Commission - Special Meeting

we'll go ahead and get started uh we're here at city hall on july 21st 2026 for two meetings this evening uh we'll first have a brief special called session with five action items and that'll be followed by our regularly scheduled agenda setting session all right so we'll go ahead and begin our special called session with a roll call from clerk christine howard davenport

Link. Here. Taylor. Here. Wright. Present. Fisher. Here. Johnson. Here. Culpepper. Here. Myers. Thornton. Here. Hamby. Here. We have a quorum.

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I appreciate it. All right, we're going to begin tonight with some recognitions. It's been a busy season, and so we are really lucky to have a crew of fantastic public servants who are filling previously vacant seats in our administrative team. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to County Manager Bob Cowell to introduce some folks.

Thank you very much. And yeah, I think when I...

The most popular job title is interim. And there still are a lot of interns. And I'm so very thankful for the folks that did fill in those interim roles. But part of what we've been working on over the last several months is filling those interim positions with permanent folks that we can then go ahead and take those next steps as we move forward. So since we've got kind of a group of them that have all come together, have been hired in roughly the same time, I wanted to formally introduce them to you. some of whom you've already interacted with, some you already know. Some will be completely new folks to you that you'll be seeing over the course of time. As we fill some of these other positions a couple months, I will probably do this again as well. But I'm going to ask the four to come up and allow them to actually introduce themselves to you all and share a couple of little snippets about them. Thank you. I said they got to choose the order they went in. This is the test.

Hey, good evening. I'm Charles Mason. I'm just excited to be selected as the new warden with the Athens-Clarke County Corrections Department. We're going to continue to get our returning residents ready to reenter society. So I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Ward.

I am Tony Adair, animal services director. Like the warden said, very happy to be here, very thankful for the confidence that the manager's office and those on the selection panel had. And hope to do some great things. Thank you, Tony.

Hello, everyone. My name is Pamela Long. I am your new elections director, and I am just pleased and being honored with the management to accept me to continue to lead the elections process and to continue to hope that we will leave it with fairness and openness and honesty and that we will move forward in the elections process. Thank you.

Thank you, Pamela.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Commission. So I'm Kimberly Zygmunt. I'm the new Leisure Services Director. I've been here about two months. Been meeting staff, community members, and the passion and dedication I see from both sides has been so fun to be a part of. So thanks for having me, and I look forward to working with you all more.

Thank you, Kimberly. And I want to say with all of these candidates, as with the case with all of our candidates, these all came through literally a national search that was conducted, went through multiple series of interviews. To get to this point, some of the folks that you've met have been longtime ACC government employees. Others are joining us from elsewhere in the country as well. So very, very happy that they have decided to make Athens-Clarke County their home and looking very much forward to the work that they'll continue to do on your behalf. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.

All right. Now is the time for public input on the five items that are on the new business calendar for the special called session. Is there anyone here to speak to any of these new business items that are on our special called session agenda? All right. Seeing none, I'll turn to the commission. I need a motion for suspension of rules since these are having their first hearing tonight.

So move. Second.

All right. I've got a motion from Commissioner Taylor and a second from Commissioner Link. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. All right. Formality that we need to take care of is adoption of the 2026 property tax rates, current property tax digest, and five-year history of levy. Can I hear someone to place a motion on the floor, please?

So move. Second.

All right, I've got a motion from Commissioner Wright. I have a second from Commissioner Fischer. There's an ordinance associated with this, I believe. I'll have Attorney Drake read that now.

In order to extend the ad valorem tax rate, we enable the fund to live in personal property and act in support of community origin from the year 2026 and for other lawful purposes.

Thank you, Attorney Drake. I appreciate it. Any follow-up, Commissioner Wright?

No, I think this is just housekeeping. Wrapping it up.

We're keeping between the lines here. Commissioner Fischer? Yes, sir. All right. Any others? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, hearing none, motion carries. All right, second item tonight is an ordinance to levy and assess taxes for the Clark County School District, which is part of our responsibility as a county government. Do I hear a motion regarding this tonight?

So moved. Second.

All right, I've got a motion from Commissioner Wright and a second from Commissioner Link. I believe there's an ordinance associated with this as well.

An ordinance to levy and assist taxes for the Clark County Board of Education, for the Clark County School District, Athens-Clark County, Georgia for the year 2026, and for other purposes.

Thank you, Attorney Drake. Any remarks, Commissioner Wright? Ready to move. Ready to vote. Commissioner Link? Yep. Any others? Hearing none. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, motion carries unanimously. All right, third item is our annual school resource officer agreement for the 2026 and 2027 academic year with the Clark County School District. Can I hear a motion regarding this?

So moved. Second.

All right, I've got a motion from Commissioner Fischer, and I have a second from Commissioner Taylor. All right, Commissioner Fischer?

I just want the public to know that the Clark County School District is paying the full freight for this particular program, and our police department is part of that program, so I just wanted to make that public.

Anything Commissioner Taylor?

No.

Any others?

I have a couple questions.

Yeah, questions, Commissioner?

First, I want to point out there's a discrepancy in the number of days. On page two in the agenda item, it says the school resource officers will work 179 days. But in the Clark County School District's contract, it says 180. It's just a small typo that just needs to be clarified.

Got that, manager? Yeah, the 180 days in the contract would be the correct, and yes, we'll make sure that's. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. The second thing I had a question about is the total that's here, $470,000, is it going to cover six officers' salaries and a portion of the supervisor's salary, as I understand it, I'm curious if the officers that work in the school resource officer program, I'm not sure if they are different ranks, but I just wanted to make sure that their salaries were covered regardless of their rank and the $470,000 captured that.

Yes, that is correct, and that's how that number's arrived at in the beginning. There are some operational costs behind the scenes. Obviously, we provide vehicles and those kinds of things that are already covered in other expenses, but as far as salaries, that's covered.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Any others? All right, there's a motion and a second on the floor. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, hearing none, motion carries. All right, item four is renewal of a small business enterprise agreement. This is an annual subscription that we apply to and receive every year, and this is just a time-sensitive matter since we didn't have a July voting meeting. So I'll entertain a motion regarding this.

So moved. Second. Second.

I've got a motion from Commissioner Wright. I have a second from Commissioner Link. Commissioner Wright, any remarks?

I just found it very interesting, the history of our size growing and that item.

Commissioner Link? I'm good, thank you.

Any others? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. All right, final item is another one of these things that we would have taken care of had we met first Tuesday of the month. This is the Heard Community Center Accessible Parking Improvements. This is the bid award. I hear a motion regarding this item.

So moved. Second.

All right, I have a motion from Commissioner Taylor and a second from Commissioner Link. Is there an ordinance associated with this, Attorney Drake? No, sir. I did not see one. No, no ordinance. All right. Commissioner Taylor, any remarks?

Yes, just making my facility and my district safe. Commissioner Link?

Commissioner Link, anything else?

No, thank you.

All right. Any others? All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Hearing none, motion carries. All right. Can I hear a motion to adjourn the special called session?

So moved. Second.

All right. Motion from Commissioner Taylor, second from Commissioner Link. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. All right. We are going to move right into our agenda setting session. We have a consent agenda, which are items 1 through 16. We have, count them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 items that are recommendations from the Athens-Clarke County Planning Commission. And then we have old business items, which are 23 through 30. There will be opportunity for public input on the consent agenda. There will be public input opportunities individually on each of the planning and zoning items, and then there will be public input opportunity on all of our old and new business. First order, though, is to ask the commission, is any commissioner interested in moving any of the consent agenda items to discussion to the old and new business section? Commissioner Link?

Yeah, 12 and 13, just for a quick comment.

All right. Any others? All right. 12 and 13 will move to discussion. Any others? No. All right. All right. Perfect. All right. So now is the time for public input on any of the items on the consent agenda. And so those are items 1 through 16, except for 12 and 13. Would anybody like to speak to any of those items? 1 through 16, with the exception of 12 and 13. And we do this every year, but please make sure when you step to the podium, you place your name on the record, let us know your place of residence, and then you'll have three minutes to provide input. There's a clock in front of Clerk Howard. It will turn green when you begin speaking, yellow when you have 30 seconds remaining, and red when your three minutes has concluded. And we'll thank you for your time with us. Good evening. You know the drill.

I am Joan Roden and I'm delighted to be here tonight, especially for this number five consent agenda item to be able to tell you once again that the Athens Tutorial Program is alive and well. I was just at an event there on Saturday with parents and children who are interested in not only tutoring, but I like to call myself a personal trainer. I like to be there to work one-on-one with the students. And if you had been there, if you could only see videos of what takes place at the Athens Tutorial Program, it's certainly worthy and I'm delighted to see it on this agenda. I hope that you will support it wholeheartedly and come to see us. Athens Tutorial Program, 410 McKinley Drive. It's at the Miriam Moore Community Center. And if you've never been there, please take the opportunity to go. It's better than you could possibly imagine. And a lot of good work is going on there through the community, because the community in 1981, Aaron Heard started the Athens Tutorial Program and built it up to an amazing, very well-known program. But through COVID, through the death of the founder, Aaron Hurd, and through times building back up, it's been a climb upward, but we're there. So come visit us sometime. Athens Tutorial Program, Miriam Moore Community Center. Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Roden. Any other public input on any items that are on tonight's consent agenda? Again, those are items 1 through 16, with the exception of 12 and 13. All right. Next segment of the meeting, we're going to have presentations from our planning director, Bruce Lonnie, on each of those items. And again, following the presentations, there will be individual item public input and then discussion by the members of the commission. All right, so technology is our friend tonight, and so Planning Director Lonnie is going to take us through the first of our planning and zoning recommendation items from the Athens-Clarke County Planning Commission.

All right, thank you very much. The first item tonight is a rezone request that involves a future land use map change as well. At 1490 Witt Davis Road, this item and the next three items were heard at the July 2nd Planning Commission meeting. The future land use map change that's requested is to go from a single family residential future land use category to rural. And the zoning map change is from RS-25 to AR. RS-25 is a single family residential designation. AR stands for agricultural residential. The reason for the request from the applicant is there is a historic single family home on the site with some outbuildings related to its agricultural use. There has been some evidence to show that this is one of the oldest remaining houses in Athens-Clarke County, and the area around it had been a farm. They are interested in two special events per year. That is not at the threshold to require a special use permit. That is something that we could permit through a temporary special event permit. That is part of their interest for the property. To give you an understanding of where we are, this is on the east side just south of Witt Davis Elementary School. That is what's just out of the frame at the top edge of the photograph. Here you see the future land use designation. On the left is what it is today, single family residential, which is consistent with the surrounding area. The light blue is for the school property, so it's shown as government. The request is to take it to rural, and that's what you see on the right hand side. The zoning request, similarly, is for that same tract of land. You will notice a very narrow connection to Whit Davis Road. It's enough to have an address, but not much more. There is a very single lane residential driveway there that serves the present house and property, but it is fairly narrow. This shows the environmental areas on the property. There's a creek with a buffer in the northwest corner of the property, but beyond that there is really nothing else here that is environmentally sensitive. And this is the site plan that was submitted by the applicant, which is the property owner. What they are interested in is retention of the existing homes. They're in the process right now actively of restoring the property, and that is part of their reason for the request. The analysis on this by staff and from the Planning Commission is that we have a request that's partially compatible with our 2023 comprehensive plan. It certainly encourages preservation and adaptive reuse. It doesn't really complement or conflict with the adjacent Clark County School District property. It doesn't increase the supply and variety of housing units, but the lot in its present configuration would make it really difficult to be able to subdivide for more than just a few lots. It is partially compatible with our future land use map. It does make an isolated rural district, but it's important to understand there is historically rural character on this property. And it is partially compatible with our zoning map. We tend to want to avoid isolated zoning districts, especially when you have development nearby that was developed under similar zoning standards. But this is a reduction in the development yield. So it is slightly different. We don't often see these. So Planning Commission's recommendation of the submittal is to approve the future land use change from single family residential to rural, and to also approve the rezone from RS-25 to AR with the following conditions. And these conditions are largely to carry over the RS-25 character concerns that were heard during discussion and also from public comment. First of those is property shall meet the tree canopy requirements of the RS-25 zoning district. um it's interesting to note the ar zoning district doesn't have tree canopy requirements because it's really intended to allow for active agricultural uses so row cropping is still one of those properties shall meet the livestock limitations of the rs25 zoning district which would only allow two head of livestock per acre so that's consistent with the zoning around it and that the AR uses would be limited and would not include kennels, feedlots, slaughterhouses, or any commercial use that would otherwise be permitted in the AR zone. That concludes the staff presentation.

All right. Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate it. All right. Is there any member of the public who's here to speak to this item? If so, if you'd line up the podium at this point.

Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Ed Lane with SPG Planners and Engineers at 1725 Electric Avenue. I'm here also with my colleague Caitlin Kittle and our clients, the Bredals, who own and live this property and have been working to restore and preserve it. Just in some brief remarks, I want to mention just two things. One question you may be asking, because I know the commission asked, was Why was the rezone specifically being asked here when there are other avenues for them to achieve similar goals? The reason we pursued the rezone to AR was it just seemed like to us the most straightforward way to achieve those goals in kind of a transparent way that here's this property, it's one house on a larger lot, it doesn't really look like RS-25, and hasn't been that way for over 100 years, and so it seemed the way to match the land use to the zoning category, and would allow them to meet their goals. There are other ways to do it, but just to list what that would look like, because there's legal nonconforming structures, we would need to likely subdivide to three lots, request at least one variance, and then perhaps pursue some atypical conservation easement arrangements that would encumber the land in an uncomfortable way for a primary residence. But anyway, that's why we pursued this. The other thing I'll just quickly mention, In the beginning of this, I think there was some misunderstandings that this would be an event venue, a commercial business that essentially would have events here all the time, which obviously would be very concerning if you lived here, and all of a sudden there's you know, every weekend there's events. So just to clarify, that was never the request, wasn't part of the request. AR zone does allow to, but out of, I guess, an abundance of caution, the Planning Commission vote was even to eliminate that, which the applicant is okay with. But in case you, I assume you have in the record a lot of letters from the neighborhood, and if you read those in relation to the events, I just want to be clear, that would not be allowed if y'all were to vote in favor for this. Last thing, Commissioner Davenport, I know he's not here, he suggested if it would be helpful for us to have a one-page uh informational sheet uh help me out procedurally i don't know if there's a motion to accept this or the attorney can take that from you okay there you go if uh there's just a one pager commissioner davenport said that could be helpful so we provided that we're uh we're here welcome to answer any questions you may have thank you mr lane is that everybody for this side

We do have Commissioner Davenport telephonically. So I think the clerk can operate the device. Okay. Commissioner Davenport, any remarks regarding this one?

All right.

We'll move on to the rest of the group. Commissioner, go right ahead.

Yes. Sorry, y'all. I am in Alaska. on a cruise about to go downstairs to play bingo. But anyway, hopefully you guys will understand the applicant and please understand some of the concerns that some of the residents have about this property as well. Like for example, we spent two years doing the future land use process and we're gonna essentially be agreeing to spot zone this one particular parcel. There are other ways to have preserved that property by going through the destroy preservation process. But I believe that the projects, I believe that there are projects that were closer to AR zone that were denied in the past, but we're about to prove this in a in an area surrounded by RS-15. But also some of the concerns that I'm hearing from residents that I would like you guys to take into consideration and look at this project holistically and what could be done by right RS-15 zone versus changing it to an AR. I do have concerns about the limitation, well not the limitation, but the noise when it comes to AR is more You can amplify noise from an AR. It's a lot more than in an RS-25 zone. But when I get back in town, I will be able to discuss more.

Thank you, Commissioner. Any other input from members of the body? All right. We're going to move on to the next item, number 18.

Next item is a special use. Well, hello. There we go. Special use permit request for three 57 South millage Avenue. This request for a special use is for approval for a fraternity use at this location. Um, they're looking to have.

Hello.

there we go all right hold on tight so they're looking for 17 700 square feet total of fraternity use but they would be adding almost 12 000 square feet to achieve that total over what presently exists 24 bedrooms would be there for 56 on-site residents they are asking for two waivers one for a reduction in the parking lot screening which would normally be 10 feet they're asking to reduce to six and two for reduction in a parking count from the 93 spaces that would be required by code to a total of 63 33 which would be on-site and 30 would be off-site and would be executed through an off-site agreement here's the location you see it a lot of folks know it as the tutor revival house that's been on a variety of lists over the years has had some deferred maintenance and the Current owner is looking to introduce a use that would allow for the property to be restored, preserved, and expanded. Future land use designation is not to be changed. It's mixed density residential, which is compatible with the fraternity use. Rezone, there is no change in the zoning, but you would see an indicator, if approved, of a little triangle that indicates the special use approval. Special use comes with a binding site plan and binding report. So here's the current condition of the property. As noted, we have some deferred maintenance. The roof plan we thought was helpful because it really shows you in the darker shade what we currently have for the massing of the existing structure, and in the lighter shade to the top of the screen, the program of expansion to accommodate the use. And here's the site plan that goes along with that. In the very middle of the screen in the heavier weighted outline is the addition and you would see a parking field provided to the rear. Some architectural elevations that are quite impressive if we could see them. Come on now. They would be binding with the application upon approval. Largely what we're talking about here is restoration of the existing building. This property is also in the Milledge Avenue Historic District, so it is subject to design review by the Historic Preservation Commission. So what you're going to see from the Planning Commission is a recommendation for approval with the variances also approved and not changed as requested, but with one additional condition of approval that would allow for final design to be determined by the Historic Preservation Commission. That is a practice that we've started several years ago not to get into a chicken and egg argument between the two boards. But they do have the final say in many things about that design, but not the use. And so this body would be making a determination about the use. And then we'd let the HBC handle design review. So largely represented here, we don't imagine, and the applicant has not suggested that there would be any large deviation from what you're seeing on the screen, but there could be some things that have to be done to come into compliance with design guidelines for the historic district. And they might be minor. We just don't know what they are yet. All right. I'm going to hit the button. Here we go. All right. So as noted, the Planning Commission recommendation is to approve The special use permit as requested with the two variances without alteration, so a reduction in parking lot screening to six feet, reduction in required parking from 93 to 63 with the arrangement of 33 onsite spaces and 30 offsite, and then that final condition to allow the HPC to handle final design review with the issuance of a certificate of appropriateness for the renovation. That concludes the staff report.

Chair Greg Musil. All right. Thank you, Bruce. Is there any member of the public who's here to speak to this item tonight? Give us your name and place of residence.

Good evening. My name is Mason Sphinx with Dovetail Civil Design. We are the applicant as well as civil engineers on this project. If you have any questions regarding the site plan, I can answer that. I'm actually going to turn it over to Charlie who serves as the BYX president who can tell you a little bit more about this development.

Good evening. My name is Charlie Nelson. I live at 290B Pine View Drive, Athens, Georgia, 30606, right past the connector. And I currently serve as the chapter president of BYX at the University of Georgia. I want to focus on two important aspects that make our project unique. First, the efforts BYX has already made to be a responsible neighbor, and second, the structure we have in place to make sure our parking plan and house rules are followed. BYX has not approached this process casually. We hosted a restoration roundtable at Ms. Peggy Gallis' home on Henderson Avenue to hear directly from neighbors about the future of 357 South Milledge Avenue. We incorporated requests from that meeting, including low intensity parking lot lighting and a left turn only exit. We have continued seeking feedback because we understand that this house is a part of a historic neighborhood in an important Athens corridor. We've also made clear parking commitments. Every resident will have access to a designated space, either on-site or at the adjacent Butler building lot. Non-resident members will not be permitted to park at the house. For chapter meetings and larger events, they will use nearby UGA lots or other transportation options. Our largest weekly event is scheduled differently for most Greek organizations. Our chapter meeting is Sunday at 6 p.m. rather than Monday night. This offsets our highest regular traffic demand from the normal peak period for Greek activity and gives members access to nearby UGA lots without the same weekday conflicts. Most importantly, this plan has a real enforcement structure behind it. Our housing board is a working body with defined positions and responsibility for the property. Together with our officer corps, it has written authority over parking assignments, events, neighborhood conduct, and discipline. Our rules prohibit unauthorized parking, parking in restricted areas, blocking driveways, and creating traffic or noise problems. Violations can lead to written warnings, fines, suspension, towing at the member's expense, loss of assigned parking, or other chapter discipline. These are practical enforcement tools, not suggestions. We also have continuity beyond student leadership. The BYX National Office has been closely involved in this project, and two alumni from our chapter now work for the national organization. This gives us institutional support and accountability beyond any single office or term. We understand why transportation and public works is cautious, especially when other organizations have failed to follow parking rules. We support enforcement of Athens-Clarke County laws and ask to be evaluated on our structure, commitments, and record. We are not asking you to rely only on good intentions. Our submitted plan is backed by assigned responsibility, written rules, meaningful discipline, national support, and demonstrated engagement with our neighbors. Additionally, we are seeking to restore an Athens landmark that faces demolition by neglect without timely action. For those reasons, we believe this plan is practical, enforceable, and beneficial for Athens, and we respectfully ask for your support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Is there anyone else here to speak to this item tonight?

Good evening. Good evening, Commissioners. I'm Gary Burch. My wife and I live at 228 Anderson Avenue. Our backyard border is just a little over 100 feet from this property. And I want you to know that we very much favor this proposal. We're part of the Henderson Historic District. This is a historic home that has been neglected. We think the young men who have this proposal and the team that they put together will do an excellent job. adding to this historic neighborhood. So they have our full support. We've met with them. We followed this carefully. My wife and I both attended the evening discussion with six or eight members of the fraternity at Peggy Gallis' home, and there's strong support for moving this proposal forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Burch. Is there anyone else here to speak to this tonight? Seeing none, I know this is in District 4, so I'll ask Commissioner Wright to speak first.

It is. I just want to be clear. I inherited the dilapidated, boarded-up property with the redistricting mapping, and I have had to write numerous work requests for securing the property, the roofing, the tarping, getting it into compliance and I am thrilled that there is a dedicated group of men that are going to take this on and they have the strength of their national fraternity. Charlie said it really well about their commitment. This is a different kind of fraternity. The fact that their chapter meetings are on Sunday follows their focus on spirit and the church strength that they get. Some of the things I was impressed with, I walked through the property, the added on, you can see on the back of it that there's a lot of added on wooden structures to it. The core of what's staying for the historic part is the brick. part if you were to drive around and take a look at it so from the street front on millage that's going to look the same and then the modern part is in the back the modern part they not as a requirement but as an asset they have Handicap access for their members wheelchair access for housing for members for members parents They didn't just do the minimum. They've really focused on that being an element of inclusion for their group I support the shorter smaller six-foot buffer between the other and properties one's a sorority they I think have a buffer too and they can work within that and then I also think it's appropriate for a fraternity like this to have a prime location on millage where they can increase their membership and and grow in that respect and also the fact that this membership because of their Lifestyle choices are the type that can actually live on campus. People talk about why don't the students stay on campus. A lot of students, they want to drink and smoke and do things that are not allowed in the campus housing. But this fraternity has a different way with their lifestyle and this allows their fraternity members that don't live in the house to be on campus and therefore close. And so that's why I support to them not needing the number of parking and then they've made arrangements like others have at the Butler Building, and if that were to change and get a new use, then they would need to follow up on what, if they can't keep the parking with what might change there, that it's tied to this plan, right, Bruce? And so I'm in full support of it, and I'll be sure to let everybody know if I hear other comments otherwise as this goes forward for our next vote.

Any others from the body? Commissioner Link?

Yeah, I'm grateful to see this property getting some stewardship. This was in my district once upon a time, and I'm pretty sure I wrote a couple of those work orders too. It's been a big concern for a very long time for historic preservation advocates. So I'm really grateful to see that it's getting rescued. I look forward to seeing what the HPC thinks about the design. I hope that it can pass with flying colors.

Anyone else?

I have a couple questions. Well, I'll let my colleague go. Go ahead. I guess I'm hoping this is a new era of working with UGA and the local government and the historic communities. I appreciate the energy and the presentation from the young man and they did their homework. You got to do your homework. You got to go and talk to the neighbors. You got to go figure out where the concerns are before things come before this commission. So it's good to hear the young and the seasonally young be supportive of this project. I hope this is what the future of this local government is going to look like. There's a place for everybody, but we just got to be able to talk with folk and find out where we can link. I'm very impressed with the presentation and the work that you've put into the presentation.

Thanks, Commissioner. Commissioner Johnson.

Hi, thank you. I just have three quick things. And I want to start by saying I didn't get a chance to review this. So if it's in the packet and if you've stated it in your presentation, Mr. Lonnie, I apologize. The first question I have is I noticed the staff did not recommend it, but the Planning Commission did. Can you speak to that?

As far as the staff analysis, we're always a little bit hesitant with a drastic reduction in parking that's being requested. It's kind of a premium resource, especially in the Milledge Avenue area, and it is available at the Butler building, But that was our primary concern was the offsite parking agreement and how it might be tenuous. And on that point, can I say, and I should have said this earlier, what the representative from the fraternity described about their parking management, that is in a document. And it is in your packet. And it would become binding upon approval. And that document is especially important when it comes to enforcement. rather than having a verbal promise that they're going to manage and operate a certain kind of way, they've actually committed that in writing in a way that is far more aggressive than we typically see and will be an excellent resource should we have any cause down the line to do any enforcement of the parking.

Great, that sounds wonderful. Does that mean they have a contract with the Butler building to use 30 of their spaces?

They have one in principle. They have not executed it yet, but they would have to prior to, yes, before permit.

And my last question is related to the variances. You spoke to one. The other one was the reduction in screening. Why was that supported?

The site is narrow. And in order to accomplish any amount of meaningful onsite parking, they would have had to have less parking onsite if they were to meet the 10 foot buffer requirement.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the explanation.

Commissioner Hamby.

Sure.

So Commissioner Wright, if I heard you correctly, you do not believe this fraternity will be some sort of animal house.

That is not their style. Good to know. And I would say the strength in their national organization speaks to the longevity of their lifestyle, if you know what I mean.

Okay. Yeah, we've got enough animal houses. SAE comes to mind.

What's your address again? You said the animal houses, I believe, are in your district?

That's what I... And that's kind of... Let me see that mic. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Wright.

Thanks commissioner.

Yeah. Nice to know that somebody has taken up the balance of the smoking and drinking any others. All right. We're going to move on to item 19.

Next item is at 1960 Barnett Shoals road. This is a special use permit request for commercial parking as a primary use. There is an existing building on site here previously occupied by Burger King. It has been acquired by the neighboring restaurant, Chick-fil-A. Their proposal is to demolish that building, which would leave the only use of this property as a commercial parking lot. In order for that to take place, there is special use approval that's required by this body. The point of this would be to serve the existing restaurant, the Chick-fil-A, as their parking is also a premium item. So here's an aerial view of the subject property. To the top of the screen, you can see the Chick-fil-A restaurant drive-through lanes and their parking. They are presently using the Burger King property. Since they do own it, they are using those spaces that exist for parking for their restaurant. It's perfectly legal, allowed by right. They are not proposing any changes other than the demolition, which changes that discussion about what is the principal use of the property. Future land use is general business. Zoning would remain CG, but it would get the notation of special use approval should it be approved. The site plan associated with it, this shows the removal of the Burger King. So the footprint of where the building is today would be seated, grassed. They would provide for some amount of outdoor seating, which you see in the lower portion of that former footprint. Some shrubs would be planted to help control movement through the park area into the parking lot. There was concern in the discussion with the Planning Commission about especially small children moving back and forth through the parking lot and having something to direct that kind of foot traffic so that it's a little safer. So the Planning Commission recommendation is to approve the special use permit with three conditions that were ultimately addressed through a plan that the applicant brought to the meeting. So that amended site plan would be approved as part of this. But that amended site plan addressed those three things. One, that there be a tree island that would break up where we have a run of more than 14 contiguous spaces. That's a code standard to get a tree island for every 14 spaces. There was also concern from the public utilities department to make sure that if the building is going to be demolished that we get the services there capped safely at the main. And then the third is to close driveway access to the adjacent restaurant parcel. I mean, the closed driveway access to the adjacent parcel would be maintained. That inter-parcel access is very, very helpful. The applicant is also showing some directional flow back out onto Barnett Shoals that will help for this to be a little safer situation than it presently is. So that amended site plan would be a part of this approval should it be approved. And that ends the staff report.

Thanks, Bruce. Is there any members of the public here to speak to this tonight?

Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Jill Minton. My address is 500 West Fulton Street in Sanford, Florida. I'm with CPH Consulting, the engineers for the sites, and also representing Chick-fil-A. As staff said, we've been through some prior meetings. We've had some suggestions from Planning Commission. As also stated, Chick-fil-A is currently utilizing the site as parking. They can continue to do so. They'd like to remove the building, make it more aesthetically pleasing for everyone. We are adding the outdoor seating, some hedges around as well. we are doing the directional closing of to make the right out only for this site so we've been working with staff we just want to make a a nicer more aesthetic pleasing site for everyone to use since they do have the use of the lot as parking as is so we are here to answer any questions anyone might have

Thank you, Ms. Minton. We'll follow up after the discussion period.

Thank you.

Anyone else here to speak to this tonight? We do have Commissioner Myers. She's on the phone. It's in her district, so I'll go ahead and turn it over to her.

Hello. Can you all hear me? Yes, ma'am. Yes?

Yes.

Okay, great. I'm calling from the other northeast corner of the United States. Okay. at a family gathering, but I am quite focused on YouTube and have been following the presentation and reviewed this earlier today. I just have a, I'm gonna try to make my comment and question all in one to make this easier since I'm talking into a void here. And I just wanted to know whether or not the footprint, I think Bruce brought this up, but the footprint of the existing structure isn't going to be reduced or expanded when it's replaced with the green space. Actually, let me see if you can respond to that before I go on.

Let me restate your question, because I may have missed some of it. The green space would match the existing footprint. Is that your question, Commissioner Myers?

Yes. It's not being reduced or expanded.

It largely matches. There may be some spots that are being retained with some hard surface, and you can kind of see those in the plan. But, no, the footprint is going to be replaced by lawn area or plaza space.

Okay. The comment I had is usually I would not be in support of adding parking lots, and I'm not totally decided on this issue yet, but I'm leaning towards supporting this. It seems that there's a large possibility that if this parcel was redeveloped, that the existing Burger King building would be replaced anyway. So getting rid of an abandoned building and replacing it with green space seems to be a better option for the east side than leaving the abandoned building. The property is already being used as an expanded drive-thru and parking area for Chick-fil-A, which is a very popular establishment on the east side and all over. So that seems like it could be a better, you know, a better option overall. Any comments from Eastside residents who have something to say about that? You know, we won't be voting on this until August 4th, so I welcome that. And finally, just to the Jill and developers, if we do approve this, I know you talked about adding picnic spaces. I request that. that the tables in these green space include shading like the ones at Alps Road, Chick-fil-A that has umbrellas and the concrete circular tables you see as you pass by. Because I have a feeling it will be used by the many people who go to Chick-fil-A. And those are all my comments on this item.

Thank you, Commissioner Myers. Appreciate that. Commissioner Taylor, I know you were interested in a query from the developer, and I'll get to Commissioner Link.

Yeah, so Commissioner Myers' question, we had the same question. I'm excited. I use that shopping center every day, so I'm excited to see with the building going out, but that's it.

Thanks, Commissioner. Commissioner Lake?

Yeah. So it appears that the footprint of a building is getting replaced with lawn. Where are the trees? Are there any tree requirements here? They're for every 14th space. But in that vast lawn area, there's, I mean,

i think that there will be one tree required per seven parking spaces we don't typically have tree management plans as part of a binding plan because the planning commission didn't require any additional trees to shade that shade was discussed there was nothing that resulted in a condition of approval but there would be more planting on here that's just not represented at this time there will be one tree per seven parking spaces but it's not going above the minimum requirement at all There is nothing conditioned to go beyond the minimum.

I mean, I would like to see, you know, considering that there is this available blank space, it would be nice to see at least a handful of healthy native shade trees go in there for the benefit of the environment and maybe suck up some of the pollution from the cars going by. So maybe Commissioner Myers and I can talk about that as a possible condition.

Any others? Commissioner Wright?

Yeah. On that same, just to continue a little bit about what Commissioner Link was asking about, Bruce. So with the tree per parking spot, are those Needing to be within the line of the parking or or can they be they could be in the island?

It could be adjacent Even if you have enough lawn area to plant it large canopy trees are what we look for as shade trees Yeah, you need a lot of soil for a large canopy tree So there are places on this plan where you could see plantings. There are some trees called out along the right-hand side of the image there to the back of those parking stalls. There's probably some opportunity for some other plantings in the upper left corner. Those were all things that we were going to take care of to meet the minimums during plans review. That's as far as we were going to go. The eight spaces there that are currently adjacent to a building, the building goes away, there's an opportunity in that portion to get minimum would call for one tree in that stretch.

okay and then so um i think you had some images that we don't have in the packet can you send us as a follow-up what the two parcel current traffic flow looks like and then isn't didn't you say there's gonna be some improvements besides the building being gone right for the traffic flow right out

That arrow at the bottom left of the screen, there's a directional flow through that exit. And then right now, if you go out there, you'll notice I think there are cones set up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen where they connect to Chick-fil-A. That's a condition of approval to keep that open.

Okay. And then also going out towards Kroger is staying.

That's correct.

So the only change in the driveways is this one down here. Is it being eliminated?

It's being sort of reduced and directed.

Right out. So it's a right out only.

You can't take a left out of it.

And then this one is either or, depending on how risky you want to draw the crossing all the way over?

Correct.

Okay. Okay. Well, that answers it for me. Thank you. All right.

Is that everybody? All right. We're going to move on to item number 20 on 1125 Newton Bridge Road.

Okay. I guess I better pay attention, huh?

All right, this request is to modify a zoning action that this body took a couple years ago for a project, a residential project at this address, 1125 Newton Bridge Road. This is a type two request. What does that mean? It comes through one cycle rather than two cycles. Two aspects of this. One is more informational that the applicant is wanting to sort of publicly recognize that this is not just 1125 Newton Bridge Road. This is the Newton Bridge crossing residential subdivision development. The more substantive part of this request is the third bullet you see on the screen, which is to change the timing on the requirements that were in condition five of the original approval for upgrading intersections at Newton Bridge Road at two other points to the south of this project. One at Cathwood and one at Lavender. Vincent. Yes. So, the standard here would be to go to making it happen prior to gaining a certificate of occupancy for the beginning of Phase 2. When this was originally brought before the Commission, there was no phasing proposed. It was a single-phase development. What the developer has encountered is the need to break this into phases. And so triggering the expense of making those off-site improvements with just the number of houses built in phase one was going to be difficult. What they're looking to do is have at least the guarantee of phase two before making those off-site improvements and completing the work. So just a refresher on where we are. This is just north of the Holland Youth Sports Complex on the same side of Newton Bridge Road. You can see construction underway with phase one. Single family residential is still the future land use. That is not being changed. And then also the zoning, it would remain RS-25. It really is just that singular condition of approval from the rezone. Here's the environmental areas on the site. You can see there's a creek running along the southern edge. This is the layout associated with the subdivision. And then these are the diagrams of the offsite improvements. This one at Vincent. This one at Cathwood. Both of these are being coordinated with our transportation and public work staff. I think we've had really good discussions with the applicant about the design and execution of this, but really what they're looking for is the ability to do this after phase one has started, but before, after phase one is completed, but before phase two gets going. So overall, the analysis on this found that we have a comprehensive plan issue because it's delaying the development of traffic calming features. But I think technical staff certainly understands the reasoning for it. It is compatible with future land use map, compatible with zoning map and the ordinance overall. And it is consistent with other adopted plans by this government for the corridor. So Planning Commission's recommendation is to approve with two conditions. One, the applicant will need to provide a performance bond prior to approval of the final plat for phase one for the cost of the construction activities needed to complete the off-site improvements shown in the application. This would be to guard against phase two never happening. Second bullet, the proposed improvements shall be completed prior to the issuance of a final plat approval for phase two. So that's our trigger. If you wanna do phase two, you've gotta have this offsite work wrapped up. Just for procedural understanding, the final plat is really the last step of the development review process. So by the time a developer has made it to the final plat, they've come through all the engineering for that second phase at their expense with a lot of work with staff. So this isn't just a moment in time. This is a pretty significant requirement to get to the final plat for phase two. And that concludes the staff report.

Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate it. Is there any member of the public here to speak to this tonight?

Good evening. My name is Buck Bacon. I'm with W&A Engineering. Our office is located at 355 Oneida Street here in Athens, Georgia. I'm here representing Four Star Real Estate Group, the developer of the Newton Bridge crossing site located at 1125 Newton Bridge Road. As Bruce said, we are requesting an amendment to condition five of the original rezoning there is really no substantive change to the design of the intersection improvements it's simply that we need some additional time to deliver those improvements The revised condition would allow our client to plat, construct, and obtain the certificate of occupancies for phase one of the project prior to completion of these offsite improvements. That represents about 62 new single family homes. Those lots would be ready in the next month or two. based on approval of the final plat. So this amended condition requires that a bond be in place prior to approval of the final plat for phase one, and that these improvements be completed and accepted prior to the final plat for phase two. Our client fully intends to begin construction of these offsite improvements as soon as these drawings, the revised engineer drawings, are complete and approved. And obviously staff have recommended approval as well as planning commission. And so we'd appreciate support from this body. And representatives from Four Star are also here. So I'm happy to answer any questions you have. And of course Four Star is also happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Mr. Bacon. Is there anyone else here to speak to this item tonight? Good evening.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is James Bykoff. I live at 224 Broadland Court, Atlanta, Georgia. I am market leader for Four Star Atlanta East Division and we are responsible for the development at Newton Bridge Crossing. We're really excited about it and I just want to reiterate what Buck said briefly. We are committed to these offsite road improvements. We even started them but had to pull back when we realized the plans needed to be adjusted. And so we are just asking for a little bit of time that will allow for the first homes to get started and bring much-needed housing supply to the community. Appreciate you guys, and we're here for any questions we answer. Thank you, Mr. Mycock. Is there anyone else here to speak to this?

All right, we'll come for discussion. Commissioner Thornton?

This project has long been on the assembly line for a long time, and I do think giving them the additional time to make it right. We want it to be right and not rush through. We don't lose anything. There's no money or waivers on our part. It's just about time. This is probably the first subdivision that has been built in a long, long, long, long time. So we struggled with the dollar amount early on, but It is what it is. I do think that they've taken in consideration the traffic studies and they've tried to work with that. I see Dexter pointing at me, but I think that because the districts are so close together and so connected, we want to make sure, but I don't think this changes the traffic study at all. I mean the traffic plans. I think it's a good plan, and I'm glad it's in District 9. Again, like I said, that's the first subdivision. Bruce, you need to find out when the last subdivision was built in Athens-Clarke County as a homework assignment.

I've got Commissioner Fisher. Yeah.

I appreciate the fact that we're going to be getting more housing stock in that particular area. Also, the improvements there, because we have had probably about four fatalities there in that particular area, and it's a dangerous intersection. So I appreciate the builders and developers taking care of that from that perspective. It is going to add a little bit more traffic because right up from Capwood is another subdivision going in about 100 plus homes. So it is going to add a little bit more traffic coming down Capwood into Newton Bridge Road. So I'm hoping, again I'm not sure what type of improvements you're going to do at Capwood, and I'm hoping for a red light. it'll be very important to have a red light there. So again, not sure what type of improvements y'all gonna do from that perspective, but I'd love to have that conversation. And I always ask, what's your price point on the housing that you're gonna be building for some cost-wise? So if y'all don't know that chat, it would be good to know what the cost of the house is going to be for that particular subdivision.

I think we can address the question about the signal. If you could just come to the mic, so that way we can capture it on the record. Thanks for signing up.

So, Commissioner Fisher, the proposal here is not for a new signal at this point, but it does provide for adequate left turn, right turn, and additional lanes to accommodate a signal in the future, in the near future. Okay.

Thank you. In terms of price points, so we are the developer, we are not the home builder. We'll sell the lots to a home builder. What I'd love to do is get with that home builder and see where they're planning to start the pricing and get that information to you. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Lane.

yeah um this used to be my district once upon a time um yeah and and it's long been a treacherous stretch of road like i'm i'm always sketched out going through that area um so it's good to know that you know there there will be some of this infrastructure going in that will certainly help calm traffic i'm concerned about a light i would love to see a light there i feel like that is like the main solution to um making that road safer and slowing down speeds on that road I'm wondering if Athens in motion has weighed in on this at all. We have this citizen body tasked specifically with bike and pedestrian safety. I'm just wondering if they've had a look at this or had been given the opportunity to weigh in at all. I feel like that would be an appropriate thing with a project like this.

Commissioner Thornton.

What would be more appropriate than Athens in Motion is our staff. We have staff that is responsible for working on, TPW should have done a traffic study. We should be looking at T-splash money for traffic calming. So let's let our staff do what they get paid for. And I am the first one that is concerned about traffic safety. And I do not understand why we have not had a traffic light at that corner of Newton Bridge and Cathwood, maybe? That don't make no sense to me. But maybe, Mr. Bob?

There are a couple of forthcoming projects

And so if we have a list of that, but to say that AIM has to give us their blessing, I'm struggling with that.

Just to identify some things that y'all will see in the coming months, there will be a report either late this summer or very early this autumn about the stretch. coming out of that kind of unusual intersection where Dairy Pack, Chase, and Barbara and Newton Bridge all come together and stretching outward. You also have on the coming T-SPLOS program that the voters have now approved, a roundabout that will be at Cathwood and Newton Bridge. And then there is in the approved plan a bike and pedestrian connection directly from the neighborhood to Holland Youth Sports Complex. So just know that those are some component pieces of this as well.

Mayor, I know when we had several accidents on 29 and Harvey Mathis, we did that R curve, which has been a tremendous help for people coming out on Harvey Mathis and 29. So again, I think that I'm glad this has come up because safety should be a key issue. But all the projects that are coming down the pike and maybe, Mayor, you could share with the rest of us some of the things that we can be looking for. Anyone else? Commissioner Lake.

Yeah. Has our bike peg coordinator taken a look at this as part of the evaluation? Yes. OK. Good. Thank you.

All right, we'll see this in a couple of weeks.

I have some questions.

Commissioner Johnson.

Thanks. I noticed that the Planning Commission departed from the specific protection, financial protection of requesting by the Transportation and Public Works Department. Their original request was they were in support of Placing money equal to the construction cost in escrow. The Planning Commission changed that from cash escrow to a performance fund, and I was wondering if someone, if you could speak to that, please?

Absolutely. Yep, so I think that was, feedback that was given by transportation and public work staff upon consultation with the attorney's office, the proper wording and the normal practice is a performance bond, which puts us in a much better position, more appropriate position in working with the developer. So the change came after advisement from the attorney's office, which was super helpful. And transportation and public work staff agree with the change.

Okay. The second question I have is the staff report says the request includes no design changes, and the developer's report does not say the same thing. Can you speak to that?

So we had two design concepts that were part of the original zoning approval. And this may be a good... point for the applicant's representative to also comment on. What has been discovered is that the exact detail of those designs was either impossible to engineer and meet traffic engineering standards or was not necessary and there were other methods to achieve the same level of safety. And so what we've done is With this change, we've given some latitude to correct and do proper engineering on those design details, but I would certainly welcome the engineer to speak to that as well.

Anything further, Mr. Bacon, on that?

If you're satisfied.

Yeah, that's clear. And my last question is, this is in a TAD zone. The developers not requested any funding, but they have the right to. They can. Do we anticipate that down the line to supplement their costs? I mean, they would know. You can come to the front. Thank you. Thank you.

We have discussed this with the, I think it's the TAD committee members, Pete Duga, Drew Beskin, some others. We have not requested any money yet. We're just doing it out of our pocket, but I appreciate the idea. We're trying to coordinate with them, though, is the answer, yeah.

Thank you so much.

That's all.

Commissioner Thornton.

And since Commissioner Johnson brought up the TAD dollars, again, you have not requested anything thus far. Since we're talking about this traffic light, and I do know the Newton Bridge TAD group has, I think they're the only group that has come before us with a plan, which is on infrastructure, so that might be another option if we wanna put that on our radar for that safety on that Newton Bridge and Cathwood. I hadn't thought about that.

And you'll see, I believe, some recommendations coming out of the analysis, again, late this summer, early this fall. Anyone else? All right. We have two items that are text amendments. You might remember early in this calendar year, the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing, which is a resident body, came forward with a handful of conceptual recommendations at a work session. This body then forwarded those conceptual recommendations to the planning staff and planning commission to put some meat on the bone, so to speak. And the first two of those are coming to us tonight.

Okay, so a little bit of history. So thank you, Mayor. Wanted to revisit the background on how we got here. So on March 3rd of this year, the Mayor and Commission adopted a resolution that directed the Planning Commission to start preparing a series of housing-related zoning code text amendments to address housing affordability and housing availability. Now, the reason for that resolution was largely inspired by a presentation that was made by the GIC Committee to this body on January 13th in a work session format. And in that presentation, there were a series of topics that were recommended for study. Those were carried forward into the resolution and they're listed on the screen. So accessory dwelling units, single family attached units in a variety of forms, manufactured housing minimum street frontage requirements for new residential lots so that connection point of a new lot to a public road smaller lot sizes smaller home sizes and the reduction of parking minimums as far as required parking goes so those are the items called out in the resolution So what's in your packet, what you're going to see presented next are the first two text amendments that have come through this process. The process that was put together by the Planning Commission included the creation of a new subcommittee that carried forward the GIC. subcommittee so we have all those people that worked on that presentation that you saw in january they were part of the group that the planning commission is working with and the planning commission appointed a four-member uh represent representative group from the planning commission so we now have kind of a super group working on these recommendations with staff support from the planning department but also we've called in public utilities public works to the extent we need to we've we've been working with developers to kind of understand realities but we've also got neighborhood representation on this subcommittee as well so tonight we have two text amendments one for secondary dwelling units the other for minimum dwelling unit size the planning commission took these up in reverse order the agenda for tonight kind of flipped that so we'll we'll deal with secondary dwelling units first And what we've got presently in the code is worth saying out loud. So in the code that we have, the development code, we have the ability for guest houses. We've had that in the code for 20 years plus. A guest house is an accessory structure to a single family home. There are standards to make it smaller. There are standards to place it in a rear yard. But one of the standards is it cannot have a fully functioning kitchen. And by building code definition, a fully functioning kitchen is defined by a cooktop and an oven. Um, you can have a refrigerator, you can have a sink, you can have all the other things. You just can't have a cooktop in an oven. So presently what we don't have are is the ability for an accessory dwelling unit to be independent from the main house, from the existing larger structure. So this text amendment starts from that starting point. Um, very similar to what was brought before you in 2022. that seeking to just allow for a full cooktop range and oven would accomplish the creation of secondary dwelling units to be allowed by right. It's already allowed in the code without the cooking. This group decided to go into a little more nuance and to be a little more responsive, frankly, a lot more responsive to the conversation that was heard in 2022 and to the conversation that was heard during the development of the future land use map. So what is being proposed is this, that secondary dwelling units would fall into two types. You would have a detached variation being called backyard cottages. You would have an attached option, which is called a secondary suite, which would be something like a lower level of a home used as a secondary unit, or perhaps a wing that was constructed and has its own entrance. but these would be the two subtypes of secondary dwelling units. There would be a maximum size for these. So 1,000 square feet is considered to be the maximum that's being proposed. This would apply to all the RS, the single family zones, the RM, the multifamily zones, C zones, commercial, as well as our AR neighborhoods. Commissioner Davenport, you'll appreciate this. What we're talking about here are platted subdivisions, not the open space, unplatted areas of AR, so AR neighborhoods by definition. In that AR neighborhood, because we have much larger lots that we're dealing with, there would not be a specified maximum square footage. But we do have a rule for what is subordinate. And so the wording that's being proposed is that these secondary dwelling units would be subordinate especially as they are detached, they would be behind the front building plane of the primary structure. So side yard, rear yard, they would be oriented toward the primary structure. So not towards the neighbors, um, but toward the interior of the property or toward a right of way. And you would need to have, if you're arranged towards the right of way, we're thinking about those lots that have two frontages, a corner lot, a through lot, that would be okay to orient towards a street, but not to a neighbor. And third, in terms of scale, the unit has to have less square footage and fewer bedrooms than the primary structure. parking this was a good bit of discussion amongst the subcommittee how to handle parking and this was a point of discussion in 2022. so what they have proposed for discussion here is that secondary dwelling units can include but aren't required to provide one additional off-street parking space Part of their discussion was perhaps there are other ways to address this. We certainly have some in-town locations that are tight, where providing additional paving for a car is taking away an opportunity for housing. And that was their value statement, was to make more of the land available for the living unit, less of the land prioritized for the vehicle. Now, where would these be permitted? They'd be permitted in single-family, multi-family, commercial, and AR, like I noted. They would not be permitted in our institutional, our light industrial, our EO, which is more of an office park type of development, and our industrial zones. Those are all the zones right now that have pretty big restrictions on residential use anyway. So from a commentary standpoint, I want to give you some background into the discussion and some of the other things for how to roll this out should it be adopted. A lot of discussion about materials and design. I think the subcommittee was very comfortable with a good-looking secondary dwelling unit. They were less comfortable with a less than good-looking secondary dwelling unit. So the notion here is that making these attractive while keeping them attainable needs to be a priority and some sort of discussion with the public maybe back through the Planning Commission on design requirements could absolutely take place does it have to take place in conjunction with adoption maybe but maybe it could be deferred second bullet point deals with design also What we recognized in doing some research into this from other communities is there's an education component about this. I think there's a lot of legitimate concern about the unknown. What is this gonna look like? How is it gonna be built? The communities that have sort of wrestled with that have had really good luck with a design competition. The design competition achieves multiple goals. One is education. So it allows kind of an opportunity for a community to come around. It also allows for design firms to participate and create plans that respond to local character, architectural themes. It addresses the look and the feel question. and can produce a pre-approved, if that's the direction that you end up with, catalog of approved off-the-shelf designs that could have costs defrayed as part of those designers participating in the competition. That's how San Antonio has handled this. That's how some other communities have looked at this. And applicants would still be responsible for their site design, compliance, and associated permitting. But it would allow for staff in the community to have a better sense of what the end product is going to look like, rather than a low-style, minimalist approach. It might have something that has a little more decorative response to the local community. back to the parking issue i said there was a lot of discussion about parking the subcommittee thought this might be an opportunity when our on-street parking is available for it to use the permitting process that we already have in place there is an opportunity here for that to be expanded for the on-street parking permit program that would allow for a degree of enforcement that we presently have an understanding for and that would open the door for some of these lots that are otherwise very hard to get another driveway or parking pad to be able to seek some relief by using on-street parking. I'm happy to answer any questions. I do have some representative photographs. So these are the types of things that the committee was taking into consideration when they were thinking about design. These are not high end by any means, but a lot of them are responsive to the type of development forms we have in town, whether they're clabbered sided or certainly some pitched roofs, use of metal for energy efficiency for the roofing. These would all be the types of things that they were thinking through as a design element would be what we'd want to produce out of this ordinance. Also want to point out, these walk among us. We have secondary dwelling units throughout town, Five Points, Boulevard, East Athens. There are many, many, many properties that already have these that were either built as guest homes under our current ordinance or they were built under prior zoning and have served a number of purposes, whether it's for student housing, whether it's for guests. whether it's for visitors or aging parents or children that are in transition. We have a number of this type of form really peppered throughout our community already. So this is just taking what's already allowed by code, giving it more design attention, and removing the requirement for the cooktop and the stove. So that's the end of the staff report.

I appreciate it. We'll go ahead and get public input and then commission discussion. Any member of the public? Again, make sure you state your name and place of residence and we have a three-minute opportunity. Good evening.

Larry Jordan, Maple Forge Drive, and Nature Walk subdivision.

Oh, sorry. In 2015, I purchased my single family home in a neighborhood of 98 other single family homes. I think it's unfair that every single family homeowner that bought their property throughout the county to be disrupted in what they thought they had bought into. I didn't buy into a subdivision where you could just add whatever on the backyard. And that's a concern. I think it's going to drop my price of my home significantly. This outgoing mayor is trying to make the most historically drastic change to zoning in the history of Clark County, and he is doing so in a very sly way through zoning text amendments to Title IX. This drastic change to every single family home and neighborhood is unprecedented in any county in Georgia, and this is not being done through the normal rezoning processes for such a dramatic change. Again, it is an end around established norms so that the outgoing mayor can have his way. No studies were done on how this affects infrastructure, such as water, sewer, police, fire, all I hear is talking about parking, and any other services supplied by Athens-Clarke County. Never has anything on this large of a scale been attempted without all the considerations being accounted for. It's unfair that the new administration under the future Mayor Fisher and the three new commissioners will not have a say in this. I'm asking for this to be delayed. until the new mayor and commissioners can get into their positions in January of next year. If this does go forward, which I hope it doesn't, I'm hopeful that at least six commissioners will put a stop to this until at least January 2027 under the new administration. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Jordan.

I appreciate that folks may have thoughts about other speakers, but if you would just listen so we can move on through the litany.

Benny Robison, 120 Amboy Court, Cedar Creek. Just have two questions. One was, will it lower the value of my home price that I'm living in now? The second question is, what kind of vehicles can be parked out there? Someone might buy one of their homes and it might be a truck driver. So I want to know what kind of vehicles you can park out there on the street. Thank you, Mr. Reverson.

Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Glenn Townsend, and I'm the representative for Holly Hill subdivision off of Epps Bridge. We have a concern as far as what benefit this is going to have to residential subdivisions. We're scratching our heads trying to figure out who thought of this idea. And we're not exactly sure that the people, which is the word they that was spoken of earlier, put a whole lot of thought into this. We feel like that it's going to affect the property taxes in our subdivision. And I'm here to say that our subdivision is voting no on this. If anything, it needs to at least be tabled until further input can be established. But as a representative of Holly Hill subdivision, which is about 100 homes plus, we vote no on this because we do not think this is a good idea. Thank you, Mr. Townsend.

Good evening.

Can we start that over? She already started and I haven't spoken a word.

I think that was from the prior speaker, yeah.

No, she just changed it. OK. I'm Linda . I live at 119 Middark Street, Creek Drive in Athens. Much of what I have to say is my thinking process when trying to make sense of the Planning Commission's recommendation. I have so many questions. Are these amendments a response to the Planning Commission to help with affordable housing? Is that what the idea is? Do they consider ADUs the best avenue to increase housing? Did a bunch of residents make requests to build them? It just doesn't make sense to me. And actually, I don't think that the amendments are a response to the needs of the residents of Athens-Clarke County. I will venture to say, not with final proof, but with proof of coincidence, that this is simply our planning commission complying directly or indirectly with the wishes of the American Planning Association, the APA, and nationwide 501 . The APA held events in April and May of this year, which included topics such as inclusive planning for social change, economic trends and transformations, housing challenges and solutions, think 15 minute cities, and navigating the political landscape. Yes, they even train you in how to handle opposition from residents. The ABA is behind the new 21st Century Road to Housing Act, which became law on July 11, 2026, just 10 days ago. Since it is a federal statute, it applies nationwide, but its implementation and impact depend on state and local actions. The state of Georgia did propose HB 1166 on this issue, but it did not pass. The federal bill has over 45 provisions. Among other things, it encourages local communities to overhaul codes and systems. They want to fix the financing to cover AUDs and other missing middle housing. It focuses on the federal government working with localities to increase housing production, and they want to reform the system. Well, I don't pretend to know anything about the bill. If it's good or bad, it does make me question. If the planning department is making these amendments, you'd think they would be to benefit the residents of Athens-Clarke County. But if they are such a benefit, why is everything so secretive? I mean, changing the zoning on all single-family zone areas is a huge change. Yet there is no transparency. Too little meetings, hoping no one would notice? If these amendments are good for the people of Athens, why not let everyone know them and place rezoning notices in all single-family zones so people would be informed? Also, I think it's curious that the language of the amendments, the term single family dwelling is changed to principal dwelling nearly every single time. So what's that quote? If you want to change the law, change the language. The APA uses the term social change, transformation, overhaul, and reform the system. Transformational change is inherently linked to communism. There are so, so many questions. Please don't vote for the amendments until we all gain a better understanding of the possible impacts on our community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.

Good evening.

Good evening, Joan Roden. They often say that people create a problem so they can sweep in then and fix it. I think that's what's happening right now. I'm here for those who cannot be here. Some people are working tonight. Some people don't have a clue that this is going on. And in the interest of the audience, I have been here for eight years watching this process. The proper way to address zoning is what we've been talking about tonight. So we're wanting to recreate the wheel, because we don't have enough to do. We don't have enough consultants, and we don't have enough money. We're trying to do something new that's going to cost more, cause more confusion. It's unimaginable. My vocabulary word for tonight is, to the educated and the illiterate, ramrod. to force a proposed measure to be accepted or completed quickly. The original meaning, a rod for ramming down the charge of a muzzle-loading firearm. Well, let me tell you something. This is a muzzle-loading firearm that's taking place tonight with this proposal. For the past eight years, Athens has survived agendas like the one tonight set by the outgoing mayor, who only has until December to do any ramrodding of agenda items couched in flowery and hazy rhetoric. They use the word by right. By right, that is not you make a decision. That is not you make a decision. That is they change the municipal code. So by right, anybody, anybody, according to these specifications, can make this next door to you. And you may say, oh, my subdivision, they'll never do that. People move out and people move in. With that in mind, public trust has tragically been eroded in Clark County for the past eight years with numerous promises made and few promises kept except for the urban renewal agenda that repeatedly, repeatedly involves destroying community by clearing out rundown areas, areas repeatedly overlooked by plentiful government funds until it is too late and leads to displacing low income residents. Then it's called the unhoused. Then they're homeless. And now the homeless resolution is put on the agenda with what Jesse Houle called resolutions are nothing more than a greeting card or window dressing. It's nothing more just to make everybody look good. And it's hiding the total lack of determination to get the root of the problem. Homeowners trusted the local government when they purchased their single family home. Zoned homes sinking hard-earned money into what they consider to be an investment based on a reliable government. How many ADUs are they going to be?

Thank you, Ms. Roden. I appreciate it.

Can you please pass that around to everybody there? It's an unsigned civic... What is it? Civic...

Good evening. My name is Fred Stevenson and my wife Sharon and I have lived in the same single-family dwelling in Cedar Creek for the past 48 years. I direct my comments to Mayor Gertz and to each of the commissioners and especially to the tens of thousands of citizens who live in single-family homes in Athens-Clarke County. Two weeks from today, on August 4th, the Commission is scheduled to vote on changes to our residential zoning codes. These are huge, not minor changes that will have the most profound and negative consequences on single-family homeowners and their neighborhoods in Athens-Clarke County history. It concerns me that this matter has been introduced so quietly and that most people in our community have no idea about how the revised code will alter their lives forever. I've studied the changes line by line. I sent my report to Mayor Gertz and to each of the commissioners. I asked them to read it, consider it, and put it in the record. But it kind of tells you the difficulties we're facing that we really need to address. So my conclusions from that report today are that the benefits you and I sought when we bought our single-family homes of privacy, peacefulness, and safety are in jeopardy. The overall effect of the zoning changes will be the end of single-family neighborhoods as we know them today and the opening of the entire county to rental properties and short-term renters. Our quality of life is going to change. Our home real estate prices will be threatened. Promises and protections by our local government will end. The proposed zoning changes must be taken very seriously. We need to know who's pushing these changes and why. We want to know why the mayor is rushing this for a vote. Policy changes always have unintended consequences that can have lasting negative impacts. These need to be thoroughly identified and explored. Our Athens community, this place I love and proudly call home, was built upon the bedrock of families and single-family homes. And these proposed zoning changes will destroy that, and we cannot let that happen. So I totally oppose the proposed measures as drafted. The commissioners must table this until the matter is thoroughly understood, investigated, and debated. No vote should ever be made until the public has had ample opportunity to become fully informed and given more time to provide input. And there is definitely no urgency to pass these zoning changes on August 4th. If proponents believe these code changes are such great ideas, they will remain so six or more months from now, and the advocate should have no problem convincing the rest of us. I urge the rest of this community to get educated immediately to the proposed changes and voice your concerns to the Commission before it is too late. And if any of you want to read that report I wrote, if you give me your email address, I'll send it to you. Lastly, I am counting on Mayor Gertz and this commission to just do one thing. Do the right thing. God told us to do the right thing. I can live with your decision, but please do the right thing. Thank you.

Hello. My name is John. I'm a renter in District 2. Opinions shared are my own and don't reflect those of my employer or any organization of which I'm affiliated. Thank you for being open to considering ordinance changes that can support the growth of our housing supply. I was hoping we could all acknowledge that housing is too expensive and our housing supply has failed to keep up, but I see that maybe that isn't a given tonight. It's certainly a problem every city in this country is dealing with. Just a couple weeks ago, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act became law this month. It was passed in the Senate by a vote of 85 to 5 and in the House by a vote of 358 to 32. Laws rarely pass in the federal government with that amount of bipartisan support. In that act is language speaking to these exact types of changes, overwhelming national bipartisan support for this type of ordinance change. A study you've all certainly heard me cite is called, Homelessness is a Housing Problem. They look at per capita homelessness across major cities in the US and use statistical modeling to see what explains the variation in per capita homeless rates from city to city. What they find is mental illness and addiction has very little predictive power from city to city, rather housing demand or housing prices and housing supply elasticity, how quickly a city can build more housing when it's needed, explain variances in per capita homelessness in a statistically significant way. The individual factors like addiction and mental illness and disabilities tell us who becomes homeless in a housing market that's already strapped. Currently, someone can build a unit in their backyard that doesn't have typical kitchen appliances. That sounds great for an Airbnb, but that's not something that we have really talked about wanting more of in this community. But we do talk about wanting more housing units, so that's something to consider. As a community, we also talk about limited land area for developments. The property owner wants to use part of their own property to build an additional housing unit. I don't see why we as a community with a shortage of housing should stop them. As a community, we also talk about infrastructure limitations to building new housing developments. If we can legalize property owners to give them the ability to build additional units tied into the existing infrastructure, why stop them? Every garden cottage that a private property owner chooses to build on their own right and hopefully rent out to another person in Athens gives another Athenian a safe place to live. It's a chance for said private property owners to generate additional income as well. Now as a chance to do something about our housing shortage, this ordinance will undoubtedly boost our housing supply elasticity, which the statistics suggest will have long-term impacts on reducing homelessness. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Morris.

Good evening to all of you. William James, District 6, Ms. Stephanie Johnson, Commissioner. My wife and I moved to Athens-Clarke County five years ago. We chose the location in which we now live because we liked the neighborhood and its single dwelling residential zoning. So we vigorously oppose any plans to change our current residential zoning. So in other words, don't do it. Just leave us alone. If we enter this large-scale property rezoning big tent, it'll become too easy to continue the destruction of meaningful zoning. And from where I'm standing, this proposal does look a lot like a camel's nose. So thank you for listening.

Thank you, Mr. J.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Andy Herrod, 315 Brookwood Drive. I have several things I want to say, but the long and the short of it is that although I don't have a problem with SDUs in theory, I do not believe that you should allow these by right. I think these are something that should go through a proper process of planning and approval by the elected body. So I've got several things I want to say here. We'll see how far we get through them in my three minutes. First of all, I would like you to think more about the impact of this on infrastructure. Will neighborhoods where these will be built or plan to be built be able to handle increased stresses, especially on sewer and water compared to the capacity that particularly sewer had when the neighborhoods were first laid out? If a neighborhood can only handle a certain amount of such STUs, will there be a rush to build them by some neighbors to use up that capacity first? If so, does that create inequity amongst homeowners and will that create either legal issues or pressures to install higher capacity infrastructure, particularly sewer? What happens if somebody sells a house with a renter in an SDU? Will the new owner be forced to keep the renter to the end of their lease? What happens if the new owner does not want the renter in that unit but wants somebody else or no one? Will the renter be evicted? This is also being pitched as a way to address housing availability, but I suspect that with the added rental income that can come from the SDU, institutional investors will snap up properties with SDUs as they go on the market, thus exacerbating issues of people getting on the property ladder. equally likely some will just become Airbnbs. Now I know you've had new regulations are coming in for Airbnbs, but we were talking about Airbnbs when I was sitting where you were many years ago. And so the time that it takes to regulate these kinds of things means that a lot of SDUs could be built and operate as Airbnbs or short-term rentals before anything can be done about them. I don't think that the county has the staff to address every complaint about an Airbnb, and addressing them can take months, if not years, and that is a negative impingement upon the neighborhood as that happens. The tax amendment says that the SDU is, quote, designed for and occupied by one family only. Your attorney has just left the room, but I do not believe that you can enforce that under state law, especially as you don't have probable cause to step onto a property to investigate, and people do not have to provide documentation as to relationships, again, under state law. You can't even really enforce the unrelated individuals law that's on the book, to be honest. There's also, finally, an issue with the process. Normally, the planning department, on something as memento as this, will go out and hold meetings with neighborhoods. To my knowledge, this has not been done, and this is one of the biggest changes that is gonna take place in Clark County if this is passed. So, to me, this strikes me more about ideology and the opposition of certain individuals to single-family neighborhoods and zoning than it does about assessing our housing problem.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Good evening.

Hi. Hi, I'm Sam Stabler. I live on Cleveland Avenue in Ms. Thornton's district. I'm a painter. I teach at the Mardad School of Art, and I have a small design-build architecture firm with my wife and my partner. My kids went to Berks or in middle school at Central or Clark Middle. I'm telling you all this to paint the picture of who the face of pushing for this legislation is because in favor of this legislation, this reform, because I am a, a person who is watching my employees live through an acute housing crisis and these are the people who are left out of this conversation they do not have homes they don't have places to live and this is a easy simple moderate moderate amendment to our existing code, certainly compared to what's happening in other parts of the country, that would allow for homeowners to make the choice to develop a small portion of their property that would increase housing. Like I said, I'm a builder. I'm going to tell you some stories of people who came to me asking for ADUs. In the Boulevard neighborhood, I had a longtime resident. She'd aged in her home, raised her kids in her home, was a widow. She could not make it up and down her stairs. She asked if she could build a structure in her backyard to live in. She would rent the front. She did not want to leave her home. I said, no, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. She had to leave, she left, okay? In the Normaltown area where I used to live, there was a resident who's a client of mine who asked for a structure to be built for their daughter who was fleeing an abusive marriage. And they thought it was really important for their daughter to be on their property, but for that daughter to have an autonomous space that she could live in. I had to tell them, no, you're not allowed to do that. She is not allowed to live on your property. I have another client. Lives out of state. He's owned the house for a while. He rents to his childhood best friend. His job situation has changed. He has the idea of moving in to a small structure on his property, living on the same property with his best friend. I said, no, you can't do that. He is going to push that person out of their home. And one of the people who built a house in the contemporary era where it is so prohibitively expensive, I would love to build a back cottage where I would be able to rent and add to my income the viability of preserving my home, my ability to live in this community. And I'm not allowed to. I would ask you consider the people who are left out of this conversation, who've already been pushed out, who are being moved out, who are not able to speak here today.

Thank you, Mr. Staber. Thank you. Good evening.

Good evening.

Hi, my name is Shannon Bushway. I live at 250 Clover Street and Melissa Links District. I've been a homeowner in Athens for over 20 years. I actually do have a backyard cottage in my home. Three years ago, I got a divorce. and living on my own became completely unaffordable. Luckily, my parents stepped in and they helped me purchase the property and they built a backyard cottage where they also reside in my house. So I do understand a lot of people here have concerns about what this looks like. I can just say personally, it was a life changer for me and my daughter to be able to remain in Athens and live here. I'm a school social worker. I work with unhoused families. I have for 20 years. I thought the housing crisis in 2009 was the worst housing crisis I had seen in my life. I have never seen anything like I'm seeing now. Housing in Athens has become completely unaffordable. I rented a home for six months. They sold the home when I was renting there. It cost me more to rent a home than to purchase the home that I have now because I was able to have a backyard cottage for my family. I wish my parents had an oven and a stove in their backyard cottage so they don't have to come into my house to cook. It would be nice. There are a lot of regulations already about Airbnbs. I do rent my home on game days to offset the cost. But there's a lot of regulations. My neighbors actually have no issues with my cottage. Several of my neighbors actually have used my cottage when their families have come into town because in normal town, the houses are very, very small. So I do understand that people have concerns. But we are in an unprecedented housing crisis. Living in Athens has become completely unaffordable. I love this town. I lived here for over 20 years. I want to stay here. I feel very lucky that I'm a person whose parents helped build that cottage so that I could stay here. I do think I understand that people are concerned about maybe what would happen. It's a lot of work to build a cottage. There's a lot of regulations behind it. It was not an easy situation for us to build it. You have to have the land, the capacity, the water, the sewer, all those things were taken into consideration when I built my property in the back. And if you come to my property, you cannot even see it from the beginning, from the house. I do think there's already a lot of regulations and structures set in place. I think this is really important for Athens that we start talking about some creative and interesting ways to create dense housing for people so we can have a viable community and not just people who have lived here for a long time in single-family homes. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bushway.

Good evening. Good evening. I'm Gilbert Mill on 256 Hamilton Road. That's Athens. And I was the developer of Princeton Mill, the whole area down there. And we built different levels of housing to accommodate the needs that people had and what they wanted. Before I did anything, by joining neighborhood is is I talked to all of those people to tell them what my plans were and to make sure this was not gonna be something that would be adverse to their interest either so having built the big houses on the bigger lots and then I built the condominiums and they built the empty nester homes too so we have a real good collection of housing that would fit people's needs. And if we do away with this RS-25 as it is now, that's going to really affect the people in these bigger houses. And I don't want to have anything like that happen at the hand of the city doing something where we went by every rule that they put in for the zoning for the different properties that we had there. and took care of all of those to make sure we met all those rules and regulations. And then to have this thing change to undermine some of these bigger properties is just not right. That's all there is to it. It's just not right. So I hope y'all will consider that, because people have spent their good hard-earned money building what they wanted, and they bought what they wanted, and keep it stable. Stability is the most important thing you can have in this kind of matter. Thank you, Mr. Miller.

Good evening.

Good evening, y'all. My name is Danielle Gilmer. I live at 725 Pine Forest Drive. I have something that I was about to say, but I want to echo what our friend just said about stability. The National Association of Realtors did a survey last year, and for new potential homeowners, the first thing that they said that the number one thing was stability. They don't care about how big that house is. They don't care about where that house is. They care about being in a stable environment. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you for bringing that up. All right. So housing affordability is one of the biggest challenges facing our community here in Athens. While there isn't one single solution, allowing for secondary dwellings and reducing the minimum square footage for a home are two practical steps we can take to create more housing choices without changing the character of our neighborhoods. Backyard cottages and secondary interior suites would allow homeowners to make better use of the property they already own. They could provide housing for aging parents, adult children, caregivers, teachers, healthcare workers, or someone just starting their career. They also give homeowners the opportunity to earn additional income that can help them remain in their home as housing costs continue to rise. For many families, a backyard cottage can mean the difference between staying in Athens or being priced out. It creates opportunities for intergenerational living, supports aging in place, and expands housing options for people across different income levels. Backyard cottages and secondary suites fit naturally into existing neighborhoods. They're smaller than traditional homes, use existing infrastructure, and increase housing gradually instead of through large scale developments. Local builders and small scale developers already here in Athens would be an invaluable resource for these projects. Creating more diverse housing choices is about rebuilding the housing ladder inside the places where people already have relationships. It is about restoring the ability of neighborhoods to serve not just one household type, but the full spectrum of all members of our vibrant and diverse community. I encourage you to support these amendments. You'll be helping create a more affordable and resilient Athens for the current and future residents. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Thank you, Ms. Gilden.

Good evening, commissioners. Mayor Goertz, thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Jesse Siebentritt. I live at 327 Oglethorpe Avenue, apartment 2 in Athens. I've lived in Athens for 20 years. And the housing challenge is one that affects us all. And I've seen over the years as the people that went to school with me here in Clark County and want to continue to live in this community have found it more and more difficult to afford good housing options. And I understand there's a lot of folks here tonight who have bought in to their homes at a particular time. But I think being part of a community means that we understand evolution happens. And that as communities grow and change, that we have to make space for neighbors and make space for growth. And so I think this is a good idea. I think housing affordability is ultimately a math problem. You need a certain number of units in order to house a certain number of people. And if we can give people who have homes and want to use their homes in a way to provide some more housing, give themselves a little more income, then that seems like something that they should be allowed to do. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. C. Good evening.

Evening. I'm Michael McClendon, 201 Hamilton Road here in Athens. I want to address the elephant in the room here for a moment. Frankly, if you vote to approve these changes, your name will be carved in a stone recognizing the day the traditional single-family home neighborhoods of the classic city disappeared. Whenever you're reading a proposal from the Planning Department and they change the words single family and replace it with principal residence, that's a red flag. Somebody should be paying attention. The real issue here is that the agenda for this is driven by a group of urbanists and progressives in City Hall, the Planning Department, the Planning Commission, along with advocates to impose social housing policies on the citizens in Athens. Key elements of this doctrine include eliminating single-family residential zoning, cram as many people as possible into those houses, enable duplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, and even high-rise gulags in those neighborhoods, reduce if not eliminate parking, and force people to use mass transit and bikes. That's the progressive nirvana. These zealots also take advantage of the affordable housing advocates by blaming the affordable housing crisis on single family zoning in order to reform zoning to allow denser units. Somebody's got to tell me, how many ADUs would it take to be able to satisfy the affordable housing crisis? It's thousands and thousands and thousands. So that's just ridiculous. In reality, this is a horrible idea. Once single-family zoning is dead and ADUs are approved, houses will be marketed as multifamily with high rent and be occupied by students, and if we don't think that, we're kidding ourselves. As a result, the property value will increase, and once sold, other property owners will see an increase in their property taxes. We've already seen part of the manifestation of this in terms of the over 1,700 short-term rentals that we have in Athens. Looking ahead, investors will gobble up lower-priced homes and third-dimensional student housing, further reducing the inventory of affordable homes. I also point out there has never been a public policy debate in Athens-Clarke County about social housing agenda, nor have I seen any Athens-centric analysis of the consequences and impacts of what is being proposed on infrastructure, property values, real estate, economics, et cetera. Clearly, one goal here is to drive out long-term resident homeowners into high-density housing with no consideration of the consequences. And let me close by saying this. I think it is very interesting that you have memorialized the loss of a single-family home community called Linnentown. But here you are wanting to eliminate single-family zoning across Athens. Commissioners, you just need to kill this proposal and be done with it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McKendree.

Good evening.

Thank you. My name is Jack Domeney. I live at 195 Dunwoody Drive in the Cedar Creek neighborhood. My neighbors and I are here to ask the Commission to table these proposed zoning changes until the questions and concerns that we're raising have been addressed. Much of what I'm going to say is going to sound very familiar from what other people have already brought to you. I'd like to preface this very briefly by saying I understand the issue that we're trying to help. I have an adult daughter who lives in the house with me and my wife. She has a good full-time job and cannot afford to move out. We've identified, my neighbors and I, a number of ways that the changes in this ordinance could alter our neighborhood in ways that harm the quality of life we enjoy there. I want to focus on one issue that is rental status. Here's the bottom line. Unless there's an ordinance or other legal restriction, every single family home in Athens becomes a potential two rental property. Athens zoning restrictions on renting to unrelated individuals are applied to each single dwelling unit. So a property with a primary and secondary unit can have two families or two roommates in each. An individual homeowner building the ADU is only the start of the story. At first, they may rent the new cottage, which is what we all would like from what we're hearing here. But setting aside the other issues my neighbors will highlight, this is the best situation. Eventually, though, that homeowner will move out one way or the other. They may, if they're simply moving away, decide to rent both the primary and secondary units. Or if they pass away, their heirs could make that same decision, get the income from both units. At some point, though, that property's gonna be sold. Who's going to buy it? Well, the cost of a single family home plus a cottage is going to be higher, potentially much higher than the home alone. As always, those with the deeper pockets will have the advantage. This will make our neighborhood, my neighborhood, a target. Perhaps I should say a bigger target for corporate landlords. Worse, those same corporations will realize for any property they buy, they can add a secondary unit, nearly doubling the potential revenue stream. Over time, dual rentals will only increase. Homes occupied by their owners, the kinds of owners most deeply invested in the health of the neighborhood and of Athens-Clarke County, will become fewer as rentals dominate. You may say that an aging neighborhood, such as Cedar Creek, that rental conversion is inevitable. I don't necessarily agree, but I will say dual rental, such as I've described, will make the conversion far more likely and much faster. Over time, they can completely change and destroy, is not too strong a word, existing single-family neighborhoods such as Cedar Creek. If you must approve a secondary dwelling ordinance, it must be modified to prohibit separate rental of the primary and secondary units. Please, we ask you, send this ordinance back to the planners to address this and the other issues that my neighbors will bring out.

Thank you, Mr. Dominick. Thank you.

Good evening. Hi, my name's Ken Poitier. I live at 160 Spruce Valley Road, Cedar Creek neighborhood. And I'm here to bring the discussion back down to the specific text that is before the the commissioners, we're not doing a strategic planning process here, which my neighbors are really focused on. You guys are asked to look at a specific set of texts which are gonna change the municipal ordinance code for the county. I think there are a lot of deficits in that text that suggest it needs to go back to planning to look at things, and I'm gonna point out a couple of things, chapter verse, just so you can kind of get a feeling for what I've done. I've gone through and spent a lot of time looking at the ordinances. I mean, I went on the web and brought down the official ordinance and then realized you guys have changed the ordinances three or four times in the last 24 months, so I had to find those because they're not on the official. audience, but it ties in. Sections 921, which is definition, sections 91516 and 91528, which is the new audience on short-term rentals, kind of all tie together to make this particular document inadequate. And I'll give you an example. So by definition of a short-term rental, an owner-occupant or a primary resident can apply for a short-term rental permit. Owner-occupant is defined in 921. Primary resident is not. Resident is not defined. So what is a resident? Common English uses would say that a resident is the person who's living there, right? So why is this important? Because when you apply for a short-term rental, it's either what you've defined as the owner-occupant Or, there's a big R in there, a resident who shall have obtained written permission from such property owners which shall have submitted with the application. So this offers a way to get around the owner-occupant limitation. And it all comes back to a definition, not to your ordinance, but you just haven't defined it in very specific terms. Another thing, section 9, 15, 16, item eight states, no on-street parking of business-related vehicles, including occupants of an STR, shall be permitted at any time. Item six states, adequate off-street parking must be provided for the residents, employees, and business visitors. Since the proposed text is not requiring off-street parking in general for accessory dwellings, does this mean that off-street parking will be required if the accessory dwelling is used for short-term rental? We had somebody just talking about she rents it short-term and she doesn't have on-site parking. She's in violation of your current ordinance right now.

Thank you, Mr. Fortier. I appreciate your time with us tonight.

Okay. Thank you.

Good evening. Mr. Mayor and commissioners, my name is Kent Middleton. I live at 195 Clyde Road in the Green Acres Crestwood subdivision. I'm president of the community association and also a member of the Eastside Neighbors Group. I agree with much of the opposition heard here tonight against the language changes that would permit the building of secondary dwelling units or ADUs by right. on all residential, single-family, commercial, agricultural, multi-family residential zone properties in Clark County. I sent you all a letter from the board, signed by the board of the Green Acres Crestwood Community Association, asking that you vote on the buy-right, that the vote on the buy-right ADUs be postponed. Perhaps it should be tabled. At any rate, we request that the process be slowed so that more citizen voices can be included in the process and that citizens can better understand the economic impacts of the changes, whether the infrastructure is adequate, and how such wide-ranging code changes will affect neighborhood character and public policy. Greenacres Crestwood community is mindful of the pressing need for portable housing in Clark County. We are not opposed to code changes that would expand housing options. We have been told that most of the 30,000 new residents expected in Clark County by 2045 will be accommodated along major and minor corridors and nodes, not in single family residential neighborhoods. We believe the government's approach should be more strategic. At a minimum, we believe the principal residents should be owner-occupied, as required in Gwinnett County ordinances, preventing a property owner from renting both the primary residence and the ADU as investment units. This helps preserve neighborhood character while providing opportunities for additional housing. I also forwarded a copy of the Gwinnett County ADU to you all. We urge you to include more community voices in the process before the vote comes before the mayor and commission. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Middleton.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Charlie Upchurch. I've lived in Athens all my life. I currently live at 145 Tillman Lane. I've been in real estate for over 40 years in Athens. And I'm looking at these pictures up here. Bruce is right, Mr. Lonnie is right, that there are a lot of these dwellings already in existence. But over time, over these years, we've had commissioners with a lot of common sense. And people will come in here and they'll say, hey, look, my daughter has just broken up from a bad marriage and we would like to put a building in the back of the house. And they did. Or they've got an elderly parent and they come here and they talk to them. They tell them, say, hey, look, we're in a bad way. I've got an elderly parent. They need to be in a secondary house behind our house. And they allowed it on a case-by-case basis, not with a big swoosh of a paintbrush saying, you know, everybody's going to be able to do this. Yee-haw, let's go. So I appreciate common sense with my leadership. Another thing, too, is that in 1992, Athens-Clarke County spent, I think it was around $800,000 for an outside contractor to come in here and tell us how to set up our long-range plan. It was Frigonesi's group. I don't know if y'all remember that. I was in real estate at that time. He came to town. spent a year doing all the opinion polls and everything else. His plane hadn't gotten off the runway good, and the commissioner started picking his program apart. Everything that he had said, they started cherry picking it and taking different things out of that. But when I look on this thing that we're trying to pass, it says International Property Maintenance Code. International Property Maintenance Code. And it talks about, well, it doesn't talk about square footage. I've got to go there and look at it. But why do we need the International, what is this, Property Maintenance Code? We're grown adults here in Athens, Georgia. We don't need to be taking some code that was written in Washington state or some other place and telling us how to run our county here. Why are we doing that? I don't understand that. I'm going to try to go through some things that haven't already been talked about. Last year, we were fighting because y'all didn't want short-term rentals. This year, y'all are fighting us, saying you want rentals in every backyard. I don't get this. Let me tell you. Oh, God. Let me tell you another thing, too, is that you all say this is to help property values. Again, I've been in real estate for 40 years. If I build this in my backyard and it cost me $100,000 to build it, you look at those. Everything's gone up in price. $100,000 is a $725,000 monthly payment over 20 years because this is a secondary home. You're not going to be able to get primary financing on it. So you only be able to finance it for 20 years. I put this in my backyard, my taxes are going to go up. That's the thing that we're looking for. This is a tax play. We want more taxes, so my taxes go up because I've got this dwelling in my backyard that's spending off of now $1,000 a month in rent.

Thank you, Mr. Officer. And I see it.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

Hey, my name's Mark Graham. I live at 315 Milledge Heights. Five Points is a historic neighborhood. It's a place you'd like to take people for a walk through down the shady sidewalks, down to Five Points, see your neighbors. Well, that's changing. I'm going to tell you a little story. Right next door to 315 Milledge Heights was another small red brick Five Points kind of house. that a guy from California bought, an LLC from California. He came in and bought it, and redid it, and then built a monster in the back. It's not one of these. It's a two-story brick structure. It's huge. We've got signs out there now saying how illegal it is. You all have probably seen it. Well, it's an abomination. It looks right down over our backyard, screen porch, and everything else. They can do that. It was legal now. It was to code. But here's the thing. It's RS-25. And they came in there and signed leases for four students already. It's illegal. It's illegal, Mayor. And what y'all are doing is glossing over the failure of this county and this city to enforce our existing ordinances. You're not doing it. You're not doing it. And my experience has been reaching out to commissioners and all is just a waste of time. But you guys cannot do this, not in good conscience. You cannot do this. You just can't. It's just not right. People who invest in their homes and then have some out of town person. The big elephant in the room is the University of Georgia students. That's who the big elephant in the room is. Rich parents from out of town coming and putting them up in these things. And that's what's going to happen. It's happening now. And we're fighting it. We're going to continue to fight it. This thing about affordable housing and all, what a joke. The people that need it, and I agree that there's a need for it, they can't afford these. They're not going to live in these things. It ain't going to happen. It ain't going to happen. It's just not. You're going to find the rich kids and maybe some parents and whatnot living in them. The one that was built beside us, the extra building, was put on the market briefly. They took it off when we started raising cane. $600,000. $600,000 they want just for the accessory. So I'm asking you, I'm pleading you, use some common sense. Look into your heart. People said, what is right? Do what is right. Do what is right. Right? Do what is right. Back us up. We're paying the taxes. We're paying for you. So help us out. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.

My name is Gordon Rogan. I live at 340 Heller Cove. My wife and I moved into Athens really in 1999. We built our house. Been there 27 years. In 2012, I started coming to commission meetings. I believe Kelly may have been a commissioner at that time. And I remember the theme, homelessness. 2012, homelessness. Then it comes along and it's the housing effect. And it is. It's a real problem. But I had a friend who worked as a state legislator years ago, and she said, if we got three calls about any subject, it kind of set up the radar. If we got 10, we were going to the phone. and finding out what's going on. Well, you've heard from more than 10 people here tonight. And I think most of you have gotten emails and you've heard from your constituents this week. I'm not asking you to table this. I'm asking you to kill this. This does not need to come back up. If there is the homelessness and there is the need for housing, our commissioners and our mayor have been elected the new administration's been elected dadgum it's your job you find a way but the way is not putting on the back of people if i thought this was going to help me in my retirement and i built that and i had more income coming in first of all as charlie said the taxable issue here's my question to you is that income taxable that's taxable income so now i i'm paying more in personal income taxes this is a bogus plan i think it's kelly's last swan song and i ask you to do away with it thank you thank you mr rick good evening my name is ross watson i live at 430 sandstone drive in cedar creek

Paradise, my home. Your home is paradise. You commissioners, that's your oasis. That's where you go to get back to the people that you love. That's where you go to get out of reality. I'm going to go back to my kingdom. I'm going to go back to my family. And I'm going to relax. You can't do that when you're driving your driveway. and you've got a manufactured home just unloading and sitting on the other side of your fence, oh, you don't have a fence? Or you went ahead and your neighbor put it in? You're going to eventually get tired of answering your partner or your spouse's phone calls. You say, you know what they're doing over there now? You know they've got a bulldog chained up there outside of there? Do you know all this noise? What's going on? You don't want to go back to paradise? It's not paradise anymore. That's what you've got to think about. You cannot divorce yourself from this decision, and you're going to have to live with it every day. These people, I'm so proud of them. They're here. They didn't know anything about this. You had meetings in May. You had meetings in June. And if you read at the minutes of the meeting, it says, For and against. No for, no against. Ooh, no one showed up. I wonder why. One of the meetings, they had one person show up. You know who that was? The planning department. Steven Jocks. It's his job to explain what's going on. No against, okay? Here, you got a bunch of people show up, and you have some for, and you have a hell of a lot of them against it. So do the right thing. Cancel this. If anything else, at least let the new administration be the one that makes the decision and has to live with it. Do it right. Do it for my family. You took family out of the secondary dwellings. Every time it was there, you scratched it. The family, the foundation of our community. Your family that you put the dollars there is, hey, I want this for my kids so I can have them a safe place to sleep, a place to come home to, a place to be proud of. You took all that away. And I'll just let my time go in silence so you can have this time to think about it.

Thank you, Mr. Swanson.

Watson, thank you. And by the way, you have the people's name and address, so you can answer their questions.

Good evening. Good evening. I hope it's been a learning evening. I'm going to start. My name's Don Nelson. I live at 320 Milledge Heights, and that's 30606. I'm going to start by asking Mr. Mayor, if you have the power to remove this from the agenda for August, please do it. If you don't, I ask the Commission to table it when it comes up. But I'm going to start. I want to make one point. There have been talk about people keeping their kids or their mother-in-law or mother, that sort of thing. I don't think I have a problem with that. I don't think a lot of people on the street have a problem with that. But it should be an owner-occupied home that has a secondary unit. So what you're proposing, and I wonder, The premise for this was affordable housing. And I can assure you, and I'll invite all of you to come down my street and look at the house across the street from us that was a single family home, had a young family in it. They were moving out, and they sold it for $730,000. I think it was 1,600 square feet. Somehow they got an ADU approved. I'm still not sure. I've talked to people in the permitting office who don't understand exactly why that happened. And they built a two-port garage, and they expanded the house. And they cleared out 24 trees off the property, basically denuded the property. So you talk about affordable housing. I'm trying to figure out, when they're spending more than a million, probably a million and a half dollars on this, and they're getting a loan, what do you think they're going to charge for those renters or families? to live in that house. I can tell you the main house is $5,000 a month. I don't know what they're gonna do with the ADU. And we've talked to the owner and he said, well, he didn't know that there was an ordinance for more than two unrelated people living together and we had a conversation about that. And he said, well, I guess I could rent it to them and we could do an addendum where they have to abide by these rules. You know that's not gonna work. And then he said, He could sell it to a family. I said, that's great. Or he could rent it only to unrelated people. In the additional items to be considered, number one wording in that was input from the public. That's what we're asking for. is for you to staff and commissioners lead a comprehensive communication campaign to better inform the people in single-family neighborhoods about this project and see what comes about. But we need more time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Good evening.

My name is David Lyle. I live 178 Virginia Avenue in a single-family home across the street from a single-family home with a garage apartment behind it. I think there's another garage apartment on our block. There may be others because you can't tell from the street, and I think that's kind of the point. We have a housing crisis in Athens. It's people can believe it, not believe it. It doesn't really matter. It's true. When you go to rent, prices are high. When you go to buy, prices are high. That doesn't change because of people's opinions. If we're ever going to do anything about it, a big part of the solution has to be letting people build things with their own money on property they own. Right? And so if this body thinks it's going to solve that problem by constantly putting itself in the way of that and telling people, no, you can't build, or we're going to have a process where in a city of 135,000 people, if you want to build a little cottage in your backyard, you have to come and beg this body to approve it. And they have to decide, well, is your sob story good enough? You say it's for your daughter. Just how abusive is her boyfriend? We really need to look into this. Because there are precedents. The person last month said that they got beat up. But what about you? We need to allow people to build on their land with their money. This process started as an attempt to address housing costs, right? To make housing more affordable. And so people got together and said, how can we do that? And this is one of the things that the Planning Commission came up with. That was the process. And anything we come up with, there's not going to be any silver bullets. So to say, well, this won't solve the problem, no one thing is ever going to solve the problem. It's going to take a lot of little things, a lot of little houses. And if people don't want to have one, there's a great answer. Don't build one. Don't build one in your backyard. Very simple. So I hope, although I... strongly doubt that you will have this process to move forward, but we're never going to address the housing crisis if the only way it's going to happen is if no one ever complains about it. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Benny Coleman, and I'm still alive. I want to start. The reason that I gave that proposal to each and every one of you about 100 manufactured homes is because of this reason. They could have their own subdivision, wouldn't have to do this. And a lot more people will have the ability to afford a home without intervening someone else's property. Any person who owns their own property, if they don't have over three or four acres or something like that, they should have the ability to say no. We don't want no house right beside it. But when I beg you all to not let it get to this, you're ignoring me. Now it's here. You're going to have to deal with it. I see it, and I'm grateful that I've seen you manufacture homes, and thank you, Bruce, for looking out. I've seen it on there, and I appreciate that. But think about it. People want to have home ownership, not just rent terms. We are born here in Clark County, excuse me, as in Clark County, Georgia, not as in Georgia, Clark County. We all grew up with home ownership, not renters. We had something to leave our family members, not investment, not to bulldoze someone out whose income is lower than ours, not to set up high on a pedestal. We welcomed people. We brought them food and drinks to the home, but now what we're doing, we're taking that away because of greed. Think about it. New subdivision for low-income people home, like manufactured home. Ayrton Clark County school system has property now. All you all have to do is attempt to talk to them and say you want to buy this property for low-income manufactured home and they will have to let it go because they had that property over 20 plus years and they hadn't done anything with it and the government said they have to do something with it. Now they are putting fences up there to protect that because they know what I'm saying is right. Now you all need to understand we all cannot live in stone bricks and everything. We all cannot have this fancy lifestyle. There are poor people, middle class people, black, white, yellow, green, I don't care what color they are or what race or religion. They cannot afford what we are asking. Please consider affordability to end this problem at a low cost. Thank you for it.

Thank you, Mr. Coleman. Good evening.

Good evening. I wasn't going to speak tonight, but I guess I am. I'm Alan Jones. I live on Xavier Drive. And I want to thank the Athens GOP for getting such a good turnout tonight. I'm impressed. I've never seen so many collared shirts in this room in one time. I also want to thank, if Jesse Houle is listening, Joan Roden. used you as a piece of wisdom. But anyway, I live off Xavier Drive. I live in a very nice subdivision. I have a nice yard. There's a little lake across the street. It's fairly wooded. Everybody has a decent amount of space. And the thought of having an ADU pop up in one of my neighbor's yards It's OK. I would hope that they would ask, and maybe it's not by right, but maybe if my neighbors are OK, then let somebody build an ADU. I don't want to build one, but if my next door neighbor, Ed Tolley, who's going to take the seat, if he wants an ADU and he comes by and says, hey, Alan, do you mind if I build this for my grandmother? I'm probably going to say, yeah, sure, Ed, whatever. If it's that type of a situation, who cares? Who cares if that costs $100,000? Who cares what that does to the person who's buying its tax bracket if they make that choice? You know, if I could go grab the American flag and wave it, I would. I like small government. I like freedom. I like liberty. I like to be able to do with my land what I want to do with my land without the government telling me what I can and cannot do. So with that liberty, if I want to have somebody else move into something like this, if I want to help, whether it's because I want to help the affordability crisis, whether I have a grandparent, whether I've got a student, whatever, I would like to have one of these things if that's the choice I go with. And if we're worried about students, students are going to go for the, hey, they can be fine with just a microwave. They don't need the stove. Mike's been learning for years without using a stone, right? But you don't necessarily have to be against these things just because it's progress. Yes, I don't think that everybody in a neighborhood is immediately going to want one of these things. Maybe there's going to be one in a neighborhood here, one in a neighborhood there. Big deal. What it's going to stop is maybe from building another neighborhood on the edge of town where there's sprawl, we've got to put more sewage, we've got to put extra fire department, we've got to put extra cops. I would rather have that than have this be something that we just don't do because a bunch of rich white people are saying, oh, don't put that in my backyard.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right, y'all, we have come by the point of our typical break in the evening of maybe 8.15. Friends, we'll go ahead and take a 10-minute hiatus, and then we'll turn for discussion. We appreciate it a great deal. I'm going to go ahead and move the commission discussion and then we have one more planning item and then we're going to do old and new business. All right. Y'all, as we get going back again, I wanted to begin just for everybody's benefit, having Bruce Lonnie just explain process-wise, given that this is a text amendment and we'll come to the commission sort of by virtue of our natural cycle, kind of what their opportunities are at a voting meeting.

So turn it to you, Bruce. Absolutely. So any text amendment really has the option for this body to approve, approve with conditions, deny, remand back to the Planning Commission. And this body has done that on occasion, where you've received input, you have some guidance that you want to provide to the process to revisit and send it back to the Planning Commission for further work, especially given that this is all under a resolution directing the Planning Commission to take this up anyway. I think that remanding back for any of these text amendments is not just appropriate, it's consistent with the resolution. That's the body who's working on these things. So if that helps, Mayor?

The only addition I would add to that, as always, if there was a decision to at any point to remand it back to the Planning Commission to do so with specific instructions so that they would know what to do with it.

Just a point of order to make clear, though, too, this body could either remand it back or we could just deny it when the time comes. That's right. So thank you.

All right. We'll go ahead and get substantive input from the body. We'll begin with Commissioner Link.

First of all, I just want to ask Bruce, this ordinance as it stands does not distinguish between owner-occupied or non-owner-occupied properties. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay. Also, I want to ask, if you own a home in an HOA and an HOA has a rule against ADUs, you would have to abide by your HOA's rules, correct? This does not supersede any HOA rules.

Any private agreement that further regulates a subdivision or a condominium development or anything like that doesn't change the rules on our books. It just supersedes those and can modify those.

This has come before us before, and the last time it came before us I offered up a CDO that added criteria. None of those criteria, I don't believe, have been included in this process coming back to us. If anything, the Planning Commission was directed to not add complexity and conditions to this text amendment. This is a very complex issue. that definitely warrants conditions we also have a planning commission that um nearly half of them were absent so we have a five to one vote with four planning commissioners absent you know if anything this definitely needs to go back and and to have that more nuanced discussion among those planning commissioners i was really hoping that the planning commission would give us an ordinance that had those conditions, that had those criteria. I believe, personally, I believe it's perfectly reasonable for a homeowner to want to build a small cottage or build out a basement or a garage or whatever to accommodate an aging parent, a boomerang child, a caregiver, to move into themselves as they age so they can age in place. Or even to rent out for a little extra income. I have friends who are, you know, empty nester single moms living in four bedroom houses that don't want to leave their neighborhoods. I mean, my husband and I might need to put both our mothers in our backyard someday on the 750 square foot lot where our carport got taken out by a pecan tree a few years ago. I mean, there are plenty of reasons. to want to do this, but there's also, as folks point out, there are plenty of dangers. The last thing I want to see is a policy that will incentivize student gentrification in which more neighborhood homes are sucked up by student housing profiteers and taken off the market and made more expensive and unaffordable for permanent residents. So I've thought about this issue for a long, long time. I live in a neighborhood where there are plenty of ADUs. There are plenty of big old houses that have been busted up into two or three or four apartments with another ADU out back. I really believe in neighborhoods that have diverse housing choices. But we live in a college town, and the reality is that student market is going to creep into, especially into our in-town neighborhoods. And we've seen it happen in East Athens. We see it happening. in Hancock where we have RM zoning. I believe we need those criteria and those safeguards in place that will keep these on owner occupied properties and de-incentivize student housing. When I proposed that CDO before, it would limit these ADUs to one bedroom units. That would certainly de-incentivize the student housing market. I've come up with a long list of questions and conditions to consider. The definition of subordinate is very vague, subordinate structure. I feel like we do need that one bedroom minimum. We need to be very clear about how many stories. I feel like any ADU would have to be built within the buildable footprint of what would be allowed as a primary structure, not the typical accessory setback. um parking we hear about i mean we had the young man from the fraternity talking on and on about parking we have two parking um items on the agenda tonight i hear all the time about parking issues especially in these in-town older neighborhoods with narrow streets and limited on-site parking at the very minimum we you know we should make sure that these are only allowed in properties that already have those on-site minimum parking standards met i would like to see an on-site parking space for a unit storm water management i repeatedly have had constituents who have a neighbor put up a garage or something and all of a sudden the storm water is washing out their backyard you know i feel like that's something that should be worked into an ordinance where where does that storm water go Tree canopy, how many of these student housing profiteers are gonna just rip out trees to pop these things up and double their income? The entry location, like where precisely would the entry, I think that this does address it somewhat in the orientation of the ADU, but I think we need to make sure that people aren't having an entrance right outside their bedroom window or something. Lot size, maybe we want to consider a minimum lot size for something like this. Homestead exemption, I really believe that these should be limited to homestead exempted properties. Topography, when it comes to sewer, you may not be able to tap into the sewer line if your ADU is sitting lower than your house. That's something to be considered. I mean, these are certainly not affordable to build for the vast majority of families, just the infrastructure alone. And will they be allowed to tap into the existing infrastructure, or will they be required to tap into a new line at the street? I know apparently that's a requirement now, even in those RM zones, and that makes it even more expensive. Do we want to come up with a special use permit for ADUs that go beyond a certain criteria. Trash and mail. Is it a single address for trash and mail, or is it two? There's so many concerns and complexities to have an ordinance that's this vague and broad. I'm just really disappointed that we're the ones that have to bring this up. At the very least, we should have a work session about it. This needs to go back to the Planning Commission. I mean, only half the commissioners have even seen it. I don't the discussion seems like it was I didn't watch it. I'm going to go back and watch that meeting because it just seems like there was very little discussion of the nuances that are absolutely necessary for something like this. I hope we can pass an ADU ordinance. I really do, because I want to build one. But we really need to be very, very careful and nuanced about it and see to it that it's just not opening the floodgates to gentrify all our neighborhoods with overpriced student housing.

Commissioner Fisher.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I think so. My colleague's point, Mr. Link, you know, one thing we talked about when we first started talking about our future land use We should not be piecemealing our zoning stuff. We need to do an overall zoning for this community and what does that mean and what that does look like in the future. I would not vote for this. I think we need to deny it. I think we need to go back to the drawing board, take a look at what we got, and really understand, because our zoning orders have not been changed in over 20 years. And we need to start fine-tuning some stuff to Melissa Link's, Commissioner Link's point. And we can't rush this through, and we can't peach-meal it. So my suggestion would be we take, I don't even want to say that back to the Planning Commission. We deny it. I want to see when we take office in January, start looking at this to really understand what the impact is going to be. And affordable housing is number one. Going around this community, that's what do need housing we understand that but that's the way we need to do it and we can't rush this we got to do it right and we can't just put the zoning stuff and just throw it out there and see what stick and we just can't do that as a community and i'm not going to support anything like that until we really do we take a look at it but let our community tell us what they think our ordinance as we move forward in the future and what this community gonna look like over the next five, 10, and 15 years. So I'll say let's deny it, go back to the drawing board, let's take a look at all our zones. We had six things up there. Not sure where they picked out to, but there's more than just those six things. There's some other stuff that we need to look at when it comes to our zoning. So we gotta look at infrastructure and we gotta look at how those zones is gonna impact those infrastructure as we move forward. So that's my opinion, Mayor. Commissioner Thornton and then Taylor.

I was going to save my comments for item number 25, which to me is directly related. No, I'm not going to support this even though I do believe that folks should have the right to do what they need to do on their property. The reason I'm not going to support it is because I have asked, since I have been on this commission, to be inclusive in our discussions. But yet and still, it seems that the meeting, that's when everybody comes from whatever side they are. The project with the fraternity house, and I mentioned how they reached out. how they included people in the conversation, how people of different ages were involved. We don't do that. I think Mr. Lonnie said that they reached out to, I wrote it down, public utility. It's the basic government groups. It's the basic government groups. And I keep saying this, and I can say this now because this is my last term. I have said this 100 times. Every time y'all make a decision, it makes it look like the commission sealed it, put the stamp of approval. Your jobs, to me, is to understand what we're asking for and bring us what we ask for, what the community asks us for, and not come up with your own plan. So if that sounds a little rough, you wait till we get to item 25.

I just want to make one clarifying point to that, which is,

This was presented by the get committee at a workshop. And I want to read specifically what the direction was from the get committee. And it said that what was being recommended was our proposal is to simply change the definition of guest house. That was it. There was a whole bunch of other stuff that was background, but that's the direction that Bruce and the Planning Commission received from Ewell when you passed the resolution that said move this forward, move the GIC committee recommendations forward. We're happy to take any of those other revisions and changes, but I'm not going to let staff take the heat for crafting something that was... clearly spelled out in those GIC recommendations.

I'm going to say this about what was clearly spelled out in private conversations. And maybe they should have been more public. Let's do low-hanging fruit. Let's work on those little things such as smaller lot sizes or blah, blah. Which is the second one. But I get that. But I'm saying, you took the big piece and started, I would have assumed that this would be a, so forgive me if I misunderstood how this should have moved. I really was excited about changing the rezoning for manufactured homes, you know. Benny Coleman made a good point and said that to the committee, because guess what? I was on the committee, so I know what I said. Now you're going to took my thunder for 25, okay?

Again, all of the recommendations that the get committee made, that were in your resolution have all gone to, or are all in the process of going to the Planning Commission and coming forward with those. So all of those items, and part of what I'm gonna ask at the end of all of this discussion, not today, but when the final, when the actual vote is cast is, if there's not an interest in moving those other items that get recommended forward, and I'll remind everyone too, there was stated opposition to some of these items and ideas at the work session, when still the Commission directed staff to proceed. move forward on those. So if there is not interest in moving those, I'm not interested in having staff spend their time and the Planning Commission having to spend their time on addressing these items. We are carrying forward what we were asked to do by the get committee and by the commission through the resolution. If there is not an interest in moving forward on that, that's perfectly fine. Or if there's an interest in doing it in a different way, that's perfectly fine as well. I just don't want to be in a position where it's assumed that Bruce and his staff decided to do something completely different than what was asked for because that is not the case.

I'm going to wait for 25.

Let me move on to Commissioner Taylor.

So a lot. OK. I haven't spoken a lot, so I have a lot to say. First off, Bruce, you're absolutely right. Mike brought this up. when Bruce presented it to us, Mike brought up all of the points that this community has brought up as well as the reality of riding through Mike's district and my district and a part of Ovita's district is the fact that you see the reality of what ADUs do in single family residential neighborhoods and the fact that Characteristics of communities change. Art Street, when I grew up on Art Street, we didn't even know these many houses could even go in one little small spot. Now you have two two-story houses and an ADU and a house on a piece of land where my grandma house sat. And so that's the reality. And also, to the homeless point, the people in my district who are being evicted, they're not going to be able to afford ADUs because they can't afford housing authority. Also, the fact that we do have private interest that comes into the community that buys up land marginalized communities at an all-time high pushes us out. And we work here, and our children go to school here. But you're absolutely right, Bob. We push this text amendment further, even though Mike told us not to. but i'm also on the get committee so and i have a presentation coming up so wait for hours to decide that we don't want to do what the get committee says but um i do appreciate what um the planning department has done and i also commend everyone who came up to this podium to speak about what this text amendment can do to their communities. Because I think it's very important that one blanket amendment, because it will affect all of us differently. And so I won't be supporting this because I've already seen what it does to single-family communities. And every one of those zonings is zonings of District 3. And so if I go through with this, I will be willing, even though a lot of my residents can't afford to build their own ADUs, a private equity company will come in and push us out and build their own. And so I just, yeah, so no.

I've got Commissioners Davenport and Myers, I believe, are on the phone. So we'll start with Commissioner Davenport. Go to Commissioner Myers.

Hey there, you all hear me?

Yes.

Okay, yes. I've been listening to this attentively, you know, from my little room that I'm in here, listening to everyone speak. You know, this is what we asked the planning department to do, so I wanted the planning commission to look at it. So this is not a surprise. It is obviously something that needs more discussion, both from the emails that we've received and the comments tonight. There most likely need to be more guardrails on any kind of due text amendment that addresses some of these issues that are brought up. But I want to make an observation. I don't know the exact number, but I think there were about 27 people who spoke to this item. I am now in the senior category myself. I am over 65, I get a retirement, I own a home, and I get Medicare. I think every single person who got up and spoke against this tonight is in the same category as me. Of the four people who spoke forward, there was three people who were clearly younger. Okay, Athens-Clarke County has, 12% of the population is 65 years old and older. I would like to hear from the people who are 18 to 64 in this community what they want in terms of housing. They're not all students. We have a lot of people. We have 60% of our people who are renters and who are really struggling because of the high rents. As one commentator tonight mentioned, this is not an end-all. It's not going to transform a community overnight either. But it's not the answer. It's not the complete answer to affordable housing at all. But there is not one complete answer. There's a bunch of levers, and we have to decide which we're going to push down. Now, if we don't want to push this down, we won't push it down. There has to be big thoughts for it. But we have to be clear that this is a lever that's talked about across the nation in terms of affordability and creating affordable housing. Again, needs guardrails, needs more work, needs more public discussion. But to discount it based on the overabundance of comments we've heard tonight from people in my age demographic, what I'm not hearing from the people who are struggling or to pay their rent to find a place to live. I wanna hear from those people. So anyone who's out there listening, let us hear from you. And that's my comment tonight on this topic.

I'll move to Commissioner Wright.

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback because it's very strong. that the people who have their place now are seeing bad examples of the current version of an accessory dwelling in their neighborhoods and to open, I think it would be a floodgate, but part of the details, like Commissioner Link started off saying that the details that are missing one of them would be that i could see that a new subdivision could be built in accessory dwellings in the description that we saw tonight in that description could be in a new unit and with a new place when you buy there you know it's there you you might have one you might buy a unit that has it you might buy a unit that doesn't it's not a new dropped in thing to your sanctuary backyard where everybody uh your neighbors also enjoys the not having a dwelling back there. The parking is a major no for me that we would not require the parking on site. So size and the amount, I also don't think that the AR zoning should take the burden of this. We don't even allow chicken coops in the front yard. So I don't understand why we would allow this with the spaces there, but it changes the character and that we had a project I think on gain school didn't pass but it had a variety of housing options within that complete development so if we could have accessory dwellings for new builds not in existing zones that sort of strategy I think would allow some versatility and affordability for people to build more housing But I do agree that the solution is not in this text amendment.

Anyone else before I return to Commissioner Lake? Commissioner Johnson.

Thank you. In September 2025 and in August 2024, the AJC reported that Athens Habitat for Humanity and Future Foundations respectively was constructing 160 square feet tiny homes. They envisioned using the units to address the homelessness crisis in Athens, Georgia, but the current minimum dwelling has prevented the concept from moving forward. I'm not saying at all that Habitat caused this amendment, but it is sufficiently connected and it's worth me asking Was this amendment requested by Athens Area Habitat for Humanity, Future Foundations, a developer, or other specific applicant?

This amendment was requested by the commission through resolution based on the presentation by the get committee at work session.

Thank you. Number two, for more than 15 years, residents have flooded this room and begged for tiny homes for the ordinance to be updated. I've sat in small conference rooms with leadership and comments like, we'd never do that. We don't want that here. We don't want those communities. I find this interesting because those individuals are no longer coming to the meetings and they told us we're going to have to move. We can't afford to stay here. We need to be able to afford where we live and I'm comfortable in a tiny home. That option was never afforded to the scores of residents that came before us at least since 2014 to my recollection. Number three, I agree with a lot of the members tonight, the residents that came out. And thank you so much for expressing your democratic right to speak and tell us how you feel. And I agree with Commissioner Thornton, oftentimes we don't know it until you do. And it feels like a hijack. I think oftentimes resolutions are unclear. They're not very specific. I have found myself the language is questionable. And it's not purposeful. I'm not going to claim that. But... It speaks to a longer review process and discussion before a vote. We shouldn't receive a resolution and have a work session, receive a resolution, and expect a vote. Because interpretation means everything. And I think we've seen mistakes happen. And past commissioners say, oh, that's not what I meant. That's not what I thought it was going to do. And I think that's really important for us all going forward. study these recommendations from the resolutions. I agree the amendment does not contain any affordability requirement. I didn't see any language related to owner occupancy and a guest house, I'm not sure why that was a, a task for the GET Committee. I'm not on the GET Committee, and I don't attend the meetings, so I can't speak to it. But it doesn't speak to affordability and trying to provide density that people can afford and provide more homes. That's all I have.

CHRIS RODGERS, I'm going to return to Commissioner Link.

yeah i mean i want to speak to the concept of adus within existing structures i feel like that's where you can get some affordability um you know it's a lot more affordable to convert your basement or your garage or a couple a wing of your home into a small studio apartment Building a standalone, whole new standalone structure is, even if it's a teeny tiny thing like that, it's gonna cost you at least 100 grand. Maybe converting a shed, especially a shed that might already have plumbing or an outside garage, that might be more affordable. But I feel like we should kind of treat existing structure, tiny homes, and within existing livable structure or ADUs differently than new construction. Again, this is such a complex issue, and there are so many levels. Even within our neighborhoods, we have so many different lot sizes and topography. What we've been presented is something that's very broad-brushed and vague. And I really want to see it happen. I want to see us get an ADU ordinance. I want people to be able to do this because there is so much need out there. And it's not even necessarily need for affordable housing, but it's just families, people with aging parents and caregiver needs and boomerang children. I mean, there is some definite, definite need. And they already exist, especially within our older in-town neighborhoods. They already exist. And they're of no burden at all to neighbors. But if you get them in every single backyard and there aren't some regulations, I feel like there are profiteers out there that would really take advantage of it. It just needs a lot of nuance. It needs a lot of nuance. And I know we don't like to do nuance here, but if there's ever an issue that needs it, it's this. We're talking literally about people's backyards, literally.

Bob, I want to respond to your comment. And I most definitely don't want to throw the planning commission or the planning department under the bus. But we had all this discussion tonight from my colleagues. So what bothers me then is we send something over to the planning commission, and they really didn't send us nothing really back that had any teeth. So I think that's a frustration for my colleagues. What I'm hearing is, yeah, OK. It might have been vague, but that's the experience. Let's really take a look at this, see what the impact is gonna be on this community and how we can come up with a really good plan. What Commissioner Link is talking about, all these days, we're coming up with these ideas, and there's some smart people on the Planning Commission. Why not say that? So it seemed like it was rushed, like you just wanted to put something through there just to check a box. Well, I'm not checking boxes. We need to have some teeth when we come to zoning, that it's going to fit the characteristics of our neighborhoods and this community. So I think for me, that's what I want to say. That's why I said, you know, let's just back up. And if we do need to give more marching orders or be real specific, I think we can do it. There's enough smart people on this commission that can do that, can make those suggestions. But I think that's why we sent it there, because they're going to come back with some really good ideas, some really good stuff that we can really use. We might not always agree with it, but it needs a lot more teeth, and it just wasn't.

And I think that's a different set of directions than what was given. I don't disagree with that. I mean, actually, if the direction had simply been, We need ADU regulations. Planning Commission, go craft those. It was in response to some very specific recommendations that were presented at the work session and were intentionally intended to be very limited and very fast. That was very explicit. All of those, there's I think five or six items in there, all of those were intended to be developed in very simplistic ways and moved very quickly. if at the end of all of this there's not an interest in this piece, I would suggest revisiting all of those because they may all result in the exact same outcome because what GIC was trying to do was establish fairly quick meaningful changes that would move the needle on affordable housing and route it through the planning commission to do so and that was the limit of the instruction that's very different than saying planning commission we need you to actually originate the idea not originally but actually craft accessory dwelling units here's some parameters that we would suggest that you know you might consider in that development and then they would go through that process that just wasn't the process where they were reacting to so yes i think it can be done in a completely different way if there's a desire to move in that direction

And so just as legislative process, some of that detail can happen at the resolution stage when you say, hey, you know, these are some contours around the marching orders, or it can happen at this phase where we say, hey, you know, we appreciate the work you've done, but you didn't hit the mark on these three items or these 14 items, Commissioner Lake.

16, I believe there's 16 on my list.

Commissioner Thornton.

I will be sharing my notes. Again, again, you know, There has been a former, and we've had several, so you don't know who I'm talking about. A former manager said, when I would flip about something, well, this is what the commission said. And I'm like, no, that's not what I meant. And so, yeah, I get it. What might have been... a green light to go did not look like what I thought it was going to turn out to be. So I want to give staff credit for at least putting, you gave us something to work with. You gave this commission and this community something to work with. I am so, I would like to see more community input, but those things that are little things like, whatever's little, I thought that's what we were going to get. I really did. And I thought, sure. And I've said this at the get meetings. We need to focus on manufactured homes. It should not have been the fourth thing down on that list. Manufactured homes, because you have people who own property, they can't even put a manufactured home up there because of . I just assumed, and we know what assumed means, I just assumed That was clear. I did not know we were going to have a text amendment complexity. I didn't know. So I apologize for that. Thank you for supporting your staff, but I gotta support me right now and the people that have come to speak to us tonight. And there were things that were said. I'm gonna tell you, I hurt my feelings a little bit, but I'll tell y'all about it later, the ones of you that are my friends. We're my friends. But I think we all want the same thing. But how do we get the same thing? Some of y'all are the same folks that have come before us about homelessness. What are we going to put on the table to address homelessness? So the ADU, well, I'm trying to break the 25. Go ahead, I'll sit back.

All right, I've got Commissioner Johnson, then Commissioner Link, then we're gonna move on to the next item on the agenda.

I was just reading the minutes from the March 3rd, 2026 meeting where the resolution states the Adams Park County Get Committee identified six areas for modification. Is that what you were speaking about? Yes, yes. It says of local ordinances that could that could enhance the availability and affordability of housing, which included allowances of accessory dwelling units, greater use of single family attached units, smaller and less expensive homes, such as manufactured dwellings, reduction or elimination of minimum and street frontage requirements, smaller lot and home sizes, and reduction of parking minimums. Some of what is in the text amendment is in this, but the affordability and increasing the housing is not. Those are the two most important things that this commission has discussed since I've been on, since last January.

All of those items that you just read off are all parts of text amendments that are working their way through. I do want to touch on the manufactured home one because it is in the pipeline. It will be coming forward. I can assure you, I'm going to say it right now on the record, this room will be full of people opposing what the GIC has recommended for mobile homes. I'm going to read it. It says the GIC has recommended that the ban on manufactured homes in all residential zoning districts be removed. which means residential lots would be permitted to have manufacturing. That's the direction that has been given to the Planning Commission, and I can tell you this room will be full of people opposing that.

and i think you're right i'm going to move to commissioner lincoln yeah just one more thing i i don't know if anybody saw um we were sent um gwinnett's adu coordinates and um i want to encourage everyone to take a look at it they have about a dozen items the criteria i mean i feel like we could go you know two or three further than that especially considering the pressure we have from the student market But Gwinnett has a nice, straightforward ADU ordinance that has very specific criteria and limitations that we could mimic and get something that I feel like, you know, a good portion of our community could live with.

All right, Bruce, we're moving on to the encore.

So the other text amendment on the agenda this evening deals with minimum dwelling unit size also coming out of the resolution. The current code like the entire code language of what's current and proposed is on the screen. So I'll just leave this up here. What we have had in the code as long as I've worked here, and I believe it was a carryover pre-unification, was that single family homes, RS zones, with a couple exceptions, would have to have 1,000 square foot living area per unit. We also have a diminishing of that square footage requirement when you're in more dense single family, the RS5. And in the RM districts, you can have 600 square feet of floor area per unit. That's in our code today. And multifamily dwellings can go as small as 450 square feet per unit. When we started working on this, we were looking for ways to move forward, and one of our speakers earlier referenced this text amendment in their comments. What we found was, in working with our building code, our building inspections department, rather, as we were sitting and talking about what they need, they handed me the manual that they use when they visit properties to do a code compliance check on when you have substandard housing. So when there is housing in town that is too small, that is not functioning properly, and there's a code issue, they use what we have already adopted, which is the International Property Maintenance Code. This has already been adopted by Athens-Clarke County. This is what we work with. So we thought, well, let's not create something new. Let's use the rules that we already have. And honestly, the rules that we're already using for code enforcement, that makes the most sense. So we did, and we have stricken what you see on the screen, which had those numbers, and we just have a reference to this section of code. Happy to share this with you, and I can give you quotes from it, but it does provide considerable latitude when designing a living unit. A couple things I'll read from it. Every living room shall contain not less than 120 square feet. Every bedroom shall contain not less than 70 square feet. Every bedroom occupied by more than one person shall not contain less than 50 square feet. Obviously that gets difficult because you don't know how many bunk beds that may appear. But 70 square feet per bedroom, we can work with that. And then it gets into distances from... Entryways and distances off of kitchen appliances for safety. The focus here is safety One of the things I will point out also that as we were drafting this we were Reinforced that our direction was correct by a recent court case of at the end of 2025 with the city of Calhoun and There was a determination made there was a challenge brought to the minimum square footage that Calhoun had in their code and And what was found was that it was arbitrary. And I believe it was Dodge County Superior Court. The court finding was that you just can't have a number that you can't support. And it's not related to health, safety, and welfare to do so. So what we're seeing is a legal environment where these types of numbers that are in our code are being challenged successfully. And what we need to have is a basis that falls in line with health, safety, and welfare, which is the underlying purpose of why we have zoning and home rule for having those types of regulations. So that's what we did. So the text amendment we have is minimum habitable floor area requirement references this code as published by the ICC, the International Code Council, and is referenced in Athens-Clarke County Code Section 711, which lists all of the codes that we have adopted. What we will have with this is educational materials, because not everybody can afford to pay. These aren't free. I'll say that. But what we'll have is, if we've adopted this by reference, then we have the latitude to produce this information in educational materials so that people won't have to guess. What we will also have are images that show how this piece of code can be applied to a layout. every example on the screen meets the standards that are in the international property maintenance code so we will make sure to have this type of information available and staff will be able to work with property owners and builders and contractors and and just general applicants about how to achieve compliance should this text amendment be adopted So that ends the staff report.

And what this is in response to the recommendation, we haven't said it, but it's the recommendation related to tiny homes. I mean, what this is, is this is basically responding to the recommendation, which was remove the artificial and probably not able necessarily even to be substantiated minimum size of a home and instead only link it to a standard, and that standard being health safety. And so that allows the homes to become smaller, but not so small that they're not actually meeting minimum health standards. So that's what this one is in response to that request out of the proposals to enable tiny homes.

We're gonna have to go ahead and take any public input on this item, so we'll go ahead and move to that at this point. All right, go ahead and move to the commission discussion. I've got Commissioner Culpepper. Oh, I'm sorry, we do have one opportunity for public input.

Hey, everybody. John. I'm a renter in District 2. Opinions here are shared on my own and don't reflect my employer or any organization I'm affiliated with. You heard everything I said before. I support this ordinance amendment for a lot of the same reasons. We talked. Thank you, Commissioner Thornton, for mentioning what are we going to do about homelessness. I think when the rubber hits the road, we have to make hard decisions on how we make homes for our neighbors and for people in our community. I think that this is another text amendment that could greatly impact our ability to boost our housing supply elasticity to build more housing in the context of having limited land area to build on and limited infrastructure on which we want to build those homes. If we want to make a dent on homelessness, we have to make a dent on our housing supply. that also will relieve the burden that renters like myself have, surviving, living here, working here, without having to work two jobs. If I want to build a house that's smaller than a thousand feet, I mean, that's that size, I guess, I don't know, who are we to say that I can't live in a small house, or to say that someone else can't live in a small house. Now's the chance to do something about our housing shortage. Allowing for smaller homes will undoubtedly boost our housing supply elasticity, which, again, the statistics suggest will have long-term impacts on reducing homelessness. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Morris. All right, Commissioner Culpepper.

Never mind. I thought this had to do with the size of ADUs, and I was like, why in the world are we talking about that?

Figure out that this is the size of primary residence.

Yeah, never mind.

That's right.

Commissioner Lincoln and Commissioner Wright.

Yeah, I mean, I hope we can move forward with this. I live in a house surrounded by sub-1,000 square foot homes, you know, and some of them have full families in them. The house across the street from me has four adults and two kids in it. This is how people lived for most of history. And if you have a piece of property, you want to build a home, why should you have to build more home than you need? And there's a long history of building these small homes and then adding on to them or adding the secondary home. I mean, you travel through the countryside and you see the little cottage and then you see the big one next to it. I feel like this is a no-brainer, unlike the other item.

Commissioner Wright?

Yeah, I also hope that we can move this forward because I think it aligns with the setbacks, right, Bruce? It would be our infill setbacks. It already has the parameters around it. It's less complicated. We have lots that... because of that minimum sizing, can't be habitable. It's an empty lot. And we spent, what, 18 months on the infill details for infill housing, and this fits under it with it being a smaller one, as I understand it. So, again, I hope that we can move this one forward.

Commissioner Taylor.

How do we regulate it? I probably missed it. How do we regulate it to make sure that it does not turn into a short-term rental or a party house? I have a red tiny house over on Winterville.

Old Winterville.

Old Winterville Road. Yes. And it's, and it did get hit by a car. God, that is so not funny. I'm so sorry. But anyway, and it is unproblematic. can't say that I'm against the ADUs and say that I'm for tiny houses, but I do see one in my district. My major concern would be how do we ensure that tiny homes, I mean, because we can't even make sure regular size homes go to families. So how do we, you know, because it could serve all of the things. It could serve missing middle, you know, and it could fit a small family, but when this is allowed to be built, there is already a notion in Clark County that we're gonna work the zoning so that it works us, so that it pays us. And at the end of the day, families are still shut out. And so as we continue to explore options, we also need to ensure the enforceability of any type of middle missing you know, middle missing housing or, hell, tax amendments, I'm sorry, tax amendments, you know, so that more families aren't pushed out because developers know how to use the codes that we put forth to benefit them. And because it's not enforced, we're still shooting ourselves in the foot. And so, unfortunately.

Bruce, do you want to talk about kind of how this correlates with our STR regulations?

So the short-term rental regulations vary by zoning district. So in the RS zones, the single family zones, it's only allowed as a home occupation, right? And there's a whole permitting process for that. And that allows us to, we just have more documentation for enforcement because we're working with a home occupation. this minimum dwelling unit size applying across other zoning classifications like RM, well, in the RM zone, short-term rental doesn't have to rely on, well, actually it does. It has to rely on the home occupation permit as well. It's only our commercial zones where you can do the non-owner occupied or non-long-term tenant occupied short-term rental. This is reducing square footage, which may, I guess, result in units being built that are designed for short-term rental use, but those short-term rental regulations are still gonna come into play as if it were any other size. I don't know, the regulations we've got right now, I think we're finding out are fairly enforceable. We're early in that process, so our track record is growing.

Commissioner Taylor, I guess I'm just thinking in practical effect, you might have a 500 square foot home that's smaller than what current code allows, and every football game weekend you decide to go stay with your sister and rent that out. So that would be allowed under code? Commissioner Thornton.

Yeah, I want to just go on record. I do like this text amendment. And I keep thinking about places that may be built in the future, being able to build those smaller size houses, and I'm not referring to ADUs or backyard cottages per se, but I could see where this provides housing for our vulnerable veterans that are unhoused. um maybe a small family it also and again i'm talking about new development and new buildings it also probably decreases the cost of building so builders can still make a profit but maybe not as you know make enough as equal to a smaller unit so i do like this um because i'm i'm I get the calls that folk would be happy with something like this, people who just can't afford to live where they're living. So, yeah, I like this one.

Thanks, Commissioner. All right. Everybody ready to move on to old and new business? Yes. All right. I'm going to relocate so that we may do that. all right everyone uh we had uh two items removed from the consent agenda to move to discussion those were items 12 and 13. so now is the time we're taking public input on 12 and 13 and 23 through 30. so if any member of the public would like to speak to 12 13 or 23 3 30 now is that time Good evening.

Hello, my name is John. I'm a renter in District 2. Opinions shared are my own and do not reflect my employer or any organization with which I am affiliated. Three years ago in 2023, I and a few colleagues did a forum with the Athens Chamber of Commerce. I remember specifically, I believe Mr. Upchurch, who was here earlier, asked me directly about data and the cost of homeless solutions. I told that audience and Mr. Upchurch that if anyone had a good guess on how many unhoused individuals are surviving in our shelters, on our streets, and in undeveloped parcels in the woods in our community, that it would be me and my team, and I could assure him that there was no reliable real-time data source. ACC chose to fund the Homeless Coalition to begin to gather that real-time data in an updated coordinated entry system and pursue long-term solutions. Fast forward three years and you have a resolution before you with that real-time data cited within it. The Atlanta Rising Initiative in Atlanta successfully housed 490 people from homelessness over the past year because the Atlanta city government found properties to build housing on for that specific purpose. During that time, Atlanta shut down a number of homeless encampments by helping encampment residents move into housings first. Apologies for not having the exact numbers before me, but last year we lost over two dozen members of our unhoused community that died. We've lost over a dozen already this year. We've had over five dozen camps shut down in the past two years. Those people don't have the opportunity to move into housing. They get shuffled onto another parcel of woods where they trespass and set up shop where the same thing inevitably happens. I love that this resolution affirms ACC's commitment to ending homelessness through compassionate, fiscally responsible, and evidence-based solutions. I love that this resolution directs staff to locate land where we as a community can consider action I love that this resolution asked for buy-in of institutional partners like the hospitals, educational institutions, and other stakeholders in Athens to get involved more meaningfully, which has demonstrated success in peer communities. Asheville is one I would look towards. I would like to see it added that ACC pursues partnerships with neighboring counties in some official legislative capacity to pursue and support Athens-Clarke County in solving this regional housing crisis. While this is simply a resolution and not an ordinance, please show the many of us with clients and friends and family dying in our streets and in our woods that you see them and want to do something about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Morris. Is there anyone else here to speak to any item of old or new business tonight?

Good evening. Hey, good evening. Yes, again, Jesse Siebentritt, 327 Oglethorpe Ave, apartment 2 in Athens. And like John, I want to speak in support of item 29, the resolution for homelessness support. And I don't have a lot of policy or detail behind it like he does, but I understand there's three key points. that this would affirm a desire on behalf of Athens-Clarke County to look for opportunities to build shelter and housing, to strengthen partnerships with organizations that serve people who don't have housing, and affirm a commitment to prevention and reduction. That seems like something that we ought to get behind as a community, and it's something that whenever Whenever I walk by somebody on the street who clearly doesn't have a place to live, it hurts your heart a little bit. And so I hope that we as a community can support efforts like this to help make that not happen anymore. Thanks.

Good night. Thank you, Mr. Stephen Tripp. Is there anyone else here to speak to any item of old or new business tonight?

Good evening. Hi. Ken Poitier, 160 Spruce Valley Road, Athens, Cedar Creek. I want to speak to 26, the partnership with the University of Georgia for the GLT-LMIG submitment and the IGA for Salt Millage. I volunteer at the State Botanical Garden once a week, and I visit there two or three times a week. And I have to tell you that some millage at the current entrance to the State Botanical Garden is very dangerous. And I know the garden is moving its entrance further east to alleviate some of that concern. And the university is paying for that movement. But we've asked specifically why they don't put a roundabout there, because that would slow the traffic down. The traffic is 50 miles an hour in front of that area. And I can't tell you how many minutes I've sat there behind an older visitor as they try to look over the hill and figure out if a car is coming. 50 miles an hour. Moving it 20, 30 feet, that's going to help a little bit. A roundabout will slow the traffic down. They are putting a roundabout in front of the new track and field facility. That's going to slow it down. But as we all know, the minute they exit that, the foot goes on the accelerator and they're off to the next roundabout at I always forget the name of that road. Whitehall.

Whitehall.

Whitehall. At Whitehall. And they're going to be blasting along because there's nothing there, wide shoulders. So I encourage you to approve that agreement. I know there's no money unless the state comes up with the money. But I think it's a good thing for the county to do and to work with the university on that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fortier.

Last call for older new business public input. All right, we're gonna go ahead and come to discussion. And Commissioner Link, you asked that items 12 and 13 be removed for brief comment, and so I'll hit you up for number 12.

Yeah, I just wanted to remove it to point out that, yet again, we have items that deal with parking in our older inner neighborhoods where the streets are super narrow and many homes don't have driveways. This is something I hear about every other day. It makes it necessary to yellow curb in those neighborhoods just so a fire truck or a bus can get through. That's the reality of the world we live in. People have cars. Even if they don't drive them all the time, they have to park them somewhere. Just wanted to make that point. I'm happy to put it back on the consent agenda, both of them.

Any other input on 12? Everybody okay with that back on consent?

Yep.

All right. I guess that summarized your 13 input as well?

Yes. Yes.

All right. Any other comment on 13? Everybody okay with that back on consent?

Yep.

Let's do it. All right. Moving forward to old business. We have a couple items of old business. 23 is the oft-discussed naming of the East Broad Street Bridge over the North Coney is the Weaver Dees Bridge, automatic for the people. Any input on that item? Commissioner Wright?

Yeah, I'd like to put it on consent. I would also like in the follow-up email if we could get the number of Dexter Weaver's petition signatures. I know it had to be the 1,000 threshold, but if y'all would share with me, I suspect he got over that with the timeline that he had.

Does that sound good for everybody?

The consent is fine with me. Quick question. In order for us to name, he had to have signatures, right?

Yeah, he does, but I just wanted to know how many, because I know he had the minimum, but he might have more, being as how he is.

All right, 23 is hitting consent. All right. Item 24 is an intergovernmental agreement with UGA regarding the North Coney Access Road, and I know there's a meeting of residents that's coming up regarding that. Any input on that one?

I would rather to wait. Can I pull it?

Well, it's already pulled. Okay, that's fine.

I just wanted to share that when I had Bailey Street in my district, I had a lot of comments from the residents at that dead end. They were concerned about things happening back there because of the dead end, the safety of it. They were concerned about the coming and goings.

Commissioner Myers, Commissioner Wright speaking and I'll call you right after that.

And so I would like to know in the follow-up, not right now, but in the follow-up email if there's any feedback from the fire department or the police department because it seems to me that the dead end of that point is the opening that up and having it to where emergency vehicles can come from two directions would be helpful because an emergent ambulance wouldn't make it in if there was a situation. And also just to remind everybody that the university came forward with this idea as a solution because our bridge was down and had to be repaired to get out to College Station and so then they had people paying for parking permits and we had to negotiate some different rerouting for our water reclamation facility.

Go ahead, Commissioner Myers.

We hear her. She can't hear us. Commissioner Myers.

All right, we're gonna have her follow up via email.

Anyone else?

All right, we're gonna move on to item 26. This is the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing.

Oh, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

Yeah, go right ahead.

I'm here. OK. OK. No, Patrick also mentioned. Who's on there?

Commissioner, I'm about to move on to the next item, unless you want to go ahead and begin speaking.

OK. okay are you still there kelly yeah there's a slight delay so what i'm saying okay isn't coming through to you on youtube at the same time that he would like to read the previous item off of consent okay all right sounds good all right yeah in addition i'm sorry i've been trying to listen to this in two different ways so i can hear it correctly um i just wanted to follow up on the bailey street thing since i motioned last month to hold it um So residents could be contacted. And I want to, I also spent several hours with the Neely family who owned the property originally and sold it to Athens Park County about 20 years ago and to learn a little bit more about the family property history. But after that, UGA did send communications to all the residents of Bailey and Grove Street in mid-July, June, and then in October. july i followed up and knocked on the doors of the homeowners on bailey street and grove street um so and you know didn't have run into any opposition um but i do encourage anyone who uh you know does have a concern to reach out uh hopefully we've done a good job um i'll continue to encourage us all to or and uh staff to allow us uh give us knowledge about what's going on as soon as we can so we can get people involved earlier. I also spoke with the county manager about erecting some kind of historical mark on the property because the Neely family's history is really important to the local African American and Athens history in general. So that's something I'm also pursuing there. You guys have already mentioned that the East Athens Friendship Baptist Church Saturday and I believe Director Busolani will be there, perhaps someone else. But anyway, I'm glad we had the time to review this and to reach out to people and just wanted to report in on that.

Thanks, Commissioner. I appreciate it. We'll leave that off consent. 25 is a proposal from the local Georgia Initiative for Community Housing group that would clarify the way that affordable housing funds that come through the Athens-Clarke County's general fund are provided based on family size. Any questions about that?

This is what I was waiting for, which I do believe indirectly or directly connects to the text amendment. And our committee was to expand access to home ownership. And when we came up with the banding income limits, That was clearly not using federal dollars. It had to be community dollars. This looks like, the way it's written, that we are kind of looking at the AMI from the federal money. Now, I just need clarification because that AMI, the way it was presented, is not going to be, be able to be used with the federal dollars. Steph, can you clarify?

Yes, it is still only applicable to those general fund dollars, not to the HUD dollars associated with it. The reference to HUD is still so that we have that sort of benchmark to work off of, because that adjusts periodically through there. That way we wouldn't come back every single time to make those adjustments to the bands. But to your point, it is still only applicable to those projects that are general funded projects.

So then, I think then, when we word this, you really need to explain, that needs to be clear that we do not follow the same regulations with this banding AMI. And it was really addressed because of the housing trust fund money. That's kind of where we were looking at. So this, if you wanna use that as a baseline, that's fine, but.

Yeah, if we need to make it clearer that it is for those general funded projects, we certainly can do that. I mean, to your point, it's in the description, I think, of the stuff, but it may not necessarily be adequate in the attachments, and so we can certainly do that.

Okay, and so, and my next point, Mike is up here looking at all my notes. When we were talking about the ADUs and affordability, and this to me, and that's another reason why I'm not going to support that first text amendment. Expanding The general, the people who most likely can afford or want to do ADUs, they are nine times out of 10, and I'm not putting, and I guess after tonight, I'm 100% sure that they will not be attracting those families that I'm concerned about. They're not going to be attract, so when we talk about expense, there is nothing here that I think, again, I know Bob was being very clear with me, But there is nothing in that text amendment that really talks about home ownership and accessing. And that's the committee. That was my point when I said, when we said one thing, and then when you keep referencing it to get, it seems like this is what we said. But most people who are looking for housing nine times out of 10 will not be moving into an ADU.

Yeah, and I think the way that you all structured kind of those recommendations with the GIC have kind of that affordability ownership piece, if you will, kind of overlaying on top of all of these items. And so some of these items may, 90% of it, not check that box necessarily, but 10% would. Other items might be the, the tiny home version, for example. It might be 100% of the affordability piece. So I think you would need to look at, I think the way you all structured it is, all of these things, or some version of them, when they're adopted, will move the needle on affordability and home ownership. Each of the individual tools will do that differently, if that makes sense.

Well, it doesn't make that much sense to me. Because again, if ADUs are primarily for renters, Where is the connection to home ownership?

It could be in the form of the person that actually owns the primary home actually having an ADU in the backyard that actually generates money, income, that allows them to stay in a home ownership instead of having to actually leave because of that piece. You heard a couple of examples of folks who maybe they were getting older, and they were on a fixed income, and a way in which they could stay in their home is to have that ADU in the back that itself would be rented. So that's an example of how that might be. Those are not going to be nearly as likely as the, say, the tiny home example. If somebody can build a home that they're gonna own that could be smaller, that might make it more affordable for them to buy.

And maybe this is where I'm just like on this narrow road. I'm thinking about the people who call me. I'm thinking about the folk that call the Homeless Coalition. I'm thinking about a mother right now who is in, their dog Ken, caring for her brothers because her mother died and the young man is blind. I don't have no place to send them other than trying to give them money each week until we, so those are the folk that I don't think the group of folk are, we're talking about almost two, three different groups of people.

And Commissioner, just so we don't belabor this, I think what you're recognizing is that you need a whole toolbox of solutions and of course we're gonna get to that in just a little bit.

And the piece I would add to that is subsidized housing is an element of that conversation because to your point, There are some of those folks that, outside of living in property managed by the housing authority, are not going to gain access to housing. There is no other option. You cannot build a home affordable enough, whether it's an ADU or a tiny home or anything, that they're going to be able to afford. So subsidized housing has to be a part of that conversation also, which is going to be, in this community, predominantly driven by the housing authority.

Well, I will also say, and I know Kelly's trying to move forward, I am definitely on board with the text amendment and this housing initiative being addressed next year i i i because it's too it's too it's too cloudy for me so i know it's cloudy for everybody else and i do think um you're talking about the adus i'm talking about it all now because there are definitely some misunderstood miscommunication And I do hope that you and the mayor-elect will plan on having a work session or training at the very beginning of the year so we all know, or y'all will know, and we'll all be on the same page. That's the only point. Commissioner Link?

I'm good.

OK. All right. Anybody else? I do think also the other potential benefit of where this tool could be used is actually as you move forward in implementing the affordable housing fund, because those are general fund dollars that you'll be instructing other folks on what they can do. And this will relate directly to that.

So do you think the text amendment should include, if we revisit it or whatever, should spell this out a little bit clearer or not? Or is this totally different? That's totally different. OK. I'm good. I'm good.

26 is partnership application to GDOT to collaborate with the University of Georgia regarding roundabout at the entrance to the botanical gardens. Everybody good with consent there?

Can we put that tier banding income on consent?

Everybody good with consent?

Sure.

25 and 26 consent. All right, 27.

Another prospect is the Jefferson River Road multi-use right-of-way.

Yep. All right. Longstanding SPLOST or TSPLOST project. All right. 27 is consent as well. Appreciate that. All right. 28 and 29 in some ways take two different tools toward the same challenge of homelessness. 29, excuse me, 28 we'll get to first. I want to thank Commissioners Davenport and Myers, who are not here with us in the room tonight, and Commissioner Fischer, who were on the right-of-way committee. Sometimes you find that plans that you initially make need to be revised somewhat, and so this body adopted some ordinance update language a few months ago that, through working with the attorney's office and the police department, we found out needs a little additional finessing. This would in ordinance language, clarify that there is no place on the sidewalk or on the road bed that it is safe to lay down, and just makes it clear in ordinance language. So any questions about this?

I just have a comment, if you don't mind.

Commissioner Hamby.

I appreciate you doing this. It sounds like it's kind of moving towards the Savannah model that we've talked about. Yes. So I appreciate you doing that. And, you know, I've said this a few times that we've had a lot of different, a lot of different spectrum of local ideology here tonight. And, you know, in order for us to really move forward in doing some of their homeless population. uh the folks on the left need to understand that what we're doing tonight is something that's uh i think gonna help and is compassionate but we just can't let people sleep outside on the sidewalk like that there's nothing compassionate about that and the people on the right need to understand that we're going to have to spend some money in order to fix, in order to help the folks that we're trying to help. And I think your resolution is, I'm assuming you put that resolution on here to help spell that out. Yes. Thank you.

So, questions about 28 before we get to 29. Commissioner Wright?

Can we suspend the rules and vote on that tonight, 28?

No. Let's give it a moment, just so that everybody can absorb it. No, I'm tired. We'll be back here in two weeks, taking care of business.

I just wanted to point out some safety issues with that. If you guys remember, we had a car fatality that went through the light where Barnett Shoals does a 90-degree turn in Gainesville, and often a person sleeps at that corner, and it's very fortunate that that person was not there when this car lost control. When that woman lost her life, it could have been a double tragedy.

Commissioner Taylor?

Yeah, I get the spirit. I wholeheartedly get the spirit. And I know that we have unhoused individuals that sleep downtown. And I know that it is a situation. But I'm curious to know, where are we going to put them? Are they going to go to jail? Are we going to arrest them? And the reason why I say this is because I know that unhoused individuals end up in jail and a lot of unhoused individuals would prefer to be there because they're safe and they don't have to worry about um being attacked or any other things that they endure out in the street but a jail is is not the place that's not why we have park county um jail is for um our unhoused individuals and i don't want us to get in a situation where like we're gonna pass this and that's where we're gonna go. I would prefer there be like, we're gonna revisit Barber Street, we're gonna redo that school in Barber Street, we're gonna have wraparound services, we're gonna give our unhoused community a chance

more options and better options than just going to jail or to the hospital because they're going to end um right back out on the street what you're identifying commissioners 29 and just to make it clear that i don't believe there's anybody from pd here but it's my understanding that this would not compel initial enforcement as jailing

I mean, if they don't move because they're terrified at something that happened to them, which is why they're downtown to begin with, because that's literally a thing. And so, and also another reason, our unhoused people, they're not all Athens residents. They're not all families that have just been evicted. These are individuals who have mental health issues, which again, to the spirit of 2020, which is given to the spirit of it, but I also don't think we should leave it up to just the non-profits to also come up with it. And whether we are or aren't, I just want to make sure that we aren't. I see how, and it's been really hot outside. I've witnessed wholeheartedly what happens to people who get dropped off in Athens and now you know, we're gonna be moving them from downtown. And so they're gonna go to places like North Avenue where there aren't a lot of lights or bigger vision that's gonna be moving. So probably the parks where we're gonna lose a lot more unhoused people. And so I just want us to be responsible because these are human that come to Athens thinking that they're gonna get resources when a lot of them are met with rape. drug addiction, and ultimately murder.

Commissioner Link.

Yeah, I mean, I have a problem with the number two. What is the definition of a public area? I mean, I totally get, you know, preventing people from laying down and sleeping on the sidewalk and even on benches where, like, you know, that are supposed to be accessible to the general public or in a building or, like, within the right-of-way in an intersection. Those can be dangerous areas. situations but what is the definition of a public area Commissioner attorney Drake worked on this but Commissioner links question is what discerns a public area from private area I mean I get what I get what Commissioner Taylor is getting at um I mean this is a

that this ordinance mirrors some of the other ones that other communities in Georgia have done. She'll answer that question. If you have any other questions, she knows this back and forth because she's done so much work on it.

I mean, you know, is it okay for someone to lay down and take an afternoon nap propped up against a tree in the post office lawn, you know? Like, I don't see why that should be a problem.

I don't think this regulates that area because we don't

Since I was on that task force, let me comment. I think the intent was, to Commissioner Taylor's point, is not to arrest a homeless population if there's a violation. I think we did have our public safety officials in there with us, and we had a solicitor in there. We want to be empathetic. We want to make sure that we use compassion when we ask the folks to move on, but it's not the intent to arrest people, send people to jail. Now, to your point, I think it's a very good point. As a matter of fact, I talked, had a conversation today with some housing advocate about the Whatever happens downtown, where do our unhoused population go? And that's something that we're gonna have to work on as a community. Because right now, to your point, Commissioner Taylor, there's really nowhere to go.

Yeah, I mean, I just don't feel comfortable with that vague language until we do have somewhere for people to go. Like, I would prefer that we leave off that, you know, very broad, vague, no person shall camp in a public area until we have a clear plan on where we're gonna send people who... are in these situations.

Yeah, because I guarantee you they'll go in Barber Street before they sit downtown. They'll probably traverse down.

Well, and I think there's, like you mentioned, there's a good reason that some of these folks are out in very visible area because it's safe. Yes. Having eyes on you. Okay. Next slide.

All right, so moving on really to kind of another facet of the same conversation, 29, I want to give a lot of credit to Commissioner Thornton and certainly a lot of our homeless service providers, some of whom have been in the room tonight and some of whom aren't here tonight, for recognizing that really there is this keen unmet need uh it's a need that i know i've talked to a couple of service providers about for probably a decade or more and that is that we don't have some of the specific kinds of spaces that we need to transition people into healthier lives and healthier environments very specifically there are some congregant shelters in athens-clarke county two of those We have some family units in Clark County, but really we don't have much in between for that individual who might need an efficiency-style apartment, but might need some modest level of caretaking. This direct staff to identify properties, either public or private, that would be optimal for these kinds of needs. also asked staff to assess the cost of those things, both in terms of construction as well as operational costs, and also says, let's figure out which of our service providers are the optimal partners on these activities. And so we've had a lot of conversations around this, and I think everybody has a similarity of spirit around these conversations. But this is very directive, which we've not had. And so this is a directive for management and staff to assist us in this regard. So I turn to Commissioner Thornton because she was in the driver's seat from the outset.

COMMISSIONER THORNTON. Yeah, this was a Yeah, this was good. And I want to make sure I respond to Commissioner Taylor and Commissioner Link. I think the concerns they raise should be a point of, if this passes, which I hope it does, that we address immediately, just immediately. Because to have the top, the earlier ones, it looks like we don't care. But when we did the homeless study, we probably should have done a resolution right then to back up the study. The resolution, again, is not specific, but I did, one of the biggest things that I like to think that I reminded everybody, we need to not only include faith-based groups, but also businesses. And especially when you're talking about downtown. We got the downtown authority, we got the chamber. We have business, and this opens the door more of those real significant public and private partnerships. Instead of getting calls of complaints, from businesses downtown, we should be calling them and asking them, hey, how can you help, or do you want to help, and make a space for them. So I hope that the resolution opens those doors, that we have those conversations, that the resolution is just not words on a piece of paper that's going to collect dust, but it should identify the concerns that Commissioner Link and Commissioner Taylor have mentioned.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Commissioner Link?

Yeah. I'm really happy to see this, because it offers a long list of very specific steps and situations that can be pursued. particularly the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. We've got empty buildings all over the place, plenty of them, Athens-Clarke County owns. I remember years ago reading an article about an empty Walmart that was opened up as a camping facility, I think in someplace cold like Minneapolis or something. And the tiny home, this addresses tiny homes, which I feel like can be tiny home communities that might even have shared bathing and kitchen facilities where folks just have a roof over their heads and a space of their own. um and also this idea of bringing um additional community support and as far as like public private and other community partners um from what i understand savannah the savannah college of art and design funds the homeless day center down there in savannah maybe we can reach out to some of the educational institutions in our community and ask them for a little extra assistance on giving these folks who are hanging out downtown that we often hear specifically from students and student parents that they don't like seeing these folks maybe we can help fund a place for them to actually go and get some help and some comfort and clean up a little or whatever they need you know to meet their immediate needs um but yeah we really need the whole community to start pitching in to help with this issue

Number 30, last item on the agenda tonight is very different subject, water line upgrades. This is approval of construction plans to upgrade those water lines. Consent. Consent. Everybody feel comfortable with 30 on consent? I like clean water.

Can we put the resolution on consent?

I think that all just to just sort of highlight it is to highlight it. All right.

Yeah, we have two commissioners not here.

All right. 30 is on consent. They like clean water as well. All right. Oh, you're done. You're adjourned. Please. They're second. Yes. All right. Motion from Commissioner Fisher, second from Commissioner Link. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Thanks, everyone.