of our other meetings, perhaps. So we're all in town. wouldn't interfere with as much anyway with other tribes. Harder for you, Corey. Everything's hard for you to be in town. I get that. I may not be a fan of the extra name. We're talking about traveling for vacation. You travel for work.

If we did it on Wednesday.

Yeah, if we did it on Wednesday just before or Monday before or Wednesday after. Either one of those. I think either of those is viable. Start at 5 or put it on a Monday or Wednesday before or after one of our regular monthly meetings so that we're here anyway or in town probably.

I know y'all need some time to think about this and talk amongst yourselves how you want to go about it. But I know you're We'll be planning your 2027 schedule. We have to publicly advertise these meetings. And I thought this was the appropriate time to bring it up.

I think we might have some indifference. I'm kind of indifference between the two, but I see the need.

Well, if we did start at 5, then I'm OK either 1, 2. But would that mean we would start work session at 2 instead of 3?

That would have been my thought. We'd just move our whole day up. OK.

If I could just offer a couple comments. I don't have the charter in front of me. I just want to make sure that it doesn't have a time specification for a monthly meeting. Usually it doesn't, but we'll just want to confirm that for sure. We can always change the charter, but we would want to double check that. But the other point, and to Commissioner Ragsdale's consideration of moving the meetings faster, I have a lot of jurisdictions that with the consent order, you know, it's been maybe vetted at the work session a little more in detail, and when the consent order comes up, they don't read each of the items again. And sometimes that doesn't take a long time, but sometimes that can take another... Five, ten, or more minutes, you know, if you've got 15, 16 items. It's just they announce the consent agenda. All the items are there for public reference, and they don't read each one. So that would be a very quick consent agenda.

I've started doing that to try to – make the meetings go a little bit faster.

That would be an option.

Present the consent items during work session in detail, and then I just read through them during the regular meeting.

Well, and I'm saying not even read through them. I have a lot of jurisdictions that will say, the next item is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? And you don't take time to read through each one. And so that's just, it's not a criticism of how we've done it, because it's fine. But it's just a thought of if we wanted to find ways to expedite.

Yeah, and honestly, I'm open to that, too. I just don't know that that would be enough. Save us a ton of time, right?

But it'd be a little bit.

Give them enough time.

Yeah. But I'm OK moving up to five or having it on a separate day. Either one.

I'm sure there's a better way. With our collective heads together, we'll figure it out.

Corey's our biggest traveler. What's your thought? You're the one who's going to have it.

Keeping it all in one day would be easier for me, but I'm just one of five. So I'm open to that.

And if we did, if we moved one of our meetings, we'd have to check the charter. But if we moved one of our meetings up, would it be less confusing to move them both up?

So that people know they'll be here at 5 instead of 6.

Thank you for your consideration.

Was that what you're thinking? If we did move it up to 5, then y'all would start at 6? So what's your...

Probably 6.30. We'd probably be at 6.30 then, wouldn't we? Give us an hour and a half and still get you... Let's start at 6.30. Yeah.

Still be a challenge for us to... 90 minutes, that's still... That's getting us out at 8 o'clock, which is reasonable.

Yeah. And there's still going to be the risk that we run over and you don't start till seven, but at least it's not eight.

Yes. Yes. And we do have some controls about the number of cases that can come forward at any given night. So those are in place right now. So we're not overwhelmed. What is the maximum? I'm not sure anymore now. I can't remember.

I believe it's eight cases and two of those slots are reserved for commercial cases.

And we often don't have that many cases. Typical four or five is what we have, typically.

Anybody have an issue? I mean, I think the best consensus I'm hearing is let's look at moving our meetings up to 5 o'clock start, moving yours up to whatever you think is appropriate, 6 or 6.30. And we'd move our whole day up to our work sessions would start at 2 instead of 3.

And then would you move the second meeting up to 5 o'clock also, second meeting of the month?

I think I would, just to reduce confusion.

The only concern about that is availability to the public. 5 o'clock's early. People at work are not going to be able to be here at 5 o'clock. Probably get some pushback on that.

Could we change the order of the agenda to put public hearings last? That way, if we start at 5 and we get through everything and give people time to get here if they get off work at 5 o'clock, and then the last thing we're doing are the public hearings and give them a little bit more time to get here.

Makes sense. That sounds good to me.

I don't know if we're bound to that in any way, that order.

Let's take it under advisement for the moment. But I think the consensus right now would be to move in that direction. Start at 5. I like the idea to put the hearings last.

I'm available to help you at any time you have a question. I'm available to help you.

Just to throw something out, for your millage rate and your budget hearings, you have hearings that you currently do at the meetings that have to start after specified times. So your new times, and you can do a special call meeting. You can do anything else, but just a point to remember. You wouldn't be able to do exactly like you're doing now with your budget and your military hearings for that evening hearing.

DAVID BURRAGE- What is the time for that? Do you know?

If I remember correctly, I think it's 6 o'clock would be your earliest start time, which currently you're fine with. If you move back to 5, you would be too early.

Unless we shifted everything, like you said, to the end of it.

You'd have to schedule separately, I guess. You could maybe gavel out of the meeting and immediately back into a special session, maybe.

So you don't think it could be a part of a meeting that started at 5, but the hearing didn't start till 6?

You would have to separately schedule them. I think you could work that out, but it would just be something you would have to do.

So that's another wrinkle to try to digest for this. But that still sounds like something that could be fatal. But I have an idea we can find a way around that.

I don't think it would be fatal.

Well, I mean, fatal to the idea that we start at 5. We'd have to find a workaround for that, which could be a little.

You can easily do it. You just need to remember to do it.

All right, so let's maybe take it up again at our next meeting. But unless we find a reason not to, I think I see us headed toward a shift to a 5 o'clock start for our meetings with some variation for hearings that have to be after 6. And maybe 6.30. I mean, it's painful to sit and wait. I know it is. But maybe that's better than keeping everybody else waiting.

Well, anything that you can do to help improve the situation would be very appreciated, and I thank each one of you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good discussion. Okay, now we're to walk through for this evening, and this is going to be a very long meeting, potentially. So we've got a couple of presentations, one of which I'm going to want to have a little discussion about in executive session. We've got... Rick Jaspers and Bill Fincher here to present a resolution naming this Exit 20 right up here for Mandy Ballinger. Kind of a big event. I'm proud to have them here. Commissioner Ragsdale's going to make a new appointment to the TSPLOS committee. And then we start the series of public hearings. We've got the budget first up. So we would normally go through that now and again this evening.

I don't know that we really need to do that. I think we can wait. Yeah.

Maybe we just do that once only and do it this evening. All right. So we've got a whole bunch of planning related. Soil and erosion control. Got something to tell us about that one? Ms. Jacks. Jack.

All right.

He owes me one.

He would never. Mm-hmm.

Good afternoon. So what we're doing with soil erosion is...

Excuse me. Can you put the microphone a little closer? He's old. I'm old. Hard of hearing.

Is that better, Commissioner?

That's much better. Thank you.

All right. Thanks. So what we're doing with the soil erosion ordinance is we've had, since I've been here 60 whole days, quite a number of issues with... different sites actually violating the ordinance. We're having to do stop work orders. They're violating the stop work orders. And I think there's a huge history of that in several different areas throughout the county. But it's happened a lot since I've been here. And so Brantley asked me to come up with a solution. And so I've added Section E to the ordinance, which would allow for us to not only charge the monetary penalty, but also criminal penalties, which would be enforced in the state court. So it would carry the fines of $1,000, but it would also carry possible imprisonment not to exceed 60 days. And so it would be a more serious penalty. It wouldn't be the very first thing that we go to, but there are several places that we all know of that have an issue that continually violate, continually ignore. The EPD has gone out, done things that are continually ignored. So this was a suggestion and I think a good resolution to maybe stop those things from happening.

So this would not be, you violated this ordinance, here's a criminal penalty. This would be, it's been ongoing, you've had multiple warnings, you should know this by now kind of thing, right?

Correct, this is the final stop on the erosion train.

Okay.

Yes.

It seems like most of our ordinances carry that potential one year, because that's the most we can do. Correct. But you're saying it's not in the ordinance now?

It's not in. No, sir. So I added it for your consideration.

Well, could we? And I totally understand. You and I both know several people that this would help with. But I have had some of the public reach out. And the example is just one. My concern is the agenda item 8.2, erosion control. The amendment adds criminal penalties to the ordinance. Penalties include jail time and every day is considered a new violation. It's like the county is trying to have EPD powers. At least the EPD is an equal opportunity enforcer. In the past, county commissioners have used the EPD to go after their political opponents. So again, I'm just voicing a concern. But what if we just left it a monetary criminal period and took the jail option out of it? Is that doable? How is that different from a real man?

Well, it's not criminal if you don't go to jail or a possibility of jail. I mean, there's already the fine that's $1,000 a day, and every day you violate, it's another $1,000.

I thought it was civil now, and that's why we couldn't.

It is civil, right.

So you can't have anything criminal unless there's a jail element.

There needs to be a criminal violation to that.

It can be a monetary criminal violation, or does it have to be?

It has to, as a former prosecutor, my understanding is there has to be some kind of imprisonment.

Who said that? The enforcers. I'm sorry. The enforcers, the ones who would actually issue a warrant, I mean, is that through the marshal's office?

It would be the marshal that would go.

But who initiates that order to the marshals? Development inspectors would be the starting point for it.

Correct, correct. And so now let's say this site has had the EPD out three times, and they violated the stop work order 26 times. And they've had a problem throughout their history. So the next violation of the soil erosion ordinance could possibly be that engineering or staff says, Marshals, I need you to come with me. We need to really enforce this. We need to make this real for the developer. They don't have to issue a warrant. That's not something they have to do, but they could understand that that is the reality of that. Later on, we're going to talk about impounding animals. The marshal has to do that, and there is a criminal penalty for impounding animals, but the marshal does not have to issue the warrant.

I get that. I guess my concern is, yeah. Like, I know we need something with more teeth, for lack of a better word. I just didn't realize that an incarceration element was included with that.

I mean, and again, you don't have to approve this. We can go take it back to the drawing board, you know.

Then we're straight back where we were before, so.

Right.

It's just something I didn't realize was the inclusion of Jill.

Well, I mean, you I guess you can't call it criminal and have no jail time. But what would we want to do anyway?

And the judge doesn't have to enforce the criminal penalty.

The court that it goes to. But if it's a $1,000 fine max. It's civil. So it's going to.

Right. But if you go the criminal route, the judge doesn't have to give any criminal time. It could just be the fine again. But I just think it's the enhancement of this could be a possibility that you're in jail because you keep ignoring every enforcement arm that has been trying to preserve the natural resources of the county, you just continually do it, and you get away with it, and you just don't feel like it applies to you. And I think that's the frustration.

Can we put some guardrails on it to make sure that this is like X amount of offenses before jail becomes an option?

And is there a way to, as far as the, it's $1,000 a day.

That's what the current civil penalty is. And so this is just reiterating that up to, right, it's up to $1,000 a day. That's the current civil penalty.

And the reason for that is some of these multi-million dollar year penalties, that's nothing to them.

We're reiterating the civil and adding a criminal component to it in this section.

I'm just concerned that it seems like staff's going to be the ones that are going to be Like the judge or the magistrate judge that would... Well, the magistrate judge would be...

This would go to state court. That would only be if we're seeking jail time or would it go to... That's correct.

If it's under the criminal penalty. If it's just under civil, you're right, it goes to magistrate court.

So the option would stay. In most cases, it would still be just like it is today. Correct.

This is for the... The worst of the worst. But again, it doesn't have to be added. You can table it or decide not to do it right now. I mean, think about it some more. It's just an option that we came up with. And it might not resolve anything.

So who would... Considering everything we got, we may be better off just taking one and exploring this a little bit further, because I do have some more questions. But I know we've got 13 other public hearing items, too.

But you did say that the Marshall would be the one that would issue this

citation, this criminal citation. Correct. There would not be a staff person issuing that. Correct. It has to be a post-certified. It would be a staff person initiating the. Yes.

It has to be a post-certified officer that issues a warrant.

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

And I would think while it would initiate with the development inspector, I would think the marshal wouldn't simply take his or her word for it. I would think the marshal would take some responsibility. I'm about to issue this warrant that has criminal potential. I'm going to make sure I think it's worthy. And if it's not, I'm going to push back. I mean, we would expect that out of him.

That is correct. And that's my.

But at that point, it is on, you know. And then who would swear out the warrant at that point?

Would it be the DA or the solicitor? I'm sorry to say that again. Who would swear out the warrant for the actual arrest?

Well, the marshal would swear out the warrant. And then the solicitor would prepare the accusation. And then they would get a court date. They'd have an arraignment and a court date. OK.

And then currently, the solicitor's office prosecutes cases in state court.

That's correct, yes.

Can we do something with the fines, too? I mean, if you're like $1,000, then the next one will be $10,000. You can't go over $1,000, right?

I thought it was $2,500.

According to the statute, correct.

Well, but I think my understanding is we're limited under state law.

That's what I meant. I'm sorry.

Our ordinance is maximum $1,000 per day. No, $1,000, not $2,500. I think it's $1,000.

It's up to $1,000 a day.

OK.

So we can't go higher than that. You can't go higher than that.

So a couple questions, Jenny. Violator. So I'm switching to the language here. How do we define the violator of this? Is it the property owner? Is it the person actually doing the work?

The person that has the permit to do the land disturbance. So whoever that person is and that has disturbed the land, the soil, that's the violator. Yes, sir.

So that person could be sitting in an office somewhere.

A developer in Mississippi.

Yeah. And that would be the person who gets.

And then we have a jurisdictional problem.

OK. Second question, under this new Section E1, I don't know if you can pull it up there or not, but any person who commences a land disturbing activity without first obtaining a permit required by this ordinance, comma, who fails to do this, comma, who fails, should it be and in front of all those? They're doing this, and they're doing this, and they're doing this. Because the way I read it is if they do any one of those things, it's a violation. But it sounds like it's got to be all those things stacked up, right?

I'm following the state Ordinance and so they have I mean we could put in and because the state is the floor, right?

Okay, so we could add an and absolutely I mean is that am I understand that correctly you have to be doing all these things, right? you've started a land disturbing activity and You got a permit or sorry, and you didn't get a permit and your not doing sedimentation control correctly, and you've violated stop work order, then you get to this.

That's correct. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that have to happen. Like I said, this is the end of the line, end of the train for this. And it would definitely not trigger the first instance. Sure.

OK.

It is a harsh penalty.

Yeah. Well, again, when I read that one, it looks like if you do any one of those things, This is what's happening to you.

When do the violations, if they get a stop work order, say on Monday, when do they normally start work again? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday?

When it's released. Right. And then also, just real quick, it says $2,500 in here. So is that a different amount? Like if we're limited to $1,000?

Right. That's in the erosion control. That's like the civil penalty in the erosion control ordinance.

So this would be in addition to that?

It would. It's separate. So when the stop work order is issued, that is basically identifying the issue that they need to address, like a silt fence is down. or sediments left the site. And so really, their work is limited to addressing whatever the issue is that caused the violation. And they can't do any other light work on the site until they fix the violation. So it's really dependent on how long does it take them to fix the violation. And coming to compliance really drives when they get back to work again and the stop work order is lifted, if that makes sense.

It sounds like. when you get the stop work order that they're back at it again within a couple of days and have not corrected the problem.

It could be. It just varies on how serious or egregious the violation is and the cleanup might be. There might be a major cleanup they need to do, but it could be that it could be relatively quickly that they could address it and get back to work. So it's just going to vary. So we could probably get a little bit more information from staff on kind of generally what's the baseline they see with something like that.

So we couldn't revoke their permit to do the work.

I think you can after, what is it, three stop work orders in a?

Revoke it or have whatever, maybe second, third time they do it and have the marshal show up and say, you're in violation, you're under arrest. Arrest them, whoever's on the job.

That's criminal now.

Whoever's on the job site.

Can't arrest somebody unless it's criminal.

We might get it. That's what it sounds like we're trying to do, or make this criminal. Make it a criminal. Yes, for sure.

Again, if y'all are OK tabling it, I'll save my questions. Because I could go into this for another half hour. I got some questions, too. Well, I mean, we scheduled the hearing. I think we ought to have the hearing. So why is civil not working now? What's the holdup with that? Because we've already got the $2,500 a day civil penalty. And maybe I just misunderstood. I was under the impression it was because a judge can't enforce the civil penalty. Is that accurate?

Yes. Well, the reason why they took it to state court.

Yeah.

And the state court judge says, well, I can't hear this because there's no criminal penalty attached to this. This is merely a magistrate court violation. I can't hear it in state court unless there's a criminal penalty attached. And so my understanding is that's why.

So if we had taken it to the magistrate court judge, would that have enforced it? Possibly.

Could have possibly.

Well, but honestly, I think we just try that first. It sounds like we just took it to the wrong court. forego anything where you know, I don't want to be putting construction workers in jail. I mean, that's just.

Was that our choice to go to state court? I mean, typically what happens is you say, no, I want a jury trial. And there's a right to a jury trial.

Correct. Yeah, I don't know.

And that can only happen in state court. It can't happen in magistrate court. That's correct. So the defendant in the case usually is the one who has to escalate it to state court. And once it got there, we hit this snag. The state court judge says, I can't even hear this.

Could possibly. I don't know that.

So he's got a right to appeal it to state court. And then the state court says, no, I won't take it.

To my recollection, and I just had heard a little bit about this, I think it does predate Jenny, is exactly as the chairman's suggesting. When someone requests a jury trial, then it goes to the solicitor's office to handle it. And so I think this initiative, and Grantley, correct me if I'm wrong, came from Todd Hayes' office, from the Solicitor General's office, because they were unsuccessful in a prosecution where there was a clear violation, but they found a loophole in the ordinance that they didn't believe gave appropriate jurisdiction or penalty that was appropriate to be considered by the state court judge. So that then kind of neuters us completely. If someone asks for a jury trial, we've got the state court judges saying, well, we can't do anything. But I think it's trying to plug a hole in the ordinance as much as anything.

And he wasn't a pro se. He had an attorney. Right.

Thank God. So if it's a regular civil case and you're not happy with the outcome of that, I mean, what's the avenue? What would this be different from a regular civil case? Don't we understand that?

Well, it's all about how the ordinance is written, and I'm not that familiar with it, so I can't say too much except that I do recall that fact pattern, the Solicitor General calling it to our attention, and then I think Brantley's team getting involved because they were unsuccessful in a prosecution when there was plainly sole and erosion control violations, but there's a problem with the ordinance language. And so it takes it out of our hands. Like, while you might say, OK, we could go to magistrate court or develop it however we wish, if the litigant, the defendant, requests a jury trial, you can't have a jury trial in magistrate court. That automatically bumps them to state court. And so I don't know a whole lot more than that, but if you're postponing it, then we could get the solicitor's office involved. I believe there's a brief that I recall them sharing that they argued to try to enforce what's in the ordinance. But to my recollection, and I know Brantley's group got involved, so you probably know a lot more than I'm remembering, but there was like a loophole in the ordinance that didn't have a connected penalty provision at all. And so the judge would not enforce anything.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is I don't have a problem with the monetary penalty, but it's the... Well, it's the jail aspect of it that I have.

And I'm not sure about, like, are Cherokees ordinances generally like animal control, solid waste, do they all have a criminal penalty attached or no?

We're getting into that. Is that coming next? OK.

I was going to say, just under general state law where local governments are authorized to have local rules and regulations and ordinances, it's standard to say you can have a civil penalty up to $1,000, 60 days in jail, or both. I mean, that's like state law and standard. And most jurisdictions just recite that verbatim and have these criminal penalties.

I'm familiar with seeing it. Yeah.

And you may not even realize they're out there. So we may have those in some of our ordinances. Yeah, for postponing, we can find out a little more from the Solicitor General's office what the problem was.

Well, I think the chairman wanted to have a hearing on it. Did you not?

Well, I mean, we've advertised the hearing.

We can have the hearing and then postpone it. Okay. Table it. Yeah. We don't have to act on it.

Okay. Okay. Well.

All right. Sorry about that.

That's all right. No. I'm sorry.

No, no, no. I just, I didn't have all the answers and I apologize.

Please acknowledge we're going into this one without. likely plans to move forward because there's still some undecided things. All right, so have you got the fireworks ordinance as well?

I have fireworks.

Move ahead.

We're going to have some more. So what I did with this is I met with the marshal's office. There was some question about definitions, especially when enforcing fireworks and people who have equine sections of their property and how we're gonna enforce the noise ordinance and the fireworks part of that so in the original ordinance 2640 a section 6 was very very skeletal it just had consumer fireworks and then it had a sentence added on about 200 yards from equine facility so the Marshall was needed more definition and they wanted to be able to enforce it correctly so I came through speaking with the Marshall and we got together and I created the section 26 40.1 and It sets out consumer fireworks separately. It has the definitions that the marshals need in order to enforce it. It talks about equine. It talks about what a facility is because equines are not just horses. It's horses, mules, pennies, and asses. And so it was not just horses. So it helped them figure out what it was. Facility let them know that it doesn't have to be a riding ring. It can just be one structure or a number of structures. We put out the time restrictions to help them enforce that. And then for the 200 yards from the facility, we came up with the idea that the marshall would get with gis and any identified equine facilities get with gis and go ahead and do the map around the facility for we thought about 250 yards because gis is plus or minus 250 yards in accuracy and do that um do that section around the facility so that the marshals aren't out there in the middle of the night with tape trying to figure out where 250 yards is. So they're working on that. And then we have the balance of the ordinance section there. feel like if the public gets out there and helps the marshals figure out, OK, yes, this is my facility, the marshals can do their homework and have things prepared so that when these issues do arise that they're ready to respond and respond quickly. And it just helps enforcement all the way around.

So we'd put it on the property owner and the owner of these animals to stake out the distance.

no no we're the marshals is getting with gis and we're they're creating a map for the marshals so that they have an idea of where that 250 yard radius is so if they get a call about that certain property they can oh yeah there are horses there there is a radius we can go out with pretty much pretty pretty good certainty that it may have violated

Yeah, I think that's a great idea, but where's the parameters for that like does it start are we saying just the barn?

What's the facility because if it's 100 acres then are they claiming the entire hundred acres and The definition here, the facility is any structure or enclosure, including a barn, stable, stall, paddock, or similar improvement, used to house or confine one or more equines.

That really is a full pasture then?

So if there's a barn, yeah, well, 200...

Well, the barn makes sense, $250 from the barn. But what doesn't make sense to me is if somebody's got 100 acres, they can't claim the whole 100 acres and then say they want $250. So who are you working with on that? The marshal?

Well, if there's no structure, the ordinance and the way the state law reads, it doesn't apply to that facility. Because it has to be an equine facility. And the facility, according to state law, has a structure or enclosure. I guess a fence is an enclosure.

So if the property is fenced in, it would be from the edge of the property?

From the fence of the property, 250 yards, all the way around the property. So if it's 100 acres, that's why we were like, we need GIS involved to help them map out where that 250

But the answer is it could and would be from the fence line, even if it's a 100-acre pasture that's got horses in it.

Well, if they do have a barn, would it be from the barn?

And it would be from the barn. Or we could just, if we decide we want it to be from the fence.

This is kind of important. So you've got a barn in the middle of 100 acres. There's a fence around the 100 acres. You're talking about measuring from the barn or the fence?

I would say from the fence.

From the fence. That's what I thought.

Yeah. Well, that's a lot.

It's the big measurement. Yeah. All right.

But I don't know if you've got $100,000.

But that's what the ordinance already says, right? That's the ordinance now.

That's what we have, yes, sir.

And we're just now talking about creating a...

Just for the marshal to have internal. A measure form. Right. And so we're asking.

So they don't have to measure it themselves.

Correct. And we're asking the public to make themselves known to the marshal so that they can have them on the map, so that they can enforce this ordinance on their behalf and protect their animals.

So it's not really changing the ordinance. In a substantial way, it's really just adding a way to define these are the ones that have them, and therefore these are the boundaries around the areas.

Right, and it sets out the time limits and defines what consumer fireworks are.

So the distance is still what, two? Same as it is now. 200 yards. Yeah.

I just didn't realize it was fence line to fence line. That's going to claim in a big area for people who may want to shoot fireworks off.

Yeah, I've got folks that are wanting to go 500 yards.

I don't see the pasture as included in facility there. When I read that facility definition, it's not the pasture.

I would have thought it would have been the barn.

It's the barn or paddock or stable. It's not the pasture, I don't think.

Well, it's different, a paddock and a... Well, a paddock is not a pasture. A paddock is like a small area where you turn a horse out for a couple hours a day. They're normally maybe an acre. They're fenced in, round pen. Some pastures are just an acre. Well, we're not talking about pastures. We're talking about paddocks.

I'm not sure I know the difference. The spirit of the ordinance is if there's a facility or a piece of land that has horses, You don't want to have to go tell the landowner, the owner of the horses, hey, I'm about to shoot fireworks. Go put them in the barn so they're not out in the 100 acres that are in the barn. We want to avoid that with this ordinance. So if you do it from the improvement that it says, which would be a fence, in my opinion, then that covers that. Otherwise, if you say it's from the barn, well, if the horse is standing at the fence, 1,000 feet from the barn, that fireworks still has the same negative effect on the horse, right? That's what this ordinance is about.

I'm just trying to look at the people in rural Cherokee County who do want to shoot fireworks off. To me, it doesn't seem fair to them to go to the edge of the fence line, and if they want to shoot something off on 4th of July, just because the owner has this area fenced in, now that we've got to go another 750 feet past that.

And I thought there were exceptions for some of the holidays, too. I see some quiet hours here. Is that located somewhere else, exceptions for holidays, like until midnight?

That's just on the times, yeah. The distance still is there. But the timing exceptions are in a different section. OK. So I think it's nine, nothing after nine on normal days.

Right. And then permits and exceptions, that's section E. If you know you're going to shoot off fireworks, you can come to the fire marshal and say, I just need an exception for the time.

You're going to exceptions, like on New Year's Eve?

Correct. Fourth of July.

Fourth of July.

My birthday.

My birthday.

Your birthday, rib day. And the violations are the same as the ordinance was before.

The intent is not to change the definition of where the restriction applies. It's simply to bring in a registration element and a GPS-based determination of the distance from whatever it is today. We're not talking about changing. If it was a paddock versus a pasture, it's still a paddock or a pasture, whichever it is. Now, I think we're confused about which it is, but it's one or the other, and we're not planning to change it.

That's correct. Yes, sir.

OK. We're moving slowly here. We're going to have to figure it out. So we'll hold this hearing. If we can figure it out, we'll do so. All right, so what about sawmills? You got that one too?

I got them all.

Oh, all right.

So for Article 4 and Article 7, so what happens with this next one? This year, the General Assembly amended OCGA Section 2-16, which affected sawmills and also some livestock issues. And so we had to go back to Article 4. update the definitions of livestock and poultry in order to make sure that we were in compliance with the changes and then under seven point seven dash eight manufacturing uses we had to improve section E about mobile or portable sawmills. The state law changed several issues that were under our former ordinance and so we just broke it out and made it very clear and followed state law with the wording and the definitions. And then under that same law, same bill, changed under 7.7, it changed 7.7-24, animal production. And so we actually had to go in and change quite a few things. We had to add definitions. We had to change some of the definitions of the animals that were being used. And we had to update. What foul is, and that's also in section four. And we... Updated and we emphasized that that about the number of hens on the site and Where they had to be located that stays the same, but I think it makes it a much clearer section We have a separate section broken out for that that section one Roman numeral four under that Section and then under D, that's page 4 of 4, the livestock husbandry standards were changed a little bit, talking about the animal quarters not being closer than 75 feet to any property line. That's the same. We just emphasized that. We broke that out to make it clearer for people. And then under Section E, We just changed the wording a little bit there. The maximum density of livestock on the parcel as a land use intensity and development standard shall not exceed one animal per acre of lot area. And that extra does needs to come out. shall does not shall not exceed shall does not so yeah that i will make that change at the break so that is that one so if i understand this correctly the only thing we're saying is you can't use a sawmill within 100 feet of the property line What changed is it prohibits the county from adopting or enforcing any ordinance prohibiting or restricting the use of mobile sawmills on agricultural land. And the sawmill waste and the lumber produced is considered an agricultural product now.

Okay.

But you had a question about the location of it? Was that?

Yeah. So if you look permitted use additional requirements, it would be 7.7C. It says it looks like the production and packing of raw materials shall be permitted provided that any structure for such processing is no closer than 100 feet to a property line. So that's stationary. And then D is stationary sawmills are permitted provided that an outdoor storage of logs or lumbers shall be at least 50 feet from the street right of way line.

Right. So if you have a production facility, you're packing the raw materials, it has to be 100. But the actual mill itself can be 50 feet.

From the street, not the property line, right?

Correct. The right-of-way. Yep. From the right-of-way line in the street.

That seems fair.

I'm a little confused why we're to have so much change for things that don't seem to be about sawmills. Hens shall be confined to a fenced enclosure. Am I on the wrong page or something? It's two different sections.

Separate sections of the same ones.

It's two different sections.

Oh, OK. Yeah, the one bill changed two separate sections. So I apologize for that.

OK, other questions about that one? All right, and then we've got administration, item 8.5 on our list.

Yes, that's my last one.

Backing up real quick to the equine and fireworks.

Oh, yes.

So Google knows everything. It says it's a fence line. And actually on the Cherokee Chamber website, there's an article from last year when we updated this that says from the fence line.

I think it's the whole pasture. If they got 100 acres, it's 100 acres. I mean, I think that's the way it was intended.

And it does say enclosure. And my understanding of enclosure is a fence. So I mean, but if they don't have, and I'm thinking more of like, let's say somebody in super ag, right? And it's five acres and they have, you know, horses out there, and they have a barn, you know, how does that affect those people? Not necessarily a big thing. So is it only a registered equine facility? They may just have a paddock and not an enclosure. And they just have a room attached to the barn for the horse. And they may let their horse go, you know, but... I don't know. I haven't seen it.

But it sounds like it doesn't even, if we're understanding it correctly, they don't even have to have a barn, per se. No. If they have a fenced area that has horses in it, then no fireworks within 250 yards of that fence line.

Well, it's 200 yards, but GIS is plus or minus 50, so the Marshall's map would be 250, just for us to be sure.

Okay. Okay. So what are we doing with administration?

Okay. Article 14, under zoning administration, we've added the ability for the senior code compliance officer to – well, for the zoning administrator, which is Margaret, to have the senior code compliance officer – our one and only bow, and one or more additional code compliance officers to assist in the enforcement of the zoning ordinance. And we've added section 4-10. to this to allow this enforcement authority. The enforcement authority is to issue citations only. They don't fine people. They don't arrest people. It's heard in magistrate court once. The citation is issued, then magistrate court date is given, and then the person goes and magistrate court sets the fine or the penalty. Currently, Beau does not have the authority to issue citations. He has to call the marshals. The marshals have to go out, issue the citations, Then it goes to magistrate court this gives both the authority to issue the citations As the senior code compliance officer and then also we've added one component Allowing the Cherokee County animal control officer only under section subsection D to issue a citation for animal issues that have now fallen under this zoning regulation. And again, it doesn't give them the authority to arrest anyone, fine anyone. It's just issuing citations. And also, it doesn't allow the animal control officer to impound an animal. That is still within the purview of the marshal's office. A marshal does have to come out, complete the paperwork for the impoundment, and then the marshal decides whether a warrant is issued or not based on that impoundment. But that's a separate section, but this does affect that. And so do you all have questions about this?

No, it makes sense. Does it make your life easier, Bo? That's the most important thing? Yes.

Well, my question was going to be, is this to ease a burden on the marshal's office, or where did this come from?

It eases a burden on the marshal's office, and it gives Bo the authority to, instead of having to go out to the property three times, he's there, it's in the moment, he can write the citation, and that saves him time, and then he can go on to the next.

OK, so just thinking through this, the marshal's office issues a citation today. Does that carry a fine or other penalty with it, or does that come later?

Well, that'll come later in the magistrate court.

So what we're saying this group is going to be doing going forward is no different than what the marshal's office is doing today? Correct. OK.

But it just takes the burden off the marshal. It allows Bo to get more work done. And I think it speeds up the process for the homeowner as well, or the property owner as well. They don't have people coming out to their house three or four times about the same issue. It's dealt with once.

So taking who the people are out of the equation, right? I think of zoning folks as down here knowing when and how to issue a citation. And I think the marshals are about right here. How do we get that on the same playing field, if that makes sense? These are professionals that know that world, been doing that for years. I don't think Margaret or Bo have ever issued a citation, right? So how do we make sure that's being done? correctly and at the same level as the marshal's office. Again, nothing against you and Bo. I just want to make sure you know.

I would say that I am not as familiar with issuing citations. We usually, in the past, would direct the marshals to issue citations in certain situations if we've spent time trying to bring something into compliance and it's still not working. But Bo does bring some of that. knowledge from his previous positions elsewhere about writing citations and following a case through the process. So I'll let him give you a little more detail.

I guess it's just the act of doing it, right? We rely on this group today. How does that transfer over to you guys? I guess that's my big question.

So it eliminates having to coordinate with the marshal's office. They're either at training, roll call, when I'm available. So it could be one day, it could be three days.

Weeks?

Well, I don't know. That's rare.

In rare cases, it's been weeks before we've been able to issue a citation.

OK.

It's just time frames coordinating together. I do have experience in this. I was not a post-certified officer in Alpharetta, but I was a sworn officer in Alpharetta and was able to issue citations and summons and did so. So I do have experience in that and know when to and when to not. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Well, and again, in my mind, I've got to take the people out of it, right? It's just the position. If someone else comes into your position that doesn't have that experience, how do we make sure they know what they're doing? So that's really the question is, I don't know how you issue a citation. I've never done it before. But I just want to make sure that all those bases are covered if we have multiple people doing that now that aren't doing it today or possibly have never done it before. And then we've got a group that is expert level at it. And so just want to make sure we're doing it right. That's all. Because this seems like a major change to me.

And then to piggyback off Corey's point, so now when y'all call the marshals, is it y'all's decision now whether they get the ticket or not? Or does the marshals still have the ability to say, well, I don't think we need to ride them?

They typically issue the citations and list per me on the citation. So the solicitor's office knows to reach out to me to get all the case report and information from the case.

Did they ever not? Did they ever say, like, no, I don't think this warrants it?

No. Not that I can recall.

Presumably, they have that power. They've trusted you so far. If you say it should be written, they do.

Because I live and breathe the zoning ordinance. That's where that kind of division has been. And so they're not as familiar with that ordinance as I am. So I've explained it to them. I'm not just saying, hey, write this. without any kind of basis behind it. I can explain to them and show them where and why a citation is needed.

And I think this does burden us with the requirement that it be somebody with that kind of ability and knowledge in that role. And if we change that, I mean, if it's If it's Margaret going out there and doing it, she doesn't want to write citations. So this wouldn't work if that's what it was. It would need to be somebody with some law enforcement knowledge and experience.

I don't have any law enforcement experience.

Well, and that's what I'm saying. This says it could be Margaret. It could be Beau. It could be code compliance officers of the county. So that could be our building inspectors, I guess. Is that right? Or who would that be?

It has to be us.

That would be if we had other people under Bo.

Oh, yeah. So zoning administrator, Bo, and then C is just that's vacant today, you're saying? Other code compliance officers of the county?

That is looking to the future. What if he had a staff? Right.

OK.

OK. Fair enough. Thank you.

OK. Is that it?

And just one more thing, if this is passed, it does change our agreements with the cities a little bit. And we've already reached out to the cities. And it's not this code enforcement section, but how the animals are, if animals are impounded Our agreement changed a little bit with the city. We had to lay out for the city, according to the state statute, who was doing what in what order. And so Jeff has already reached out to the cities. They are fine with changing the agreement. They understand that the state law changed a little bit. And so the change that was, I guess, it wasn't a change. It's actually an emphasis on roles in the situation where an animal has to be impounded it has to be impounded by a post-certified officer it can't be impounded by the animal control officer and then the post-certified officer determines if a warrant should issue on that particular violation so we needed to make sure that the cities knew what we were doing and they are They've gotten our changes and we've made changes to their agreements and they are Jeff can probably talk to you more about what the cities have said But Jeff's hoping that he would have those documents before you on October the 6th for review Okay

This is about, I mean, I'm saying this is about code enforcement.

I'm sorry. I'm going back to the previous one I forgot to tell you about that.

Oh, yeah.

The one that talks about sawmills and livestock.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

Yes. I apologize. Okay. I put it on the wrong ordinance.

Okay. Okay.

But that's all.

All right. Thank you. OK. So then we get into the alcoholic beverages. No, I'm sorry. We've got moratorium extension. Any reason to talk about that? I think we know what we're doing there. We're just going to take what we've done, move it to 12 months, right? That was good. Yeah.

Very good.

Quick work. But alcoholic beverages, I think we may have to talk about that one.

So essentially, with House Bill 1029, The package store located at 6115 Hickory Flat Highway is on property that will come back to the county on January 1. And what this amendment does is it reconciles the ability for us to license this package store selling distilled spirits, but still leave open the possibility that another store could be permitted later in the Hickory Flat District. That's it. OK.

Sounds good. And then we've got all this series of de-annexations. And I presume the same principles apply to all these.

Yes. So these are the first cases of many where we're trying to set up property to be zoned in the county that's coming back to us from the city of Holly Springs. So these first cases are all properties that are currently developed. And they're mostly residential subdivisions. And we're just trying to... set us up for success, for zonings that would be essentially effective Jan 1 when those properties come back to us so they're not unzoned. and we're taking, we've figured out what's the closest zoning district where they can fit into them, and then we're basically saying anything that's on the plat, that's part and parcel of how that property was rezoned. So if they've got variances, if they've got different setbacks, it's all coming together and being adopted through the rezoning process.

So really, each one of these would be a board-initiated rezoning of this property to what you've determined to be the most closely approximating zoning category that we have. Correct. But we're going to have to go through each one, open a hearing, see if anybody has anything to say.

Right. We have to go through the motions. They're not all contiguous, so we couldn't put them all together in one single case.

Well, actually, assuming we're ready to move on them, we'll need to take action on each one of them. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So in this one, Margaret, 8.8, it's just rezoning. No variances, right? No special conditions?

Whatever is memorialized on the plat.

Okay, so we're not listing those out. We're just adopting that as part of this. Correct. Okay.

That is the strategy we're taking. Okay. We felt like that was the cleanest and simplest.

Got it.

Any more questions?

Oh, no. That was it. Each of these could be more than one parcel, then, I guess.

Yes, yes. We're doing a whole subdivision at a time. I don't know if you recall, but we did a very similar process for all the parcels along Highway 92, when we changed the Highway 92 overlay district to take out the residential provisions, we had to clean up, I think it was 16 or 17 different subdivisions that had been allowed per the overlay district. But now we were taking away those provisions and making them nonconforming. So we kind of took a page out of that process.

But each of these will have the same zoning.

Everything within a single subdivision would have the same zoning designation.

None of these are going to be parcel A is this, parcel B is this. I got you.

Right. And for the most part, they are, at least the residential subdivisions, is either RZL, RTH, or TND. We've had to use our TND district.

OK. OK. All right. All right. So we're not going to talk about here individually all these, just that group. Okay. So that brings, I think you have the next item too, which is...

I have good news on this one. Oh, yeah, withdraw. We got a withdrawal on this appeal request.

So do we need to take any action on that? What action do we take there?

I don't believe we need to take anything.

You have to approve it.

Withdraw the request.

You have to approve the withdrawal request.

Yeah, they asked just to be withdrawn without prejudice. Okay. All right.

Yeah, sounds like they were just running out of time and didn't want to wait another 30 days from today, so just dropping it.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. So that brings us to the county manager's stuff, consent agenda.

So since we're running short on time, is there anything on the consent agenda that you have any questions about? We've got a donation to Fire and Emergency Services, two resolutions in support of some federal funding applications to GDOT, two from the county. One being GDOT has requested us to put an application in for CMAQ funding for the intersection improvement of State Route 108 at State Route 140 up in the Alaska area. It will be a GDOT project, GDOT funded. They just can't put in their own application. They've asked us to put that application in for them. And then we've also got an application down in the south end of the county for the Cox Road, Arnold Mill Road connector, which one of our state representatives has asked us to put that application in for that CMAG funding for that project.

Was that on our transportation plan? Yes, that one was, yes.

And then we've got an application for the city of Woodstock. This was going to be one of the county applications. And we're working with our partner, the city of Woodstock there, asking for some additional construction funds for the intersection improvement at Town Lake Parkway and 575 interchange. The county is the sponsor of the project, but since GDOT's limit was only two applications per round, we're working with our city, asking them to get that funding for us there. That would be a TSPLOS funded project. Item 11.4 is an update to the personnel policies manual. You heard the update last meeting. This is to add volunteer firefighters and public safety rescue volunteers. Kind of clarifies that. Item 11.5 is a resolution. Oh, sorry. Another clarifying resolution, which confirms the chairman's signature authority to execute county documents. It was just a housekeeping item that our county attorney has found. Item six is a call for a public hearing. That would be... to update the county code of ordinances to allow the county to continue normal government operations at the start of a new fiscal year when the annual budget has not yet been approved. Our fiscal year officially runs from October 1 through September 30. We are proposing or have been approving the county's budget at our first meeting in October. Technically, we're approving it within the fiscal year. Next year, we're going to back it up and approve it for September 30th. But this year, we're just going to approve request a continued resolution to continue funding at normal 2026 funding levels into the first six days of fiscal year 2027. So we will amend the ordinance for that, and then we will have that continued resolution under my portion of the agenda. And then we've got two calls for public hearings, one to modify zoning conditions for a parcel out there off of Bells Ferry Road. And then another one for board-initiated zoning for a parcel that is located on Ball Ground Highway. My portion of the agenda, there's nine items I'd like to go into a little bit more detail in, in case there's some discussion. First item being a request from the Sheriff's Office for Amendment 8 to the agreement with Trinity Services Group to extend the food service agreement at the Adult Detention Center for one additional year in the expected amount of $819,400.44. This amount is included in the Sheriff's Office fiscal year 2027 budget. This is for food services for inmates and staff at the Adult Detention Center. It is an increase in the expected price of 3.4% and is determined to be fair and reasonable. Based on CPI data for meals away from home, just for information, average inmate meal price is $1.72, and a staff meal is $3.68. I don't think we can feed a whole lot of people for that much money.

I notice that's a 2016 contract. Have we looked at other vendors, or is that limited?

That's a pretty limited contract. But yes, after 10 years, I think next year we're going to have to go out and revisit that contract. It's about the only bargain we get in the jail business. Correct. Correct. Any questions on that? Item two is to consider a request from risk management for renewal of the inmate medical budget protector insurance with correctional risk services for the 2027 annual policy in the amount of $218,329. This policy is an insurance policy designed to protect the adult detention center's budget against costly and unexpected catastrophic inmate medical expenses. Policy would be in effect from October 1 of this year through September 30 of 2027. It includes a $40,000 incident deductible. This proposal represents a 5.5% decrease in the premium from the fiscal year 2026 policy. And this revised amount is included in the Sheriff's Office 2027 budget. Third item is considered a request from Risk Management for approval of a proposal from Travelers Insurance for renewal of the county property and casual insurance coverage for fiscal year 2027 in a total amount of $3,072,007. Our risk management team and the county's insurance broker have reviewed the insurance proposal from Travelers for the 2027 property and casual insurance coverage. Our property deductible remains at $25,000, and this $100,000 self-insured retention remains unchanged at $100,000 for liability, with the exception of auto liability, which we have a $200,000 self-insured retention. Our loss rate through September of 2026 is 71.5%, which is higher than the 57%, which is considered acceptable by most insurance carriers. However, our insurance premium rate increased by 9.12%, while our cyber insurance decreased by 7%. With both rate and exposure increases, the county's program increase was 13% year over year. We had budgeted a 25% increase. So this is coming in at $300,000 less than budgeted. Our exposure increases are an additional $9,735,000 in property and the addition of 44 pieces of equipment or vehicles to the county fleet. predominantly Sheriff's Office vehicles and public works vehicles and some fire trucks.

So Jeff, just so I understand, it's $3 million a year, but you're saying that they've already paid out like 71% last year? So they paid out $2.1 million?

Our loss ratio is 71.5%. Most of that is We've got several categories, but most of that is for auto. And they didn't go up on us even though we went?

Or they only went up 9% even though we went over 20%? Correct.

And some of these, you know, Our insurance broker, he calls it a long tail. Some of these, they look back five years. So we're still settling some claims that have been out there since 23, 24. So some of these take a long time to resolve.

Mr. President, nothing more?

No, we've been very successful travelers. Questions on that? Item 11.4 is employee medical plan changes for 2027. I'm going to call that up for you guys to take a look at. I figured you guys might have some questions on that. This will be considered a request for proposed changes to the employee medical plan for the 2027 plan year. Proposed changes to the employee medical plan include updates, deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, copayments, and premiums. The medical plan changes and employee premium increases over the past two years have not been enough to keep up with increasing costs of medical care and prescriptions. In addition to the proposed plan changes, this proposal also includes increasing employee medical premiums by 10%. These proposed plan changes will align medical costs with the proposed FY2027 budget as well as align with the board's directive to balance the employer-employee medical plan cost ratio of 80% employer cost, 20% employee paid costs, This proposal creates an 83% employer, 17% employee paid cost ratio. And these changes will go into effect on January 1 of 2027. I can go over some of this, but we had the Insurance Office of America, Spencer, come in about a month ago and talk about some of these adjustments. Are there any? Questions on this? This is the Northside plan, proposed changes to the Northside plan. Costs would remain the same as last year. The Cigna plan goes up, I wouldn't say significantly more, but there is an increase in the Cigna plan costs to employees. And then we've got this kind of summarizes the biweekly proposed plan employee premium changes for both the Cigna network and the Northside network. It compares both 26 to 27 and what the increase would be. annually. As you see, Northside would be no annual increase, whereas the Cigna increase would be up to almost $584 for employee plus family.

So what's the main driver with the Northside plan? I mean, are they just giving us a really good deal? Because the plan is proposed to get a lot better for the same price. Cigna is going to get worse for a higher price. So what's?

Northside, it's a smaller network. They are actually trying to get encourage more folks to go to the Northside network. It's more localized.

We're trying to encourage people, you're saying?

It costs the county less to use the Northside network also. But yes, it's a smaller network. They've just been able to keep their costs down a lot more than the Cigna network.

I'm asking. I know today we've got a lot more people on Cigna than Northside. Correct. We talked about at a previous meeting trying to drive I can't remember the percentage, more people on the north side. But I think the numbers are where they are today for a reason. People want choices. Correct.

And then some of these. Do you have to pick which one you want?

Yes. Yes. An open enrollment is proposed for the last two weeks in October. And during open enrollment, you will choose whether you're going through the north side plan if you're going through the signal plan. and that it would be effective January 1 of this year. Our medical plan is a plan year, is a calendar year plan.

So does Northside work if somebody's got kids in college out of town?

Yes, they do have. Yes, there are. Kathy could give you more of the specifics. But yes, we've got that. Yes.

Yes, so the Northside Health Network is local to North Georgia. So then we have an overlay network called First Health that's actually owned by Aetna. That's a nationwide network. So if you live here, you would use Northside, but your child's going to school in Virginia, then they would just choose providers from the First Health Network. And then, sorry, the Northside network also includes CHOA network. So anybody that has pediatric care needed here, they would just choose a CHOA doctor, Children's Health Care of Atlanta. And that's a pretty broad network too.

So if somebody's going to the University of Georgia, which I did, I had a staff member in another department reached out with some concerns. I think she's got a kid or two that's going to Georgia. they would use the other nationwide?

They would have to choose Northside. So if they had an emergency, they could go to any ER, and that would be covered as a network that's required under the ACA. But if it's just for a regular doctor visit, they would need to drive to wherever there's a Northside provider.

OK. Unless they opted for Cigna, then I'm assuming they would be covered in a bigger area?

Basically anywhere, yeah.

Thank you. And I've had to question some of these severe cancer cases or whatever. People go out to Texas, MD Anderson, and some pretty expensive places. Cigna, I think, covers those within some limits. Northside, I presume, would not. Is that a fair statement?

Northside has a very robust cancer program now. Most people that I know in the area that have had cancer treatment in the last couple of years have gone to Northside. If there was some kind of very specialized treatment that Northside didn't provide, we've got it built into the plan where an in-network provider could refer somebody outside and that would be covered.

Okay, so it's possible.

But if it's basically the same service that Northside can provide, then you would get it at Northside.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? This is kind of a big one.

All right. Thank you. This slide here shows what some of the proposed savings would come from.

And this is totally separate from the drug monitoring thing that we talked about earlier.

So Commissioner Cagle was talking about the Opioid Free America. Yes, some of these savings would be from Opioid Free America. If you approve this and you don't want to go with the Opioid-Free America plan, you need to make that in your motion that you approve the changes with the exception of Opioid-Free America. And then we'll have to... What that is is expected savings. And what we budgeted was on the really low end. So we will, you know... Savings in the property and casualty insurance, we saved $300,000. So we're halfway there with the savings that we had from there. So there's other places in the budget where we will strive for savings for the rest of the year to make up that difference.

OK. Well, I would like to point out, so the Opioid Free America That's not just, one, I don't think it's going to be any savings whatsoever, but that is an additional expense that it would cost the county of, what, over $100,000 a year if we did elect?

So net, net, net, they're anticipating savings, but yes, there is a cost for them to administer the plan, to the plan, but net, net, they're saying that even with that cost, it would be about a million dollars of savings to the county, minimally.

I'm skeptical of that too. I don't really know. You guys have been closer to it than I have, certainly.

I mean, do you believe it? That's why we took a 20%. Our estimate was more 20% savings rather than they gave us a kind of a tier where we could say if we saved everything, Chuck is very conservative in his estimating. And I totally agree with him in that we definitely took the low end there, whatever savings would be.

I really don't think there would be any savings There's not any real data to back up that there would. There's no other counties in Georgia that have opted into this. And I think the only county that I'm aware of in the United States that has is one place in Minnesota that just approved it. I'm sorry, not Minnesota, but Michigan that just approved it in August. So I don't think we spend the money on it.

And what will we be spending on it? $100,000?

Yeah, over $100,000. It's $500 per patient that's identified. Yeah, we've got about 200.

So yeah, worst case scenario, that's what it would cost.

Well, I think it was $500 a person. They identified 271 people that they would reach out to. So you divide that by two, that's $135,500. And I don't think we're going to get a dime back for it.

I think it's an item we probably don't need to take a chance on. I think we continue to look for other programs that maybe can save us in that area. There probably is some potential savings, but I'm not sure this is it.

That's kind of what I'm thinking. Wait a couple of years, see if they do have success in another county.

I think we take it out and we'll have, as Jeff said, we'll have to look for other areas for savings. But I think this is an area we take out and look for other areas or different programs.

Any other thoughts on that one? I mean, we're not voting on it now, but.

You just have to, when you do vote on it, just specify that. The plan changes with the exception of that. So this is called opioid free air?

This is item 12.4. OK.

Item 5 is a request from Public Works, award of a construction services agreement to Connect Construction and Excavating for Concrete and Asphalt Crushing Services Stockyard, the amount of $97,500. If you've been to the stockyard, you would have seen the mountain of concrete that he's got stockpiled there. This is a contractor that would, it was the sole responsive bid that will uh crush all that into stone that can be used in roadway projects um item six is a request from the sploss rotary department for amendment one to construction agreement for the state route 92 a trickle road intersection improvement project with backbone infrastructure that will be replacement of additional storm pipe in the total amount of 54 621.80 this is an active construction project at State Route 92 and Trickum Road. This change order replaces a storm drainage pipe that is actually, once they started connecting to it, the additional pipe needs replacing because it's deteriorated and actually clogged with concrete. Item 7 is a request from CATS for approval of the fiscal year 2028 application to the Georgia DOT for operating assistance funds for the CATS 5311 Rural Transportation Program in the amount of $526,000 with Cherokee's obligation being $263,000 for operations. This is an annual grant request and is included in the CATS fiscal year 2027 and will be in the CATS fiscal year 2028 operating budget also. Item 12.8 will be to consider a resolution to adopt a revised administrative policy related to distilled spirits. As a companion to the ordinance that revises chapter 6, amending the distilled spirits retail districts, proposes a resolution that will supersede the policy for the Hickory Flat Retail District that was adopted on June 6 of 2023. This resolution will provide for the alcohol licensing process that will be required with the transition of the Hickory Liquor and Wine Company, which is located at 6115 Hickory Flat Highway in Hickory Flat. That premises is currently inside the city of Holly Springs. And on January 1 of 2027, we'll transfer to unincorporated Cherokee County. With that jurisdiction transition, this resolution sets forth the process by which the Hickory Liquor and Wine Company may apply for and receive an alcohol license from Cherokee County within the Hickory Flat retail district. This works out those details. This is one of those special cases where we've got to amend our distilled spirits policy to work for that existing liquor store.

Is that the same thing we're holding a hearing on?

It's related to it, yes, sir.

OK. So will we have an action item under both? OK. OK.

And then the last item, I kind of briefly touched on that under consent. This will be considered a resolution to adopt an interim spending authority for the county operations to continue at fiscal year 2026 monthly funding levels until the FY2027 annual budget is adopted. This resolution temporarily allows the county to continue normal government operations at the start of the new fiscal year when the annual budget has not yet been adopted.

Any questions on anything on my portions of the agenda? Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion to adjourn the executive session to discuss property acquisition, personal matters, and pending or threatening litigations.

Motion by Commissioner Cagle to adjourn the executive session for stated purposes. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Commissioner Weatherby. All in favor of such adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We're adjourned. We'll be back at six for a long meeting.