Commission - Regular Meeting

go ahead and get started it's good to have everybody here tonight this is uh this is a bonus meeting for us uh most often we approve the annual fiscal year budget the first tuesday of june but given that the state had some moving pieces we pushed this back to tonight so here we are it is monday june 9th, 2026. And I'm going to go ahead and ask Clerk Spratt, or excuse me, Clerk Howard, thank you, to call roll for us.

Davenport.

Here.

Link. Here. Taylor. Here. Wright. Present. Fisher. Here. Johnson. Here. Culpepper. Myers. Here. Thornton. All right.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right. Our civility pledge is in front of me, as provided by the Georgia Municipal Association. It indicates that we govern ourselves well when our collective decisions have allowed differing views to have the opportunity to be fully vetted and considered, when all people have the right to be treated with respect, courtesy, and openness. We also value all input and commit to conduct ourselves at all times with civility and courtesy to each other. So, we have three items of business tonight, two items of old business, one item of new business, and now is the time of the evening when we provide public input. In terms of public input, our single three-minute opportunity. There's a light in front of Clerk Howard that will turn green when you provide your name and place of residence. It will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds remaining and red when your three minutes has concluded. And I'll thank you for your time with us. So is, in fact, any member of the public here tonight who would like to speak to us? Good evening. Again, just provide your name and place of residence.

Hello, my name is Tuesday Demeter. I live in Athens-Clarke County's second district, and I have concerns over the implications of flocks coming on the budget listed on page 134C97. According to MITRE, who work to manage and assess cybersecurity threats, these cameras are not only unsafe, They play an active role in the criminality that they claim to deter. In Dunwoody, Georgia, in September of 2025, disclosed via open records requests, Flock Vice President of Business Development Bob Carter accessed these cameras in the gymnastics room of Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. Randy Gluck, another flock safety employee in business development accessed the same room alongside preschool, daycare, center areas and fitness gyms. This isolated incident is unrelated to the spending of the license plate readers in downtown areas but represents to me and hopefully this body that access to these cameras through external means is possible and is not conducive to reduced crime in our community. Returning to minor and common vulnerabilities and exposures, nonprofits who release publicly available information on this security risks. There are about 28 cybersecurity vulnerabilities within both license plate readers and Android apps for accessing the camera's footage, and more whose vulnerabilities range from quick and easy access to this footage from an external attacker, to personalized information being presented in clear text or insecure data being readily accessible and available to read by anyone in the county with access to these cameras. MITRE and CVE also cite vulnerabilities in accessibility, meaning that any layperson in the county can readily access these cameras and get instant access to personal lives of people living here. I hope that this body will discuss this as a breach of security to our neighborhoods and not as a means to reduce crime in Athens-Clarke County.

Thank you, Tuesday. Is there anyone else here to speak to us this evening? All right. Seeing none, we'll come for a discussion of old business. I know, Manager Cowell, there was interest in a brief presentation around some of the contours of our enterprise fund budgets. And so given our interest in that, I'm going to go ahead and relocate temporarily.

Thank you. And I'll be very brief about this. A couple of you had requested, and I think everyone concurred, that you would benefit from a little bit more information about how the budget presents enterprise funds and what goes into those enterprise funds. I would say that it's best also to view this as maybe a precursor to an upcoming work session item because I think that everyone will benefit from digging deeper into these as well. i'll start by first making certain that everyone who's viewing and in the room and otherwise kind of understands the significance of enterprise funds and what they are and how they differ so the easiest way to explain it is when you and i get our tax bill and we pay our taxes those taxes come to you all and you decide where and how to spend those i mean it can be spent near where we live or have a business or it can be spent elsewhere Enterprises are conducted as businesses, so they're business-like operations, which means that the people who use those services pay for those services and the dollars collected for those services are used for those. They're actually very targeted. They're not available to use for other purposes generally in those cases. um so that that's one of the significant differences and that differs a little bit from special revenue funds so in our budget we have general fund which is basically that the tax dollars that come in special revenue funds which are collected for a specific purpose and can go to that specific purpose only and then of course enterprises which again are business-like operations we have several of those in our budget these will many of these are followed by a lot of other communities and then other communities will have other enterprises as well so the ones that we use are airport landfill water and sewer solid waste and storm water those are the enterprise funds that we have community i worked at previously parking was an enterprise fund our parking is not an enterprise fund that there are dollars that commingle, if you will, that come in from tax dollars that go toward it and other purposes associated with it. There are communities that run their own electric company. That would be another type of enterprise fund. But those are the ones that we have, the airport, landfill, water, sewer, solid waste, and stormwater. So how do we collect? charges for these. That is predominantly done through service charges, fees, rates, et cetera. So let me give you a few examples for each of those enterprises. So for airport, there are things like ramp fees, fuel charges, bag handling charges, and so on. That means that anybody that uses the airport pays to use the airport. The rest of the taxpayers don't pay for the operations, the local operations at the airport. We all pay through federal funds, but for the local operations, it's paid for by the people actually using it. On water and sewer, you can think of rates that we all pay if we're customers, connection fees, septic disposal fees, and so on. That's how they generate their revenue. On solid waste and landfill, that comes through refuse service rates. Again, if we're customers, we pay for those rates. Dumpster charges, disposal charges, which are tipping fees and so on. And then in stormwater, that's the stormwater collection disposal fee and inspection fees. Note, in none of those do you see taxes because, again, the taxes collected through your property tax don't go toward those efforts because they're operated as enterprises. The users of them pay for those. The objective of all enterprises is that they collect enough money to pay all of their costs, again, rather than the taxpayer. And then, in many instances, actually generate revenue that is put into savings so that those dollars can then be applied to future uses associated with those. so um how are these funds spent and that's kind of what we're what we're showing on the screen i want to just i'm extracting kind of one enterprise and that's the water and sewer to use as an example rather than going through all of them but in this in this instance if you look based off of those charges for services that i gave as example and other revenues so when we all pay our water bill we all pay for our sewer if we're sewer customers we have those other things like disposal fees and so on those generate are projected to generate about $82.5 million in FY27. So in the current budget, about $82.5 million being generated. If you drop down to the bottom and you were to add up the expenses, so the $41 million for things like personnel operating and so on, and then the capital expenditures, the spend side of it is actually $95.5 million. $13 million more is being spent than is being taken in in the projected year for revenue. And that's because, as I mentioned prior, there is funding left over from the previous year on purpose that's banked up that actually is being used to fund capital projects. So we're able to actually carry a balance forward from year to year. We report that as the unrestricted net position. Other places will refer to that as retained earnings. If we were in the private sector, that would be profit. So basically, the difference is we keep those dollars to apply to projects, whereas in the private sector, that profit that would be generated is paid out to the shareholders. We don't do that. We actually reinvest into the infrastructure that's there. So when you come out all of that at the end, we start it with $96 million in kind of our fund balance, if you will, and we anticipate ending with $73 million. Those are dedicated to those future capital projects and also to having operating revenue should there be something catastrophic that we'd have to carry for three months' worth of expenditures. So that's in this page. exists in the budget for every one of the enterprises. So you'd be able to go to any enterprise, be able to look and see how this is done for airports, the money they're collecting, how they're spending those dollars, and what, if anything, they're carrying over from year to year. Same would be true with stormwater and so on. That's the operating side of it. I mentioned a little bit on the capital piece of it. So also inside the budget for the capital section. So we have a whole section of the budget, as you all know, about all of our capital investments. And those are similarly divided up by those activities. So if you go to the public utilities section of capital projects, there's 10 or 15 pages of different capital. The one that I've pulled up is the rehabilitate and replace sewers. So when I mentioned those, if you go back to that slide we had, there was like 40-something million dollars being invested in capital. In this case, we're projecting 20 million of that to go to this particular kind of capital project. So this is the investment that is expected to be made in each of the upcoming years to replace existing sewer lines and rehabilitate them. And that's where we're getting rid of things like infiltration of stormwater into the sewer lines and so on. And that's projected to, again, be $20 million in the given year. Similar to the operating side, if you go into the budget, every one of the enterprises that have capital expenditures will have pages like this. So that's kind of my quick overview of sort of how the enterprises are presented within the budget and why they differ from the other part of the budget and how they're kind of separate. from those. It's my hope that in probably early fall, we'll add a work session. We'll come to you, and it's probably going to be over a couple of work sessions. I'd like to take public utilities and do it independent of the other enterprises because it's so large, and we'll dig into this much deeper. We'll talk about how those rates feed into the revenues. We'll talk about what is actually in the capital program over the course of the years. We talk about dollars that are saved or identified for future capital projects. We'll talk about what those are so that you have a much, much better understanding and a deeper understanding of those enterprises. And again, we'll do that in the fall and kind of pick those up. And the utility folks and the other enterprises will be present to answer those questions as well. But I think the key piece is they're operated like businesses. The money they collect pays for what it is that they do. General tax dollars do not pay for these activities. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

You mentioned the airport enterprise fund. We recently purchased a $1.5 million piece of fire equipment. Was that out of the enterprise fund or was it supplied?

It was. The other advantage of the enterprise fund, and this is true also with storm water and with sewer and and water and to some degree landfill and in all of their cases much less so than they used to be in the past is we can use the funds that we're collecting through rate charges to actually leverage grants from the state and federal government so in the case of the fire truck Pretty close to 90% of the cost of that truck is actually being provided by the state and federal government. The 10% is what's getting collected locally through the airport. Again, we'll do the same thing with water and wastewater projects. There's just not very many federal funds any longer for those. More often, you may tap into a low-interest loan program through the state. But yes, that's how we would leverage those dollars so that even though we're not using tax dollars in those cases local tax dollars and we're collecting those fee charges it lets us use those fee charges to actually access federal and state dollars that would otherwise go to another community and so we're able to grab those thank you Special revenue, general fund, and enterprise. So special revenue, really good example is Hotel Motel. So those are dollars that are, in that case, both statutorily and local ordinance driven of what you can do with those. So we account for those separately in the budget. So you'll see, just like enterprise, you'll see a separate section in there for each of those special revenue funds. They're just not necessarily business operations like the enterprises are.

The TAD dollars are.

Yeah, TAD dollars are, yeah. And the special revenue, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you all, and I look forward to talking more in the fall on that stuff.

And again, thank you, Bob, for doing that again. I think one of the things we just really wanted to... the community know and our residents know about we do have these enterprise funds and what they're used for and I'm looking forward to when in the fall we get a little bit deeper into and the residents understand how we use those dollars and that you know these things are available to help as we move forward and look into how we do those type of things in the future especially when it comes to water and our sewer replacing stuff and I hope we would you know because we don't know but I'm hoping to your point you mentioned it If we don't do loans, there'll be some grants on the federal or state level we use to help subsidize some of that too.

Yeah, that's the best use of those dollars is to leverage those for other dollars. It's also really important for folks to understand that if you're only a water customer, so you're on a septic system, you're paying a water bill and the money that you're using for that water bill goes to water improvements. You're not paying for sewer line extensions if you're not a sewer customer. We don't have very many folks that are sewer customers and not water customers, but if you're a customer for both of those, you're helping contribute to both of those. But we get asked that question quite a bit for folks that aren't on sewer. Thank you. Do you need a follow-up?

No, I think I'm okay.

Okay. All right. Everybody ready to move on? All right. So as everybody knows, the kind of most significant action most local governments take every year is adoption of their fiscal year budget. And so at this point, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the FY27 budget as presented.

Do we have public input?

We already did that. All right. I've got a motion from Commissioner Thornton, and I've got a second from Commissioner Myers. Commissioner Thornton, any remarks?

No, this is probably no offense.

You say best budget ever.

Never. Never. I have no comment.

Commissioner Myers let's go with it I think for those people who are listening or want to know there's an amendment to the to the to the mayor's budget and that's included in the agenda item And what's really good is that we had a lot of consensus on this as a group and we are moving through in a conflict-free, calm, responsible way.

Commissioner Lay?

yeah I know we had quite a bit of public input on the special events issue and I just asked the mayor to consider appointing some kind of task force so we can kind of reevaluate how we approach that and where funds come from and how they're distributed for next year so we can write the ship a little bit and maybe open up opportunities for other organizations and other locations to access local funds to put on special events.

Thanks, Commissioner. And just a couple of brief notes about that since it has come up in conversation. You know, one of the components is just, you know, what's the absolute limit of funds that any one event can receive, as I think accurately noted by a lot of event promoters, costs of everything are going up. Costs of security are going up, materials are going up, renting lighting is going up, talent, all those sorts of things. And of course, we've moved from a situation in FY19 where we had about $90,000 to this year where we'll have $300,000. And so one of the things we may want to consider is, well, rather than just adding a multitude of events to sort of have stable of events relative to the total amount. Another thing I've shared with a lot of folks who've queried us about this is that an opportunity we'll have in the coming General Assembly session is to see if the General Assembly will put us on a level playing field with places like Gainesville and Macon and have an eight penny hotel motel tax which would produce ballpark an additional million dollars a year in in revenue that would kind of allow for some expansion the membership of the general assembly's delegation has changed so maybe there's some opportunity there and then the last thing i'll note is that i think it's reasonable to say hey you know do we want to go ahead and allocate some amount of funds for downtown and some amount of funds for the community outside downtown so

I have one more comment regarding the flock cameras. I'm wondering if the manager's office could offer us some kind of memo or something letting us know the terms of our contract. And what kind of assurances there are that any information that's taken in from those cameras is only accessible to our local law enforcement officer, except maybe in special cases of a warrant, a particular warrant from an outside agency?

Yeah, I think I can provide a response from the Chief. He's kind of verbally conveyed some of those and can do that as well.

I mean, my concern is, you know, that accessing information that is intended for use by our own local law enforcement being made available to other agencies for purposes beyond local law enforcement.

Yeah, and they have some fairly stringent local, we do, local standards relative to that. So yes, absolutely.

And let me address that.

I've got Commissioner Wright. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump. We'll move on to you. My bad. Commissioner Wright.

Y'all just made me forget what I was going to make. I started off just piggybacking on what Obita had said, and I do appreciate it. the fresh way that we have been. And I really believe that we've been learning together, possibly just the same way the county manager is learning from being here and assessing things and staff supporting that and teaching us things and us learning what's going on and it being methodically You started really early, the Mayor Pro Tem did, in asking us what we're thinking and to speak, and he circled around several times to make sure comments were coming forward, making everybody comfortable. I think there were some times when we talked about different things, but like Commissioner Myers has also said, it's all come together. really well and I hope that we continue that strategy in the future and I think learning more about the enterprise funds together also will be good. And then if we can also, when we're looking at the community event program, I think that it would also be a good time to look at how other communities are running those through the CVB and if our CVB was not underneath the classic center authority that would allow our whole community to get the benefits of the cbb as well because the different people have come forward with different stats on how much money a different community have in that area, but I don't know that they have the same structure as we do. So we could also be learning about some changes in structure and some improvements that would give us the whole community involvement for the CDB. Thanks, Commissioner.

Commissioner Fischer. Yeah, thank you. And I apologize, Commissioner Rice. That's okay. So just a little bit of a comment on the flock cameras. And I've been constantly talking with the chief about our flock cameras. First, I think the public needs to know we only have 300 cameras that we have with the government. The rest of the 1,800 or so cameras are tied to either businesses, homes, or other neighborhoods. A community needs to know that. Secondly, we scrub, according to the chief, every 30 days, we're scrubbing stuff that's coming off that we have videotaped and things like that. Our chief, they do a deep dive on the information that we get, make sure that the flock cameras are not being misused by our local law enforcement, and of course, as anything, any system could get hacked, but I'm proud of the fact that what our local law enforcement are doing when it comes to those fog cameras, I've said it too many times, and I get it with what happened in other communities, but I always worry about what happened in Athens. And we need to really be mindful of what we do in this particular community. I'm proud that the chief, you know, they scrub every 30 days. They're taking that information off the system and possibly off the cloud. And I'm not an IT guy. But at least we're trying to make sure that other agencies are not trying to get our information. But even the company that we're dealing with, again, I don't know all that. the interactions of that, but I gotta trust our local law enforcement to make sure that we're doing right for the benefit of our community. First of all, the privacy of our community, but second, make sure we continue to make sure our community is safe. Because when I hear a parent, when I find a three-year-old, was killed, and if those cameras would have not been there, and you talked with that mother and found that those people got peeped off the street, that means a lot. Especially when you talk about a black and brown community, things happen a lot in our community. Those folks want to feel safe also. And again, and the cameras is not the do-all. They still got to do the work. But it's just a tool. And I think people need to really realize that moving forward with that. So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Hamby?

Sure.

I was just going to make a little joke here. So y'all don't get too comfortable with Bob's way of doing things. I've been down, but I'm not out. So I'll be back to true form next budget season. Thank you.

I do think that I was you know I was downtown with at this neighborhood health centers and

for a gay pride day downtown, and it was really a good day. And I don't think, I think a lot of these groups, they bring in not just entertainment, amusement, fun day, but revenue also. And I do, after we just talked about the different enterprises, maybe, manager you can think about how can we do a downtown or entertainment type either enterprise or special revenue ahead of time um i don't want us to cut back i think like i said and i'll be downtown this weekend with hot corner so if we know that these events are important to the community. We should not wait till budget season for folks to make their case of how much they do. I think we as a commission should be more proactive. And Kelly, you won't be here, but by next year, and Mike, hopefully you'll be okay. We need to start planning, be more proactive if these groups are doing, not if they are doing great work for us.

a to-do list, how can we proactively... Yeah, and I think it actually works well with some of the conversations that you all have already mentioned today, whether it's pursuit of looking at an expansion of the hotel-motel tax, whether it's the relationship between the CVB and the Classic Center. I think all of those come together. Even the way in which the DDA is funded and operates and stuff is a piece of that also. So I think there's several pieces with that.

And this has nothing to do with anything we're talking about, but I'm going to say it because it's a revenue opportunity. Why are we allowing Pilgrim's Pride poultry to park all over that place, which is our property, for free? That's a revenue opportunity. So, just putting it out there.

Commissioner Myers.

Yeah, I just want to kind of return the discussion, at least in my head, to what this budget is really doing and the responsibility that we're, sort of following through on on our commitment to the mission of Athens-Clarke County and to our employees because really the majority of the biggest probably funding is going to our staff and we are with the the amendment from the commissioners able to raise the market rate increase to 4% for our unified plan employees and the public safety plan has 3% plus they have all these bumps built in and then increased slightly our you know the initial the target pay for the new employees as well so that we can keep pulling people in and And I was also looking at the agenda report and seeing how we're taking some of the spossed money revenue and putting it towards really important capital projects and ongoing maintenance. So I know we're talking a lot about special events and such, but the vast majority of the budget that we're passing is going to do the work of the county and to keep it running smoothly and efficiently for all of us and for our residents so i kind of just want to bring it back to that before we go on and have a vote

All right, I believe we have an ordinance associated with this.

Yes, sir, we have a budget ordinance and also the ordinance that reorganizes the people and belonging department, Mr. Mayor. The budget ordinance, an ordinance to provide for the raising of revenues and the appropriation of funds for the Unified Governor of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia for the fiscal year 2027 beginning July 1st, 2026, ending June 30th, 2027. to provide for the operations of government departments, board agencies, elected officers and other governmental activities, to provide for the level of personnel authorized for the various departments and agencies, to provide for capital budgets, to establish 2026 property tax rates, to establish compensation for the charter officers, to establish rates and structure of fiscal year 2027 health insurance programs, to establish fees and charges, to repeal conflicting ordinances, to provide effective dates and for other lawful purposes. The second ordinance, an ordinance to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia with respect to renaming and reorganizing certain government offices and departments for other lawful purpose and for other lawful purposes.

All right. Thank you, Attorney Drake. All right. We have a motion from Commissioner Thornton and a second from Commissioner Myers. All in favor, please say aye.

aye music to my ears friends thank you very much yeah and if i can just say thank you to a few folks so please appreciate certainly want to thank the the budget team and the finance team for the work that they've done obviously they do they do the real work which we just get to meet and talk about the work that they're actually doing so certainly appreciate that in hr also he's always working kind of behind the scenes alongside us with it as well and sarah for keeping track of all of the comments and making sure that you all get those in a timely fashion the rest of the manager's office, and the directors, who actually are the ones that kind of put forth the needs that are present in the community. And then, of course, most importantly, you all. Thank you for being kind to me on my first budget, and I don't expect quite the same treatment the second time, but I appreciate it. I know next year's budget, you know, we've already kind of previewed it. I mean, there's going to be some very difficult decisions as we move forward, good decisions because we're bringing more things online. But it won't be probably quite as smooth, but I really appreciate the work that you all did in getting us to this point. So thank you.

Thanks to you, Bob. We really appreciate it. All right. Item two is a resolution calling for a referendum for imposition of the floating local options sales tax. We've engaged positively with the City of Winterville and the Town of Bogart. So I'd entertain a motion from the body. So moved.

Second.

All right. I have a motion from Commissioner Davenport. I have a second from Commissioner Wright. Commissioner Davenport, any remarks?

Yep. This is a people decision, so we'll be voting in November.

I look forward to our rollout of communicating this. It is complicated, but it makes sense, and I think it's a good fit for our community, but again, it'll be for the voters in our community to decide, but I hope that we can educate them between now and then.

I agree. Communication will be key. Commissioner Fischer.

Yeah, and that's sort of my point, too, Mayor. If I can be so bold, and I do this respectfully, I really wish before, if we got some time, I really wish we could really just do a little bit of a work session on this and really start that conversation about the flaws and what it means and what it's going to impact on. It is, you know, and again, I say that I was genocided last week. It is a regressive tax, and I think we need to figure out what the impact is going to be, not on our community, but the people we're trying to help, you know, on homeowners, how much money we're trying to raise. Again, if I can be so bold as to say before we vote on this, I guess sort of motion to do one work session. I know it may be a special call. My colleagues may not want to come back. So let's do a work session before we vote on this. So maybe just have some community input. I don't know whether or not the community has really been communicate with what we're trying to do. And you're right, the people are gonna make decisions, and I get that in November, but I think we really need to do some education starting now instead of later, because sometimes we get so caught up in everything else that we may forget, and then it'd be too late. I don't want us to wait until October, and then we're trying to rush and do education to our community. Our life will start sooner than later, unless you all can convince me that we'll start working on this later after our break that I may be okay with. And I'm still on the fence, but I just think this is a big step for us.

A couple points, Commissioner. One is that given our ballot construction timeline in engagement with the Board of Elections, we need to act before the commission hiatus that we're about to go on. However, I think your kind of larger point is key, which is that we need to be able to really understand ourselves and communicate to the public, here is what the set of trade-offs are, here is what the typical take would be of folks from outside the community, and of course we've talked about students living on campus similarly, contributing new dollars to the community, and I anticipate that we could quantify that in a way that would be helpful for everybody at our August work session.

Yeah, and I think you can also have an opportunity to delve deeper if you want also at the retreat in September as well. So I think there's a couple of initial steps before we get really into the communication part of it. Commissioner Thornton?

I have prepared to vote no, but I will be abstaining. I do think that just with some past things that we voted on I just do not know where it lands that I'm pretty sure this thing is going to pass without my vote so therefore I do think that having some type of education, training as soon as possible is necessary, but I will be abstaining because this is too complicated for me. This is a bit more than I want to take on as a teacher.

Thank you, Commissioner.

We'll make sure we do a roll call vote so that you can abstain. Commissioner Davenport? Okay, y'all can sign up to my newsletter and my gym newsletter. I detail what a FLOS is, how it's a voter. Went out to more than 1,000 of District 1 residents. But if y'all want to educate the public, I will send it to you so I can. But yeah, FLOS is just... You know, we're doing it this early because we need to make sure to get on the ballot by November. But it's completely residential, the resident's decision. If the residents feel that, hey, we don't want to do this, they can make that decision in November. So this body doesn't do anything other than, hey, we would like to do a floss. But for just educational purposes, ACCG has done a really good job with 581, explaining floss. And maybe Christine can send that back out. You said that this was before. But yeah, I would just recommend just, I know Dr. Myers maybe have put it in our newsletter. I know Commissioner Wright did it in hers.

I think I've got Commissioner Myers and Commissioner Culpepper.

Yeah, I'm going to be voting against this. I've thought a lot about it. I know it provides property tax relief, and we're getting revenue from outsiders. But I cannot get beyond the fact that it's a regressive tax, that 60% of the people in Athens are renters, that the people who don't vote are the ones who are going to be most impacted by this. So if we pass it and gets on the ballot, I can't see any way even with education, that it's not going to pass because of voter turnout and who turns out to vote. So I just have to do that. So I will be voting against it.

Commissioner Culpepper.

Yeah, I just want to make sure everybody listening understands we're not voting for this. We're voting to let it be on the ballot for the our constituents to make the decision. So, you know, I think that's why I'm going to vote yes for because I want them to be able to make the decision and it's our responsibility to make sure we give them the right information.

Commissioner Johnson.

Yes, I would like to also comment that I'm not planning to vote for this for several reasons. The first one is when you first introduced it to us at the retreat in Gainesville, there were no questions. You did a great presentation. No commissioners asked questions. I don't recall any conversation about it since. And I get town halls. I get newsletters. But let's ruminate here over how close the T-splice almost did not pass. We are losing confidence. It's more than we have between now and November to educate folks. This is a transparency issue. This is a communication issue, at the very least. It's communication. You were interested in it so much so that you introduced it to us. There were no questions. But since then, we could have been communicating with the public all this time. Now we're in June. And so I do not want to put it in the hands of voters and just expect them to vote because they understand. I do agree with my colleague that individuals might vote yes because it's on the referendum. But if they don't have any information, there's a 50% chance that they'll just vote for it because it sounds good. I would rather us do these type of big decisions in the right order. The communication, you didn't get feedback from us, but start the communication process early on. That would have been an indicator to me if I didn't receive any feedback from colleagues that maybe I need to get more information out there. I feel the same way about getting more information out to my constituents. I've heard from several constituents who all said vote no. for various reasons. My primary reason is we've had time to communicate and educate. We've not taken the opportunity to do that with our constituents. And so that's why I'll be voting no.

Thank you, Commissioner. All right. I've got a motion from Commissioner Davenport, second from Commissioner Wright. We'll go ahead and do a roll call.

Davenport. Yes. Link. Yes. Taylor. Yes. Wright. Yes. Fisher.

No.

Johnson.

No.

Culpepper.

Yes.

Myers. No. Thornton.

Might as well be a no. It was going to be a deception. No.

Yes. Hamby.

Yes.

Six yes, four no.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Thanks, everyone. All right. We've got one item of new business to consider under suspension of rules, so I just need a motion for suspension of rules. So moved. All right. Motion from Commissioner Davenport. Second. All right. Second from Commissioner Fischer. All right. This item is a resolution to ask the Planning Commission to amend Title IX around inclusionary zoning and commercial district regulations. Commissioner Hamby. I had a good idea at our last meeting, which was to put this in front of the full body. And so I appreciate Attorney Drake, your office, putting a resolution together. This stems from our experience in our inclusionary zoning code, which we've recognized can be a great source of revenue for our housing fund, which we've had, of course, a lot of discussion about. And so this really begins a process of creating more revenue for that housing fund. And then also comes from some reflection based on a lot of our large scale downtown projects, our arena district project, our north downtown project, and then our forthcoming judicial facility so that we would be able to effectively move residential density around within downtown as I mentioned. I explained to Manager Cowell, you might think of this moving of residential density as maintaining the same total potential density within the downtown district, but almost like those balloon animals that you sometimes see at the county fair. You're just moving the air from one place in the balloon to another place in the balloon. So again, this would be deliberated on by our planning commission and then would return to this body for future deliberations. So entertain a motion to move the body. So moved. Second. All right, I've got a motion from Commissioner Hamby, second from Commissioner Myers. Do we have a motion?

That was the suspended rules.

Yeah, it was the suspended rules. I did that too. Commissioner Hamby, any remarks? No, sir. Commissioner Myers?

No, I look forward to seeing what comes back to us. These are some significant changes, and I look forward to learning more after I see what they come up with.

Any others? Commissioner? Taylor. Taylor. I almost said Tyler. I don't know. Tippy Canoe.

You know, we don't have to get into it after words, but okay. No, no, honestly. I... I appreciate us going this route to have the planning department look into it prior to us. I'm going to keep my eye on it because I get this pit in my stomach that with all of the new development and all of the things that we're proposing, the high rises, you know, the balloons that's popping out of the sky, I'm weary because I still think about how it's going to impact the people who are already in place. And I don't want to, you know, always be a Debbie Downer, but I also live in the reality that development has side effects. And a lot of times, it's the most vulnerable who are pushed aside and displaced by the new shiny thing. I do look forward to see what the planning department is bringing back, but I do want it to be on the record that I am very afraid of what could come and what this body could potentially vote on that will change Athens in the next 10 to 15 years that we didn't even take into account. And so this caused me pause, and I want it to be on the record. Yeah, I don't too much care for it. Commissioner Link.

Yeah, I mean, I have a little bit of consternation about the commercial downtown height regulation going above 10 stories. I feel like... developers are don't take advantage enough of our inclusionary zoning downtown because they can already get away with you know so much density within that 10-story limit so I hope that the Planning Commission will kind of do the math on that and and I mean I'm open to seeing flexibility and some of these and density regulations when it comes to funds coming into our affordable housing fund or affordable units being included in projects. But I don't want to open the door just for more market rate and luxury high rise unless we're getting a real good payoff when it comes to our affordable housing.

Now this one I will be abstaining on. This won't be a no. This is gonna be an abstention. And I'm abstaining because, like I mentioned at our last meeting, in June, anything that we were dealing with with the last study was gonna be kinda passed off to GIC. Now I admit I'm in a, a campaign season, so I haven't really been paying much attention. And like I said before, it sounds like this may pass, and so be it, but I'm gonna abstain because of past experiences that whole school is, burn me once, shame on me, burn, shame on you. So I'm gonna abstain on this one, but hopefully it'll turn out better than some of the other things.

Thanks, Commissioner. Madam Clerk, just note, good night. Commissioner's abstention, please. Commissioner Fischer.

So, I guess one of the things, and I want the public to know, and our colleagues, this is just going to go to the Planning Commission. Then either thing that we do moving forward, though, we still have to approve it moving forward. So, I do want the public to know. Exactly right. You have to come and follow up. There's another project that we're we don't like, we don't have to vote on it. So I think, you know, it gives us opportunity though, the Planning Commission. So to go through it, put that two cents in it, send it back to us, then take a look and see what happens. Mr. Wright.

Yeah, and in that process too, that's other opportunities for public input, studying, learning it along those timelines. So it's also recorded to look back on similar to our work sessions when we have those. As soon as we do them, we can, direct folks back to those recordings for additional incidents.

We have an inclusionary zoning policy in place, so I have no problem with that at all. I just want to be clear that I need time to be more focused in my decision making. I have not had that time since election session had started. I'm still concerned about how things flow and how things happen. Please understand, I have nothing against inclusionary zoning. I just do not feel confident that I wanna take this step. And if it passes after this month break, I'll be refreshed, whatever, and be on board. Thanks, Commissioner.

All right, we have a motion from Commissioner Hamby and a second from Commissioner Myers. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? And I'm abstaining. All right. Thank you. All right. Friends, we will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I so move. Before we adjourn.

Oh, wait a minute.

Before we adjourn.

Are you going to do this?

I very fondly do this. Oh, wow. Y'all ready?

Yes, sir. That was fun. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's been real.

That was live.

I love it.

We've got a presentation in this room in the morning. I just want everybody to know. That's okay. I appreciate it dearly. Thank you. Thank you. The kids from Liverpool will love it. All right. There is a motion to adjourn from Commissioner Davenport. Is there a second? Second. Second from Commissioner Fisher. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you all.