Commission - Regular Meeting

symbol. I'm sure your questions never there is no set.

All right, y'all. It's good to have y'all here. It is May 12th if you've lost your calendar in 2026 and we're here for two work session items and then our first group conversation about the FY27 budget and just because we are glutton for this kind of good time. We're going to be back here in the same space on Thursday, May 14th uh at one o'clock for continued conversation about the budget. And at the bottom of everyone's sheet is a handy cheat sheet for the next few weeks of your life. Um, I actually uh had to adjust my calendar on my computer because I thought we were in one more meeting even. So, um, everybody please take a look at that. We're going to talk about the Sandy Creek Basin in just a moment. Uh, that'll be followed by proposed updates to the purchasing ordinance and then budget discussion. But as we begin, I'll go ahead and turn it over to public utilities director Hollis Terry to introduce our guests in the room today. Good afternoon. Um, this is a presentation requested from S Creek Basin. Um, our engineers, Hazen and Sora, has put this together, the feasibility study, and I think that's going to help commission know where we're trying to go. Um, and they're going to represent some of the concepts that we discussed. Turn it over to Al.

Um, good morning. Good afternoon. Um, yep. So, we're here to uh discuss the Sandy Creek Basin and the potential alternatives we have for uh extending or improving sanitary sewer within that basin. Just want to introduce myself. Uh my name is Alan Bowling. Um I'm a civil engineer with an engineering firm called Hazen and Sawyer. Um, we've been working at various levels with uh with public utilities since the early 2000s where we've um helped you guys uh design and construct the Trail Creek interceptor which is one basin to the east from Sandy Creek. And then uh and then I' I've actually been working with you guys pretty heavily since about 2012. Uh you know on all kinds of projects Brooklyn Creek and and also plant project plant. Brian Jones is with me. Brian's one of our lead civils at our office in Atlanta and uh has participated in doing a lot of the work here. So, just wanted to introduce yourself. Thank you for having us. Um just kind of introducing uh kind of Sandy Creek Basin. That's a term we use all the time without thinking too much about what that is. Essentially, that is uh the drainage area that drains to Sandy Creek. Um Sandy Creek is a is a is a tributary of the North Okone River. And uh so really it's within what we call the North O County River Basin. That basin is served by your North Okone water reclamation facility which is just south of the loop south of campus um college station. Uh it's a 14 million gallon day facility. Really nice facility. And then there's an existing sewer line. We call it the upper north oakone upper north oone trunk line. It's about three and a half mile sewer line that goes from the the wastewater plant on the south side of the loop all the way through town and uh up towards the Sandy Creek basin but not into the basin. Um Sandy Creek the the the total

area we're talking about it's about 5,800 acres. pretty sizable um with about 2,000 some odd parcels across the the basin you know all the way from small lots to to large a um and then based upon I would say based upon available records about 1,600 septic systems within it's I don't have perfect records on that but that gives you a sense of scale so there's you know about 1,600 existing it's a you'll know this uh basin well it's a mixture of of uh you know you've got a major park up there and a lot of greenway property that that the the county has uh purchased over the years to develop its greenway. And of course, you've got your um your uh you've got a fair bit of a in the north part on the edge of the the county. And then you know various aspects of commercial industrial. Most of the residential in the basin is zoned uh I think you guys call it maybe AR25. It's just your halfacre your standard halfacre lot. So that's that's kind of the sort of existing conditions there. Um, kind of a some background here. This is as far back as I know. Uh, I don't know what happened before 2010, but y'all's every five years you guys have a service delivery plan that POD puts together to help plan out really a 20-year horizon. I think you're in the process of of approving the the 2025. Um, I didn't have that up here because it's still in process. um uh in the 2010 service delivery plan, um there was a specific um uh letter and a directive from your predecessors to essentially uh remove Sandy Creek Basin from consideration for sewer. And so that was uh I'm sure there was reasons for that that kind of predated me, but that that's that's where I kind of started helping you guys. uh the at 2015 we ended up meeting with with y'all when we were updating the 2015 service delivery plan 10 years ago, 11 years ago probably. And um and you know at least we're recognizing that

there was some there was some concern about um the impact of possibly some aging infrastructure, some aging septic amongst those 1600 septic systems. And so, uh, at that time in the 2015 and really again in the 2020, uh, the the directive from y'all when y'all approved those service delivery plans then was to, uh, let's see, evaluate the issue and identify potential solutions, but it was it was u just really more of an assessment level. And that's that's that's what we've done to date is just look at assessment

assessing. So, part of what we're here to do is just maybe bring you up to speed or introduce kind of the the things we've done over the last uh mostly this last year, but in other times as well. What you do see on the right side is um is it's it's just an excerpt from your 2020 plan. Obviously, that's about to be out of date when you approve your 2025, but you kind of see some hot spots of where septic systems are. And just to give you to orient you in the county, the the pink top middle with the biggest hot spot, that's kind of the hot spot of that that is this the Sandy Creek basin with the septic systems there. So really looking at what what alternatives or what opportunities do we have to either make improvements to existing systems or possibly extend new new new sewer in the basin. So lag there. So, just to to give you more information that you may or may not want to have, like you know, we we kind of looked at as many different things as we could think of. You know, there's there's a there's a handful of tools in your tool. Your most traditional is what we're all familiar with, just st typical gravity sewer. This is Peud's heart and soul on the sewer side is extending gravity systems to properties to uh to like this sewer. Oftentimes there's a connection where a developer a developer will do a portion of that work. uh that's part of their their responsibility when they develop property and then it ties into an existing or maybe an extension of of Peud's um sewer systems. Oftentimes those are those are generally running along creeks and rivers because that's the low point. That's what happens. Gravity wants to drain things downhill. Um a second alternative is a pressure sewer system. Uh y'all are very fortunate compared to a lot of utilities uh around the state. Y'all have very few of these which is which is ideal. But essentially there are times where uh you cannot you you cannot connect from point A to point B. There's something in the way. Maybe that's a property issue or just environmental sensitive area. There

could be a reason that you do not want to build gravity all the way down the hill. And so instead you'll build a pump station and you'll collect it on site and then you'll pump it. And then you you have a lot more flexibility when you choose to pump something. you can you can turn left and right, up and down because you're imparting that energy. Instead of using gravity, you're using power to to move sewage. So that that's a that's a um that's an alternative and and a small number of those in the county. Um a third one, and I'm just mentioning this because it's something we evaluated. Uh you do have, you know, there are what's called package treatment plants. That's that's kind of an unofficial name. It's just an on-site treatment facility. Um, you'll see these uh they're around a lot more than you realize. Uh, you know, they're a lot of times around private developments. Maybe there's a if you're down in a coastline area and you've seen maybe a builtup sort of a a nice resort, they may have something there because they're they're uh they're looking at treating it on site. Or if you're in a really rural area and you just are not able to connect. That is um not common and we did not spend too much time on that. uh you would actually have a very difficult time within Clark County getting that permitted through the state because you have you have treatment facilities. So while that is an alternative and a method that can be done, it's it's not incredibly feasible in this currently. Then those are all publicly owned facilities and then we kind of also looked at privately owned. So, the most sort of natural one you're going to think about is what we currently have, which is, you know, 16 some odd, 1600 some odd, and then many thousands of others around the county, which is just your standard on-site septic system. Um, that is, you know, you've got a piece of property, you got a house, maybe a commercial establishment. you generally have some piece of land, maybe it's a backyard or a sideyard where you're gonna have a um a tank and then what's called a drain field that that basically

spreads out the your your sewage in a in a manner that is safe to to discharge back into the ground. Um there's millions of these around the world and um you know, so that's that's there. Um, another alternative that can be privately owned that you do not have here in the county and it's not really that common in the state is is community septic systems. So, you could do the same thing where maybe you had a you know, a lot of times we think of this as like a subdivision. You have a subdivision where everybody is draining, but instead of draining to a county gravity line for any number of reasons, you could build a a larger collective sewer septic system. And there's some advantages to that. there's some efficiencies um and disadvantages as well. I also mentioned package plants in there twice. I realize I have that on here twice because many times package plants are actually privately owned. They have their own uh their own contracts, their own uh legal responsibilities, their own permits with the states and whatnot. So, while I repeating myself, we didn't necessarily spend a lot of time on that because I think you'd have a really difficult time getting that permitted through the state. We just wanted to fully acknowledge that these are these are things you could build in Sandy Creek Basin or anywhere else in the county. Um, as we did this, if you look on the right hand side, you know, we asked ourselves, what are the things we're trying to assess to um, maybe try to evaluate which of these alternatives makes the most sense or is most appropriate is probably the right way of looking at it. So, first and foremost is our commitment, both Peud's commitment, Hayes's commitment to protect water quality. That's a core fundamental commitment. It's also a a permit requirement that that Athensclar County Public Utilities has as as a commitment to Georgia EPD. Um, you know, and so that is really thinking about your groundwater and your surface water to ensure that we're protecting that. Um, adjacent to that, a little different is just uh what we're just we broadly called environmental stewardship. Um, in y'all's documentation, a lot of times

it's is referred to as environmentally sensitive areas and just uh doing the uh or evaluating ways to protect environmentally sensitive areas as much as possible. I kind of view it as like a for kind of a conservationist mindset. Um, a third area is is is identifying and supporting future development. And I recognize that there are there are varying degrees of interest in that. But but you have to sort of recognize that depending on depending on future development that may impact which tool in your toolbox you want to use, right? There's some tools that are more appropriate for uh less development and some tools that are more appropriate for more development. And then finally, and this probably comes from just the engineers and us, reliability, redundancy, resiliency, and same thing for public utilities. Y'all Water and Sewer Group there have worked with utilities all over the state. They are some of the absolute best. They take their job very seriously. Um they care a ton. They work crazy hours to make sure that that your systems are reliable and resilient. Um finally, we do look at cost. Um I think at this stage cost is a little tricky because there's there's there's hundreds of unknowns and so it's very difficult to to compare apples to apples at this stage. But, you know, generally speaking, we try to evaluate capital cost, which is like upfront cost, things you're paying for the year of construction versus long-term operations and maintenance. uh can't imagine that you can read this um but I think you have printouts and I'm not going to go through this specifically but you know essentially if you think about what we tried to do is for the for the for the uh uh four main things we looked at because we kind of dropped packaged plants from consideration which is basically gravity sewers kind of the traditional bread and butter what PUD does uh pressurized systems lift stations and force manes another uh tool that PUD has in its tool belt versus um centralized septic systems, kind of a community septic

system or decentralized, which is the most common. And without going through all the details of that, we tried to provide pluses and minuses of each of those. And the reality is is there are advantages and disadvantages to each type of technology that you use. Um and you know, which ones you you might argue or maybe determine is most appropriate for a circumstance. I'm happy maybe towards the end if there's questions. I'm happy to touch on these but it would be very difficult to read them all in real time. um approaching. So one of the things we try to think about is you know this is not um completely this is not an undeveloped basin right so you've got sort of two things to think about you've got you know entire neighborhoods and uh and other developments you know existing developments and trying to understand uh what would be uh an appropriate solution or an appropriate I would say plan and goal for supporting existing systems versus proposed developments and and those, you know, they may end up with the same solutions, but it, you know, depending on your your priorities, you can end up making different decisions. And so, um, I'll actually go proposed first. You know, generally speaking, if for public utilities outside of this basin, because this basin has kind of been off limits for for for a couple decades, you know, um you know, when a proposed development within Athens, clar county comes forward pretty much everywhere else in the county, um you know, it is the responsibility of the developer uh coordinating with PUD to extend sewer to that property and across that property. And on on occasion with permission we may have a developer install a lift station in force main where they can't connect by gravity but that's sort of an exception and that I would just say that's the that's for all practices that's the status quo for how public utilities works across Clark County. Um

uh that that doesn't really apply here as much because there's not sewer in the basin. So, um, you know, I think you would have to decide for proposed developments if anybody wanted to build in the basin what you would want to do. And I realize that's one of the reasons we're here is to sort of continue that conversation. Um, on the left hand side, and hopefully I guess you can see this on your screen or your printouts, you know, uh, you know, what do you do in Sandy Creek with what I'm calling existing development? Generally that means existing houses, sometimes existing neighborhoods, sometimes existing mobile home parks um and and and whatnot. And what do you do with those? And you know uh where you have concern that a septic system isn't functioning correctly. Um they do require maintenance. I think that's a challenge. I don't know of anything that doesn't require maintenance. Even though we we we sometimes we don't we forget that. You know, that's a challenge of a septic system is that it's a little out of sight, out of mind. That's true actually with gravity systems. It's it's true of everything. We we are very fortunate that we live most days without having to think about sewer and so but you know so but one of the one consideration is you know with existing uh developments you know what could you do to improve existing septic systems. Um the other would be is if you didn't want to improve an existing septic system or could it you know how could you connect that individual home or septic system to another solution right uh whether you know you could connect it to one of POD's gra existing gravity lines um or you could choose to find some land and build a community septic system. There might be opportunities for that. And I I'm the last time I'm gonna mention this, but just because I wanted to be thorough. Or you could actually, you know, you could maybe take one of your uh neighborhoods that had a bunch of septic in it and you could choose to to install a package plant. Um, I will say uh if you were to

take um depending on uh how how the existing neighborhood I'll just use neighborhood kind of an easy term is depending on that neighborhood's laid out. Uh it would be varying degrees of complexity. Some might work out easy. Uh they've got nice you know it's it's got some slope to it. Everything would fit. There's enough room between houses to connect um you know to a new technology. Um but others could be a lot more complicated and you know depending on how how close they are to be built together and how how disruptive that could be. You know there's there's lots of considerations on that and that's one of the reasons that makes it difficult to provide like a just a broad cost estimate because it's very very specific. You can end up it just depends on the circumstance. So

uh I I just wanted to go back you know look at this from a different angle just you know for those people who have septic systems on site that's you know just I don't you know you basically generally have what's on the left we call it a septic tank it's like a a big uh concrete tank an older one could have been brick if it depending on how old it is and your house is draining into that. There's a couple of walls in between it that basically slowly that that holds the sewage in there for a while and m a lot of microbial activity that helps uh clean the sewage out and then it drains out into what you see on the right side which is called a drain field which is a series of pipes that spread out across your yard. Those pipes have holes in them that slow almost like a soaker like a like those soaker things they sell at Home Depot that don't work real well. Like it's almost like that. it just slowly releases that water and what you're trying to do is release the water um across a wide area so that it doesn't create wet spots which would you know could create problems. Uh it is very common that the drain field is something that uh can fail over time just because eventually the the soil stops its ability to absorb or uh or the and then the basically that sewage finds its way to creeks instead of into the groundwater and that can be a challenge. Also recognizing uh septic tanks require maintenance. I think an unfortunate I think consideration people just assume it's set it forget it, but the reality is is that if you're a homeowner with a septic system, you should have a little pocket of money off to the side so that every three to five years you're paying a septic company to come out there and pop out that tank. Um and when you don't do that, it creates problems downstream.

And and also if people don't know where their septic field is, they start parking on it and different things like that. Um There's a lot to it.

There is. And I'll mention this uh uh I said earlier, you know, a significant major a significant portion of the residential zoning up there is is halfacre lots. Uh by today's uh sort of u most septic systems are managed at the state level through the department of health. Can't remember the exact name of that state department, but it goes through the health department. Uh they it is almost impossible to get a septic system on a halfer lot today. Um you know, we all learned lessons. you know, what you could permit in 1950 and you couldn't permit in 1980 and what you could permit in 1980 you can't permit today. You recognize that now now in a in a in a new septic system, you have to have room for your septic system, but you actually have to have room for a completely new one in case yours fails. So, you have to when you're building new development with septic, you you're required to have enough room for a backup. You don't have to install it on day one, but if something goes wrong, you can back up. and and that that's really challenging on what you'll have some areas in this basin that are T90 lots and there's no room for a lot of that. Uh we'll get too deep. There are um yeah, I I'll talk a little bit, you know, on the right side was just the concept of a community system. You can kind of imagine that instead of you instead of you having a system, you and all your neighbors getting together and have a larger one. There's some efficiencies on that. um that can be really tricky to retrofit because you have to find a property and usually that property already has homes on it. Um on the left side there are uh there are systems um uh where you can collect it at the house and essentially pump it to a a larger a larger uh collection system, you know, to where you might have each home, let's say have a neighborhood of 50 houses, every home would have its own little pump instead of going to it septic system and it would pump it out to a new line and go down to the to the front entrance to the neighborhood. ood to be dealt with

there. We call those low pressure systems. It's just low pressure at the house. It's not high pressure what you would see in a county system. A lot of these are retrofitted. Um you'll see these systems oftentimes like up in mountain communities where uh you know it's very difficult to install septic systems on the side of mountains and so you know there's these retrofitted options. So there's an there's an option that exists from a technology standpoint that could be a tool in your tool belt that would collect it at each home. That could be its own challenge. Like I don't want to pretend otherwise. You got to make a connection on each home. You have to you have to get approval at the homeowner level. You have to decide who's paying for what, who's maintaining all those things. But but that is a technology there.

Are are these mostly um new developments? Like if if you're building, would it be a little easier? Well, it's definitely everything is easier with new developments. I mean, I know new developments have their own downstream consequences, but like in terms of this, yes. Um, uh, but it but these low low I would call it low pressure sewer. if I was just giving it a generic term. Um, you know, the you know, this this is a a doable method for for connecting and removing somebody off of a septic system and maybe capturing a group of homes. And you still got to do something with it when you get it, but you're at least collecting all 50 homes into one location and you can decide what to do with it. Then, um, I think about this about 10 years ago. I I I my kids were getting big and so we we renovated the basement and dug a big hole in the slab and put a little uh pump to collect it and pumped it to the street. And you can buy those things at Home Depot. They're all kits. This is a little bit more complicated than that, but it's the same idea. If you've ever had a basement where you've had a little pump in your basement to be able to pump to the street, it's it's a little bit a little bit nicer version of that. You need it to be nicer version because it is, you know, you want to make sure it's done correctly, but it's the same kind of concept. Um, and then I'll mention this. That's on the right. This is just a generic, you know, example. This is kind of a a county owned, a PUD owned lift station. So, what a lift station would be is just this on a much larger level. It's a it's a relatively large um tank that's in the ground that collects sewage and then a series of pumps and electrical systems and everything else will take that and pump it wherever you want to go. You could pump at a half mile, you could pump at 10 miles. Um, obviously that can get complicated, but but you know, this is the kind of thing whereas on the left you might see something that's at the homeowner level, right? Which is maybe

4 foot x 4 foot by 4 foot. And on the right is something that you probably put on its own quarter acre parcel, you know, that takes its own property and has its own maintenance responsibilities and maintenance requirements that PUD would do. So, I just wanted to put these next to each other to kind of kind of just talk about different types of solutions and then we'll skip this. This is just Okay. All right. I was just I wanted to kind of zoom in and talk a little bit. I I was broadly talking about just tools in the tool belt that you you have the option of. Now, let's kind of talk about Sandy Creek. Um what you see here is you've got the loop and then that's MLK going north south kind of in the yellow. Um, and the existing sewer ends just inside the loop. So, uh, what you see over on the left side is your beach and water plant. Uh, your meter management water sewer. Uh, it's all back there. It's behind the the what's just to the east of the chicken plants there off of the Barber Street area. And that green line represents the sewer. So, coming straight down that page is that three and a half mile sewer line that goes all the way to North Okoney plant. And that's y'all's line. You all have easements, you all have ownership. POD maintains it. And then actually there's a a relatively new uh crossing of the river that's um very secure, very safe, very well built, designed to withstand the river and so that everything's safe there. But that's basically where things stop. And that that's that that construction probably finished around 2010. And that's as far as it got. Um but but that's essentially where if you wanted to tie in sewer from the Sandy Creek basin, this is where you'd be tying it in. Um and you can see there Sandy Creek is actually about an 8/10en of a mile up the river. It's hard to see the river on the aerial just because there's so many trees and the river is greenish just like the trees are. So it kind of blends in. But the river's there. It snakes all through the up there and then it starts snaking all

over the place and he's so flat. So about 810 of a mile up from there. Um, zoom it out real quick. One of the challenges of the basin, um, is not not just that it's big, but it's it's it's it's very flat. Um, and it is, you know, you know this because you've ever been through there. That's one of the reasons you have the, you know, so much greenway through there is there's a lot of standing water, wetlands, waterways because of because of how flat it is. Um, it is flatter than you can build sewer. Meaning you you have to build sewer with a little bit of slope to keep your sewage flowing, right? And you know, you can flatten it only so much. You know, if you you you build it dead flat, then it's not going anywhere and you got problems. And so, the reality of the basin, uh, is that it's it is too flat to to to build sewer all the way up the basin. Not that you'all want to, I'm just talking about it just to understand. So, from the get-go, you recognize that if if you were to want to put sewer here, you're going to have to look at this in in pieces. And so, we'll do that next. Okay. So, I kind of we kind of identified what we what a name we just made up. So, not an completely unofficial name of just the lower Sandy Creek basin. That's just a madeup name. And it kind of gets you up to basically where nowhere in Freeman hit on that map. And I hate it. The on the right side is um is it Dawson or Dawsonville uh road?

Danielsville.

Danielsville. I knew as soon as I said that was pausing. Dawsonville from Dawsonville. I'm sorry. Danielsville Road. And uh and then basically, you know, on the left is is S Sandy Creek. And so we kind of um looked and you can see a green line there. It's just trying to understand, you know, how far up Sandy Creek could we install gravity sewer, right? Not that we are, but we just understand what could we do? And we're relatively confident with just the information we have that we could build that up into this basin. And you know, effectively that would open up that basin to to connect to gravity sewer. It's about a thousand acres. Um there's a from our records there's about 450 septic systems on there. I my gut is there's more because I we feel like there's some gaps in the records, but but at least gives you a sense of of scale of how many septic systems are are existing. And uh one of the the hardest parts of doing this but would be super critical is we actually have to cross the loop. Uh and Georgia DOT is responsible for that loop and has some pretty strict standards for how you cross it. It's it's not a a simple job. It's a there's a pretty major expense associated with crossing that. But we kind of looked here and said if if we were going to connect to the existing sewer that's down there um off the greenway kind of across the river from from the water plant and and take it up here. It's about 14,000 ft so not quite three miles and planning level estimate about $25 million. A good portion of that is actually crossing crossing the Northley. Um now that's just giving I call it the bones like the the skeleton. That's just getting sewer in there. that's not going and connecting to your property and connecting to your property and and and doing those connections. So that that would be almost impossible to predict at this point because we don't know where

we would be connecting the further up the basin. Uh just calling it upper Sandy Creek is the upper portion of the basin about 3,000 acres. And the reality is it's two separate basins. The east side is Sandy Creek kind of keeps going up Sandy Creek. You can kind of see, you can see the lake up top, the big red or excuse me, pink B's uh large park and that creek keeps going up, you know, past the county line. And um that's, you know, we're looking at about 160 septic systems, probably more than that, another 19,000 ft, probably another three plus miles of sewer line. And then what I mentioned here plus the lift station. This is a portion that you would have to at some point to install a pressure lift station to pump over. You just because you it's it's too flat. You wouldn't be able to you wouldn't be able to connect this basin, this little subbasin to the rest of your gravity system if that was something you wanted to do. Um then you have on the right side you have I assume it's no catchy creek nochi. I knew I was gonna I was gambling on that. and uh you know another 5600 septic systems over there uh similar length which doesn't surprise you you know and um and I've got lift station there. It's possible it's possible that that one could connect by gravity. Uh we honestly just don't have enough information at this time to be able to really know that it's so flat through here that it's really tricky to to tell. Um, but we kind of just, you know, tried to look just your standard what would we do if we were extending sewer into the space and what would that look like and trying to give beauty an estimate of just building that just that that that initial trunk line to that other people might choose to connect to. Uh, and and not to be forgotten, we actually have the uh the west side of Sandy Creek as well. Um and so it's Commerce Highway essentially Commerce

Highway function as the high point. So uh on the that's this side of the Commerce Highway drains down to Sandy Creek but doesn't have any sewer and you know it's a decent size area. It's 900 acres. There's a lot more commercial obviously in this area. Um and so there's you know potential there if you wanted to have traditional sewer if that was on one of the tools you wanted to use. It's about 20,000 foot of sewer plus a low station that would end up being pumped into uh into the north county basin. Pause. All right. One last slide. Go ahead. Sorry.

Sorry. Okay. Um yeah, not totally sure where this goes. you know, just trying to talk through um you know, one of the goals was to bring you up to speed on on different tools of the tool belt, recognizing that there's there's different things you could do. I think one of the major questions that we obviously would want to hear from you all is is where you want to where you would want to prioritize anything at all. And and I think there's a big difference if you were saying we want to prioritize improvements to existing systems, right? or are we prioritizing um a providing sewer for potential new development? And those are those can be the same solutions, but they also could be very different. They they could have very different they could come up with depending on that priority, you could have a different perspective on what you'd like to do. Um and then the second question is is is you know, are you interested in making improvements to a portion of the basin over the overall basin? And um again uh I think that impacts how you would choose to go about it. Like if you said I only you know I have this targeted area of the basin and we really want to find a solution for this 400 acres out of the 6,000. That might be a different solution. That probably would be a different solution than if you said we want to solve this for all 6,000 acres. Um, so and then depending on whether well y'all's input and directive to to PUD probably the next step for PUD would you know take this right now we've been kind of evaluating things like at 10,000 ft maybe even 15,000 feet really high level GIS driving with our car around town to just kind of get a perspective on it. you know depending on the directive that you provided POD you know next steps would be you know I would say slightly more detailed engineering the value of that is to be able to give you specifics

rather than talking right now everything's been discussed very very generally where you'd be able to identify specific challenges specific improvements and specific cost I appreciate it and it's been a topic of like a very long conversation over the course of a couple decades been here since 2006 as far as quite a bit of that, you know, I just, you know, want to go ahead and

for the benefit of the public and kind of our engineering partners sort of contain the conversation effectively. And so I think it's fair to say that, you know, the area of interest was really that lower Sandy Creek basin generally defined by Freeman Drive and Balding Drive that includes Ber Elementary School and the Hope project for example. Um, we're really not talking about, as I understand it, and certainly don't put the words in your mouth, we're really not talking about the upper Sandy Creek or the Niki Creek areas so much as we are that kind of area where as you described out effectively, you know, we've just got a bunch of these halfacre parcels, you know, often duplexes on them. So, two families on a halfacre parcel. Um certainly a couple of undeveloped parcels, the the Hope one is an example or the the Bully Drive 441 parcel or some undeveloped components of that, but you know, a lot of this is built out. So I mean, is that fair to say for everybody kind of as as they've participated in these conversations? All right. All right. So that's at least a helpful level set in terms of, you know, containing the discussion. Um but certainly interested in everybody's kind of thoughts or feedback. And so I know I've got Allison and Melissa.

Well, just to clarify, that has to be done first because it's the connecting point, right? I mean, well, and I'm I'm suggesting not only first, but solely. Yes. I mean, I'm barely even that, but for

like you say, condensing the discussion. Um that covers I I appreciated the diving up that you did because I think the last time I studied it for previous um plans it was all together which I can put together with this but I appreciated the breakdown on the four segments and those details. I think that's uh and the cost for this. Anyway, yes, Melissa, so when we're talking about extending the sewer line, are we talking about along the creek digging up installation underground along like alongside the creek bed? Um

removing tree canopy, removing vegetation for what would probably be what 25 35 foot corridor. Yes, I would. Um, so I'll answer second part and first. Um, so generally speaking, if you're going to install a new sewer, there's just I would say a common corridor width is just a 40 foot width. 40 foot.

Um, it can be narrower and oftentimes it can be narrower. It's just, you know, narrower is just makes it more difficult to construct. So usually we start at 40 and then we narrow it based upon constraints. It could be as narrow as 20, but it gets a little bit more it just physically gets more difficult to build. So, I'm gonna answer the question about the creek in a second. So, I'm just trying to give you a sense of that. So, oftentimes if you're building a new um a new sewer line like we did Trail Creek almost 20 years ago or 20 years ago, you would you would you would probably generally do a 40 foot corridor. Oftentimes that other that 20 foot you you you end up keeping 20 of that like so that PUD needs that 20 forever. Maintains unveated

20 is maintained unveated. it even, you know, they'll come in through and mow it down every once in a while. The other 20, depending on lots of discussions, you know, y'all's default is to replant it. The default is to replant it. You know, at a minimum, it's going to get replanted with grass, but your default is to replant it with trees. Um, sometimes you end up negotiating it with property owner. What do they want? You know, what do they want? And so then this the second question was specific to this. Um, you know, uh, we have flown at kind of the 10,000 foot level. Uh, we've done some spot checking at the on the ground level or I have looking at things like I don't think anything is going to be on the creek. It's such a wide area of flood plane. It's, uh, what we're kind of showing is really kind of hugging the flood plane uh, to try to get away from water as much as we can. you don't really it's it's not preference to build sewage in a flood plane where you can help it at least I mean you know you got to do what you got to do sometimes depending on things but and at this level I don't have like an alignment that would say this is you know we're just looking at a large level um but we do take there's sort of a balance you take into consideration you know how to protect environmentally sensitive areas uh versus um you know uh building the same line up the hill could be a lot more destructive because you're having to do a ton of excavation. So there's a usually at the preliminary stage we end up doing multiple alignments and we walk multiple alignments with utility and say here's the pluses and minuses depending on who the property owner is. You might like show them the different alignment options. So, um, Sandy Creek is pretty pristine and it runs into the Okone River, right where our drinking water comes out, right?

Um, also, I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but right over the county line on Sandy Creek is a golf course and luxury housing development going in, which is going to severely impact that creek. um those that vegetation along Sandy Creek, you know, helps filter it um from any runoff that is coming from the basin. My concern is, you know, removing all of that vegetation and the environmental impact of that will will impact the creek. I mean, we're already getting environmental impact from the septic. Um I'm I'm you know weighing all those factors on top of each other. Would we be doing more damage to the creek to an and to the you know the corridor in general? Sure. Um losing all that tree canopy.

Um I'm also curious to know about the trunk line going up Highway 29 and Danielsville Road. Is there a possibility of looking at a line that would connect into that trunk? So, so Daniel's Danielsville is also kind of a high point. Yeah. So, nothing will naturally drain the danger because it's actually the high point. I mean, everything falls away from it. So it's

you can pump to it and so that would be an you know one so what's shown here this is tricky because I we I could have shown 14 different slides with different solutions and you know uh but uh you know what's shown here is uh a broad concept of what a gravity line could look like. um fully recognizing that uh we would uh I think PUD has an interest to stay away from the creek because it's mostly because it's just really wet and it's not ideal and and um you want to install a sewer line in a place that you can do maintenance in the future and so we would actually want to build it up into the what I call uplands away from the wetlands away from the backwater. Um a different solution would be you know to build um you know one or more pumping systems around in the basin and then you know whether you pump it up Danielsville. So kind of the very right of that slide that's the Trail Creek basin. So you can pump it up to the top of the hill and let it fall trail creek basin. Not all those lines were sized with this in mind. You got to be, you know, you don't have unlimited options, but there is capacity in that basin that you could pump it at the top of the hill and let it let it go down into Trail Creek and then it would still go down into the trunk line. It still go to North County plant from that perspective.

So, we currently have lines that are failing that are impacting tens of thousands in the Homewood Hills Forest Heights area. We've got East Athens. um you know really dense in town places that we're encouraging development because they're already developed. Um this $5 million that we're talking about here 25 $25 million that we're talking about here would be diverted from you know efforts to improve those lines and continue that in town development. Correct.

It would would not necessarily be diverted. It could result in an increased rate in order to be added so that you don't divert. So if you kept the rates have to increase everybody's

right they kept the rates the same it could divert another project. If you increase the rates it would just be added to and that would be true with anything that's not in the service delivery plan that if you wanted to add to the service delivery plan. I mean, I feel like before we continue this conversation, we need to a truly understand the environmental impact and the loss of food and what that would look like for, you know, the people who live in that area who specifically that live in that area because they want to enjoy that green space. Um, and a a real understanding of what the cost would be for the entire community as far as rateayers. And sort of the fiscal algorithm of this is, you know, potentially borrowing $200 million rather than $150 million. I mean, there's a sliding scale there. You know, we we generally have pursued these service delivery plans with kind of a large bonded indebtedness package. You know, we at times in my tenure here have had north of $300 million of bonded indebtedness through utilities. And of course, that's a revenue bond because people are paying their bills every month. So it's not like a general obligation debt.

So functionally that's what we'd be talking about. Yeah. I mean we really need to have some discussions with you know the environmental community um you know scientists, hydraologists um understanding the impacts on the creek and on our drinking water and how you know that upstream development is impacting the creek and are we just going to be adding to the problem? Um yeah, I mean the drinking water of the entire county um comes out of this specific area. Okay.

Um I do want to make um a comment about Commissioner Link's point about the um the golf course. uh one of my constituents is here and he did notice problems and he had to go through staff to get with EP EPD. So there is an awareness and there is a concern about that kind of development being this close to Athens clar county which we probably wouldn't have known about if Troy hadn't been on on that. Now, I'm going to speak about my district because Commissioner Link also brought up about the other areas that do not have sewer. We proudly look forward to 300,000 coming people moving here in the next 10 30,000 people moving here in the next 10 years. And If that is the case and we're having sewer problems or sewer issues now, we're going to have to pay or do something ahead of this migration of folk moving to Athens. Now, as far as people like living out in the you know in the country and and and in those uh areas which is primarily in is not in the city areas. I think one of the things that I have found and somebody needs to take responsibility for it is that the maintenance and the checkups are not regulated by nobody

um unless code enforcement or the state finds out. So I've had three three um septic overflows in my district. Matter of fact, one was right next door to me. But if you want to do all of this stuff about checking downtown and and seeing all this, I wish these are the kind of conversations we had before. Now when we in the district in my district want to do something. I have not heard anybody talk about septic or sewer lines in my eight years on this commission. And now that it becomes a issue, not an issue, becomes a conversation. I'm And I'm'll be upfront. I have no problems with septic tanks, lift, what I have no problem. I don't even have a choice. But um I do have a problem when folk in district 9 are not or have not been um what I think um commissioner right said don't even know where your septic tank is at and we um contaminate areas by the time they get fixed. So, I do like that you did break this down in the three parts. That makes it a little bit easier to understand. Um, and I really I I said I wasn't going to say this, but I will. Um, there this conversation comes about after promises that were made for uh all of Athens. I'm not going to just say uh the African-American community and now that folk are kind of speaking up and they want we somebody needs to be held

accountable about this. And it's amazing when it comes to um communities of color how this becomes a serious issue. again. Um, Commissioner Link, if you knew all those areas, we're having problems uh in in in downtown or center town. These are the things that we should be talking about, but this is the first. So, again, I like the package plan. I like the breakdown. I do agree with Commissioner Link some more conversations. I got uh constituents that bring resources. Not that I don't trust you guys, but uh I got constituents that are very educated and we need to be finding um something that um a win-win situation for everyone. But when we get into we got to do this, we got to bring that, we got to do this. Look at the reason why we don't have a sewer. It's be and I and and Melissa said it, she said it, but I got folk in my district that have learned how to live with faulty septic tones. Help me fix that. And it also seems that whatever we do, we're going to need a list station. Did Is that what I heard? Um, I think it's feasible to construct gravity sewer through this lower area up through kind of the Nowhere Freeman intersection where you wouldn't have to have a a lift station. But it it really I think it depends on

sounds like it requires more analysis. It just depends on, you know, if you said, "I only want to service this one parcel in the middle of this." Well, then you're going to build a small station for the middle of it. You said, "No, I want to fix I want to uh possibly replace septic systems across the whole area," then you'd have a different different perspective. You'd say, "Well, let's build a gravity line to pick that up." Thanks.

Um, couple questions. um from a technology standpoint and haven't done this over the last 20 years. How safe now and I think the public need to know how safe now are things that we install these if we want to install something what that would look like from environmental perspective and how to protect the environment and secondly to my colleague um saw's point know everybody about we need more density more density more density you're willing to slam more densely in established neighborhoods which going to take up more septic and water but when we talk about expanding out to her point it's an issue and I have problems with that. So, still a lot of work to be done. I think technology has improved 100%. I like the fact that we can sort of part this out and be able to concentrate on certain areas and still not impact the environment. I think it's important, don't get me wrong, it's real important, but to Commissioner Thor's point, every we want to go into areas of color, it's an issue, but yet we say let's do more density in these neighborhoods. to point more people are moving in. You want to build more housing or more colleges or more duplexes, it's the same type of impact on your systems. So, we got to figure out not only as a commission and as a community, we want more density. We want more or whatever. And do we want to help those people their own septus um um systems to get off septic systems and get on sewer and water system that will protect them and help them. So I think you know to me is that a moral issue we try to help these individuals and what should we do as a um government as a commission and as a community because I think we want we need to involve them. But I think we know we need to be realistic. You know, we throw these words out about what we

want to do. When the time start looking at stuff, everybody throws their hand on, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not in my backyard. So, we got to figure out what we want to do moving forward. That's a commission. Carol, back to Allison. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. And with respect, I'm not quite sure. I I mean, I'm I'm not I'm just talking about facts. Forget about what I want or not. I mean I if you're building in in town where there is capacity you don't have to build new water lines sewer. I understand there needs we had I mean the country I don't care but we had to do it when we did the arena we had to add

No. Right. Right. Well that's why I just said that except for there isn't and we have to fix them. So that's that. But the the the other thing is at the end of this there's a question about like are we trying to fix the septic tanks or new development or both which are I think are good questions to be looking at here. Um I'm a little concerned if I go back to that page 15 just in terms of let's say we're trying to deal with the septic sit situation with the line and this is just factual. I'm not even looking at the environment here. I'm looking at the factual here. If we look to that to get over to the lines, let's say I have a house up on Freeman Drive and some duplexes and to connect, are we talking about like to connect down to that sewer line? Are we talking about as a community or like with the county, would there be lines coming off of this green thing that the county would pay for? I mean, so I'm up here on a duplex and I know that like in my neighborhood where we have septic, if I want to connect up to close to where there is a line, I have to pay for that whole line. Um, and so that's, you know, that's actually a lot of money in my neighborhood. So, are we planning on having any branch lines coming out? That would be the county. Um, that's just one question. And ultimately that would end up being a also a policy decision because typically as was explained what we're building out are the uh the trunk lines. So kind of the the skeleton as was was said earlier with the normally the expectation that growth and development is expanding those smaller collector lines out further or if somebody's in close proximity and is wanting to take a system offline they may be connecting into that piece. It doesn't mean that you couldn't as a part of a project actually expand that network so that now you're not only

building the trunk lines, you're building the collector lines um and and on up through almost literally to kind of the front door. We approach water a little bit differently than waste water.

Obviously, it just adds cost associated. Well, and so you know whe whether or not I mean there's something that like if we're trying to deal with the septic and we're trying to get to the septic at the houses on Freeman Drive just using that street for example. I don't know where they all are, but is like how I mean I I want to know how much it would cost to add in some ranch lines if that's something or if you weren't doing that and I lived up here, what would the cost be? Because there's one thing building these lines, but if I'm looking at something and it's like I can, you know, personally pay for 10,000 to get a, you know, I don't know, clean it out or whatever, but I'm talking about 30,000, that's that's a different thing. So, I'd like to I think that's something we have to be um you know, we just have to be factual about because if we want to help the homeowners and the environment with the septic system, we have to be looking at what we're actually can follow through and get done. Having that septic that line there and not being able to connect to it doesn't do anything to improve the septic system.

Yeah, I think it's fairly safe to say that if if project. The utility project only included a a trunk line interceptor running into this watershed. It will do essentially little to nothing to actually get those homes that are currently on septic connected. I mean practically you have to get closer to those homes given all kinds of reasons um to to getting there and stuff. So, I think if we did take this step, if there was a desire to advance on more feasibility analysis with this, it would need to include, okay, what would the cost $25 million to get the trunk line in here? What would the additional cost be to expand that network out?

Can we get a cost on how much the next step of feasibility would cost? And then also on the cost of this overall, the 25 million, does that include landing costs, this rightway acquisition? It it it would it it does or would I mean Yes, ma'am. I mean, are there estimates in there? Is there a line? Yeah. Okay. For for Okay. And of course, that 25 million is sort of a lumpy, right? So, usually on my end, I want to be careful. It's like I I want to give you guys a sense of scale, right? Right. Um and and yeah, that's a a cost including

So, but but back back to the original question of what we're trying to do here. if we're trying to for the new development for the septic I think that's a discussion to be had as as well um so that we understand I mean that we would need that to know that for the next step of the feasibility I would assume um

the the other fiscal piece I'll note is that some communities when they've got comparable questions and they've got low-income residents who need to connect to new kind of trunk lines secondary lines that they may use CDG dollars, federal dollars to to fund those connections. So that's just just what you see out there in the world. What legally on that one just and then then I'll I'll be quiet, but that legally on that one, can you do that? Is that a program that federal dollars so you don't have to save? Well, no. What I that isn't my question. My question is can you limit that to a certain geographic area because there's so many people in other areas that don't have it. That's a question legally I was wondering about as well.

You could you could definitely pick. I mean, one has to be either an eligible population and or an eligible area to begin with because CP has to go to folks that are limited income or some other categories. And then yes, you absolutely could say we're going to target an area of the community for whatever reason and focus the investments in those locations as long as the other conditions are met. Again, knowing that, having an estimate of how much would be needed because we don't really get that much in CDBG funds, right? So, typically you're going to get a couple million dollars. Yeah. A year for all of our CDBG housing programs and so on. So, yeah,

just to continue to clarify the the complexity, can we get back to your slide 11? Being a visual communicator, I work better with the picture up there. So the trunk is the big circle and that's visualizing the gravity that we're talking about across that whole map which is why that first basin Kelly that you're asking us to focus on has the gravity at the the level that you've researched it. So then you take a new development, they're going to be putting, you know, whoever's building is going to be paying for all the pipe up until the property line, right? And then the property line to the trunk is us or the property owner kind of thing. No,

the developer usually takes it from the trunk. Takes it to the trunk. All the way to the trunk. So then, so that carols a little bit of what you were talking about, how far

to get to the trunk. And then can you go to the next one? I don't want to get it too back one sorry back to the graphic of the hookup. So if somebody's existing with sewer and that trunk is in that the the gold color pipe is now what we're talking about adding that's several thousand dollar to get bypass their sewer and get to the trunk. Right. And we're talking about that cost for each person who maybe doesn't even have the $500 to clean up the septic of which I do talk about a great deal because it does concern me and the limits that our um health department have on the preventative. It's it's an outreach thing versus a robust

Yeah. Yeah. And that sort of thing. And then um you know maybe we could take some of that CD money. I mean, it would be great if we could have some money now to help those people with the maintenance of their septic because this discussion is one thing and the execution is years and years and years down the road because of the work that we are currently doing on the existing sewers that um need repair to continue to have it functioning where it is. Those of us in the public sector world often say we're planting trees in new shade we're never going to enjoy and there's no more illustration than what we're talking about right now.

I I do appreciate this presentation and it would have been helpful when we were trying to understand that project that was on the agenda. Remember it came out and then the rainy weather version of it and I think a graphic

Melissa and then Avita and then we need to move on. I I would love to see a a feasibility concept of what it would take to get the lift station to get that Freeman Drive, Fowler Drive area up to the Danielsville Road truck. I I'd much rather see that and and it might be worth it, especially if you have the area to install some like renewable energy field or something. You also get the trailer park. um that tree. Oh,

yeah. I I' I'd rather see something involving that on an existing trunk line that is on a roadway that would constitute much less environmental damage. Um you know, and there might be ongoing costs to run that pump, but that's a cost that, you know, could be borne by the folks who are directly benefiting by it or from like some other alternative funding fund. um you know rather than that massive massive environmental destruction that also endangers the health of the creek and also would require a boatload of eminent domain and money

I um I do agree with um commissioner link about a feasibility study for the Danielsville we don't have to touch if we don't have to go in the other direction I think that would probably be um the best option Um uh and then we could deal with uh those 4 I forgot how many numbers of sure

uh later on as a separate issue but to be able to do a feasibility study to um to um go to the Daniels bill uh that would be I am going to say this um I do think that these are the things that offer money should have addressed. I think these one of the things that we have we don't discuss until after the force is out the the fence because we could have used our money to help those folk on septic tanks to get, you know, whatever help they needed. So, I needed to say that. But, Kelly, my question to you is, don't we have some lines somewhere that people did not plug into before I got on the commission? So it's I mean it's very common and I think you know you guys alluded to it that you know you put a a main line in and some new development is going to plug into that maybe slowly over a period of years or even decades an existing plug into that and and the Trail Creek line is a good example. Right. So there are a bunch of property owners along the Trail Creek line that effectively extends all the way up Highway 29 that aren't plugging into that line right now.

Is do do they know that they could do that? I I mean, we we put a line down for whatever the future is, but now we got we we invested in lines that folk why would we I guess I'm saying do we need to look at that too because there are lines out there that could be used. That's what I'm asking. I I don't know if uh or his team could kind of identify like in their engagement with the prospective customer base if they're just people who are kind of the fact that there might be a line relatively adjacent.

The Trail Creek uh corridor has seen a lot of growth since that line's gone in. We've actually seen numerous large developments tying onto that line and extending the main from that trunk line way out into the corridor to develop their uh apartment complexes, commercial complexes, etc. Um it's it's pretty well known there's a line out there and we see a lot of people a lot of interest in connecting to it. So that the the so again I I imagine because of the growth mostly retail and businesses and stuff but is there a way if is that another option to connect if we're looking for these connection spots. Is that an option?

Take the Sandy Creek Racing and Trail Creek though you gonna have to redo you can use map because you're taking capacity away from Trail Creek to serve Sandy Creek basin with that. Okay. That's what I'm asking about the trail and I'm just looking for all the options. So that's not a good option. My opinion though houses

and I do think to kind of build off of what Matt said as well and I want to see if I can kind of maybe capture what it is it sounds like you are saying for us to be able to take away. Um, it's far far more likely, just so everybody knows, that if we place a front line into a watershed, into a basin, far more likely that you're going to see folks come in with new development and have new pressure wanting to connect to that line than it is folks that are on septic systems connected to that line. The septic systems work, whatever that means. Meaning, no one's forcing them to connect into the sewer. There's a cost with doing so. Even if we're close, there's a cost with doing so. Um, a cost that frankly that's very difficult for them to bear compared to someone who has a raw piece of land who can turn development into the way in which to pay for that extension system. That's important to kind of know and you're sort of seeing that out as was just mentioned with the Trail Creek one. We've got, you know, talked the other day about a mobile home park that can actually connect to a system right now that's chosen not to do so. There's lines there. They've chosen not to. And in the meantime,

tell but but we know why. Right.

Right. In the meantime, we got a lot of this commercial development that actually has come out of the ground because there's sewer there. I think and this might might check to see if we've got the direction that we can kind of take away from. So sounds like we definitely have said there's zero interest in studying any further any feasibility above what we're kind of calling this lower piece. So no need to look at any of those other parts of the the base. And and the way I would describe this is really kind of to expand the feasibility assessment that has been done so far to do a couple of things. One of those is um a fuller developed cost magnitude of costs that go beyond just the trunk line. So you're getting closer to where the septic systems in these areas are located. So there's a better sense of what would it really cost to get up close to those those structures. That's part one. Part two is what would also be the feasibility and potential costs of looking at the development idea the area that's identified in future land use plan for development up in the Freeman road area to in effect lift over to the other I know there's some other complications that were just mentioned that have to be taken into account but that's kind of the second part of the feasibility. Um, and then this isn't the third part, just so we know. There's there's two there's two in the future landings map. There are two growth areas, if you will. The one I just talked about at Freeman, the other one is down where the amphitheater site is. So, both of those would be looked at. Is it feasible to get service to both of those areas? One possibly lifting over Angusville. And the other is what's the magnitude of cost to get up close, if you will, to the duplexes. And then, you know, that would kind of be the next piece of feasibility because the next piece after that is design. And I'm not hearing we're ready to move into the concept of design. We we first need to expand the feasibility analysis, come back again and see if based on that there is any desire or interest in moving any part of that toward design. Is that fairly

and we're staying away from the S I just want to be clear. We're staying away from the Sandy Creek base and we're looking at the D. No, this would still this would still you you can't you actually can't serve the two places without going in the Sandy Creek basin. The the the ones on Trail Creek, do they connect to the Sandy Creek basin at all? No. But but I think the kind of what we heard mostly not at this point is stay out of the wet areas to the greatest degree possible. You know, create the plan of greatest environmental benefit.

Yeah. And there's some reasons we, you know, there's practical reasons as was mentioned for constructibility. There's also some other regulatory reasons. There's some land in there that we actually can't do things with because there's some restrictions attached to the the natural features that are present in the land. So, so yes, and some of that's going to obviously drive some of the costs up in terms of that feasibility, but we've got to give you at least a sense of what those costs are. So, you can tell us whether from a cost standpoint, an environmental standpoint, a benefit standpoint, is that something you want us to move toward the design stage, but it sounds like we've got a kind of part two of feasibility before we get to that. Thank you, Rock. All right. Fair. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, everybody. All right. out in time. Thanks a bunch for working on this. We appreciate it. Look forward to the next chapter. All right. Uh we're here now to talk about purchasing because as a large organization that spends about$3 million a month, we take a quick break. Sorry. All right, we'll take a five minute break real quick.

Hi y'all. We're going to go ahead and get started here. Give me a thumbs up, Jeff, when we're ready. All right. We're here for continuity with our work session here on the 11th of May. Uh excuse me, 12th of May. And um uh we have with us David Boyd, our finance director um who's going to bring to us some proposed updates to our purchasing ordinance. As I was just reviewing with David uh we come to understand this phenomenon called inflation. It's the dollar today in 2026 doesn't buy what a dollar bought in 1992. So we may want to think about adjusting internal policies to accommodate that reality.

Thank you. As uh we stated on the very first slide or second slide here, you know, most of the purchasing ordinance ordinance uh sections date from 92 to 2004. We do have some that are newer than that than that that put in in the last 78 years for various reasons, but most of them are from 92 to 2004. And of course we all know that in this long time period since 92 and 2004 you know we've had er inflation that's eroded existing threshold levels. We've had a lot of uh uh improvements in uh technology and internal control. Uh now all of our purchases flow through the Munis uh financial system and required documentation and supervision approval prior to payment and that all gets signed off on by uh purchasing beforehand. Uh and business practices have evolved as the US and world economies have changed. So really what we're trying to do here is we're trying to update the purchasing thresholds to reflect the impact of inflation. And you will see a lot of the thresholds we've recommended are actually less than what the inflation adjusted thresholds are, but I didn't want to get out over my skis, so I kept them a little under. Uh we also want to introduce an annual budget adoption of inflation adjustment to the thresholds so that we don't have to visit this issue again. Uh we also want to adopt purchasing definitions that reflect current business practices and just in general change other functions that reflect improvement of internal control over small purchases through the adoption of our workflow

technology and our munis system. And so overall these these proposed changes uh should improve the efficiency of purchasing processes. And I'll tell you purchasing the purchasing process is one of the most commonly hated processes in this government and has been since the day I've been here. Uh I went through that I just put this in here for everybody. You know we had limited space in these tables. So, I just put these abbreviations in there so that you would know. Also, the page numbers that are shown in the presentation, they refer to the red line purchasing ordinance included separately from the presentation, just so you would know where we're pulling that information from. Now, ordinance changes prior to 2012. One of the reasons I had to use two uh periods in which to calculate the the threshold the inflation impact on the threshold is because you know if you go to MUN code and you go to the quick link or you you go to the upper right hand corner where it's titled more the drop-down menu offers a previous versions link but uh that that only goes back to really March 23rd 2020. 12. So I knew that no one could take time to go through the attict of the city hall and find these particular ordinance years. And so I just went ahead and calculated the thresholds. So I I'm just trying to give you a preview of why this is set up the way it is. So first of all, thresholds. So we have these main categories of

thresholds for privacy award of contracts. You know, currently the mayor commission approved any threshold, any contract that's above or equal to 200,000. The manager any contract below 200,000 and the purchasing administrator, which is the designate is below 100,000. We're recommending, you know, for mayor commission to go up to 300,000. But if you look at the two threshold level, the two inflation adjusted threshold levels, we're below both those levels. And if we found out that the 200,000 was from 92, we'd be in nearly 500,000 now. Uh, also change orders within the budget. Right now, if someone comes to us and they need to get a change order approved, purchasing ordinance does not speak to what threshold uh a person uh need or who they need to take the change order to. And so, purchasing policy does, but the ordinance does not. So, we're recommending, you know, mayor commission approve anything 100,000 or more, manager under and purchasing administrator. of below 50,000 and we don't have since it's not in the ordinance now we don't have anything to compare that to currently in the policy it will say $50,000 but I mean you're going to have $50,000 in change orders you know in any major construction contract so it does uh it does slow the process down there's also this other thing in our purchasing ordinance about monthly contract reports and That's where purchasing division creates a report that shows all contracts issued during

the month of $10,000 or more. I personally don't know why that's in there because that has probably been there since 92. I don't know. Um but I mean if they're within these threshold limits and they're within the adopted budget, I'm really not sure why we produce that to begin with. But if you want to continue doing that, we could raise the threshold to 50,000. Now, I went back under footnote three, which is hard to see on this slide here, but I looked at three months, November uh 25 through January 26, and you would still be getting about 50% of that report on average if we went from 10,000 to 50,000 in that reporting. competitive solicitations and quotes. This this is really one of the biggest areas that frustrates people right now. If you want to go out and buy something, you don't have to get any quotes. If it's below $1,000, uh that's got to be from 92. Um, and we just set that at $10,000 as a recommended level because that is the federal, excuse me, it was the federal micro purchase level limit. It's now 15,000. 10,000 three quotes. Uh, currently if it's anywhere between a,000 and 50,000, you have to get three quotes. We're just recommending 75,000 or less. And if you look at the uh inflation adjusted, it's well below both those those thresholds. Anything that's a bid, in other words, you're going to go out for an RFP or a competitive solicitation. Right now, it's 50,000. We're asking for greater than or 75. Uh and of course, that's below both the

inflation adjusted thresholds. And also you you have to understand that all RFPs are competitive solicitations of any kind. Doesn't matter if it's $10,000. State law requires us to put that on the Georgia procurement registry. So it's competitively bid anyway. So we're just we're just basically adjusting all the thresholds here for inflation. And then one other thing that doesn't exist in the ordinance at all is when the manager is absent who signs for his threshold limits. It's not it's not in the uh it's not an ordinance or policy to my knowledge. And so what we'd like to do is officially put, you know, that during the manager's absence, there's someone that can act as his designate to sign uh contracts and and approve other purchasing thresholds u what in his absence. So we've got the deputy or assistant manager or chief of staff, whoever he designates. So since this is one of the most important areas of purchasing is who's approving what are there any questions at this level?

So sometime when the mayor's out and then it be designated would this fall in that category? The only kind of substitute for mayors is when mayor contract right so that and so that would just continue. Okay. Okay. Okay. Regardless of everybody once it gets on your desk, everything is already gone. That's right. It already has appropriate either administrative or legislative approval. Okay.

I think this sounds great. It seems to me like it's helping the process move forward. It sounds like there's a lot of busy work that monthly without and all that was also probably before software. Um, so it's you're modernizing it in many ways as well as it's happening consistently and your methodology on it as well as showing those thresholds even though we're going up. We're not going way way up and and the footnotes I can read. Probably those are good too. Okay. Any other questions? I know it's exciting,

but it but it's something that we got to do. David, I hope you bring us something similarly riveting the next time. Yes, I always do. Uh we'll talk about accounting standards next time. Um

be improved. One of the things we want to do is put into the ordinance uh paragraph that says, you know, upon the adoption of the ordinance, all purchasing thresholds identified in this section so shall be subject to annual increases by the rate of inflation as you know defined by the US government. uh and inflation adjusted thresholds will be rounded to the nearest $1,000 increment and will be adopted as part of budget ordinance. So, what that means, if you've got a threshold that's $100,000, let's just say the rate of inflation is 1%. We change it to 101, you know.

Yeah.

If it's 50,000, you know, we we might suggest we change it to 51 or we might just wait another year, but it would be cumulative from the time you adopt the 50,000. So we would always go back and and oppose that and it would work the same way as the fee schedules do now in the budget. So if you go in the budget and you look in the back section you'll see a list of all the fees that we charge. We envision this being in the same not in the feed schedule but a separate threshold. Um expansion of definitions. Uh, I just threw this in there because we've only got five definitions now in in the ordinance and we're I'm just telling you we're putting in 17

so we have more clarity for future purchasing decisions. And purchase order exemptions. I'm gonna let you go this.

Um, I'm Jessica Barry, the purchasing administrator. Um so for purchase order exemptions uh this is basically where there is not an actual procurement methodology that we're using. Um for example if we are um in litigation we've obviously already um obligated ourselves to pay a a third party um law firm to help us handle the litigation. And so basically we just need a process to where we can cut a check to pay an invoice to said law firm. Um and so that would basically be process that we would like to up to put into the policy so that therefore we can expedite that process um to help ease some of the burden on the departments that that handle these types of um purchases so to speak. um it's not anything that we actually play a part in in helping determine who we're going to contract with so to speak. Um as you can see health services for when we are bringing employees on board on board through HR. Um obviously HR has a certain vendor certain contractor that they want to um the onboarding exams with. Um unfortunately if we have a body transport with the coroner's office, we have certain people um who are trustworthy that need to transport that body um to an investigative lab to do autopsies. That is what this is talking about. So we would just like to process

and do we when we doing transport bars are we using funeral homes or what else transportation or stuff like that?

No sir. Um so if they are going to a crime lab for investigative purposes that we are using um certified officers to do that. I will just say that when they originally brought this to me, they just said body transport. You mean body? Who are we transporting? It's dead. And obviously there's some things like utilities. We we don't do a PO pay George power bill. We got to pay them no matter what. And usually settlements are awarded damage through the mayor and commission. Real estate transactions are through mayor and commission. there's just no point in having a PO requirement for those and currently and in a lot of these things we don't use POS because we can't uh you've already made the decision u and but the current ordinance just doesn't have a PO exemption so we might as well formalize

David let me ask you what about our constitution officers though like sheriff do they follow our same guidelines uh competitive solicitation uh exemptions. We're not really changing anything here, but right now we have various types of competitive solicitation exemptions, you know, like federal or state contracts and so forth, emergency purchases, soul source, those kinds of purchases. But they're spread out all through the ordinance. All we're doing is moving them all into one place so that if someone's reading the ordinance and wants to know if something is exempt from a competitive solicitation, it's all in one section and they don't have to look through the entire ordinance to find it. That's it. That was that was sweet. It's a lot better than uh sanitation, wasn't it?

Any questions? Yeah, this something we're gonna need to vote on. Yeah. Yeah. So, we need to know vote on this change in policy. I'll have to do an agenda. I think August, I think it's Well, it's a 45day process, but then y'all don't vote in July, right? Without you. Yes. Time to ponder it. Yes. Once I do the agenda, the pondering things are rough for right. Okay. Thanks everyone. Appreciate it y'all.

Thanks. All right. How lucky we are, my friends. We get to begin our conversation 27 budget.

I know. came out of there.

Mr. Dav,

good to see you. Perfect time. Perfect time. There's snacks in it. I know you know I know you haven't had time soft drinks finance. What is that? Look at all the color. This is a version of

catch. So, are we done recording?

I was my feet up on the desk. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, but yeah. while it's fresh in my mind. I'll get with her to see if I can

just in the break face. Oh, that remind everyone. Oh, look at this pamplet. It's all the colors. See, it's not in the fancy paper. Listen, that's for having your palette right here. It's different. I mean, it's got a few more. Okay. That color that you don't have enough

um Well, you the first commission. I understand if it really was a credit for my job.

Sarah, did you do this? usually means you're being off.

Yeah. Yeah. He was trying to change first time. Yeah. Jim, Bob, y'all about

All right, everybody. I think we're about ready to get started. Excited to be here and uh kick off for another budget year. Obviously, lots and lots of work has been out in the background. Uh department directors prepared their preferred budgets really prior to the beginning of the year. uh those were aggregated and uh the manager kind of looked at what was possible and had some recommendations uh and then we'll think in conjunction the manager and I uh you know produced have in front of you uh and uh everybody has in front of you just a kind of a one-page uh bullet point set of highlights um you know these are largely reflected in the letter that's in front of your budget book that everybody has a copy of but I do kind of go down the this is what I guess I would call the just the facts ma'am part of it. Um and then u ask the manager for any additional input after that and then as mayor pro commissioner fiser will just sort of field any questions. I think ideally today we're just sort of collecting thoughts. Um we're obviously going to have a series of other meetings that you have kind of in the block at the bottom of your one one pager uh days from now. So uh plenty of time for your thoughts to coales into maybe some direction if you have some different direction. Uh so just uh kind of to note these elements that I think everybody's interested in. U the millage rate would remain at uh 12.25 mills. Um, and I'm going to come back to that because one of the things that I will be proposing is that we put a floss flexible local option sales tax on uh on the ballot for November 2026. That would effectively lower that to about 7.25 mills with the trade-off being a new penny of sales tax. U the FY27 budget totals about $377

million with the general fund being about $212 billion. of that um total capital investment uh is about uh $67 million general fund uh excuse me it's about $67 million of which about $7 million is general fund capital. Um this budget recommends a 3.5% market rate adjustment in employee compensation. Uh what I would like to contemplate though um given the prospect of extra dollars that will roll in is that if we do get more than $200,000 of extra dollars in the digest, we we bump to 4% um which was the the manager sort of idealized version. Uh this budget removes nine existing positions from the general fund. That that's a total about $484,000. U there are a couple of new general fund positions. uh a new assistant manager and of course we talked about that a year ago. Uh really wanting to have a better distributed workload across the organization so that no individual in the manager's office is too having to bear too heavy a burden. Uh they would move uh from part-time to full-time a correctional institute social worker just to better do kind of remediation work with them. Uh there'd be a probate fiduciary compliance position in probate court. you know, probate court has to manage both people's living wills and their their estates, you know, post departure. And fortunately, uh, we just have a huge volume of work there. And so, probate has for some years been concerned that we're really not doing a careful enough job kind of following up on the directive people's wills. Uh, there will be a part-time to full-time probation lab, uh, just to handle internally the volume of work there. Uh and then there would be a facility maintenance tech in the courthouse. Um of new positions from other funds other than the general fund. Uh there would be a county engineer that would be split

funded between our SPLAS and T-PLOS programs and the building inspections fund. Um and this person would really be doing two things would be kind of helming this sort of newly brought inhouse effort to kind of helm our own capital projects rather than outsource the bulk of that and then secondarily or maybe with kind of about half that time but really do kind of a much more u guess what I'm going to call take a bull by the horns approach to our planning and development processes just so that it's easier for anybody to go through our development process whether you're kind of opening a barber shop or whether you're opening a 100,000 square foot facility. Somewhat connected to that, there'll be uh two project managers in the in the capital projects department, uh storm water operations coordinator, um uh transportation public works uh staffer, and then one additional airport firefighter. Uh this budget also uh asks uh for funding for an economic development strategic plan. Um, we've laid out in our economic development planning cornerstones, you know, biotech, health care, small business, creative culture, for example, but we'd like to dig a layer deeper and really make sure we're doing all the things necessary to launch all of those aspects of our economic development plan.

And mayor, the next item is actually way long. It's it says general fun. It's actually the tlost um excess revenue 12.6 million.

Yeah. And then uh next bullet point um we are going to realize more dollars from the current TEFLs package, not the one that's in front of voters in May, but the existing 2023 package than we would have anticipated. And so there's a recommended set of expenditures around that uh that's part of this budget um for a half a year uh following the December 31st expiration of ARPA dollars. This would continue our ACC CCCSD youth partnership uh to the tune of about $65,000. We would continue to fund those Athens housing authority embedded youth development programs uh to the tune of $150,000. This would add a salary supplement to the sheriff's office which is very common around the state. Uh and and in fact there's been compression within the sheriff's office. the sheriff is now earning as the uh as the director of that department less than some subordinates. Um and so this would raise it up and and I used the uh Augusta Richmond and the Columbus Muscogi models to sort of model this this cost.

So we're allowed to use the C++ funds for these. No, this is this is general fund dollars. No, we've moved off of TES back to that. What was the amount Bob that you said fees? It was 12.6 million. Yeah. And that's for the whole and I'll give you all I've got a kind of a one page that has the break that down. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. So that bullet point that says general fund capital 12.6 should say T plus excess. Okay. Yeah, that was just a misgrant. 12.6 million. That's correct. Oh, I see it. Okay.

T plus excess, not general fund capital. Um uh there there are uh some increases in cost at at the jail particularly given the u population load there. So uh there's recommended medical increase of 350k and recommended uh meal increase of 280k. This would reduce the neighborhood leaders program funding by about $380,000. This would extend the season at the bishop park pool to the tune of $40,000. Uh it's anticipated that this would probably be part of a multi-year plan. Uh leisure services staff would sort of just get some familiarity with what the community need is kind of in this uh coming fiscal year. So kind of late summer of calendar year uh 2026. And and the expectation is that probably next year, a year from now, they would refine that and say, "Hey, we've really found out, you know, we really need the weekend hours. We don't need daytime hours." So, we're, you know, we're we're feeling our way through, but sort of recognizing that there's a desire for an extended season. And so, this basically would take us from keeping that pool open from when students go back to school at the beginning of August through Labor Day because currently that's when we've been shutting down pools is when kids go back to school.

Awesome.

Yeah. Uh uh let's see. Uh moving on. This fully funds the libraries request with a tune of $461,000. fully funds the public defenders request, you know, $167,000. It increases community events programming um with $50,000 new dollars to bring that total funding up to $300,000. You'll recall that five years ago, we were at $60,000. So over the course of that many years, we've uh quintupled the sexupled, excuse me, the amount of time going in there. Um uh and this of course distributes the people and belonging function throughout the organization which does result in a reduction of FTE from six to four individuals. Um and then there's a set of lift in the rate fees and service charges that are at the very back of the book. So you can kind of see those uh current FY26 and proposed FY27 charges basically to just kind of rightize them through almost the same inflationary vehicle that David Ford was talking about when it comes to the the purchasing project. Um staff has done a great job assembling some highlights. So we've got a a new piece Thank you Jeff and your team. Uh new piece of our public information out there. And uh Bob, is there anything else you want to highlight for questions? And

yeah, I'll just highlight a couple of things. Um one of the some of these are just reinforcing things that I had said when I presented kind of the priority um meeting. One of those is this is the beginning of the movement as the mayor said to bringing more of our uh capital project management in house. And as I shared with you all um that will probably be a two-year undertaking. So this year it's the county engineer, two project managers. I would expect next year it's probably at least two more project managers and then you should see most likely with the T-slos that's in front of the voters in uh in May. You would likely see those projects being the first projects that our internal project management would be anticipating kind of taking um taking on. So multi-year phasing, but we're starting that that process as we have moved forward with those. largely what I shared with you all has uh simply been picked up by the mayor. The mayor was able to identify some additional um funding with really going from that 4% to three and a half% that addressed if you remember I said if there is extra money there's some judicial items that need attention. Those items have now been covered and are in the mayor's proposed budget. And then as I shared with you all in the most recent update, the tax digest appears or is coming in stronger than what we had um certainly projected within the budget somewhere around $1.6 million of additional revenue um at that meeting. I think the mayor has said it also in his meetings and in his discussions and I'll reinforce it again that our recommendation for what it's worth would be that those dollars be used first to restore the or the three and a half to 4% that's around $217,000. Um we also were required to do about a $250,000 contribution because of change in state law dealing with state police pension. So it would be to restore that back into the budget. Um and then um we

would recommend that the remainder of a govi fund balance so that we can lower our use of the fund balance. The reason that recommendation is there is because as you'll hear on Thursday as we move into actually building new judicial center and the associated um debt issuance with that the stronger in my opinion the stronger our fund balance is the better that will be viewed by our credit rating agencies which will ultimately benefit us and getting us closer to that 20% number above our 16.7 16.9% minimum standard I think helps us in that regard. So that's kind of why we're making that. That is probably by far the most substantial change from the time that um both I presented and also the mayor's budget was submitted, which is um more more revenue coming in than had anticipated through the tax digest. So I think those are the things that that I kind of wanted to highlight um with that as well. Thank you.

Okay, questions. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Um um before we get started though, um Sarah did a great job last year capturing things that um we talked about in these meetings. So I I asked her, we talked about want to do the same thing. Um and I I'll set out some but all of us need to be present in the session. One thing I need, we're not going to have a whole bunch of CEOs coming down the pipe this year budget. Um us to get out. We're going to request that you may get in. Let's get them in. Let's try to agree on we're not doing all these CDOS's. Okay.

One budget um recommend that the village state 12.5 where we are. Um and again, we look at the tax digest any type of um um funding that we may use. Again, you got any recommendations? I know some of y'all have already emailed some of those things and some of them will be difficult to do but at the same time let's just have that discussion make sure whatever we that Sarah shares with us we have that information then we're going to try to get this thing together but not a whole lot I see to share get this thing over the hump and we can move forward. So with that said um questions coming and again um this Thursday we got all the constitutional officers coming in. So again, I think again I'll send a um text and email out tomorrow or either tonight and tomorrow. We need to be present, you know, because I don't know if people come at the last minute. I agree with the mayor. We're not going to be doing we're not going to be waiting for the last minute. Get this stuff done. Let's get it done. Show up for these meetings. We probably get some feedback from our public. Um but we'll get emails from our public. But I think what he has presented um there some good stuff on here. So, let's just try to get some things done and move forward.

Yeah, Commissioner Fischer, I just want also again on Thursday um in addition to the constitutional elective, we'll be talking about the concept plan and the funding plan for the judicial center. So, it really will be important as well. It gonna be it going to be a long week, guys.

Yeah. And and Andrew reminded me so once we get this um one of the other things that has kind of changed is and we were hoping it would go back in the other direction, but as you can imagine, fuel in fuel costs are increasing substantially. Um, and so that may be a cost. We also need to look ahead into the upcoming budget year that we hadn't necessarily accounted for the rates that we're currently seeing. I throw that one out there, too. Um, and one other thing, you know, we don't have I know sometime we have these pet projects. We don't have a whole lot of those this year. So, let's take a look at what we got and then go from there. But I really want this to be a smooth transition. So,

yeah, I got several questions. Um, so constitutional officers, are they going to be asking for more money too, or is it gonna be is everything covered in No, I would say um probably with the exception of a couple of them, much like all of our departments, every one of them had requests that exceeded what could be what could be funded. Now, how many of those ultimately get talked about when they meet with you, I don't know. Um but there certainly I would um certainly let you know absolutely in every instance again as with every department there were requests that exceeded the available funds. Okay.

And we met with them already what they but yeah they may but I just have to play it by ear. I I think it's fair to say like the top priorities were covered. Um you know it may be the one of greatest disparities the sheriff's office. Yeah. Okay. Um, mayor, can you go over your referendum for November? AB:

Absolutely. No, I appreciate you asking about that. So, uh, of course, in 2025 and then kind of as amended in 2026 in the Georgia General Assembly session, local governments were given a new option uh for an additional penny of sales tax called flo or floating local option sales tax. And what that does is as you create a new penny of sales tax cash register that then reduces the millage rate uh for all users for individual homeowners for folks who've got a beauty salon for somebody who might have a car repair shop um and and everybody u and the approximate tradeoff would be one new penny of sales tax for about a five mil reduction. Uh the thing that is important to keep in mind though is that that doesn't necessarily remain exactly the same every year because what you do is first you collect a calendar year of that sales tax penny and one year may be exactly 5 mil the next year maybe 4.95 mills the year after that it might be 5.01 mill so so it's going to float a little bit just as the the value of that penny uh modifies. Now the thing that we do know about uh revenue in Athens clar county is that a lot of that revenue the sales tax front comes from outside the county. So those football game weekends, um those entertainment events downtown and and certainly the 10,000 people who live on campus who are getting everything from cell phones to laptops uh dropped on their doorsteps are generating dollars that that could flow into this community via all those activities. Um, you know, if I was to kind of play the con side of the argument, I mean, certainly there's a little more variability in sales tax, but like I described a moment ago,

you're going to have no net change in revenue because every year, if the sales tax goes up, well, your property tax is going to go down a little bit more. If the sales tax doesn't go up quite as much, your your property tax may encounter a little bit more of the overall budget, but it basically from a revenue perspective, it's net neutral from year to year. U certainly, you know, there there's the reality that sales tax is a regressive tax. Um I mean, there's no doubt about that. But I would say in aggregate, you know, you're not only helping that wealthy property owner, but you're helping that pro that property owner whose house may only be worth $140,000 uh equally. So, you're you're really helping everybody uh and and you're drawing new dollars into the community that would flowing into the community again because those folks who reside on campus and because of those tourists. Um that would require a vote by the commission in June in order to put it on the agenda. an intergovernmental agreement with Winterville and Winterville said they're favorable to this and um then there would be a vote in the summer by the board of elections to place it on the ballot in November. So uh structurally that those would be the steps.

How about the next step? Oh and Bogart as well. Thank you Jay. How about the next steps at the timeline after that? So it's say it's approved. Yep. So what would happen? you'd begin collecting that new penny in uh 2027 and then on people's next following tax bills they would see that reduction in millillage based on the first year of collection.

So practically what happens is the sales tax starts January and those dollars are placed in an account because they can't be used for any other purpose. the account grows, earns interest. From that, you then calculate what the millage reduction is that reflected in the new tax bill. And effectively, some version of that happens each year for the five years. It's a fiveyear um if approved it would be a fivey year.

That's right. Yeah. So, so the the first approval if the voters would go for this in November would be for five years and then you would get local legislation to extend it for another five from the local delegation of the general assembly. the So though if it's collected in 2027, does that not do you you can't it doesn't affect the um millage rate until the following year in 2028 when we're working on the fiscal year? We were just looking at that. It would be reflected in fiscal year 29 reflected in your fall 28 tax bills even though you hadn't collected the fall 2020 tax bills. Okay. So it's a year Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you collect a year's worth of that sales. So that wouldn't in terms of us and the millage rate reduction. We wouldn't anticipate that till the fiscal year 29 budget 28 no 28 yeah I think for the budget purposes it would show that as the millies now again it shouldn't affect the revenue side of it but in terms of you know posting what the millage rate is the mill the millage rate would actually change with the fall tax bills but as far as a budget you'd have to think about how we would account for that in the FY20 because it was it kind of a changes in the middle I guess of the fiscal here, right? Generally it lags,

right? So I mean because like next year we'll be these years keep flying by, don't they? Um you know for now you'll be doing the fiscal 28 budget, right? But we will only have collected a let's we half of a year so we won't won't have it yet. So, so I think because you've got a full year of collections in the basically December 31st, 2027, I I I think that kitty that that fund, you know, then goes to the following fiscal year's reduction. So, I guess my question on that just to clarify it when your list of questions, when would the homeowner get the reduction?

It would be with that with their fall 28 tax bill. So that's when they would realize the reduction and this is the reason it's called floating. Yeah. Because it's floating up and down and depending on the collection. It really depend. Yes. On the collection. So just one thing that may be and I talked about involved um we want to make sure we do a good job educating the public. Yep. Understand what this means and the impact. So I think be critical that we two that have a collective body and make sure that Yeah. And I think that understand and we and probably can do that during these um meetings.

In addition to the timing, I'd say the key issues that are important to communicate would be that the sales tax that is collected can only be for property tax relief. It can go and that property tax relief is directly related to the amount that you earn plus the flooding part as it goes up and down 5% 4% whatever it might be depending on those revenues. I think those are questions folks are going to want to know. Um, in terms of you can make with the sales tax, that's the only thing you can do with it. But what what I think pertinent to your question, what we'll return with is just a calendar, right?

Here's when it needs to be voted to go on the budget. Here's when the public would vote. You know, here's when the first year of collections would happen. Here's when you would see your first tax bill with the reduced mill of dra. And then here's when it would sunset and have to be renewed by yeah the local delegation of the general assembly. I'll come back to you. Go ahead. Couple of questions. Um on the economic development strategic plan, when was the last one done? There's never there's never been one. Um my next question, so we feel obligated since ARA funds have ended that we should still um do 55,000 for the school district. What does that entail?

So u we have an intergovernmental agreement with the school district and you know I'll back up you know really I'll back up a few decades. So, you know, people who were very involved in youth development in the 70s and 80s, you know, have often noted to me, listen, there was a point postification when the amount of youth services were just generally reduced in the county. Um, and they and then kind of even some newer folks who've moved to the community, you know, will look to a place like Barrow County or Walton County and say, "Look over there, the county is doing all this stuff. you know, they're running these youth programs for soccer or softball or volleyball or other things. And so this program, you know, was a really nice opportunity to say, hey, we're going to take kind of collective responsibility for all these youth needs. Um, and now, of course, we've got 1,600 kids who in most recent year were from fourth to eighth grade kind of out there, you know, getting really positive role models who were there with them on the court or the field in the art studio every day. uh were you consuming their time effectively u and really because it's this partnership model we're really spending a lot less money than either if it was a school district activity or it was a county activity

I'm going to have a question for that one be different too um I see the housing up same story with the ARVA money it just feels like relationship even though we don't have that pot of money no more that we want to that what I'm hearing.

Yeah. I mean, and really, you know, what I'll, and this is kind of was the academic in me is that what we know is that we invest in kids kind of during those critical years of their life. They're putting themselves on better paths to lifelong success. It means that those are kids who are going to have mentors who are going to help them as they get a job and get into college and get into a successful life. And of course, the housing authority kids are some of our most challenged kids. And so, not only are we giving them better lives, but we're also preventing some problems that that we know unfortunately kids who don't have good role models and good opportunities to move into, you know, have befall them. So, so I see this as both a sort of lift to our young people and prevention of bad stuff happening because I for your people be out on camp highway 78. So, did both of you um make a request or you kind of

I I I was proactive because I guess my my thought is that the money that we gave somebody those um those recreation centers have closed um just for the summer. Is it just for Yeah. Yeah. Because they're busing to the central location for the summer. Okay. It'll be open back up in the fall. Okay. Well, I'm still going to look at that one. Okay.

And my last one I have a question about is the neighborhood leaders and it's a reduction. And from what I understand, uh staff has asked all the neighborhood leaders to reapply for their positions. And uh I think they're only uh I think there's 16 now. Is that it? And there would be 10 and a supervisor. Well, I heard eight and and and maybe the 10 maybe that counts. Maybe that's and then there two are SNAP funded.

Okay. So here here's my concern. Uh there is now this is what I was told. I'm wrong. Correct me. that even though they did ask the neighborhood leaders to reapply, they're also going to be opening up reapply internally, but they're also going to be opening up for external applications. Now, I'm a, you know, I'm a fir I'm a firm believer and support the neighborhood. I can't seem to get my hand around my head around if you only have eight positions and half apply because four have quit or or are quitting. Um they're not going through that process and and and and in the past we have gotten all these great reports. Why would you open that up to new folk? and you you'd be best taught the Aaron and Terrace, but but I'll give you kind of the short version of it. Um, at least in part based on my last school district administrative job as well, which is that these are somewhat reformatted jobs. So, the job description is somewhat different. Um, each of these jobs has both a generalist and a specialist component of the job functionality. So, for example, you you you do some general things for the entire population, but then you have some specific knowledge in housing, for example. Kelly, they did that. That was their mo their their model before. You had certain people who did just housing. You had certain people who did um you don't. So that is not they may have they may write it differently, but they were doing that before.

Well, it is in fact written differently. Okay. So what my experience in in public school context before is that when you have this sort of job reformatting um you have everybody reapply um so that you're really kind of seeing the kind of full field of opportunity because ultimately you know tax dollars being spent and we want the best productivity out in the community from it. Well then we probably wasted our money then if we got if we don't think these are the best and we got to go outside and and open it up to everybody else. But I know I'm gonna do what um mayor pro Tim said. I'll get back with you. But um those you already know ahead of time what my concern. Yeah. If I can just Patrick's not finished.

Oh, that's fine. I'm sorry Patrick. That's get I get Commissioner Lake and Commissioner Right. Thank you. I have a whole bunch of questions. So um it's not bad. It's just more clarification. You weren't done. I can just tell from where that's right. Um, county manager explains. Okay. Explain the storm operation coordinator. Don't they have that already? Who is uh so I can explain. Yes, I can.

Yeah. So, in our streets and drainage division, it's funded partially with storm water and partially with general funds depending on the type of work they have. Uh, the the work of that division has grown significantly. So, if you think about 10, 20 years ago, it was a little bit of road repaving, the occasional sidewalk project. Uh, and and honestly, pipes were somewhat of an afterthought. And as we've grown in our presence, we've expanded our crews over time, and we also have taken on a much more aggressive storm water management component. So, you all are familiar with like the live stream pipe replace program. Um, this would be somebody who is a a peer. There's only one operations coordinator in streets and drainage right now. This one would allow them to manage all of the storm water crews that are f focused on those water quality and drainage issues and have the other ops coordinator available or your breadandbut public works if you will. And then one last point is um these are our frontline folks when we have storms and we get a lot of mileage out of our division administrator and our operations coordinator in those storms. But if we think about having a prolonged event having a little bit more leadership capacity allows us to have continuity of operations over three, four, five days even even into weeks. And so we feel like there's a resilience component as well.

Thank you. I'm almost done. The facility um the facility maintenance for the courthouse technician. We're going to be building a new courthouse. Will that position be needed?

Yeah, actually what we'll do is that position just well it could do two things. It could probably look at two things. It'll follow over to the new courthouse and also it would potentially be able to be a part of what would serve then renovated courthouse. Um, you know, you would hope with the new courthouse there'll be less maintenance, but there's always going to be maintenance um responsibilities associated with that. And hopefully they'd be able to bridge both of those. Plus, keep in mind, we're probably, you know, 3 to four years from occupancy of that um of that new board. So, still have that that window in there as well. And um and nothing and nobody in central services, but that's generally central services job.

It would it would still be central services. Sorry. Yeah. They' just be assigned to the courthouse. There we go. I got it. Um and Bob, can you explain the FTE county engineer is a two-year process capital?

Yeah. So, so the county engineer um one I'm kind of I have to say that I was quite surprised when I came here that we don't have a county engineer. I mean, that's just a standard position. And it goes back to something I shared with with you before, which is we just don't have very many engineers, period. um county engineer would ultimately have one primary responsibility. Initially they're going to have two. Um the one primary responsibility is to work alongside Josh who is the capital project administrator. So he think of him handling all the business side of the uh the operation and this engineer would be the one managing those project managers. That is the that is the group that ultimately will take project management from today. Jacobs. Um, again, it's going to take some time to actually kind of unwind those. Um, so that be that is going to be their primary responsibility initially. I'm going to kind of divide their interest in that to start building that capacity they just described. The other thing they'll be doing though initially is assisting myself in in completely reviewing completely our development review process with the intent of reconstructing that process. So that's everything from what planning does to what utilities does to CPW does in in terms of reviewing development standards. I would expect that's a you know 18month kind of process 18 month two years and hopefully that will um enable that person to step out of that responsibility so they can dedicate completely on the other I would also think at that time you would see that position move out of the manager's office and into the capital um department section. So because then it would be focused exclusively on that on that capital side.

That's it. May I prot? Yeah. Um Oh, the neighborhood leaders. Um have we had conversation with the school district about sharing the expense of that program?

So u family connection communities and schools one runs two parallel programs. They run the neighborhood leaders program and then they run a set of school-based positions. Neighborhood leaders are intended to be communityf facing. Of course, when they were first designed, they were designed just geographically around those elementary school feeder zones. That was really more just a function of breaking the map up in some kind of way the work than it was really being school embedded. Uh but they have some staff who are school embedded in the elementary and the middle school.

Okay. If I can also add one thing with neighborhood leaders and I should have done this with Commissioner Thornon because it's something not looking for any response to this at this point. It's just something I think as we get into further discussion of the budget is the way this is structured right now with the neighborhood leaders is this is the proposed reduction to neighborhood leaders. Meaning you would not expect me certainly to propose in the next budget year further reduction of those if that ultimately is not the direction. We'll need to know that as we go in because I'm I'm just working into the assumption that this is the the proposed reduction within this program. They will then manage the program with that number of folks aligned with what your expectations are for for that program. Ultimately, that's not the case. We'll need to know that as we start to shape the FY28. Again, not don't need any response or answer to that now. It's just something put in your mind as we go forward with it.

I mean, I'm reluctant to reduce the funding of the program. Um, I I I think it makes sense for a reorganization of it. I could see how those geographical areas were kind of inequitable. Um, but you know, I I don't want to see the capacity of that program be impacted. So, I'd be eager to hear from program how this directly affects the functioning of it. Um, I have other concerns. um the community events programming. I feel like those folks have made a solid case for significantly increased funding. And you know, I look at these accomplishments and we we cite the 336,000 guests who visited the arena um and also the um real time crime center. And you know, part of the expenses for those community events is um you know, paying our public safety to operate the real time crime center to assure those events are safe. Um and also that 360,000 people have visited the arena. I I've surmised that probably at least that many people have visited our special events. And I mean I personally know people who are you know reducing their summer travel plans because of um you know the cost of gas and inflation and you know the general economic uncertainty and and those community events provide free family entertainment. Um you know the opportunity for families to enjoy themselves and enjoy this community and for families from outside this community to come and enjoy them. Um, I mean, I have friends who travel every year to come back to Athens and spend their money here for these events. Um, and they're more and more expensive to put on. And we, you know, we're paying our officers more thankfully, you

know, rightfully so. Um, when those events happen the events that are commission then my Oh, right. So I wanted to understand back to the 12.6 million TE floss over of the last one. Are did I hear you say that you're going to use that for the operational T-spos things that we can't do on the next? No. No. So we had Okay.

So we had when I did my presentation, we had a whole list of what those could go for. So for example, it would go to more paving. would go toward more of the traffic signals. Um, so things that are already in these plots that we can apply more dollars that's going to be so so the list of what that 12.6 is going to go to I'll find in here. Yes. And I also can send it out again to you all as well. That was in the excuse me presentation that I gave um to the priorities. But yes, that's what it that's what we're doing. Now I will say you know in fairness that's our recommendation. That's not um you know fixed in stone. It has to be those projects that came out of the T-Losts. Those are the ones we're recommending that that it be

but that but that's also the T-Loss that House Bill 328 doesn't affect or it does affect that backwards.

We're still evaluating what the impact of that is. So again, it was in the last update, you know, there there was a house bill that was passed um which affect may looks like it will affect the ability of Tesla to be used for operational purposes for transit if that transit is providing free fairs. Now, we're trying to evaluate what that means and how that plays out into it. Um that would probably not affect the that list of TSWS projects. it could most definitely affect the T squass that's up for so that's part of what proval I think think Jud and his folks are working up some kind of sort of memo and some other information associated with that

and if I might add um the proposed capital offsets of 12 million and change is uh less than a little less than half of our anticipated peace floss 23 uh surplus collections. So there are still still have to be conversations after this budget uh about what to do with those collections assuming they materialize as the state indicates they will. Okay. And these will be private ready. They be ready to go if if that's the case. The thing that we do ready to be I mean we can spend the paving money about as quickly as you can.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I would and I think it's a good way to describe is we're trying to identify things that can be done quick is a good example. getting the traffic signal because those are repairs of existing traffic signals upgrading or another example sidewalks might be with it. Yeah, because those dollars are coming toward the end of the sort of the T-los world if you will and don't want to spend the next six years trying to figure out how to spend those dollars. Okay. Um I I'm good with what has come forward and the extra so now that um we know our revenue the extra the the additional revenue is the 1.6 six million you recommend these right now that's what the that's for the esim

and I and I agree with the philosophy of that going to the employees what' you say get that up to 4%

and then the rest going back to the reserves bond rating that that's I I agree with all that strategy um the what I don't agree with is the community events program increasing again because it already increased a hot. And just to be clear, the entities downtown have the option for beer festival zones, which Jam for Cam made over a million dollars on. So there if there's a beer zone activity, I'm I you know, I'm picturing that the Athens Filmfest group did not does not have that. So I can see where additional funds might need to go, but they also don't need the extra security and the cost and the camera and the police for not having that zone. So the zones are there, they cost more, but they are a revenue generating if they would get into the current mode of raising money. And so some of our longtime um events downtown, and again, these are only downtown. We have a whole community that deserves uh special events and gathering places. So I would vote if we do have this 50,000 extra that it go to the mayor's CIP for dispersements. It's hotel motel as well. Kelly, is there a anything conflicting in that? Because it's both hotel motel one's

No, it's I mean it's it's available. I mean, certainly legislatively, my understanding is that, you know, it's available for countywide expenditure. Um, you know, I said the mayor's fund hasn't been increased in 20 years.

Um, without a doubt. Um, so I'm not going to turn down any more money and I don't think any turn. But I think the ability to reach out to something newer that's starting up versus the longtime ones asking for more and more when actually we have with the festival the beer zones have created a revenue ability for them. I do have a a conflict in that. But again, this is a minuscule part of the huge budget that I think we're all mainly in agreement on. But um I also want to just uh share with people who weren't in the email that I am at a conference. So I'll miss all next week. So that's why I want y'all to know that. Okay.

I don't think Mario and then I come back. Okay. On the community events programming just to clarify when you're talking about you said the thousand you're you're like let's not include Kelly's 50,000. Oh, I'm saying put as it put it to the mayor's CIP in because that the whole county versus the community events program.

Yeah. No, I just didn't understand if you were talking about it and not putting any more um on that community events program. I would really really love it if I could see I guess it's on uh E8 in the budget like where that is because we hear this you know year after year and it's you have to have some sort of I don't magic knowledge to understand where that community tourism improvements and special events there's nothing that says it's it's it's in some of the line items so I don't know what the events Like I don't know which one it is. There was a 40,000. It's not clear on E8.

So you just wanted to expand that list so you can see what's actually Yeah. Like I mean what goes to what I mean what goes to what I mean there is an increase with the mayors between you know on tourism improvement and special activities. But that's only at 40,000 and that makes it to 385 which is 85,000 more than the 300,000 that's now going to community events. So, what's the other 85 going to? And where's the other 10 10,000 that Kelly said he added in there? Like, I can't find that stuff. You look on page C86. That's the section on has general administration. There it is. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, slow down a little bit. Let me get there.

It may have broken down enough for you. If not, A and just so that you've got this um forward to everybody the coming for the downtown development authority that has a recommended line item budget for each of those individual events.

Yeah, it it would be helpful actually if this is you know the community events program was split out because obviously it's not all the special events because you just said that was at 300,000. Um, and then the other thing is that if this is coming from the hotel mo motel and then that's over I can look over here. I kind of like them to match so that I could see this stuff in both places that it matches up. So that's that's one thing and along with that and this you may be able to pull it up from another year Sarah the answer to this. I once again need the answer to the question. How much money do we are we obligated from the hotel motel to the arena to the visitors center and and also bond obligation that we've had. So just so I can clearly respond to that question when people ask me that um that I should know that. And speaking of of this book, um actually I'd like to know if anyone else like y'all can like highlight some of the differences between our previous year's budget book and this year's, but I'm especially I'm looking at the splast balances at the back. Um, and I think it would be these numbers don't match up with what's on the monthly the expenditure summary from 42026. I believe that might be because the project balance here adds in the designated encumbered, but I don't know. I'm just making that up. And I think that needs to there needs to be a little asterisk there explaining the difference because otherwise you're looking at these numbers, you're looking at these numbers and you're like they don't match like and they're coming out from the same place.

Yeah. And hopefully we will. So we actually just met on this yesterday. So my my goal is and and it's partly accomplished in this book and I we're hoping we can get it accomplished in the final version of this because you know my my goal is to make sure that someone in our community can pick up the budget and know what it is that we're anticipating spending on capital in FY27 is this example regardless of what the source of revenue is. So that would include

airport utilities but also SWAT and TWA. So the number that the mayor read for example said we're going to spend $67 million by 27 in capital even that's not a full accounting of what we're going to spend at capital because we got TLOS and SLOs dollar spend also. So I think it'll take us a couple of budget cycles to get that exactly where we want but I think that is the starting place. The starting place is to take that list you're looking at saying, can we get a an accurate number of what we expect to spend in 27 on TLOS and SPLAST um projects?

Well, I I might suggest I know this is another column, but if I were a community member picking this up now and I'd look at that T+ 2018 project balances and I'd go, whoa, this is crazy. we're doing 2026 and there must be there's like millions and millions of dollars from 2018 here. Um, and it doesn't, you know, I would I might add another line after this or somewhere that says, you know, encumbered and designated because I know some of these aren't even accurate because if I go to the 2011, there's a couple of million dollars here and there's a couple of things that aren't like it doesn't match up. Um, so like I was looking at this and going, "Whoa." Or like if you if you look at the uh classic there's bunch of things in here. Anyway, I'm just saying that that that's me as an issue with the way this is laid up right laid out right now. Um, let me see what else I have here. Special events. I asked you about that. That Oh, and I am I am totally I would love it if we have one. I mean, you're talking about the mayor prom saying, you know, multiple cos, but really we've ended up having two and there's been surprises at the end that have changed this. Hopefully, you know, under encouragement from all of us together, we could get this and compromise with one. It'd be great to have that as a

That is my That's my goal. That's your goal. So, um, but that means that we all need to be aware of the that's going on. Yes. That's why it's so difficult and I want to do this more in public. Yeah. In the public and have it here and so have to compromise about things, you know, compromise is part of it, right? Um but I'd love it to all be out in the public. Well, I agree. Can we not do any emails in Texas about stuff we want? Let's all make sure we're fine. Thank you for that. We already got some. So, yeah, let's talk or we discuss in public, right? Let me get Commissioner Thor link and then um that report and then we're going to close this out.

Um well, I'm I'll say it out public. If we're going to bring be bringing in neighborhood leaders from the outside, that would not be important. Um, the whole idea from the beginning was to for the neighborhood leaders to gain skills while they're helping somebody else to gain the skills that would promote them. That was expressed more than one time. So, and we have seen neighborhood leaders move on in advance. I never thought neighborhood leaders, the same one should be always there forever collecting retirement. So, um if they have not been good enough or have not developed those specialist skills, um I will not be supporting our uh neighborhood leaders. So,

let me make one suggestion. I think the mayor mentioned reach out to uh why wouldn't you? They they better watch it on TV. I don't know. Okay. Um and No, no, no. I think it's important though that they hear that though. Yeah. Yeah. I don't mean on TV. I may need to hear it from us. Okay. Well, I can do that. I can go. I'm not being difficult. Commission,

my other thought is I do not we're we're supposed to be moving forward on the housing trust fund um with a coordinator or director. Um so I assume since it's not in this recommended budget, but 27 that position is going to be later. It it would would be so the the housing fund pro it's a good question. I mean it's going to ultimately be once you all decide how it's going to be managed and administered you know it will be a budget that you'll have to establish associated with kind of the contractual relationship with whomever it might be. So there is a scenario where I think you're you're simply entering into an agreement that says we're pushing these dollars over for this purpose because the employee will not be an ACC gov employee. The employee will be whomever you contract with in it. So so no I do not think the expectation is that that's a next year thing next fiscal year. I think it's in this calendar year that we're working through once you all decide who it is that we're going to actually partner with

with that fund, not general fund dollars. Right. And they won't be our employee. Okay. Doing that. So, yes. Yes. All right. And so, the next thing um is our budget goes into effect in July, right? Where are we with the ARPA dollars that we have given people um the um you know, we didn't call back. Yes. The next quarter is July, right? Because ends in July, August, September agenda reports.

Yeah. So there'll be one effectively one more time that we would come back and say here's where we think performance is kind of the last opportunity is sort of claw back and reassign if you will because anything after that as we get close to December is going to have to you know move into an account that's already open and we can purchase. So that's kind of the time frame associated with that.

And and so one of the things that I was asking u early on while these dollars are still wherever they are uh where are is there a line item or um somewhere we can know what the interest is um as far because the interest is does not have to go back or be clawed back. So is the interest somewhere? Yeah. And we can break it out further. The interest is accounted for in the interest earned part of the budget and is already allocated into the general fund budget. But yes, we can take that interest earned line, if you will, that's in the budget and create the subcategories below it because there's other things that we earn interest on also that we

Yeah. Oh, I got Mr. L. I got damn boy. Yeah, we got very short. I forgot. I forgot. Yeah. I just want to clarify when it comes to my concern about the C. I'm concerned about those familyfriendly programs that don't have don't don't serve alcohol. They're not focused on the alcohol consumption. You know, we've got the Hot Corner, Pridefest, Latin X, Junth. Um, you know, I I want to see us have more more events that attract families. Um, because the families are the ones that are really cutting back on their expenses and not taking vacations, can't afford the Six Flags tickets. Yeah. or even go there.

Yeah. So, just please stop don't highlight the difference from math 26 and FYI. Say what now? Please don't highlight the difference. One of my commissioners I think that's what she said was highlight the difference between FY26 and FY27 changes. If I misinterpret that, I apologize. They're on every time. But anyway, um I was like for $90,000 to destinate. That's all. He's got his allart menu.

Yeah. And and I I just want to on that the the extra money, you know, with the I just want to reiterate out loud the money to up the the to the 4% raise, the 250 for the police uh pension

pension. Um and I also, you know, we had the fund balance, but I also want to put in the pitch and the reminder for that next year we're going to need some stuff for the East Side Library. And I was actually wondering if we could find out now if there's an anticipated number for my questions and answers of employees that would be needed na next year and what percentage are paid by state funds versus local funds do they anticipate so that we can at least have a little you know that's going to have to be incorporated to the general budget but we're going to need that little extra next year.

And I just want to thank y'all. I want to close out and again I we need to highlight I do want to um you may be and I met talk about the enterprise fund. I think we really need to um let the community know how those funds work. So we need to at least have one time talk about enterprise fund how we use those dollars to do some of the thing that we do and how those departments are not funded by general fund. at the mall for that conversation. This is budget. Right. Everybody good? Yes. All right. We will be here Thursday and talk about the judicial facility and then

we're budgeting. It's going to be long. Is that why you're letting us out early to see