Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. It is Tuesday, August 4th, 2026, and we're here for the monthly voting meeting of the Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission. If we've not concluded business by 815, we'll have a 15-minute break at or about that time, and we're going to go ahead and begin with a roll call, so I'll ask Clerk Christine Howard to do that for us right now.

Davenport. Link. Here. Taylor. Here. Rice. Present. Fisher. Here. Johnson.

Here.

Culpepper.

Here.

Myers. Here. Thornton. Here. Hamby. Here. We have a quorum.

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right. I'll go ahead and read the civility pledge that we've adopted, provided to us by the Georgia Municipal Association. That indicates that the way we govern ourselves is often as important as the positions we take, that our collective decisions will be better when differing views have had the opportunity to be fully vetted and considered, that all people have the right to be treated with respect, courtesy, and openness, that we value all input, and that we commit to conduct ourselves at all times with civility and courtesy to each other. First order of business tonight is the approval of the minutes of meetings of Tuesday, June the 2nd, Thursday, June the 4th, Tuesday, June 9th, Tuesday, July 21st, and nonvoting meetings of Tuesday, July 21st. Do I hear a motion for approval of those minutes?

So moved, but I would like to make an amendment to the approval minutes.

Yeah, please describe that, Commissioner Taylor.

There was an item that we voted on on June the 2nd for... 228 Fairview Street. I know we voted on it. How does that process go before we? I should have asked Bob.

So we can certainly do this at a later date, but one of the things you'll want to do is articulate the difference between what's in the minutes now and what accurately reflects the record.

So what you indicated that you wanted to do was a motion to reconsider. That was the item where you thought it was backwards, what the commission thought they were approving, what they actually approved. You thought some commission was really confused that they were approving the item when they were actually approving staff's recommendation to deny it. It had to do with the, what was it? One lot removed. What? Yeah. The one lot removed exception?

Yeah.

And so it was for what nonprofit?

2288. It was for East Athens Development.

East Athens Development Corporation.

So if you want to do this now, say, I'd like to approve the minutes but reconsider the Fairview item. And so then we will do that at the end of the meeting tonight.

Okay. But there has to be a vote on it, Mr. Mayor, to get it added back on. And somebody who voted in favor of it, which you did vote in favor of it because you thought you were voting the other way, it would be reconsidered. Does that make sense?

And so given that Commissioner Taylor voted in favor of it at the June meeting, she is an opportune motioner for reconsideration.

Yes, she is.

Well, I would like to make the motion to approve the minutes but reconsider the 228 Fairview item from June 2nd. I'll second. All right.

There's a second for that motion. All right. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All right. So we'll go ahead and look at that Fairview item at the conclusion of our normal business tonight. Okay?

Thank you. We'll come back.

All right. Madam Clerk, are there any written communications this evening? no there are none all right thank you i want to describe the process for public input tonight there are going to be several opportunities for public input tonight there will be public input on our consent agenda which is the first thing that we'll discuss here there will be public input individually on the six different sets of recommendations from our planning commission so we'll hear those individually The only thing that's unusual about these planning and zoning items is that regarding the property issues, somebody could have signed up in advance for a 10-minute segment of time. We do have one of those. Then we'll have public input on our old and new business. And then at the conclusion of the night, we'll have public input on any item that was not on tonight's agenda. That's open mic night, effectively, here in City Hall. Public input is a three-minute opportunity except for that one 10-minute deviation that I mentioned. When you see the light in front of the clerk, it will turn green when you begin speaking. And at that point, just need to provide your name and place of residence at the beginning of your remarks. It'll turn yellow when you have 30 seconds remaining, and it will turn red when your three minutes is concluded. And I will thank you for your time with us tonight. During public input, you may feel any number of ways about the speaker who is at the podium, but your job is just to listen. And if you would like to speak, do so when it is your time. So no cheering, jeering, just listening. I think everybody's got that. All right. So hearing that, now is the time for public input on any item on the consent agenda. And those are items 1 through 20. So would any member of the public like to provide public input on any of those items that are on the consent agenda? Again, those are items 1 through 20. Now is that time. And again, just let us know your name and place of residence and the item to which you are speaking.

I'm Dr. Dan Roberts. I'm the executive director of Taylor Grady House National Historic Landmark, Inc. I would like to speak to item number 10. first of all i want to thank the mayor and the commission especially all of those who work very hard on creating community-based value criteria for us all to be monitored under we appreciate that we submitted our application and our application was reviewed favorably we're already collecting our data so thank you for doing that we also want to thank our commissioners that we met with to talk about our lease and what we were doing and planning to do at the Taylor Grady House as the nonprofit under that roof, and we are very appreciative of that. You should soon see some programming coming forward that would be very favorable to the community, and we're looking forward to sharing that with you. Also, I would like to extend my congratulations to Mayor Fischer in coming. We're happy to have you on board, and as we always say at Taylor Grady, welcome home. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I appreciate the opportunity to continue to work for Taylor Grady National Historic Landmark, Inc., and for the community. Thank you, Dr. Roberts.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak to any item that is on the consent agenda tonight? Again, those are items 1 through 20. 1 through 20. Those are the items on the consent agenda, items 1 through 20. Again, your name, place of residence, and the item to which you're speaking.

Mr. Mayor and Commissioners, I'm Kent Middleton, and I live at 195 Clyde Road. And I wanted to thank the Mayor and Commission for adopting the ordinance for accepting the Vision Zero Safety Action Plan Implementation Grant. This federal grant, if approved, will address dangerous road and pedestrian conditions. on Barnett-Scholes Road and the intersection of Barnett-Scholes Road and Gaines School Road on the east side and many other dangerous conditions across Clark County. I want to thank Stephen Bailey of Transportation Public Works and other department heads that submitted a successful grant proposal that produced a report identifying dangerous traffic and pedestrian hot spots across Clark County. This report allowed the Bailey Group to apply for implementation grant that you're approving tonight. It will allow the county to ameliorate some of the most dangerous conditions. Some of the work will save safety improvement dollars because some projects in the implementation grant overlap with voter-approved TSPLOS proposals to improve automobile, pedestrian, and bicycle safety. So TSPLOS money may then be freed up to be used for other safety projects.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Middleton.

Is there anyone else who'd like to speak to any of the consent agenda items? Again, those are 1 through 20 on our agenda tonight. Would any commissioner like to remove a consent agenda item for further discussion? All right. Seeing none, I want to go ahead and ask the attorney to read all the ordinances that are part of the consent agenda for us.

There's ordinances associated with the first eight agenda items. In order to amend the FY 2000, this is agenda item one, in order to amend the FY 2027 operating and capital budget for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, so as to provide grant funding if awarded from the Bureau of Justice Assistance for expenses related to the Comprehensive Opioid Stimulant and Substance Abuse Site-Based Program grant program and for other purposes. Ordinance number two, in order to amend the FY2027 annual operating capital budget for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, so as to provide grant funding if awarded to the police department from the U.S. Department of Justice through the 2025 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant for enhanced community outreach and improved communications and for other purposes. Ordinance number three, an ordinance to amend the FY2026 operating capital budget for the Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, so as to provide funding for an increase to the tax commissioner's salary supplement and for other purposes. Ordinance number four, an ordinance for the establishment of a yellow curbing on Atlanta Avenue between the intersections of Barber Street and Macon Avenue. Ordinance number five, agenda item number five, an ordinance for the establishment of yellow curbing on South Pope Street between the intersections of West Broad Street and Deering Street and for other purposes. Agenda item six, an ordinance to amend the FY2027 operating capital budget for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia so as to provide grant funding if awarded from the U.S. Department of Transportation safe streets for all grant for 2026 Vision Zero Safety Action Plan project. In item 7, an ordinance to amend the FY2026 operating capital budget for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, so as to provide funding for utility billing software for public utilities and for other purposes. And then agenda number eight, an ordinance to amend the FY2026 operating capital budget for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, so as to provide grant funding if awarded from the Georgia Department of Transportation, local maintenance improvement grant, LMIG to the University of Georgia, UGA for funding of the construction of a roundabout located at South Millage Avenue in the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.

Thank you, Attorney Drake. I appreciate that. Do I hear a motion for approval of the consent agenda items one through 20?

So moved. Second.

All right got a motion from Commissioner Link and a second from Commissioner Taylor. All in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right hearing none motion carries and the consent agenda is approved. All right we're going to move on to our six recommendations from the Athens-Clarke County Planning Commission. The first of these regards 1490 Witt Davis Road and so any member of the public could come to speak to this item at the podium. If you line right up we are ready for you. And again, just provide your name and place of residence. Hello.

I am Joseph Burns. I live in Waverly Woods right near 1490. So I knew the previous owner, Lori Dillard, for quite some time. We were good friends. And she, as a matter of fact, sent me this little letter that she'd like me to read. My family and I lived in this wonderful old home for almost 35 years. We would still be there if we had not experienced health problems that kept me from living there. As traumatic as all of this has been, selling the house, it broke my heart that someone else would be living there. We knew it was a possibility that would be divided up into smaller lots. The grand old home could be torn down. The pecan trees in my gardens and small ponds, et cetera, would be demolished. Enter my angels, Mark and Mindy. They honestly love that property as much as their heirs do. as much as I do. I know it could not be more in loving hands than the Berdahls. Their attention to detail is beyond anything I've seen. They are not about to do anything that would be detrimental to the property or the surrounding neighborhoods. They look forward to living in the area and will be nothing but an asset. Thank you. From my own personal perspective, I've known Mindy now for the better part of a year, completely support her ability to use the property with the new zoning.

Thank you. Could you spell your last name for me for the record? Burns, B-U-R-N-S. B-U-R-N-S. Thank you. I appreciate it, Mr. Burns.

Good evening. Good evening, Mayor and Commission. My name is Ed Lane with SPG Planners and Engineers, located at 1725 Electric Avenue. I'm here speaking as the applicant and, of course, also on behalf of the property owner, the Bridalls. And so in context of tonight's full agenda, I suppose this is a relatively small item for y'all and a rare down zone in land intensity and density. But for the homeowners, the Bredals who have been restoring this home for a better part of a year, as mentioned, It's a big decision. And so as you know in your packets, they're just asking for a rezone that better represents how this land has been for well over 100 years. So just trying to match the zoning to what that property is in order to protect it from eventually being developed down the road. So just here, if you have any questions, be glad to answer that, but do ask for your support tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lane.

My name is Brian Reber, R-E-B-E-R. I live at 195 Tamarack Drive in Waverly Woods. And I don't claim to speak for them, but I can tell you that nearly half of the residents of Waverly Woods wanted to be on a list serve to be kept aware of what was going on here because they expressed opposition to this. It was 40 some of 100 properties. I am asking for you to oppose this because, first of all, there are other ways to protect and preserve the property. It doesn't have to be an AR designation to protect the property. It can be something like a conservation easement. Despite the fact that this has been mentioned to the owners on May 2nd, on May 7th, and on July 2nd, there seems to be no openness to this, and I don't know why. Second, this requires a modification of the future land use map, which was only recently approved. Third, it does not enhance the surrounding property values. A public park might enhance our property values, but a private slash commercial park will not. Fourth, you need to protect, there's been the argument made that you need to protect the investment that the property owners have made and you also need to protect the investments of the surrounding RS-25 properties for the hundreds of families that they represent. rather than the special interest of a single family. This would be an AR in a C of RS. If you've looked at the map, and I'm sure you have, you can see how really odd it looks. Fifth. it will decrease the tax value of of uh... the property and six despite promises made by the owners and promises that i generally believe uh... i know that there's no guarantee that once this is this is rezone they are that's that the property wouldn't be sold because of an anticipated circumstances and then uh... than that Future owners may not have the same sort of positive civic mind. Seven, they can put another house on the property, especially if you approve what you're going to be talking about this evening. Eight, it's spot zoning, and there's generally opposition to spot zoning. And finally, the owners can really do what they want to do without rezoning. It may be harder, but it is possible. And so for those reasons, I would ask you to please vote against this. Thank you, Mr. Rapper.

Is there anyone else here to speak to this item before we move to commission action? Commissioner Davenport, this is in your district, so I'd ask you to place a motion on the floor for us tonight.

There's two votes. There's a vote for future land use and a vote for a rezone. All right, so make a motion for the future land use. Can I make a motion for the rezone first? Because there's conditions. Future land use first?

Yeah.

Because there's conditions on the rezone. A motion for the future land use to deny.

I'll second.

Is there a second?

Sorry.

All right. Remarks, Commissioner? No. All right. There's a motion from Commissioner Davenport. Any remarks, Commissioner Taylor? No, sir. Any others from member of the body? All right. We'll go ahead and have Attorney Drake read that ordinance.

Ordinance to amend the Code of Athens-Clarke County with respect to amending the future land use map of Athens-Clarke County by changing the designation of one process of land comprising approximately 9.4 acres located at 1490 Witt Davis Road. from single family residential to rule and for other purposes.

All right, we have a motion and a second on the floor. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed to the motion to deny?

No.

All right, please note Commissioner Link opposed to the motion. So motion carries nine to one. Correct. All right, Commissioner, would you like to make a motion on the rezoning?

Yeah, the motion to deny the rezone. all right i've got a motion to deny the rezoning from commissioner davenport second from commissioner taylor any remarks commissioner davenport it's this one was a very interesting um project and i respect the family for the work that they're doing um most can be achieved keeping it the pasta as it is it's a little bit more cumbersome but it protects the integrity of the surrounding area and and the neighborhoods. So if everyone takes a look at the condition that was placed on the property by the Planning Commission, the first one, the subject parcel of land shall meet the county requirement of RS-25. The second condition that the Planning Commission recommended was subject parcel of land shall meet the livestock limitation of RS-25. And then the third condition that the Planning Commission voted on, five to two, the following. The following land use shall be prohibited from having kennels, slaughterhouses, or any commercial use described as, you know, section 972, the code of Attaquah County. That's essentially an RS-25. So, you know, the Planning Commission, Approved it to turn into and they are but the condition they placed on the property It's this was the exact same as an RS 25.

So that's why I denied Commissioner Taylor any remarks Commissioner link.

Yeah, I I agree with the Planning Commission's recommendation on this primarily because um, you know by returning this to an AR property, it preserves the property. It is a historic home. It's historically a farm. The Planning Commission put these conditions on it to prevent it from being an intensive active farm that might disrupt the surrounding residential neighborhood. With that RS-25 zoning, future owners could come in there and bust up the property and turn it into a bunch of lots, tear down the house, tear down the other historic structures. I think this is a means of assuring that this remains a historic rural property.

Any other remarks Commissioner Myers?

Yeah, I just want to say that I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about this today and listening to the the Planning Commission meeting as well and there were two members of the committee who voted to deny the rezoning really for a lot of the reasons that Commissioner Davenport brought up and I ended up getting to that point myself because I saw that there were other ways that the historic nature of the property could be preserved. And it seemed as if it was mostly from the landowner, from the homeowner, a concern about what could happen after they had the property. makes things a little bit easier, perhaps to get through some, jump through some hoops, but the larger thing about retaining the nature of it had to do with more, with what would happen way after them, and yet there was a very strong commitment to keeping the property for a long, long time. So I ended up a little confused by that. Anyway, I just wanted to add a few remarks on that. I know Commissioner Davenport thought about this pretty intensely and we did have a lot of communication from neighbors as well.

Any other remarks? I'll have Attorney Drake read this ordinance.

In order to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia, with respect to rezoning one parcel of land comprising approximately 9.48 acres located at 1490 Witt Davis Road from RS-25 Single Family Residential to AR Agricultural Residential and for other purposes.

Thanks, Attorney Drake. Madam Clerk, we'll go ahead and do a roll call beginning with Commissioner Davenport.

Davenport? Yes. Link? No. Taylor? Yes. Wright?

Yes.

Fisher?

Yes to deny. It's a motion to deny. You're voting yes to deny.

Oh, okay. Yes, okay. Johnson?

Yes.

Culpepper. Yes. Myers. Yes, to deny. Thornton. Yes. Hamby. Yes. Nine to one. Yes.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. I appreciate it. All right, we're moving on to item number 22 on our agenda. This is the special use permit in the CO for 357 South Millage. So if anybody would like to speak to this item, now is that time.

Good evening. I am Mason Sphinx with Dovetail Civil Design. We are located at 3651 Mars Hill Road. We are the civil engineers and applicant on this project. Here with me tonight is also Katrina Evans, the architect, and Tripp Allen, a BYX representative. We are happy to address any questions that you may have. We also want to say that we appreciate your time and support on this project. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sphinx. Is there anyone else here to speak to this tonight? All right, seeing none, this is in District 4. Would you like to place a motion on the floor, Commissioner Wright?

Yes, I make a motion that we, let me check the notes here, that we approve the rezone and its request for special use is part of our ordinances related to the Greek use, and then the actual details will be going through the Historic Preservation Commission.

And so it would approve with the two variances?

With the two variances, yes. I'll second.

All right. Got a motion from Commissioner Wright, second from Commissioner Link. Commissioner Wright, any remarks?

No, I kind of already covered it when I did the motion.

Any follow-up?

I'm just glad to see this property getting restored and used.

Any others from members of the body? All right. I'll have Attorney Drake read the ordinance.

An ordinance to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia, with respect to special use approval in the CO Commercial Office District for one process of land located at 357 South Millage Avenue.

All right. All in favor of the motion that's on the floor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Hearing none, motion carries. All right. Moving on to item 23, which is 1960 Barnett Shoals Road. So is there anyone here to speak to this tonight? If you can, just provide your name and place of residence.

Yeah, my name's Jason Toole, 1031 C, West 23rd Street, Panama City, Florida. We are the engineers and architects for Chick-fil-A, and again, just here to, you know, happy to answer any questions you guys may have, and we appreciate support for the job.

Thank you, Mr. Toole. Is there anyone else here to speak to 1960 Barnett Shoals? 1960 Barnett Shoals.

all right it's in commission district eight commissioner myers yes i'm i'm here and uh when i listen to this again i realized i just said the same thing to say that i had last week when i was two weeks ago when i was speaking from afar but since i'm here in the room and i have the you just said you'd take any questions um i had brought up the small detail providing shade on those on those tables like you do at other places and so I know I didn't make an amendment or anything but since I've just thought I'd ask you now for the people of the east side of Athens so we have some can use those tables yeah I mean we're happy to add trees to that area if you want I mean they will have the umbrellas you know like well that's what I wanted to make sure yeah and the trees too I did talk to the planning director who said that you'd be talking about trees Um, and to do anything that you can to do to make that more hospitable to people being out there for longer periods.

Yeah, that would definitely have the, uh, typical like seat covering umbrellas that you would normally have on like the outdoor seating. But yeah, I mean, we're happy to add trees as well if that's what the commission would like.

That, that would be wonderful. That would be wonderful. But, um, But anyway, thanks a lot for that. That's the only thing I have. And in fact, for those of you who aren't over there, the change you made where you block the exit out onto the entry road has really made a tremendous difference in the flow of traffic. you would normally never think that customers were so loyal that they would go into an interior road to enter the fast-food restaurant but that seems to be the case and in this case I think having the green space rather than an abandoned building not changing the parking is is a better option than what's there so I'm making a motion to approve this

All right. There's a motion to approve from commissioner Myers. Is there a second second from Mr. Taylor? All right. Uh, commissioner Taylor, any follow up remarks?

Yes. Um, I'm excited, um, about. them turning this into a parking lot. I go into that shopping center every day. And so I see like Burger King is not working anymore. So I think that this would be a good transition along with the library that's about to come online. So it's going to be a whole thing on the east side. I'm very excited about it.

Any further remarks? Commissioner Link.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate Commissioner Meyer's concern about the trees. I want to ask the applicant to please add some decent shade trees in that little green space. Not just for shade, but, you know, the shade trees can help clear the pollution. It's on a busy corridor. It'll cool the air. I think it's just real important. It also slows traffic. There are legitimate studies that having decent street trees and shade trees will help slow traffic. So I think that can really benefit the whole corridor quite a bit.

Any further remarks about 1960 Barnard Shoals Road from commissioners? All right. We have a motion and a second. I'm going to have Attorney Drake read the ordinance.

In ordinance to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia, with respect to special use approval in the CG Commercial General District for one parcel of land located at 1960 Barnett Shoals Road and for other purposes.

Thanks, Attorney Drake. All right. Motion and a second is on the floor. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries unanimously. All right. Item 24 is regarding 1125 Newton Bridge Road, and we do have... Mr. Buck Bacon signed up for the 10-minute time, so I'll call Mr. Bacon and his kind of fellow 10-minute participant who we're going to share the 10 minutes to the podium.

Awesome. Thank you, guys. Good evening. My name is Buck Bacon with WA Engineering. Our office is located at 355 Oneida Street here in Athens, Georgia. And I represent Four Star Real Estate Group, the developer of Newton Bridge Crossing at 1125 Newton Bridge Road. We are requesting an amendment to condition five of the original rezone. The revised condition would allow Four Star to plat, construct, and obtain certificates of occupancy of the homes that are proposed in phase one of the project prior to completion of the offsite intersection improvements. In exchange, Four Star would provide a performance bond to Athens-Clarke County for the cost of those offsite intersection improvements, guaranteeing that the improvements would be completed. The amended condition also requires that that bond be in place prior to the approval of the final plat for phase one. and that the improvements be completed and accepted prior to the final plat approval for phase two. This amendment allows Four Star to deliver approximately 62 new single family homes to the market while providing the financial guarantee that the offsite improvements will be completed in a timely manner. Four Star fully intends to begin construction of these offsite improvements as soon as the newly engineered intersections are approved and permitted. In fact, they've already submitted the performance bond to Transportation and Public Works for review this week. Uh, staff and the planning commission, uh, recommend approval. And so, uh, likewise, uh, we're asking for your approval this evening. I appreciate your time and, uh, respectfully request your support and, uh, please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Is there anyone else here to speak to Newton bridge road? All right. If we have questions along the way, we'll, we'll call you up. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Um, this is in, uh, district nine, uh, commissioner Thornton. Do you have a motion for this item?

I make, I make a motion to approve this item. All right.

I've got a motion from commissioner Thornton and a second from commissioner Taylor Thornton. Any further remarks? No. Mr. Taylor.

Um, 62 single family houses is what Athens needs. And so I feel like as long as it's in writing and that there is a guarantee that they're going to put the roundabout, that they should be able to continue to work to get housing on the ground.

Thanks, Commissioner. Any further remarks from members of the body? All right. I'm going to go ahead and have Attorney Drake read this ordinance.

In order to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia, with respect to modifying certain conditions of zoning associated with a parcel of land comprising approximately 137.7 acres and located at 1125 Newton Bridge Road and for other purposes.

Thanks, Attorney Drake. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. All right, and we have on our agenda two text amendments. 25 is the first up regarding secondary dwelling units. If anybody would like to speak to this item, you can go ahead and line up at the podium. Good evening.

Hi, my name is Lyda, L-I-D-A, Waugh, W-A-U-G-H. I live at 505 Ponderosa Drive in Cedar Creek, Athens, Georgia. I'm wanting to address the idea of secondary dwellings on any properties. I find it ironic in a way that this other property on Whit Davis has just been approved to remain as a single family. and yet you're thinking about allowing people on much smaller properties to build additional dwellings. This does not preclude people having, people have built additions, garage apartments, et cetera, over time. I grew up here, my family moved here in 1960 from Rome, Georgia, so I'm, I'm an Athenian, but I do think that the nature of all of our variety of neighborhoods needs to be preserved. You also need to look at the infrastructure. Many of the neighborhoods on our side, on the east side of town, Cedar Creek, Green Acres, University Heights are all kind of hilly. We have problems with flooding when we have heavy rains. We have a lot of problems with power outages on our side of town. Our streets in Cedar Creek are constantly being torn up because of water lines having to be dug up and redone. So any additional dwellings, especially additional dwellings that are going to obviously require plumbing, electricity, gas, all of those things added, that further impacts the infrastructure of the neighborhoods. It also means taking out trees, all of those other kinds of things. We as property owners are also essentially taxed for all paved areas that impact water runoff, and so when you start adding secondary dwellings, no matter what their size is, typically people are going to allow for parking, et cetera, for those additional paved areas. That also is going to impact the water runoff into our natural creeks and reservoirs in the neighborhoods. So I really think, I'm not saying that people can't, I understand a lot of people are looking at multi-generational housing now, whether it's kids who come back home to live or grandparents or whatever. But I think there needs to be a way to look at perhaps adding on, adding up, but not necessarily impacting the land use of individual lots, especially if they're only about less than half an acre. That really is, and also any A lot of the neighborhoods in Cedar Creek and, sorry. Thank you, Ms. Quah. Appreciate your time with us tonight. Okay, thank you.

Good evening.

I'm John Wares. I'm from 280 Cherokee Avenue in Five Points. I'm also an Athenian. I've been here long enough, I guess. I'm speaking on the issue of ADUs. I have no problem with ADUs being added to a property. People worry about the changed character of their neighborhood or their yard or their view. I've seen my Five Points neighborhood changed by homes replaced by mansions. dwarfing neighbors, destroying stream habitat, changing runoff, changing our wooded habitat, and constructing imposing, quote, single-family homes that dwarf the ones around them. So as far as I'm concerned, somebody having an extra unit in their backyard doesn't affect me any more, any less than somebody building a very large mansion right next to me. And that's what's happening in Five Points, and it's happening in other neighborhoods. So as far as I'm concerned, let people choose what to do with their property. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wears. Good evening.

Evening, Mayor and Commission. Tim Denson, reside at 483 Quailwood Drive. Speaking to item number 25, the accessory dwelling units, the secondary dwellings, we need to be very clear when we're talking about this. This agenda item does not allow secondary dwellings to be built. I hope that we all understand this. That can and is already happening. Currently though, they can only be built in a way that allows and benefits short term rentals and people who don't live in Athens to have a place to stay when they come and visit. This policy does make a change though, where those buildings can legally be used for Athenians, people who live here, to live as a permanent residence here. So if we're trying to find solutions to housing, bring down the costs, make more housing available to more people who live here already, this is honestly the lowest hanging fruit we can have. I myself, we have an in-law suite at my home for my in-laws, but we can't have a kitchen in there for them. That's ridiculous. This would fix that. So let's please take some common sense changes here and make sure that we have a policy that doesn't just benefit, again, short term rentals and people wanting to visit Athens, but actually benefits the people who live here and gives people a place to live. Similarly, on item number 26, the minimum dwelling unit size, this is something that we should have taken steps a long time ago to allow tinier homes here so that people can have a smaller footprint where they live. So I hope that that one passes also. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Danson. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Keyla Singleton, and I live in Athens-Clarke County. Commissioner Myers said recently that she'd like to hear from younger working residents who are living with today's housing market. And I'm here because I'm one of those residents. My husband and I have lived in Athens for well over a decade. We rented in Boulevard. We've rented in Normaltown. Before buying our home just outside of Normaltown, I live at 345 Nottingham Drive. Sorry for not addressing that immediately. We built our lives here. We volunteer here. I serve on local community boards and we've spent years investing our time and energy into this community because we care deeply about where Athens is headed. Professionally, I work in residential real estate. My husband has spent years working in Athens hospitality industry. Between the two of us, we see both sides of this issue every day. People trying to buy homes and people wondering if they'll ever be able to afford one. I'm also not here to speculate about the what-ifs surrounding ADUs because they already exist, as Tim just said. I'm here to point out that ADUs already exist in Athens and they have for decades. They provide housing for renters, aging parents, adult children, young professionals, and families while giving homeowners additional flexibility and income. Most importantly, they have done all of that without destroying neighborhoods they already exist in. I've heard concerns about accessory dwelling units being a threat to the neighborhood character, but garage apartments, carriage houses, and basement apartments have existed throughout Athens, including in some of our most beloved neighborhoods. They haven't destroyed Five Points, they have not destroyed Normaltown, and they have not destroyed East Athens. They've simply become part of the fabric of those communities. Some of the commissioners and public servants participating in this discussion know firsthand the value of an ADU and what can that experience and how much value that adds to their property. I hope that experience helps inform a policy that gives homeowners the opportunity to make the same responsible choice. I don't think the question before you is whether Athens can coexist with ADUs because it already does. The real question is why some homeowners are allowed the opportunity simply because their ADU was built decades ago. Well, the real question in my mind is why some homeowners are allowed the opportunity simply because their ADU was built decades ago, while today's homeowners are told they shouldn't have the same opportunity. I don't think it's just that whether you can have an ADU depends on whether someone happened to build one 40 years ago. Good policy should not depend on luck, and it should not depend on your opportunity based off of decades ago and rules that were made decades ago. If these homes are compatible with our neighborhoods today, why are they suddenly incompatible tomorrow? We all agree that Athens has a housing challenge. The university continues to grow, the health science campus continues to expand. This proposal does not eliminate single family neighborhoods, and if we're willing to support one of the smallest, most incremental ways to add housing, then I think it's fair to ask what solutions are we willing to support, and I feel like this is a pretty easy one. Athens has always been a city that values creativity, practicality, and community, and I hope you'll extend those same values to our housing policies.

Thank you, Ms. Singleton. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. Robert Foster, 350 Pine Forest Drive. I'm here to talk about ADUs as well. In 2008, when I graduated in another city with a PhD, I came out into a market that didn't have jobs, and I got fired from another one. And one of the easiest things that helped me be stable during that time period was a secondary dwelling unit in the backyard of a friend of mine. And I think that it is, in this conversation, it is one of the easiest things that we can do to provide an opportunity for people who are lower income, out of work for some period of time, to have a place to stay for some period of time, to get back on their feet, just like it worked for me in 2008, in another place, in another time. I live on Pine Forest Drive, and somebody bought a house caddy corner for me and flipped it and made it into an Airbnb, and it's very popular during the University of Georgia football season. I was not particularly pleased with this event. On the other hand, as it turns out, parking hasn't been a problem, noise hasn't been a problem. It has been a problem every once in a while when a student's parents realize that we live across the street and they want to come visit us, but that's still okay. I think what we're doing here with secondary dwelling units actually adds to housing opportunities as opposed to flipping houses and making the Airbnbs in my neighborhood. I'm much more pleased with that opportunity and I'd rather deal with parking and other issues, tax issues and other things related to that than people flipping houses and UGA fans coming in parking category corner from my house and enjoying themselves on the weekend as much as we enjoy seeing them. So I hope that we'll accept the changes to the policy and move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foster.

Good evening.

Good evening. Joan Roden, item 25, secondary dwellings opens the door, allows full second homes with kitchens on every single family lot. How many of you have dug deep enough to know what these specific ideations, three different ones in the past three days, that's going on in this particular text amendment? Also, vote number one passes, secondary dwellings are legal. Your neighbor on a standard R8 lot can now legally build a second full home in their backyard, complete with kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and its own front deck. Your block used to have 10 single family homes, now every one of those 10 lots can add a second unit. Your block could eventually have up to 20 households. This is a hidden agenda, and if you've not dug deep enough, you should have. The hidden agenda that has taken place throughout the ADU amendment process has been appalling. The veiled attempt to create a change to the single family RS designation has created quite a stir. With the numerous iterations of these amendments, some changes made six hours before the meeting is grounds enough to call for tabling scrapping and calling it a day on this lively attempt. These changes and the lack of communication between organized committees, mayor and manager give absolutely no trust in this process. Gick tried valiantly. I know because I was there for several of the meetings, especially supporting Benny Coleman's proposal for 100 new manufactured homes. Creating a zone change from the dust of the ground is a genesis miracle in itself. I have to give Commissioner Thornton credit for taking the bait. Manager Cowell tried to salvage it with his intervention at the July 21 meeting. Kudos for speaking up in an honest and transparent manner, more transparency than we see in most of these meetings. But it made it all clear that these ADUs, under any name you give them, Any name you give them. And RS zone changes were not ready for prime time. It should have never been put on the agenda. So who put it there, I ask? Who put this on the agenda? The last straw was to make multiple changes right under the noses of the public, the commissioners, and anyone willing to ask the right questions. This is not only sad, it should be ethical malfeasance. Scrap these amendments tonight. Make it clear that this deep well was too much for this little quick draw. It was not necessary for it to pass under this administration, or was it? It was a really bad optic for an outgoing mayor. Let's put this to bed right now. We can revisit it when we wake up January 2027.

Thank you, Ms. Roden. Folks, we've got a lot of folks to get to, so if you just listen while you're here in the room, I appreciate that. Good evening.

Good evening. I'm David Paul Lamar. I live at 148 Fox Hall Trail. And seeing how these things can affect where we live and the property values and things like that. And the perspective does mean a lot. You know, if things start changing, you can say, well, these are the other, you know, garage apartments and all. They've been there for years, so that's not changing the perspective. But if you start adding things in, that can make a difference. I feel like this is designed to remove the voice of the people in zone planning in the future. And it could... It's really intending to install an unstated agenda. I believe that's where we're heading into that, that item number one. We're just speaking to number one right now, right? It's item number 25. 25. Okay. Item number two, then on that local minimum size floor replaced with an international property maintenance code. What does this mean? that our bar is set by the minimum that somebody can survive with in a third world nation. That's where we're going. Why can't we continue with the standard that shows how somebody can live comfortably and really healthily? So I think we ought not to change that. It shouldn't be changed. And then these two need to be put together. They haven't been seen together. They need to be put together because one impacts the other, and they need to be considered that way, and I think we need to set them on the back shelf until we get in with the new administration and see how this can move forward. Everyone loses, if we go through this way it is right now, the right to a single-family neighborhood. It's going to disappear. The assurance that new units near them would meet community standards, there's no assurance of that. There's no assurance that increased density would be accompanied by proportional investments in roads, sewer, water, and schools. The basic requirement of transparent democratic government being told what the government is actually doing before it does it, we need to know that beforehand. Georgia Takings Law sets a high bar for comparable regulatory takings. The homeowner who loses neighborhood character through the process has no straightforward remedy. Please combine items one and two into a single ordinance that a combined public notice may be issued, that a combined public hearing may be held at the next available meeting, and that the combined impact of both amendments on minimum unit size in RS zones be included in the staff report presented to the public. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Parlamark. Good evening.

Mayor and commissioners, my name is Kent Middleton. I live at 195 Clyde Road and I'm head of the Green Acres Crestwood Community Association. Tonight I support the commission defined option barring ADUs in existing homesteaded properties but allowing them in new developments. This is essentially the position of the board of the Green Acres Crestwood Community Association as we sent to you just before your last meeting and sent you a Statute requiring homeownership As in Gwinnett County With owner-occupied Housing. It allows for the grandma suites for the daughters to come and daughters and sons and help their parents in aging. It provides for some rental income for people that might need it. but it does not allow for rampant commercialism or student takeovers. So we suggest that at least one of the properties must be owner occupied. As Bruce Lonnie has frequently said, the ADUs are among us, and indeed they are. You see them in Five Points and the garage apartments as been pointed out earlier tonight. We have several in Green Acres. In one, the senior in the household lives in the ADU, and the daughter and her family live in the main house, and then the reverse in another ADU. I'm not sure that the ADU issue has been presented too well by the government. uh... i was on the future land use committee and uh... the uh... future land use map left the single family neighborhoods pretty much untouched protected uh... as they are the uh... and we were told repeatedly that uh... growth of thirty thousand new residents in clark county by twenty forty five would be absorbed largely if not exclusively but largely on the corridors and the nodes, the town centers, not in neighborhoods. And of course, adding ADUs will not greatly accommodate a lot of new residents in any case. So I suggest you send this back. Ask that the commission-defined option be adopted. and receive more input from the community and work out the details about parking and enforcement and setbacks. Thank you, Mr. Middleton. Thank you very much.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. I am Mickey Chastain. I am at 105 Lakeover Drive. Very grateful to be here. I speak in favor of, I guess, ADUs or backyard cottages or whatever we're calling them. I very much speak in favor of these options for our community. uh... as an option for affordable housing to address our housing crisis uh... in particular for i do appreciate the ideas of protections in place against outside investors and uh... protecting uh... for uh... for those who are owner occupied homes uh... but i want to point out that at this moment in front of the planning commission is a proposal to put a bunch of mobile homes and this was something that was mentioned a little earlier out uh... in country corners in pinewood And everyone's touting that as a solution to the housing crisis. And the folks out there, primarily black and brown communities out there, are complaining and saying, what about parking and what about traffic issues? And I think I would like to mention the idea that if we're going to address the housing crisis in this county, we cannot continue to expect to solve these problems on the shoulders of our black and brown communities. These single family residents and communities, as we've just been reminded, are so well protected and majority white. For those of us especially who live in these communities whose land is protected from any additional mobile homes being brought in, we need to be aware that if you're going to live in Athens-Clarke County, Reaching solutions to the housing crisis will be shared by all of our residents. It is a privilege to live here. It is a crisis for our county. We need to share the burden and not expect it to all be solved on the most vulnerable communities as we have so often done in our past. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chastain. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. My name is Jonathan Parrish, and I am a resident of District 5 at 105 Westchester Drive, and I'm speaking tonight in the affirmative for ADUs. I have lived in Athens for nine years now, and I have been a renter here in Athens for that entire time. And in that time, I have watched rent prices across this county steadily rise with no end in sight. I have lived on the east side, I have lived on the west side, and that's not because I necessarily like one part of town better than the other, but it's because I routinely see my rent increase and then I have to move. And then I see that rent increase and then I have to move. And it's already happening where so many people are already getting pushed out of Athens-Clarke County. And we're seeing it first with lower income people and communities of color. And I just wonder where that stops. And in these nine years, I have heard a lot about how local governments only have so much power. These are issues that are larger than Athens-Clarke County. They are nationwide. Athens-Clarke County only has so many options on the table and so many tools in its toolbox. And so that's why I'm here tonight, because this is one of the tools that is in this community's toolbox. This is something that is within our community's power to actually be able to have an impact. And that's something that I don't think we see enough. And while I hear a lot of people having concerns about their property values and what it may or may not do. I think I'm speaking for most of the renters here where we don't have properties to worry about the values of. What we do have to worry about is our rents and how much are those going to increase and how are we going to tackle the affordable housing crisis that we are seeing? And so I hope that the commission will keep all of these people in mind as they are making their votes tonight, because there are real lives that will be impacted by this. It's not just another item on the ticket. It's one of... I've seen the only solutions that's been proposed to actually start to tackle this crisis. It won't solve it overnight I know but at least start to chip away at something that's been festering in this community for years. Thank you Thank you.

Let me get your name again for the writer. Yes, Jonathan Parrish. All right. Thank you. Mr. Parrish. Thank you Good evening Good evening

I want to speak on items 25 and 26. My name is Michael McClendon, 201-9 Hamilton Road. I'm the president of the Princeton Middle Town Homeowners Association. I want to make three quick points, and then I want to summarize a few things. First of all, I do not doubt the sincerity of folks who are looking for affordable housing. affordable housing is what you can afford our members of second lieutenant there were a lot of things i couldn't afford to in terms terms of housing so i don't doubt that but what i am concerned about is marketing these text amendments as somehow you know being the salvation for affordable housing is really kind of a canard and it creates uh... emotional appeal and it creates people's expectations but there's no evidence to support that it would do anything to affordable housing. Second thing is to remind you that we're the smallest geographical county in the state of Georgia. we have one of the highest population densities in the state of georgia and everyone wants to live inside the loop ten donut or right around the outside of the donut and that density is even higher the third point is i said each one of you email with two attachments that had a detail analysis of these two proposed text amendment proposals only one commissioner open that that email and documents, which tells me that none of you have done your homework. So let me get to a few things. First, you need to kill these two proposed text amendments and any associated CDOs, then terminate all policy initiatives to liberalize secondary homes and ADUs. The CDO is just another way of getting the camel's nose under the tent, make the public feel like you're doing something, while you kick the can back to the Planning Commission and bring all of this back again when nobody's paying attention to do what it is you want. We're not gonna allow that to happen. We're gonna watch it every step of the way. The old saying that the devil is in the details is certainly true here. If you had read the email that I sent in the detail analysis, you would know that. But in brief, item 25 opens the door to full second homes with kitchens on single family parcels. And item 26 replaces ACC's size standard with an emergency standard as small as 150 square feet. I suggest a more appropriate title for your plan would be the Super Tiny Home Ordinance. Commissioners, it's time for you to draw a line in the sand in 2026 to stop the assault on single-family homeowners and our quality of life. Thank you, Mr. McClendon.

Good evening. Good evening. Hello. My name is Edward Kelly. I live in Athens, Georgia. Thank you for listening to all of us tonight. I think the objective of these changes is to alleviate the affordable housing situation, and that's commendable and a caring line of thought. However, my basic question is, will it work? I don't think it will. From a supply and demand standpoint, I don't think there's a way to build and create enough new housing in the city for it to make a real difference. Sure, there will be some ADUs built by current homeowners for the mother-in-law or their niece, but without a doubt, investors and builders will see an opportunity to add to their income-generating portfolio, and I'm certainly not anti-capitalist. Property owners and landlords will charge what the market will bear and not keep their rents low out of the goodness of their heart. It seems that the only real way to reduce housing costs would be to rent control or government-owned housing, and neither of those are going to work. Even if the building of more housing can be incentivized through tax breaks, tax credits, and other methods, once the housing is built, builders and investors will charge the market price. Thus, if we're going to address the affordable housing, it should be a policy that will actually work. Unfortunately, there's no easy answer, but why enact these policies that seem to have negative effects on our existing populace? The affordable housing mess is a national issue, not strictly for Clark County. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Good evening. Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Eric Sanderson. I live at 115 Summerwood Place in District 2. I'm here tonight to express my strong support for Agenda Items 25 and 26, in particular on the ordinance regarding secondary dwellings. Athens is needing more housing. ADUs are one step forward in that goal. They are a more affordable, accessible form of housing that can be built and financed by homeowners. They are a way for Athens citizens to age in place, to downsize without losing access to their neighborhood and their current community. And fundamentally, ADUs are not some scary new change to Athens, as we've heard from other people tonight. ADUs are already built throughout Athens. They're part of what makes our neighborhoods vibrant and diverse. you know, they're a draw to what we already want to see in our neighborhoods. You know, I've heard concerns that this change could increase development pressures in some neighborhoods, but I think those pressures are already here, you know, rents are already going up, people are already being displaced, people in Athens are already being priced out, so I don't think we should be taking any potential solution off the table. Any unit we can build is another unit that an Athens resident can live in. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sanderson.

Good evening.

Hi. My name is Catherine Haar, and I've lived at 275 Willow Run for about 10 years. Now I'm from New Orleans, but I often say that I'm from the future, the housing future. That is because I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the most expensive housing market in America. I had roommates until I was 34. I worked at nonprofits. I didn't have a lot of money. I ran a rental assistance program at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. My husband started his own business. We made about 60% of the area median income, but we bought a house. Did you all know that when you buy a single family home with a little rental cottage in the back, part of that rental income counts towards your income to qualify for a mortgage? and helps you pay for that house? I just wanted to ask y'all today to listen to the experts. Not only are we gonna maybe be able to keep a couple of our artists and musicians that we love so much in town, maybe not lower the rents, but maybe stabilize them. But also, there'll be couples like me and Josh that can buy a home that couldn't otherwise do it because it has a little bit of rental income. And I think you should think about that too. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Farr. Good evening.

Hi, I'm Susanna Caritasas. I'm running for state house district one 20. Hi y'all. Um, I agree with the planning commission recommendation for 25 and 26. Uh, Athens is having, is having an affordability crisis. Like most of the state. If you talk to anyone that lives in Georgia, they will say that is their number one issue. And, uh, we have to address that. And this seems like low hanging fruit that we could just, you know, let people have, which is why I support the language to the ADUs. Lowering the minimum square footage for a housing unit would allow us to build more tiny homes, allow more people to live in Clark County, and would allow young people to own homes faster. I also agree with allowing the ADUs to have stoves. Thanks, y'all.

Thank you, Ms. Caritasis. Good evening.

Hi, my name is Kristen Morales. I live at 338 Satula Avenue. I serve as the chair of the ACC Planning Commission and member of the Creative Housing Options Subcommittee, which you all requested several months back. But I'm here tonight in my capacity as an Athens resident and owner of a property that our current codes see as incompatible. My request is that you see the benefits to allowing fully equipped backyard cottages or attached yet separate living spaces rather than the currently allowed guest cottages. The question before you today isn't whether our single-family neighborhoods should become apartment districts. They shouldn't. Instead, the question is whether one modest additional home on a residential lot fundamentally changes the character of a neighborhood. Many of the neighborhoods we treasure today got that way through gradual incremental change. Basement apartments, garage apartments, and backyard cottages are part of that story. For example, my house was built around 1915 as a two-bedroom cottage. But by the end of World War II, the owners built a basement apartment and, throughout the following decades, it was home to two and sometimes three families. In fact, when housing was in short supply after World War II, houses across Athens and the country responded by gently accommodating more people, tucking them into basement apartments, above garages, or into backyard cottages. That history matters because it reminds us that modest changes in homes did not erase the character of our neighborhoods. The question before you today is not about labels like single family zoning. Rather, we're discussing how to thoughtfully allow smaller homes within our neighborhoods. Cities across the country have now lived with these policies for years, and in each, we see permits increase only slightly, with most units built by owner-occupants rather than developers. Even with these proposed changes, most homeowners won't build an accessory dwelling because construction is expensive, financing is difficult, and many properties simply aren't suitable. The experience of other communities has consistently shown that. That said, homes like mine have quietly provided housing for more than one family for generations without changing the character of the neighborhood. I believe other homeowners should have the opportunity to do the same. Accessory dwelling units are not the answer to every housing challenge, but they are a valuable option that strengthens housing choice without changing neighborhood character. Let's not close the door on giving homeowners another way to care for aging parents, help adult children get started, create a modest rental, or simply make better use of the homes they already have. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Morales. Good evening. Hello.

My name is Sam Stabler. I live at 228 Cleveland Avenue in the Newtown area. I'm in Ms. Thornton's district. I'm here to speak in favor of the ADU amendment. I'm a teacher. I teach at UGA in the art school. I'm an artist and I'm a home builder. I have a small design build construction company. We mainly restore old homes, but we do ground up build. told you all during the agenda setting three, four examples of real citizens who wanted to add small accessory units to accommodate their ADA needs as they aged in place, to accommodate their daughter fleeing an abusive relationship in order to not evict his best friend who was living in his place, and myself, who would like to add some rental income to my property because I I built my house two years ago in the most expensive time ever to build a house and I could use some additional income. Today I want to sort of address some of the patent untruths that are being spread in the opposition to this. There's this weird theory that adding square footage which is taxable, valuable land is going to decrease your property value. This is 100% false. Free economics prove this. If they were arguing that this was not going to address the affordability issue, I would say, well, OK, maybe there's an argument there that it's not really going to do that much. But the idea that it's going to decrease your value is disproven by every market in America. OK, guys, we are so far behind the curve or eight ball, whatever metaphor we want to use here, when it comes to addressing the affordability crisis within housing, that we have the silver lining is we can look at other municipalities who've already done this and see how it's impacting them. The state of California, the entire state, and the entire state of Massachusetts have allowed ADUs, by right, everywhere in the state. Single family still exists, still pretty nice places to live. The state of North Carolina, the state of Texas are getting ready to pass the same legislation. The state of Georgia, we have Macon, we have Savannah, still pretty nice places to live. Last I checked, those are still getting more and more expensive. They are not devaluing. Durham. Gainesville, in Gainesville, Florida, that has the University of Florida, can't hold that against them. What they allow is not one, but two ADUs on their property. That is the most comparable situation to what we have here. Guys, we need housing. Young people need housing. This is a tiny, tiny reform that will allow homeowners who are the most responsible landlords out there to add to their property. Please allow this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stable.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Steven Jaques. I live at 150 Breckenridge Lane in District 5. First, let me thank my wife, who is getting our kids fed and in bed tonight. Young families are underrepresented at these meetings, but we could really benefit from these zoning reforms. My wife and I recently bought our first home. We're frugal folks in our mid-30s. We have master's degrees and professional public sector jobs. We're not officially housing burdened, yet the cost of housing has imposed painful trade-offs nonetheless. The market says we got a fair deal, even a slight discount. Yet, this very same house was 60% cheaper just six years ago. If we had bought in 2020, even at today's interest rates, our monthly mortgage would be $1,800 less than it is today. Imagine. That $1,800 could grow our family or actually save for retirement. It could buy in our old school zone so that our son could continue attending with his best friend. And what do you say to my five-year-old? Sorry, kid. You can't go to school with your best friend because someone's afraid of on-street parking or a new starter home next door. son if we build new homes for your family you might change the character this neighborhood and we can't have that so the law says you've got to go I tell you this not to say, woe is me, but to show that the housing crisis is bigger than folks with no roof over their head. Yes, it's homelessness, but it's also the quiet strain on family finances, foregone opportunities, and settling for less. 83% of our residential land is owned exclusively for big single family homes. No backyard cottages, no starter homes, and certainly no apartments. In other words, we don't permit the variety of homes we need within our existing neighborhoods to allow everyone the opportunity to find the right amount of home at the right price as their age, finances, and household needs change. You can find backyard cottages, garage apartments, and starter homes throughout our most popular and pricey neighborhoods. We're just asking to re-legalize them. My grandfather attended UGA while living in the spare bedroom of a lady on Lumpkin Street. He got a cheap place to live, close to everything he needed, and she got extra income, a win-win. What could these options do for us? My family would use a secondary suite to help pay our mortgage while providing a home for a young teacher or a med student or an aging parent, making cookies with the grandkids instead of wasting away alone. In closing, I ask you not to mangle these bills with special conditions. They've already been vetted by a table of experts, skeptics, and advocates alike. Please, don't punish thousands of people with expensive housing and denied opportunity because someone somewhere might do something annoying. These bills aren't silver bullets, but they are meaningful steps in the right direction, so let's pass them tonight just as they are. Let's say yes to more housing choices for regular folks. Let's say no to fear and exclusion. Let's say yes to Cookies with Grandma.

Thank you, Mr. Jackwees.

I'm for Cookies with Grandma. Are y'all?

Good evening.

Hi, Mayor and Commissioners. My name is Dan Lorenz. I live at 157 Grady Avenue in the Boulevard neighborhood. In my view, the main reason to support moving forward with less restrictive secondary dwelling ordinance is so that more of us can use our own property to do things like provide a place of their own for parents who are to downsize to. Give a brother or a sister or a friend or a neighbor who is struggling a separate space to get back on their own two feet. helping a returning college grad save up a little money, offer a little bit more privacy and hospitality to visiting friends and family, and supplement our income to help us stay in the neighborhood we love. That's the main reason, to give ourselves the ability to do more things like that. There are other benefits too, including a modest expansion of available, relatively affordable housing, and a modest increase in property tax revenue. But really, for me at least, the main reason is to give ourselves another tool to create stronger families, stronger neighborhoods. To help more of us have this power, I'd encourage the Mayor and Commission to have the Planning Commission create pre-approved pattern books for secondary dwelling buildings and to find ways to increase access for low-income homeowners to financing for home additions, home repairs, and secondary dwellings. Of course, a less restrictive secondary dwelling is just one thing we need to be doing on the housing front, but it's a nuance that will help us build better, more caring, stronger neighborhoods over time. Why not move forward now? How long can a simple change like this take? Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Laurent. Good evening.

Good evening. Happy Tuesday, y'all. My name is Joe Levine. I live at 464 Forest Heights Drive in District 5. I'm here today to speak in favor of items 25 and 26 regarding secondary dwellings and minimum dwelling size. I believe it is our community's responsibility to do all that we can to create safe and affordable housing for everyone, with most attention going to our working class, low income, and unhoused neighbors. I'm grateful to see that our local government and its partners have been making efforts to utilize different tools to create more affordable housing, including the Affordable Housing Fund, ARPA, HOME, CDBG, SPLOST, and more. I'm also grateful to see that in the FY27 budget, goal area number four, for quality, stable, affordable housing for all, it is a priority to implement recommendations from the disparity study, specifically with regard to construction and A&E contractors. I'm very pleased that this body sees the opportunity to marry affordable housing with economic development. We need affordable housing for everyone, and we need good jobs for everyone. So we're saying, let's pay local minority builders to build affordable housing for our neighbors. Now to really make that effective, there's a lot that goes into that, of course. But these zoning amendments that are before you today are two pieces of the puzzle to make it easier for that to happen, for local builders to build affordable housing. Now, I do empathize with people who look at any zoning policy and want to make sure it doesn't have the effect of displacing low-income people, especially in historically black neighborhoods where this has happened far too much, due in large part to the fact that unfortunately at this point in our history, housing is a commodity that people with money use to make more money. My response to that is that these zoning policies give us two more tools to create affordable units, which will help our working class and low income neighbors. Also, once passed, we have the opportunity to support low income homeowners in building their own secondary dwellings. There is a program in Charlotte, for example, that gives homeowners interest-free loans to build a secondary dwelling on their property as long as they rent it out at an affordable rate once it's built. That could be a practical use of the affordable housing fund to create more affordable housing and support low-income homeowners at the same time. Overall, these two zoning policies are a small part of the puzzle, but they are still important pieces in providing affordable housing to everyone in Athens. So I urge you to support these efforts as proposed.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lalonde. Good evening.

Good evening, my name is Joshua Cloudy, 167 Talley Crossing, currently Commissioner Thornton's District, formerly Commissioner Johnson's District. I'm here to speak in favor of both the secondary dwelling as well as the minimum lot size. For four years, between the ages of 24 and 28, I lived in a 660 square foot, we called them little back houses where I lived. It was two bedrooms, although I lived there alone, so the second bedroom was a little living room, bathroom, little kitchen dining together. I paid $800 a month for those four years between 2020 and 2024, when we all know rent was crazy expensive, $650 less than any of my friends who lived in townhouses or other forms of housing. The person who lived in the main house was not the owner occupant. They were also renting that house. Um, the landlord lived diagonally across the street. Um, it was a great opportunity for me to live in a multi-generational neighborhood, single family homes, older retirees. young families. We had a little park right across the street. I walked north to campus a couple blocks. I walked east to our coffee shop. There was a great little bakery. If you ever go to Lubbock, Texas, there's a great little bakery called Brulee. All of these things I was able to have as a 24- to 28-year-old because of this little back house. Couldn't have afforded it to live in that neighborhood in a single-family home. It's anecdotal, but I don't know of any undergrads that were flooding the ADUs that were in Tech Terrace. It was mostly grad students and young families. There were a few undergrads who were family members of the owner-occupant. When I moved out of that little back house to come here to Athens, Georgia, the person who moved in for a semester was the niece of the as a December grad, where she didn't have to take up a property somewhere else. After that, a young Ugandan family moved in there. The father is doing his PhD. They have two young kids who live in that second bedroom, something that they wouldn't have been able to afford. having that property. Their kids now have a little park. There's a nice school just a few blocks from that neighborhood that their kids get to go to. Their dad gets to either take the bus that's right there on the corner to campus or he can walk. All of these things are possible because of this secondary dwelling unit. I ask that you support it without major restrictions. I think that this is something that scares a lot of people, but I've seen it do a lot of good.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Toddy. Good evening and

Good evening. My name is Shelby Branch. I live at 287 Morning Drive, which is District 6. I am just reiterating what other people have already said about us approving the ADUs. I think for a number of reasons. We've been talking about the affordability crisis for a while. This is one of many issues that we could implement. One, to increase our housing variety and supply. And two, I mean, as a property owner, I think I should be able to do whatever I want on my property. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Branch. Good evening.

Good evening. Hi, Mayor. Hi, commissioners. My name is Dara Kalantari. I live at 120 Winter Circle, District 3. And I'm here today in support both of the ADU ordinance and the minimum lot size. I wanted to share the perspective of a young homeowner. The average age in Athens is around 30 years old. I feel very lucky and fortunate to own a home at my age. I bought it nine years ago, and in that nine years, The prices or the value of my home has increased by two and a half times. But I did not buy a house for an investment. I bought it to have a roof over my head. My investment is in this community and for other people to have this opportunity. And if in nine years this price has increased this dramatically, how many other people will have an opportunity? I want people to be able to afford to live here and be safe and comfortable. So I'm very much in support of the ADU ordinance. And I would also like to repeat what Shelby said. If nothing else, I would like to be able to choose what to do with my own property as a homeowner. And also, I have lived here for 14 years. And in that 14 years, I have seen Athens change dramatically. I know a lot of fears tonight have been expressed of neighborhoods possibly changing. Athens is already changing. and we can have a say in how we want it to grow and make it more accessible to everyone. So I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for your consideration.

Thank you, Ms. Kalantari.

Good evening. Hi, my name is Keegan, Keegan Brooks. I live at 291 South Finley Street in District 4. Thank you all for being here today. I'll be short. I wasn't originally planning to speak, but my generation seemed a little bit underrepresented in terms of the speakers. So I'm here to speak in favor of the ADU amendment and also the amendment on minimum dwelling size. I think many speakers before me have eloquently kind of talked about why this is important. I appreciated what Christian Morales had to say, what John Wears, Tim Denson, Shelby Branch, what a lot of folks have come to say today. And I think this is a small incremental step to kind of expand housing supply and support affordable housing in Athens. Several people have remarked that this is not kind of a one size fits all solution that will solve Athens housing crisis. And I think that's very much true. This is one of many steps we need to take to get in the right direction of where housing should be in our city and where we want it to be. As a young person, I gave up on dreams of home ownership a long time ago, but I would love to see more kind of affordable housing options and more progress on the issue within our commission. I know we have a kind of GIC committee that's been doing a lot of excellent work, and we have a planning commission that's been deliberating on a lot of this, and I would love to see the commission pass both of these amendments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.

Ms. Roden, I've already got you this go-round, but if you step up during the next one, we can get you again.

They're each doing the 25 and 26, so I'm just going to do mine now so that we can get it out of the way.

Do you just want to speak to 26?

They're all speaking to 25 and 26.

We'll have 26 in just a couple minutes.

Together, micro unit second homes, as small as a hotel room, legally permitted. Are you serious?

Ms. Roden, we're going to do 26. No.

We will have done 25 and 26.

They've taken three minutes, and you've had three minutes already this go-around, my friend. And we'll get you three minutes more in just a couple minutes. The line is short. And you're going to be in good shape, so don't you worry about a thing, darling.

They spoke to both.

We'll see you in just a couple minutes. Just a couple minutes. Just a couple minutes.

Don't you worry.

You get three more minutes in just a few. The line is short. Life is good.

It's the use of the time. So we'll see you in a minute. We'll see you in a minute.

That's what I'm here to talk about. Good evening. Good evening. My name is John Craven Morris. I'm a renter in District 2. Opinion shared on my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or any organization with which I'm affiliated in. Forgive me if this sounds a bit repetitive, because I know I was here two weeks ago. Thank you for being open to considering ordinance changes that can support the growth of our housing supply. We know housing is far too expensive here in Athens. And that's because our housing supply has failed to keep up with the demand here in town. It's a problem every city in our country is dealing with, but we're dealing with it especially more because we have such little land to build on. I do want to repeat what I said a couple weeks ago, which is that the 21st Century Road to Housing Act became law last month. It was passed in the US Senate by a vote of 85 to 5 and in the US House by a vote of 358 to 32. Laws rarely pass Congress with that amount of bipartisan support. And in that act is language supporting the legalizing of ADUs. That's overwhelming national bipartisan support for this type of ordinance change to address the overwhelming housing crisis that this whole country is facing. According to Colburn and Aldern's per capita homelessness variation, research from city to city per capita homeless variation is driven by two factors, housing demand, that is housing price, and housing supply elasticity, or how quickly a market can generate new housing when needed. Their statistical analysis demonstrates that healthier housing markets have less homelessness. More pressured housing markets means those at the bottom with the most barriers and the most vulnerabilities suffer the most. Things that make housing markets pressured are new people moving in, especially new people with more income than locals, like UGA students or retirees. Things that make housing supply pressured are limited land to build on, limited infrastructure, an emphasis on single family zoning, such as 83% of your land being zoned to single family, and zoning codes preventing missing middle and diverse types of housing from being built. These factors sound familiar to me here in Athens. Our housing demand is going to keep increasing. UGA is going to keep raising enrollment. Retirees will keep moving here. Both are groups with far greater income than your average Athenian. Legalizing ADUs is one of several tools that we can use to help increase our housing supply elasticity and make a healthier housing market. In addition to potentially supporting older homeowners with aging in place and allowing family members to live independently on their family's properties, legalizing more diverse types of housing will also help young professionals, grad students, baristas, artists, musicians, and other service industry workers find housing here in town. I have multiple friends who live in ADUs right now that are in these types of professions. I hear talk of how expensive it is to build these. The good thing about them is that no homeowner has to build them, but those that can or want to can. We aren't going to get new land anywhere. Infrastructure investments will take a long time. We can legislate our way out of preventing these from becoming Airbnbs. And for the sake of all the people who can't afford to buy a home, let's legalize housing, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Morris.

Good evening.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Commission. My name's Hampton Barineau and I live at 255 The Preserve Lane. I come here today to speak in favor of 25 and 26. I want to open my remarks by asking the commission to note the age and class of those for and those against. In the past election cycle, we heard numerous appeals to voters in which candidates said that they were going to listen to young people and address housing affordability. Heck, if I had a nickel for every time I heard the phrase missing middle housing during the election trail, then maybe I'd be able to afford a burger at Clocked without the tots. I asked the commission to represent all of Athens, especially those who are most... in the most precarious situations. Athens would be nothing without our young and working people. I am a young working person, now a non-student, and I know so many people in my situation where rent is making life harder here in Athens. Yes, ADUs and smaller unit sizes are not going to fix the issue of affordability, but it is a tool that will help us to lower and get to the broader issue of affordability. We cannot throw our hands up and not use the tools at our disposal. Please meet the moment and fight to make Athens more livable. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Baronow. Good evening.

Good evening. I am Dylan Pryor. I live over at 190 Baxter Drive at the University Garden Apartments, which is just shy in District 10. I'm here today to speak in support of item 25. That is the amendment regarding ADUs. I will start by remarking on a request my dad once made to me. A year ago or so, although he was not nearing retirement age at all, my dad told me that when the day comes when he no longer has the strength to work, that he wants me to set up a small housing space in the yard of whatever future house I may have. Now, I recognize that I am not in that situation, and nor will I even really benefit directly from this amendment, but I believe my dad's request reflects an extant need that a great deal of families have across Athens-Clarke. This amendment will not just act. as one step in alleviating the current housing crisis in Athens, but also permit more and more families to ensure that their loved ones are able to live comfortably and securely in their greatest times of need. Having had other family members in assisted living, the isolation that they experience is soul-crushing. Permitting an increased access to develop ADUs allows families to make these accommodations. to be with their loved ones, to care for them, and additionally, to not have to suffer additional great costs that these facilities incur. Now, I will note that these ADUs will not be used solely for elderly family members alone. And frankly, I believe that is a good thing. But this amendment thus acts as both benefit for individual families permitting the greater deal of opportunities surrounding housing in a variety of ways, and also orients us towards remedying and starting to fix the crisis here in Athens. And while I cannot provide my father that one request he asked me at this moment, I hope you will pass this amendment so that other families may do so. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Pryor. Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Elise Stangle at 235 River Hill Drive, District 7. I am here in support of item 25. I'll keep it short. It doesn't make sense to allow guest cottages without stoves and not allow units with stoves that can be used fully. And for long-term rentals, this would give families and homeowners more options to figure out what works best for them. On a personal note, my mother and I actually talked about an accessory dwelling unit in my backyard about two months ago back in June, and we didn't make any decisions, but it would be nice to have the option. This would give more options for more families. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Stangle. Good evening. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Shannon Bushway. I live at 250 Clover Street. I spoke here a few weeks ago. I actually do have a backyard ADU. My parents live there. Part-time they built it. I would really, really like for them to have a fully functioning home. They built the home. They paid for it. I think it's my right as a homeowner and also as theirs. I do foresee at some point it would be really, really nice for I think someone said grandma's with cookies. I think my daughter would probably enjoy that as well. Also, as someone who has rented in this town, I know there's a lot of people that came up to oppose this. I'm curious how many of those people have attempted or had to have rented in this town in the last five years. About three years ago, when I was getting a divorce, I had to rent a house. I was trying to keep my daughter and me in the same neighborhood so she could attend the same school. I was paying $2,000 a month for a two-bedroom, one-bath house in my neighborhood. It was really affordable, I mean unaffordable. That is half of my income. I have a master's degree. I work in education. Housing is very expensive, especially for single-parent families. Sorry. So I am absolutely for Amendment 25 and 26. I think we need some flexibility. I think this is a multifaceted issue that's happening nationwide with our housing crisis. I also want to remind everybody in this room that Clark County has one of the highest poverty rates on the East Coast of the United States. Last year, Clark County schools had 473 kids coded as homeless. that's higher population than any of their surrounding counties, I think those kids would really benefit from having some flexibility in their housing. Anybody who's had to move recently, who's had to pay deposits, anyone who's worked with homeless families knows how difficult it is to move from sharing a house with someone to getting a first month's deposit, doing your first month's rent, paying all your utility bills. When I moved and had to rent my home, It cost me $5,000. I am not sure how many people in this room, other than maybe the people who are opposing this, have $5,000 extra to get an affordable two-bedroom, one-bath house for their family. So I'm for this. I hope that you guys vote for it, too. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bushway.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Michael Bean. I live in District 5 in Athens, Georgia. I've lived here for over 25 years. I want to say I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak and participate in this process and for each of you to offer me that opportunity. I'm not an expert in city planning or housing or real estate, but I am an expert in finding an affordable place for my family to live. I don't think anyone can disagree that we're in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, and I don't use that word crisis lightly. There are experts who got together. They are the brightest minds in our community, diverse, group nonpartisan of career experts in city planning and real estate and community members and residents who proposed uh... these two items items twenty five and twenty six which i'm here to support So no one is claiming that that is a silver bullet that is going to cure the housing crisis. Anyone who brings that up as a criticism of this proposal is not being serious, I hope. And I just want to thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Bean.

Good evening.

Hey, I'm Melanie Aaron, 165 Clyde Road, Athens, Georgia. I live in Greenacres. I grew up in Greenacres. I grew up on the east side. Before that, I grew up in other parts of Athens, Five Points, mainly rental property, while my father was a student. I have nothing against ADUs done in a thoughtful manner, and I'm now at home with my mother, who needs me there, needs help. Um, that it's thoughtful that it fits into the neighborhood, that it doesn't impose things on the neighbors that affect their quality of life. I think it's very crucial that it's. One of those homes is owner occupied because being so close to the university, a lot of the neighborhoods on the east side, green acres, Clark Dale, you know, university Heights. I can see we're right there at the vet school, close down there, right off college station university. that it would just become people buying up property. We already have rental property, that's fine. But then you add another, and eventually we're at siege for people who have the money to buy things and just put another unit and have rental property. I think it needs more thoughtfulness about planning the distance from property lines, how it looks. whether it fits in, you know, the size of the lot. I agree with my board for Green Acres and my president, Kent Middleton. I stand with them. I'm all for it. I'm all for ADUs and kitchens in them for grandparents and best friends and nieces and everybody. But I just want it to be thoughtful. And I love my trees. And I'm really concerned about losing trees. If you drive around neighborhoods, you'll see And I can give you references on this. With your neighborhoods, you'll see that they're your biggest source of green and trees in the urban setting. We have beautiful trees, and I really want to see that preserved. It's really important for all of us to have shade and to have trees and to have trees breathing and making oxygen. That and quality of life. So I think it needs more thought, more thoughtfulness. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Heron. Good evening.

Hi, I'm Laura David. I'm an Athens native. I have a long rental history and very long. And I will say that I do agree that it just needs to have more thought put into this. This is unfettered ADU. implementation and it's great that we have a lot of wealthy young people who are able to do that, but I can say for sure that they do not necessarily bring down rental prices. It is true that what I've seen myself is people with money buying property and putting up very large ADUs and I think there just needs to be some restrictions on height, on owner living there. If you don't have owner occupied, then you're going to have rental companies buying these things. And there's tons of those that do that out of state anyway. That's part of the problem. It's not somebody renting out part of their own home or an accessory dwelling behind them. somebody making, it's a corporation making big profits. And I just think that this needs to have some restrictions on it and be done little bit with a little bit more demarcation of what is and is not okay and then we're all good with it because yes kitchens are good that's that's all good but but yeah just no restrictions at all on who can do what that's just unacceptable because we want to have some planning so I would think the Planning Commission would need to reconsider thank you thank you miss David

Good evening. Hey, Mr. Mayor and Commissioner. I'm Greg Waddell, 570 McWhorter Drive in Athens. I've listened to a good bit of stuff here tonight. I'm a little different. I'm here to ask that we do table this recommendation. I'm a realtor. I'm a builder. I'm a developer. And I don't see this as an opportunity for me to capitalize. I'm not seeing this as for me to be able to go out. I don't want to just cart blank the whole city, put them up everywhere. Do you, as a commission, know how many single family residences we have in Athens-Clarke County? Do you know?

Anybody know? Right at 28,000.

So tomorrow, in the perfect world, if 28,000 ADUs were to be permitted, have we thought about what that would look like? The water, the sewer, the parking, the infrastructure, our wonderful planning department and building department that is already burdened so deep with what they're doing. Just think about it. 28,000. And if you pass this, we can all go tomorrow.

Get in line.

All right.

I'm in favor of property rights.

However, I'm also a firm believer in making decisions that are best for my community and property owners. I do see this as a knee jerk decision without a deep dive study of the recommendation. Has the planning commission and the building department communicated together on this? We've done a deep dive. How will this happen? How will this take place? How are we gonna handle the water, the parking? Have we done that? I don't think we have. I've heard a lot about affordability tonight. I've heard Macon, Savannah, Gainesville, Charlotte, that all have gone all in on ADU.

You know what they have in common?

Very high crime rates. Extremely. I've got friends that live there. Who's going to go out and build me a 200,000 ADU house tomorrow and rent it to me for $500 a month? Any of us that took Econ 101 knows that math does not math. I heard six years ago mortgages were $1,800 less. Why not look at what they were 15 years ago? Why not look at what they're going to be 15 years from now? I'm all for property rights. I'm not against the ADU, I just think we need to not put the cart before the horse, back up, do an in-depth study, not a knee-jerk reaction. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Waddell. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Linda Krock, I live at 119 McNutt's Creek Drive, Athens. Wasn't planning on speaking tonight, I spoke a couple weeks ago. But it's amazing when someone's offering pizza, how many people come out and talk. So I felt like I needed to say a few words. ADUs, I have nothing against ADUs. My kids and I have talked about it ourselves, go and find some land, have the main house and an ADU on it, with some land, not in a neighborhood. I think there is a need. So I'm like ADU case by case. Not let's blanket the single family zoning without having a zoning notice out in front of every single family neighborhood so everybody really understands what's going on. I don't think that ADUs are really what we need for when you're talking about affordable housing because rent keeps going up, keeps going up, keeps going up. We want people that can own their own homes. So you want a neighborhood with smaller homes or a neighborhood with starter homes? Absolutely. I mean, these stories were wonderful and sad and all that goodness you know, but I was young once, too. It wasn't easy for me to rent. I would have roommates. We found a way. You know? But ADUs are not going to solve the problem. We need homeowners and not more renters where the rent can go up. Because once you can, if you work hard and you get that home, and you have a lifestyle that you have a yard for your children, your grandchildren, and, you know, your house payment is going to be way less than any rent, right? Everybody that's a homeowner knows that. So we want affordable housing for people that own their own homes. Rentals, yes. But an ADU is not going to solve that problem. So just a few words on that. And so I am speaking, of course, against the amendments. And the wording is unclear, and I don't think it should be a blanket situation. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Kroenke. Good evening.

Hey, my name is Chris Shaara and I live at 127 Herman Street near Dudley Park. I'm speaking in support of items 25 and 26 and I agree with many of the points about ADUs already made. I'm a native Athenian and I grew up in Cedar Creek, a traditional single family neighborhood that has a long history of neighborhood activism. there are many fears about adus but as has been said accessory buildings are already legal you just can't install certain kitchen equipment in them people use workarounds and build new adus anyway but this code update encourages long-term tenants instead of airbnbs Athens has a strong need for quality, small-scale housing. Single-family neighborhoods like the one I grew up in have a lot of political influence, but nowadays, far fewer people can afford a single-family lifestyle. Many more people are seeking quality housing as single people, as couples, and as pet parents, and ADUs and innovative housing designs under 1,000 square feet help address this need. A side note that Japan builds some of the smallest and most space efficient housing in the world, often well under 500 square feet, and no one calls Japan a third world country. Athens is full of single family housing and college apartment complexes. I hope you will support planning code recommendations and encourage more charming, innovative, and efficient small housing options. Thanks for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Ara. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Commission. My name is Danielle Gilmer. I live at 725 Pine Forest Drive, and I am a member of the Creative Housing Option Subcommittee that worked on these amendments. I am of course in favor of the proposed text amendment to reduce the minimum floor area requirement, as well as the text amendments to allow additional secondary dwelling units in single family residential zones. While legalizing backyard cottages and secondary suites will not have the impact that most of us would like to see in helping out our most marginalized and low income neighbors, it needs to be understood as one tool in a box of many that we would be remiss to not utilize. If we zoom out and broaden the picture of housing potential in Athens, if we know that there are already several other components we are working on, such as manufactured housing, allowing for more plexes and decreasing lot minimums, we can see this for what it is, another tactic in our repertoire. Athens has been in a housing crisis pressure cooker for years now, with no changes or acts to move the needle forward towards affordability in too long. Legalizing more housing options to be built throughout Athens is the first domino that needs to fall to make way for affordability. When these types of missing middle housing are legal to build with kitchens, we can activate the small builders and developers in our community to be the first to get these off the ground. We can streamline the process and make it easier for those small builders that already have the skills to build, but might find it daunting to navigate the steps of permitting and proformas that lead up to putting their first two by four frame together. We need small building pathways that are safe, clear, predictable, and proportional to actual risk to be able to move forward, but we need to make it legal to do so first. In other words, missing middle housing is not only an affordability strategy, it is a community continuity and empowerment strategy. I encourage you to send this back to the Creative Housing Options Subcommittee without the CDO and to give us the opportunity to show you the work we have done and continue the conversation together. Thank you for your time and your thoughtful consideration.

Thank you, Ms. Gilmer. Good evening.

Everybody, my name is Ray Smith. I'm running for State Senate, which includes parts of Athens-Clarke County. I currently live in Oconee. I'll be brief. I know that a lot of other people have done a great job explaining the pros and cons of this item 25 as amended. So I just want to reiterate a couple of things. One, this is a very, very small change. Basically everything, basically building ADUs as stated, can already be done. The only meaningful change is that you can now include an actual kitchen. it's interesting to me that there has been this much opposition to what really in effect is not going to have a meaningful effect those of us that are in favor of expanding options for affordable housing are fully aware that this is a very very small change that frankly is not going to move the needle all that much in terms of providing more affordable housing as has been stated many many other times this evening it is part of the broader spectrum of options that can help over time to alleviate the stress of our housing shortage it essentially just provides a little bit of additional flexibility for homeowners to add a little bit of additional income and at the same time provide a little bit more affordable housing uh... we know that the places that have accepted ordinances like this, they haven't seen a huge number of ADUs built. So the theoretical scenario of building, whatever it was, 28,000 ADUs is not going to happen. That is, you know, it's just completely unreasonable. A very, very small number of these are going to be built every year. It is a very small part of the broader solution to our affordable housing crisis, and I urge you to vote yes on this so that we can start to make a change and over time help people have more access to housing. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Smith. Good evening.

Yes, good evening. Fred Stevenson from Cedar Creek. I agree with you. Athens County does, Athens-Clarke County does need to address the shortage of affordable housing. But I want you to brainstorm with me for a minute. I sat there and said, well, who needs more affordable housing? Affordable seems to be the key word here. And I saw two main groups, young couples or families who are struggling to buy a single family home. That's my grandkids, they have that problem. and lower income people who can't afford current rent levels. We've heard that, plenty of that tonight. Advocates assume that secondary dwelling units will help both groups. How? By more available homes and lower prices, as in more small, cheaper houses. Mayor Gertz, you sent out a memo and you said that other places are doing it, such as Minneapolis and Austin. That's true. They have done it. But what you didn't say is, and what were the results, which seems a whole lot more important to me than the fact that they built them. So the key word here is, did it create more affordable housing in the week? I'm going to talk about what I found. If you want to find information on this, I had no trouble finding it on the internet to find out what happened. Yes, people did build SDUs, but they made affordable housing worse. Let me review what Mike Urban, a Massachusetts realtor, said. And incidentally, Massachusetts has not approved this unless they did it within the last two days. And he said, the plan to change zoning laws in Massachusetts to allow secondary dwellings on single dwelling lots is not the solution. It will not create more affordable houses. It will do the opposite, increasing the cost of single family homes. Homes will simply be unaffordable to more people. There will be a flood of investors, developers, wholesalers who will aggressively seek out, even solicit, and entice current single-family homeowners to sell them their homes. They will pay tens of thousands of dollars more for that home than that young family trying to buy the house who doesn't have the money to compete with them. And they're doing it for higher rental and profit possibilities. urban said the homes the homes most sought after are the fixer uppers those very same houses families with limited funds seek to buy there will be less of those homes to buy and the ones that are available will be more expensive what single family secondary dwelling zoning changes in places like minneapolis austin and california which has been mentioned here produced were more renters in former single-family dwelling neighborhoods and single-family zone areas turned into duplex communities. The biggest threat, though, in Athens, Clark County, is to our most vulnerable residents. Now, the lower income people living near downtown Athens in affordable, older, small homes. Those are the homes most desired for SDU development. It is already happening in Athens. Ride around and look. Thank you, Mr. Stevenson. If you pass these code changes, it's a mistake.

Good evening.

I have this device. I can only hear people on microphones and myself. So I've got to stand in front of this microphone. And I can't hear you. And I apologize for that.

Anyway, my time's going.

My name's Ross Watson. I live in Cedar Creek. I was here on the 21st and expressed my feelings. And I talked about family. First of all, This is a very complex, complex decision you have to make. And I don't see the confidence and knowledge that I would want to see in my commissioners about making a decision tonight. This needs to be postponed. I don't think it needs to be postponed indefinitely. I think it needs to be postponed until you become fully knowledgeable and comfortable to walk in front of your constituents and say, listen, we have really studied this. We have looked at it. We've got third party market research from local real estate people. We've got our local people doing infrastructure stations. You have to be better prepared tonight than you are when I think you walked in here. And I think you have heard from the citizens of Athens And I hope that you will listen to your heart, and I hope you have talked to each other, because you cannot want to be responsible for dissolving single family neighborhoods. Single family neighborhoods is what We who live in those neighborhoods, and they're everywhere. I forget what the gentleman said, how many there are. That's why we bought in them. That's why you probably bought in yours. It was the location. It was a single family neighborhood. It was a bedroom community. It's where you were starting your careers, and the people you're living with, they're in the same boat. And your children grew up together. It was a wonderful feeling, safe, comfortable. Neighbors, don't take away single family neighborhoods. Your name will be across this whole country, I guarantee you that. Postpone this. Do some research. Listen to the questions these people have brought. And I know there's been thousands of documents sent in, thousands of them. Read them. When you say you did, electronics is amazing, you know what I mean? You talk about cameras, I mean, you don't even go on your phone, everybody knows what's going on, you just gotta know how to access it, okay?

Thank you, Mr. Watson.

Thank you, sir.

Good evening. Hey, good evening. Broderick Flanigan, PO Box 295, Athens, Georgia. I'm here to speak to item 25 and 26 as well, but mainly 25, to urge y'all to vote to pass it. I can't really say too much more that has already been said in terms of the data and the efforts or the information that's out there that supports that this is a viable idea and option for housing. having a diversity of housing I think is important. I will share a couple of anecdotal examples and context in my personal life story with ADUs. I actually lived in an ADU for a while, for about two years. I first moved in in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. That's around the same time when I became a neighborhood leader with Family Connections Communities and Schools. During that time, as I was starting to get my finances together, get my credit together, I was looking for a house, trying to purchase a home here in my community where I was born and raised. It took me about two years to find something within my price range. I kept getting outbid. I kept getting undercut by investors. It was hard. It was rough. After that two-year period or during that two-year period, without me being able to live in the ADU and the family that I was living with or that were renting to me were renting at such a low rate, it allowed me to be able to save for my home. And also during that time, I encountered a lot of people who were experiencing homelessness as well. and as a neighborhood leader. And throughout that process, I was able to house maybe the three and a half, during the three and a half year period that I was a neighborhood leader, I was able to help house about three families, one of which those families actually, I gave up my ADU unit for like a weekend for them to be able to be ready to move into a transitional housing. It was a family of seven. They were actually living in their car when I first came across them. Again, I know this is anecdotal. I know there may be several other stories out there like this, but I want to just kind of share some of the benefits of ADUs and these types of housing and the impact they have on our community and the lives they touch. Because sometimes we get bogged down into the data, into the articles, into the conjecture, the theories. We lose sight of the people that are actually being impacted by some of these decisions. And so I think we should pass this. If it doesn't pass tonight, we should add some of the provisions and take care of the concerns that some people in the community have. But I feel like we should definitely pass this ADU amendments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Flanagan.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Mr. Mayor, commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. I served on the planning commission in this county for about six years, and from what I've heard tonight and on the 21st, the July, there's not enough meat on the bones of this thing. Y'all need to send this back or vote it out now and go visit it later. It's just not ready for primetime. Thank you very much.

I just need your name for the record, sir. I just need your name for the record.

John Elliott. I live at 130 Southview Drive. Thank you, Mr. Elliott.

Is there anyone else here to speak to item 25 this evening? Commissioners, would you like to deliberate or take a break?

Deliberate. Take a break.

All right. We're going to go ahead and do a 10-minute break. We'll be back in our seats about 8.15.

Patrick.

everyone glad to have you here we're going to go ahead and proceed with the rest of the evening thank you for waiting through the break everyone we'll go ahead and get started all right everyone we're going to go ahead and get started with the rest of the meeting all right everyone we're going to go ahead and get started with the rest of the meeting hope you're doing well we got we uh we're gonna go ahead and uh have deliberation on item 25 uh consideration of the last of the planning and zoning items and then old and new business and then as always at the voting meeting we'll have any resident input on items not on the agenda at the conclusion of the meeting So just as we begin discussion, I want to go ahead and set the table because between this meeting, some electronic communication, and the prior agenda setting meeting, some questions had come up, particularly around process. I do want to note that the process through which this text amendment and item 26 have flowed is the standard text amendment process. We are in this many years long process of revising our future land use plan that was a decision that the commission finalized earlier this spring it's a process that happens in every georgia community once a decade and what follows from the future land use decision is then a series of code changes so that your code language better matches your new future land use and so as policy makers The county commission understands that we can't just have a concept plan and a new map. We actually have to kind of make things tangible on the ground so that in this case, you know, we understand that we're going to accommodate something on the order of 30,000 new residents by about 2045. And we want to make sure that we create the series of code changes that will allow for that change. In this case, there is an Athens chapter of the Georgia Institute for Community Housing, and that cluster made a series of recommendations to improve the availability and the affordability of housing, and those recommendations then flowed to the Planning Commission, and those are coming to this body then one or two at a time over the next many months, so please continue to pay attention because that's the sort of normal process through which these things happen. This series of six recommendations came to the County Commission in a work session in January and then again were heard and deliberated upon at the Planning Commission level. Also wanna note, among the things that I love about Athens is the fervor of the public and also the really great well of expertise we have here. We've got fantastic artists and creatives and technicians and scientists. We have people who know finance expertly. We have a lot of researchers and journalists who are very skilled in their disciplines. And so it's good to live in a community like that. And it's particularly good to live in this time in human history when there's access to a great wealth of information. So the combination of having a lot of really smart folks and having access to a lot of really good information very easily means we don't have to live in a community where there's got to be a fog of uncertainty. We certainly don't have to live in a community where anybody's drowning in the cesspool of social media. And we don't have to live in a community in which anybody has to engage in wild speculation about the impact of potential code sections. Because in this case, we've got hundreds, in fact, hundreds of case studies across the United States of communities that have accessory dwelling units And they include many communities in Georgia, including Roswell and Savannah and Columbus. And they include a lot of college towns like Madison, Wisconsin, or Knoxville, Tennessee, or Gainesville, Florida. I mentioned Gainesville last because I had the great opportunity to sit next to Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward at a conference in Atlanta just a week ago, a week prior to today. and Mayor Ward shared some data with me. Gainesville's particularly interesting because it's really our closest cousin of any U.S. city. Gainesville's like Athens, it just lacks hills and a winning football team. but it's got about the same number of people. It's really got a similar economy and it's got similar demographics, both racially and in terms of native folks and folks who've moved to the community. Gainesville legalized accessory dwelling units in 2020 and then opened the gates a little bit wider last year with some amendments. And in six years, Gainesville, again, very similar community, saw 42 building permits for accessory dwelling units in six years. So the lesson is that it's not going to be the most widely used tool, but as has been stated so often, it's one tool in the box, and it's a tool in the box. the box of which we need given that we are verifiably numerically in a housing crisis, as anybody who was familiar with looking at MLS listings in 2005 versus here in 2026 can tell you. So I do encourage the body to, Given all the comment that we've had, given all the questions, allow the Planning Commission to do some further deliberation on this, both so we can have some public education and so we can right-size this to the community's needs. So with all that said, I'd certainly welcome a motion to be placed on the floor.

I'll move to accept the option presented to remand this to Planning Commission with some direction. I'll go ahead and read the direction. We've had a lot of back and forth discussion, and the mayor has presented us with some of this information as well. Allow secondary dwelling units in new subdivisions. Allow secondary dwelling units in existing RM and RS zones on homesteaded properties, that is owner-occupied properties only. and that if properties transfer to a non-homesteaded owner in RS zones, require that the definition of family is met on the parcel. Limit secondary dwelling units to no more than one bedroom in existing neighborhoods. Create a staff assessment assuring parking is available in existing neighborhoods, and if on-street parking is restricted, require an on-site space. and include annual reporting of secondary dwelling permits and occupancy rates and a two-year review of the ordinance.

There's a motion on the floor from Commissioner Link. Do I hear a second?

Yes, I'll make a second.

A second from Commissioner Myers. Commissioner Link, any further remarks?

Yeah, I believe these are some reasonable criteria to start with. And, you know, when I heard the folks at the podium, you know, over and over again, I hear folks who are in support of this ordinance talking about family, giving families the option, talking about putting grandma in the backyard or the boomerang child in the backyard. And that's... where I feel like ADUs can really benefit this community. The last thing I want to see is the student housing profiteers take advantage of our code, because they already are. God knows they already are. I mean, take a drive down Pope Street or Pearl Street or East Broad Street.

Arch Street.

Arch Street. I mean, it's creeping into Rock Springs now. We've got to accommodate our families, our working-class community, our lower-income community. I believe in housing options. I believe in multigenerational neighborhoods. I heard that word come up. You know, and smaller housing. And, you know, by limiting these to one bedroom, we are encouraging those smaller housing units. You know, and I... I feel like we can find a way to do this. We can find a way to make these legal and increase affordability. There's definitely increased opportunity for affordability when you're talking about these units within existing structures, you know, the basement apartment in the empty nest or single mom's four-bedroom home or whatever. Those are the kind of opportunities that can provide affordable housing in our existing neighborhoods without disrupting the neighborhood, without changing the tone of our single-family neighborhoods. So I look forward to a robust discussion with the Planning Commission. I sat down with a couple different planning commissioners this past week, and I think that we have a lot of opportunity to increase our housing supply increase the diversity of our housing supply, and increase it for the folks who actually live here.

Mr. Myers?

Yeah, following up, I'm glad to support this. I am supportive of us moving forward with some of these zoning change options. These are things that I've been on the commission six years, and this has been referenced again and again year after year, addressing As one tool, the zoning changes that add one option, one way of increasing housing options, as we've talked about here before. We discuss this in a work session, and I know what happens. I mean, we all know it. People get... alerted to issues as they come up closer for a vote. But it's been out there. It's been out there to discuss. I made a link to it and talked about it for the committee presentation in my January newsletter, did a whole big deep dive in May, reviewed it again. But people pay attention at the when it's right there we understand that that's not going away uh... but we all need to look at this more carefully we do need to add some card rails on here it's clear that it's going to need that if we have the community embraces i think we can get those kind of guard rails there And I hope that's there. I mean, I think of that just like is brought up here, whether or not I have a home and want to be able to have an option for a family member to be there. As I, in this older category, am looking at things happening, I keep thinking, I have this little fantasy of how I can have a home health aid there in that little house when I'm older. There's all sorts of options, and that it's there for someone else down the line. You know, we do have these options that are available now. And I did want to ask the, I'm making the motion, but I want to ask the planning director, is he in here? He's like in the back, one thing, two, to address how The, how this fits in with some of the, like whether or not an ordinance revision needs to address, whether in the language itself or in the accompanying material, all of the other regulations that apply. So the setback, the amount of coverage that could be used, I don't think that's come across as clear. I'd also add on to complicate things, how it fits in with the existing accessory regulations. building you know square footage uh... and make it really clear about where these things could happen and where they couldn't i'd imagine uh... in i'm on a septic system i'm imagining that i might not be able to actually pull one in because my septic you know i don't know that so just laying out all of the details that would help us understand that might not need to be in the ordinance but there accompanying it because I can't put it up right against the fence line. I can't use all of my space and fill it in with just little structures. So if you could all, when it comes back to us, make that really clear whether in the language or accompanying the material, I'd like to see that as well. Anyway, that's a second.

I've got a few folks lined up. I've got Commissioners Davenport, Hamby, and then Thornton and Fisher. Okay.

So, yeah, I was just wondering, can we just send it back to the Planning Department and just look at it holistically instead of having clear guidance? Because Commissioner Byers hit on something that I was thinking about, like when it comes to existing, when it comes to lot sizes and pervious spaces and then pervious spaces that are allowed on, and if we allow ADUs and you already have an accessory to do well in, you know, what would that look like? You know, maybe banning them in our zone existing and maybe only allowing them. So, you know, we're talking about tools in a toolbox. Can we... get options when we see this again. So do we have to have clear guidance, or can we just make Bruce's life a little crazy?

I noticed, to a large degree, when we have a text amendment, it's enormously beneficial to send it back with a punch list of things that we want them to look at, rather than just in the abstract saying, take more look at this. I don't know if you want to follow up with any remarks, Manager Cowell?

or look at perhaps alongside the direction that you would be giving Planning Commission some kind of workshop, again, with you all, not with, you know, not talking about, not that there's anything wrong with having another town hall, but it really is items that you're wrestling with as to what might, that would be the other option not option it would run alongside but I think it does help the Planning Commission have clarity and what it is that you're expecting to come forward but if there are other in addition to that if there are other items you'd wanted to explore further it's probably that's probably better done in a work session because you're otherwise you're really putting the Planning Commission in kind of a role of sort of guessing what it is that you ultimately want in those those options where the options presented in a work session are perfectly fine, because then you could clarify that direction even further. But that would be alongside the CDO. So you'd have to figure out also in the language of the CDO to create that opportunity that they could expand based on additional information or something.

And we've occasionally done a joint session with the Planning Commission, so that wouldn't be a novel endeavor here.

Commissioner Hamby? Sure. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the chance. You know, I'm listening to, I think there were 47, 49 people talk. Everybody made some good points and made their case. I do, however, kind of am thinking in my mind about why we're even having this conversation, especially if they can be built as guest houses right now just without a stove. I'm wondering, too, once they are built, and if a homeowner with a homestead exemption is not a homestead-exempted property anymore, how are we going to enforce that definition of family? We're having trouble doing that right now, y'all. So there is that. And I'd like to ask the attorney a quick question here, if you don't mind. So, you know, with a motion that – ask us to have the homeowner or have a homestead exempted property be the only ones that can do this. Is that pause for concern with the attorney's office?

Well, the attorney's office has authored a confidential memorandum on that issue, so I don't want to speak to that, but I would refer the commission back to the memo. Okay.

Okay, I appreciate you saying that because I think that causes me pause for concern. But what I would like to do is I'd like to make a substitute motion to deny. And I'm going to make that motion because I think there's a lot of things at play here that we haven't thought about the consequences on. one of them you could already do it two of them the second one is that you know we haven't thought about the the neighborhoods people are going to go to and and and i don't i don't want to say the right the sky has fallen sort of things because it may not but i don't want to set us up for that so i'm making a substitute motion to deny to deny because for one we've got a lot of stuff to talk about we've got other affordable home housing issues and and things that we can talk about that will be more substantial than this, y'all. So we've spent, what is it, three hours now, plus the other three hours at the previous meeting, plus, I guess, a subcommittee of the Planning Commission is meeting to talk about things. So, you know, motion to deny, or motion to deny, yes.

I'll second.

Substitute motion to deny. There's a second from Commissioner Culpepper. I'm going to go ahead and return to Commissioner Thornton afterwards, but Commissioner Culpepper, just as the second or substitute measure, I want to give you an opportunity if you have any remarks.

I agree with Commissioner Hamby. There's too many things that we're having to discuss and too many things up in the air about it, and I don't think it's going to move the needle as much as we think it is. I think it's got more of a negative effect with investors coming in and buying up houses and then putting ADUs in the back, and then you have two rental units. It'll probably, I feel like it's gonna make property values go up, make it less affordable.

I wanna return then to Commissioner Thornton and then Fisher.

I appreciate Commissioner Hamby and Culpepper for making the motion, and I support that. At our agenda-setting meeting, and the reason why at our agenda-setting meeting, I think I sounded like... I didn't understand what our planning director was presenting, and I didn't. Because all of this and everything I can think of has been around unhoused folk, single mamas trying to find a place to live, and veterans, people with mental health. So how do we move to ADUs as a solution for those folk that I was thinking about. I am glad that the speakers brought their personal stories and agendas. I get it. I'm going to have an ADU in my backyard right now. I'm telling you now. With or without a stove. I'm going to have one. I'm thinking about those phone calls I get from folk who cannot afford to pay their rent who are unhoused, that's who I was thinking about. I'm sorry. So maybe if we go back and we tear it, who are we talking about these affordable housing? Are we talking about the folk that are almost on the street already or at the Salvation Army? Or are we talking about the college students that need a place to stay or the grandmother that wants to live behind their kids? I think those things need to be filtered out and all of them are important, all of them. But who are we talking about when we do a blanket ADU process all over Athens? I guarantee you most of the folk that might be, I don't know how they feel, but I know they're not going to be breaking their neck going to the Salvation Army saying, I got an ADU in the back of my house. You got somebody that needs some place to live. That ain't going to happen. So I think we need to go, like again, last meeting, our county manager brought it clear to me that I wasn't clear what I was saying. I wasn't clear because I was not thinking about those other valuable population of folk. I was thinking about the people that I speak up for and deal with on a regular basis. Matter of fact, I had to encourage them to put manufactured homes on the list. I had to encourage that.

Commissioner Thornton, I need to move on to Commissioner Fisher.

No, I'm not supporting it.

Commissioner Thornton took some of my thunder, and that's always my question. who would these ADUs really benefit? Are they benefiting people that's unhoused? Are they benefiting single moms who got children? And the answer to me is no, it wouldn't. To Commissioner Thornton's point, people not running, you know, and it was interesting, not many people that looked like me stood up and talked about ADUs, and that's interesting to me. Folks don't come up, and maybe they don't want to speak for themselves, but to Commissioner Thornton's point, we get calls personally from people in our community who need to have somewhere to live, either by hotel, or they get kicked out, get evicted. My colleagues, Tiffany, my colleagues, Johnson, my colleagues, Thornton, myself, we get those calls. And I said this, but my white colleagues don't get those calls. We get those calls when people are about to get kicked out. So we're looking at these ADUs. We really need to take it again. I'm not against it, but I think we need to really take a hard dive, take a look at that, and then who are we trying to benefit? It's great if we can build ADUs and bring in our grandparents, our parents, bring in our children. Or you may get a couple that are grad students that can be in those ADUs. But what about those moms that are working, can't afford the rent already that we got here? And then the question should also be asked, are the ADUs going to be any cheaper? than a regular apartment. So all those things have to come into play. And you're talking about, we said we put a limit on 500 square foot. Mom got three kids, she's not going to the ADU. Not in a 500 square foot place, unless the kids are sleeping on the floor. So we need to be realistic, take a look at it again. And we got all these other housing stuff that's going to come down the pipe. And I talked about this earlier when we were talking about our future land use, that we really got to take a hard look when we start looking at our zoning and how it's going to impact this community and what it's going to mean for really the people to really get housed in this community and what that's going to look like. And I know a speaker talked about it. We're still the smallest county. in the state of Georgia. So when we talk about housing, and I always say we gotta be smart about it, and if ADUs is some of the tools in this toolbox, that's great. But let's talk about what it's really for and who it's for and who it's gonna impact.

Commissioner Davenport. Okay. I'm going to try to be a compromiser here. So here's the thing. We heard from constituents, residents, people in the audience who have stated that they want to help some of those people who are homeless. They want to help some of those single families, some of those mothers in our community. This is just one tool of the toolbox. I can't see... i can't see a mass you know everybody getting thousands of permits in the next two or three years for 80 because they are going to be costly you're literally building another home in your backyard you have to get permanent sewer blah blah blah all that stuff so it's not going to be an easy process but i feel that you know you know if if we just have this discussion one more time I know the community don't want to hear that. Some people in our community don't want to hear it, but just have this discussion one more time. With some limitations, with some guard wells, maybe it could be even more enticing. Maybe it could be something that's palatable for this community, but that one tool or the toolbox where we've lived and heard from you know, possibly hundreds of people in our community, maybe thousands in our community, who are willing to build these ADUs, and we're denying them that right. I do, and this is coming from a person who is, like, against them, because I don't want to destroy neighborhoods, but I would like to see what other options that are out there to allow private property owners to build something that could be, you know, potentially help even two or three or four or five or 20 people in our community. and I don't know how that looks like when it comes to giving direction to Bruce, and I know Bruce is probably stabbing me in his eyes right now, but just having a, I'll seek direction from County Manager on how to proceed. Commissioner Link.

Yeah. i mean i i can tell you who these people are going to help they're going to help the people who when when you can build an extra unit in your backyard to put grandma in grandma's not taken up an apartment in brookside senior housing or denny towers um you know you spread the wealth around a little bit um And I do feel like we need the guardrails. We certainly need the guardrails. And I would like the Planning Commission to discuss lot size as one of the criteria. We certainly have in-town neighborhoods with really small lots that are not going to be able to logically accommodate these. But I feel like the owner-occupied family living aspect of it is crucial. And giving people the opportunity to age in place You know, if you can build an ADU in your backyard for a caregiver or to move into yourself, so then you can rent out your front house and live on that income and also have somebody on site to kind of keep an eye on you as you age, that's a whole other issue, too. I mean, these are really, really crucial housing for aging people. And there was a whole article in the New York Times, I believe I shared with y'all a couple years back, and I just re-shared it this past week, about Gen X and aging and ADUs. That's where it's really crucial. I mean, I come from a generation where plenty of my friends never married. They're growing old alone. Or they married and they never had kids. They're growing old alone. this kind of housing where you're still part of a neighborhood, and being part of a neighborhood is so important. I mean, I could, I have a dozen people I could text right now to let my dog out because I'm stuck in this meeting. You know, that's really, really crucial, is to give people the opportunity to age in a multi-generational neighborhood, and that's where ADUs can really fill that void by offering those multi-generational diverse housing options within a neighborhood you know there's the there's the people growing old in four bedroom homes that they don't need but they don't want to leave their neighborhood well maybe they can convert two of those bedrooms into a rentable suite and make a little income and have somebody on site as they grow old

Commissioner Thornton.

Again, I am one of those people you are describing. Again, I do plan on having an ADU. I'm not going to no retirement home, but I am saying When we started talking about zoning, and especially when we tack on that GIC, which I was a part of, we talked about access to home ownership. That was our group, right? And we promoted zoning. And the reason why, and I think Commissioner Fischer kind of alluded to it, Our zoning laws had not been changed since 1991, and they were intentionally race discriminatory. And I met with Kelly, I think I saw Danielle and Matt, racially discriminatory. So I thought that when the zoning committee was meeting, I didn't micromanage, I thought they were going to take that into, how do we move those barriers that are discriminatory to black people. Now, I know I try real hard not to talk about race or anything like that, but it's a point. And so, yeah, I was looking at those folk who are single, low income, people of color, that nine times out of 10 are gonna be facing the same rent issues, why don't we do, all the property that we own, why don't we do an ADU community? So, no. Every time I trust you guys, you come back with something different. Every time. I have done four housing summits, and different issues have come out, and I could tell you who came and who didn't come. And now you wanna talk like, oh, the aging, I'm the aging person, okay? So every time we come up with something that helps the folk that I represent and that I care about, you twist it to, it's a shell game.

Commissioner Myers.

Yeah, I just want to bring this back to a larger discussion away from the personal here in that this use of ADUs, and if we don't want it, we don't want it, and we can knock it down. But we also need to look at all the other things that were put forward by the committee and such. These are all things that are part of a, we could call this meeting up and spend all our time looking at all the affordable housing initiatives and studies online And we can all divvy that up and read them because there are tons and tons and tons of them on there. But I will tell you, there are local advocates here. I also received a long document that I did read that also gave a whole explanation of how manufactured homes were the evil thing that ADUs are. So I think I remember last week hearing Manager Cowell say, are we going to go with any of these things? I mean, are we gonna, so I think that's, I don't have an answer for that tonight. I think we need to look at that because the documents I received were also critical of manufactured homes in all residential RS zones. So I'm just bringing that up and I think it's, yeah. I'm not gonna, there's a lot, you know, there are a lot of young people, whatever their color is, who are looking for less expensive rent. And I saw a lot of postings on social media of people who aren't here as well. I really, think that this is about making more housing options available. When you have someone, whether or not they have one job or two jobs, single or not, have a family, and they're paying $1,800, $1,500 for a kind of, you know, a real, like a two-bedroom house, maybe even, you know, that's a whole lot of money. And this is just one little tool. It's okay. If we don't pass it, we don't pass it. But it's just one tool. And I hope we wouldn't just throw out the whole tool here, when tonight we had clearly had plenty of people who were asking us to look at this more closely and maybe put some guardrails in there. And I think we need to respect all those points of view. And maybe the question, I have another question, because we started out going, I only want to help the homeless. So are we going to get rid of any kind of thing that doesn't help anyone but the homeless? Do the questions. These are rhetorical questions to throw out. I don't need responses. but You know Thank you

This is very complicated and very involved, and I remember when we had the seven, I think it was seven, GIC topics. We're doing a couple of them in waves. The next item, 26, is another example of things that we want in the toolbox, as Commissioner Davenport said. And I wanted to vote on them at that time a la carte. And I was assured, Mr. Mayor, that I would have my chance to vote singularly on these after there was time spent on the Planning Commission, the Planning Department. I personally don't like people to waste their time on topics, but this topic is so complicated, as we've seen with the people who came forward for the agenda setting and then the lobbying that happened to make sure the other side of the coin was represented tonight so that it is a lot of difference of opinion and I think behind the rail is showing that as well but this is the a la carte time This is the time to say yes or no to a topic. 26 is a yes or no topic. We have more of them coming. And I think that the topic of the accessory dwelling units, the memos from the attorney's office, the complexity of the commission-defined option, the guardrails have to be feasible. and to be monitored and enforced in the homestead exemption as well as other things. And when you talk about needing space for a family member, we already have that. Some people just put them under the same roof with them. And if they're in an accessory dwelling, clearly, Commissioner Thornton's gonna have one, and when it's time to cook the turkey, the turkey will be cooked in your house, because that's where the main oven is. I'll cook it in the microwave. So I'm ready for us to move on to 26 and vote.

All right, I'm gonna have Attorney Drake read the ordinance.

The ordinance to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia, with respect to secondary dwellings and for other purposes. Thanks, Attorney Drake. Commissioner Johnson?

Really quickly, I just wanted to say that if it passes or not, one of the things, if it's reconsidered, one thing I haven't heard anyone say or state is how it's going to be taxed with the school and with the property tax. If that could be embedded into some language if it passes, the consideration of that.

I don't know if Manager Cowell or Deputy Manager Saunders, if you want to discuss.

It will be simply added to the value of the property and therefore taxed just as the principal home would be taxed with it. I think you heard a couple of the folks speak that what you'd actually see most likely is the value overall of the property would go up and therefore so would the taxes on the property because there is potentially an element that is still homestead if it's a homesteaded property. the commissioner would have to decide, I don't know how the commissioner would decide, kind of that split with it, but overall the value of the property would go up and therefore so would the taxes on the property. And all of that would still be distributed just as it is today through the taxing entities. It wouldn't be as if it would be somehow taxed in a manner that money didn't flow to the schools or things like that. Or separately. Right, it would all be incorporated into that same piece of property.

Would this be a burden on our tax assessor?

No, I mean, it would just be as if you built, for example, a detached garage on the property. You're going to add value to that property, and then that gets incorporated into the taxes on the property itself.

Thank you. Substitute motioner is Commissioner Hamby, so we'll go ahead and do a round robin, beginning with Commissioner Hamby.

Hamby?

Yes to deny.

Davenport?

No.

Link? No. Taylor? Yes. Wright? Yes. Fisher? Yes. Johnson? Yes.

Yes.

Culpepper?

Yes.

Myers? No. Thornton?

Yes.

Seven yes, three no.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right, motion to deny carries. We're going to move on to item 26. So if any member of the public would like to speak to item 26, which is the text amendment regarding minimum dwelling unit size, now is that time. Again, just make sure we have your name and place of residence.

I'm back. Trust issues is a big part of all of this. In 26, I thank you for taking your time on twenty five twenty six would have been devastating because if you don't know what all is in twenty five you don't realize that you're voting to allow in what is in twenty six and there will be more discussions i can assure you we trusted this government for RS zonings where we decided that's where we wanted to live. We didn't have a lot of money. We weren't able to build something big. We barely could finish a basement. But we invested in something that we knew was lasting, something where we knew that our families could come, that we could pass on in a neighborhood that is extremely diverse. I just have to laugh to hear some of these things that you say. Our dear friends who are our neighbors, these are diverse Indian, black, Hispanic, we have everything on our street. And we do fine. But when you come in and you say, you trusted us, but we've got some other people that are louder than you. And so we're going to say, we're going to change your trust. Promises made, promises kept. And that's what this commission has said. The people of Athens don't trust you. Why? Because of things like this. And when you delve into what's going on with 25 First, And if you'd approved it, you would have made it hell on earth for the people who understand what happened in 26. It is the camel nose under the tent. There's not a person in here that has stood up here that wishes ill on anybody. But there are other ways to do things. And I think about that amphitheater. I think about that hole in the ground. I go by it all the time. Why can't something be done there? Infrastructure. There's no sewage. There's no infrastructure in there. So it sits there as a hole in the ground, reminding all of these people that there's land. land that could be a huge neighborhood of what they used to call starter homes. And the starter homes people were helping each other. They were in the same boat. And so they encouraged one another. This is sad that this is happening. And the new administration that's coming in was voted in on purpose. And so we want to, and somebody said, somebody made the statement, this is the next, oh, first, this is the first domino to fall when they were talking about doing the ADUs. This is the first domino to the fall. That was exactly right.

Thank you, Ms. Rhodes.

Thank you.

Anyone else here to speak? Item 26 tonight. Attorney Drake, I'll have you read the ordinance as we begin.

Ordinance to amend the Code of Athens, Clark County, Georgia with respect to minimum floor area requirements and for other purposes.

All right, Commissioner, place a motion on the floor, please.

Motion to approve. Second.

I've got a motion from Commissioner Davenport and a second from Commissioner Myers. Commissioner Davenport, any remarks? No remarks. Commissioner Myers?

No, I think this makes sense and allows more housing options.

Any others? All right. Ordinance has been read. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right. Hearing none, passes unanimously. All right. Thanks, everyone. All right. Next opportunity for public input is now on any item of old or new business. And so those are items 27 through 32. So if anybody would like to speak to any of those items, rules of input are the same. Just make sure we hear your name and place of residence and then reference the item to which you're speaking.

My name is Jeff Cass, 145 Maple Lane.

I've been a 37-year resident, raised a family of two. I'm a small business owner.

I'm here to speak upon the homeless situation. I want to be very clear. It's not a one set item. It's a 70, 80, 90, 10, 30, whatever it may be. But the amount of homelessness and loitering that has been allowed to go on in this town has impacted businesses. It's made families fear for their safety to go to places that they shouldn't have. These people regularly harass folks. And it may be a mental issue. And if we don't have the resources to do it, there are six facilities in the state of Georgia that we can impose mental help to them that is provided by the state. As Clark County, we are not hard to levy fines on the students that come here for jaywalking, minor in possession. all these revenue things that I understand, right? We're keeping law and order, but yet we let people just sleep on the streets with bags. I mean, it's basically littering. I just feel like there's got to be some solution to help police our streets, our neighborhoods, and this is not downtown. This is not Five Points. This is not normal town. It is everywhere. And I feel like we always talk about this. There's always these, oh, well, we've got this going on and this going on. I have not seen anything happen in the last 10 years At all. We're not doing anything to address these people that are just pandering. And honestly, we have invested so much money in this town with the new college board off thing with the park and our downtown Reeve Instructure. Look at all the money that's poured in here with all the students and the housing. And again, I get the housing, the affordable housing, sure. That's the 80%. The 20% is what I'm talking about. We have to do something about the folks that are causing problems for regular citizens like you and I. Again, heartfelt, please do something to make our streets safer, to make our families want to ride bikes down the streets. There has got to be an easy resolution. We have the laws in force already, whether it be littering, whatever. We've got to do something about the 10, not the 90. And we have to address the 90, too, because that's super important. We want to help those people.

Thank you, Mr. Cass.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Barbara Barnett, and I live at 330 Athens Road, Winterville, Georgia. And I'm here with Mr. Dexter Weaver. And we are happy to report that we did meet with Commissioner Patrick Davenport about a couple of months ago to discuss the naming of the East Athens Bridge. Mr. Weaver and I agreed that the bridge should have both names. We should have both names on the bridge. On one end, it would be Weaver D's Automatic for the People, and on the other end, there would be a plaque saying, In Remembrance of Miss Jessie Walton Barnett, who dedicated and was committed to the reconstruction of the bridge. So we was on the same page, and we was reminded of the scripture that says, When three or more gather in his name, he is amongst us.

Yes, that's good.

So we came up with that agreement, and we are really happy about it, and we know Ms. Barnett would be more than happy to be on the bridge with Mr. Weaver.

Thank you, Ms. Barnett. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Weaver. Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Jessica Fore. I live at 225 Jennings Mill Road in Athens. I want to talk about the homelessness issue a little bit. Domestic violence is the direct cause of homelessness for 50% of homeless women. And without support from family and friends that had significant resources, I would have been one of them. I was a worship leader at a local church, and I was in an abusive marriage with over a dozen risk factors for being murdered by my abuser. The senior pastor told me, nobody in leadership thinks you should move back in with them, but if you don't, you'll probably lose your job. They fired me. My ex had wrecked my truck, run up my credit cards, ruined my credit and sabotaged my work. So for three years I couldn't afford a car. For 18 months I couldn't afford an apartment. I lived in spare rooms and I rode a scooter to my two jobs, one at five in the morning, one 45 miles away. I borrowed cars when the weather was absolutely untenable. I had family help with lawyers and legal expenses and moving expenses and things like that. And even with all of that assistance that I had, because my surroundings were with upper middle class people who had resources to assist me, even with all of those resources, it took years to get to a point of basic normalcy. And if I had been in a different socioeconomic situation going into it, I would have absolutely ended up on the streets. You know, I've been in a lot of church settings, mostly conservative white church settings, and I have heard over and over in every conversation about systemic poverty that it's not the government's job to take care of the poor, it's individuals and it's churches, but the same people who will say that when there's an opportunity to leverage the government and leverage their civic engagement to punish poor people or to perpetuate the causes of systemic poverty, they're more than happy to line up and do that. And now they want to criminalize homelessness because if you fine people for sleeping in public spaces, that's purely an avenue to be able to arrest them for not paying the fine. I was downtown last weekend, and there was a woman sleeping on the street in a sleeping bag with her belongings around her directly across from a church that's sitting on $11 million of tax-exempt real estate, and they're running a pay parking lot. And I had a friend with an accessible tag because he takes care of a family member with disabilities. He was towed out of that parking lot recently for $300. And I was reminded of Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus was a beggar lying. at the front door of a rich man at his gate, begging for crumbs from his table. And the rich man ignored him, and then the rich man died and he went to hell. That is red-letter words of Jesus right there. So, in jest, to make a point, I might suggest that instead of finding people who have lost everything, who are sleeping on the streets for being poor, for being stuck in that situation, maybe we find a way to find the people who invoke faith and invoke community and then come out and say that they want to harm people who are living in poverty and that they want to punish them and send them to jail. Maybe we find them. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Fuller.

Good evening. Good evening. Again, Tim Denson, 483 Quailwood Drive. First, I want to speak to item 30, the resolution showing that this community supports for helping those who are unhoused. Some fantastic things in there, some fantastic words in there that I completely agree with. The problem is the item right before it, number 29, is in complete contrast to number 30. Item 29 is an urban camping ordinance that criminalizes homelessness. It does not solve homelessness, it does not reduce homelessness, it criminalizes homelessness. And if you arrest a person who is homeless, they are still homeless. But now they have legal charges, fines to pay, a court date, a charge that will ding on their background checks when they try to rent a place or try to get a job. Housing them in our jail will cost all of us taxpayers hundreds of dollars per person. It's about $72 to $80 per person that we put in our Clark County jail per day. And then when they are eventually released from jail, and they will be released from jail, they will then again have just extra barriers that we have put on top of them to make it even harder for them to become housed. So the resolution, also number 30, it states, communities throughout the United States have demonstrated measurable reductions in homelessness through coordinated implementation of evidence-based practices. And this is true. And amazingly, the communities that have actually put an urban camping ordinance, like y'all are suggesting right now, it has been found that those laws do not actually work. There is evidence showing that they don't actually work, but they actually exasperate homelessness. So if we're talking about having things that are evidence-based practices, we should not put this urban camping ordinance in place. Because we can't deal with this as if it's a regular crime. People camping and sleeping outdoors are not doing so out of an act of rebellion or criminality. Therefore, you can't deal with it as if it is. They are doing it out of an act of necessity, an act of self-determination, an act of fight for their life, a struggle against a society that has forgotten them and left them behind. And so when we talk about this, if we realize that this policy doesn't work, as it's shown in other communities, that it actually makes homelessness worse, that it's actually going to cost this community extra money, why are we doing this? And I understand why we're doing this, because it's hard. It's very hard. And none of y'all have found a solution to this. Of course we haven't. It's a very difficult thing. But again, this is not the solution, y'all. Don't sell this to downtown business owners saying that this is going to fix it. It's not. They're still going to have people down there. We're still going to have unhoused people. Instead of sending a cop to somebody to cite them and then take them to live in a jail, why don't instead we have more case managers and social workers go to that person and take that person to a house or apartment? Again, both things cost the same amount of money. They literally do. So what's our priority? Please vote no on this. It's going to make things worse.

Thank you, Mr. Denson. Good evening.

Hi, thank you all for staying so late. My name is Star Scott. I live on Winterwood Drive and long-term resident of Athens. It's hard to follow the two speakers who just spoke in front of me, but I do want to give my support to agenda item 30, but I want to speak to agenda item 29 and just say that this proposed ordinance really criminalizes homelessness, and it's not in alignment with the values of our amazing city. I want to invite each of you to think about what your home means to you. For me, that's safety and warmth, or in this weather, air conditioning to cool off. A sense of belonging, a place to let your defenses down and rest and breathe. Now I want you to imagine that when you leave this meeting tonight, and I know everyone's exhausted, we are too, you have nowhere to go. You can't go home tonight. So I have a difficult time even imagining what that feels like. A few weeks ago I met a new friend and his dog who are part of the Athens Unhoused community. For the sake of the story, I'll call him John. to protect his privacy. He is a decorated war veteran. He is a Marine who is qualified to literally the highest ranking in our military. And the trauma that he's experienced in service to our country is literally the exact same trauma that is driving him to be in his current scenario of being unhoused. arresting John won't change his situation at all. And it won't change our situation in town either. So research and data confirm that criminalizing homelessness does not reduce this crisis at all. Instead, it worsens the issue and inflates our public costs, traps individuals in a cycle of poverty, Sweeps and fines and arrests, they simply, they might remove visible poverty, but from one area without addressing the why. Why are people in this situation and why are people lacking stable housing to begin with? So criminalization creates barriers to housing, it imposes impossible financial burdens, it disrupts healthcare and support services, and most of all, it fails to deter public sleeping. So we're going to go through all of this, and we're not even going to be addressing this issue to begin with. I see my time is almost up, but I just want to say we are a loving community. Let us be in alignment with these values that make us a loving community where we take care of each other, whether you are housed or unhoused. And this proposal for this ordinance doesn't represent our community. So let's not criminalize homelessness in Athens, Georgia.

Thank you, Ms. Scott.

I know I jumped back in line, but this will be a half a second. Mr. Dexter and I forgot to mention that when the public, Athens-Clarke County Transportation of Public is putting this article in the paper, this announcement, to please say her name, add Ms. Jessie Barnett on this proposal as well.

Ms. Barnett, we'll work with you. We'll give you a call.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Jasmine Williams, and I live at 168 Endale Avenue. I also have been managing a bar downtown for the last 10 years. I have seen what homelessness has done to our community, and I have talked to these people. I've not only talked to them, I've brought them into my bar. My bar has come together to supply these people with clothes, food, shelter. I have even brought some of these homeless people into my own home when it is too cold. I have hunted the streets with them to find their things after being stolen when we just bought them a brand new backpack and tent. I have been with these people more than one day, more than one conversation, for what feels like a lifetime. And I sit here and I've been brought in front of people that actually matter because I sit on a box all the time in front of people who can't hear me. And my friends have pushed me to come into a room that makes me very uncomfortable, where I've turned around to Mr. Denson by watching all of this and asking, is change possible? Is anything possible? Is me being here going to do anything? Is there hope? And as somebody who's 11 years sober, AA teaches you how to find hope, to run from that hopelessness. And that at this juncture is the only thing that keeps people alive is hope. And I sit here and I keep thinking about feedback loops. I'm sure all of you are familiar with what a feedback loop is. And there's two of them that come to mind, a positive one and a negative one. A positive one is something you see commonly happening at UGA every day. Somebody has offered a scholarship to give them opportunity to allow them to go to school, to allow them to get an education which will then get them the career which is going to give them the opportunity to then be an acting civilian within our community doing good things. That is a positive feedback loop. What you're creating with whatever legislation this is, is the biggest negative feedback loop I have ever witnessed. I am 33 years old and I've lived here for more than half my life and yet here I stand in a room of people who want to make life even harder. It is crazy. Where is the funding in programs? Where is the funding in training? Who are running these programs that I oddly don't know? I'm tired of driving homeless people to a meet-up point at 4 a.m. to maybe get an opportunity for a worksite job that day. That's what you're offering, and I know that. Sure, there's more resources, I'm sure. But are the people running these resources trained? Are they adequately aware of how to deal with mental crises? This feedback loop must turn into something positive, or we will see the negative impacts this has on our community. And either maybe we won't. Maybe you'll just bust them all up and take them somewhere else. But I certainly hope that we're just not going to ratify homeless people, but find a way to lift them up the same way we do UGA students.

Thank you, Ms. Williams. Good evening.

Good evening. Me again. John Wares, 280 Cherokee Avenue. I'm totally opposed to Measure 29. I'm simply going to quote from the historian and author, Sarah Kinzior. When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those that struggle to live.

Thank you, Mr. Ware. Good evening.

Good evening. Christine Bice, 340 Whitehead Road. My first thing was about the petition for the bridge, and I think it's a moot point now because they got it straightened out. I was just very surprised not to see that on the agenda tonight. So I'm not sure who, I've been working with Davenport a little bit, but And then the second thing I wanted to speak about is item number 29. I just have one simple question for you guys. If you had nowhere to go, and I think somebody just talked about this, if you had nowhere to go, Where are you expected to exist? I mean, you can't be like Mr. Bojangles and just float up in the air. You have to have somewhere to lay your body, your physical body. And this is not a rhetorical question. It is central to the ordinance and how you guys have worded it. Because I think we all know that camping is code word for homeless or unsheltered. And whether or not these are unintended or unintended consequences, the result is that it's criminalization. And so what exactly are our intentions? A citation can become a warrant. A warrant can become an arrest. An arrest can become a criminal record. A criminal record makes it harder to get hired, harder to find housing, and harder to escape homelessness. This is not a pathway out of poverty. This is a pathway deeper into it. If the real problems are unaffordable housing, eviction, untreated mental illness, addiction, the fentanyl crisis, then let's have the courage to address those problems directly instead of regulating where desperate people are allowed to place their bodies. And I ask you once again, if you lost your home tomorrow and had no financial and no social safety net, where would you legally sleep under this ordinance?

Thank you, Ms. Bice.

Good evening. Good evening. I'm Robert Foster. Again, it's from 350 Pine Forest Drive. I think we all know that the reason that number 30 is on the agenda is because there are a couple hundred people every night that have no bed to go to because there aren't beds for them. That's why we have item number 30 on the agenda, which makes 29 ironic. I have people in my phone so that call me that are long-term homeless. It takes a village to get a person from being unhoused to housed, and it takes years. James was on the campus of the University of Georgia, and I worked with him with Advantage and other people for three years before he got home. There are some people here tonight that know my friend, Brant, who was in my home. And we watched the Super Bowl together and other things, long-term homeless. We finally found him a home. But because of his interactions with police over the years in other counties, when people called him and said, oh, we found a loophole in your parole and we're gonna come get you, he killed himself. When we criminalize homelessness, we then start to create greater interactions with some people who are mentally and emotionally unstable. And my friend, Brandt, is dead today. We cannot, cannot, we cannot pass 29. until we have places for people to stay. And I'm glad to have them in my home and to have them watching the Super Bowl and to be buying sleeping bags and cell phones. And I got people that I've been working with for two years still have no home. So let's get our together. on number 30 and vote 29 straight down because we actually want the beloved community where every person in our community knows that they are loved and we are gonna help provide for them and I'm putting in hours and there are lots of people in this room that are putting in hours with these people to try to help them find their way to a home. Do not criminalize it, do not make it more difficult, do not drive people like my friend, Brant, to commit suicide.

Good evening.

Good evening. That's a hard one to follow. My name is Gareth Fenley. My address is 1695 Brush Creek Drive in Monroe, Georgia. I drove over tonight because I've seen evictions in Walton County, where I live, lead to camping in Clark County. I'm a former resident of Athens. I'm involved in various efforts as a social worker and a volunteer in Athens, including Mutual Aid Athens, which has 4,000 members. I'm personally holding property tonight for two residents of Athens who are homeless, one camping and one in your jail. I drove here to acknowledge that Athens-Clarke is a regional hub for homeless services in the Northeast Central Georgia area, all the way from my home in Walton County, east of the Savannah River. Anyone who looks at a map of Georgia that shows election results will show this county is a bright blue spot in a red region, and the unique qualities of Athens-Clarke your character of being kind and generous, a humane and progressive community. I want to acknowledge and thank Athens Clark for working and taking more than your share of this region's burden of helping people who are homeless. Homelessness is not an Athens problem. It's not an urban problem. It's not a Democratic Party problem. It's an American problem affecting every community in every region. Evictions in Walton become camping in Clark. What makes Athens-Clarke stand out with respect to homelessness is not that you've solved the problem, it's that you're trying. It's not that you've created the problem, you did not. It's that you keep choosing to lead in trying to solve this complex and difficult human problem. So I'm here tonight to thank you and say don't give up. Don't get mean. Don't get harsh and punitive. Don't make up more ways to get more people in jail and prison. I ask you to vote no on the proposed ordinance in item 29. It's not in the spirit of leadership that represents who you are. And I ask you to vote yes on the resolution in item 30. Don't give up.

Thank you, Ms. Spindley.

Good evening.

Good evening. Thank you for having me. My name is Thomas Sosby. As far as my address, I am one of the unhoused. I come to you tonight because number 29 has bothered a lot of people that are on the streets. We have fear that the police are going to be coming by sweeping people up to take them off to jail. As such, I ask that 29 be struck from the agenda. As far as number 30, homelessness support, I will admit that I have seen certain shortcomings when it comes down to certain facilities, such as Advantage. We need more mental health help here. About 50% of the people who are homeless have mental health issues. I have watched people argue with trees because they believe that somebody is there. I have watched people sit there and walk up to a bus stop and scream, leave me the fuck alone, and drive people off. I'm sorry for my language. We definitely need to find a fix for our homeless problem. There are 1,500 of us here. 1,500 is a large number. We are a portion of Athens-Clarke County. We are brothers and sisters here. Some need help. Some are down on their luck. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Salisbury.

Good evening. Good evening, sir. My name is James McQueen, and I'm homeless. I agree so wholeheartedly about the trash. That always bugs me. You might see me from day to day, anytime, any given place, for free, picking up trash, especially around sanctuaries. As far as these people speaking of trees, that's due to the meth they consume. You understand what I'm saying? It's the drug addiction. It's not that they're mentally ill. And if they is mentally ill, put in place polices where they can come talk to these people and put these people in jail for a minimum of three days and give them a clear mind and then let them back out. But as far as criminalizing them, these people want to be safe. I tear up when I walk past a person sleeping in the doorway and he ain't even got no cardboard. He's just on the actual country. You see what I'm saying? I slept on the porch of City Hall. I kept it clean. You see what I'm saying? Oh, they ran me off. Man, I called the police. They got a problem with me calling the police. Police told me a guy with my own cousin was selling drugs on City Hall steps. I told him, no, you're not going to do that. So I went to the police. I said, this man is selling drugs. The police tell me, oh, the mayor said, oh, I welcome. I said, so you tell me I can sell drugs on the steps of City Hall? He said, oh, I welcome. And let me tell you something. God had just blessed me with a place to stay. Oh, thanks to this service sergeant who put this bogus intoxication charge on me. They put me in Jackson County Jail. I missed that. I missed that, being able to pay $260 a month rent just because of him. See, I'm seeing, he's seeing it black and white.

And for anybody that's seeing black and white, you need to check that out with God. Come on.

God didn't give me no option. He didn't say, Mr. McQueen, I'm finna send you to the earth. Your mother, do you want to be black? Do you want to be white? I probably would say Latino. And I thank God for being a Latino. Come on now. For Ms. Mara Zuniga. Oh, I thank God for her. Because guess what? I watched a man. beat his girl on this very porch. Man, I thought she was dead. You hear me? I went and called the police. Oh, they in the room. They know I ain't lying. I went and called the police. They let the man go. When my victim wanted to let my charges go, they told me, oh, the state picks him up. It ain't no homeless problem. It's a people problem. Y'all need to quit singing, oh, God bless America. God bless America. Now we need to pray, God bless the inhabitants of America. We need a ritual, man. We need a prayer ritual around City Hall. You hear me? That statue out there, what it say? About the bond of peace. Huh? It say the bond of peace. You go out there and read that big old angel out there. See? Man, I never thought... I left out this room crying. I didn't have no idea. I didn't want to come back. You hear me? I don't want to come back because, see, I get emotional. Because, see, I live this thing. I ain't just talking. See, these people sleeping in the doorway, these people are afraid. They're scared for their lives.

Thank you, Mr. McQueen. Appreciate it.

Good evening.

Hi, my name's Marin. My personal opinion does not reflect my employer or any organization I'm affiliated with. As you guys consider this ordinance, I ask you to zoom out and look at the real world outcome of what you're voting on tonight. Let's map out what actually happens if this passes. An unhoused individual sleeping on the sidewalk gets a citation. They cannot afford to pay that citation. That unpaid fine turns into a warrant, which turns into an arrest. The individual is released back onto the streets with nowhere to go. The cycle continues. This is not a solution to homelessness. It only leads to the criminalization of it. Ticketing someone because they don't have a roof does not create affordable housing. It doesn't add shelter beds Banishing someone from a sidewalk doesn't make their need for sleep disappear It just guarantees they will be more isolated more vulnerable and harder to reach with actual support It is not the fault of our unhoused neighbors that affordable housing does not exist in our community right now. This ordinance will inflict more fear, trauma and financial burden on people who simply need a place to lay their heads at night. It does not serve the city or reflect the values of our community. To the people sitting in front of me, I know sitting here for hours is tiring and it's hot in here. This vote might just be another agenda item on a Tuesday night for you guys, but to someone sleeping outside, it dictates whether their basic survival is treated as a crime. Passing this ordinance will not make homelessness disappear. It will only deepen the displacement of human beings. So I urge you to vote no on this ordinance and instead direct time and resources toward real housing solutions. Thank you.

Thank you, Maren.

Good evening. My name is Christina Garcia. I live in Commission District 2, and I'm the former executive director of Bigger Vision of Athens. I'm asking you to vote against agenda number 29, not because genuine obstruction should be tolerated, but because law should be clear, limited, and focused on conduct that actually harms others. We all agree that sidewalks, streets, and entrances must remain safe and accessible. But this amendment goes much further. It could punish someone for sleeping, laying down a blanket, or keeping personal belongings in almost any public place. Even when that person is not blocking anyone, damaging anything, or threatening anyone. People should be held accountable for conduct that harms others, but they should not be penalized simply because they lack housing. This amendment does not solve homelessness. It punishes its visible consequences and moves people from one place to another. As much as we may want to believe otherwise, none of us is immune from experiencing homelessness. A family crisis or unexpected financial hardship can change a life very quickly. Please consider what you would need if you suddenly had nowhere safe to sleep. You would need compassion, dignity, safety, and a realistic path forward, not punishment for having nowhere else to go. Homelessness is not something that we can hide from public view and call it solved. Unhoused individuals are members of our community, and we share responsibility as human beings to help one another, especially when someone is at their most vulnerable. Athens doesn't have enough safe accessible shelter and housing for everyone who needs it. When someone has nowhere to sleep, banning sleeping in public does not create another option. As we've heard, citations, fees, displacement, All of that makes employment and housing even harder to obtain. And enforcement would also burden our already strained law enforcement, court, and jail systems, using public resources to punish homelessness rather than address its causes. I'm also concerned that belongings may be considered unlawfully stored after only one hour. Losing medication, clothing, or identification can be devastating. Taking away what someone needs to rebuild their life only perpetuates the cycle of homelessness. Please address actual obstruction with clear, narrowly written rules and do not adopt a sweeping ordinance that criminalizes survival. We should measure success by how many people reach safety, stability, and housing, not by how effectively we remove them from public view. To support humane and effective solutions, I also ask you to vote yes on agenda number 30.

Thank you, Ms. Garcia. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Matthew Simmers. I'm a resident of 1595 Cedar Shoals Drive, County District 1. Nice to meet you. All opinions are my own, and thank you for the privilege to voice my input today. Like those before me, I'm speaking on opposition of item 29, the amendment to make the ordinance that will make camping in public spaces without permit unlawful, or speaking plainly criminalizing homelessness. There is a growing homelessness issue, but finding and arresting individuals that need assistance the most is unconscionable. I am vehemently against this amendment and ask to reconsider focusing efforts into finding alternative solutions like those presented to you before me as well that aid and assist rather than to stifle, fine, and punish. Item 30 is the resolution for homelessness support is pretty language in the right direction, but I look forward to seeing action that comes from it and to help those in need. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Simmers. Good evening.

Good evening. Hello. Thank you so much for your time in organizing this so we can all come and speak. I think it's amazing that everyone here has come together to share their stories and beautiful minds and expressing their love for humanity. I myself suffered homelessness three years ago when I escaped a cult. I was kept at a farm for three years. And without the help of the police, I would have been homeless and I would have been arrested. It's traumatizing to see what happens when people face homelessness. They lose their sense of safety and dignity and belonging. And I'm very inspired today by everyone here who has spoken out against this so we can help people and we can come together as a humankind and not putting these stigmas or racists or whatever social or capitalistic agendas might be. I believe we can all come together and find a solution for everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I just need your name for the record.

Sharon Clear.

Thank you, Sharon.

Hi. My name is Tuesday Demeter. I am from District 2. I'm a trans woman, and I've been in and out of homelessness my entire life. I am perplexed and disturbed at this ordinance of item 29. I find it deeply troubling that in the year of 2026 that we've elected to weigh the decision to prohibit intimate and personal ongoings of a human life if they don't have four walls and a roof. To criminalize behavior such as sleeping, lying down, and leaving personal belongings in public sets a precedent that we as a county and we as a species have left people without homes, without a place to sleep. Normally, in common discussion, homelessness is seen as an immediate problem with an immediate solution. It's often considered that the integrity of government and law and order is sustained if the exceptions disprove the rule. Homelessness is not an immediate problem to solve. It is a structural one. people abandoned by systems of government and law and order, living conditions that exacerbate commonplace tasks. I would urge this commission to consider your own bedrooms, your own beds, your showers, your personal belongings in their place. Now consider that instead of a bed, you haven't one. In a place of shelving and closets, you have bags and backpacks. Where would you decide to put your things? Where would you decide to sleep? If you haven't a place to put anything, where would you go? In this scenario, an unbearable summer heat rests itself on your back, on your face and hands. There is little shade and hardly a place to cool. And in your exhaustion, you place your things down, and God forbid, you sleep on a bench, for you haven't a home to lay your head. Is our county so embarrassed by unhoused Athenians that we have to start jailing them? Are you going to tell other counties that they'll soon be receiving our homeless because we criminalized sleeping? I urge this commission to vote against the prohibition on the very basic human nature of getting a good night's sleep. If you can't house them, at least let them rest.

Thank you, Chief. Good evening.

I'm Michael Ruppersberg. I live at 170 Virginia Avenue. I work downtown. I am downtown five to six days a week. So I want to talk to you all about the perspective of someone that is downtown all the time on items 29 and 30. And I'm asking you to vote yes on 29, the obstructing the streets and sidewalks ordinance, and yes on 30, supporting the homeless resolution. We can treat and support our homeless community and neighbors with respect and dignity and help them lead productive and healthy lives again. But we can also have safe and clean and inviting public spaces downtown. We can do both. But right now, downtown, we're not doing either. For those of us that work downtown and are downtown on a regular basis, we encounter feces and urine on streets, on sidewalks, in stairwells, in elevators. We see people with mental illness and substance abuse abuse, yelling and accosting us, coworkers, visitors to our town. We see people sleeping on streets, on sidewalks, on benches. It is quickly turning downtown into a place that is not welcome for the entire community. It is not welcome to our families. It's not welcome to our children. It's not welcome to the visitors in our community. We can do better for our homeless community, but we can also do better for downtown for our community, and that's why I'm asking you all to vote yes on both of these. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberg.

Good evening. Good evening, everybody. My name is Frank Richardson. I live on Bailey Street, and I'm talking on number 28. is due to the University opening up a road up on Bailey Street. I've been living there 67 years. So I know that it's been a blessing to have them to shut that place down one time to cover the sewage system. So when it get hot, you could smell all that. I've been living there 67 years, so I know. But now they want to open the road up again to make an access road. Okay, you have just finished Bunny Show Road. You've got seven lanes over there. You come off Bailey Street and try to cross to go to Lexington Road, somebody's going to get hit or killed because when you change the light to turn on Bunny Show Road, it's just like a speedway. You've got to fight your way to get in the road. So I've seen that myself. And when you're coming around, you can't make a left turn on Bailey Street. You can't make a left turn off of Bailey Street to go to Lexington Road because cars are coming around that carousel so fast, they can't stop. And once the students come back into town, you've got to bottleneck all the way around. all the way around to the end of, the middle of Bonnechot Road, and that's a lot. Then you got Attitudes on that road. I suggest that they go back and take a good look at that before they decide to open up that road, because see now, the residents, a lot of residents over there now, it's already a problem. So if we got a problem now, it's going to be even more a problem. Then you know what happens when you have a problem like that? You start to have attitudes. Now people carry guns and stuff. They get it. You going to let me out, so I'll shoot you. No. See, we're dealing with a generation where people don't bring common courtesy with them now. They get too mad. I got somewhere to be, so I'll just shoot you. You get out my way. So what I'm saying is, go back and look at it. Vote no on it. Go look at it. Study the traffic before you open up that road. Come over there. That man right there, he said it himself, that it's hard to turn left. And I know myself it is. So I suggest that you go back and look at it before you open up that road, because it'll be too late once you open it up, because people don't obey signs like they should do. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Alex Bryan and I come from District 8. I've come with concerns over this ordinance for the unhoused peoples of this town. I find that if it were to go through, it would set a bad precedent for the future and encourage further disrespect and dehumanization of our most mistreated citizens by not only this board but by the future and current residents of our beautiful town. I would ask that we look to more affordable jobs for these people, as well as keeping housing for them affordable, as what has been discussed earlier tonight. More consideration on their rehousing by being more strict on the UGA College's growth, even if that goes in spite of the push against it from property management companies. These people once all had places that they were able to hold down against the world. at one point, places to sleep well and sheltered and independent from the scrutiny of passersby. I wholeheartedly believe that, with the help from our county, they could do so again. Even for those who are dropped here who aren't necessarily Athens-Clarke citizens, with more of them week by week put here in Athens, they don't arrive here because we are known as jailers and haters of their characters, but as people willing to shoulder the uplifting task of helping these people to their feet. And to talk of the future more, would this not set up the stage for unhoused people being arrested in areas that were also once okayed by the board? I see a possible future in where the homeless shelter just past downtown could be destroyed in the coming years, months even. And what then, I ask, are we to do with them once they'd be arrested and taken to the jail, more overcrowded and more terrible conditions? moved to another jail some 50 miles away further from their families just to work labor for the crime of sleeping on the spot when nowhere else was available that night and then restart the cycle once let out. If they don't die from overwork, we can, we must, and I expect better. That's all.

Thank you, Alex. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Lakeisha Gant. I reside at 225 Swanson Drive in District 7. Dear Mayor and Commission and elected colleagues, first, thank you for the complex work that you do and for continuing to allow room for public discourse and engagement. Our governance is made better by our collective work and your decisions as a body sheds light on our moral conscience and political will to address some of the most complex problems and the most basic human needs. I'm here to support the resolution for homelessness support, item 30, and to reiterate that ordinance such as the one here, number 29, are harmful and actually exacerbate problems. While I understand that resolutions run the risk of being performative, and in my own past governance I tend to lean away from them for this reason, this resolution, however, is simply a call to our humanity, and the ordinance minimizes the humanity of the people that we already overlook. I understand that governance isn't easy. I also understand that we feel better when we don't have to see homelessness. Psychologically, it helps erase the dissonance we have from our claim to care, but our actions that say otherwise. This is a common human experience. I also understand that a basic human need such as shelter should not be politicized, which unfortunately it has been in our small city. We have an opportunity tonight to simply communicate to our unhoused community that we care. Yes, there are more actions that are needed, but this is simply an opportunity to communicate that. A couple of things to consider, the rate of homelessness among the general population is estimated to be about 1.3 to 2%. Whereas recent homelessness among jail inmates is 15.3%. according to the American Psychological Association. Also, the aging of the homeless population has been linked to several other negative factors and outcomes. The psychological and physical impact of homelessness is a matter of public health concern, and some adolescents run away from home due to abuse and other issues such as sexual orientation. When adolescents have aged out of foster care, they end up experiencing an increased risk for homelessness. I'll shorten this and say a resolution to support homelessness and a bold stance against criminalizing homelessness is simply an opportunity to communicate that we value the humanity of all of our neighbors and that we are ready to begin addressing an issue that is so complex but also a basic need.

Thank you, Dr. Gant.

Good evening. Good evening. Hi. My name is Keegan Brooks at 291 South Finley Street. Many speakers before me have spoken on everything wrong with number 29 on the agenda. No person should face criminal punishment for sleeping outside where they have nowhere else to go. There's also been academic studies that these types of bans don't work. Dozens of cities have implemented similar types of bans over the past several decades. There's been a lot of research by the housing policy experts that these don't have a positive impact on communities and they don't result in a reduction of homelessness. There is also an irony to me that this item is on the same agenda as the text amendment on ADUs recommended by the Planning Commission. Obviously, the amendment to ADUs and how they can be built and what can be in them would not solve our housing crisis by any means. But if our commission does not have the political will to pass the most minor of housing reforms, even if, like Mayor Gertz cited in the example of Gainesville, it would create 42 additional units, it feels like it would be a very uphill battle for meaningful change. in terms of housing policy before our commission. I would also like to additionally appreciate the work of the Athens Get Committee, the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement, the Athens Homeless Coalition, the staff at Advantage, and many others who I've met who are working very hard, including many members of our commission to do the work on housing and improve our community and reduce homelessness. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brooks. Good evening.

Hello. My name is Scott Sapp. I live in District 1. I'm here to speak out against the proposed ordinance in item 29. I believe it will not improve issues surrounding the unhoused but harm the population more. My understanding is that after a warning is issued, they can get fined, which I imagine many will not be able to pay, or they will pay at the expense of survival needs. They could also possibly face jail time, after which are they going to be any better off or in a better position to comply with this ordinance? In the language of it, there seems to be a bit left up to the discretion of law enforcement to make the call as to whether or not someone is camping, which I feel is a slippery slope towards increasing profiling by race and social class associated appearance. Further into ethics, the unhoused people of ACC are our fellow humans. I've heard a lot of scary tales serving as othering from proponents of anti-homeless legislation in general. They try to portray them as a scary other group. But I'd like to bring up that the victims for a lot of the incidents involving the homeless are also homeless. Would running these vulnerable people out of our public spaces better protect them from danger? Do they deserve to be sequestered to the margins along with suspected bad actors? There's this talking point that people from surrounding counties comprise the majority of the homeless population in ACC. Well, we get the funding to provide services for the region. It seems Athens is meant to serve the region. Do you want to turn these people away? What is the solution for them? I don't see grand reform to provide ample services to all surrounding counties on the horizon. On a personal level, I find this ordinance to be depressingly reinforcing the current trend of the death of public life across society in that we are looking to further police who gets to spend time in public places, how, and how much time alongside the decrease in the availability of public spaces where you can just be without having to spend money. The ordinance will not succeed as a deterrent and we should be looking for actions related to prevention and mitigation for the housing crisis in Athens. There is a litany of non-punitive items in the proposed resolution to consider. Further, I remember a report from a few years ago mentioning Athens as one of the worst places for upward mobility for low-income families in the country. Two major long-term drivers of homelessness are low wages and high housing costs. I believe UGA, the major employer in the region, that can set the competitive wage for jobs in the service sector and influence supply based on the housing they supply for their increases in student enrollment is largely responsible for the issue of homelessness in Athens. We should ask ourselves what can be done to involve them and hold them accountable for long-term meaningful progress. Thank you, Mr. Sapp.

Appreciate you coming tonight.

Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Kristen Bryant. I stay in Patrick's district. Some would say that we're number one. I'm here to speak to you as a public policy expert. Are you guys aware that the city of Los Angeles received a court ordered external audit of their housing department for the years 2020 to 2023? The findings were as follows. Los Angeles and their lack of affordable housing oversight is exactly what placed the affordable housing inventory at risk. A two-minute search online, I can find over $100,000 in the year 2022 alone of missing budgetary funds intended to go towards affordable housing. So you're telling me that you're going to vote to incarcerate people because you failed to do your job? In addition, six months ago, February of 2026, federal courts ruled the city of Los Angeles violated the Constitution, constitutional rights of the unhoused when sanitation and police officers seized and destroyed personal property during the incantant cleanings. And I apologize, I don't believe in being the bigger person. Rest in power Eric Mays, when they go low, we go lower. There is good news though. Many of you are immune. or excluded from qualified immunity when it comes to your vote due to your occupations and hobbies outside of your role as commissioner. And we the people are ready to take action on those exclusions if necessary. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bryant. Good evening.

Good evening again. Hello, I am Dylan Pryor, resident at 109 Baxter Drive. I was up here earlier. I am here to speak against item 29. It is no doubt that homelessness is an issue within Athens-Clarke. But the solution to that is not to push those affected by homelessness or a lack of housing further into the margins of society, which is what this proposal does. A ban on public camping, as proposed, is a ban on homelessness. It is already a strenuous and damaging enough situation to have to endure the elements and always live at public risk of violence, starvation, and deprivation as many of our homeless population does. in effect, to constantly live in the margins of society. This proposal will only intensify the awful situation that each and every homeless person goes through. There are always more sensible solutions, life-saving solutions, than to over-police and endanger an at-risk population. Allowing those who do not have a roof over their head to simply live and sleep unbothered is the bare minimum when it is a result of our own failures with regards to housing policy that has placed them in these situations. It is far better to develop the existing services to aid those affected by homelessness and ultimately in the long run to develop more programs to assist in providing housing for these folks as is outlined in item number 30. As someone who in the past has been affected by temporary bouts of homelessness, I can say that when I was, I felt less human. It is something I hope I never have to experience again and something I hope that so many more will be able to avoid. But proposals like these, items like these, like number 29, only cause that dehumanization to worsen. When you criminalize someone's existence, it makes them feel like they are worth less than anything. So finally, to reiterate, the solution to homelessness is not to further push out these people, but to build up institutions and structures to take them back in. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Pratt. Good evening.

Hi, I'm Susanna Kirtasas, state house candidate. I was up here earlier. So I urge you not to criminalize houselessness. The solution to this problem is money. If Athens doesn't have the money, then we need to lobby and petition the Georgia state government to legislate money into the issue. After November, we're going to have new people in charge of Georgia. And because Georgia has plenty of money, currently sitting on a $16 billion surplus, and we need to use some of it to help these people. Because they are people. They are Georgians. And we need to give them shelter and rehab and mental health services. Some of them are veterans. Instead of issuing fines and arresting them and giving them permanent records and eventually making them convicts, thus ensuring they will never get jobs and will end up landing back in jail or prison and ultimately costing the state much more money than if we just helped them to begin with. Unless the plan is to land them in prison so that the for-profit prisons in Georgia can make even more money. Criminalizing the houseless is an extremist move, and it's what Trump would do.

Thank you, Ms. Karatesis. Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Trotter. I'm originally from Michigan. I've been in Georgia eight years. And it took a lot of courage to come up here. I've heard a lot of stories. I came here married. I'm a divorced single mom. And Georgia, Athens has made it really, really hard. I'm here to vote against criminalizing homelessness because I could be homeless any day. I could be homeless right now when I leave out here. Even though I have a roof over my head tonight, I wake up every day terrified. I'm a strong, black, educated woman, and I feel sick. I feel weak. I feel helpless. here in Athens. I have homeless friends. As a little girl, we lived in an abandoned home, and I didn't even know we were poor because my parents handled it so well. We went to a place called God's Kitchen every day to eat. I thought it was a trip, like going to Michigan Adventures or Cedar Point. They made it feel comfortable. I never had the feeling of somebody look at you disgusting, and that's what you get when you're homeless here in Athens. People look at you like you're disgusting, like you stink, like they can smell you a yard away. I'm terrified to be in that position. I don't know how many people here are homeless exactly, but I know there's a lot. And I know there's businesses that got to be ran, but putting them in jail is not the answer. There's no shelters here. I experienced, through my divorce, domestic violence. He told me I couldn't make it. I would be out on the streets. I've made it four years. It's getting there. I can feel it happening. It's coming, not because I'm not capable of going to work. I go to work every day. It's not enough. Georgia's still at $7.25 minimum wage. That is unacceptable. If you cannot, people that are in homes right now, they are transferring to the streets. So even if you get the people off the streets, you got more people coming. It's never going to end. You have to do something, put some shelters in place, get those people out there visiting homeless people, asking them what can we do to help you. That's the only way this is going to end. And if you spend the money, you have to spend the money. It's got to come from somewhere. And that's all I got to say.

Thank you, Mr. Trotter. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Jonathan Parrish. I am a resident of 105 Westchester Drive. I spoke a bit earlier. For those of y'all who know where Westchester is, I live directly across from Advantage. And there are more often than not unhoused people there in that area all the time in my neighborhood. And based on the way that people who are supporting item 29 would be speaking, you might think that I would be terrified of my neighborhood, that I would be afraid of being accosted, as people have said earlier. But I'm not, because all the unhoused people in that community that I see every single day are all just trying to survive. And yes, I see them on occasion publicly camping. but they're just sleeping. They have their items with them, they're sleeping. And so when you weigh their survival against what people who are in support of item 29 are saying, just saying that they are uncomfortable seeing them, That's not equivalent at all. You can't just weigh people's momentary discomfort against other people's survival. That is entirely against what makes this community great, because we take care of our neighbors. And I consider Advantage my neighbor. I live right next to them. And I consider them part of my community because they are. They are all of our community. We can't just ignore them and pretend that they are going away and pretend that sending them to jail is going to change anything. And that's just not neighborly and not something that we should be doing here in Athens-Clarke County. And so I'm completely in support of item 30 and against item 29. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Perry. Good evening. Good evening.

Good afternoon again. My name is Hampton Barano. I live at 255 The Preserve Drive. I wish to speak against 29. A while back, I was in front of the downtown Chick-fil-A walking to the parking deck when I found myself eavesdropping on a grandmother talking to her granddaughter. The girl saw a homeless man quietly holding a sign begging for loose change, and the girl asked something about the man to her grandmother. The grandmother told the little girl that the homeless man didn't deserve her attention, that he should just get a job. Every day, our values and better nature are challenged. It is easy to fall into hate, apathy, disdain, but that is not virtue. That is not right. I want a city that reflects the best of human nature and not the worst. I do not want a city that doesn't acknowledge the humanity of its residents. I want a city that will not criminalize homelessness. Let me be clear. The studies are clear that a compassionate response to homelessness is an effective one. Do not get me started about a housing first homeless model. I can go on and on about it. But to criminalize public camping is to give in to our worst instinct and to make the situation worse. Please vote no. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Baroneau. Good evening.

How y'all doing? Mike Moss, 281 Highland Park Drive. Thank you all for your service to the community and for your time. Camping bans do not solve the problem of homelessness. They reduce visibility and are counterproductive to actually helping the human beings that are sighted. Storage of personal belongings and sleeping in the public right-of-way is an issue, but these individuals are also part of the public, part of our community. And we have a plan in motion to provide lockers for those with nowhere else to store their belongings. ACC did not want the liability. News flash. The liability is already in the public right-of-way. Otherwise, we would not be having this conversation. And with the proposed ordinance updates, the surge in unpaid citations and therefore flooding at the jail for trespassing charges is imminent. The solution is housing at any cost. We use the term homeless, but our people are unhoused. They have a home. It's Athens-Clarke County. Shelter expansions and transitional housing are simply a start. And while desperately needed, they do not meet the actual need we are met with in daily growing numbers. Secondary dwelling units, tiny home communities, single-use occupancy, and multi-family units are evidence-based solutions. We have the services in place, mental health caseworkers, substance use programs, workforce development, reentry from incarceration, street outreach, you name it, we've got it, understaffed and underfunded as it is. The problem is we have no housing to link these individuals to once they begin receiving services and sit for months and even years on waiting lists. So where else to turn to but the safety and sustenance of public areas? And we need a vote on criminalizing survival. As a taxpaying productive member of this community and as a resident of District 1 who also has lived experience of homelessness, I urge a vote no for item 29. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Moss.

Good evening.

My name is Arianna Romstein and I'm here today as a woman in long-term recovery who has experienced homelessness firsthand. I know what it is like to have nowhere safe to go at night. I know the fear, the shame, the exhaustion that come with simply trying to survive. Sleeping outside was never a choice I wanted to make. It was a result of circumstances that many people are only one crisis away from facing. Today, I'm grateful to be in recovery and rebuilding my life. I stand here because people offered me compassion, support, opportunities, instead of treating me like a criminal. Making it illegal to sleep in public spaces does not solve homelessness. It doesn't create affordable housing, expand mental health care, or increase access to addiction treatment. It simply punishes people for not having a home. Many people experience homelessness are veterans, seniors, people with disabilities, survivors of domestic violence, or people struggling with addiction or mental illness. They deserve dignity and a chance to recover, not citations or arrests that make it even harder to find housing or employment. I ask you to consider policies that address the root cause of homelessness instead of the criminalization of poverty. Invest in housing, treatment, outreach, and services that help people move forward. I'm living proof that recovery and change are possible when people are met with hope instead of punishment. Please vote against any measures that outlaw sleeping in public spaces. Every person deserves dignity, compassion, and the opportunity to rebuild their life. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Rammstein.

Good evening. Good evening. How you doing? I heard a guy. My name is Rashawn Prince. So before I start, go Dawgs. And I say that because it's going to be the first time I'm going to make y'all smile. I'm sorry to say that. Because I was told that I had to write a street address if I wanted to speak. I'm homeless. That already brought some anxiety to me that I'm already dealing with currently due to my personal choices as well, my mistakes. I'm holding myself accountable. But at the same time, I'm here to talk about the homelessness issues that's going on in Athens. It's not that the people don't want to work or we're lazy, but when we talk about mental health, we talk about stress, we talk about things that we go through. I promised my daughter when she was born that I will always be there on her school day to buy her shoes. Because my older sister suffered from a lot of traumatic and self-esteem issues because her shoe size, you know, we got, we kind of long and big in my family, right? So, my daughter was born, I looked, first thing I did, I looked at her feet, I said, ah, you know, but I'm going to make sure that's taken care of. So my sister told me, she said, Sean, one thing I want you to do. And my sister, when she's serious about something, she looks you in your eyes because she went through her own traumatic issues. She said, I want you to always make sure your daughter keeps some fresh shoes on her feet. Well, I'm not going to go down the whole reel of what happened, but... I just got out of jail on a Saturday due to the unprofessionalism that some of you guys cops have. I noticed something that wasn't supposed to happen when I outspoken on it. I was arrested for obstruction. And not to go too much in detail to it due to my fear of being harmed tonight, I'm just saying like this. We still have constitutional rights. In our 17th Constitution, it states that when you add a fee to a bond, it's an excessive amount, right? So my bond was $10. There was a share of fee added that was $23. So my bond total was $33. I stayed in there a total of 36 days. And while I was in there, I was writing the officers saying, hey, according to my constitutional right, this isn't fair. I was told, well, when you just pay the $33, we'll rightfully let you out. Well, I'm like, well, if I could just pay it, then I would have just been gone. But it's things like that right there that dehumanizes us, right? And now we've got to be back out here on the streets. And I think there's like a whole misconception when it comes to homeless people. Because if you look at me and I told you I was homeless, you wouldn't even think I'd be homeless. Thank you, Mr. Prince. Thank you, sir.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Malcolm Howard. Currently, I've been going through homelessness for about six years. I came from Atlanta to come to Athens for a better chance, which I can say Athens has shown me a lot of kindness. But in the whole time I have been homeless, I've been studying the dynamics of what homelessness is and to the point where there was one point in time where homelessness was supposed to be illegal, as in not allowing people to become homeless. And then as time went on, it became a homeless industry. I want to say is this. I understand the plight of seeing people in your places of business and seeing people disrupt your day-to-day goings, everyday goings with people coming in the city, living in the city, and however things may go. But I believe the bigger issue is that we do not restructure the transitional housing, because you can provide shelters that people have nowadays, but they really don't do much to help go further or help put people in a position where they can actually help themselves and become a part, you know, back to the part of the society they fell out from. And I feel like if we restructure the system statewide, but also if you guys are willing to sit here and spend time and money and trying to, you know, put people in jail, you should redirect them to those funds and to helping the people that actually want to go and get somewhere to live and somewhere to go. I don't want to be homeless. I hate being homeless. In fact, I wish that there were people that were homeless that make it a part of a people like me and a couple people I know and probably people I don't know that actually are trying to get on their feet. But for people to come structurally as intelligent individuals and gather in a courtroom to try to basically say, oh, we're going to take these people and displace them more and then put them in more situations that basically degradate the situation, it would be very uneducated and very... ridiculous to be honest. So I feel like there should be restructuring with the system that we do have, more implementation to help those who really truly do want to help themselves. Now as far as the ones who are derelict to society or however you may want to see it, that do not want to do more for themselves, do what you want with them. I can say less. I play devil's advocate with that. I just don't care. Because I try. I don't leave. I don't trash public places. I don't do any nefarious things to people's properties. I leave when someone asks me. I don't argue with the authorities. I do what I can. And that's pretty much all I want to say. Please do better, and I will too. Have a good day.

Thank you, Mr. Howard. Evening.

ryan dober and i'm uh... uh... citizen of district nine one thirty featherwood hollow thank you all so much for being here tonight i know it's late and it's a lot to ask i know but here we are uh... i'm also here to speak on item twenty nine surprisingly uh... enough people talked about the data goes against this being a thing that's going to be successful. There's a lot of people who have told a lot of stories. A lot of people kind of who are for this I've heard saying things of wanting to feel safe, wanting an inviting place. I ask inviting for who? Inviting for what neighbors? I'm raising my family here and building a community and have a lot of friends and building community here because I wanna be a part of a community and folks who are my neighbors who happen to be unhoused at this time are also part of that community. They're also my neighbors. I ask that we treat them as such. I ask that we focus our attention on not criminalizing something that's out of their circumstance or out of their circumstance. It's not, it's not, something that people want to do to have to live on a bench or live on a street or live on a sidewalk if we want to create safer spaces we can create safer spaces to not have to have them do that i've spent a lot of time in the courts i've seen we already over index on criminalizing and putting a lot of these people in jails and in front of judges and in front of prosecutors and i don't want to have to do things and don't want to have to see that done even more so Again, I'm starting to ramble because I'm losing my thought and everyone else has said everything a lot better than I have, but I really do appreciate your time and I hope with that I do support item 30 naturally, which I think goes against item 29. So thank you for your time and appreciate y'all.

Thank you, Mr. Debrin. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Riley Kirkpatrick, 1005 Danielsville Road, 30601. I am the Executive Director of Access Point of Georgia. First off, I want to say wholeheartedly thank you for being here. I see you all. I see you watching people. I see how late it is. I know it's been a long day. And I run a needle exchange in this town, and I have never connected with any of you. And right now, I'm regretting that. I wrote a whole big long thing, and I'm just going to be authentic with y'all. This work is brutal. It is heartbreaking. It's not pretty. It doesn't make for... There are some things that make for good stories, right? But it's hard. And I feel like any other time I would be saying different things to you,

But I'm tired.

I'm really tired. And I've been kind of hiding, honestly. I've been exchanging syringes with active drug users since 2019 in parking lots and such. I started getting state grant funding in 2021. We're in our second building. We've been doing incredible things, and I try to be quiet about it because of the resistance, because of the stigma that is harm reduction, and at the same time, Y'all, we got 127 people. We did 127 referrals last year. We did 58 warm handoffs, warm handoffs where other peers took them. I have so many used syringes that I can't pay for biohazard right now. We got in more syringes than we gave out, which is mind blowing. And I just wanna point out that that's a thing that you're never gonna hear about that. You are not gonna hear about that. And I say this, and I think the biggest thing that I'm here feeling is that I came here from Pacific Northwest, Portland, Seattle, okay? I don't mean to be rude, but y'all would talk about homelessness and I would laugh. I would. The problem that can become is so enormous that we don't even get to have conversations like these. It's just reactive.

Thank you, Mr. Patrick.

I appreciate you all.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Hello, everyone, and good evening. My name is Ansley Warnock, and I live at 1294 East Broad Street. Today, as many others, I stand in strong opposition to the proposed ordinance language update that would prohibit the homeless community from sleeping in public areas. In January, 2026, there was an estimated deficit of 77 shelter beds in Athens-Clarke County, with this estimate being low. We know that there are far more homeless people than we are able to count in a point in time measurement. In light of this, such a change to the ordinance would leave many of our neighbors with no option. As I speak, I urge you to imagine what tonight would look like if you had no place to go after this. On a broad scale, banning sleeping in public would have trickle-out effects to the detriment of the Athens community holistically. Several studies have indicated that many homeless people that use drugs do so to stay awake. So the increased necessity to stay awake is likely to lead to greater substance abuse issues in Athens. My opinions are my own, but I'm an epidemiologist. So from a public health standpoint, we understand that increased substance use tied to the increased need to stay awake, as well as forced displacement, displacing people away from valuable harm reduction resources, will lead to greater mental health issues, greater chronic illness, and greater overdoses. Again, this is a public health issue. In response to some concerns brought up before me, sleep deprivation is also understood to be a major causal factor in aggression and violence. If you went two days without sleeping because there's nowhere for you to sleep, you would be far more likely to get into a fight or hit someone's jaw. So the language change that has been proposed is likely to pose a greater disruption to community life than does public camping now. as well as exacerbate the victimization of the vulnerable in these situations, who are frequently other homeless people. Shrinking it back down, this criminalization of homelessness put into practice would be fundamentally cruel. Sleep deprivation has been understood by medical law to be coercive and abusive. And given the insufficiency of other resources, enforcement of an outright camping prohibition must be understood the same way. Crueler still, the punitive nature of the ordinance would slow re-entry into employment and housing in appearance on one's criminal record. This is how you create chronic homelessness. Athens prides itself on responsive, empathetic approaches to the struggles that our neighbors are facing. The prohibition of sleeping in public would be a major step backwards. I urge you to reject item 29. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Warnock. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Amelia Orr. I live at 220 Clover Street. I'm speaking to express my opposition to item 29 as well, which amounts to a criminalization of homelessness, as we've discussed. Instead of seeking to improve the issue of homelessness in Athens, As it's been touched on, this proposal will instead make it more difficult for those who are unhoused to access resources, gain employment, and acquire housing by giving them fines and putting citations on their records, potentially putting them in jail, thereby worsening the condition of those who are unhoused and trapping them further in poverty. As such, this proposal will make it even harder for those who are unhoused to escape homelessness, increasing their suffering and worsening the issue of homelessness in our community. If we want to address homelessness and help those who are unhoused get off the streets, this proposal will actively work against this aim. Instead of directing resources towards addressing homelessness through evidence-backed solutions, including increased access to housing, health services, and employment support, this proposal will be a very expensive punishment of homelessness that will simply continue to cycle those who are unhoused through the legal system and then put them back onto the streets. This time and Athens resources would be better used to work to address the causes of homelessness instead of prolonging it and to reduce suffering instead of increasing it. I think that all of us would probably agree that we'd like to live in a city and participate in a government that seeks to reduce suffering. This proposal will neither benefit the Athens community at large or members of our community who are experiencing homelessness. All of us deserve real solutions and that is why I encourage you all to vote against this ordinance. Thank you for your time and for being here so late. Thank you guys.

Thank you Ms. Orr. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Emily Spicer. I'm here to share my personal opinion that does not reflect my employer. I reside at 550 Willow Street. I support item 30, but I'm here to speak on item 29. According to ACE data provided by Athens Homeless Coalition from assessments that are conducted in our community, there are currently 546 adults and 221 children experiencing homelessness in Athens. And that is only including people who have been connected to a service provider. Before you vote tonight, I'd like to ask a simple question. Where are these people expected to go? This ordinance defines camp or camping broadly as sleeping, making preparations to sleep, or storing personal property for more than one hour in any public area. Under this language, a person lying down in a park, napping on a bench, or leaving a bag unattended while using a restroom could be subject to citation. And while I recognize the exemptions listed in subsection C, the burden of approving those exemptions falls on some of the most vulnerable people in our community, people who are already navigating crisis. What concerns me most is the downstream impact of fines on people who have no means to pay them. A citation does not necessarily become compliance. It means incarceration, which not only is costly to taxpayers, it actively dismantles whatever fragile stability a person has managed to build. I strongly encourage the Mayor and Commission to vote against this ordinance, as the language to me means we are not solving homelessness, we are criminalizing it. We are all human. We all have to exist somewhere. The evidence is clear. Housing first approaches, sustained outreach, and access to wraparound services produce better outcomes than enforcement. I urge this commission to pair any ordinance changes with meaningful investment in those solutions and to ask whether tonight's vote moves us closer to that or further away. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Spicer. Good evening.

Good evening, I'm Nyasia Keys. I live at 1035 Barnett Shoals Road, so I'm District 4. Tonight I'm speaking against item number 29, which criminalizes homelessness. Unhoused people are not obstacles or a nuisance or just these abstract beings that we should just ignore. They're community members and humans just like any of us, and they deserve dignity and respect. It's counterintuitive to believe this ordinance would be helpful to them. It allows homeless people to be fined into an endless cycle of poverty. You can't take an out of sight, out of mind approach to this and throw people in jail and look away as if the problem no longer exists. Voting in favor of this ordinance will only make things worse. And if you're upset about the aesthetics of having unhoused people downtown, focus on implementing policies that actually address the source of the issue. I can only hope that we instead invest our time and resources into developing solutions that are actually effective in eliminating this problem and protecting some of the most vulnerable people in our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Keyes. Good evening.

Good evening, my name is Isabella Murphy. I live at 945 College Avenue, so just right by the heart of downtown and right where a lot of the effects of this ordinance will be taking place. I live, work, and go to school in Athens. I work two jobs, one at Access Point, which you actually just got my boss a few people ago. and one at Foxtail Coffee right down the street from here. Between these two jobs, I meet people experiencing homelessness almost every day. And from what I have seen, item 29 is a targeted attack on homelessness, and it will do nothing to solve this problem in Athens. This ordinance is being presented as a matter of public safety, but displacing people, separating them from their belongings, and pushing them further away from services does not make them or the wider community safer. And the statistics support this. Statistics show that enforcing laws like this can cost three times more than providing housing and services, and these policies do not reduce homelessness. And public health research also finds that forced displacement disconnects people from services and can worsen their health. If people cannot sleep on a bench, sit on steps, lie down, or keep their belongings with them, where are they supposed to go? Many shelters are only available at night, which still leaves people with nowhere to be during the day. They go into local businesses because they need water, air conditioning, or somewhere to sit, but businesses are already starting to turn away, which I have seen firsthand happen at Foxtail. So if they cannot be in public spaces and cannot be inside businesses, I ask you again, where are they supposed to go? This ordinance does not create another place for people to be, it only creates another place that they cannot be. I know that the commission is also considering efforts to expand housing and support. And I appreciate that you guys recognize the need for these solutions, but people still need somewhere to exist while housing is being developed, while they are on wait lists, while they are trying to qualify for assistance, and they should not be punished in the meantime. In sociology, we talk about a concept called cumulative disadvantage. So once someone starts facing barriers, each new barrier makes the next one harder to overcome. A citation can lead to fines or involvement with the court system, which can make it harder to get a job. And without a job, it becomes even harder to find housing. If the goal is to reduce homelessness, the city should invest in housing, transportation, identification assistance, and support services. Moving people and taking their belongings does not provide any of these things. I want to leave you guys with one question. If someone came into your workplace tomorrow who had been cited under this ordinance, would you hire them? If the answer is no, this ordinance is creating another obstacle between that person and stable housing. The people I meet are already trying to navigate systems that are incredibly difficult to get through. We should not add another barrier. I encourage you guys to harness the empathy and humanity you and I both know you have. I encourage you to vote now. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Renfrew.

Jason Jacobs, District 2, downtown business owner for 16 years. And I agree we need to show empathy. I'm on the same page with all that. I think there's an implication that supporting 29, which I do, somehow makes you heartless, which it does not. The empathy that I would like to see is for people going about their regular days and being able to use public spaces, go to work, not be harassed. Like I said, been in business for 16 years. It's only gotten worse. A lot of people saying this won't help anything. Well, nothing we've done so far has helped it because it's only gotten worse. The population keeps growing and growing. We keep attracting more and more people that we cannot handle, that these resources and the people dedicating their lives to cannot handle. And something needs to be done and boundaries need to be put up. It's a safety issue. I've had employees harassed physically. I've had them be propositioned for sex in three walls in a corner of my store before I could get out there. Shot up heroin in front of while she had a child. been threatened with physical violence, challenged to a fight, and I've heard solutions offered of give them a cigarette, make friends with them. Not practical solutions, not very serious. This is a great step in the right direction, in my opinion, in cleaning up our public spaces so that everybody can enjoy them. Can't tell you how many people throughout the community. I don't even go downtown anymore. Don't want to be harassed. Don't want to be yelled at. I have people on video screaming that they're going to hurt others themselves, kill people, call the cops. They say can't do anything. This allows them the opportunity to actually get these people off the streets and away from dangerous situations, which City Hall has experienced, hired their own private security, which I cannot afford because of a situation that happened here a couple years back, I believe. There's situations down, there was a shooting just up the road. We had a guy get macheted. There are safety issues and there need to be boundaries. And I feel, I got a heart as well. I feel for all these cases, absolutely. look for help in other ways, but also place boundaries for us who are just trying to go and live our daily lives, enjoy our beautiful town, try and earn a living to generate tax revenue to maybe help in some of these other solutions and that are having trouble doing that because of the situation and the environment that is downtown. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobs. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Joseph Schultz. I live at 635 Oglethorpe Avenue. What follows is my personal opinion and does not reflect the position of my employer. I support item 30. However, I implore you to oppose item 29. Arguments about items earlier this day focused on the economic advantages or disadvantages of affordable housing. People can talk about the correct economic approach to affordable housing, but when it comes to item 29, we leave the economic behind and enter the realm of simple morality. For that reason, I would like to remind those listening of the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who himself experienced displacement and homelessness. Speaking to the king of Judah, the prophet said, woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice. He says, I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms. So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar, and decorates it in red. Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and the needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me, declares the Lord. While I can empathize with business owners who are worried about their livelihood, no good can come of wealth built upon human suffering. So I ask that we heed these words of ancient wisdom and profound religious meaning. Communities founded on oppression eventually reap what they sow. Let us not be like wicked kings who would criminalize those among us who have the least. Instead, let us heed the words of Jeremiah, that rather than punish, we weep with and help those experiencing homelessness. This city will not be made better by criminalizing poverty. It will be made better by defending the poor and the needy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shelves. Good evening.

Hi, my name is Brittany Miles, and I live at 295 Oglethorpe Avenue. I feel a little unprepared. I should have written something for this. But I'm here to oppose item number 29. I think it's inhumane. I think it is ineffective. and i don't think it represents what we say our community stands for which is what's in item 30 pretty ironic so i just wanted to say that thank you thank you miss miles good evening good evening my name is amy paul i've lived in clark county for 30 years and i've been homeless for the last year and a half

EVEN THOUGH I HAVE SOME ADVANTAGES THAT SOME OTHER PEOPLE DON'T HAVE, LIKE A COLLEGE DEGREE, IT'S STILL A PROBLEM. and to get out of homelessness. And you may have noticed I'm not wearing shoes because I slipped in the mud. If you had done that, you'd go home and change your clothes and everything would be fine. I don't have that option. Luckily, I had pants, but I didn't have shoes, and I'm here. My problem is with arresting people. And as other people have said, they get a citation, they don't pay it, warrant, arrest. And now they have another part of their record. Additionally, as they're taken away, their property disappears. And it's from other homeless people going into those. I mean, flashlights are a necessity. They're valuable. And as I'm standing here today, and I've been here for quite a few hours, I worry if my stuff is going to be where I left it when I get back. It's not a good idea to lead us further down this path. Someone mentioned about the cost of putting someone in jail, $72 to $80 a day. Do the math, it's a little over $2,000 a month. What could you do with $2,000 to put a homeless person in a home? That's more than enough. And another issue is their health. We can't keep our health out here. We don't have air conditioning, heat, place to rest. I haven't slept in two days, it's just so scary. This is, it's just, you know, it's very difficult. Please don't make it any harder on us. Please help us use this $2,000 a month. Think about what we can do with that. We can house them. We can help them with their health. They're going to the hospital. They don't have insurance. They're not paying their bills. It's getting written off. This is an ineffective use of law and money. Please don't make it any more difficult for me and for us. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Call.

Good evening. Good evening. Thank you, Amy, for sharing that. I'm John. I'm a renter in District 2, opinion shared of my own and don't necessarily reflect my employer or those with any organization I'm affiliated with. I'll start with I am very angry about homelessness, as are many people in this room, as are many people in this community. I know some of you get calls about people struggling. We definitely see dozens at work every single day. It feels like a big part of my job and my colleague's job as providers is directly telling people, requesting, even begging for help, exactly what they fear, that they're on the list, and I can't even estimate how long it will be before we have the chance to help them get their own place. How are me and my colleagues supposed to build trust with our clients when meeting their basic need of housing as a one in 100 tool in our tool belt? We still do, by the way. I love that item 30 directs staff to look for land to build shelter and housing that people need. They can't recover without house. They can't deal with their mental illness without housing. When they get rained on and live in the elements, they can't work when surviving as a full-time job. We do not have housing to put these people into and they often sit on the list until someone else is evicted and rejoins the homeless community or dies. We need more housing. I also love that item 30 reaffirms our city's commitment to compassionate, evidence-based, fiscally responsible, and collaborative solutions. I do think this is in direct contradiction to item 29. Criminalizing homelessness is not compassionate. Helping people meet their basic needs is. Criminalizing homelessness is not evidence-based. Finding people for being homeless does not help them get out of it. It just makes it harder for them. Criminalizing homelessness is not fiscally responsible. I've heard Chief Salters say numerous times we cannot arrest our way out of the homelessness problem. Do we want our officers spending their time waking people up to give them tickets? Do we want our courts chasing them down for not paying those tickets and our taxpayer dollars funding their stays in our jails? Criminalizing homelessness is not collaborative. There was not discussion with providers or with the unhoused community themselves on this matter before it was put on the agenda. I'm glad you got to hear from some people tonight about it. And I'm glad so many people cared so much that they stood outside and stood here for five hours to give you three minutes of their opinion. I don't want to see people yelling at things they're hearing and seeing on the sidewalk. I don't want to see people in psychosis when I go downtown. I don't want sex offenders who have served their time in prison and been released back to our community be damned to live in the woods for the rest of their lives. We are all better off and we are all safer when all of our neighbors have a safe place to live. I would ask that you add language to item 30 that directs ACC to explore avenues for formal regional partnerships with neighboring communities, even if they don't care and won't come to the table. I would ask that we continue to engage with our state delegation to identify and pursue regional housing solutions. If we want to criminalize being unsheltered, let's make sure that we have options for people to go. When an officer kicks them awake for sleeping, how are they to comply? If we want to end homelessness, we have to have options for people. Please, for the love of the people that we voted against ADUs for, let's vote against the Rights of Way Committee recommendation to criminalize homelessness and in favor of Resolution 30 with the addition to pursue intergovernmental regional partnerships. Thank you, Mr. Morris.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening. It's me again. I'm Ray Smith. I'm running for State Senate, which includes about half of Athens-Clarke County, including the downtown area, as well as four other counties. I currently live in Oconee. People have already done a great job of highlighting the very real human cost of item 29. I'll simply reiterate. These are our neighbors. They deserve dignity and respect, and criminalizing them is inhumane and cruel. It exacerbates their situation and makes it even harder for them to find stable housing. All of this is true, but in the interest of appealing to people who might disagree with all of that, I'm going to talk a little bit about the financial and logistical ramifications of item 29. I recently attended a listening session with Sheriff Williams to discuss conditions in the jail. My takeaway was that the jail population has skyrocketed and we are facing a crisis. The jail is understaffed and underfunded, leading to safety concerns for the inmates, with several deaths having occurred in the last several months. Item 29 will further criminalize homelessness and lead to an inevitable increase in the jail population, further exacerbating that ongoing crisis. Many unhoused people are experiencing mental health problems that will make them unfit to stand trial. We have a shortage of psychiatric services, so many of our jail's inmates stay there indefinitely, with ever even being convicted of a crime. Again, further exacerbating the crisis. Now, on to the cost. To house an inmate in the Athens jail costs roughly $75 a day or $2,300 a month. That is literally the most expensive thing that we can do to address homelessness. And on top of that, we know that from the research, it doesn't even work. I hate reducing this to a math equation. Because the bottom line is that item 29 is naked cruelty disguised as help for downtown businesses. But unfortunately, some people need the very real cost to have a dollar sign next to it for it to make sense. Item 29 is a recipe for disaster. It dehumanizes our neighbors who simply have nowhere else to go, and it's going to cost a lot of money. It's a lose-lose if you care about the dignity of our neighbors or just want to save some money. I don't care which one, but vote no on item 29 and yes on item 30. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Michael Bean. I live in District 5 in Athens, Georgia, BIEN. I'm the executive director of the Athens Homeless Coalition. Thank you for this opportunity to speak this late at night. I am grateful to you all for this opportunity. I will be speaking in favor of item 30 and opposing item 29. My core objection to it, move along orders, are inhumane. extremely expensive, and equally importantly, do not work. People either return to where they were, or they relocate. And when they relocate, it's usually somewhere less safe, further from services, further from the people who look out for them. When they're displaced from that location to, the cycle repeats. This doesn't resolve the underlying problem. It shifts it. And each shift makes the person harder to reach. I'd also like to ask the Commission to be clear-eyed about what this ordinance actually does. A citation from law enforcement is a criminal legal consequence, not a service intervention. And for someone without a fixed address or income, an unresolved citation can lead to arrest. I spoke with several of you about this issue, and no one here has been able to give their word that this ordinance will not result in a warrant for someone's arrest. I think it's worth naming that plainly before we vote on it. In 2023, I co-authored a study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the leading medical journals, showing that displacing unhoused people through policies like this increases the rate of overdoses, hospitalizations, emergency room utilizations, and death. Our estimate was that displacement could raise the death rate for this population by 15 to 25%. Subsequent studies have shown the same thing. I've spoken with people on both sides of this issue. I understand the concerns about public safety, visible mental illness downtown, about the strain that some business owners feel, and about other counties discharging vulnerable residents into Athens. Those are legitimate concerns and they deserve real answers. Unfortunately, this ordinance does not address any of them. If you're concerned about public safety or mental illness, please invest more in mental health crisis response and mental health services. If you're concerned about the business community downtown, please consider investing in housing and wraparound services for these individuals to help them get off the streets. And for the commissioners who voice their concern about or their discomfort about people calling them in need for help or in danger of being evicted from their homes, I can empathize. We get calls like that or emails every day. So this ordinance doesn't address that, so I suggest instead investing more in eviction prevention and subsidized housing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bean. Good evening.

Good evening again. My name is Daria Kalantari, 120 Winter Circle, District 3. I'm here to speak in favor of resolution number 30 and in opposition of number 29 on the agenda. I'm just concerned at the paradox we kind of witnessed tonight, the hesitation and the lack of courage to pass or to even readdress the ADU ordinance. And I know we have several other text amendments on the way throughout the rest of the year from the get committee. And these are all to address building more affordable homes and addressing our current ordinances and zoning that we have. And I don't understand how we are going to improve the situation if we cannot even find the courage to address housing. We couldn't even see it just a couple hours ago. So I'm very much in opposition to 29. I hope that maybe we can first address the housing situation in Athens because these are interconnected. When we asked earlier who do ADUs serve, maybe not every unhoused person will go live in an ADU, but it can help open up other opportunities. These are all interconnected and I hope we recognize that. I appreciate your time. Thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you, Ms. Kalantari. Good evening.

Good evening. Mayor and commissioners, my name is Grayson Penn. I live at 150 Timberland Drive. I was born in St. Mary's and I've lived my whole life in Athens except for three years when I was homeless in and out of Athens when I was 18. I volunteered at the food bank, Free IT Athens, and regularly volunteer now at Project Safe. I used to sleep behind the classic center under the abandoned railroad tracks, but they bulldozed that for the Atkins Ford Arena. Before that, they bulldozed the larger encampment for the Firefly Trail, if we remember, and sent everyone to First Step, which turned out great. We know what happened there, which I never would have gone to for many reasons. Regardless, I know no longer of any good spot to sleep in Athens. The shelters are always full, and even when they aren't, none of the people I ran with would ever go to shelter. And none of you would want to go to shelter either, I can assure you of that. But our reasoning was of a deep mistrust of institutional establishment, and that mistrust is perfectly validated by the ineptitude apparent in the proposed amendment to the ordinance in question. I've been homeless in many places across the country, including Atlanta, New York, Baltimore, LA, tough places, but most notably, Boise, Idaho, not Ohio, Boise, Idaho, and San Francisco, California. And the attorneys in the room will know why I mentioned those, because San Francisco was terrible for their sit-lie ordinance, which criminalized sitting or lying down in public from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Luckily, we've already determined that's a terrible idea, as discussed in History 9. uh... on the agenda but these ordinances start like this amendment does and then slowly creep into something terrible these amendments that we have are vague enough to begin with to do that the wording list examples such as but fails to say limited to or not limited to and there's no definition for use of living accommodations if it's not limited For example, where would you eat food if not the dining room as a living accommodation? And where would you sit if not the living room as a living accommodation? And the reason I bring up Boise in relation to this amendment is that Boise tried something similar, and the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruled in Martin v. City of Boise that their anti-campaign ordinances were unconstitutional for cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, in 2024, we had City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the Supreme Court overturned the previous ruling. You would be aligning yourself, commissioners, with the politics of the Supreme Court and their ruling, with its current members, notably extremely unpopular of late. should you vote on this amendment. I think that's something your voter base should know. I'm not optimistic that any of you are going to make the right choice in these amendments. We know Georgia House Bill 295 went into effect in July, so the county would fear getting sued for non-enforcement of Title Code 41 regarding nuisance. But I hope that you try to find a way in what should be obvious. I've never received a ticket or a threat that made me think, oh, maybe I should just have more money.

Thank you, Mr. Payne. Good evening.

Good evening. My name's Catherine Kelly. I live off of Barnett Shoals Road. I'm here to speak in opposition to item number 29, which originally reads as if it's intended to keep entrances to buildings clear, but the added amendment adds camping and public spaces to a list of barred activities. The extreme escalation is shocking, surprising, and disappointing. To ban sleeping in public spaces is to punish those without a place to go. Criminalizing homelessness is in direct opposition to item number 30, the very next item listed. It is performative and egregious to suggest item 29, which is proven to worsen homelessness in communities and followed up with item 30. Item 29 lacks empathy and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the options available to my unhoused neighbors in Athens. Writing citations, levying fines, and taking people's personal belongings does not give them a place to go, nor does it make anything for anyone safer. or more accessible. Creating a punitive solution gives Athens an excuse to remove Athenians from spaces deemed too nice for unhoused residents, which directly conflicts with the purpose of the existence of public spaces. I ask that you vote against item 29. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Kelly. Good evening.

My name is Bridget Roloff. I live off of College Station, and I'm here to speak in opposition against number 29. It's late. We've been here for a while. We've heard a lot of people say why this is not a good idea with many lovely evidence and support and better speaking than I will ever care to try to even attempt. But this is our community. I mean, it is... 1058, there is a line to the door. And I'm sure there are still people outside waiting to come in here and talk. And we have heard one, maybe two people in support of this. And otherwise, this is our community. We are here. We are saying we do not support this. We want to help the people who live in this community. This ordinance serves a community that won't be here for another 13 days. And that is what y'all are voting in support of if you vote in support of option 29. And I would just like to say that kind of sucks. Thanks. Have a lovely evening.

Thank you. Good evening.

Hello, Commissioners. How are you guys? I've never been up here to do anything like this, but I would like to speak on the behalf of my people, which are the homeless people. I am homeless. I do not have an address, so I'm going to read what I wrote. It says, to whom it may concern. Advantage. Sparrows Nest, Bigger Vision, I Take Up Four, and other resources. I feel that the waiting lists are too long, just as well as I feel that our basic necessities need to be met. I am number 29 without looking like it. I don't look like I'm number 29. Everybody's like, you're supposed to look homeless. But I am. I sleep outside. Right there, they're trying to keep me from sleeping, guys. To go on, just as well as Athens builds a UGA building or a jail, provide us with a solution, please. James stated earlier, the older guy that was in there earlier when I first came in, he stated earlier about homelessness. And right now, he's on the other side at my spot laying on throw-up. I can't even, I can't sleep there. So I have to find somewhere to go. Other than that, the officers tell us to leave, but where are we to go? Where? When they wake us up with flashlights, where are we, on bikes? Where are we supposed to go? Other than that, I just want to make you guys aware that a lot of us homeless people, we have nowhere to go. You guys clock out, get in your car, cut your arrow, and you go home to your husbands, your wives, and your children. We don't do that. We have to go hide our blankets, find our blankets, find food. and just lay on the ground on cardboard. Of course, I don't agree with the trash or whatever, but we need some resolution around here, and that does not mean kick us out from where we are. If you have to set boundaries, set boundaries, but don't make us leave from where we are. Do not take the ground, the bare minimum. That's the bare minimum that we asking you for.

That's it. Ma'am, I just need your name for the record.

My name is Shonda.

Thank you, Shonda.

All right.

Good evening.

Good evening. I'm here again as well. My name is Elise Stangle. I live in District 7. A lot of great people have said a lot of nice things tonight, very powerful things that it's hard to go after, but I wanted to say Thank you all for being here tonight so late. I know this is a long one. I understand the need for a safe and clean downtown. That's what we all would like. But I think the police surely have better things to do with their time. Someone who is sleeping is by definition not harassing someone, and a pile of belongings is not harassing someone. This will not help. The people I talk to are only outside because they have nowhere else to go. For some numbers, the maximum amount of SSI for 2026 is $994. I looked up the amount of one of the local new developments that says it's affordable. And they are in some ways more accessible because they don't require three times rent. So they are more accessible for people. But their rent for a one bedroom for an affordable place, it was $975 the last time I looked it up. I looked it up tonight while waiting in line. It's gone up to $1,038. And I'm going to repeat that the maximum amount of SSI in 2026 is $994. That is not sustainable. There is no housing for people who are on disability in Athens. And then if someone is waiting for subsidized housing, for housing authority, for something that doesn't take 115% of their check, then they're trying to get a bed for the night, and our shelter beds are very limited. I help people call into Bigger Vision, and that's often a 30 second difference between whether or not they get a bed for that night or they're on the streets. You have to call in exactly at four, And if you aren't one of the first ones in, then you don't have a bed. And at that point, you can't get into Salvation Army. They're already done for the day. And there's nowhere else in Athens for individuals to stay. So someone else mentioned negative feedback loop earlier tonight. And that's what this would be. This is punishing the people who are most vulnerable and just have nowhere else to go. And it would be prioritizing discomfort and momentary convenience. to just kick the problem down the road and prioritize it over people's actual lives. And that is not the Athens I want to be a part of. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Stanger. Good evening.

My name is Barrett. I live at 100 Hillside Street. I'm an apprentice electrician, resident four years. I did wiring in the renovation at the old bank across from the globe for about four months. And every day when I walked to the job site, I would see the same faces sitting on the sidewalk or sleeping on benches. And most days that I could, I would part ways with my spare change or take someone through the store. And in the process, I got to know a few of them. And one of these people is a very nice lady named Sabrina. I don't know how exactly she became homeless, because I believe that's her business. But on the 4th of July, she approached me outside the Globe asking for cash. I didn't have any on me, so we walked down to the ATMs so I could pull some out for her. But on the way there, she told me her tent had been torn down by police officers and her partner had been arrested for asking for the officer's badge number. She then expounded on her fears that without her man, she'd be a more easy target for rape or for her meager belongings to be stolen. And in this moment of vulnerability, she showed me a stab wound that she had sustained below her collarbone the last time she'd been forced to camp by herself. And from hearing stories like Sabrina's, it is hard to feel like homelessness in Athens isn't already criminalized. Police ran her off her campsite, which was in the woods. She was already having to hide out from civilization to avoid being hassled, but even this was not enough. Police arrested her man, who was helping to keep her safe from potentially violent opportunists. It's dangerous enough to be a young woman walking home alone at night. It is far more dangerous to be a young woman walking with nowhere safe to go. The beds of the shelters fill fast and conditions in the shelters sometimes keep members of this neglected community from wanting to stay in them. So why are we even thinking about voting to further criminalize homelessness? The negligence that already exists constitutes a criminal level of cruelty and a downright shameful lack of mercy. Investors are landing all over town, opening new businesses and purchasing new properties. The college generates a tremendous amount of revenue. I find it hard to believe that there's no possible way that we could think about allocating this tax base towards the homeless community, especially if they're being sent here from other jurisdictions so that they might benefit from our more robust services. Another man, Christian, told me he was Ubered in from Monroe. If communities around East Georgia are seeing us as the last best hope for their local homeless, we are fundamentally failing as a city and a community to rise to this noble challenge for those who have been swallowed up in economic hardship in these times as they get harder and harder and harder. I'm begging the council members to listen to their conscience and vote no on 29. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Barrett.

Good evening. Hi.

Let's see.

My name's Archie Dyer. I've been in and around Athens my whole life. And I was a public school teacher, an art teacher for three years here in Clark County. And I'm here to oppose item 29. And I'm asking myself, why am I here? Seriously, why am I standing here after I worked all day for $13 an hour, which is not enough to pay for rent on my own, by the way, I have to have a roommate or else I would not survive. Instead of relaxing on my couch to rest so I can wake up and do it all again tomorrow, I'm here at 11 p.m. I'm here instead of on my couch because there are people in my town that can't do that because they don't have a home. And my local government wants to make life even harder for them. This should not have even been proposed. Period. Period. The same government that kicked people out of their homes in Linnetown in the 60s, that they built themselves, by the way. Look it up, there's a book about it by Hattie Thomas Whitehead. That same government that took people's homes wants to criminalize people for not having homes. Make it make sense. Shame on you, Clark County. Shame on you. There are pedophiles running our country and keeping us poor on purpose, and your enemy is poor people. You should be doing everything in your power to keep people off the streets, and you're deciding to make life more difficult for them. I'm embarrassed to be an Athenian today, not only because of what they did in Linnetown, but also for the terror that this government continues to enact on its citizens, address or not. Last week, a homeless man was shot by the police. Does anyone even know his name? I don't.

Thank you.

Because I'm embarrassed to be a part of this town. Our humanity does not depend on what we have. It depends on how we treat each other, whether we are housed or not. It seems simple. This is the stuff we learned about in kindergarten, but it seems like these old pieces of garbage can't seem to remember that. I say it's time we start electing younger people who aren't so far removed from when they learn how to be kind. People should be free to sleep, lay down, and have their personal belongings with them. Period. Three simple things that all humans do. But it's a problem for Athens-Clarke County government. Why? It's because they don't have a home. That is simply despicable. And I'm starting to think that this town is run by a bunch of villains. You don't solve homelessness by making people's lives more difficult. You solve homelessness by making it accessible to have a home. That is the job of our elected officials. Instead, they just want to send the police to harass them. And in last week's case, it resulted in someone getting shot.

Thank you, Mr. Dyer.

If you're okay with this ordinance passing, then you can go to hell disrespectfully. Shame on you for you proposing this ordinance and expand access to housing now.

Good evening.

Hi, my name is Kayla Patnan. I live on 250 Epsbridge Parkway. I just graduated recently with my Master's in Social Work from the University of Georgia. I've been working with homeless citizens of Athens for years at this point. And I'm here tonight to speak in opposition of agenda item 29. The fact that the interference of sidewalks ordinance was edited to include a punitive fine for people who are experiencing the worst moments of their lives and brought before our commission today marks a cruel and shameful turn in what Athens claims to be about. This ordinance isn't rooted in helping our town. Not only do people who need to sleep on the street have no financial capacity to pay, but when they inevitably fail to pay, the cost of superfluous court dates and eventually incarceration will shift to the taxpayers until the real authors of this ordinance, those who are invested in for-profit prisons, swoop in offering to take our neighbors into custody so that they can use them for labor as is happening right now in Utah, Louisiana, and Texas. This ordinance is not unique. Its language mirrors the language of the aforementioned states. As it stands now, groceries make up 30% of the average American family's living expenses. And rent in Athens has gone up an average of $653 on a one bedroom since 2020, but wages have remained the same. Our largest single employer, UGA, pays most its hourly workers $17 an hour, and even Clark County pays its most credited new teachers $52,000 a year, a wage that's $20,000 less than the $70,000 salary required to qualify for a one bedroom. This is how we create homelessness. Even the sheriffs came to the commission publicly asking for a wage increase to match the rising cost of living. Those who are middle class are slipping into poverty, and those who are in poverty are becoming homeless. Pretending the cost of living hasn't gone up while wages have stagnated in the US posts a record amount of job loss due to AI. will not get us out of the situation. And in 2023, Clark County's own commissioner report said a yearly investment of $5 million into building affordable housing would house our current population. And the US Department of Health and Human Services has found affordable housing helped lower and stabilize rent for everyone else. We can help ourselves, our neighbors, and our town by investing in solutions that address the root causes of homelessness, or we can approve an ordinance designed to eventually enrich a very tiny few at the cost of everyone else. This is the choice we have tonight. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Ms. Patman.

Good evening. I'm Mickey Chastain. I am at 105 Lakeover Drive. I am a pastor in town. Also, I, along with a lot of folks here, are familiar with phone calls and the weekly requests for help. I am here to oppose item 29, the campaign of ban on public camping. And also to support item number 30. And it's been interesting listening this evening. I'm hearing like this inclination, this tendency that seems to have existed for some years for us to seek, this body to seek what seemed to be like the quick fix solutions for like housing issues and unhoused communities when these are extremely obviously complex issues like this room is very deeply involved in the complexities. And I guess the message, even those couple of downtown business owners who are wanting to support this ban, like all of us are coming together, those of us who oppose it, and even those who support it, to ask you all to begin to really make long-term investments into solutions that are sustainable, that address the root causes to finally get into the complexities of this. I think it's very helpful for you all that you have all of us and all these folks who are sort of putting the band-aids and doing the best we can, but we're all of us. Everyone who has spoken on both sides of this are asking for coordinated, compassionate, long-term sustainable responses to the unhoused issues and to our housing crisis that is sustainable for all of our communities that prioritizes housing, outreach, mental health services, community partnerships, solutions that improve the safety and dignity for all of our residents. I think we're all asking for the same thing from this body and have been for years. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Chastain. Good evening. Good evening. Broderick Flanagan, PO Box 295. I am in opposition to number 29, along with everyone else, in support of Agenda Item 30. I've been a business owner of brick and mortar for eight years over in inner east Athens, over in Triangle Plaza. I've seen all manner of things that some of the business owners described earlier. Not one time that I try to call the police on people or want to see an ordinance like this passed in order to address those type of situations. I feel like if we pass something like this tonight, we're taking a grossly step in the wrong direction and being irresponsible with our political will and political power. Last year, I feel like we, meaning AADM and some of the people that are working on some of the housing ideas that we brought forth, introduced the idea of creating an overlay district in each of the 10 commission districts. Where you can create an overlay where only nonprofit developers can come and develop. We could have started doing that work last year. It could have been assigned to committee by now. You're well within your power, Mayor Gertz, to assign that work to a committee so that nonprofit developers can start to build transitional housing like pod communities where people can be out of the elements. This most recent winter storm, we saw fatalities that happened because of y'all's lack of actually pushing the button and doing something substantial and sustainable. And so I feel like I hope that you are not operating from a place of fear. I understand that there's been a federal and state legislation passed recently that will hold municipalities responsible for not enforcing, loitering, and panhandling laws. Again, I hope you're not operating from a place of fear out of that, from that, because the people have spoken tonight. People power, the people have put you in these seats, and the people will remember what happens here tonight if you all pass these text amendments. And I hope that we can begin to work on some of these resolutions that people have brought forward. You guys got money for the Strike Fund and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund from that property swap with the melting point, that money that they paid into our affordable housing. So use some of those funds to put some of these ideas into action. I'm trying to figure out why y'all dragging your feet, honestly. I've met with a few of you already in meetings to talk about some of these ideas, to put some of these ideas in place. So please assign it to committee yesterday. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Flanagan.

Good evening.

Hello. My name is Susan. I'm with Safety Athens. And I'm going to be under three minutes, I promise, Mayor Gertz. OK. I think we're not seeing the forest for the trees. I could give hundreds of anecdotal stories. I could show you hundreds of pictures of homeless people that we've encountered and have talked to and worked with. We've done a lot. We have done a lot. developed money, pulled money together, got a woman's car fixed so she could leave town. You know, all kinds of stuff. But anyway, back to the thing. The piece of data for the night. Do you or any other adult household members have a criminal record or history with incarceration? This is a survey question on the coordinated entry form. And as of February 11, 2026, the answer was yes. Do you know what the percentage was? 70%. That's of the unsheltered homeless. And what these resolutions are addressing is the chronic unsheltered homeless, because that's who the people downtown are complaining about. And that's who's causing the problems in town. I'm not saying they're causing problems. I'm just saying that that's what is being said about them. Let me get in to where we are. We don't have an opinion on the sidewalk ordinance at all because it's not going to make a difference. We know that. The data shows that. We also have a disagreement with the resolution that was put five days, which nobody knew about, before a vote. So let's get into that aspect of it, and then I'm going to get into my little written speech here so I don't mess up. So we respectfully ask that you either table this resolution or amend it in two important ways before moving forward. Why? because the resolution presumes definitive action needed without a complete picture of a problem to solve. We are talking about unsheltered chronic homeless here. We're not talking about eviction prevention. We're not talking about McKinney-Vento families. We're talking about a specific subpopulation. Okay, so if you do keep them, if you do decide to keep this resolution, first, incorporate point of origin data into the resolution needed to accurately describe the circumstances of the unsheltered homeless on our streets. You have these data, I've given it to you. We have, safety has. Second, remove the specific directive instructing the manager's office to identify properties for unlimited future shelter and housing developments. What problem are we trying to solve? The resolution data do not provide a complete picture of Athens chronically unsheltered population. Across multiple years of point in time counts and Athens coordinated entry data, approximately half of this unsheltered population of which we're talking about report living somewhere other than athens before becoming homeless thank you miss monteverde i got one more thing to say and that was quick that same group also reports higher rates of mental illness than those whose point of origin is athens this data thank you for visiting with us accepted you need to take it into consideration start over see the big forest for the trees And please look at the recommendations in the last two slides that we sent you. They're very action-oriented. And it's for everybody's help. It'll do well.

Good evening.

Good evening. I am Shanice Allen. I live at 130 Meredith Ridge Road, and I am speaking on number 28. I'm the president of the Inner East Athens Neighborhood Association. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the residents of Bailey Street, Grove Street, and the surrounding Inner East Athens community. For weeks, our community has asked straightforward questions about the proposed Bailey Street Roadway. We have asked for traffic studies, engineering analysis, alternative routes, information about planning processes. Instead of receiving complete answers, we continue to be directed from one office to another. Just this week, the Director of Transportation and Public Works confirmed in writing that no traffic impact analysis was performed and no transportation impact or feasibility studies were conducted for this project. Yet, we are expected to believe there would be little impact on our neighborhoods without the benefit of those studies. We are also told that It is UGA's project, so we should ask UGA. But when we ask to meet with UGA, we are told that they will not meet with our community. We have even heard that this is simply how UGA operates. This is not acceptable. When a project affects an established neighborhood, someone must be accountable to the people, or we will end up like Lenintown. I also want to address another issue. The commission-defined option references recognizing the Neely family through a historic plaque or marker, Let me be clear. The Neely family is a separate issue from the Bailey Street Roadway proposal. If we're going to discuss the Neely family, the conversation should begin with whether the Neely family and other long-time black landowners were treated fairly when their land on Bailey Street was taken and their historic community was forever changed. That is an important conversation, but that is not in this conversation. Placing the Neely family's name on a plaque does not answer our questions and it does not address our concerns. The Neely family has asked that those references be removed because our family's history should not be intermingled with this roadway project. Our history deserves to be recognized with honesty, care, compassion, and dignity, not as part of a developmental proposal. Tonight, we are simply asking for transparency, meaningful public engagement, and complete answers before decisions are made. Our community deserves to be heard before, not after the road is built. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Allen.

Good evening.

I'm Cameron Gover, 250 Grove Street. I want to thank you all for being here so late tonight. I'm also talking about the Bailey Street, like, just straightforward with you. They want to ruin our neighborhood. We had two people from our neighborhood tonight who had to leave because they had to go to work. We are a neighborhood of working class people. We're real people. And UGA has just, do any of you know how many parking spaces the UGA Park and Ride Block has? Does anybody know? It's in the document accompanying this number 28. Does anybody know?

It's 1,650.

And when that intersection on College Station Road backs up, that's going to be 1,650 cars coming through our neighborhood. And that's before they finish building out this parking lot. They've only developed half the land. I'm sorry. I'm shaking a little bit. I'm upset. But this came... totally out of left field. It feels slipped in, snuck in. I'm just going through some of my notes. I do want to thank Bruce, our planning director who came to our neighborhood meeting. UGA, we heard that UGA may have contacted some of our commissioners, but they didn't show up at our meeting. They're not here tonight to speak about this. When Bruce briefly mentioned traffic studies, and when I called him on it, he very quickly just folded and was like, yeah, no traffic studies have been done. In conclusion, Like, I'm begging you tonight, please, you know, at very minimum, table this vote. This is not appropriate at this point in time with the way this has been handled. Please don't dump, you know, if they finished out the rest of the land, you'd be talking about 3,300 cars into our neighborhood. It has very bad traffic already. Please don't destroy our neighborhood. We are not the solution to UGA's traffic problem. Thank you tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Gobert. Good evening.

Hey, good evening. I'm Chris Peterson. I live on Hope Street. I was also born here in Athens. Somebody mentioned St. Mary's earlier. I live in Watkinsville, but my parents always brought me to downtown. I spent downtown, I mean, I spent my whole life here. Since 2019, I've been working downtown, and I would say on the shortest week, I'm here five days a week. A lot of times, I'm here seven days a week. And I will say, since 2019 through today, the number of families who come downtown is dwindling. You can see it. It's not a question. There's less and less and less each year. Do I think we have enough support here in the Athens community for our homeless? No. I mean, no one would oppose number 30. I will say with 29, I do feel like we need to give officers some ability to take care of situations which they're kind of stuck with now. I mean, there's officers in this room I've met with before. I'm not gonna go through this line of issues we've had. Do I think everyone downtown is an issue? Absolutely not. Sorry, I'm musing out of this late, so bear with me. We need help downtown. The homeless need help as well. Let's figure out a way to do it so everybody wins, thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Peterson. Commissioners, you've been at your seats for three hours. Do you want to forge through, or would you like to break?

I'll push on through. Yeah, that's getting so long. Can I just ask Sandra one quick question? The next agenda item deals with that.

Well, we'll get there when we get to that agenda item. Let me determine. Are we going to take a quick break or not? No. All right. We're moving on. All right. That's the story. We're sticking to it. All right. Item 27 is the bridge item. In formal terms, I guess the question is does this need to be held or not?

Well, Bob, after tonight's revolution, yeah, it is 1130, so y'all have to work with me. So do we hold it to change the language to address the partnership between Weaver and...

I can make a motion to that effect.

Yeah, I mean, we're contemplating.

We're having a unique moment. Would we like to hold this one until the end of the discussion so that...

Patrick has more information than I do with this bridge being in my district. I guess it's a bridge between your district and mine, right? I did appreciate the information that came forward from the two entities that we've been learning from, so I would make a motion that we put it on hold so that additional information can be nailed down about proper signs and the ability to do what was asked.

All right, there's a motion from Commissioner Wright to hold it. Second.

Second from Commissioner Hamby. If I can just add one piece to that, because the additional name has not yet been been verified or advertised, and so the tabling would probably need to be for 60 days in order to make sure that we can get the required notice actually published on it with the new name.

Yeah, to table it for the time needed to bring it forward appropriately. That's the part that, since we don't know the steps, you know the steps.

60 days or whatever it needs to be properly addressed.

We'll bring it back when we've done some research and made sure we do the proper public notice for naming. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. 28 is the Intergovernmental Agreement with the University of Georgia for the North Coney Access Road extension to Bailey Street. Is there a motion regarding this?

Motion to deny. Second.

Motion to deny. Commissioner Johnson. Second from Commissioner Link. Commissioner Johnson, any remarks?

I got them written all over the place, but the takeaway that I heard tonight is out of 115 people that spoke tonight, more than half of them talked about how UGA has impacted their life as it relates to increased prices, living costs, options and now this, what I don't particularly like about this scenario is the fact that the University of Georgia would not meet with the residents. There was no heads up and I think the statement, the nervous man, and I'm nervous too, stated was it slipped and snuck in and it feels like that and I don't support it because the lack of transparency.

Commissioner Link?

I agree. I mean, the fact that the university will not meet with the community is enough to put the kibosh on this and demand that there is some transparency and some outreach from the university. Also, the traffic study. That's a lot. That is a lot of traffic going through a neighborhood. If that was going through my neighborhood, hell yeah, I'd be upset. So there needs to be a lot more outreach, and the university needs to engage the community.

We've got Commissioner Myers and Commissioner Davenport.

Yeah, I'd like to make a substitute motion to approve. Second. And I just want to address this a little bit here in this. This did not come out of the blue. This was on the agenda in June. At that point, I asked for it to be tabled so that UGA, and asked UGA to reach out to all the residents. I believe they sent about 50, 60 letters to them all. In early July, I followed up and knocked on the doors of all the homeowners. as well, not every resident but all the homeowners, and talked to about four of those residents and left letters with copies of the UGA letter in case they had not received it. I also was not able to be at the meeting last week that happened with the inner east Athens. I had a previous planned vacation, but I know that we did have a representative here and there were with Bruce Lonnie from the planning director and he put a very good summary together that he gave to the manager and the manager shared with me and then shared with the rest of the commission as well. I'd like to manager to address any of the issues that were in there as there. I do want to make one clarification as well before we go to there because I did have the, if you open up the agenda item, the CDO has been, it's physically on there because I believe the clerk wanted to show the historical nature that it was submitted but I removed that and shared that with all my commissioner colleagues yesterday and it's on there but it's all crossed out and says that it has been removed So we were respecting the wish of the Neely family on that item and did that as soon as I got the message this weekend on that. So I addressed that Monday morning. I do would like the manager to address, if he can, any of the traffic issues that were brought up and perhaps the question of the left turn as well. I am a person who goes down Barnett Shoals a whole lot. The assumption is that most of the people will continue to go out College Station. We do not know that for certain. I agree with that. But maybe the transportation director or the manager could address some of these issues.

that were addressed and why there wasn't perhaps why there was no need or why there wasn't a traffic study done yes there's a lot here so I'll try to go through this as quickly as I can so so as mentioned Bruce Lonnie attended the meeting and he took notes from the meeting which have been shared with each of you there were a number of questions that were raised at the meeting based on his notes that to the extent we've been able to TPW has provided at least a response. I don't want to say an answer because in some cases the response was we don't know because that's something that's associated with UGA. The general concerns that were raised were that there was a lack of communication from UGA with the community about the intended purpose for the proposed roadway. Questions like why is the road being built were raised repeatedly which obviously were unable to answer for UGA so that was kind of the general, kind of general questions. Specific questions included how will southbound traffic flow on Barnett Shoals Road be restricted from using Bailey Street? There are no restrictions currently planned. It is not believed that the traffic that will be using it will use it. It's not a high potential cut through. But we should be prepared to implement traffic calming if is necessary. That is also something that could be incorporated into the design up front as well. The question about was a traffic impact assessment completed for the project? No, it was not, and the reason being is because the projected trip generation doesn't trigger the standard for requiring such a TIA. Will there be any improvements made to the existing Bailey Street right-of-way as part of the construction? We're talking about curb and gutters sidewalks and so on and no that is not anticipated as part of the project or currently funded as an ACC gov project if the IGA um specifying the northbound access from the roadway to the existing bailey streets to be restricted on game days there are no current restrictions attached to it however we certainly retain the ability to do that in the future if it ended up being an issue as we do elsewhere in the city where during game day we're able to actually close streets um for um for for safety reasons If park and ride traffic is not supposed to use the new roadway connection to the existing Bailey Street right away Why doesn't the road connect directly to the access road? and the I'm sorry It's not supposed to use new roadway connection of the existing Bailey Street, right? Why does the new road have access to interconnect at all and Could the new road be extended only to the access road? Response was interconnection provide secondary and emergency access to the park and ride. Our utility facilities and Bailey Street residents in case of road closures or failures. There's a question about accessing directly to the loop. That would have to be something negotiated with GDOT. GDOT has been generally pretty clear they're not going to have direct access to the to the loop accesses to occur at interchanges. Is there a specific UGA staff person that is appropriate point of contact? I'm not going to read through all these, just a series of UGA questions, which of course our answer only can be, that needs to be taken with UGA because we don't have We can't answer for UGI, obviously, in those cases. And then the last question was, is the new roadway associated with any greenway improvements? And leisure services staff provided feedback on the plan when it was initially submitted earlier this year. The only comment related to the new road was to make suggestions of having sidewalks wider in the area, similar to a multi-use path. And the design has included an element associated with that. But there are no direct suggestions expansions of the Greenway or anything associated with it. So those were as quickly as I could summarize the comments that were captured and then the responses that we could offer. Again, some of them we couldn't answer because they're really UGA's to answer.

Thank you for that and I believe that they were shared or the traffic engineer, one of you all, it's getting late here, my head is buzzing a little bit, replied to Dr. Allen with those.

Yeah, I believe Dr. Allen referred to the email that was received from TPW that carried the same information.

Right. I do want to say also that I did meet with the Neely family back in June, and that was a very helpful, productive conversation. I appreciate that. That was after I had made the motion to hold it and ask the university to reach out, and I did. Until tonight, I had not heard from any residents, and I had asked the Inner East Athens group to please communicate if there were things to reach, either send them to me directly or to give people my email addresses. So anyone who is in my district over there, I just sent out a newsletter, and I had a whole thing on there. I please ask you to find my name on the website, and there's a place to sign up for the newsletter. I put the agendas every month in there with links right to them. you know whatever happens with the group happens to the group but i have the substitute motion in I'm ready to move forward.

I've got a motion from, a substitute motion from Commissioner Myers. The seconder was Commissioner Wright. Commissioner Wright, any further remarks?

Yeah, this used to be my district and that dead end was problematic safety-wise. And then part of the reason, just to be clear, that this additional access point is because of the issue we had with our bridge and there being only a one-way in and out. how that repair and an automobile malfunction could also block the traffic so safety wise it seems appropriate to have this in here and it shows you can see on the in our document here that it's our property as far as having it like the manager had said if we need to put a barricade on it say then nobody's coming through here that the blue area is our property and it's a partnership just like We did a similar partnership. I'm working together and the staff of the two entities Putting all this together and it has been out there for two cycles or three Commissioner Myers to because we were two cycles meet in July and and just like it's it's it's hard to pinpoint meetings and that are brought forward and a lot of people during the summer aren't available to go to meetings. So I hope that people won't have their feelings hurt and think that because Carol wasn't at the meeting or UGA didn't have somebody at that meeting, we did have staff to answer those questions. I support this for us as well as the community that is going to not have a dead end anymore. They were complaints a lot of times about that dead end of Bailey Street to me by the residents when I was representing that area. So I hope that this will move forward.

Commissioner Davenport, did you have a remark? I thought I saw your hand.

Can I just add one more remark to you? If the situation does arise where there is a lot of traffic, there's also a process we have where we have neighborhood traffic management that we'd evaluate the data and that could go onto the list of projects to get some traffic calming if that does become an issue. I think that's perhaps what Commissioner Fischer was gonna add in there.

Commissioner Fischer. Yeah, I was gonna mention that we need to be real specific about adding, looking at doing traffic calming in that area, and also to keep 18-wheelers out of there, about putting up a structure saying 18-wheelers can't come through. So I think that would be one of the items that we also should be a part of this process.

Any others?

I just have one last comment.

Commissioner Johnson.

Yeah, I'm really surprised that people are hoping that this moves forward with all the we don't know the answer to that we heard from our county manager. Traffic calming is great, but I have a project that's waiting on traffic calming right now, and I can't get it. I asked for information. Nothing is promised. This is disrupting a neighborhood. And, you know, if UGA can call every single commissioner, They can call and get in touch with the residents that will be affected. Whatever happened three years ago, last year, when we have a 67-year-old gentleman that came in this evening to talk about how it will affect his life, the neighbors, two neighbors stayed, two neighbors had to go to work. I mean, I think we should give more... consideration to the people who actually show up and stay six hours just to say two sentences worth of a statement of how someone mentioned multiple times quality of life. And so that's all I had to say. That's the last.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Link?

Yeah. Commissioner Fisher offered preventing 18-wheelers, but What about RVs? You know this is gonna be used for game day parking. Do we have any say over limiting the kind of vehicles that will be run through there?

No, really the tractor trailers are the one that we could actually isolate differently and even then it would be tied to those that would be going through traffic because we do have deliveries obviously that go into the utility facility as well but beyond that you wouldn't have the ability to regulate any other vehicle unless, again, you took the steps. During game day, it became onerous. We could take the steps to actually close the road.

And we're responsible for maintaining the road.

That is correct. That is correct.

Commissioner Myers, you had a follow-up?

Yeah, I think just clarifying the language, perhaps someone who worked on it, because I thought in the resolution, in the agreement, game trade traffic would not be directed in that route. So, I mean, as a person who goes through there, with the RVs, that's the game day traffic. It wouldn't be routed that way.

It would not be routed through there. It would be open unless ultimately we end up choosing to close it. So I don't want to set the, it would not be routed through there, but that does not mean that someone couldn't drive an RV through there, just as an example. It's just not game, you know, we have routes with game day traffic, as you know, that we actually route folks through. This would not be one of those, but it will also not be a closed street.

All right, so we've got a substitute motion from Commissioner Myers and a second from Commissioner Wright. We'll do a round robin.

Myers? Yes. Thornton? No. Hamby?

Yes.

Davenport? Yes. Link? No. Taylor? Yes. Wright? Yes. Fisher?

Yes.

Johnson?

No.

Culpepper?

Yes.

Seven yes, three no.

All right, motion carries. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right, 29 is the rights-of-way use ordinance. I'll entertain a motion from a member of the body.

So moved. I make a motion to accept the ordinance.

Mayor? Motion from Commissioner Hamby to accept. Second. Second from Commissioner Fisher. Commissioner Hamby, any remarks?

Sure. I've got just a few, and I know it's late, so I won't keep everybody. But, you know, we had a lot of folks down here to talk about this, and it's very encouraging and very encouraging. appreciated, and certainly if we take all this energy that was in this room tonight and help our homeless population, then I think we can make some headway on doing some real good for all of this community. I will point out, I thought It should be pointed out on our next issue with the resolution. It talks about all the things we've done, and I'm surprised that we didn't hear that from some of the providers that receive our money, especially with the homeless coalition. And I know we've done a lot of good work with Advantage on some SPLOST projects that are helping to put some bets out there. But I will say this, that we've done some general fund appropriations, some SPLOST, American Rescue Plan, CDBG money, home investment, and continuing care funding through the Department of Urban Development. I say all that to say is, you know, it sounded as though tonight we weren't doing anything, but we are. It's not an easy problem, but... We are trying to do something. And the other thing that I keep thinking about, and I've said this before, that people on the left are gonna be upset if we don't allow sleeping outside. People on the right are gonna be upset if we have to spend money to make sure that we help people and give them those wraparound services. So y'all, this is what I see us doing. I mean, I'm not interested in throwing somebody in jail. I don't think any of us are. But I think we are interested in helping people. I don't think we're being a compassionate community when we see people sleeping this way and living this way. That's not compassionate. That's not humane. So let's do something. This will really force us, and the resolution does too, will force us to step up our game. And we need to step up our game. So, anyway, I may have more to say later, but that's all for now.

Commissioner Fischer, then Commissioner Thornton.

Thank you, Mayor. It's a long day, long night, 11.49 right now. I'm going to try to get out of here quickly. And I agree with my colleague, Commissioner Hamby. We have invested a lot of money in our homeless population. And let me say, and I was on the committee on this right-of-way, and we had a service provider on that committee with us. when we was talking about this, so this is not a surprise. We knew it was coming down the pipe. A lot of our service providers that deal with our homeless population, they do a good job, but everybody got to step up big game. We got to really bring these service providers together to talk, and I don't hear that enough in my mind, that our service providers are talking to each other to provide homeless population what they really need. We don't do enough of that without all our service providers. I'm going to put that out there. Secondly, for the community to know, we already have a camping ban in place. You know we can't camp in our parks in this community? So we got a camping ban in place. The rest has not gone up because we put that ban in place. Now for our business owners that's downtown, we owe them something. for them trying to generate and try to make a living to hire folks and offer them to hire jobs. And I say this, and I've said this before, A lot of us live in neighborhoods or in communities. Would we want the same type of camping going on in our own community? And the answer is probably no, because you end up calling the police. So why should we suspect our business owners to sell, when somebody, and somebody sent me a video last Thursday. This guy was doing his business right in front of their, doing his business right in front of their business. It's just not fair to those business owners downtown. And all of us, I'd like to thank all the commissioners sitting around this rail. I really tried to work hard to work with our homeless population. I mentioned earlier how some of us as commissioners receive calls to help people that keep them from getting evicted. or keep them in a hotel. Just during my campaign, my wife and I took in three kids because their mom had a situation living in our house. So when people say to me that I don't have compassion, I got compassion. I understand what that means. Because I was not going to let, first of all, let those kids go into the system, and I'm not going to let them be out of the house. So for me, we got to work together to work on to get this thing resolved. But we can't have people, Commissioner Myers said, that's just as humane as somebody sleeping on pavement every night. That's not fair to the homeless population for that to happen. And we got to do something to make sure our business owners But people can come in and spend their money so we pay taxes to help us do what we need to do. So for me, it's a difficult situation. Can I have a little bit more time here?

One more minute. I'll be done.

It's a complex situation what we're dealing with when we deal with our homeless situation. And we're not the only community that we're dealing with. I was with the incoming mayor of Gainesville, Georgia. They have a heck of a time in Gainesville dealing with the same thing that we're dealing with. So this is a regional thing, and we've got to do better. But we've... I'm going to ask our service providers, I'm going to put this out there, that you work with all the service providers that help our homeless population from a mental health perspective, from a social abuse perspective, so we can pull this together. Because too many people work in silos. Some people are doing this, helping the homeless population. Some people are doing this. Why can't we work together to solve some of these issues? And that is not going on, and that's the truth. Those things are not happening. So we really want to do good for our homeless population. Let's work together to help solve some of these issues so we can move forward and make this community what we want this community to be.

I've got Commissioners Thornton, Myers, Lincoln, Davenport. I got you. Commissioner Thornton.

I totally support our business owners downtown, and I do think that this, what is it, item 29 does contradict item 30. It shows that we are. not organized. We should not have had two different issues around homelessness. I struggle now. I'm trying to figure out and I have sent all of you emails about some concerns that I have had This should have, both of these should have really been led by the Homeless Coalition. So my question is, well it's not even a question. I'm not gonna vote for this, but I understand and empathetic with the business owners, because nobody wants to step in there business and crap is in their driveway. Nobody doesn't want somebody threatening them. But we have been working on this so long and Commissioner Hamby just mentioned the different fundings that we have put into homelessness. We should be so far ahead of the game. I don't care what other counties are doing. I have spent the night at Thomas Lay Park with the homeless when I had to volunteer. I have worked in the encampments. So I'm not sitting around here trying to be bigger than nobody else, but I do respect the business owners downtown. And the business owners should be mad, but my question now is with everybody that spoke tonight, what are y'all going to do after this vote? I mean, you come up and you speak, but Everybody has a responsibility with homelessness. And I think that, again, I'm not gonna support it, but I do question or suggest that you work with the Homeless Coalition or the businesses downtown. I don't ever hear about the Homeless Coalition and the business folk meeting before tonight. No, I'm not talking about a forum. See, that's what the problem is. Forums is just a place where you just pass information. It's no action. You need action. You need commitment. You need the businesses to say, I'm willing to do this, and I'm willing to do that.

Commissioner, I need to go ahead and move on to the other folks here.

No, I've still got a minute. But my fellow commissioner already told you how much resources we have put into this homeless issue. But I'm not going to support it because I don't think that it's not the Christian thing for me to do. But I do think we all can do better. And Mr. Bean, I appreciate you adding that, but it really wasn't necessary.