City Council - Regular Meeting

30 and I presume Sharon I call this meeting to order. Is that right? Yes, I call the meeting to order. Um, thank you all for joining us for our retreat and um it's been a busy week seven uh lots of things happening in Duny. We can't

wait a second then. Um,

so I thought I would kick us off with a little bit of said a lot out of the last seven days, but um, Dwey is in a really strong position. We are growing, thriving, and progressing. And that is something we should all feel good about. We're doing really good work. But as I said it, the state of the city, the success we see today is not accidental. It is the result of thoughtful actions and decisions, careful planning, and a community that has stayed engaged and continues to show up. And that's why we're here. The goal today is not to solve everything. It is to align on where we believe the next uh momentum or trigger for Dumb Woody should come from the question in front of us is not whether Dumby is doing well. It is how we make sure it continues to stay competitive, relevant and thriving in the years ahead. And we have a few questions that I want to focus on today which is wait guidance question.

Wait Jay J. Is that the first one? Okay. Ensuring Del's future. What are our next um strategic moves? Because we want to align on where we think our momentum should come from. And then Jade, what kind of city are we intentionally becoming and what do we want to avoid becoming? And for me this is like a really critical path we need to go down as we are going to be faced with lots of decisions you know the next two years and beyond. And then what do we do to ensure Duty remains competitive and thriving in the future and um and so that's sort of the overview. If we leave today with a clearer sense of where we want to focus our energy and attention then we have had a successful retreat. The goal today is not to solve everything, but to continue to define direction. So, I thought I would give us a few ground rules if that's okay. Uh, I did I wrote them down, but they're not written down anywhere. Sorry. So, I want us to stay focused on the big picture. Today is about direction and priorities, not solving individual projects or getting into operational details. Um, and as a reminder, our job is the what. You know, we're to define and then let our staff help us to the how. And I'm always have lots of ideas about how, but our job is really the what. Be candid and constructive. We want to hear different perspectives, but in a way that continues to move us forward or move the conversation forward. Listen to understand. Let's give each other space to speak the benefit of the doubt and really hear what is being said. Let's be mindful of time and keep us moving. We have a lot to cover. And finally, let's focus on what we can control. There are always

outside factors, but today is about the choices in front of us. If we can do those things, I think we'll have a good day. Thank you all. All right. Who goes next? You okay?

All right. Oh, once again, thank for the time full day to go over city. It was really appreciate that. It's a it's we have a great city council. I'm not just saying that, but I work for y'all. Y'all keep things together, stay focused, stay on track with uh business of the city. I want to you look around other cities and how they operate. We see some that operate really well, some that don't, but we're on the top standpoint. I also want to thank the staff for all the work they've done in putting this retreat together. Um they put a lot of time into listening to the council um going over different plans and assessments that that y'all had looked at over the years and also putting that together. Um following what the mayor said minutes ago about having a couple different things. One of us to think about is statements I would like which is we can't control the wind but we can adjust our sticks. So that's what we have to do. We have to keep moving. We have we can't control everybody that comes to the council meeting around economically can't control those fac um you know we've had several things that have gone at us different things like that they still come out very well it's not by accident y'all will give us the staff the authority and power to do what we need to do to make those adjustments we have something because of that and we have a flexibility to do different things that are important. So the break for today is um falling back on the 2025 comp plan that was major funded I think the comp plan did it that way just having a major renewable back what what we see the city for the future as y'all all know very unique you know we're landlock we have

tremendous opportunity more opportunity than probably any other city within the metro region and uh because that a little too. We can say hey done the best in my opinion how we operate location transportation network second to none. So comprehensive plan took all that into consideration the part of what we're looking at maintain our neighborhood like that's always been the number one focus of the county. um also invest in right where we're standing this is the you know pinnacle of city of D when it comes to economic and it's why we're on the map but people talk about perimeter a lot of people it's always funny when you talk to different ones y'all might experience the same thing that people talk about they say oh I didn't know the king and queen was in same springs I said they thought that was done it's kind of it's a greater W it's But people see that people see it as hey that's done you when they're thinking about the perimeter area. So we want to continue to invest make investments in these areas here and also to cultivate other local centers. The village spent a tremendous amount of time and energy on the village. The other day I went there hard to find a parking place you know it was just it was big. It's crazy but this is grow a park far away. It's fine. I'm I'm going here. Um Georgetown we have a Georgetown plan we redid. is still a major focus of ours. We'll continue that. That area is continues to evolve. Um Jet Fairy Jet Fairy has some changes. It's still working through some entity issues over there, but we have huge investment giant in that in that sector. It's going to change the dynamic here. Again, talking about Sandy Springs, right on the edge, you know, that share in Sandy Springs and then of course Winter's Chapel kind of an emerging

portal. keep waiting for the public investment, waiting to see what can we do to spark that public investment and get more uh interest in that area. And so we continue to work on that. Part of our desire outcome, you want to hit the slide there are control. Um so our our outcome today is have the council align on a shared understanding of priorities in the city's key places. I just as mentioned from that we want to get the five to seven priority is so and of course those can have subcategories we want to focus on five to seven hot topic I think we want to really focus on we have a 2027 2028 capital action plan align with our CIP and I know many of y'all and that's something that this council did put together a CIP that we have that's we want to work from what's our goals and every now and then someone has to come in It's not all the CI there's a reason for it coming out of a blue. We got to make such adjustments and and integrate that back into the CI and where else where does it fit all this. So that's something we want to focus on. Some governments you'll see they will they'll jump around. This is today's problem. forget about the blank. Forget about life. We will keep you back with these these plans continue to grow. Though all this is capital projects or initiatives may include policy actions, partnerships, programming or targeted capital investments and a lot from them. So that's what we have right there. Of course, there's some stuff going on down at the capital. We're trying to find out see where that's going to end up with tax issues and we we will know all that but we will talk about that this summer at some point have a separate retreat before the budget talk about some of these other issues. Um but that's where we are today. I think if y'all have any questions on today please ask. We have all the staff here. I'm here for Jay

city attorney but if there's any question come let us know. JR.

Okay. Um, everyone just to give you kind of the run of show on how this this uh retreat will be is structured is it's split into the three parts we talked about that are tied to the comprehensive plan. And I want to get Michael start on the hat on this um you kind of came up with the definition of this that like we have this let's focus on these three areas because it's something that all seven of you have been ingrained in for years literally for years. So what we want to do is kind of separate each session a little work in each session right now. We're going to go through some questions just to kind of put it into your head and then we'll we start them in each one. So sessions one, two, and three presentation will mainly be planned economic development parks and police and public works. They'll each do something. It's not a 30 minute presentation of where we are as a city, what we have been doing. is to set the table because part of the thing is we say like in the first couple maintaining neighborhood you ask an average person is my neighborhood maintaining they might think of different things and forgive the obvious things we do but one I like maintain your neighborhood painting roads is the ultimate in maintenance it is literally the ultimate and it's something people see and use every day so we're going to go through that type of thing so what I want to do for this intro section is go through the questions for each one of those before we start each section we'll repeat those questions. Again, this is for you to think on during their presentation. So, what they'll do is they'll go through their presentation staff will and then the floor is opened up to y'all for discussions on. So, just to kind of go through this and the deliverables on each on rating neighborhoods. First question, what pressures or challenges could affect neighbors and overall quality of life over the next five years? Specific time frame. We're looking at five years. We're also looking at what could affect them. That's the thing that you as elected officials focus on. You see it coming down the road. You need to adapt. Second one, what does maintaining neighborhoods

and quality of life mean in Dun? You need to define quality of life is different things to different people, but there is a consensus. Character parks, culture, identity, structure, free space, mobility or something else. Just because you list on there does not mean it's all inclusive. Third one and this is one that you as elected officials are hyper focused on. Where are we already seeing stress for early warning signs? That's when citizens talk to you. That is when you see things as yourself as a citiz. And the fourth one, are there emerging issues affecting residential living that we may not be talking about? There are things that will happen in the future that we know our conversation today may just be a little bit. This is something that might happen 10 years from now. Now, let's go to the doom. When we're finished with this section on a piece of poster delivery, three deliverables, top three catalytic initiatives. In other words, what can you as council do? Top three things to push forward for maintaining neighborhoods. That'll be session one. Session two is investigating perimeter. Perimeter is the engine. It is the engine by definition. What role should the perimeter area play in Dunw's future, autonomy, and identity? We all know it's there. We all participate in it. are all part of it. We need to talk about the role of the second one. What is the perimeter value proposition redundant? In other words, there's a return on investment. We have an asset. It's a large asset. It is influential here. And what must evolve for it to remain competitive? It is competitive. Now, what must happen for it to maintain competitive? If you don't look at maintenance on something, it goes downhill. Third one, and this is actually a big one that we as staff talk about quite frequently. What barriers are there that could limit the areas to competitiveness? So in other words, we see things what is it when a person makes a decision to some what are the barriers? So that's something we'll talk about in the front. This one has the

same thing as three catalytic vision, but the the first part of this sentence we we would be okay with dropping it, but I think it's a good idea getting a vision or an investment piece for the perimeter. It's a little bit different for the neighborhood. Neighborhoods are pretty much the same as city to city. But for us as we talk about the per area, do we need to do something that says what division? Third. Third one will actually take a little bit longer because it's four very specific areas and a local subject. Okay, we all know them. We've all passed through them. We've all run through them. We've all learned we've been around at them. What should each center feel like five years from now? There are four different centers. All four have a different area. All four have a different feel to them. All of y'all are from different areas of the city and visit some more often than others. There's different points of view on them. The second one, how is success defined for each one of these here? So, we're looking at success for Winter's Chapel may not be the same as success for Jeff Ferry. You can do one project and never do it in the other one. It both be considered successes. What improvements or investments and this is a big one. Could be make these centers more reflective. What can we do as a city to make all four? There are going to be different investments for each one. The deliverable for this one's looking at one or two initiatives for each session for each section, not necessarily the whole cultural thing because it's going to be different. The village is going to be different. So, we're going to do one or two for each one. I'd actually recommend at least two. Um, and then the fourth session that we're going to have is priority. So, for all of these, so three in the first, three in the second, up to eight in the third. Pick back for the big seven to focus. It's not a hard number. We put five to eight. We've been bouncing around. I kind of like seven, but there are seven counts of numbers. But the consensus here are the priorities for each one of these areas. And then from that, we're going to pick kind of like the top set. Feel free to differentiate. If you guys think the

top, eight, nine, it's okay to go big or go small on that, but it's to show the focus for the signal. Um, that is the intro to this. One of the things that was in your reading packet was a forgetting the lazy name and came up with the Tyson report.

Alan Jones. Um, Michael did a summary of that showing us compared to those and I actually think that if you didn't read it beforehand, okay, homework time is over. We're ready. We're rolling. Um, but take a look at it if you have. It's a very good thing because that kind of where we are. We're suburban, removed from the core of a bigger city that's above and and it shows that we can parallel that that we don't have to be in. Okay, this is the opening session and we're going to go to uh section number session one immediately. We've got a small break in there to do a little bit of stuff just differently holiday to kind of to break up the day a little bit. Um that's not part of the bigger part of the retrie. But with that, any questions about the intro section first? All right. Are we ready to go to the first questions? Right. Um, let me go back to the questions to begin with. Remember, we're talking about maintaining neighborhoods. Question number one, what pressures or challenges could affect neighbors who follow life over the next five months? Looking at a timeline. Second one, definitions. What does maintaining neighborhoods and falling life mean? The third one, what early warning signs are we missing? And fourth one, are there emerging issues for not even talking? So with that, we won't have to do the I2 push button thing. I press the right button. Did I press the wrong button?

That's everybody. This is like stop sharing. I think you stop sharing. Stop sharing. Here we go. This is what I love about technology. There's a button that says share. I'm getting to it. I see your face close up. Get it up. That's fine.

That's not going to work. Right. All right. Good morning. Uh, good to see everyone today. As uh, Eric and Jay just talked about, we're basing this on comprehensive plan. We spent almost two years uh putting that thing together. It was a major overall comprehensive plan. Um we hired a consultant. Um had a steering committee Tom was on there. Um we met or uh several times. Um so that's what we're dealing with. There were three main areas maintaining neighborhoods. He investigating a vermin day the local center. You'll remember some of the uh steering committee and people in the public came because you had a lesser and it was important that that was uh it was no range to them but it was important that that be first.

So the city's comprised of about 70% single family housing um except for the employment centers at the perimeter and um the village and the other ones. um sort of 70% of our city. It's a big part of our city. Uh the population uh this time with 28,000 uh 500 essentially um just in the single family area um comprised of 10,000 households. The average size is 2.8 eight uh persons warehousing United um most of the area single family is about a four or an acre or less only 2% of our land has lots of an acre or larger in that area. The only redevelopment uh that's going to happen over the next 20 years uh is about two to 500 the houses are going to be a lot of them are going to be torn down and rebuild. Problem with that is the cost here. They're get much larger houses and much more expensive. But first problem in my case the one area this is what uh one of the big stories housing it's all that allows. So the only

subject is the transitional neighborhood areas. They're very defined by these roads, but they had to be within a quarter mile of the commercial areas. So those are areas where we could think we could have some mixed use um house plexes possibly town homes housing um in those key areas. Um there's the ones at Peeler Tilly Mills. There's a lot there that's for sale. It's single family. Nobody's probably going to put a single family house there. So that's one of the areas but the somebody wants to come in and do it has to go through process that has to come.

Say that again because there's no commercial area where you're talking about the Peeler and Tilly Mill. Yeah. It's residential, right? Yeah. But you're saying no one's going to put a single family home there. It it's very private intersection. One house. Yeah. Right. It's one house, right? It's empty. Yeah. Listening. So I could do a lesson but so that's you mean North Peach Street. I mean that one corner that lot that's forever right church. Get up.

I can follow.

Okay. Uh just pulling straight from the plan that Richard was talking about maintaining capabilities. One of the action items from there both is to enhance safety on neighborhood roads by filling in gaps in sidewalk. And a lot of what I'm going to talk about in these next few slides is things that we've accomplished already and then some ideas for projects the council may consider moving forward. Um so as far as sidewalks specifically go, we've uh since governing the city, we've built 15 about 15 miles of sidewalk. map here shows all all green is existing sidewalk. Um and we we've added about 15 miles of that is what the city has built. Um the yellow lines are additional sidewalks or in some cases paths where filling in gaps and sidewalk program and when I say programmed I mean it's funded for construction in the next five years. Um, so everything in yellow on there that was in the works works program and then the that leaves about four miles of gaps on major roads in the city on you know on one side of the road there's not sidewalk. So yeah, those are shown in the uh the dashed red lines. Those are not funded, but those are the gaps that were still remains after everything we're working on. um potential priorities to consider uh circle there uh on the screen is mount there's one section of Mount Vernon that will be remaining on the south side of the road to uh that doesn't have

sidewalk that project is partially funded in the CIP it's funded through design and some right way but the construction is not fully funded but that we're bringing that project is not burned in phase two. Um, Burmac is a project where we did a concept on it. Um, and but it's not funded for construction. Uh, that one south of WAC is maybe uh something to consider with the tarp filling in there. Um, and then the third one is the south end mill. We've had several requests for sidewalk down there. there's there's sidewalk the amount sidewalk on the west side of the road. Um but I point out that none of those or really any of the sidewalks we have remaining are just simple sidewalk projects. Um they're you know they will require adding curves storm water and other improvements to be able to do a sidewalk. So, it's not they're not projects that we can just say, "Hey, here's here's a little bit of money. We can go do this in the next few years." They're going to take some some funding and planning. Um, and I I'm just going to stop there for see before we move on to other topics if anybody wants to comment on the sidewalk. I thought we had this something for the reserve fund on Vermont. Yeah.

Uh we did the first piece turning the corner and wack down to to far. We're we're adding that to the wack project. I just remembered something on So there's still a cat out of there. Okay. So the little circle is actually just south of we are doing. Okay. Okay. is is um the two miles that you funded are those also major projects like storm water and everything the ones that are

uh most of them are bulm is is basically just a sidewalk project view um one up some of them are just mainly just sidewalks some of them are part of bigger projects so I should know this after a bazillion years But when a sidewalk is also storm water, does the storm water funding part come from our storm water fund?

We historically we did not do that a lot, but we have started doing that um lately. U the contributing from the detail to the storm water. We so we just typical road drainage we would probably pay for out of the the project but things where we have to add storm water to control the flow or or reduce the flow you know storm water we're paying out storm water like the big pipe replacement on the Georgetown project or was that to county you know they had we took pictures there were the there was all kinds of pipe work and the gateway project

yeah we paid for all that out of battle. Okay. Okay. And then when we designed our sidewalk plan, I think I'll use some data like looking at where people were walking in the grass and stuff. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. We have a rating system. Do we still have that like for those four the remaining gaps? Yes. I meant to mention that uh the Tilly Mill sidewalk is the highest ranked remaining one that's not as far as that that range that we came up with 16 years ago. I feel the hardest street I would pick too.

Yeah. And then you know we've talked in the past about standing into neighborhoods that's still kind of out there on the table. We don't have a formal policy that we've adopted on that because we've still been trying to finish these, but um that as we get close to the end of this, that would be something that bring consideration.

And what's the update on GDub for Catilian? Uh it's not shown on this map, but they are planning to put in a like a 10 foot path or sidewalk, whatever you want to call it, from Shambling Downy to Monkey Street. So that whole section would get completed. Thank you. But in hindsight, just 2020, we should have done that sidewalk at least from at least where the people live, you know, 15 years ago or whenever we were going to do it because we thought they were going to start this project and they never did. So for future decisions when y'all have to deal with GPOT, consider that their timelines are not always accurate

because you can see where people are walking. I mean, that one is visually obvious. is the small gap on Mount Vernon Place. Um, is that part of the intersection improvement too? Yes, that's that's why we haven't done anything with that one is it would be we're going to the intersection improvement for that intersection would realign the road and I I was going to mention that one. Okay.

Okay. So in addition when I'm talking about pedestrian safety in addition to sidewalks um okay uh city has done a number of uh crosswalk enhancements over the years 25 to be exact. Um they're noted in various locations around the city by the little sign symbols and the little red light looking symbols. Um, we also have seven more programs funded uh that we're working on. Uh, there's only six show on the map. The one that's missing is the Vanderland at Hinsley extension there. Um, so those are in the works. And then we have a couple of intersections where we're looking to improve the lighting. Um, so there's a lot to be still crosswalk instance. And these are all crosswalks that aren't have traffic signals

and the timing of those. Um well, some of them are part of capital projects and then like Hensley, that's a oneoff that could be done in the next year. Um like the one that's showing um the one on Wheeler and the one on Happy or Florida Capital projects that would be sometime in the next 5 years or something for all of these. Is there a way because we get so many concerns about healer water works. Is there a way to expedite something?

Well, I mean, we're hoping um we're acquiring right away now. We're hoping that that project go construction before the end of this year. Okay. Then the other thing that was mentioned in this transportation blurb under maintaining neighborhood was implementing intersection improvements. Uh I'm not showing all the ones we've done here, but I did highlight in 2025. We did do a couple of quick what I call quick fill inter uh safety improvements. Uh they're shown with the green cross on the map. And we also implemented we adjusted the signal timing at 30 intersections across the city um to have a leading pedestrian interval. That's where the pedestrian gets a few seconds to start walking before the the green light or the blue arrow. Um and then looking ahead we have some other projects in the works. um shown by the purple looking cross there have 11 additional small safety improvements that could be anything like signs or curb extensions, left turn lanes, um realignment in one case. Uh and then we have six six projects a part of bigger projects. We have six signalized intersections that are going to get some type of improvement. um that are in the CIP. The uh some a couple of future priorities to consider um the Mount Bing place at Tilly Mill intersection was mentioned a few minutes ago that I mean has been designed it's just not fun for construction. Um and then the Shamley

Dunway Peer Burmach corridor has been talked about before and that um would probably be the next priority as far as looking at intersection gap in the sidewalk gap and the bike lanes there. Um so looking at that for the third thing in this uh transportation amendment and maintaining the essentially business um to u reduce speed based. Um, as y'all know, we just y'all just recently approved a number of changes to submit to the state for approval to reduce speeds. Um, Sergeant Nelson and I have also been talking to a a company that could provide speed data on all the roads in the city. Uh it's it's a little pricier than we were hoping, but um it would cost about $30,000 for a year's worth of data in that it would it would basically identify schemes on all the roads in the city. Um that would help I think it could help with police targeting and sourcing uh and then possibly looking at areas where maybe there's some engineering things that could be done. Do you need to help?

Could you expand on that? Like what? Like so would they just go and study all the streets and say here's the average speed like the high and low? What what they're they're a data company. So they they were they get speed data from GPS cars and they they're um

I think they said they only need about 100 cars using a screen in a day to be able to get accurate data and they provide you know 85th percentile speed you know whatever and it's not it's aggregated they don't they don't give you speed in the beginning it's this 85th percentile speeding up the street for this day or this week or whatever. Um, so can you So that means if a neighborhood street doesn't get 100 like this, would it all bazillion street? in every street in the city, but you know the short culdeac or maybe not, but any any street

that connects to something else probably should have more than And Michael Joe asked earlier one of these I want to address a lower speed and I think it's 25 lower than 25.

Yeah, if we don't if we don't pull permit on it and don't do radar. Yeah. Uh, Georgia law 40-683. Local governments in Georgia cannot set speed limits lower than 25 miles an hour local roads even with the engineering study. Uh, however, the exception to that would be the construction zone and I think you can go down to 20. You cannot do a 15 m hour that's so Woodstock has illegally done that. They haven't read the law. Yes. I don't know how they enforce 15. Richard Richardson can tell you about it. You're interested.

Ken said question of that. What about Brookun Park? It's city property. It's a park listed at 15, but it's our property public. It's not public. It's listed 15. 15, but it's a city park. Well, I guess the question becomes is it a is it a road or is it something else? But I don't I think it's going to be hard to just I don't know how you enforce that asking the question since it's different than everything else.

I think because it's public, it's probably what considered part of the road system if bars are allowed bars. I'm not sure I can enforce it and and I said it before that Jeopardy I think that the place to say is you know you run into these despair about if you set a speed lower it's violated how can you set a speed higher in other words you have to be consistent whatever it is but that's what the law is right now my thought was behind y'all's charter was first to stay on speed so that's something like a part of unsafer conditions such as speeding. Well, this, you know, this is just a I didn't go read all the cases, but uh I think there would have to be a specific reason. And right now, what it is popping up, it says uh outside of urban or residential districts, meaning other roads, the minimum reduced speed is 30. zone exceptions lower speed are permissible where specific hazards are identified school zones 20 to 25 NBH or 10 break construction. So I need to look for one question with that is if we identify an area where we need to have speeds below 20 we can engineer it so that it would be difficult to go fast. I mean we still have active fault. Correct.

Sav. So I I don't know whether there's been an issue with speeding and broke running for example but there may be other places in the city where it would be safer to have car slower and you you know reference engineering to control earlier. Maybe we look at those instead very narrow. Yeah. Narrow the lane or you know.

Yeah. And I should me I meant to mention too that and just about every capital project we're doing now in some type of element to the for slower speeds from arrow wings islands that kind of thing and you know they're not they're not going to slow everybody down but we are trying to things like that turn radiuses uh Richard you know the the streets at like the ones who come out private or the um 25 on main street and we've got permission to stay bus ways and outside we still handle Dri so there's so many articulate whether they're dangerous

I and in relationship to this like you know we get complaints about speeding in neighborhoods fairly frequently and we send out y'all send out the speed trailer thing. Is there a backlog of neighborhoods waiting for that at this point? they're starting a you want another one about I just I'm I'm curious and then I think one of the strategies we might want to consider and maybe y'all are doing it is when the speed testing is over that you tell us and tell the people that are emailing or something that it shows and then we need to know I get I mean maybe that's a regular we should get so we know half a lot of the time it doesn't show what people think it's going to show, right? Because

but it would Yeah, I think it's posted on the website. But yeah, I guess that's that speed data we were talking about could help with the trailer out there if you have the data where so I do have an answer to the park situation done. Uh this is 40-6371. a local government to set a speed limit lower than 25 then a far be a special hazard conditions I don't know how you enforce it but you can again we've already done the engineering for proto is engineered

speed I mean the speed and Michael as about as has any since I've been on council I don't think anybody's petitioned for you know the neighborhood traffic caling policies since 2020 has Has anybody applied for that? Uh well, I think the last one we

was probably for Nation Drive, I think. I don't remember when that was. Uh we have had a couple of requests. Um since then, but a lot of times when we do the speed measurements, it comes back people most people are going within five miles of the speed limit. So, um, never had anybody, uh, petition that had high enough speeds recently. And then we had in some cases, and this goes back to one petition and they met criteria, but they didn't. Um, and so they they just decided they're not really forward

and we we changed it to also like to uh

so in the comp plan in the work plan or activity section that talks number one talks about. Um so just a couple things in the most literal sense of maintaining neighborhoods. Um we're in good shape. Um we continue to see good results from the city's invested in um since since inception. as as of the end of 2025, over 90% of our streets are in fair or better condition. As you can see here, um we have about 1% only 1% and very poor condition. Um and we're on track to to pave all the streets u completed paving cycle in 20 years 2029. Not to get off subject, but how's our pothole repair budget? How are we doing on that? So, um this one showing the progress we made in 2010 rating all the streets in the city combined. The paging condition index rating from zero to 100 was 69 for the whole city. that's shown by the the blue column here on the left of the graph. Um most of everybody at that time I think didn't didn't think that was acceptable or good enough uh and where we needed to be from a level of service. So the the city council was invested in paving and u also back then we had a backlog of streets in poor condition. You can see it took five years as as the PCI was going down. It took five years to kind of slow that to reverse that trend and get up on the backlog and it took 10

years to get back to where we started. Uh but today we are at a 76 um and I think the the sentiment today would be that this we've achieved an acceptable level of service. Um we don't probably need to go really any higher than that. Um the uh somewhere between 71 and 75 I think has been as a good target. Um and the reason why the red line on the graph shows our m today in today's dollars what we spent in operating maintenance that's the pothole filling pavement patching what our you know do to maintain the payment outside of the reservicing. And in today's dollars, we're spending half of what we were uh on that out of the operating budget since 2010. And that really started turning the corner around 2021, which is when we got up over 70 with our uh PCI score. So, you know, there is a I think there is a direct result between the resurfacing we've done and how it impacts the operating budget able to not spend as much on street maintenance uh as we last um from a maintenance standpoint is storm water. Um we want we invested heavily in upgrading the storm water system through the condition of our assets and also improve water quality uh in the streams. Every 5 years we were required by our storm water permit

to do an inspection of all the city storm water structures and pipes. Um and part of that uh inspection we do a rating of the condition of the pipe or the or the structure from one to five with five being the the best. And so through the different cycles, the most recent cycle that was completed in 2022, we started in 2011 with about an overall condition rating of our pipes of about three and a half. We're up over four as of the end of 2022. Then the this chart on the right shows as of 2022, which was our most recent cycle. Um what the what how the breakdown of the condition. So we have um I think about 90 90 over 90% of our pipes are in fair or better condition. We just have 2% that are failing and 5% that are poor that we're continuing to to work on it. But we we improved that by doing the the pipelinings and uh some in some cases diglation pipes. So continuing to focus on that. And Michael, how's the cash uh the revenue stream the the fee uh coming into this utility? Um and can you refresh some folks of how it's calculated and uh so I know it was changed many years ago was changed once from initial.

Yeah the the fee is uh based on well for single family it's a flat rate uh for for commercial and everything else is based on the impervious area. You pay a certain amount for inious area. Um the fee there's a built-in escalator fee and it's tied to the municipal cost index that's published. So as the cost city services nationwide increases the RP is tied to that index. Um and so we we're we have the revenue we have coming in has been able to to cover expenses. you know, we we actually have a little bit of um less if you want to call it that. We've spent some of that down, but there there is money there to maintain um what we have

and we got a boost because we had the Yes, we did a lot with the ARPA money. Um you know, $4 million worth of u rehabilitation has been completed in the last three years was the ARPA money. So that that's helped a lot. That that helped us keep from having to tap into our reserves smaller fund. And with the ones that are failing and poor, I assume they're on the list to be done. Yes. Next week. Okay. Well, you know, in some cases there's easements that are needed so we can't just, you know, go away after it. But yeah, those are all in the work. That's all I had.

Michael, can we circle back on the potholes again? Yeah. Potholes, are they done year round? Is it now pothole season? We have a crew ready to go out. How does it work? Does it work all year round or is there certain times a year that there's a push for pothole repair?

We fill potholes year round. Uh if it's sometimes we might have to put a temporary fix on it and come winter time. Sometimes the asphalt plant's not even hot to put down. So we'll fill it with cold beds come back cut it out and do a hot mix when it's warmer. So we but we're always I mean anytime we can build a pothole then for for bigger payment repairs that really is I think it's March and November I just I'm seeing a number of potholes and then trying to make sure that we have enough money to do the work that we need to do. seeing main infrastructure, roads, main thorough affairs with potholes. Like I could name a couple of them, but there's some that are jumping out at me and I could report them, but at the same time I'm like now reporting I'm getting close to reporting, but it's it's it's time. It's season, right? I figure it's also seasonal.

Yeah. This is the time of year probably when you see the most because they they tend to pop up more in the winter, right? And then so this Yeah. Yeah. And then sort of spring is kind of the catch up time of getting those bill. But yeah, if you have specific areas well then I think everybody on council general receive bles reporting. Yes. I wouldn't have.

Go ahead. on paving in general. It feels like to me the major streets aren't doing so well like the Shamley Dumby at least in my neck of Shamley. We know what's happening, right? This county is tearing up some Shamley D power and all that. But so those were that road was repaved in our first 20 years. Right. Does it is our plan to wait till the next 20 years to do something or how or Pat? I don't know what we do because it doesn't look like it was paved in modern times. I think or at least parts of it.

Well, the the uh the major roads take the most. They tend to get cut up by utilities the most.

Um and they really should be. So when we talk about a 20-year paving cycle, that's we're talking really about neighborhood streets. So nothing the longest you should go anything about 20 years, but but the main roads really need maybe more often than 20 years. Um, and so I think where we are right now is we're going to hit all the neighborhood streets in 20 years, but then there's a lot of main roads that should be coming back up in the next few years um to see this section. I think we're talking about it's been maybe about 10 years since it was paid. So sometime it shouldn't be 10 more years before that's paid again. to say that. Uh sticking with baby um as we know county is going to be doing major overhauls to the water system um over the next 10 years we're going to be doing major infrastructure there and obviously with water works being within our city and I imagine we'll get a pretty good impact from some of that work if not from actual roads being cut up just additional trucks and and heavy equipment wear and tear on that. So question is I just want to ensure that I'm sure are that we're working closely with the cat county and specifically the waterworks people on there um construction schedules make sure that we're coordinating our efforts we're not going anywhere in the road that might get torn up or that if we know that you know especially in that waterworks area shapel and perhaps dealer um my understanding is going to be a lot of work at the actual plant itself um that we're seeing on top of that and and we monitor that so that those roads deteriorate quicker. We're able to uh

adjust that. So where where are we on?

We we are coordinating with them and they they told us recently that um pretty much any capital project we do on the main road, they're probably going to want to replace the water line if it's not already placed. So if they're doing that on Mount Vernon and Philly Mill, they told us recently they wanted to do that on the next section of Mount Vernon right now. So yeah, I think anywhere where they have older pipe, they're indicating we have a project they want to make the water man placement part of that. You know, it makes makes our projects harder and makes them take longer and but I think in the long run it's the best thing to do. So we are towards that.

Yeah. And the main reason there should be we're anticipating accelerated projects again because of the rate increases in their plan. So I just want to make sure that

yeah now what they haven't told us about is like any plans. So you know we share our list. I'm not aware right now that they're saying but definitely donate above like it's it's a DA county project, right? How do we make sure that when they come back and pay that they do it to our standards?

We we've been trying to keep a close eye on them. uh we're asking them test reports for there we see person and we've also had a couple cases even sent our people we needed to do a lot of our testing to go out check them um so we're we're trying as much as we can to make sure that they All right.

Jordan is coming over there to fix it. All right, just a one slide talk about the uh what we're doing with the neighborhoods. Um our neighborhood police patrols uh we're going to use that since uh all of you authorize back. We're going to get them in this uh to get more visibility. Vacation housewatch um that's very popular. A lot of our citizens on patrol you'll see that go out there. I when I go out of town I go involve you and every kid uh my cameras call our own house to build check make sure. If y'all are not using that, please do. Um, of course, speed traffic forcefully. We do have um with our speed brok. So, and and the priorities, you know, obviously you all send you're getting a lot of your constituents that are having issues. Just let me know.

Uh pretty much is governor's office highway safety. We're going to do our um traffic enforcement especially with our pedestrian crossing details. Um you'd be amazed at how many citations we issue with those how many citations we issue when we do that enforcement and how it's about educating the public you know you make sure we're out of crosswalk um but uh it is a big deal we do get a lot of you get reports to um our integrated license plates have fund that privately with them um obviously when government and the RFID access. Uh we actually um one of the greatest um ideas uh for the council to approve that. So when our car is pulled up to any it's it's in our holdings that will be pulled up to any gated communities um the gates open on autom with EMS got cheap time now directly um we got we got them all our RF ID so we're able to open it works as well maintain post so that's what we're doing neighborhood networks um yeah biggest complaints are we have cruise or 285 raising energy And uh most take a lot a lot of stuff we keep uh obviously handled. Uh that's we do have a traffic unit. Um right now I've got one opening uh so they're the ones we get traffic like Sergeant Nelson charge. Uh he has two options waiting for staff to get back up. So I'll have three that is traffic in traffic speed enforcement special times. Yes.

Uh the How about your uh handheld details? I know it's all related. You know, your hands-free details. You guys, you could do it probably every day, but yeah, we're actually have um so we're partnering with um uh they're not terrorist compliance, so basically the state do law enforcement. We're going to do detail around the perimeter coming up in the next couple weeks. And yeah, it it's all the time I get to work, you know, and I'm working next to me. Yeah, distracted driving is is a big issue and that's the only reason for accident.

I I I know you guys don't don't ever advertise it and I don't need to know when it happens, but I think that's so important that you see people with they're just the inattent of drivers. It's such a safety issue. You know, you look at the pedestrian fatalities and all the crash and you add it to the prevalent. So, I totally support you guys doing that as much as you can and I hope you do it more than once a year. Yeah. Yes, sir.

Um, parking issues, any areas in the city that I mean I some have cropped up with me. I know I've talked to you and Rachel about some and the school comes up from time to time. Any kind of feedback you're getting on areas that need attention?

No, it usually pops up at the beginning of year school. So every year and we have to go out and address it. Um and yeah, she's still down by one of our synagogues. Um however, we haven't done anything in there. The nobody's blocking the roads for our vehicles to get in and out. I know that's been brought up a few times that that one street there. Um most of our is reactive. um you know individual citizens of see some handicap sound respons

I know there was some um planning done uh down at the farm not the farmhouse but at uh the Donaldson banister farm just from some concerns of people getting out and I know uh wildat park had a holly event and I'm guessing parking was okay there but she had a parking

that I I just want to make sure I guess I'm just saying this since I can see both you here. Um, you know, I can see Wildcat Park being used again um by other groups because it's a big open field. So, just to make sure that I guess there are parking plans in place for events at um parks where parking spill out onto adjacent streets and neighborhoods. So, just thought that's an issue that gets brought to me. Respond. You have something that's coming up. make sure that spell out in the streets.

Yeah, that may honestly. So I don't know exactly like we're just saying this Jay but or Eric but like when you're talking about the beginning of school it feels like we can hear the same issues every year and don't ignore it

right it feels like we could look at how we can be proactive somehow and it won't be perfect but use the school as a to like I know that when I was trying to keep us from having to make all the streets around the high school no parking you know I worked with the school it didn't matter We end up having to make them go hard this but it would be it would maybe behoove us in the beginning of July to you know we ought to figure out how we can maybe minimize the problems that we have at the beginning of every school year get with the exception of maybe the first day or two suggestion on where but once they're done with it that's going to talk what we can do things and that's the the what

yeah okay could jump on that I mean there's going to be a stadium but no high schools. Yeah, we'll get to that. They may have a parking plan, but I think we need to be thinking on it, right? I just in detail about that because that's going to cause some make a note so we can we come back to finish. We can talk about it. So, chief, we do parking tickets. We do. Okay. We do. Okay. I just wasn't sure. Yeah. If there's a car park the wrong way on the street or something. Yeah, we could just take it off. Okay. So, we write tickets. I just wasn't sure about that. Yeah. Next question. Public safety. Just clarify. Public safety. You've asked them to be okay. It was brought up one time that was in the job. Is there a reason they can't? You have to be okay.

And then uh truck enforcement. What are we doing for truck enforcement? I'm hearing complaints on that. I said, well, I saw some complaints as well. Um I mean, if they're I mean obviously they're doing business trucks, etc. going to stop. I'm sorry. We will not stop the problem. Um I know there was a mention of getting on block and doing that. Um the only way we could do that is if we were contacting the company say hey do you have a different route that you can take? You know you're not there. We are enforcing it and we do see it. It's just a standard truck. As long as your officers know what are truck routes, what are not. Guess what's for our match point of high school is not a truck route. If any officer sees any truck overloaded, you know, gross vehicle wave eating the bigger truck, you should be asking the question because there's no there's no Kroger right on Vermeck. You should not be using Vermeck as a cut through the your delivery. So I just wonder if your officers are trained with that aspect of

the other thing we did reached out all kinds specifics we reached out for and asked them to make sure that their algorithm or their shows that's not Thank you. We're also encouraing the signage on my brother that I've got specific complaints on that road which is why I'm aware. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. Speak a little like so just to you see Joe's word level set um or we do that in their park. So this is where we are currently. So this this map was created by Trust Public Land. The the darker green outline are the park locations and the bigger kind of green blobs are people that 10-minute walk these cars. So you can see it's highly very heavily concentrated in these areas which is great. Um overall we're still at only about 26%. So we have some work to do. Are you saying this is 26% of the city?

Correct. 26% of the city which is what you see like public plan national parks direct this comes from threshold they look like no that's based on CDC as well I hear what you're saying but doesn't look like 20

and then a little hard work plow thank you communication this came out of our welcome bags you need a single welcome bag you know we asked why did you choose somebody so you can see some of our larger birds beer playgrounds, parks, community trails, green space, all the things that make parks right happy. Um, getting into that, of course, B run, you know, we have, this is our signature red park. Um, a lot of agencies would love to have something like the B run that's not, you know, state park, federal park, that sort of thing. Um, it's it's always easy to kind of see what other folks are doing. Um, but what I wanted to do is start off and say what are we doing that people are looking at us for and what are we able to write about? Obviously, these are just some blurbs from either Google reviews, identity form, Facebook, things that we love. Um, just again kind of highlight this um I think this one here. We're so thankful to have a beautiful space on our backyards. Um, it really is at its size. It makes up over half of our total space. So, obviously big big highlight there. end up going into some of our smaller neighborhood areas. Again, why people love the parks they do? Again, nature center is something that we're just so so thankful to have. Um that um we, you know, were able to say that 70 years ago, renovations we're currently doing with the learning lab is is really just for this property. Um Windwood Hall, again, a great you'll see that here in a minute. Um Windwood Hall is due for sort of a kind of a clam up, if you will. Um and then of course you know we're doing some things all the time you know partial park you know fix the park really engaging that that area um in different ways and in Georgetown we have some some coming as you saw yesterday. So how do we continue to build on the six list is going to be on our big one um for later this year and next year. Um so right now we have a design firm selected. You'll see that at council

meetings next month. as our first big set. Um, we already have in the background sort of this what I'm call the playground seed committee. Um, so because of the the specific nature of this playground, the all-in-clusive inclusive playground in its size, we are seeking individuals from the community um that that have families or children with with special needs to make sure we're hitting all of ours. Um, so a lot of times we just, you know, we build a play around these vendors have sort of these check boxes and things that they have to have. Well, we'll be for that for fully inclusive. You know, I do sports like Allstar City, this this is your playground for families to be there. Um, so we've already engaged with some groups from the community who are very excited to be involved in in those planning that amenity specifically. Um, the high school volleyball team has already reached out. Gabby brought brought us a volleyball a few weeks ago that very well had pad. Um they've already talked to us about how we engage with high school students. They have the programming ideas. They already want to have a match against Park. They are so excited about the same work and that will be it's a great opportunity to engage with demographic that we have a hard time engaging. Um so a few things that are coming on the docket for the other parts. Sub run. Um we're working on artificial turf repairs. This was the council a month or so ago. Um we're on a schedule for the first week in September currently. So this would be both baseball fields, both multi-use fields. Um again, this is this is work that is is typical to see based on the the amount of programming and the the lifespan for for the term. Um playground relevancy I talked a little bit about last year at budget. So B run is, you know, we're 20 20 plus years available for playground because this is our we want to make sure we're staying current. Um we're starting to find more and more areas where things are beaches place more frequently. Um and again to

that inclusive nature park, there are things that we could do to make it more modern um and and more more relevant for for special needs um community than than it is currently. Um we have a couple designs for wayfinding. Um I've worked with the designer to there's two different um options they've given us. One is directional signage. So what this would be would be from each entrance. So barley peeler run is sort of these kind of gray arrow come up peeler what's to your left and what's to your right because we still have so many people that say

I come to this farm all the time. I didn't know there was a filament. Hey, I'm having a union. what else can I do? There's still a lot, you know, we obviously know it because that's you see every day, but um just another way to one help navigation and two um just really highlighting everything. There's a second design piece that you looked at is what we call our pup sign. So it's what we have at Donaldson Bay sign circle and that could be placed in front of the menu. So as you're driving along the park, you can see memorial plaza and then you know that is playground or skate park and so forth. So, we have a design. We're sort of working through um kind of kind of which way to go and and vending options before we're ready to bring that to you. Um and then we're also working on the Demilway. So, we're 10 10 plus years old on this. Um we every year we do an entire walk trail system that connects Grand Central and Georgetown. Um and a lot of the yellow dashing was stated that it's gone in some areas. It's it's time to dream that for visibility. um and coordination like that. We also um reach like the the ser the non-slip surface for our bridges, things like that. We're sort of ongoing events. Um nature center learning lab is looking great. Um I actually have a punch list on Friday for the internal building. So where we have our landscape plan in place where that's that's moving right along. And then of course um finishing that wetland and project thanks um last year. We're still seeing award nominations for that. We're still receiving um accolades for for that beautiful boardwalk edition last year.

The Donald farm um we have a couple things in the works that they've asked me to be not sure yet. Um but their lot of shop renovations that that you approved last fall um has really said they just they've exponentially grown their their program numbers flashback their field stress, you know, their overalls. Um and with that property, any sort of time we can renovate to help help their children for everybody. So they're they're very thankful for that. Uh Wildcat Park, thank you. Economic development um activation for all exhibit. Um so that would be a welcome back every year or so probably. Um we're getting a lot of great response with this. Um another another sort of art activation was recently event. Um people love that location. people understand great was was thrilled with that. Um so just again another way to activate this space while it's while it's um in its current state park. This is our group right here that's been in our little library. Uh we've done things like that. This scout had parking stop problem little have a lot of on that this year. Um our latest communication board was installed thanks to the D woman's club. Um, we have our our bids back from playground resurfacing and we'll explore that next week, but I'll bring it up to you here shortly. And then tennis delivery. So again, these it's it's kind of all all happening at once, but it's it's time um this because these tennis courts and playground in the neighborhood and our special populations tennis programs, we're getting a lot of lot of piece of this park. Um, and then just a couple things sort of what we call big impact low cost. So expanding our adaptive recreation. So we're seeing things like

um you know if the swing's right we already have undoubtedly swing if not adding undoubtedly swing um adding park installations on our goal is still to have at least one key sculpture installation at each part um and again partnering with some wonderful people that have reached out um just to to help us get further names of the um adaptive community. Those are my school. Looks like he's my question. Yes. Um, Wildcat Park Rooms. Any feedback on

how's it working to just have a portal out there? Do we need to think about something better for that spa since that's going to be kind of the longer one to go? So, nothing nothing's come to me. If things obviously, you know, let me know. But um they did we did supplement for for create event um and when we had the butterfly festival it'll be run more but um I have not heard otherwise I think we're doing okay yes and the way finding signage with father as you mentioned um you're going to you'll present then we'll look for a funding source is that what you're

yes we have a couple other capital improvement um you know one of structural needs I need to kind prioritize. Um we have we have the design. We just need to decide kind of what we don't want to overload the work with signs. It's going to do signs that um so just the the appropriate way to do it and then yes the funding before that comes to you guys. Is that related to the trail wayinding signs that we had uh budgeted the 125k from TSW? She mentioned wayfinding signs and that that going out probably in the next week or two signs funded last year.

So this is different because like front of the park this is internal. So this here things go ahead. The nature center signs are good. The way finding signs inside the nature center, they like that. That is good. Um you didn't mention the stage board um mural in the neighborhood. Okay. I'll wait.

Rachel, tell me about the Brook Run Trail maintenance aspect. I'm interested in the the water erosion along the sides of it. How are we doing on maintaining the trail, making sure that it's not falling apart, being undercut? Does that mean it's being done on a pretty regular basis? I can see some um it is. Yeah. So, um so you've got the trailway striping. We do have that section that we're still working on. Um we're still trying to find a construction going over the the area between the missile that's sinking some of those barrels. Um, that one's tricky because we have such limited sticks to get down there. So, I make sure we find the right person to do that. Um, but usually what we do is kind of this time of year we limb up everything that's on the bridge to prevent roof rod. And when we go and when we we're going to sand blast some of that the metal metal bridges. Um, and at the same time they're they're relaying you know non-slip surface. are going to get under and be sure had a deep bed because it's been 10 years time

just normal water runoff is eroding the dirt on the sides on a lot of it and we put rip wrap or sort of rocks is there I see a number of places I have seen where this worried about undercutting if we don't maintain guess we're going to evaluate that as we go through it and then um finally for me I hear a lot of partnerships with other organizations I don't hear a lot about partnerships with the um dog park or with the garden. Tell us is that anything big happening when you lost the location?

Um so the the dog park I mean Brian and I see weekly um the big the big partnership there that we started several photos and all the photos they love that um they've we couple years ago we added a second entrance. has some um security concerns if you would about just kind of one one intern. So we gather that kind of the aiding and parking and things like that. Um really the current thing she she text she'll be able to to get it done. Um the community garden same thing. Um the great partner s driving Saturday. They love that event. It's a great assignment to showcase their their membership. They still have a long waiting list for the thoughts. Um, and we're actually ties in with the veterans memorial. So the the eternal flame we we switched from kind of a cheaper vendor to provide the gas which then affects the job. So importing then on moving the current um fuel tank if you will to replace that. Um and they might be able to to repurpose that with some or something back there. They never lower them

mentioning the greenhouse. They always needs some sort of care. Are we I mean they probably need a lot of care in the summer's place. What are we doing to help just maintain the status quo or do you think we're doing to maintain that we so

nothing major? They're a pretty scrappy group. So they usually come to us and say hey we want to do this. Um it's so we want to do this be financially supported which is great. The big thing and and I share kind of playground for several years, but we both um so every now and then she will we'll find opportunities to see it and we're not not there yet that's coming early for both of us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah,

Rachel. Um, so, so you mentioned rescriing stuff. One of the comments that I get is is the color of striping like doing something where it doesn't look like the room. So, and getting away from the yellows and the whites and doing something like a green. So,

hopefully that's something that we can consider. I don't know what's best practices. I'm sure visibility of those things are factoring that. Um, you know, one thing I must toss this out. I'm sure it's probably cost prohibitive, but um but maybe in the long term I might be worth considering when I was actually up in um um Minnesota. What I've seen a lot of their trailers actually had etched vines into the concrete that look really good. Not only do they look really nice, but I I imagine that has longer lifespan than paint. Now, of course, you know, I imagine there's also cost decrees. What what I don't know what what development is there if it's worth considering or not, but just

um so Rachel on the back end of the Del Nature Center where the in these I I'm calling them informal pathways, there's a back res uh at the end of this culdeac. It's Meadow Creek Lane. And now when I lived in Switzerland, I would call them a cowgate. You could go across fields, but they had a gate that cows couldn't get through. Yeah.

But then you could move and you could get through. So basically what's there is this kind of a thing that looks like a V. And if you're very skinny, you can walk through that, but you couldn't bring a baby stroller through there. Um, and you're also seeing now in some of these national parks, they're seeing these um ADA accessible um wheelchairs that are able to go on dirt. you're seeing that use. So that to me is it's not an accessible entrance for people. And I know this probably was there before we were sitting. So when did you know the last time you used that entrance?

Uh couple months maybe three months. So that should have been I think it was a nominee. So you got to talk a little louder. Sorry. So what we did for that is just open. So it's not gated at all. It's just it's just an episode. So it was supposed to have been done, but that was that's the opening to Thank you so much. That's really the only way to get but now the cows can get through. The deer the deer could go ahead. Um teach middle school tour. How are we? It's middle of soccer season. What changes did you make and how is it doing this year? Because we have got

it's grass. The grass. Yeah. Yeah.

Um so so far we're still having to people off. Um because we are we're actually looking at upgrading the lock system for the second time. So the one that was put in people have found out how to you know unscrew it or kick it open if you will. So we were going back with like a heavy duty like our office said on like people out supposed to be out. So um thankfully we have like Antoine Andre there nights and weekends if they're see um dramatically it sounds like it's okay just fine will restart the track really nice. Um I've heard otherwise but again if you are

well I'm just so I'm asking but it was a genuine question what's the difference because this time last year it was a disaster so I just like no it's the fence is doing what it what it was meant to do. Okay. Yep. And we're making any of that better. The main thing over usage overage now we can actually close it to do maintenance actually. And if you said overuses it was wet usage over there. And did we miss why the the water issue was? Yes. I mean,

yeah, there was a leak, right? Something work. So that we did with the work years ago. They were fixed that probably didn't bring a lot of dirt. So what's happened over time is that has gotten kind of below the track a little bit slightly and so at some point in time raise the elevation a little differently but we've done a great job what we have done especially the track volume

um and the other comment that I've gotten is and I don't know when you're doing the way finding signage in Brook but the trail from Brook Run to Bernaw to have a sign there, but it's not one there if there is one there. It's not very good unless that's been a couple months. So, I don't know if you put one in lately. Do we have the other day with that the center circle sign when you um write right there by the story boards? Yeah, we said now it's it's signalty department. Okay. I came back the other way. So, the other way. Yes.

Yeah, the other way. did that once you get past the Georgetown like regally got to identify that plus what sort of so yeah um parking for events well a couple things how often are to evaluating what our fees are compared to our neighbors like for using pavilions and things. I know we looked at it the last

just a standard pavilion birthday party rental we did a couple years ago special events we're looking at this year um is again we're we're still running this year just we've got one more summer that doesn't have much perm which is fine you can use it but they're having alcohol and there was some signs when you didn't have to have fun with it. So, um, the special event piece when there's larger groups, we're still working through. I don't know if that's we're trying to minimize how many are allowed. Yeah.

Um, because that's a big big piece of it. Um, but we're we're still having to just two weeks a 5K through sitewalk. All the gates, all everything's closed. They know we can't do it. They have to accept everything. Police are out there and they're going back through. So we're having to add like more ballards or landscape rocks. So it's we're having each each type of big event we have to increase security if you will. So between that and fees we're hoping it'll people will be interested unfortunately. Right. But

so will we monitor like there's a like are you making sure we're not losing a ton of money? Who's watching the dollars? Right. So if it cost us, you know, we take in X for the fees for the special events, but by the time we deal with all the issues, it's costing us twice as much. Like we all council ought to know that. So I guess my request, my what is the financial impact, you know, making sure um something along those lines. I think that would probably be a good idea. When these events come in, are they required to give you a park? Like, did create dumb money have to give you a parking plan? Yes. And they split up the nature center ahead of time, school ahead of time, and they end up with a church.

Yeah. Do you ever give it back and say this isn't sufficient? Yes. Okay. A lot. Especially when they want to use like PCMS and it's like during the day it's like no, you can't like and I always have to have this. Oops. I'm like, right, send me a confirmation of that because I want something right. These people are low be using their space. Yeah. All right. So, speaking of Peach Tree, baseball parking is still problematic on Saturday mornings during the market.

Yeah. So, just so this Saturday, was it this Saturday or last Saturday? Was this Saturday? The park was packed. We actually had uh police ambassadors come through to try to and a couple police officers actually showed up. It was so crowded, which is great. I don't even think there was an event. I think there was really not even a nice event. It was just beautiful weather and the baseball people inly so were parking in the park. And

when I left the park, I just drove by Peach Tree because I was curious and there was plenty of parking things. They're not doing it like because they go to Peach Tree. They're doing it because well, oh, and so I think part of the problem, I'm just defining the problem is is that if if I enter it, it comes up as Brook the baseball fields. So Google allows some changes and flexibility and maybe we need to look at that with Google Maps or something. Somebody Michael Smith I think has worked with them in the past like Google maps to see if uh at one point it used to show that village drive went through the remember it used to show that that neighborhood connected to the park and Michael or somebody was able to get some corrections made. Okay. Um with the nature center which I love the nature center I think there is still a need for the community to understand that's a public park. Um, and I think the rest of you um, and I love that you're pulled together people for the playground is great.

Thank you. Well, then do you think also the Donaldson banister do you think people banister suffers from the same thing? Yeah, the city investment and stuff is a little different, but I Yeah,

okay. Um, this uh this session ends at 10:30, so this gives 30 minutes of group council discussion. We're going back to the original questions that we had about this. You can look on your hard copies of this first. You could put it back up. Uh I could I would probably break. Okay, don't do that. We have them. We have them.

First one and what we'll do is as a council discuss these. Remember, begin with the end in mind. The end of this part is three catalytic initiatives about neighborhood. You have Q&A with the departments. You've seen what's been going on. We're going to focus on these questions and then get the end of three of them. Now, we can put 20 on there, but narrow it down. So, let's go through the questions first for writing. Oh, I see. Okay.

I'm a pedestrian or amphibian or whatever the word is. Um, first question. What pressure or challenges could affect neighborhoods and overall quality of life over the next five minutes? Right. Yeah. I've been writing notes full time. So, this is what I jotted down while we're talking. Richard referenced infill. I think just changing the character of neighborhoods to different size houses is going to be a big deal.

Link to that is tree protection because a lot of times when you're putting a bigger house on, you cut all the trees off. And so, tree protection ordinance has come up. People have brought that up to me a number of times over the last six months. um the CAD school district and their school realignment, you know, they're going to be doing it, but we're going to need to be responding to it. Um the uh swim tennis club at Georgetown and what will happen with that, that's a very specific neighborhood area. Um and then just in general sustainability measures um for our neighborhood. So those will be and and specifically in this case um you you see a lot about people wanting to recycle things that the county doesn't pick up hard stuff composting things like that anyway those are my notes that I'll jot it down for what I see as kind of building issues

opening opening salvo there

285 express lanes that'll be such huge impact I think traffic. I was just coming to the village at 5:30. I was stopped. Not one line, two lights cycles. Yeah, it's crazy. I think an aging population and not necessarily related but sort of related is the ability to maintain your home. No, I I just don't know. You never know like there's an issue there's a situational shame with it's not about age. Um I want to bring up one topic uh about ADUs uh but back to this from a couple of perspectives. Uh first is go going straight to the uh comp plan. Um as was Richard mentioned earlier they all know I was I was the representative on the ser committee council. This is one topic that was interesting to me because the community feedback big part of the comp plan is community feedback and surveys and there's been a desire for community for this for for allowing some form of ADUs. The steering committee shot it down almost unanimously in a heartbeat. And so there was a that was the I think the steering committee did a tremendous job. There was as mentioned there were a lot of meetings, a lot of hours. Everyone took it seriously. That was the one topic where I noticed the largest disconnect between community feedback and what the steering committee uh did. So I I mentioned this for a couple of reasons. First of all, we're going to be going through our our whole surveying rewrite and this is probably going to be a major topic that we need to um decide

what we want to do. But there's also it may be out of our control because HB166 um may mandate a use by right statewide. So, uh, up to 400 ft. So, we need to, this is a topic definitely worthy of discussion. What, what do we want them to be? What do we want them to look like? Um, I think that has the potential there. There's great benefits. Obviously, there aging parents or or kids that can't quite afford homes who want to move back in. There's good opportunities there, but there's also the opportunity be to be manipulated and have all these rental properties popping up in people's backyards that might change the character of neighborhood. So I think it's a big topic of discussion.

Do you know the status of the you mentioned the house bill. Do you know the stat? It passed the house. I believe I don't um we're not even talking about Go ahead. I would second Tom's. I had ADUs written down here. Adus by right. Um and and just just the housing mix. Look, we have to I when when a developer calls me and says, "Oh, I have a a house I'm going to scrape and I'm going to put two houses down there." And I said, "Well, great. Make sure that a firefighter or a law enforcement of the Dub Police can afford to buy it." So, not going to happen. We have we're allowing

we're allowing too large of homes and we're not allowing higher density and by doing that, it increases the house prices. So what what do we have control over to change to add so we can have affordable housing for our firefighters and our police. So the what he's really saying is address workforce housing I think because we're not doing specifics here but yeah topic of discussion is maintaining the single family homes maintaining your neighborhoods

which are mostly single family homes but yet the some of the lists that we've just discussed is not about maintaining but changing. There's a number of houses that are not maybe used or they, you know, have an extra building, but instead are renting out their room. So, I know of a number of houses that, you know, a nice little old lady lives there and she rents out all three of her bedrooms and there's three extra cars on the street and that's allowed. That that happens right now. Um, does the neighborhood enjoy having those extra people there and the extra stuff? Again, that's allowed and I'm good with that. But when you start changing the structure of having buildings in the back of your house and renting those out, that changes the character of it. And I'm not sure that's maintaining the neighborhoods. That's changing.

I think we need to be very careful about this system sometimes. I will say that when Brook Haven did their ADU study, who was talking to me about it, that it was only six% of lots. It was like so few. And I think ours would even be less because we don't have huge. I mean, what did we just say only 2%? I mean, it wouldn't require an acre, but it requires a certain amount of backyard. Two yards. Right. Right. some months.

What I think I think what we're asking because what we're asking No, you cannot tell what they are, but that was tricky. Um what what what for the today what we would say is is that at the end of the day staff is going to look into this and we're going to try to I we' already talked about a little bit. It would be before we spend a lot of energy on it two things. we wait till the legislation legislative session ends and then secondly or simultaneously which is think merc mercifully they're over in about a week um we figure out if this is even a thing like when we look at our lot sides and and streams before we

all I'm saying is that we're maintaining neighborhoods but in the same time we're talking about items that might include rental properties include increasing rentaling BBRO you know There's things that come out of play. There's also attached and detached ADUs where you know building house versus a separate structure. Um so that I got the question what else can we do to expand offerings while m while protecting single family homes. So I mean that's the question right like because we do want to expand offerings but we do want to protect. So

yeah. So I think that's I was going to ask Richard like when do we see the new code and what exactly come and did the infill protections remain that we have so we've got to come here with the we got an initial draft of the zoning portion um we're having a meeting on the 14th of April um steering committee will review But they have a several other section. It's a big section. It's only 200 pages. So

So when do we because a lot of what we're talking about is going to be we have to codify. Right. So when do we see it? I just I honestly don't know. We're probably going to see it in the fall. So it was a long process. It was I honestly Yeah. city of Atlanta. They did it and then took years. Yeah, I'm not I just honestly legitimately did not know when we Yeah, I can't remember the timeline.

If I can use this comment, especially this maintaining versus change part that gets into the second question and we'll kind of go ramp this up so we can get into the liberals on the end. The second question was what does maintaining neighborhoods and quality of life mean? And the first one's on their character. This is talking about either maintaining changing does changing character is that part of maintenance is that part of change or they relate. That's kind of where the focus goes. Um going to the the the third second question. Yeah. People should answer. Sorry. Do you want you restate the question again?

What does maintaining a neighborhood mean? We're saying maintaining a neighborhood. we all thought about. I go the first thing I think about is repaving streets, but that's just that's the thing. I would say when you go in does it mean because that honestly gets to you know infill if you're changing house sizes all of a sudden if it you know we had a certain size house on a certain size lot and we got now a hodgepodge the neighborhood has a different that can be good or bad but it's it's definitely changed. is not behaving. When we say maintain, I mean that's status quo or are we saying enhance quality of life and promote? So, you know, I think they're borrowing this from

that's the language in the comprehensive point neighborhood. So, anyway, so it's maintaining quality of life and quality of life is not, you know, it's parks and art. I'm just trying to figure out how to do it all. That's why I use that language amenities. Sorry. Go ahead. No, I'm just defining it. Go ahead.

Yeah, I I'll jump on the park saying there. Um you mentioned the uh the 26% within a 10-minute walk, that's a CDC guideline right now. Of course, getting every resident within a 10-minute walk is probably a bit unrealistic, but I think it should be something we're aspiring to get closer to because we're pretty low on that percentage. And I think part of doing that requires maybe changing property notions of what a park is. And it doesn't have to be a broke run. It could be just a little bold out on a trail building where there's a bench where someone gets to interact with nature or read a book or or meet with a neighbor. Uh it could be a linear park along some side where opportunities present themselves. Um we should be pouncing on that. For example, the uh Mount Vernon place to mill intersection. When that's done, we actually own a little triangle of land right beside that. The city owns that property as we're realigning that intersection. Terrific opportunity to go in there, not a program park, just plant some trees, put a few benches that will not be much more attractive, but there's again just opportunities to do that. Um, and the more we spread those, the more and and the reason the CDC got I'm sure everyone can figure out is if it's within a 10 mile walk, which is a 10 mile 10-minute walk, which is roughly about a half mile, people are more likely to use it. Um, and there's all sorts of benefits to that. And again, I think it's goes directly to qualify. So, if I can jump on that, I was going to bring this up with commercial, but I'll bring it up now is connectivity to commercial nodes because there's a lot of semi-public spaces. I mean, we actually heard a complaint about one on Monday

um over at the village, but you know, especially like the village crawls with pre-teens and teens that can't drive that and they would probably be more there if there was better connectivity in the neighborhoods. And I've had, you know, a group of scouts ask me, "Hey, my friends and I want to ride our bikes to Target. What can we do to make sure we can do that safely?" So, there are commercial areas that could serve that purpose if we can make it so that people can get to them in in a safe way by walking the bike. So, that's just another stop. Yeah. I'll just specify just a subset of that. It's improved walking

tight into it. Yeah, I mean in the question in the handout it does say mobility in there as well. So I'm a big proponent of of letting people connect those nodes. It's all related between the neighbors and the commercial center. So if they can leave their car at home that'd be great. So I think when you're talking about parks since you brought it up is that whether Wildcat Park and just the question becomes do we re-evaluate how we're going to build it out or something. I'm not supposed to tell you what to do but I'm just telling you given are not significant funding options. Do we leave it alone? We need a discussion about Wildcat Park because that's a quality of life issue. It's a far. Um,

moving on to the last two on here. Well, wait a minute. I would say we go a little bit. Okay.

I I thought it was a really good point um that Lynn brought up was making the Nature Center and Donald Bannister. they are solely run and managed by partners um and making sure that you know the connectivity to Dublin nature center to Donald Basher people understand that those are public parks that's city property and I don't think all the citizens understand that. So um another thing that I love about my neighborhood is we have a path that takes directly to Wildcat Park. it was to Austin and you look at some of the other opportunities to connect neighborhoods to connect neighborhoods to parks to make it you know you guys talked about commercial nodes but it's also connecting neighborhoods through those little paths and you know looking at that as well that's to me that's maintaining and and enhancing because we're connecting the city better to be able to walk easier to the 10-minute tour

and and speaking of like the programming partners a question becomes is how are we eval like I asked about evaluating special events, but how are we evaluating our recreation program and how we run it compared to peer communities and should we be offering should we be sponsoring more recreation? I'm not talking about like movies and concerts although remind me come back to concerts. Um, uh, movies and concerts. I'm talking about like I don't even know, but like daytime

daytime senior things or uh a birding club or whatever. Just that's a question to ask. You know, we we're a maturing city and what we needed to do the last 18 years may not totally be what we need to do the next 18 that kind of thing.

But I guess maybe we offer a bunch of services but at the same time others municipalities near us offer different for example T-ball. I don't need to offer T-ball because Shambly offers great T-ball. You know what I'm saying? And do an analysis. No, but I'm talking like the sponsor like in Tucker because I know this from Stacy like they may if there's a dance class the city may be putting it on or the parks department and the question because I'm not saying we need to do it. I think we need to understand what the different models mean for us and if there's different ways to do things and quite frankly maybe it's more profitable. I mean, maybe if the fee I don't want to, you know, if the fee stays the same, is there a revenue source, uh, we're missing. I'm not saying this or that, please. I have no idea.

Yeah. Yeah. Lyn, that's a great conversation to have separately from the state. What's the quality of life, the role of our we do services and programming like for instance what Roswell does with their citizens or not? Yeah.

Right. I think with the concerts and I think this is kind of where it falls. I think they're fantastic. the what I think we lack is a vision of the why and which then so we bu we give a budget and that's what we spend but we we see it a huge difference not just in the number of people that attend but in the app like the atmosphere of the ones that are sort of well known more well-known bands that have uh and so I think that a discussion I think Tom's whoever wants to talk about it y'all figure it because music is not my thing. But I do see a difference. Somebody needs to figure it out. But because if we're So we spend and it's not about I don't not saying we need to spend more, but what we spend on our entire concert season is less than most cities are spending on one concert, but a lot of those cities are getting sponsors. And and I'm not saying Brook run is a different setting. I'm not saying we need to do any of that, but maybe we want to sponsor one concert a year in the village. I mean I don't with a big band or whatever. So

it's just something to think about. And they're leveraging their hotel BTO tax to pay for that as well. And that would just make that would be good. If we want to do it in a commercial area, link in with create share resources. They're already talking about doing this battle. I said, yes, in the mall parking lot for

Okay. And I guess to me that question is it's you know we have parks versus concerts versus programming and do we want to change the priorities? Like I don't want to deal away with our holiday lights because they're pretty kickass, right? But you're ask you're raising questions. It's like is it changing priorities and I don't know we're going to talk about it today or we just need to put that in the back of our mind.

I know this is so much. So like with the concerts do we do five? Do we just do two with like that's the question. You don't even have to necessarily change your budget that much. Again, music is not my thing. So, but I just it's such to me such a clear experience difference. Such a clear experience difference. It's just something to think about. To me, it's a budget question like we do, right? You know, if we if we do a less but if we do one less concert, do we want to just do better music or do we want to offer a different programming? That's Well, right. So that's what I saying. It's like it's right. Okay. Now we're slowly segueing into catalytic initiatives. Catalytic initiatives as it was written down. We haven't finished the

Well, I'm kind of going back to make sure we're focused on the delivery. Okay. Their policy actions, their partnerships, their programming, or their targeted capital investments. I think we might get more of that when we keep going to the next two questions.

Okay. Going three. Where are we already seeing stress or early warning signs? And this kind of ties in. Are there emerging issues affecting residential living that we may not be possible about where are we already seeing stress and where are we not talking about things that are happening neighborhoods and quality of life moves directly back to who are your neighbors? How is your neighbor affect everyday life um single family residences being converted into um offices or the maintenance facilities, things of that nature. We have a couple of houses that um might have 10 cars of work trucks on them and there's somebody living there. So therefore, they're allowed to do what they need to do. But it's the quality of life for the neighbors, things like that. I need I think we just need to make sure that our quality of life is how we are controlling the zoning, the code enforcement. Um,

and if the code is adequate, if the code enforcement adequate not the code is adequate. And I'm just looking at we we allowed sidewalks, I'm sorry, driveways to be expanded with gravel. We have a couple examples where those driveways were expanded for maintenance trucks and vehicles. I think that was a mistake. I think we shouldn't have done that. U it affects directly the the adjoining neighbors and affects the neighborhood feel this facility of an office complex. The business of the house.

I see the whole aging in place thing. I see f I see people living by themselves. A woman two doors down has early Alzheimer's and nobody knew for six months and her bills are she's not utilities up. So I see this social impact of people aging and last lack of socialization and being isolated and not being taken care of and me being able to downsize and me being taken care of. Yeah. I mean that's just reality that's happening.

Yeah, for sure. And that was on my list, but I think that's a good overview. I think I I'm the most guilty of this. I have spent my entire time on this body talking about senior housing and I think I don't know what that means. I I think I don't know what so many people really want. I think they I think we think we know what they want, but I think we need to do some work on what those definitions are, what it is that they're really looking for, which leads to Joe's point because what I'm hearing is they don't really want to move. And what are we going to do about the fact that this social isolation is growing, which in Joe's case was only discovered because she didn't pay her HOA dues, but I see it. So my thing is that I and I'm the least visual of the seven of us, but you can see where homes are not being maintained and you can do enough research to know. And so one of my things that I wrote down was what do we need to do to help those who can't maintain their home? So and I'm not even necessarily talking fiscal. So you know from staff like what is it that we are a caring community and we might so what do we do to help people maintain their homes if anything? Have we been successful in offering options in the sense of different types of real estate? I've been thinking of condos for the last 15 years. I think the last one that was really built was the Manhattan.

So again, we really have not we have not gotten any condos into our city. We're going to be looking at the the other cities Michael Starland. You do a quick realtor.com search on Vienna, you know, Virginia condos, there's 800 that for Dunwitty get50. Well, we are we do have senior condos coming the office space we use. And just to circle us back though, I mean this is important time getting off the condos and stuff getting out of the neighborhoods. It's probably better discussion when we get to perimeter where lives just what's the question

I would say I'll circle back to the infill and tree protection I mentioned earlier I don't know if it's a um it's it's it's just kind of chronic issue that we need to look at to me they're related tree protection like people switching to a larger house and then Kathy mentioned Travel. I mean traffic doesn't usually improve on its own. So that needs to be on the stress. Jay, those to me those are some stress. I think we got to put the potential closing of public schools.

I I moved here because I looked into the public schools before I chose the house. And in case especially for the schools that are going to clo like manual will get absorbed into the high school that Kingsley what happens in that space

oral stress.

Yes. So, I'm really concerned about these commercial entities, these hedge funds that are purchasing homes. And for a long time, I didn't hear anything about it in Doug Woody. And now I'm starting to hear about it. And um my concern is the you know, there's supposed to be federal relief coming for those of us who think it's a problem. There may be some state relief. There's I don't think we can forbid it, which is a shame. But what what I'm what I've already seen some of and what we've all heard about that some of us have heard about is they don't take care of their properties which kind of comes back to what John said but some of those people actually buy the properties but it's it's code enforcement I guess it's stress and what seems to be happening from the few people I've heard from is that it happened at one house in the neighborhood and then it happens at the next time a house goes for sale and so that was that was not a problem two years ago and it is starting to be.

Did you have something somebody over there said? Yeah. Uh I was gonna go back but I I agree with that and I I think that's something I don't know if it's code

or part of the zoning but that's something we need to have discussion on because it is especially I think John is probably more prevalent in district three than probably anywhere else in the city. Um I want to go back to the to the social thing and just throw an idea out there since that's what we're doing here, right? kind of to ideas is, you know, one one thing we see all the time in this community is that we're our residents are always willing to step up to help others. I think perhaps what we can do is provide available for that. So, when you're talking about uh some of the some of our aging population not being able to maintain their properties, if if there's some sort of organization that we could help to either put together or promote that of residents that are willing to go and and cut a neighbor's lawn or or just check in on them on a regular basis. I I would imagine that would be something that would be uh um wellreceived and and well participated. I don't know if again maybe we would with our creative fix uh organizations um but I think that's an opportunity to kind of um help that aging population that perhaps isn't able to maintain their their uh and also quite honestly just even it doesn't even always have to be about the condition of the property. just be human interaction and having someone typ

yes

you need to go um do we need to go through early warning signs or excuse me the ones we're not the early warning signs or do we want to go because they kind of we kind of have talked about those things So let's go through the things we've put on the board, the things that we stick on. These are the issues that we see. These are the questions. Now start looking at what are the what are the initiatives the city can do. Not the things we're doing, the things we can do.

So I think we need some kind of study on aging. Some things how what what housing is desired, what services are needed, that kind of thing. And I forgot until recently that right when the pandemic was beginning, we were having a muffins with the mayor, right Jennifer, to talk about this stuff and then the pandemic canceled it and I never revisited it. We were inviting people at that stage of life to come talk to us. But anyway, we need to figure out what the impact is on what we need to be zoning and reszoning and also how we help, you know, whatever. looking into laundry list then to digest into three.

So we talked traffic came up and at the last retreat we were going to update the transportation plan internally what's the status of that you want to answer that Michael can yeah we since we got there we didn't need a full update we just really needed a fresh look but priorities. So you're right now at least the slides was the update.

Yeah. And um we were planning to do that as part of the budget process this year. We there's projects that are funded right now that maybe the council doesn't want to do anymore or push off and maybe something they want to put in. And so we're planning to take a look at the whole project through the budget process and make some recommendations on money that could be waved. And then what council's priorities are now and we brought this mayor I think we looked at that the summer treat that is a deeper dive we're talking about that is a priority plan and how that's going to be you want to add on that

I mean you really just looking at the priority list of projects and what you this a full update that would be, you know, public involvement or save money and time and and we so out that we really don't have a lot of new projects that come up. We're not expanding roadways and things like that. It's really just and we have a lot of projects identified. It's just like one of the most important. They may take a deeper dive. Here's why I did that. We got plenty of time to go right now because we regular GMA administration. There aren't that many people register for that. Somebody was talking that's a bigger issue and Joe you mentioned before too with the transportation stuff and it goes back along with C and I want to be sure that we're hitting the nail on the head. I don't want to spend staff time going the wrong direction for this going home. Let's talk

when we talked about it a year ago. Barely remember, but I think what I envision wasn't just looking at the priority list, but also looking at some of the actual language in the plan and some of the work defined. So, I it's no secret I do not think every trail and path in Dubai has to be 12 feet. And I think we have messed ourselves up. I think we have messed ourselves up by and it isn't always going to be 12. We haven't seen this since I council but the question becomes is when we're looking at plans are there places where I guess the deliverable is going to be what makes sense where I think is so in the C do it do that in commercial areas it's fine but we have to be really careful otherwise I think

well I would specifically on the the width. Um, you know, 12 feet is what's been stated as a standard for a long time, but we're not always doing 12 feet because it doesn't work everywhere. So, like the Mount Vernon Tilly Mill and South right now, there's there's sections of that that are 10 ft because 12 feet just wouldn't work. It's not enough space. So, it means Yeah.

Yeah. Hang on. Let me interrupt just just real quick. I think part of what I want to be sure we're on the right direction. You we have the 12 foot piece, we have the 10 foot pieces, which is really this in a way it's the same thing. That's a wide trail mirror. You know, we're talking about and I think one thing and and John Henan talked about it for a long time, but it's just adding sidewalks for sidewalks. Originally, we were extending sidewalks, but here again, you do start getting to the width there because the 4 foot is that's considered ridiculous at this point. So, is it a it's a five foot if we're doing a sidewalk,

is a five foot a standard. So Rob, you and I can walk on it without twisting our ankle, falling off the edge of it. So I think that's a big deal there. Part of what I wanted, the reason I brought Michael up because I wanted him front and center was because part of what he does is the council sets plans and he puts those plans. He's got those plans when he's looking at a project. He pulls a plan out and looks at that. And what we have to do here at the council is say, "Okay, yes, we approved that plan or the council approved that plan, but that was in 2015 or even before that maybe." And so we've changed some. We've said, "Hey, look, we've heard back from the public. We've got more feedback. So, what does that mean for us?" Because Michael needs clearer direction on what this means. And I know that and it is and I had I had Jay I said, "Jay, please let's write this here to trail with because it's kind of a threat." I said it's a threat. It's a threat because we we're not all on the same page and we're really vastly different as a council on where we are on the width of these paths and where they go and the sidewalk issue. But I mean, y'all do it how you want to, but mayor, I'd love to hear from each one of y'all because y'all independently, most of y'all talk to me independently about the the trails and the wits. And I mean, and I'd like to have a little bit more clarity for staff on that, but I mean, I don't know. And and I'm hang

because I I want to hear I know I know where you are. I want to ask Michael question,

but John, do you want to you've talked you and I have talked about the past. I mean, as far as where you are kind of on what your vision was for sidewalks in the city. Again, I would much rather sidewalks and single family residential areas. I mean, when it comes to PCID 12 all day long and and then okay, let me ask you that. Let me branch off one more piece. So, we talked about like let's do the 12 ft, you know, in the PCID and mayor, you know, you and I have talked a lot about that having that in the area, but what about like then you got the cycle track issues and things like that. So where do we and Michael if I'm saying something incorrect correct me please but you know you got the trail then you got the cycle track you got the different areas and also we want to be sure when people are using those that it's not non-compatible somebody on the wrong thing with their bicycle or their ebike

even talk about ebike right and so because you don't want to get run over if you're walking down in front of yellow dog you know so yellow dog lazy dog I've done that before so I'll I'll throw out an idea it kind of gets to the lens notion of um you know what we're building where and to me it's ought to to some extent be dictated by current use. So I'll use Mount Vernon as an example. There are people running on that, walking their dogs on that, you know, kids riding their bikes on that. A six foot wide sidewalk is not going to be

compatible. You're going to need to have a wide multi-use trail. You know, in another area, maybe you don't need that, but if we focus our to me, if we focus our efforts on where people are already recreating in that way first, then we'll see to connect to that are have we now increased walking bike traffic from, you know, adjacent areas or have they remained still like, you know, lower use and that can dictate what we do in those areas. So I would prefer honestly to focus on where we know there's already heavy use and then look from there. Um

just real quick could I defer could we defer this conversation? It's very detailed for a separate conversation and exactly I don't think so. That's why we're here. Yeah. Is this all

so could you um if we talk about do we talk the what or the why or the how? Which one do we talk about? is a little different because I think we send at least some of us send incredibly mixed signals staff and we may still be sending mixed signals to staff but I think I was kind of hoping that we could build some consensus around something related to this. So, Michael, could we talk about the give a give a quick update on understanding what context sensitive design of different facilities are for people. Uh there you have motor, you have you have you have the pedestrians, you have the the bike. So, I think people need to be level seted on what the design feature overlaid with the context of what best design would be enacted there. Right? So people kind of need a level set of what because remember you know we have different designs in the village on chamber dely you know so it's context sensitive what is that facility right

and Michael before you go let's interject with Tom had something he wants to add in there too sure it may it may detail

I think I think it dovtales with this um I think one thing we need to do is just look back at our own plans and our own um sorry what we have here I mean I think part of the problem we have is a lot of public discussion has been hijacked and distorted by people that are very aggressively against trails. Uh they're saying things that don't match up to our plans, don't match up to what we're trying to do. And that's become a a a self-fulfilling prophecy with some people perhaps where they say, "Oh, this is what the city's trying to do." There's no place in any document that I'm aware of that says that mandates won't travel plans, including mass travel. Well, it's a standard because reasons Michael mentioned that, but it says specifically in the travel plan. It could be 10 ft. to be less, you know, scale appropriately to the conditions of that particular project. I I think just as a general thing, I think that uh and I think this kind of goes along with what Janna is saying is I think the scale of the project should be appropriate for

where it's going. I think along major collective distributor roads and Shanley Dunway, the wider trails appropriate. It's kind kind of it kind of mimics what the purpose of the roads are where people are coming out into the neighborhoods into a visit area. It's connecting our commercial roads and I think that's a per uh you know probably a part of that discussion as well. uh where along the major road where you've got a lot of traffic already uh having that separation for the pedestrians and bicyclists is is a safety issue, but there's also probably more, you know, as Rob said, there's a ton of people on Mount Ever, right? 5 foot sidewalk isn't going to accommodate the the desire there. So, I I just think we need to be careful when we, you know, that we don't validate inaccurate comments that are being made in the public about what our what our plan is and what it is.

So, first thing first, every street in Dunwy besides Ashra Duny is a residential street in some way, shape or form. And you're right about Mount Vernon and we have to be really careful because tons of it's always busy when the weather's good. I think that we should not I think one simple thing to do is stop striping dishes. I think the striping is really problem. I think it's incredibly problematic. I had the other one, you know, we changed the color of the stripes very I think the issue is that we're calling it all trail, right? It is it's a walkability mobility issue, but they aren't all trails because they aren't all 12 feet or even 10 feet. They're side paths. I think that the trails is the word that is that with the definition.

Yeah. that is causing us problems in the greater area because people don't want to see 12 feet everywhere. Well, one of them too part of going back to context sensitive piece, you know, a lot of what we've done versus what other communities have done is, you know, we don't put any of these sidewalks up against the curb.

You know, and some communities do that, right? I mean, that has to be a really weird situation when you do that because people don't feel safe. you'll walk right up against the curb. You know, you're when you don't feel it, you touch the car, you know, and you look at the curb and it's got black tire marks on it, you're like, "Whoa, I don't want to walk right there." So, we try to have that strip in there. But I believe too, what Michael's staff has tried to do very hard is to come up with the best way to navigate it, but from where y'all sit, because you're right, Tom, we do have a lot of people who try to hijack the stuff. But the other element, you know, I see the trails as transportation, part of the transportation network, but also as part of our recreational amenity because racial people are using those to go to our parks and coming out of the parks and also we talked about at one point having, you know, kind of a different type when it's going into the park, you know, and we've done that, you know, a wider trail going into that area when you're picking up into the trail system if it fits. But I think too going back to the sidewalk issue, you know, we have a lot of neighborhoods that don't have sidewalks and you'll you'll drive through those areas and a lot of our neighborhoods are cut through areas, you know, too because of traffic and you see people walking their dogs and they're not really as safe, you know, sometimes part of the we had a vulnerable road user issue this week. I think somebody's asking chief about that. But part of it is too sometimes people don't use them. So I don't know what we can do to increase usability. you know, they'll be running and they don't want to run on the side deck and I'm like, that's weird, too. So, we want to be sure whatever we put in people use and sprint.

Somebody that's not so hard. Well, as hard as and also the driveways, right, is the different angles. I'm not a I run in the gym. I don't run out that morning the sidewalk. I just always wor about trip hazard. Trip hazard to see. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. Can we mitigate that, Michael? And is there a way can we make those where they're not trips or just Okay, that's not and I could comment on that, you know, um and I agree. I don't think 12 foot uh trails, side hats, whatever we want to call them, be appropriate in

or more residential stuff, but I I don't think that the the distance I mean the issue the major issue is always the width of the the project and I'll use Happy Hollow as a perfect example. We had a we were proposing six foot plane sidewalks by that and we got residential residents screaming and I think anytime you're building something what they perceive as their front yard, right? There's going to be push back by those residents whether it's 4T, 6 feet, 12 feet, 20 ft, there's going to because they perceive that as their yard and they want to so you know so we got the same push back for six foot side that we've got for 12 foot in other areas, right? I got it for five feet in middle and half. I remember that. Yeah.

So, I don't think I don't think width is always the issue. It needs to be appropriately scaled to what is what is our goal for that facility that we're putting in. What is what is it being built to serve and and scaling it appropriately, whether it's 6 foot, 5 foot, 10 foot, 12 foot. And to Tom's point, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that why we go through the design process like is to scale it with what the purpose is. So I don't really understand like we don't have to define this today because it's all based very all based on the design and the designs just as long it seems to me as it does for construction. So I don't really

Yes. You're right. The mayor's got we have concept design. We have a concept design then a an engineering design and then we finally build it and we look at all those based that's it's right in theory but in action in action what's happening is and Michael correct me if I'm wrong we have defined the width of these projects and when so when the engine the designer comes in that they have to make it smaller because there's a loop in the road or whatever but that they start with the assumption at least on our big streets that that's where we're starting And then you have public feedback and concept designs and review. Yeah.

But Joe, there's never an alternative presented to us that says we, in other words, when we see it, it's already 12 feet wide, right? No, mayor, you're wrong because what's happening is it's coming forward. Most time it's a 12 foot, then we get crucified with the public. You know, everybody's coming out, right or wrong, and then it needs to be kind of narrow. what you're saying Stacy is correct in theory but I believe what's occurring a little bit more is the 12 and I don't know Jennifer if you got some ideas on some of this too on PR how we could maybe you're not understanding concerned and Michael you can correct me if I'm wrong that when we pick a design firm we give them guidance and the guidance is is that we'd like to do 10 feet 12 feet trail

so and sorry I only have a year and a half left one of my one of my concerns is not today. One of my concerns is that when we build these seg part of what I think is killing us in the public is that we we build a segment and then it takes us four years to build another segment. If we if we did 8 ft wide, could we build a longer segment? Like are is there an economy of scale here? Federal funding. What's the minimum width? Sorry. Well, yes, we do start with the following 12 foot. That's been what's you know

the standard since we started this back to

Yeah, trail. Uh we do when we run into issues we have varied it down to 10. We don't go below 10 because you know if our plans or y'all say we want a bike facility here anything below 10 is not really safely a bike facility. Uh it can't it can't really accommodate bike s. So we we really end up kind of varying things between 10 and 12 ft. um you know we can start with whatever I mean really the default starting should be for a bike seller should be at least 10 but um so that's the starting point I think there was a second part of that some

the other is if we went and made the default 10 could we do more at one time or the way the projects work do we have to have it split up so that it's a longer process Could we shorten the process? Was the right of

Yeah, we we looked at that. We've looked at that on other projects before and that's I think that's part of the reason why the default has stated 12 is one and decreasing it to 10 doesn't really save you much money or I mean it's you still got to make all the effort to do storm water and anything associated. Um, and then you know I think in the long run I mean I think in most places 10 would be sufficient but if you do get really high traffic somewhere be a lot higher. It's a lot harder to go back and add that later. Um but but yeah I I think it's it's easy to start big and and um shrink it than to try to add it later is what I'm saying. So like we did that on Cherry Hill. We had a 12 foot design and everything was ready to go. It was real easy to cut two feet off of that and just put 10 feet in when we went to.

So one thought and this is building I think off of what Lynn was saying is almost before the conceptual design if you think nea but maybe we take it just as a little microcosm. We present multiple alternatives. So you have a 10 or 12 foot path and because of that it allows these uses and the opportunity for this federal funding. You know this smaller option has this kind of impact it costs more or less because we do or don't get federal funding. if it impacts less in your yard with you know fewer bicycles almost and correct me if I'm wrong here when kind of a presentation of two or three options that kind of pros and cons that council can then go thumbs up or thumbs down before the concept is that kind of where you're getting at something

and also again think we have exorters how do we accomplish what does that look like stay away Yes.

Yeah. Michael, I think the the I think the impact is more in the or the is more on the impact on the adjoining property is just most of the cost with the width because as Michael said most of the cost is going into that infra that big infrastructure the carbon gut or the the storm water an extra 2 ft of concrete really doesn't add a significant to it but it may add a significant impact to those homes along that property. that projects. I think that's where we need to really consider a scale if it's more. Yeah.

First of all, I went I went and talked to the neighbors. Let's talk to the actual people. So, I talked to people that live on Mount Vernon next to Domin Village and they want it. So, let's let's let's give them credit and let's talk to the neighbors. Number one. Number two is the intent. Is it a mode share? Do we want to shift transport? do a load share shift to get people moving those two miles long. If we look at transportation, what's the intent? Do we want to be like Hilton? So, look at the intent. And number two is we could just have I would be fine with the six foot wide sidewalk on Mount Vernon, but have a buffered bike line, right? So, you could do different options presented. And that's what I wanted to think about too. One thing, Mayor, you and I talked about before,

um, which is going back to the public because part of what y'all are seeing, what happens to y'all, we have a 12oot sidewalk. first time we all see it as a group. Is that the is that the meat? You know, it's only we can do it. But is but I wonder if there's a way. Don't even go there. Okay. That's what I want to ask.

Right. But I think that I think for me it's not about I mean to me it's there's a practicality to some of this and actually like Joe's potentially his last thing because it's but the biggest thing is is that if our goal is to have this connectivity, it cannot take us the next 30 years. And at the rate we're going is are we better off fixing sidewalks, making them wider, and figuring out something for bikes and getting it done. And then speaking of bikes, Jay, can we write on the parking lot the ebikes? Because at some point we got to talk about that.

And then Michael, the threshold for sidewalks versus paths. Paths require a certain width. They also require lighting. And then it seems like because of that width, we're doing the storm water. I'm not saying storm water is not needed in 90% while we're doing it,

but are we then forcing ourselves into bigger projects because of the width because of the federal funding and adding in all the lights and all the other amenities? Well, that that cost could we have done an extra three miles of sidewalk? That's um the drawbacks of things about bike lanes I think in a lot of most cases end up taking up more space than a path on one side of the road.

That's too bad. Um the to to John's question about I don't again yeah if you talk about a sixoot sidewalk versus the 12T path there's definitely some extra impact there but um in a lot of cases you're still going to have to do storm water uh because every because we are so built out everything's so sensitive. We got to the point where, you know, on any project we do, we're trying to maintain the storm water to what it was. So any impervious we had the storm water obviously.

Yeah, I think but you're right. The thing with the wedge I mean the requirements are when you once you are going to accommodate bicycles on side path it needs and a shared pedestrian needs to be lit as the transportation I don't understand why we're immediately going to bikes off the path bikes are on our sidewalks because we've allowed that it's it's just odd that you've taken that as the default rail.

Well, I mean, because we're we're allowing bikes to ride out on the sidewall, but once we design a bike facility that has these sort of standards, well, we don't have to say we all have we don't have to say that as a bike, right? But we don't I mean, we just don't we have we allow bikes on our sidewalks and we see them all the time. We don't see a pack of them because that's not how people travel on sidewalks. No, the people on the path are riding these streets. They are riding on the street. So that's why we're bending over backwards for the bikes that aren't there.

Well, and this gets back to my earlier point about focusing already having use, which is why I keep calling back on burning because I do see packs of kids on bikes on my part. That's for sure. I agree. It's not I don't think it changes and I think not definition matters especially if we're getting federal money meaning well why do you keep saying federal money we well I'll give the example of the the sidewalk project we approved for the middle school where it's costing us more because we're doing it quicker so that we don't have to wait for the federal funding for a choice funding only funding bicycles what's that I mean that No was the answer. Okay.

Well, I'd like to hear the entire saying, please.

Well, well, I was going to go back to the sidewalk and so fortunately, I don't I'm not aware of a lot of rashes or issues we have with bikes on the sidewalk. I think part of that is probably just we don't have the right body on the sidewalk. But if we're trying to we're trying to encourage that for we are going to have more riders. There are safety issues with bikes on the sidewalk. there is side pass too. But when you start introducing two-way traffic on a part of the road that's not on the road over people are pulling out of driveways, they're not expecting somebody. They're turning right and they're not expecting somebody coming from the right. So, I mean, fortunately, we haven't had an issue yet. I think that's the concern of we're trying to provide somewhere for the bikes to be and we're going to put them on a side path and try to encourage that more. It needs to be safe. Um even though we're allowing them to ride on the sidewalk now we're trying to get more of that. We need they need safe facilities.

Yeah. The sidewalks design side designed with the intersection in mind but set back further for line of sight for the vehicle to turn and stuff. Right.

Yeah. As much as we can. Yeah. And and to your I think it's for you. I mean, again, it's it's all about what what the intention of that project is. I don't think we're necessarily building uh these facilities or for the Spanish crowd out there. They're going to ride in the road list. It's for the families that if I got a 5-year-old kid, there's no way in hell I'm putting them on a on a three- foot wide bike lane on a busy Mount Vernon street. There's no way. But if if we have a facility that is appropriate for that use, will we see an expanded use and families actually out there using it? I think that again all goes back to the quality of life. If I could get my take my family to bike from bike down to Lil Ice Cream, you know, if there's a safe way to do that, more families would probably do that on current conditions. So to say that people aren't doing now isn't necessarily working against because it's not safe to do right now. But

it's not at the rate we're going I mean this is this is the challenge we face a challenge we face and I think I may have a solution in my head but a challenge we face is that we build a segment and it's not anybody's fault it's our income stream as part of things but we build a segment and then five years later we start the next segment is what it feels like to me which means no one's using it which then we get all this negative feedback it's not connected

because it's not connected to anything I don't have totally a solution to that I think one of the things that would make me more comfortable and you've sort of touched on it is before maybe before things go out to design you talk about like we brainstorm I don't know we talk about what the purposes I'm a big believer in data I know it's hard to get data because it's if you build it they come kind of thing but for our sidewalks we always had that look at the grass if it's pound it down kind of scenario. Um, so I don't really totally have a solution here, but I think the solution is not to bring us just one.

Well, no, I think that's you're on the right tracker. You said something that made me think a little differently on if you brought it, hey, we're going to put a sidewalk in this area and a path and here are your options so to speak or hear but that I mean before it's designed before we come up with a 12 and that's that's what I was trying to say earlier which yes I think that would be very helpful and I'm not opposed to that. I'll just I'll point back, you know, we put look to do a facility until they know we were actually free options to the public and all shut down because they wanted their property. So that just goes back to I think I'm not even talking about though I'm talking about us. Right. Right.

Talking about let's talk about each the projects as they come up because there are cases just like in Village Mill that time day and a half of my life I'm never getting back where I had to meet with every neighbor about a sidewalk next to a school. It's some things are just yes, we're going to do them. And everything could end up being yes, we're going to do them. But I think we need input a little bit before you send it out to the next phase.

Well, like you said, like for instance, Mount Vernon doesn't go anywhere. I think it'll be about 2037, 11 years from now if we just before you get to the village from jet ferry. And you look at what what Sandy Springs just did. They did Mount Vernon Highway Road to Abernath in one fell swoop. They just ripped off the band-aid and did that two miles. But it's the cash flow management. Well, and Joe, one thing Joe brought the other day was Joe because it does go with all the projects was like the Ashford WB piece. I mean, you know, Michael, when we're constructing one piece is the other part we work on the next piece immediately and try to have that started when we're finishing the other piece, you know, the segments.

Yeah. I mean, if there's funding allocated, we're working on it. I mean, I know you all only see it at certain possible, but we looked at last year, we had 21 projects that we advanced to the next stage, whether it was right away or final design. So, if there's money allocated, we're we're working. But does that go back, mayor, to the transportation plan? Would that help? Now, we need a third thing. We keep this to death. I think it was What was the next thing? Wait, sorry. Go ahead. I'm I'm not as clear as I

think that I think that a strategy that you could consider because so this is the the what y'all have to figure out the how is it that we don't all share the same vision for what these uh transportation projects are and if and how we deal with that as a as staff Eric council is potentially before we go to that project, you say it could be this, this, or this, and we get feedback ahead of us before you hand it out to the designer or something like that. I don't have the answer. I'm just telling you that that I think I think you could do that.

So to Mary's point, I think we have all these disjointed segments and you know, connecting the dots is a critical part because

if if if we're doing this for mobility, if you can't get anywhere, it doesn't serve to provide us. So, how far and I know and I'll use Winter Chapel as an example. We did the first section. It's going to be, you know, five, six, seven years between when the next one's finished. I know there's federal money and there's all things. So from a al a long like you know doing these projects with our with our high beams on like looking down the road how far in advance if there's a project they know we know that they're going to have federal funds for how far in advance can we is there are there rules and guidelines like as far as applying for those funds versus when you want to do projects or we could be applying for something that we know is not on our radar for another 10 years but securing that funding so that by the time it all comes together it kind of fits nicely Okay, now we're ready to do the next section and boom, construction the shovels in the ground as opposed to, you know, waiting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we have to we have to have some funding allocated to start that process because anything we apply for is going to have a match, usually at least 20%. So, we would have to have something in our CIP allocated for that or be able to put it in there. Um, I have some maps in later sessions that I think will show the pieces are starting to fit together a little more that maybe it seems like

and I think you'll see that in some of our later things in another session, but um, so I guess that's where we transportation. We need to figure out a way to review the project or they even start right something. Yeah. Can I add a word because I wrote down vision on transport innovation is a process of it. It's visioning a process and that's something that's a if I'm hearing out of this whole discussion we're trying to get on top that's definitely one of correct but you need another one. So will the third is just called zoning issues because that would encompass in federal aus trees

zoning and code and code enforcement of the sub because that kind of captures a number of captures almost everything else. Do you want to elaborate on zoning anymore? No, I think we I think I think just there's a there's a number of issues already to just Yeah. to think come back for a further discussion on the details of that the things that are effective think strategy that's a good word

but also I mean we have that in process so we I mean we can talk about I think we have verbalized how you know we want to protect the neighborhoods and how you do that number one is you have to codify it and number two once you codify it you have to enforce it and so to you know John I would ask you know have your neighbors you know that have a business. Has anybody called code code enforcement to make sure that it's not be a legal business? Right? Because we do have a process in place and if they haven't been the process. So then you kind of have to educate the public. Okay. Well, this is going on. Call code enforcement, right? And also making sure that our code addresses and making sure the code addresses. But I think working on

that's what we're working on now. He has to make sure that the code addresses. Yeah. In in other words, we're going A B is already underway, but it is something that we as a city must we gave you issues to look at. And if they need more tools in the in their toolbox, then put in more tools, right? This is their this is this is your all's time to to build the toolbox with what you find. Well, and I think some of this might also some of this might also just be an update since we all are currently developing some language like are is there are there are plans to address some of these in some way? Richard. Yeah. Come on up here.

I was just saying you know we brought this up Stacy pointed out we are working on the unified development. So we raised the number of issues. Are some of them already being addressed? And then you just at some point we need an update on how those are being. Yeah. For example, the businesses I just busted a guy last employees come there. They had no business license. You have to move or they still unless he lives there eight, right? But they don't know what they don't know. So

but I think that making sure that the code is strong on the things we did the timing is fortuitous. Okay. On on that point. So years ago when we post officers we budgeted for an additional is is is there an issue of too much workload like is that something that we need to consider would additional code enforcement officers allow more proactive enforcement? It would and I think changing the way we'll refer to it as reactive code force and now we're getting into proactive proactive. Well what problem solved? Proactive is great.

Um people working on houses and vehicles license. So the question would we get a return on investment if to consider adding an additional code for or would that just or just change our policies, right? That's that's the what we've given you the how. No, that's the how. We told you the what concerned and so between the code rewrite and looking at how we do code enforcement is we'll try to flesh out what strategy to address the details and make sure things are not code

and you know one of those issues will probably come back to us because as I've told people when I talk about tree protection ordinances there are several different opinions on what that should be right right get identif Okay. Now, we've got two of them. We had a third up here where we started talking about transportation plan and incorporating that as part of the budget question. Now, we don't have to Well, aging can I would be considered Oh, no. You're going to be services and housing. It's a different It's a whole whole host of housing. No.

Oh. I asked him.

Okay.

Aging a little bit more about aging in place with the housing. What are we talking?

No. So my tension is like with John, you know, we need choices and we we do. I don't 100% think we know it was like I've always assumed look I have a certificate in geratology my thesis on aging and place but as as I talk to Dely residents and have conversations and just in the real world like you run across to not 100% sure that we are approaching it correctly and I don't know that I think we give a lot of latitude to those projects but maybe those projects are what people want and like I said six years ago and then I never did it we were going to have some conversations. So I think we have to start by because we spend we send a lot of signals into the world about what we think we want. Well, what if what we think we want is not what our residents want.

Well, and that's a good point. And plus the housing the prices we may a lot of the options are so high they can't afford to move out. They're gonna pay another 100 grand to move out of your house into those. Yeah. Okay. So it's we want we we've gone through what we would have done with but the next thing was important and now we only need 15 minutes. No, you're always got a time. Don't should be sure you hit it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not here. I mean, it's next door or something. It's not this room, but um Okay. Should we start? I would the headquarter stuff and then we can work.

Oh, yeah. Maybe Jeff's got about 15 minute presentation on holiday. That's perfect. Oh, okay. And then can someone Sharon, they're not back yet, I guess. Yeah, they're they're right here in the register. Okay. What What did you need for her if we're a few minutes? Wait till I'll call them. Savannah. Here she is.

I don't need her. Okay. Thank you for coming. Barry texted me watching just got back to my text.

Yeah. Everybody, I'm gonna talk with you all about holiday HQ, but know that it was a sort of departmental um teamwork um project and so uh definitely development parks um and also we worked closely with discover density. So a lot of information is starting to compilation.

Oops. So um it's no longer an experiment after just one season. We really think that it is here to stay. There was really good traction. We saw increasing website traffic, the social media engagement, holiday lights attendance, we'll get to that more specifically in a moment. Rividian and lights attendance went up, light attendance went up, mall visits were up, and school gallery sales went up, although there's some they're not attributing it completely to those. with the good stuff.

Um, so holiday lights holiday lights more than attendance going from 33,000 visitors last year in 24 to 74,025. We also think the uniqueness of the display really drew people very visual on social media. People saw that it wasn't the same old same old. It's a great theme. Um, and a little off the wall, but I really really love it. So that was great. Rem 4.6% 6% compared to 24. Virginiaian lights credited the HT Mailor um with the largest turnout ever, 799 in attendance at the SP gallery revenue succeeded budget by 16% best year since 2018. Denwood Preservation Trust reported strong turnout at light of Fenwood and the holiday house and residents called and emailed city following the praise the light of the snowflakes. That's kind of we love to hear website traffic. You can see 16,000 ong.gov holiday lights dominated website traffic in November and December. 5,800 total page views on the holiday hq landings page hosted by discovery. That's a separate website that we funnel every week through. Number one most visited page on uh discover done website this season. 7.7% click-through rate in Google search well above industry benchmarks. Um this is from discovery strong brand recognition. Holiday HQ was the top search query proving the campaign name is sticking and significant SEO opportunity using capture broader Christmas events traffic moving forward and discover that there's some of our engagement on social media both ours along with parks and wreck and discover Dunwy um there were some that uh you know just had some of our posts just went crazy especially there was one

that uh Rachel worked with that influenced Those are OTP MAMA. Um, one Instagram post has 346,000 views. Um, we love Miss Curtis Dunwy and um, one of their Instagram posts that the sort of caption on it in person said Dunwy really was the holiday HQ. So to hear to see one of the influencers um, using our raising was really encouraging. And again, discover shared us their Instagram and numbers and you know I think 200% increase in interactions just all um so it drove traffic and business improved retail and restaurant visibility boosted attendance of local events strengthened our partnership. We we worked very closely with discover done and they were very responsive. Sometimes we'd see something um on their website and all right away something in the event. So there was constant communication back and forth. We also work with great money as well. But really the the biggest time is between us elevated civic pride holiday HQ and now recognizable trusted seasoned brand residents and visitors suspect it partners want to support it. Media outlets are covering it and influencers are amplifying it. So looking back at um 2025 you all driven to budget 25,500 in addition to say not fun by discovered venuy and um discovery sent 24,000 of that um also paying for the holiday headquarters mailer which was really effective. They um you know Mark Galvin and I worked closely tracking all of that and he really felt like when it dropped it was sort of um late October. izing about him look but um he or was it November November they they really thought that that um had a direct result in searching and planning that the timing worked out really well and u

there were some things that were kind of nailed out because of the timing and we'll continue to to work on that for some of the holiday skate details weren't worked out before we had to go to but it was very um and then we spent our budget uh we did 8,800 on HQ banner perimeter five in the village five at Georgetown travel we sent 14,000 online place and you can see the breakdown um 10,000 for the raation of 21 snowflakes uh almost 5,000 for installation removal and storage and then my goal I remember this is because he was able to get our power testing on the pools because we wanted to make sure before the flu got out there that all the pools to actually be able to support how we need lighting stone lakes. We originally, you may remember, came to you and said we want to do the light of stone lakes at JetBerry, um, Winter's Chapel on the perimeter. We ran into problems because they are not wired, even in the perimeter. So, we had to limit it to the new ones that we had on our new trails. And that's why we did more at the village than we were planning to. And really um well not not more at the village more at Georgetown than we were planning to and the village we also benefited from the ones bought the year before by 38. They're smaller. Um and so we used our budget to plan our lights and our lights were more expensive. They were bigger. They were brighter. They were heavier and so that's why the budget was a little bit higher than the smaller ones that create um had already bought and used. They bought 50. We liked there was sort of an accidental um poll where it had ours and theirs and I thought it looked great both of them. So, we'll continue to use theirs but um but the bigger ones that we have are clearly and they look great.

So, challenges moving forward plans to charge an additional fee per pole for hanging snowflake for banners um and supplying power to polls in Jetberry winter chapel and governor. We had great news. is the mayor had a discussion with Georgia Power yesterday. Do you want to fill us in or So, uh, they are they only charge $5 for the holiday season. So, I I don't I think that they're I don't understand why they have to charge anything. The bigger issue is going to be the power and I didn't get a price from them. So, I'm going to try my best to guilt them into just doing it for us. So, this year they charge nothing,

right? Uh but they will charge $5 I think per um per I'm sorry per month um uh for the holiday season not and you don't minimal need I have no idea and right right I have no idea and I just figure I'll try to guild them into it's not the $5 map it's more it's going to cost us more to write the chat practically but it's the for the power of the fold. Well, it's much less than we thought. So, it's right by that think and have called right hand. Yeah,

it's five governments and PCI either she didn't identify herself or they didn't understand because they didn't tell me PC would be considered a government. Of course, they also sent me half the an email right after we finished with half the things they told me. Not about those were wrong, but they we'll figure it out, but it's going to be $5. So they will also help us come out and evaluate um I think free of charge which pool is better for um establishing a power connection. So that's what we would need perimeter area right so we don't have a specific budget for that but once they evaluate then we would have to figure out what it's going to cost and I think the C is committed to doing it in perimeter like I think she was willing to pay money so we'll figure it out. Okay.

So then I think our only fiscal responsibility would be Jeff Berry and we have over and then also the cost of additional which we should do additional uh snowflakes and then the additional cost of sports

and uh the proxies of hanging them and taking them down. So uh additional 2026 opportunities add lights uh well add lights is add more shows. Um, Perimeter Mall wants is looking at activating the upper uh fuel park deck. So, we're kind of waiting to see what that looks like for them, but they were clearly energized by the whole holiday HP. They didn't participate very robustly this first time around, but they they they recognize it and they want to buy in this uh this season. Um we would like to um think about adding lights to the trees at city hall just to show some presence and that would be pretty uh low bar uh to reach um but also effective and um the DPT has reached out. They're considering um not necessarily happening but again jumping on the energy of HQ. They like the idea of offering carries through all history. So they were asking if there are any laws against it and we'll have to we'll have to look at that but it may not materialize but again it's just a sign of the enthusiasm the creativity going on um and uh so the fact that we all think it would be a great thing to continue. So that is it for me it was great unless you

sounds good for for the investment seems very right and for a first year man it was way exceeded my expectations. How did um High Street end up with the skating ring? Do we know? Um so they I don't we don't really know about the plans to have a great build, but we did get some numbers for them. They had um they made about I don't know if they they didn't make it, but they brought in about 9,000 and they had 9,000 people $90,000. So um we don't know the cost of that and they had on my screen the number sorry um you might have do we know if they fellow was worth it

they changed they had four skaters the most in December and then they also told us that their bad stories month and Mary and two different going on and all but one session sold Okay. So, um that's a good sign for that. Again, they haven't told us any specific significance here, but they certainly um hope that they're you know, I think it was uh we did we did as we were really committed to getting the word out on all our end um because that was important to us. We thought like that was sort of one of the reasons we decided this was

the year that pushed the president of the company to do the ice baiting. Yeah. They were going to skip until um mayor talked you they're going to wait another year until the mayor talked to them and we backed it up and said, you know, this is really we think this is key. It was a little their hours were ambitious and they really were hoping Rosetta Baker would zip and that would have helped. It will be this year and this year the will be more reason to go there. They're also establishing their brand better more people know about touchback. You know Hampton social is gaining traction. So um there should be more that

so something else I want to know. I was at Create Dy's um strategic like retreat last month and their village holiday celebration is considered one of their signature events now. that's one of the two or three that draw the biggest crowds. So they will probably be looking to expand and grow that in coming years. So if there's stuff that we want to piggyback into that area, right, that's a good opportunity if we have something we want to do in the village. Well, and their numbers would also share. me and I think the from the first year when so in 24 when there were the two different um lightings and there's some you know ringing of the hands about that um you know

they've all been the two that year were successful this year they were both independently successful I mean there's just that focus is on they do a lantern parade now instead of a tree lighting David Davis might still do a tree lighting at his little compound here but they're not focusing on Got I mean, they have the but the focus is the the parade. There is an appetite. I mean, we've just seen it. There's an appetite for all this stuff. Everybody wants it all and more and more and more, at least, you know, at this stage. So, um it's nice that we can kind of lean into that and support that.

Yeah. This I mean, thank you to everyone and the staff that participated contributed this because it was my estimation enormous success. Um, everybody I talked to, I got nothing but positive feedback. Um, and the events, the attendance and it proved successful because the events were up. Um, and I think also again from development standpoint, people were attending these events then going out afterwards. I know my family did that. We went to the lights and then we went out over to to High Street, went uh had dinner there, went up to the speed and easy was all Christmas stuff. It was a lot of fun. Um, but um, so yeah, just an enormous success. Even the snowflakes I got so much feed a surprising amount of the positive feedback on something as relatively simple as that was was really wellreceived. Um you you made the point about the Holly license park which I think is good good to know moving forward. um of the kind of the Instagrammable uh location that when I went to I was blown away that there were lines 50 people to take pictures at our lake and bring it location because it's like why is this here people love like saying I buy those just for went all over the place. Um because it was a non-proditional, you know, lighting. The lines, the lines ring, I have to look at it as I was shoot.

Nobody was unhappy. But nobody was happy to go visit the long lines. No, nobody say about those types of displays were very popular. uh making sure that we have those great

and it was joyful how long were there well that's ridiculous it's free I mean seriously it's free you don't have to take that picture the world won't end if you don't take a picture in the ring or the ornament whatever it was or in front of the rocket yeah it was great Yeah.

Well, as a reminder, I checked with Delicia. We budgeted for this year $23,500. So, we'll work with that and we may even come back and ask you for a little more if there is if it's available. But um and again, Discover Woody is uh very much on board and does a great job at, you know, what they do. I mean, their marketing, their advertising, their social media is just so helpful. And hosting the website is wonderful to do because it it just makes sense. Um because it'll be very you know we we do a great job with our calendar of the the city events and the meetings and it's important that we don't bog it down with other stuff or you'd never know about a council meeting but they do a great job with advertising getting the word out website is pretty fantastic.

Good job.

Yeah. How long?

Sharon, are they waiting for us for lunch? We eating in the restaurant or we eating the Okay, we're flexible. I think it'll just take, right? Yeah, let's

This is where I'm going to mess up. Oh, it's ginger. And again, I wasing, but it's

great. Okay. Um, so, you know, we can't um we can't use the words World Cup or FIFA. I don't know if y'all saw this, but um Beth wanted his uh Mercedes-Benz to cover up the on the top. They just came to a settlement. Yeah, I did. Yeah, if we cover it, we're going to damage the roof.

So, um so we're going to be very careful and not use World Cups on FIFA so we don't get in trouble with obviously their logic. Um so, International Soccer will come to the area. Um here are the plans that we have on the girls right now. May 16th, kids in the park day rush unique clinics and games at the front field of Brook Park. June 5th, PS in the park is uh a soccer themed movie picking and screaming and June 13th grim on the brush union clinics and games on at park. Rachel's been working closely with Union um and they're super excited and really that great opportunity. So we'll lean into it um uh during those during the months of June and July. The tournament runs from June 11th to July 19th. Atlanta matches run from June 15th to July 15th. Opportunities. Discover Equity will host um an event website for watch party sort of like holiday HQ but there doesn't seem to be enough um activity to kind of have a separate um idol or real plus you can't I mean you call it really uh high street ash lane and the village and others host watch party which draw traffic for our commercial areas so we'll really be amplifying that because just like in county HQ it's important for us to support our you know our our commercial areas and So, we will do that. Um, again, the limitations if you need a logo, we can't say the name. And for a watch party and screen, watch party screen and license. If we were to do one of our own events, it's $6,000 plus. So, the plan is to sort of lean in on the um springs that are already available, the green spaces that we have, you know, um tops, publicly owned,

privately owned public, privately owned public spaces. Um and uh and then what they're doing. Any questions about Rachel? Are we going to do any kind of games at the movies before the movies before the movie? Yeah. So Rush Union will will do their style before before I was out on the field and everything. They're also doing activations with schools. Yeah. Um they're I was with them at a meeting.

Yeah. I will just say I'm disappointed um to host the World Cup in Atlanta. Um and we've known about it for years and it's one less on the green concert. I feel like I could do something, but that's just me. It's generational. I think it's I think it's been challenging to say schedule. We didn't know. But we knew it was coming, right? We knew it was coming. So that's just I'm I'm like Liz Lynn says I'm one vote. So I'm just disappointed that we are not doing something but we're going to do you know a concert instead. So

all right well we can certainly have more conversation about that but at the moment I'll know I mean it's done March it's done but I'm just saying that I it is a generational international events in our city we're not

for um America Georgia 250 we have approval to use the Georgia 250 um logo or working on America. Um so right now we'll embrace our um our Georgia pies. Um we'll we're really making that a um a full week leading up to July the 4th. Um the mayor has a special reading and it's through it's specifically tied to the celebration on Tuesday. Um and then kind of a three-day plump right there. um Thursday, July 2nd, we'll do a blue star marker unveiling um at the park followed by a patriotic concert by Kevin Walls. Um they they're super excited about it and that is presented by Del on Friday, July 3rd, a Star Trek House. Uh they're also going to have a barbecue lunches available. So the whole and and and a real invitation. So the whole idea is kind of fun there picnics in the morning. Um it'll be decorated with red balloon and we'll promote that heavily as part of that and then Saturday of course 4th will be going fourth of July parade and are definitely going into the

question. Any thoughts about any kind of decorations at city hall bunting over the door or something? I mean, we're we're talking about doing holiday lights and this is the only time there's going to be 250 years old. Put some kind of decorations on some city properties. That's a great idea. We'll do that. I mean, we'll we'll come up and plan that. Very good.

Okay. I miss but yeah I I I we've known about the 250th anniversary of the country for many many years as well and I I wish we were doing much more um to get around Roswell was they have more than we do they have we have the Johnson banister house but in and of itself it's actually not the historical part it's the property but Roswell they have all that history you know they have the old houses and stuff I'm not saying we could have more I'm going to more. I just don't have it all worked out. But it's good. We have the parade.

So, I think what's interesting, too, is they're sort of branding things that have nothing to do with their history as 250. It's it's all discovered website. It's a normal event website that they've labeled everything as uh tied to the 250. So, we will certainly look for new more opportunities, but right now we're not getting um doesn't seem to be building a lot of iter.

Yes. But we're also we're also open to those opportunities and we're not paraded for for instance the Del Village merchants didn't get excited about either either of these. So um although there will be walking parties and that sort of thing but we are open we're talking we're this is nothing is um this is not we're not limited to any of this. This is just what we're doing on the books now and we'll certainly you know embrace opportunities. Back to Hollywood headlines. I had to take a break. Um, oh no.

Do we what's uh are we going to be uh perc area the mall holiday lights? Um what what's the plan to extend and let's I'm happy to fill you in. So I think it's time to break Eric. So I guess I need What do we do meeting? We recess. Recess. Thank you. Uh, I need a motion to reset the meeting. Move for release for lunch by Rob. Second. Second by Catherine. Any discussion? Seeing none. Thank you. And so the scroll is

Hi Ginger.

All right. I called a meeting of the special call meeting of the city of Dumb back to order and I before we go to the next session I had asked Chief to up if he doesn't mind to talk about security of the woke up so the DAB mayors have talked about it some um and I I think it wouldn't hurt for us as a council to hear what you think what you're doing partnerships whatever absolutely okay good afternoon mayor and council um so right Now, um the first through 7 the um basically they flag out dates uh for our staff. So day before, day of the day after each World Cup um

we don't have just so we have maximum staffing just in case anything we have been meeting with with the city of Atlanta. They're actually requesting staffing from us and they're short. They need an additional 250 possibly. We're also a little bit harder. We're going to have officer same thing before, during, and after once that they're going to reallocate their assets where they're down down in Atlanta. Um, we will have a real time crime center stood up um for each event. And then of course, we're going to keep our finger on the pulse for the hotels. So, we want to do our surround trailers over there just to monitor um in case anything pops up for that. So, kind of we'll wrap that down. Um we're staying or we have uh the deputy chief has been meeting with Atlanta officials. Uh we're about to get up to uh to the events this so if anything changes you know interal monitoring threats to announce just in case.

So when are you decide when do you have to decide about Atlanta and then what's the financial arrangement do you know? So they're working through the process on that through federal government to reimburse them all the time. you know, um, you know, with inter agency cooperation, I would like to get some staff down there because the way way we share the way we have relationships here in Metro Atlanta, it just continues to build that that relationship and I want to make sure that teacher bomb. So, but you're not I understand. So we are not able to allocate those resources by those. Will we have uh that barricade that we can review by then?

Yes. Uh then if it's appropriate to apply that that one of the big gathering. Yes. Yeah. We were hoping to get it here before. each other.

So, as of last week, no hotels are full except for the visit where the teams are staying like just across the lake. Actually, maybe across the country like it's not whatever. And I guess we're we don't have any idea like how big the commercial events will be, right? because that's what you know I can't imag can't imagine but um that's when we would have to really be on our toes and dicap keeps asking for information but I don't think I don't know what's up I don't my understanding is have not even signed a single license yes we heard that last week

is so far behind and no one knows what the license things vehicle. We're getting information public, right? At the meeting last week, one of your colleagues said that they feel like there's that we're way behind like not with individuals because there's a magnitude. Yes. It feels like Yeah. Well, I'm glad we'll have something with Martha because that's what concerns me or anything that concerns me. All right. Well, thank you.

Session two, invest in perimeters. We said broke it up into things that are in the comp plan, but something the councils are focused off. Neighborhoods will perimeter a little sooner. Going back to the questions that almost sent get deliverables at the end, but your question before we get into the presentation. What role should the PR area play to Dunwood's future economy and identity? It's a big part of the identity of Dunwood. You can't say Dun Woody without it. Now there is more to Dunwood than it, but it is a big part of his visible. The second, what is Bur's value proposition for Dunw? It has amenities that people need to also have access to each of the big and what must evolve within that ecosystem in order for it to remain. Third question to look at what barriers think of it as barriers could limit the area's competitiveness. Everything has barriers. Is it mobility? Is it parking? Is it office building? What are the factors? So those are the things we're looking at. Again, staff is going to go through what we are doing now and the current status of the area to give an idea of it and the same dialogue before and when that's finished, we'll go back. Good. I think it's I hope it's up there because this camera. My next

Yeah. All right. So, keep investing in burner center. Um, of 10,200 people living there. Remember how big this area is? 70% was half the population. This area is very small. So we have uh 10,000 LIY there within 5,215 housing units. There are almost 1300 businesses there with over 21,000 jobs. It's the it's the basis for tax. We earn so much money off furniture source is high but the cost of low intensity grower it's between 4700 and 8700 new res over the next 20 years that includes high street two and three 84 perimeter center east office building version uh at 64 and 66 perimeter uh and 58 per center east of those town homes. also the fourth building uh on state farm property uh in a future uh 24 which they have not yet um we just got had a meeting the other day with people who are developing 1200 Parkway that's uh

maybe you should level set because different people know different things I think so Start with the old maybe street came from the uh high street the units the ones we've approved and then which phase two if they brought anything to us yet we have a meeting with um yeah tomorrow probably going to something to go back to bring

not sure what he's going to propose yet and then the office building conversions you're talking about those uh can't remember which one you will approve them but uh no those we've done but then by 1200 everybody knows what you're talking about yeah so I think when met with them on that project um Empire uh had under contract but that deal fell through no one was that's fine. No, that's fine. I just didn't know what which ones out. Did you talk about Old City Hall?

We're not yet. You're not talking. Okay. The GR property, right? That's that's another one of those two.

Yeah. They're probably going to come through. We've heard some rumors about people buying it. So, they'll have to come through process. Uh during the development of perimeter, many projects like perimeter mallia were built more focus. Um today, um the projects are they want to expose themselves to the to the people, to the streets and whatnot. Um so there's a different style develop that that we're seeing. Um like uh after high street there was two4 they're building to the public. Um,

was it your battery?

Area suffers from a lack of green space. I know we just uh opened Bridges Park which is way over on the side but around the mall there's nothing. I think Rachel will go into a little bit when she talks about that. Um transportation with multiple large roads reaching 285 power 100 connecting Dunwy St. Brook Haven. We have two Mar stations that we can central because it's so close to us. Um but the suburban network is very disconnected. um the the street network, some of those key local uh roads. For example, perman mall, those are big super blocks. Um now with with them about redevelopment and we got to put some roads through there to connects just further enhance the transportation. Uh Edge City 2.0 plans for more greens and spaces around permanent walls includ a strong network of local roadways sidewalks and trails using redevelopment as a tool to make these happen during the development of the comprehensive plan. We broke bro into two things the core this area here. So, this just carried over 3 to 16 stories. Um, in our code rewrite, we're going to introduce some newer concept because the office market is hurting. Um, we're seeing the normal project

wanting to convert to residential. Um, and then the transition area, which two, six stories. Um mostly transitional housing and uh commercial areas.

Just out of curiosity since we have completed the um the study with perimeter 2 2.0 I know we've had a fair amount of interest. What's their reaction been when you talk to developers and people come in? Do they find it cumbersome? Do they like it? Just they like what plan of city 2.0. Do they run? Okay. But you're solving a problem. We will solve that problem. Okay. All right. a level set on sort of economy of

your separate from

so as Jinger helped over you mentioned end of the conversation earlier about the comp plan the conversation around housing housing in the neighborhood A lot of what we talked about is that the there is enough available asphalt in our commercial areas expected now to probably take any of the demand we have the next 20 years for more residential in those areas. So I think that's one of the reasons why the discussion around we need a view we need more instate neighborhoods. it was sort of um alleviated by the fact that we have so much available as really not producing any income for us. So I just wanted to sort of key that up as we talk about safety. I'll try not to um so think about as we talk about especially Georgetown there's a lot of opportunity for everything. Um, so again, we want to just remind everybody where we are on the commercial property. Um, in perimeter, there's a little over 8 and a half million square feet of office space right now. So, that's going to be coming down. The next time I do this, it's probably going to show the office buildings at High Street phase two. You know, those buildings are down. So, the next time I run this report, it's probably going to be 300,000 ft that is no longer there. So that's going to help that's going to reduce square footage but it's al it's going to help vacancy because those build

do you know what the vacancy rate will drop to if you count the I know it may be half% or something 8 and a half million square feet 300,000 isn't going to be a lot but if everything is coming down is it's never able to come again we're going to see that at 100 probably see that at Old City Hall as Well, when the 64 and 66 buildings convert that that property will also come off. So, they're zones now, residential, they're still on the books.

There's still Yeah. So, Coar does it. Now, I could take those out myself, but the report will be a little more cumbersome. Um, no, they're still they're still considered office. So, real quickly is looking at these numbers compared to similar areas, how do they look? I mean, we're playing pretty much like everybody else, I would say the town probably be doing better than us. Um, from a vacancy standpoint, if you look at our class A, we're doing really well. It's our class B product. It's just What about the underground like apartments, hotels? Are those all online?

Um, yeah, I will. Uh so when I when I get the hotel I'll talk about whether I think that's that is really really the bright spot. Um so office is struggling a little bit but getting better uh shows signs on lease for full floor terraces. Um we've got another company that's at Vinia. Um so the good news is there the market is there to leases being signed. People are interested. It's It's not like it used to be, but the good news is we're building them on new walls. So, they're they're moving into taking vacant space. Uh retail is doing very well. Um that a lot of that vacancy is the Walmart like 3% before.

Oh my god. So, so, so eventually that will come down as well if they, you know, if they continue to move forward with that with that project. uh apartments uh right in line with everybody else. The interesting thing is class A has more vacancy than class B and C cost. So the the cost so so less expensive apartments are doing better than than class A but 5.9% vacancy really quite tight. Uh hotels uh we were probably number three in the in the region in the state as far as occupancy. Um since co our hotel market is is completely flipped. We do better on the weekends than we do there in the weekday.

Wow.

I think if you remember when we were first, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were always the hot days. Now Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I do better. Now there's just a few percentage points, but um our weekend is no longer a drag on hotels as they went to um I think hotel 4% last year. So it's really well We talk a lot about why the weekends are doing so well. Um I think you know talking to Ray and Markly a lot of our social media is helping. I think where our hotels are surrounded by amenities. You know people who stay the weekend are not looking maybe for for the cheapest price. They're looking like where where can I go to go to a restaurant close by? Um it's also the type of hotels we have in the world. Um I would say in higher end hotels we don't have a lot of select service for lower end hotels. So that's certainly a bright spot. I think Ray um Ray Zel ran on a report and they estimate that hotels produce 270 280 million of impact to to the city. Uh but I know we've talked about this a lot. Uh but place is absolutely incredible to both retail and residential. Uh it's really interesting because we've talked about malls for dying. You know, that has been the big thing and there certainly are struggling. I think there's 900 malls left in the US. The top 100 malls um equate to 50% of all sales of of malls. So good malls are doing great. the bad mall are doing really poorly and there's a bunch of malls there in the middle. Um, but it's interesting. The younger generation prefer to shop. So, they spend more money in person than they do online. The older you are, the more likely you are

to to buy on Amazon. Um, Netflix is actually opening inerson. I wouldn't say a shop, it's a it's an experience. So they're taking over like a Sears or an empty department store and like every one of their big shows they'll have this immersive experience to think Stranger Things you go through. They've opened two, one in Philadelphia and one in Dallas. Um so are we one of the top ones in Of course. Absolutely. Southeast.

Yeah. We're we're number one visited mall inventory. So if you look at us in Cland right there's actually numbers higher but I think and the general manager of the mall thinks that Costco yes is there and that's what

perform better then. So yes, we're doing very well. I think today they they grew by 7% since since last year I think all. So they're very happy. A lot of new stores if you haven't been there. All those trendy stores I can't they're for your children. A lot of trendy a lot of sort of Asian stores and they all experiential like one is a is a claw big store you go in and you you pay a lot of money you get the fall Lego. Just out of curiosity um and this kind of push chief too. Have we heard any burbles of the team takeover at they best not come's going to stand there?

Uh so just keep that in mind but the experience is really important. We do have a transa it's important to have transactional retail that would be Publix and Target and Crober and you go in you buy something you leave but it's really the experiential um place retail that's driving this driving the good news is Ashford Lane Ice Creek Campus 244 um our place as they start to to sign leases they're designed for that experiential retail Uh and if you if you you read the the report that um I did based on on Jones, it's important that we think of not only not as a monocentric place that has like Woodstock indicator that has a downtown single complex. We don't have that. We're never going to be that. And I think we need to lean into the fact that we have multiple places. uh I think many communities would would envious that we have small little neighborhood centers and then for so when we we did that study we looked at places that were more similar to us they were not around us they're not the the cers the operatives they borrow the places that have access to something like so it's important we remind ourselves that's good positive and so we need to make our investments through all of them not just Not just one. I think this is smooth and I'll

So on each one of these trying to summarize what this city has invested in public without an investment that we struck through what we struck through a lot of say was a state department and that they did over there. Um maps show you know the solid green is things that are already on the ground today. These are uh primarily paths or site basically bicycle pedestrian facilities that we've invested in. Uh the dash green just orient the mall here. Um the dash green are things that are in the works. They're programmed at the CIP. Do have a note that the AE Parkway is currently um just a design funded to do a something similar to what we're doing on center east. um that permanent should well there's existing separated life facilities on centaries today but we thought recently about upgrading that uh and then for each one of these talking about what what's the next thing if we're adding to the fifth year of the CIP or if there's additional money and I think looking at a connection to path we're already working on getting connected to village. We're getting connected to George, getting connected to the west. And I've drawn three arrows here. There's there's a couple of different ways we can try to get there because Sandy Springs has a project to extend the path up Dunway. Uh so really we can get in Street Dunway somehow. Um, you know, obviously that's going to require some help from Sandy Springs, but there's, you know, we we have cycle

track at least on one side of the road here on Hammond, but once you get past State Farm, High Street, it's out of our control a little bit. So, but that's that's what I would see as the next um priority in this area. That's all I really have. That's Is the connection to pathway path 400? I'm sorry, I don't have our CIP in any way, shape, or form memorized. Do we have any illusion to that? Do we allude to that at all in the piece?

Um, that might be there's probably I think there's something maybe in the trail master plan about it. We don't we don't really have anything programmed in the CIP because most of it is in you know we did the we did actually the connection through high street there's already something built there in high street. So we on Hammond all we would need is to build north side of Hmon which is also high street may do that at some point. Um if we go down center Parkway going way going way down there the the sidewalks on that bridge are already wide enough. Now the manage plans comes through that that could possibly change and there you're going to have to those ramps. So that's probably the least preferred option. Um but to get all the way down to Lake is essentially already there.

Yeah. So really almost everything that's left is going to bridge springs. But since High Street Castle comes is coming back to us. Is that something we can put in? Okay, cool. Michael, there's also a third option if you go through State Farm and there's their path, right? So they put their little path through State Farm. You go down through State Farm, then you go to the uh west below there on some of those back roads streets. Yeah, I mean there are bike lanes already on that street. Um, when you get out street when you're there, there's not a good way.

I don't think you can cross. I think you might not even be able to turn left out of there. So, I think Sandy Spring is for the path on the west side of Pretty sure. Yeah. So, if you can get here, you have to get across somehow. So, what's the best like of these choices? Which is your favorite? Or I know we have to count on Sandy Springs, but from for the Dunwy section, which is your favorite, but which is the most practical? Um, you want to pick this up? Hand.

I think I think Hammond is probably your best here. And and I believe Spring still has plans. Yeah. to to to do that there. Uh, I think they were going to go up with a side path, but and we haven't talked to them in maybe a year or more about it, but the last CI did not talked to their public works director about it and they're they have it in their focus on less than 400 and so this this is more of a long range C or

I think short term you just do an on street thing and you can get as long as you get ways to get featuring was talking about this is Springwood connector here. Yeah. And it has bike lanes on it. So if you get to East Street, but get across. Yeah. You ride on the sidewalk to the next light, then you cross over to the west side and then you're good to go. But where do you get on path 400? Like where is the entrance? Right there. It's down. Right there. Right down. Yeah, right there. I see.

Sandy Springs has a project to all the way up to Mount. Any update on Shambley? Are they doing anything that that probably doesn't go that direction? Yeah, I don't I haven't heard anything shame. Um doing next big project is down here in North Peach Street. They're doing the they're building their trail there where along the creek. Yeah, I was wondering where that was going.

Behind a commercial area that's already funded for that. Are we going to talk about transfer projects now or we have discussion later? I just said well I've got one of these for each of the commercial areas but I mean for specifically you can ask questions or you can do it when we get to the questions that we're going to answer either way.

So I'll ask you guys thought about it. Um so one one area I don't see is um ham drive that's it's in our control. We have Marta and we have only investment investing along Ashford Dunway there's a gap that if you're if you get off Marta in front of 1224 it's nice uh coming down canon from Dunway to path to Wilding it's nice right that area by Chick-fil-A is not an area that's very

not it is not welcoming or safe for pedestrian bike traffic and how do we again the connecting the dots. How do we I think that's a really important connection especially if we're going to maximize MARTA is to figure out a way to improve that. Yeah, that's that's a dash there. It's just so short and really that's a show dash but we're we're working on that with the EC. Um we've done we've done the the preliminary design figure out we're going to have to put a wall there. We figured out how big that needs to be, how much right away would be from the mall and we've had preliminary discussions with the mall. They're um seem willing to give us the right away. Um but we got to make that happen and that's the next step. I think the the general manager or not general manager but one of the guys from Chicago supposed to be here in April and that's one of the things we're supposed to talk about is how we get that right away. Uh and then we once we hit the right way there's a lot of util there's a hill there a lot of utilities have to be moved but then we can so we're working on building that gap out that will make that side complete that that's a cycle cycle right there so it really is only for that way the whole south side needs to be addressed at some point but we're at least trying to get that gap closed

is that right away that we need from the mall is that one of those nonsense situations where Normans in Portland can hold us hostage. Yes. So they they owe us some other right away at Wild Wings and so they they're willing they want to bump that together so they can try to make it all happen at one time. That's that's

all right. So I do know that going back to the bat really hit the win perimeter which they're doing again this year. It's the big everybody comes together for a meeting. Um they are going to have somebody as a speaker. So there's going to be an opportunity to talk about that. Um so just to sort of remind everybody the placemaking plan. This is the the plan that the city and the um at the time discovered that we um work on to increase our hotel motel tax from 5% to 3%. So um there are a lot of projects in there. Some of them we've done like phase one phase one is westside connector was nice enough to build that. Um so there are a lot of other projects in that plan. Top five projects are here and Rachel's going to talk about a couple of them that we are in the planning stage. But after that phase one is done, the perimeter that are each part which is two bridges is is complete. Um and so we're looking at now how do we now take care of the the next three projects. So at least phase one of this plan is is completely done.

Go ahead.

Um so yes the wonderful wonderful bridges. um sort of the same thing here. serviced um things either on Google reviews or you know Facebook forum reasons why people love this car um there was actually a perimeter ATL put out a um article this morning which is very sweet talks about this family that's gone down to this one car um because of all the connectivity in the per area how they used to park you know stopping public children um I think she recognized this is like a little early piece of Atlanta and they love being able to run into people at the park on the trails. Um so it's definitely being used people people in the area. Um it's great great park to have. Um so like Mike mentioned um one of the two so park at MARTA. Um so currently in the 2026 budget we have $15,000 for design um roughly five acres. This concept was put together um placemaking plan. There's a lot of opportunity there. Um this one this will have a lot of stakeholders involved but kind of a bigger conversation something we just jump in and design right away. Um so we go have a look for you know economic development to to move this forward and then the other one which is springwood it's it was in um the plan is flying for bridge park and we added funding the 2026 budget another department director named it spring sort of stuff

this is from state farm so this is about papers um again we have $50,000 in this year's budget for side. Um, and these are some some of the highlights. So, the the drunk footage here. So, state parks over here, same expression right here, the beautiful de side that's sort of on that on that border. Um there's there's a very high level concept that was part of the placemaking plan that really because of the terrain and because of the where this uh park is located. You could do um you know maybe some hardcape from the corner right there at intersection and then everything else would have to be um you know graded for like a nature soft surface trail is pretty steep down there. when it gets to the front of the creek. Um there is opportunities to maybe do do art along this long but that's pulled out but it would really be able backs up to Sandy Spring. So they'll be um while other people will be I was just thinking that to fund some of the things. Um those are the little things to read for for perimeter um kind of the next step both of both of these um again funding this year for design but then we won't see construction funding till change in 2030. So one one question. Yes. Back to the the mart just when you do the design that driveway into the mall has no sidewalks whatsoever right now.

Just right across from high street. Right. Right across from high street where you could easily walk between the two. So if we're going to put park infrastructure there, make it so that you someone's not visiting the park, they can go between those two. Yeah. And it be if you do the slide deck again, let's put down land we own already and control versus the land we don't own and don't control. And I'm just one of seven, but when the budget was initially presented to me, if you go to the next slide, the uh this this one here, I was a a no on this until we can control the land. Um, so I would prefer not spending the 50,000 until we have a commitment in writing from the owner of the land that we can do what we want to.

Who owns the land? Marta. No. So, so that is that conversation will be part of the bigger conversation I think that Smith talked about. Let's get all of these issues done at one time instead of family. Get people here. The mall is absolutely behind doing something here. This area underneath Florida is is not it's an it is it is in between our two biggest economic generators. High street is very much more with doing something here. I don't think we should call it a park. I mean it's called park right

because that's what it was in the plan but we're really not looking at it though in an active park. We're looking at the trails connectivity across. How do we make this place function better? but also how do we get it to connect these two massive generators together? You remember Adam Jones, she said the number one thing the city could do was make connections like this. High street is not going to do it alone when it all really is up to the government to say how do we make sure all of these big projects are better connected and this would be one that we get. Now obviously it's a huge money issue but maybe you start cleaning up the support on on that infrastructure but you know we we've got a conversation we need to have mall and high street and to see the ideity

yes and also to the connectivity to to high street mall station and cat all that yeah why like why like why like why like why like why like why like why like why like why like why can't the help pay for this. Um I certainly think we would hope that they would help to to pay for it, but they're not going to do it by themselves because in the end, okay, what are they going to get, right? Um it's going to have to be in public private partnership. I usually and the money from DHA maybe.

Yes. So there is money. Um I don't fully understand but DHA got an agreement with high street in phase one they building condos there is a lot of money is there any conversation about parcels on the mall on that side of the mall to have more connectivity. Yeah, I'm not sure there any part. So all of the property on that back side of the mall is controlled by the park on the other side where they build restaurants property. You're just thinking connectivity. You got big parking lots. You want to put connectivity somewhere but you have nothing to

Yeah. I think I think the idea long term or maybe shorter term would be that that part of the mall redevelops and that that this would also then directly connect with that. Another reason I think the ball will be more with helping us in fact make that happen. Or even in the short short term like if this was going to happen soon like Michael has good conversations is just a path like a like a sidewalk or something to get you to the people. Yeah. There's no way you have more cost. Well and once Right. So something crosswalks and I don't we'd have to talk about it with them.

Yeah. the ide say this is what what we're thinking that we would like to do here to get their buying. And I'm assuming we're also talking to the um uh discover dwy board and stuff like that on these projects.

I mean, we talked to them about it. I'm not sure they would escape in

Well, we're leveraging hotel mult. Well, it comes it does come from discover they haven't come from us. It's our tax. It's I think it's important to remind um that the hotel just like any other types like sales tax. The state allows it local government this is what we want to do and it goes to they are very interested in this because their connectivity connectivity high street. This could eventually connect Ashford Lane to P4. They they are very worried about a look and feel of of that area.

So, sorry. Go back. We go back to the map one more time just Yeah. So, it goes all the way from Chewies all the way down to the mall entrance. Yeah. Okay. Bye. Love the taco. Got you. Okay. Can we go back to Springwood for one second? Sorry. So, I'm okay with us attempting a design, but really that is weird place to have a dumbly park. It would be. So we

I said mostly kind of hardcape on the corner, maybe a um not trail, but just kind of a a landing zone with all the other lanes around there. Yes. It's not going to be your traditional one. There's a bunch of um you self surface. You're free. You can do different states, right? But we I think we partnered with St. Spring Springs to build Springwood, Michael. Is that right? We partnered with them. They are actually to build it. Oh, yeah. Cool. It is cool. If you think about that little bitty park over by the high school, this is bigger than that. Yeah. Right. That gives them that old creek. That's why it's fine. It's just it's all it's on the Sandy Springs border.

Yes. We should also remember Sandy Springs has few thousand apartments in their building. So, so it is in some ways a nice entry point here.

Yeah. Is the plan to capitalize I mean I know it's more feature but to make again to turn a utilitarian thing into an amenity. Yeah. Turn more like a natural looking creek. Yes. Um I know I know this is not a apples to apples uh comparison but similar you know South Carolina made that huge feature around the creep go I mean again different scale situation but on that same thing turning it into just attractive and just walk around

I I I don't know if we need to call a meeting for that but I I I'd appreciate just get a little tour of that site. All right.

We've started clearing um because it was overrun. So, we're at least I think there's I know there's 50 grand in the budget. Have we put that out at all? Yeah. Yeah. That'll probably months the design. Yeah. Yeah. So, I remember we were all wondering when in the budget 50 for Springwood Park, we all had to look at where Springwood Park is. Yeah. So, just who renamed it? Who named it?

Not much. actually. Okay. Sorry.

All right. So, check. Um, as you know, we have a real time. This has proven instrumental, especially during weather events. We stood it up a couple times. um license plate, hammers, gun protection, burns, hammer, fairless, that is all within the perimeter area. We partner with ACID two years ago. Um and when we went back to them to redo that partnership, they actually enhanced it uh to give us drones. Uh so we've covered the other side of the city as well. So their investment was 360,000. That covers a lot of the flock equipment that's within the permanent area. Great cooperation with Chand Brook and doorbell. Our SWAT team is fully stood up since we lost Sandy Springs. Uh we our equipment truck is up fully operational as well as our Bearcat. Um we've started training with them and our pro our part just picked up right where it left. They're doing and of course we can target pinpoint controls as needed. The next couple of slides I just show you some quick stacks of and the equipment that we're using in that area. So I have my prime analyst just do perimeter wall stat. So if you look at the very bottom look at the addresses that we cover products that are there um which most of it is funded by the BCI. Uh we have 20 license plate readers cover that area by hand to zoom cameras. Uh once we're all audio detection that physically shot detection. So the ground that'll be able to come into our world crime center and we can dispatch um officers as needed and we've got two trailers. We're about to add another one um to our fleet. Um so right now we do have two trailers over in the film area. We do adjust those as needed. So we're having issues over at the lazing dog. We having issues over at

So the trailer and the target parking lot was that ours or

that's ours. Yeah. So we put it over there obviously because we were having a lot of shop open up problems. So um overall when we look at all the crime stats I had uh casing break it down between 24 to 25. The only thing that increased was burglar but if you look at person crime property crime and our total index crime it's all down from last year to this year. This here is basically overall stats. I'm going to had our prime analyst do another comparison the flock product. So overall, we've got agency license plate readers without throughout the city. It's going 25 cameras, more audio detection. This is more focused down to the EM area. And the reason why we put our top detection down there is because it's a predominantly Hispanic community. They normally do not call police. So what we were getting, um, so nobody would call in to report these gunshots. Um, and it is so accurate the way it triangulates triangulates um, uh, the gunshot detection. It literally walks us right up onto the shell casings. So, we're able to collect that. I know you all heard a little bit about it on the council meeting.

Uh, your own first responder. So, right now we have one um, for the next council meeting on 13th. I have added in the other contract for the PCIB. I know we're still working on the MSA with legal. So, uh, Ken's the way he was looking at that is finalizing that MSA and of course all of you um will vote on it if that's the case and then we'll look at getting the funding for you to put on the other side of the city. Right now, we're looking at the annex. I know we're going to have to look at a couple areas where we can put that if we've got four trailers. Those are the ones that are local. So, same thing. um you know our next big event we got lemonade days coming up. We're going to put all those not all trailers but the majority of the trailers uh throughout lemonade um throughout run so we can monitor that set up our real time crime center so we can monitor it real time as the events are taking place. So, same thing with stats. Um, everything's down other than larseny. Um, it's not that much up. It's up 6%. That is our biggest crime we have here in this.

What's the difference between lar and shoplifting? It's it's coupled in there. I'm sorry. Lars is more or less like stealing like a lot more tact, you know, from from uh Okay.

Yeah. From We have a lot of that with our uh our poor landscape warehouse. Yeah. So they set down a backpack and they go and grab at So total person crime throughout the city is down 24%. Um total property crime is down 13%. Down 13%. Um, I also had her loan meet another I don't have the stats posted on here, but I had Casey run another 2025 first quarter to 2026 first quarter and we're we're trending still going down. So, um, basically that's it overall what we're doing in the per area. Um, and then of course overall the year

those numbers are spectacular. So yeah, internet that that's number one. Yeah, that mostly in apartment complexes.

Yeah, it's pretty much gone away. If you saw the mall, we don't get any models over there. And it's because not only did they happen to work to open and a lot of these entering that do usually three or more kids that walk through the park of a park, they just need so opens aware side. So it hurts one after another I would just say is there anything you think you need to help the facil with the perimeter in particular

yeah most of these perpetrators are from outside of Delway% of our arresties are from outside the city um once we get closer to um a budget retreat I'd like to discuss some retention recruitment and retention uh incentives that we could use to keep good ones that we've got. Um right now we are safe down some process and it's a constant nutrition but eventually I'd like to increase those numbers. It's just very hard to hide

when we think about shoplifting. Um, which I happened to talk to Chris Carr the other day and you know it's a $3 billion crime in Georgia and a lot of it is organized. You know, I'm not thrilled if somebody steals a loaf of bread, but I'm much more concerned about somebody coming in and taking all those socks from Target or whatever because they resell them, but or whatever. But it's he So, is there anything else like he could be doing? And then my second question which you don't have to answer is I'd love to know for the repeat offenders how many the solicitor or the DA is putting in jail. So long term I'd like to have that too because that's a conversation

you know u staffing almost and the reason I'm going to go to the investigator side because we knew the junk George retail organized crime stings and they're they work it's it's just it's a it's a tough ask you know we basically pulling everybody out of C we have to put them throughout the city and then we then we have to not only partner with those is our big anchor for the places we're having issue north Um it's a big taking um for for us to put on event like that and it's only we only do it for like two days and then it stops you know so you know I've talked to a long no longer than not much recidivism that that comes through the court so yeah we lost so it's not like she's seeing I know we work with you about increasing binds um

we have you know it's mainly a reactive um reactive police and so we get it and and with technology um our investigators doing a fantastic job because a lot of these you know targets got some great camera systems you know and u you know a lot of these you the mall their camera systems are great a lot of these we can get photos of that we're using uh AI to catch these individuals and it's working so so when are there things that these businesses should be doing that they're not feeling like this.

Well, sometimes, you know, so when we get a call on the radio, of course, we're encouraging all of them to pro. Yeah. But, you know, we we we talk about we say, okay, you know, they know to ask, are you going to prosecute? Because if it's in progress, I'm not going to risk our officers, you know, running lights and siren, infecting the public, you know, us trying to get to a crime in progress. So, if they're not to prosecute, you know, so what you do, it is us encouraging them, you know. Yes, please prosecute, you know, basically, you know, teach them a lesson.

One good place that Target does shop thing is they they've shifted from like evening stocking themselves to daytime. So they say they have people in the aisles and that's going to just be a match for the turret. So I mean again that's maybe something but we don't control practices that companies have for stopping but that's the targets too. We're not going to do this. But I have a mayor friend and they're different kind of city, metro Athens, I guess, not Athens, and they he got so frustrated with the petty stuff that he publishes on their website a list of the top 10 nuisance businesses, which we're not doing. But it has encouraged some of them to pro be more proactive. You know, if you loitering, it's your job to ask them to, you know, that kind of thing. You're having whatever. There are alternatives from passive

right talk about a lot of high-tech things here in drones. Many years ago, few years ago, there was a drone flying around Brook Park during lemonade days. It may have freaked a few people out. So, is there anything happening on drone detection, taking drones down, anything that's happening? I'm not sure we need that. I just figured it's a conversation from the opposite side of the fence. Yeah. So with the logo coming out there and have all we haven't looked into that I believe there's some extensive licensing and restrictions for us because if somebody's flying legally and I go and take ownership of that. So I think there's a lot of legal legal part of that but um some of that is doing legally. I mean run the individual that had the patent. It was a voice 107 good like you know we don't want that obviously so that would be technology but it's not we don't see that an issue you know I don't see trying to figure it out the opposite side of the fence if there's any

is it's so what's the relationship with Martya so if they arrest someone on the Marta train or at the dumb station if they ever arrest anybody at the dummy station? Okay. So, do they call you? So, so anything obviously that happens to their pick on their platform occurs there. It's automatic. So, they've got to call us say, "Hey, we entertaining." Oh, you take the report. Okay. Right. I knew they had rare we see them on the platform. You know, we try to communicate this about our suspect.

So, our Okay. And the only the only push back and I don't want to call it push back. I think they're on the f thesis um real time crime center. So we can't get in. We wanted to you know better cameras. We can't. So um you know we've been asking for a breeze path for the longest time. They won't give it to us through Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. But soon you'll be able to put it on the phone that interation cooperation though we are going to help them right I think that's like right now I think that's the most important you said

helped okay they do issue citations for people that uh turns down and they turn in on average between four to 10 citations a year is all I receive from it's just about and then they come to our court. Yes.

SH talk about this uh working with isn't there called nuisance uh laws or something or loose nuisance fees. If you have a uh if you're a nuisance business that you have so much workload on our police department, is there a carrot and a stick there that we can do as well or the I know other cities have looked at um haven't looked at that like in other words some Walmarts we we had a lot of stuff walking out there. I can't give you specific examples but I know

um it was causing you know staffing issues because the police officer would just parked and it was just not stopped. We kind of saw that as well. You know, they took out, you know, human interaction stuff was just walking around the door. So, really there um I don't know if there was such a thing as an abusive business. Um the

well some of our neighbors and some other cities like us they stopped responding to Walmart unless it wasn't a misdemeanor and I understood that that was never in Chief Grogan's interest and I know that wasn't yours but at some point it's a lot and and Walmart our Walmart had given up not given up they just didn't care they had nobody working there so anyway that we shouldn't have that problem with open circle hopefully

and So chime on what John said about the the drone thing. I mean, I like the neon front of that. You know, years and years ago, there used to be a little technology that you could have you could uh cut somebody's cell phone signal off. They're gening. If there's new technology out there to protect us, it's coming up on No, that technology changes so so much. And I'm not going to a battlefield situation in Ukraine or the Middle East, but still that is a legitimate technology. And I would love to hear about this scene. bleeding edge.

Yeah, the prison system. So, I know the prison. I don't know if any other municipalities counties agencies are looking into that, but it's something we look into. I would support funding researching into that for safety, but ready to see.

Yeah. Okay, we are at the investing in perimeter section of the after meeting and first thing we want to do the discussion is recap the questions that are going to be discussed. So the first one what role should the perimeter area play in government's future economy or industry to what role should it play? Second one was what they further island what levolves for remaining compens what is the value proposition and the third one what barriers could limit the area's competitiveness so start opening the floor what role should printer area play in the future economy and identity is open

you've already identified we've already of the city economic engine of the city. We won't even put the note up. What is the further value proposition for? What must evolve for it to remain competitive? Oh, this I have I can and also has been mentioned earlier too. Glass mile connectivity. So if you're um you know parked at your job or you took Marta, can you get to a store or to a shop without get back in the car? um kind of nodes or walkable clusters, right? So if you're in one little corner of the perimeter, is there stuff to kind of keep you there and and safe to drive?

What was what you said though? Oh, is that still last mile connectivity? No, it's related to it. Walkable clusters. So if if I'm working in this building, can I live here and eat here and shop here? And with the idea that nobody's gonna want to walk around the whole perimeter, they might walk around their northern corner.

We went crazy. And then um we talked about uh the commercial space, the the ghost or the zombie buildings, whichever term we're using, just a conversion of those. I think just as paraphrasing what we've already been talking about, I mean the the third spaces, the linger longer, the stay, the five to nine, all that kind of stuff, right? Um third spaces, linger longer, stay five to nine. And and how do we That's the um what, right? Not the how. Or is it the how? That's the what. Yeah. I go ahead.

I think the slide that's on the screen right now is is everything we need to be focused on as far as creating spaces in the city like those gathering spaces, those pops or those and they don't have to be big, they don't have to be brand, but just having more of them. I mean developed as a autocentric um lots of asphalt and concrete steel um obviously the cost of land when as those sites are coming up redevelopment or repurposing is we've seen it when it when when projects come to us they're they're going to try and cram as much as they can on every square to make for economic reason. We've got to make sure that we for requiring some human scale uh some green space, some place making into into all redevelopment um you know several of us mentioned this development, you know, projects that come to us. You know, these are multigenerational projects. We've got one chance to get it right. Uh we've got to we and and the the good news is we've seen the success. There's plenty of success stories of where it's happened and it's bringing the people in. So, we need we need more of that moving forward.

I can jump on that too. You know, we talk about arts and culture in the city. Arts in the primary area has mostly been um you know murals like the bar mural and and painting and all that. But there are opportunities as new buildings come up for interesting architecture. Um, and I don't know how we encourage that, but if we can get some, you know, uniquely designed buildings that will add interest to this area without us having to do anything. And again, I don't know how how we encourage that or how we do that, but no concert venues. I'd love to have a concert venue for later night activities. Not sure how that

Yeah, late night activity concert. It could be a small venue uh 50 person capacity of some live music. Um, I mean looking at the parks and the fact that we have a park that we don't really I mean the seven people sitting here we probably know better than most people and we had to look where Springwood Park is. So just adding to those amenities and that 10-minute walk to the park I think is important for perimeter too because it is all concrete

you know and piggybacking on that kind of something I mentioned earlier in the neighborhoods. I mean we don't when we think about parks it doesn't have to be every park has no road just a small green square like that goes a long way in an area like a perimeter so taking advantage of the opportunities to just green more and it can be along our or like in front of Ashford the mall there's a green space along there's there's 20 foot wide liz so we can shoehorn in a little space a fountain space there's all these little something as simple as trees grass. It could be it could be an a building

just a quarter size of this room. what he said to um so I think it need perimeter needs an identity of some kind

like bring it like branded like a I think I think the question is is how do we make sure that it's feels like a district and that's probably encompasses everybody that talked but what you know Because there's part of I mean most of the important part of perimeter isn't done let's be real and we're taking the rest of theirs and turning it into housing and so and an Hamlin said that our side of perimeter is doing better than the other side. Yeah. Sandy Springs and all their apartments.

Yeah. Exactly. And so but how do we like brand it when you listen to the person whose name I can't remember from China talk about why the But they're picked us over even something inside the perimeter. It was all the amenities, all the extras. So how do we market it? Brand. I think maybe it is branded. I mean, yeah, I think branding as much as I talk to people and they're like where do you live? And I was like, well, I live in the perimeter like right by the permanent mall. They know exactly where that is. It is branded. It's how do you embrace it and make it cooler,

right? How do you market it and make it cooler? And I think making it cooler whether it's the concert venue or the connectivity or green space so that we have an edge on places that don't have that. So for example, Midtown is competition for us but really we don't I wouldn't say we have a ton in common because we can breathe and you know everything's not quite I mean we're dense but it's not our roads are a lot better. Our roads are a lot better. I mean that kind of thing. But how do we market it, I guess, or continue to market it? We market it, but you know, what's our hope?

Well, there's our physical branding that you're talking about. There's also just the other things like that could be simple like for example, let's say the zip codes be the default being done. We're building the name Dunwhaty putting that at the top as as a you know state of conscious. I don't know if this is something that we can do, but when the development authority considers tax abatements because there are you a taxian, you are a done company. You're not an Atlanta company, you know, and building the Dunwy brand and and recognition uh so that when people are looking, they're looking for Dunwy, not just uh community.

Tom, and I don't disagree with you, but today's be our meeting today. Look at our agenda. The city of Dunwy put out this meeting location is taking place in Atlanta, Georgia. Well, that's exactly my point, right? 3038 should be done, Georgia. 30346. Oh, 3346. I'm sorry. It's only in Dun Woody, by the way. It's only in and you know, and again having you know and I and I did I mean we were part of a larger region and when I when I go out of state people ask most people are going to say Atlanta. You're not going to say Oh, I see them. Yeah. But but you know, from a marketing standpoint and from a a brand building as a community in the city, I think those little things can go a little better.

They're relatively easy, too. They don't require a large investment. It's simply a new sign. They finish their new sign when you come into the city. Well, you said what's one of the hooks? One of the hooks I would say between like a Midtown or Lennox is safety. The perception of of safety and and wholeness and you're kind of in the BBS, but you're not. You're cool, but you're safe. Safety. And I'll say this venue aside perhaps. Free parking.

I have this is we moved up from Midtown because our customers were having to pay for parking in our old building and they don't have to pay for parking. the dental office we opened a few years ago that was and yeah across the way that was moving in is about free parking and and just easier access. The other thing is is and it sort of touched on with Rob Rob is getting around the perimeter like we we need like a buck well that would be the barrier that oh yeah thinking of that too. Okay. It could be both but I think it's something that needs to evolve I guess. Sometimes yes

I I one one more with the whole idea. We have the the infrastructure creating the space but we have to program and activate the space program and activate space. Yeah. I looked up Colony Square Midtown. They've got a page and they've got you know like nine different things that they have active programming ongoing. So we got to have that programming. High Street just let their April release their April cap. Mayor, let's go back a minute to the transportation element though. Michael, what was PCI doing? Weren't they doing something for the bus system? You know, before CO had all those buses that were doing a different I think they still have those buses. I Right. But we talked about having a um

you know some kind of circulator of some kind. When would it run? When do you want it to run? Where's it going to go? Smith, you coming up? Who's coming up? You are a strong

thing. They launched a van.

A few years ago they looked at solid and the office building reluctant to give up their video to drive around. I think every summit has their own bus. Well, so those pick up people from Florida. But the second question is once you're here, right, and you're part is there something that could certainly move around and we independently Ann and I keep meeting to meet about it. So, but and there's also if you look at above, it's it's a big number every year. Somebody that's there to see it even under.

Well, we talked about, you know, everybody wanted to go one time. talked about something going between PCI area and the village. You know, we talked that one time. The other thing is look at the number of people that are now walking over to 12 I mean well from 1224 to campus 244 all that because that wasn't you know 10 years ago those weren't there and there people weren't walking and we have a Michael I know you'd worked a lot with PC on trying to get a better network of sidewalks and stuff behind state farm right and we hit some resistance there. Yeah. And so we are trying to do that. So I think one thing we need to look at it's not just uh vans or buses but also walkability. We put the nice crosswalk in there

and and what else I mean what else can we do Michael? It goes back to investment. I think all the separated bike facilities we're putting in eventually if that reaches a critical mass I think you're going to have ebikes. I was looking to see more see now not the same level but they start seeing similar things to what they see now attack where a lot of people are using right some type of to get around

and one thing we talked about too and where were we Michael on the we talked about one a bridge going over Asherwood you know pedestrian bridge but it was the ramps had to be so long or had to have elevator access but I mean I know some of us drive the other day to get from a perimeter mall parking lot from the Buffalo for example to Revidia to the state of the city to the chamber event you know right you have to go you can only make it halfway usually then you have to wait you know the other half but I don't know if there's enough volume between you know that side and this side I don't know we talked about it at one point too we did we did no we did we had a cut through the rock we did we had a yeah so we talked about all kinds of stuff is that a priority is that a priority for

you can do you need to do some studying on those kind of bridges and see if they're actually used and effective, right? And it's the whole they're so so expensive. Go to Petri Corners at the forum. Well, and we have no they're not going to help us at all. You know, we're just flattening. They don't they don't

right. I think it's I think it the question like for example a Dwayne resident messaged me once I mean in the last few weeks about doing one of those kind of bridges like between all the places because they had parked once and walked and blah blah blah blah blah. I think for the distances we're talking about for that's like from after lane to high street our main focus has to be on making it somewhere you want to walk like that's true needs to feel safe we need to make sure our lighting's good

um and then uh although Kim for not far and then maybe eventually if we could get the critical mass of people there like on the weekends then maybe there's some kind of private that the businesses work together. Cordinates it where there's some kind of private options to move people about. Right now, I don't think we have a critical ask. I think Ash Lane stays pretty busy. I'm not sure. Well, and but with abundance of free parking, too, it's going to be a little optim like to Uber because they want to drink, right? But we want them to move about.

That's the thing. Well, and what I'm always I mean excited about is when you look at the weekends, the the tags, people who come in here on the weekends to the restaurants, but we are truly a destination. Um, and you'll see it all during the weekend. The restaurants, I guess, have probably two two seings, Michael, you know, don't you think one and a half mix, you know, and perimeter is more busier. Yeah. depending on the rest of but it seems to be you know we are drawing people in here from other areas because it goes back whoever said about Brook Haven they don't have any amenities

for their residents and right there in the perimeter they're don't come to that anyway it's good stuff but I didn't know um that was something I wanted to talk about was the transportation within that corridor so I don't know if we have any I think the trial thing doing something mayor on the weekend type thing with some kind of bus Michael didn't we do something with the um Ray didn't he have a bus that he put out one time, you know, that it ran a trial basis. Okay. So, it's a marketing, but is there any way we could get that, you think, for like a I don't I think it has to be I'm not being No, I'm with you.

I think we we need first we need the crit. It's a chicken and egg question, but we need all these places to be really busy before there's enough people that want to that we want to encourage people to move, right? because you're not so busy, right? And so in campus 24, I don't know. But it's that's more of a daytime thing, too. I think campus before I think a lot of people go to the one restaurant that's open, you know, that's why I was kind of getting to the point of these nodes like right now money to do a circulator. But if you can make little pockets where here are some apartments and some businesses, some restaurants, so the people in this cluster can circulate from here can circulate here. Then you at least you have

little islands of of you know highly functioning space. One of the things that was initially in the comp plan work uh work or work plan but it was removed and I suggested was about the ebike uh doing a bike share ebike share and I'm like we have to build the infrastructure first u but then I think that'll be another component once the infrastructure built out for that last mile connectivity. Mhm. Yeah. I think that Rob is right because, you know, my thing is is that if you drive to work, and most people do, you should park your car once and not move it in the middle of the day.

Yeah. And so you need enough places around each, you know, which is a little tough like on the Virginia side, but where they eventually maybe park place has a few things, but where people can walk well enough still say, but so it has to be, you know, I say it has to be attractive, it has to be safe and you have to have somewhere you want to walk, right? And those things we control the first two much more than we control it third thing. And then eventually when these places get so busy that there's enough re enough customers to share essentially then I think we look at some kind of circulator but right now I don't think anybody wants to share customers

but you're but the nodes are working you know we do have the people walking within those right because we have a lot of to your point we have a lot of city hall what's the name of the shopping center there QT I can't remember the name of it park place but a lot of people walk down there you know that's a walkable what's fun to me for that is it's a walkable is, you know, you're willing to walk that far to go eat and then come back and you don't have to try not to cross the road, you know. So, I think we continue those type of issues. The problem is I think some of the restaurants like we've got a few that closed in the perimeter area, you were walkable, newer ones, they replaced,

right? Right. And so, it's from that standpoint, we had to keep encouraging those restaurants and business have to eat out time. Exactly. Spend money. spend money. So yeah, JLo barriers question barriers. Can we do some of that already? It's it's where did I put the piece of paper? It's over here. A lot of that's built into June and we can move to the Well, wait. There's some barriers. Traffic. Well, I'm in traffic, too. I think in December I don't want to drive next week. I just won't

or Saturdays sat sometimes a Saturday. It doesn't even have to be December. Sometimes a Saturday by the mall is is pretty nastier is actually Christmas Saturdays. It's barrier to us competitive to other areas. We're a heck of a lot better than lettuce. We're better than other places. So in actuality, our accessibility makes us competitive. I don't know. It's a barrier for us going I think it's a barrier if you wanted to move into one of the new places that's going to be built in perimeter doesn't say we shouldn't work on it right it would be interesting to know

it's a barrier to various competitiveness and I think right I think it is I think it is what would be interesting to know what traffic I was listening to this podcast because I have zero life and on the Los Angeles preparing for their Olympics back in the 80s or 90s and what they did with traffic lights and timing. Um, and it would be interesting to know if there's something if we're routinely doing things different on Saturdays and perimeter or Christmas. Like it'd be interesting to look at traffic manage if we were to treat December as our Olympics every year. What would that look like from a traffic management perspective? You don't That's the question. You don't solve it today. He also pays for traffic. do have just Michael say

sorry we do have different timing plans for different days and different time here Michael yeah time of day of the week um here but it it might be interesting to set some object like to look at it from way up here and try to figure out if there's like I said treat it as our Olympics every year

you know and we all around that area when I say you know change brains Sh I don't say a time I feel like you can move through Dunic and still talk about speed. It's not you don't go all the way to our time of day but sometimes some of those you'll think why there's nobody why 11:00 but I really like to drill down

say L Yeah, when you years ago we said that that ball has competed very heavily with now we have to people and it's the deliver people why does that feel different and how we don't if you want to become how do we keep that how do we keep our process going because part of you drive that theory it's just wall to-all buildings now you still have some green space we have our green space and we very proud our our staff we all really want to keep those green trees the sidewalks where it looks nicer um so Well, that's kind of how that was. That's a barrier. You don't want to become too developed out in that standard. So, how do you how do we do that?

Well, my point earlier development statement, but we got to make sure that space the public spaces are part of every plan. Um, and they're not just cramming as much in that's that's what happened. That's that'll that's what will happen if we're not checking them. And you all very careful, you know, like with everything goes on, every piece is a problem. Be very careful with how special, right? But but Tom, if that doesn't vote right now, but that could be codified. Well, yeah, that's what the point.

Yeah, that should be codified. Um I have a barrier about developer financing. Uh because we have these great developments that come up to us and get resounded and stuff and then they don't they say they don't get financing and they can't build it, right? We've had that happen. So that seemed to be a barrier of developer financing for owner occupied. So I don't know if this the best time to bring it up but it's tied to that is and it's also tied with a comment that John made earlier about the condos and stuff like that. um is should we research establishing some form of a housing authority in the city and what I what I would suggest it would be very targeted not a broadbased housing authority but what what what is that what are the housing types that we want to bring whether it's senior housing whether it's workforce housing whether it's the missing middle you know those townhouse and or or condos uh because that could be some of that gap financing. They're not going to completely finance the project, but they can provide gap financing that might push a project over the edge to make it viable. So, I think that's a tool that I would like us to at least research. Maybe it isn't appropriate money, maybe it won't deliver what we want, but I would like to to get the details on that because I think there's possibilities there. Uh like a task force will go through not like a housing task force.

Well, I just like a presentation. Not a task force. Not a task force. Yeah, not not I just like to maybe just a report of what what it might look like, what our options would be and could we do something could we do one that's that's focused like not just a broad because obviously if you establish let's say a a housing authority with no um defined purpose that could perhaps open us up to things that we don't want to do but if we had a very narrowly focused um intent you know legally is that something that we can do and and what would be the benefits? Yeah. You know, basically like a benefits and also or what are the the risks that maybe we don't want to take on?

Well, that is an interesting topic. Are y'all if the council I'm one of the department heads of that you do how would you start tomorrow question about what exactly they want I think we need to be with Ken and understand it's not it's not a forward It's just a you want to study. No, it's an authority. But also

also I wonder if part of that research should be to look if we can work with DAB. Not that I say we want to work and also DAPA is a land bank that I never go to any of the meetings but that they I think they if we wanted to we're going to have we could have some interesting empty pieces of land in the future or even now that maybe we work with DAB to acquire through their land bank or whatever and they hold it for us and and wait to him that I give give Decator a call. Well, they have the housing authority that builds housing, right? Housing,

but yeah, I think it's an interesting idea. Okay. So, I have some barriers. One is is and this is this is calling like it is. It's our reliance on federal funding for projects. I'm not saying we have an all a choice, but it makes the projects take forever. and the you know years ago when I was still I guess I wasn't mayor yet I was doing the top end stuff for Denny and the mayor of Brook Haven and Chambbley you know we were working on this transit and they didn't want to take any federal money they wanted to tax us and it's like it's not going to happen but because it takes so long and then the pandemic happened and they changed their minds but um but I think it's something to consider moving forward like what the implications are of taking federal dollars. I mean these projects are so expensive we probably don't have a choice but working with the CD she was uh now maybe it's because I was in the room but Ann was very bullish on us the other night and we know that we're their favorite even though she can't say it. Um she kind of did say it but um

yes it lives in dumpy but I mean the question becomes like what's it costing us to use that money like there's value of dollars I don't know that's one thing and because it's how long it takes and then the other thing is um we talked I think the lack of connectivity in the mall parking lot is an issue might not be anything we can do anything about But you if you have to park like this the example from Ravenia and I see people walking over to the mall in Ravenia like from the Crown Plaza all the time but then they get to that corner and then they have to walk across the sea of parking. Oh no.

Working with the mall and then um I'm a little concerned about the unhoused and I forgot to tell you Jay there was somebody at the bus stop by the Korean state. So the call is to me for the girls but they receive and so my what with that is because I know our police department does a yman's job with this shouldn't be your job of course and that becomes the question of how maybe when we get our offic what do we call that person the mental health person but you know maybe they could do a every morning they could go out for 10 minutes an hour and then call front line or 30. You know what I'm saying? Like maybe there's a way that in every morning because that's when they're the most often the most visible. I want people to get help and so if front lines our partner, how do we regularly make the connection? Yeah. And then um that's sort of so the big picture of that house. And then of course I'm a little really worried about the summer and the World Cup and what's going to happen in downtown and where people are going to end up. So that's like the that's like the micro issue with the unhoused and where they're going to send them. And the macro picture though is how we support um people and they're not just in perimeter but how we have resources. This this county has resources. They're apparently pretty good resources. They're now opening a day shelter. And so, how do we make the connection because to continue to stay above and beyond, we have to make sure we're checking all those boxes in terms of perimeter

and also animals need to go to the benches as you know. Other barriers back to the fed funding. Are we do we have projects in PC area that are federal federal dollars? I didn't think my account. Okay. Never mind. So say but but however these projects it's acquiring right away. It's utility relocations. It's all that other. Yeah. Well the top ed stuff will be the transit will be fed off for us like to build this. Are we building a station or we don't? Yeah. I don't think about for the for the rapid transit.

Yeah, I don't I don't think anything I think is able to accommodate it. Is our rapid bus going to go to the market station? Is that the current you remember?

Okay. And actually that's an that's like a good thing. Like the bus rapid transit the top end lanes are overall a negative but the bus well from my perspective but the bus rapid transit is a real opportunities. I mean they their study shows that like we're the epicenter that if we weren't here they wouldn't even be able to justify having and so they their study shows lots of people who commute into Dunwy to work will be able to take the bus rapid transit will connect BRT to Georgetown what' you say said will bus rapid transit ever be in Georgetown we don't know yet probably not because you're not the whole idea of BRT is

right is pass You're not You're not going to have frequent stops. You're going to have ball gaps, frequent stops, get people wherever. If you think about it as a as a It's not a shuttle like a No, not a shuttle, but like it's a above ground subway system. How is Georgetown and perimeter driven from Sandy Springs and Douglas in terms of distance? But so density, they're not going to have bus rapid transit stops as many as you probably heard about last time we No, I I understand. So like the one at doesn't they don't anticipate I bet it never happened. I'll just make So I think the BRT is is got exciting opportunities but there's a huge butt here

kind of like what we talked about in the trails. It the BRT system only works when the entire roadway is built and we're probably talking 10 20 years 30 years before that's done. So we we need we need to stop gap. We need something to get us the bridge between now and then. But that's really not internal. That's really external. But yeah, because we're going to get a presentation on that. Well, they're not talking about it very much because it's out for it is not what they call it. But when when the developers pick, which I think maybe it'll be this year, then maybe G dot will come back and present to us their current iteration. Okay.

Catalytic initiates, first one to be thrown up on the board. I that shouldn't use the term thrown off as soon as I said paragraph vision and do we want to go into the thesis statement for it or go to the actual three you guys ready? We'll go to the three. What what action what policies capital funding partnerships green space green space connectivity and and third one will be internal I think continue public safety yeah public I guess

catalytic catalytic connectivity connectivity to me. Yeah. This connected mechanical compass is last mile. How do you fill our offices and how do you get enough people to walk around and eat restaurants, right? How do you make sure the projects that we deserve to get done and not just benefit? So economic vitality that be like a what will be the catchall? We do something. We actually started it. I know, but I was just saying that 20 years,

you know, one of the barriers and it's way in the weeds is forever zoning and that you know like all that I mean high school took almost what 15 years to build. It was like the elephant in the room and rug it's been what 10 at this point. So uh Phil I like what was uh first one got integration. So I think for C like a sub could be like enhance the district or something. I think we want to be everyone's only choice I had aspiration.

What you talking about kind of that common identity what what's going to be the distinguishing feature u that we're you know how do we market it right their identity is brands right? How do you market it comments? So, this one gets this is this is fairly fleshed out. Yeah, this is this is the back to the marketing identity. How do we fill the offices part? Yeah. Going back up to the other green space, just the lack of the development of Yeah, I think it I think that that's a real opportunity to set us apart even more. I wish the mall would need something like the mall would need something in Portland

restaurant connectivity part It it I mean it maybe it may it probably ties into the green. It probably ties the whole way actually but like the place making part of it like like John said like having a live music venue or having public art or having

things that make people feel good walking around. I mean honestly I mean you get you get a different sense when you're walking in a in a in a nice space that has all these things. All things good on it. Okay. Uh 15 minute break. We need some more food.

We got another No, I'm not. Exactly.

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everybody. And five years In fact, pictures under the impression people in the creek. Okay. trees strongly question.

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childhood. The legisle. My We didn't

farming, urban farming, urban farming in

Brazil. Agreement.

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We're all here.

Okay. Um, moving on on the third session of the day and this will be a little bit more detailed. Got a little bit more time body cultivate local centers. Dunway is very identified because of the perimeter and then the local centers that we have there. So let's go through first before the presentation the questions we're looking at and it's a little bit different when we discuss this here. The first one, what should each center feel like five years from now? A given time frame and each one feels and each one feels different. None of them are the same. How should we define success for these places? Success may be different for each one of them. Third one, what improvement or investments could make these centers more vibrant, connected and so in other words again different for each one of the so at the end we're going to have goal is two activities or initiatives for each one of the groups. All right. Cultivating locality village part of it community as it was developed in the early 1970s of William style. The building sits at the crossroads of busy roads. One significant downsides is the lack green parks close to the center of the building. The addition of 79 town homes brought some life to the area, but we need more life. Especially the restaurants, they don't do a second. It it's also very hard dependent and it

uh has a lot of certainty. Uh the city did a uh redression of village master plan several years ago back 2020 plan introducing residential building and commercial shops build close to each other to allow. Hopefully the building uh will achieve that. Uh one of the things that we did during that plan is we introduced parking decks because handle a lot of that service parking all there is that takes up a tremendous amount of land there. Uh thank goodness for David Aes. He is single hand uh bringing those around and updated. So under the updated plan, we could add between two and 300 households. Uh but that was scaled down uh from what the original plan was. Uh there in the the core of of the village allows two to five stories and the transition is one to three stories. You can tell it's more residential and some commercial resident.

Uh again level set on the village like really all of our centers the the retail and the office are doing really quite well. um village Richard said um courtyard around the village changed the perception changed the idea. Um one developer had an opportunity to build local restaurant. It was always what held the village back. A restaurant would come in and say, "Hey, we love this market. We want to build." They were afraid they were going to be the owner of David was able to do all of the restaurants. Um, Regency is making investments again in the area around the courtyard. They've already bought new furniture. Uh, they're building a its play area. Um, they're developing this area under the 03 in front of market. So, they're making investments. A sauna, the new owner over the shops amend is doing similar. They're about to do a major upgrade to their green space

with a fence. I heard the speaker the other night. They need a fence to keep the balls out. Um they're also landscaping the entire center. If you've been over there car wash is getting very close to opening. They've got a number of other restaurants. They do have a tenant lined up the Burger King site. They're not ready to pull the trigger quite yet. That should be pretty soon. They a lot of upgrades concepts. I think we'll be happy with with who they finally go with. Everything works out. uh uh stable is is moving forward. There's also a new entertainment use that's going in the old company space. So that lease is is done and they're going to make that announcement pretty soon. So it's things are going really well in in the village. Um

but is the vendor whoever is going to be in the Burger King area, are they going to will that out pockets? Probably. So it would be it would be nice to look for another location for that. Yes. Yeah. So they've actually already they already Sunday radio

and it could be quite a while. I come soon. I thought Delony Methodist parked at the library on Sundays. Is that not like official? Okay. Okay. Shuttle already. Okay. They used to have a shuttle. Okay. Tom has no need.

Okay. From a transportation standpoint, the focus in the village has always been on improving the envir safe environment for bicycles and pedestrians. We village parkway project and of course the the village crossing project on champ is funded and our cip. Uh we also have design funded for what we call burn base 3 coming into the village at parkway storm here. And then we talked earlier about the Ash Center Parkway is not being funded. Um as far as looking forward what the next big thing would be I think to go ahead and um look at the street now from Shan Parkway to get get that those improvements all the way back to Shann And so that's something to think about. We also have couple of opportunities for sidewalk extensions into the the shopping center. Uh this one is in the post office here. We got to have that on hold depending on what happens with post office. Uh this one here we could move forward with u with some funding. um that area is is ready to set aside. That's that's the kind of magic mill of the opportunities from a transportation standpoint that we see in the village

that the second one not the post office but the second one that's on the like question. So there's a sidewalk, right? So it's there's not a side off the bank side easy to have. Gotcha. Sorry Google not so just trying to find and I mean one of the things and we can do the things on the big roads uh but trying to find opportunities to connect within the village

you know we've looked at trying to do that street grid through the child are able to do that we have talked with regency they they seem very excited about our project don't we and we're going to be talking to them about what we can do at signal there of their entrance to kind of a lot of that up these people into their site. Terrible for it is terrible and traffic was terrible.

Has Regency had any more like I remember when my son was a middle schooler and riding up to he said he was absolutely fine riding his book bike up Roberts but riding his bike through that parking lot was the most terrifying of him. So, I mean, when we talk about something being transformative, like a parking lot that's welcoming to all would be helpful as well because we can do what we can on other streets. But, yeah. Well, we would hope um if we if we're able to line the signal up better, I mean, they've even talked about moving that little building now.

Yeah. About moving that so that it kind of lined up. And so our hope would be we we fix the alignment and the intersection of the Bayworth and continue that into the the atrium area there um to really that but it's also just the yeah I it's it's finance property but just even coming in you know from Starbucks into Walgreens and yeah those all bargain mod I know now community development always has to work with the developer to say you going into the sidewalks through the parking lot, but all these older developments. It's just kind of free, free range.

And you hope that the middle schoolers on their bikes hanging out of all usually and that alignment is is huge, too. So the whole, you know, part of the cross project as well is connect, you know, rather than too distinct to connect them, you know, that that became really apparent. people last year during the uh great don the Atlanta parade they had events on on both sides but the side on the shops dwy side really kind of got lost people just didn't want to cross the street and so everyone kind of stayed on the on the uh traditional village side and u so it was really glaring how how difficult it is to get across now they have a crossing how separate these two areas are

so bridging that gap and making them making it one central Didn't we do something from um in the budget to do something on the crosswalk in between I'll call it the side and the village side to enhance that no other either side. Okay. We have a uh safety project that look at doing like a roundabout or something. A mini roundabout in that intersection or even I thought it was a raised intersection. I think uh or a flashing beacon.

I think that they already kind of determined that um it's actually maybe the roundabout is going to be restricted from a driving standpoint. says right intersection might I think a mini roundabout might discourage people from walking but maybe I'm not talking about the city

I have a question Michael back at the village street g street street grid when we had that attempt um I just want to rewind a little back story because we spent uh like I don't know 50 40k to do a concept about that present in my understanding presented to regency and then I believe we allocated It's floss funded 500k which floss is not allowed to put in private dollars and that was pretty much the end of it and I I wanted to know if we had rewound and done something different had we used if we had written a check for general funds non-obligated funds this might be Ken listening here we used general funds unobligated and wrote and give the development authority if we gave the development authority that 500k and the development authority would have had a program. Ken, you you tracking this, right? So, if we if the development authority had 500k to create a program and they would write that program so that private properties could uh uh have a grant to help uh walkability on their own properties

and and and they would is is is that are possible? Is that in the realm of a development authority having a grant program to help uh a pedestrian uh the buildout, you know, could how how else can we skin this cat with Regency still there and help affect that change? That's something I answer on the spot. I need to look at that. Also, we're that would be the what. If your what is the art of the possible, then the how doesn't have to be defined today, right? Well, it seems like a lot of the hows our other cities are doing and we're not. There are other tools in the toolbox, right? So, so

yeah, the issue was that SPL funds I think any city fund it was determined that we couldn't use any city funds for specifically I think so your lawyers It's determined that we can't use public funds on private property of all things. That's correct. Work streets. That's correct.

So I I I still would like in the back of the I know we have the whole uli stuff and I we go deep on that, but keep things moving forward. It's what are what are the lowhanging fruits of trying to make that still pedestrianized. Maybe it's not under your realm. It's like the UI checklist. I just leave that there. whatever it's it's the continue to buy anything. I'd like to point out before I forget, if you're turning left in 3BS, you're generally illegally in the oncoming lane because you don't want to be in a lane going south straight across Mount Vernon. Just I think that's got to be addressed redoing the road.

Okay. And I do have one other on the village crossings project. Um I I'll just say it anytime we get a chance to speak about that before construction is out or final design is um closing curb cuts in general. In general just making more walkability, improving safety is all of these curve cuts that we could start buying today just much like Sandy Springs started buying property along Hammond Drive 15 years ago in preparation. So again, I'd like to have that conversation because we have those curb cuts every, you know, couple hundred feet and you can't put street trees in because the curb cuts are too close and you're it's I'd like to have a conversation about how many curb cuts can we close along that sector. Write this down. So when we write it down, we'll remember

like when we get to the days I have one thing to say. Sorry. Uh traffic. It's I know one time you talked to us about the definition of gridlock. We don't have much gridlock. We have gridlock in the village. What? We have good luck in the village. So you're being so funny. I mean, you have to sometimes wait two or three cycles if you're on Shambly Dumb Woody Road to get through that light at the misaligned intersection between the two centers. And I don't have an easy solution and this is just my what. But it's and then and part of the reason you can't get through is that the light doesn't seem synced. But I don't think that's necessarily at Mount Vernon. So the light turns green at the misaligned intersection and then it's still red at Mount Vern. And so I have but and then you know then it may change but you know how people are they don't start right away and then the misaligned intersection turns red. I'm glad you brought that up because we've been getting some comments from public meeting you had on that project about the traffic and you know we've talked about it before but really we looked at every scenario we can think of assuming we don't mount Vernon drives the traffic in the village that signal because you have two major roads coming in how that signals time affects everything else in the village And uh there's only so much time we can give to both sections. So we we looked at everything from the roundabout to any kind of intersection improvement you can think of there. When it comes down to make traffic available better you would have have additional lanes. Um but

really to make it flooding you need four lanes. It has four lanes worth of traffic on it sometimes a day. If you think about and not that's not obviously what we're recommending because I don't think that's more lanes it just builds more traffic. I mean that's the situ that's not a priority about never really did other than the left turn on Mount Vernon never really complaints about traffic on Mount Vernon right so maybe the lights on lanes

so it's really I mean we we do we're making a minor improvement at Roberts with signal which should help traffic flow a little better and we're doing a minor improvement adding a turn lane, but but other than that, there's really not any anything else we can add without, you know, expanding. Michael, can I address Joe? Joe, so sorry, my mind was reading some other legal. Generally speaking, the development authority or downtown development authority can create grant programs, they usually have to be structured around the purpose of the development of our whether it's economic development or whatnot. Typically, the grant program has to require something that the owner does and it's a bargain as opposed to a purity. owner does something that is something we're seeking and and they potentially can be granted a partial grant. Most of the time you see those kind of programs not to uh uh create investment track investment create jobs like so most of the development authorities that are doing this kind of programs are doing something around that because you got three three things to worry about. when the law and mortuity clause, you can't just give away money to private property. Number two, the entity that's creating grant, it has to be within the realm of their authorized powers under the law. So, it can't get you have to be careful you're not diverting the city wish list into something that doesn't fit the category. So I don't want to go all the way down to your specific ask, but I don't want you to think the answer

is complete or no. The pathway may get more narrow as the thing is defined that you're trying to get to. Sure. Yeah. Decator's DDA uh gives grants for storefront enhancements. Storefront you see a lot. Yeah, that's why development too.

Got it. And and there's the same language and development about roads as as I think local governments has. There's specific language in development is that they they don't want roads getting built in other ways. Now my mind now my mind has gone back to what you are and we looked at and I'm not going to say the area we looked at the area where there was a way an incentivized program. There was a way around and specifically prohibited is you to try to do a grant program to do something that's in the public function of roads and in the area of roads is also arguably passed and trails that are in the road. I think I think the answer the part of your question is yes. The answer to the bottom is going to be more likely than not because of I remember looking at it.

Yeah. and side sidewalks would fall under everything as well.

That's exactly right. But and just to finish the thought to finish back, but you know that the cycle of that fight there, I don't really know what the timing balance is except down there. But if it was say 50, then the traffic's going to back up more on Shannon because there's only two lanes to get through. If you try to give Shamron Del more time, you're going to get to a point that's too much time and you're going to see the effect on Mount Vernon. So it's it's a balancing act and but yes midday afternoon

Saturday backups only so much that can get through that

right so uh you all know about the day and the development authority because it's working through uh number of the priority initiative that identified uh one one project they're working on at least creating a vision for the the village. Now the the plan created a vision. The development authority worked on its own vision and and this is it on the right hand side. Uh Denway's village district is our charming town center where neighbors connect local business and inviting public spaces bring people together. So there is an idea I think it's been talked about a little bit about further making sure that we know that the village is a specific place. it's branded in a certain way that could include weight lining. Uh it include other sites of of signage, but making sure that the entire district, not just one shot center, but the entire commercial center is known as the Denverly village for the village, whatever we end up deciding. There was a lot of discussion about how we the nomenclature around what we call our different districts. Um and that hasn't been fully figured out, but that's went down that road. Um second uh project that that they took on was looking at development opportunities or redevelopment opportunities. So we met with the bigger property owners there to identify potential projects. Uh the shops of really there there's no real opportunity for any new development. They're moving forward. They're keeping it as retail. They brought in Mr. clean to take over the the car wash that's sort of taken off the table. Um so really it's about improving the tenants. Uh moving over to Regency, same thing. Um they're they're really interested in just improving the tenants they have. Um this was

mentioned. So what the development authority focused on is post office which obviously we're all going to have in everybody. all the council members who responded to uh the mayor's request for projects. The post office is number one. We are in talks with the post office. The answer is still no. They're not interested. But their broker um is working on us on how to build on our case. So, we've shared with them all of our mass plans that every single one identified the post office as the center point of of the village and that needs to be a public dream. it needs to be the heart, the civic heart of the village. Um so we're continuing on. They also set aside some money to hire um um Kim Horn to help us think through all right, what would we do with that 2 and a half acres? What would we do off the site? Green space, parking, community space. And so they're working on that right now. So we should have something to show council and eventually give to the post office. See, we're still working on how do we make this a civic place in in Dun. Um, they went a step further and talk about, well, if if that moves forward, that would probably be a city uh function. That's not really what the development authority would would do is create a civic building. They're actually prohibited from from doing that. So, what would be the the redevelopment opportunity? It probably is these three commercial sites just in they make the most sense. They're two banks with a lot more parking than they need drivethrus a twotory office building. So they think that that is our best opportunity for redevelopment. We've looked at that site before many many many years ago. Um, so they're sort of moving on. How do we get this? How do we help the city get that under control and then move on to that

site to see something? Uh, there's a there's a long list of to-dos on on that. The next is looking at C, whether the property owners would like to do a C and if you may well pay for a consultant to help help make that happen. So those are for the top coming out of the you said I'll hand it over to Rachel. Um so because of that so parts of the village obviously you know I've read about um we we know how well the library does and rec center and all that um for several years. Um, we've been trying to figure out what to do with this with this giant wall that you receive. Um, we've we tried a couple different times to put out a lot of impressive proposals that we do for a lot of our other murals. Um, we would get some some designs back um, look at the stage board and they didn't make it as far as our commission. So, we tried a couple different ways and about a month or so ago. Why didn't it make it as far as like it didn't even make it through the art commission? Correct. Was wasn't the vision that that the board wanted to see

in our building. Okay. Yes. Okay. Um 10, you know, because this is the stage four entrance. Yeah. Um you know, masks and things like that. Um so we've engaged the living walls. Um we did the mural great team in Wonderland. They've already identified two artists. I think we started five. We're down to two. They're currently working on their design mocks. Um we'll hope get that commission by the April 7th meeting. Um and the goal is to have this the mural completed um before camp starts. So to late May um you want me to jump in there or if you want to jump in on what we

I will jump in. Okay. All right. Recently we uh voted in a sign at the Del Center with Steven Street with words, right? I I have asked that Rachel put forth two designs for us to look at. One with artist background and one with the same background, but it'll say stage door. the to build the walls. Sorry, bigger we have this whole wall. They're gonna do the whole wall. Yeah.

But I don't know how big it'll be. If you go, think of this building as having three entrances. And the entrance that faces WAC is the library entrance on which it says Z library, right? Squirrel entrance has its own art, but it doesn't have any words. Words. Stage door. They want words. They badly want words so that people will know what it is. So I I just sign

correct. So So we worked with community involvement for couple years on this. So the signs at school and the stage versus tickets all that sort of grandfather then I guess right term any changes to that you know they wouldn't be able to do what they're doing now. Um yes and stage would have loved to see almost type style started now down to wording on mural which then is assigned with the art of the art mission. Um so in that case yes it's a you know beyond the building um based on our our sign audience it was without state boundaries so that would be akin and we all decision

because it is a billboard and we the reason the nature center worked was because it wasn't visible from the street there's nothing comparable it's still a wall and it is still a wall on which we put words on a building that we grown lots of businesses Dale I hear you that that we did it and the risk with ignoring the sign ordinance is billboards and school would I'm sure love to have right and then let me ask confused as to why we anyway to me a literal marquee would be less offensive

thank you sir is there anything prohibiting a traditional marquee there yes I think based on the They have like a 2x4 I think over the door. We go in to say and that's about it. I'm kind of getting a little bit distracted with a lot of different conversations here. I'm looking at this picture, but you're talking about a lot of other things right now. Talking about this. Well, no. I I heard mares. I don't know what that looks like. And I heard other entrances. I don't know what that is. It's all about all well I'm a visual guy and I don't I try to relate so sorry. So right now the only this is what we're talking about just this right now. This is

and it's going to be a mirror. Okay.

I think just like you got to bring both options to this council or see that's fine. And is there just this might be when we just redo look at the whole village crossings project of what it looks like from a person from the street view and is it approachable? Is engageable? Do they know it's there? Are are we, you know, we can do some synergy there, right? How that whole you got some old trees and everything else and just the whole right you know how that really is approachable, engageable, somebody walking or on Shambling to the center to see it and visualize it and be engaged. Yeah. Just hope hope that we'll we'll also kind of aspire to that.

Hey, bring it. But also I want to make a point that's not about the sign is that I when we did all the village planning I thought I know I thought we agreed that the village ended at Mount Vernon. I guess I was the only person always included. Okay. Art. Okay.

Well, I mean, I think it should. I think it's a huge opportunity to connect an arts district to the village. And I even actually what I'd love to see as part of the village crossroads or maybe some other part of that is like a like a sculpture trail or something leading from the art center to the village kind of tying the two together. I mean, and and incorporating the art center into the vibe of the area. So yesterday I spoke with county association who several downtowns including uh a number of Right.

They took us all the way under the tunnel to the other side. Fantastic. They're sculptures all way. Yeah. I mean it was I mean honestly I mean we know it but this cattle pass by nothing else will help but clearly defined this as a marks facility but if you had soldiers out front it to the village again just creating that that vibe of that place making is great as would be nice if like the AT&T building would well yeah I mean but I mean it's a start I mean the W mural is is there

no I know it does have you know it's not like there's nothing there. It would be I mean more be very different.

So the only thing I want the other thing about is after a while on what's in the code and Richard's interpretation etc. without getting into whether you should or shouldn't do I think you can violate your own code. is well established and enjoyed for law that even if it's ruling your thumb code global government will tell you that all lawyers will tell you that I will tell you that and so how this back doors did things to this and other things that I don't want to say too loud when someone is challenging you because you did this it's not the fact that you deviated from the rule but if the reason for your rule is not supported by what you did. It's going to get back going over here and other things. So, you really need to think and I don't know this area. I don't know all those things, but all I'm saying to you, that's how it comes up indirectly. Not just in front of somebody rules, but the basis for the rules been undermined because of what you did is what I'm trying to say. So anytime you're going to deviate, you need to think through is the basis for the rule begin with being here because it will come back in an indirect way on the challenge of something else and I'll stop like that

typically fines against us. Yes. I just um I probably have to do more research and understanding. I look at the Sugar Hill downtown and just a street view. They own a theater there and it says E A G L E but it was there already. It was No, they built it from scratch. They own it. They own it. It's their sign code. That's not our sign code. Maybe it meets their sign code. No, I bet it meets their sign code because their downtown's very different than our village. Luckily, we're under a rewrite time.

Fix that next time. Nope.

So, so to sort of go back to uh the civic art, these are just three other green spaces around the region. Um so part of what kinds look at the post office s items would design what a green space might look like and these are just three options there many many others um the post office two and a half acres or so we're going to see what we out of that um so you'll be seeing that pretty soon um hopefully in the next month or so and you know we'll continue the development will continue as staff continue to work on trying to Maybe that added a choice.

Um just I mean that makes it very public that we're going after them. But yeah, I mean I think you know like that there's no there's no real secret and there's a process to go through close office. Okay. They have not opened that process up. They've not done that. the broker who we're working with believes there is a a path or way that the post office sells properties for public benefit. So they would not sell this if we're going to flip it to a developer to build. So that's where you have to come with them to the plan.

This we had a connected vector plan and this would need to be a civic use. There's a lot of different city views to bring city hall parks base center whatever. So that's why we're adding back to the to all of our plans and then we're going to show that hey we are really going to use this as a civic

anything else. All right, let's go to doors now. This area is very different from the village because it is many more national brands but the area is disconnected from the rest of like green park the town homes uh north square very smaller lots closer together than the walking distance are the population is about 55 500. According the comp plan, there are about 3,200,000 units. The ant anticipated growth over the next 20 years. Is it 151,000 house

over the next how many years? 20 years. Uh the Georgetown core area uh allows two to 10 stories of development and we went back and forth on this a lot. The 10 stories that is right around the village that was so expensive to buy that property. Um so otherwise it's not going to change and the transition area one to three stories mainly residential some small merchant.

Just quick slide the uh the commercial uh properties were doing really quite well. um vacancy in the office is a little bit elevated, but I think there's some big deals we're about to have that take some of that down. Um less than Would that include the like the um pet er surgery center? So, they're not there yet. They're not there yet. So, that's in there. That's that's a decent size.

Um, and there's some other Yeah, they're they have been doing much better than B because remember we took out so much of that class B and class C office converted it to town homes behind program took down an entire building. Yeah. Um, she got it. Um, right.

So there's a obviously huge amount of opportunity for behind the perimeter. This is the district that has the most opportunity. Del Park office project, school site, whatever they decide to do with that. Um the URA and we have our 2 and 12 acres there. We're waiting for a small area of plan was in the last plan they identified residential on that site. U we had talked about doing that before. Um right now the RA is continuing what they've been told in the past there but we're just going to hold off until the community and the council says yeah residential speak with us um you know we could move in that direction as well. So that's sort of what um yeah that's that mention I mentioned this morning that some of these things later would kind of show where the things are coming together and I think this is one of them. Um you know we obviously completed the door gateway project. We've got we have a pretty good existing piece west connection through the area and then we have Shane lead now you know we have North Shall in the works uh and then Cilian mentioned earlier saying that they're build all this part of the top end project. So, you know, pretty soon you're going to have not just one but two east, west, and north south connection through this area. You're almost starting to get a little bit of a grid. Um, so the next, you know, we have a sidewalk gap on Don Park. We've kind of been waiting here to see if any redevelopment's going to

happen with that office and that maybe that gets approved as part of that. Um the next really project that we would probably look at in this area is I mentioned earlier Chony between Peer and Back to look at those intersections. I know Burmach didn't use a left turn lane. Not sure what at this point it would be with the Sher intersection, but there's a sidewalk gap here on Champ. Yeah, there's there's bike lanes north here and there'll be a path south. There's really nothing on that section. So, that looks like the next logical place to um invest forward discussions with the house of the office complex. Michael, the uh north side of Shambley Del before Vermac where it's just like dirt gravel up further north right there. Vermac

on the north right below that no on Shamley down right on the north side or the east side. Is there is there inter room throwing some fresh aggregate in there or uh maybe it needs a refresh but we we put some aggregate out in the forest. Uh we can take a look at

and of course we all know that express lanes and that's going to be just who knows what it's really going by. Yeah. Who knows what? Sorry. Does old spring house land connect with Lincoln Parkway? Uh no it it that ends um a creek. They're not. They They come pretty close together and they line up, but there's a creek in between. Maybe there's a creek. I didn't know if we put a trail over or not. There's a trail. Yeah, that's what I meant. I knew they didn't. I knew there was looking. Yeah.

Side dot has agreed to build the piece from where that uh from down there to swim that's closed now along the interstate and it'll come out right here. will come back here and this is Georgetown Square where the town homes were built a few years ago and there's already a path going out to old spring house there so here okay given us any indication what they're going to do with the George Johnson club

well big Okay. Still power and she got got her project the road. So power so the bill didn't own the land. I just so that Georgia Power George Got did not understand that. Um, so they did everything they did everything right as much as Dubai did.

And then Georgia Power had allegedly had to put the pole right there on top of their so yeah in this area. Um, we added something earlier this year. So the the swing bank um had a tree fall on it had damage. We took the opportunity based on requests for over the years to go ahead and add shades at that time. We changed one of the swings up adaptive. Um we got a very nice email from my mom which was able to use it. So um again it's another way of the to increase our inclusivity. Um common ground is that new sculpture from Milani. I believe it was going to save the day yesterday. Very excited about that. Um and of course the fairway wave restriping I mentioned earlier. This is, you know, work run and all the way to Georgetown. So everything's as cohesive.

We have to I'm sorry. Y that goes for the neighborhood, right? Yes. We have to strike it. Do I need to put the trail down? No, but the regulations changed recently. I know this came up earlier. So, right, we're not we don't have to put a strike on it. put a spray on it. It needs to be up.

Um park. So our double width bench. This is the bench we've been going for for quite some time. We ran into some supply issues, but they've taken an old wind turbine for example that I think we've painted. It kind of springs color. Um we are just double checking one more thing with the structural engineer on the extra swinging part to make sure that's not going to cause any issues. Um so that'll that'll be coming up rather soon. Um I'm excited to announce that finally able to offer an in-house basketball program. Um it may sound silly. this month from this is a big deal for us able to do this. So, um he's currently been on the next time he gets older, he's able to he's found some time for us to where he can do like a free throw contest and an inmates and start some programming to activate the boards in a way we've never been able to do. um truck driving I've already talked about and of course the baseboard um fire light that y'all clearly recently um to both of those parts about can you those

so there's two parts of Georgetown park so you've talked about the playground I guess the trail but what's going on at the other part but I don't even know the body side so that's where the sculpture is oh we activated that area okay there's kind of a circular green space that's the Harbor benches are um aside from that it's feeling do you measure you sort anything like does it get that one's hard um I have to pull some some place for data that one sort of gives you we tell people are using a bachi ports or anything I've seen a little

I can't place do that we we know people are just based on parking we have a lot of requests for programming hey I go and use it for my sort of We cannot see why. So, oh, kind of sorry, going back to I would say like with the Georgetown Park kind of like we said with the nature center and yeah, Donald Bster Farm, I think it's part of the neighborhood. Yes. And the fact that we have city botchi balls and nobody knows that. I mean to be honest I didn't know that till two weeks ago until I was like you know working by looking at other people's parks and websites and I was like and that's how I knew about the the basketball thing too like

I mean I think it's kind of cool about parks didn't didn't mess with All right. What a sh the area is almost completely occupied except for office little officer is about 20% vacant. Um the area split between uh door street corners. It would probably be a good idea for us to sit down and talk with them. Um

it's fine. Norville's on the other side of the PIV. Yeah. Yeah. Um it probably be a good idea to have planning folks what we claim that area together especially since the Walmart is actually in the corners.

So just while you're talking about that I've heard you talking to some of the electives corners and mayor members about that specifically. We're looking to complete I figure out the vehicle and a proper way to do this, but setting up a joint kind of committee basically with residents and business owners, land owners to try and come up with some ideas for the area. So, we just obviously got to make sure we're doing it the correct way, but it's already underway. Um, also the cemetery, uh, with them recently, they do want to expand. Um there's plenty of room to live in to span

in in their own footprint or are they going to buy land and untouched land? Right. But it's when it goes back towards the fountain of neighborhood, it's going to be going around against single family homes isn't done with that already. It is done for my husband. It's gonna be

privacy. There are some state orders back there, but not bad enough.

So the anticipated growth over the next 20 years of 150 to 300 households um a mix of both restaurants and small businesses from being well. That's it. said that retail and office actually pretty well in this area. Um and you you've got uses there are very difficult to change. Um, you've got two manscape. You've got a number of autooriented businesses. And those types of businesses you can't find.

The place you're talking about where they're like I forget what they're called, but like stalls, but that's not what they're called. Like where warehouses? What do you call it? where there's a row of of there's the warehouses right there next to us. Yeah, I don't think we're but that's what they are, I guess. And that's where these are all auto. Yes. This is landscape landscape. There's a small office building there and then the collection of of retail. So change is going to be very hard. But there's opportunity because I don't like I think the warehouses aren't all full. like in the office building I think is I thought was empty.

No, it's it's definitely not empty. Okay. It's definitely not empty. U it's uh it's well leased. That mean people are in there all the time. I went over there yesterday and it's there's quite a few cars and a lot of lot of activity. I believe all the the old I think they're full. Yeah. And they're recent. There's more there. Yeah. So, um, there there probably is some if you go over and and the new BP is moving forward. It looks like it's almost done. Yeah. Should be opening. Right.

You know, there is some some probably some opportunity for the retail that is there to maybe help them fix up their buildings. I think the VP is actually pretty pretty nice for the renovation. They pay for the building. So um from an economic development standpoint like short term that would be you know one of the projects that I would talk about maybe the development board put together a program to help them improve the size um paint the buildings and clean up but most of the retail is not in right

um most of it is actually all our stuff and this is the line. Yeah. And so that building, this these two buildings and all that. So when you pass where the new gas station is, there's a strip shopping center that faces not the street. You know what I'm talking about? Office building. Like I said, that's mostly in mostly at least. You can't see most of right. Sorry.

Yep. From transportation standpoint, we have three projects in this area right now. One of them have to follow really the next opportunity looking at here is first run. When you look at everything we talk about uh when all this is built, that's the last gap in the system that would give you perimeter all the way to the north part of the city that is in five years roughly I was released that's that's the last step that's all

I rode um I rode my bike around last week and I took the cherry hill path Joe for your connectives council I sure as heck hope you're going down while you can tell yourself because that that incline up is no joke. I'm on an ebike. Well, we're going both ways.

No, I would not go both both ways. You're have a lot of people hopping off that sucker. But I mean, I could like to me that's a great example of how a sidewalk is also a storm water project because you could just see like like the storm water project adjacent to that. You're like, "Oh, I I see now." Yeah, I don't want to spoil video, but we were out there last week uh and talked with a couple people that were out walking on it. They're very positive. I think one of them said they had never neighborhood before.

Okay. So earlier in the beginning when we talked about neighborhoods we showed that green kind of overall map of you know park um proximity blah blah blah. So official corporate plan also has um priority less. Um so this is what we dropped in. So the darkest purple is very high priority a little bit lighter priority and the the coolest color is moderate priority and these are priority areas for park. So where when you look at de where where you use sparks the most. Um so there's two parcels 4680 and 4688 winter shuffle which is in dark purple. Um if you look at a census track these are identified as distressed or underserved status. Um it's roughly 3 acres. Um given its its location um you could still use something based multigenerational amenities. um Hispanic community engagement and cultural events even based on current activity in that area. Um so really for the travels area this is this would be focus on the side I don't have a lot of very high level understand but um that's kind of the the area we'd love to focus on before we start this go back I guess does anybody have questions or anything on chapel

I just know there's a lot of downsides in the sense of topography the sense of the egress egress egress egress it's all winners chapel based which is backed up on traffic all the way through but I just there's some downsides to that well you also need to consider though that probably majority of people using govern by vehicle don't be walking in there by park license and that's really the goal is to have parks that people can walk into so again I think we need to sometimes break our traditional vehicle or we got to drive somewhere granted there needs to be some parking here and I'm not discounting that but I I think the primary benefit to this would be to serve the the department right there that people would walk to it.

I would like with whatever committee um forms that we do some digging within the communities of the people that live there to figure out what their priorities are and that's why we have the residence part of that

because it might not be this at all like it might be secure. I don't know, but I know from some of our school administrators that I don't think a lot of kids are playing outside with a security. So, I think that we have to start way up here. I think like I feel like with the aging housing, I think again we to be careful with our presumptions until we talk to people and make sure that you know what they want may not be what where they want us to invest may not be in far. It may not be whatever. I think we need to figure that out.

And when you do have those compet chapel corridor in front of the waterworks, you know, it's like four lanes wide. There's some long-term things we could potentially do with Gwynette with Beach Corner along that doing some linear linear uh green space as well.

Yeah. No, I agree. I actually Christine had a conversation with Remlo, you know, government county. Um, and we're talking about that specific corridor and the concerns the county has is they're again going back to their 10ear plan of the waterworks improvements and there's they're going to be using a lot of that area for staging and heavy equipment coming in and out. So again, high beams on looking down the road, but anything within the short term, probably over the next 10 years, I don't think we want to make a significant investment, you know, the roadscape there because it's just going to it's going to be a mess. Um or perhaps coming in on top of that, clean up the mess, we we we do that. But again, I'd like to work closely with CAD to see how we can maybe partner and enhance that area. Capital works a little bit. All right, last area. This area between Sandy Springs. There's no housing in there, but are surrounded by housing. Recently, a former legal uh soul is now big play with tremendous success. is the own the other side of the street that vary the retail vacancy are much higher on Regency side than on the very side. comp plan allows one to three stories and about 50 or 150 households.

As mentioned earlier, we have the the uh Mount Burn and Billy Mill projects out right now that will connect all the way down to Jet Berry and really uh we have a crosswalk improvement on that plan. The uh the next thing that could be looked at there was sending that connection on Mount Vernon down to club uh didn't do anything on me club. There's not really any kind of facilities on lovely club, but it would uh connect to the Kingsley neighborhood with the the cross street and then also the signal. So give back that better access to that path that will go.

Is that a signalized light that the dog uh I like push the button. No, I mean it was going to be a standard crosswalk so high function without any kind of signalization but that's always something that we had later. It's not near the bus stop. It is. That's where we're planning. It is at that is I think Yeah, there's a bus stop. There's two bus stops

right in right kind of a little bus stop on that side of the road. We were planning on putting it close to there. It is a pedestrian count and it's kind of pedestrians crossing here and here, but you don't don't want to really put it right next to the driveway. You got tons of vehicles and so there was no It's like, well, if we put it here, this is where everybody's bing. So, there's enough crossing here. You got a bus stop there. That's probably the best place to put it. Is there a bus stop the more northern? Yeah, there's two of them. There's two bus stops. If they stay closer down to the stop sign,

closer down the stop sign. We It didn't uh It didn't look like it would make sense to put a crosswalk anywhere north of the Chicklet. Broadway next to Chick-fil-A. So, we're actually not right where Chick-fil-A is. And at the end of the day, this is a striped Yeah. paint, right? And does it change vehicular motorist behavior, you need a visual cross driving if you want to feel safer crossing the road or or raise, you need more than paint. Well, that's a start. That's a start. But I appreciate it.

Did we ever want to go back and talk to Sandy Springs about the four-way stop there? Okay. Maybe just get us They were going to leave something and then they just Well, the garden is in the way and they probably thought it was trouble, but I don't remember exactly what happened. We have continued to track the uh the rashes there. You know, there's still more that you'd like to see there stop sign.

Are you still planning to move the sign? No, we need you. We looked at that and it was really for us. She actually talking gas station they getting east and on the other side of jet fair there's no right do we have um with the the path to go from jet perry to club um when we reszone did we get the ement for that do we need it uh we have quite a bit of right away there we would maybe need some easements for or something but they would fit within the path itself would fit for Mr. Right. Yeah.

I' I've got action out to talk to uh Sandy Springs council rep up there John Paulson um because it would be nice to revisit. It's been about a decade since they discussed that way and doing things on their side of the club and stuff. It might be another good time for us to get together with them. Yeah. They're just putting in the sidewalk that's falling, right? Or Jeff area. Jeff Jeff. Yeah. And then been pro that you know because there wasn't enough going on in that quarter. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh so again, the office and retail both doing pretty well. Um the the only real opportunity for uh redevelopment I know you can see is looking at their company center a little bit fairly well occupied the the McDonald's as we know has been

it's a long time McDonald's owns it and McDonald's does not sell their property without the restrictions upon on us. And so the opportunity reason why why sitting there is because the restaurant there very well. Yeah. The only other use maybe the community not about. Is it for sale? Oh yeah. Yeah. They would sell it. They want to sell it. They have income. Wait. the McDonald's they don't really want to sell. I don't it's not

they do want to sell it. They just will not sell it without the restrictions on restaurants and somebody coming in is going to buy it and say what can I do with it? Somebody won't even put or use it. Yeah. Okay. So now all of a sudden you're looking at a piece of property that you can't really do anything with and so it's going to sit there. A bank I'm not kidding. and everything, but there's a bank. I I think banks when they you're done with it, they they still aren't feeling very welcome. I mean, for years, what do you say? We don't want any more bags, right? Well, and I'm not sure that location. Thank you. No, we I think we're allowed. Yeah. Right. I forgot about that.

So, it's acres. I'm not sure what the Well, there's Bank of America in there. what the value of the property is, but you're probably going to sit there for another 20 years. Netflix Netflix could put a store there. Spirit of the house, but it's well I mean it's I don't think more. We don't really want to sell it twice, right? Well, maybe that's right. I

mean the guy that I met with a zillion years ago when it was um about car place he was buying he was like bilizes but typically McDonald's is going to be on Roswell world you can put in industrial but auto use they're not going to have as many restrictions right well lots was a strange place for them. Yeah, regency has looked at and figures the same thing. They can't do anything with it. Building is maintained long enough. I got a call for a an oil change. The guy called up said, "Would you be okay putting an oil change?"

Right. What point like can the development board or the UDA like declare it as a blank spot and go in it that way? Right. 20 years. Right. 20 years. So we so if we can't take property so the URA we're going to have to create a new ur

but if it's been empty for 20 years what is there I mean I'm not that's just another few years right I don't know is there someone I could talk to am I Donald J's or it says McDonald's. And I thought you said you talked to somebody and I guess your sense was they didn't want to sell it. I don't know that the we started about $500, right? Right. Okay.

Now, the retail vacancy, the people that built Big Play, they bought that setup. I think that is there a fitness place coming in with the Arkansas with the old furniture. Yeah. Headphones. This is going to be my jazz club. Well, I don't think he wants another. I think he wants you to drink at his big play. I was going to have a jazz and bloop.

So, un same same land map here. Um, unlike travel, there's no block of green space. So, what I would like to do um is engage with the group parking gene. It's nonprofit. They've been 100 years. They take curbside parking spaces, convert them in public parks temporarily, and just a way to to get parks in this area of the city, activate it, do something fun. Um, typically the events are held on September, so we've got some time to come in, but um, you know, development on where the best best place for this to be, but um, that's kind of our our first step on the park.

Where do we have parking? I mean, you can use it as a parking lot. We can talk McDonald or somebody. It was like they do it small. Yeah, that's great. I like that.

Street to that for one second. I'll stand right in. So, so what's interesting about this opportunity is and maybe we do it for like the if it's a sad like do the weekend is is that maybe we do it at the old McDonald's and we see what the vibe is see what

give a little taste about maybe some future council can decide that 25 years is too long for it to be vacant and they can make an offer on it or something. I mean that's that's uh I mean it's a weird little weird looking effort

chief if you need to skip this for work work we can handle it. It'll take two seconds. Sex

it was done by design. It was done by design. The only thing that I will add is that we're right now uh curiosity because that one is like so close to Springs I mean right like when there's an accident that fourway

so they so the first like yeah I'm in the northbound lane springs I would be done before. I don't know. Any tourists broker?

One question. We'll get that up. Any hot spots any little neighborhoods or commercial nodes that need some sort of attention or some an issue we need to address. There's always speeders are always certain on our point is relatively quiet up there around course high school traffic there. We get a lot of lights up there. Um but yeah mainly uh but sometimes going to be there. Um but yeah,

why does it say ever run?

They even patrol club. I see too. They never Yeah, they never I never seen radar. I mean, I've seen our guys made our club never

um

Okay. Um energy level of the groups right now. Do we need a five minute break or do we keep going through? That's five

Okay. All right. We're ready, Jay. Okay. Fine. There are two different options in the way to attack this because there's four different areas and we got three different questions by topic or area by area or preforming. All three are viable options. Preformat. Preformat it is. Oh god. Wait. Voting on. Do do we want to go area by area or top? Question by question. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Let's go question by question and start with commonality between. So on the first one, what should each center feel like five years from now? Go with a common feeling on that. No, I don't think there's common feeling. Okay, we won't go that way. Five years from now, each center should have its own identity like and Jet Fairy should be about called something other than Jet Fairy, right? We just all referred to as Jet Fairy, you know,

right? I said, but I said Jet Fairy Mount Vernon. I mean, it's kind of a mouthful shopping. Okay. Each should be different.

It's okay to have in my mind and I think we talked about this earlier and Charlie did and that we don't have one downtown. We have like all these different nodes and they're all a little bit different. And I think that's great. And so five years from now, like I would love for people to stop talking about how we need a downtown beauty, be like, "Oh man, I went out to Jet Fairy Village or Village of Jet Fairy and it was so fun or you know, hey, have you seen the coolest thing in Georgetown?" And everybody knows exactly what you're talking about in Georgetown and Winter's Chapel becomes tied into. So in my mind, in five years, like we're have, you know, if I want to go incognito and just kind of slide in, I can go to this node. If I want to dress up and see all my neighbors, I go to that like and it everything has a different feel and all of them knows that and it's all okay.

That's my back on the fact of rebranding that area. Is that something y'all want? I think we need to write that. We need to figure out what we're going to call that area long term. And you said what? Williamsburg. I said that's what the shopping center is district.

Yeah, the way they array is architectural styles. Okay, I'm just going to say this. We've already kind of answered this for some of these. I mean, there's a lot of documents from the village already. the the sharet we just did the streetscape the overlay we're doing the Georgetown small area plan so I feel like we've already answered that for those so this question is maybe for the remaining spaces but what do we want for for years right for winter's chapel in five years I'd like to see that it was I'd like it to serve the residents in the area as well as possible like I don't know what that feels like but feels co maybe more cohesive that's what I was saying like it has its Right. No, I don't disagree.