City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It is six o'clock and I call this specially c no regularly scheduled meeting on May 11th of the Doody City Council to order unless there's an objection. Seeing no objection, the meeting is called to order. Councilwoman Harris, will you lead us in the invocation and pledge, please?

Everyone, please rise as you are able. At this meeting, help us to make decisions which keep us faithful to our mission and reflect our values. Give us strength to hold to our purpose, wisdom to guide us, and a keen perception to lead us. And above all, keep us charitable as we deliberate. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of Officer Hernandez and Deputy Chief Ladridge, I believe you are on. It is now. I'll start again.

Okay. So, good evening, mayor and council. The uh one of the hallmarks of the Domey Police Department has always been its community engagement. And as you know, we have two fantastic police officers, Officer Terresa Hernandez and Officer Terren Alexander behind me who uh really organize and run most of our programs. And one of our flagship programs is the Citizen Police Academy. And I'm going to get out of the way and let them talk about that. And uh we are here to obviously honor the graduates that have uh gone through this almost three-monthlong process. Thank you.

Good evening, council and city. Um, so we did just complete our 18th annual Citizens Police Academy. So, we do have most of them here this evening. So, they'll come up and join us um shortly. Um, I think most of you all have joined our Citizens Police Academy with the exception of our lovely mayor, which we're still waiting for. Um, but don't Great news. The next one, it will be on August 18th. So, we'll be looking for that application. I'll make sure I send it to both you and your husband. Um so this is a 13week class. Um we have of course many different topics that we do cover each week a different topic from community outreach. We do have a PIO night. So someone from the media has started coming out the first night as well. Crime scene. Um we go to the dis dispatch center. A use of force night. Of course we have the civilian response to active shooter. Um C comes, uniform patrol, narcotics, DUI. We have a simulator. Um we have a little again 13 weeks um of classes and the last night we have what's called a traffic stop night and actually our deputy chief over here um always comes in and he assists us with our traffic stop evening which puts everything together that they've learned and they act as if they were the police officers and we're the actors which is so much fun for us as well. So anyone in the city who has not taken this class yet will be putting out the applications next week. Um, so please look out for it and if you have any friends that have not taken it, make sure they know about it as well. So without further ado, would love to have class of 18 alumni to come on up here and join us. talk a little bit about what we

Hello. Never been here before. I'm Kathy Cobbs. I know most of you in a different way, but tonight I'm speaking on behalf of the 18th Citizen Police Academy graduating class, which stands before you. Our group was quite diverse. We had Dunwy Baiffs and his wife, a school teacher, a person who'd recently immigrated to the United States, an educator, a retiree, a journalist, a person who's interested in join joining criminal justice in the future, person in the food service business, retail, and others. The path to the CPA was also varied. longtime residents who said their only encounter with the police was seeing patrol cars going by in their neighborhood. One person who met officers at Coffee with a cop and still others who heard about it from friends who had previously taken the CPA. During our last session, we discussed our favorite classes which of course started with canines because everybody loves a good dog encounter. Others highlighted the simulated traffic stop uh and I must say where about a third of the participants in it are theoretically ended up dead and the other twothirds embarrassed about all the many things we missed. The gang talk was also cited as super interesting and the field trip to ChatCom. But I think the overarching theme as we discussed our experience involved the quality of the speakers, their obvious dedication to their profession and the depth of knowledge that each speaker brought to the table. And finally, our leaders, Officer Hernandez and Alexander. They were incredible stewards over the entire academy and provided us with a very entertaining and informative experience. So, thank you from the members of the 18 CPA.

Thank you. Everybody look good. Officer Hernandez or Officer Alexander, come back, please. So, when students complete this program, they have the opportunity to what? So, the prerequisite to being a volunteer for the Donady Police Department is to actually complete the Citizens Police Academy. So, there are a couple volunteer programs that we do offer here. We have our volunteer baift program as well as our citizens on patrol program. The citizens on patrol will be an additional 9-week training class that we hold in January. So, we did actually just have one student from a couple couple CPA classes just complete that program as well.

Thank you. Thank you. And thank you both for your time and talent in putting this together. I know that everyone who participates finds it very v beneficial and helpful and it's a true asset to the city. So, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Next is public comment. Um each speaker will have three minutes. If um when you get to the microphone, um just please introduce yourself. Uh and uh Ali, I know you were the first. Is he here? Okay. Always a different side to be there, but there's a big dog that started coming now that's not here today. No, it's only the second meeting of the month.

Okay. It's only a big dog that wants to go for a dog. Anyway, I'll start my clock. Um Right. Thank you, city council. Uh, I'm Ally. I come today just actually with some just very two very general comments. One comment that I've made kind of a couple of times and I'm hoping that we might be able to try to address more is we are getting a lot of traffic from non Dunwy residents around the city. So, I walk a lot and we've had some uh people that are clearly not Dunwoody residents. I imagine more likely from Atlanta as we get closer to the World Cup. a lot of their um non-resident residents are kind of being pushed out and of course they're going to use the martyr systems or any other means to try to get out of the city of Atlanta. We're getting a lot of that exposure. I hate to say it but even as walking we're seeing certain people sleep on the streets. Um we're seeing some of our brand new beautiful buildings out there um new construction. We're having people again sleep right on the sidewalks. We're having some people you know in violation of Dunwy codes. Uh last night me and a friend went to Velvet Taco right on High Street and we had a person there of course clearly not a Dunwy resident um causing issues with other patrons. I I believe I don't know if police were ever called but security had to intervene. Long story short, these pushes are um obviously kind of negatively affecting the rest of us. So, I'm not sure what we are able to do, but if there is something we can do to politely um enforce some of those code enforcements around sleeping on the streets, um other non-residents coming in maybe causing disturbances or other issues and and kind of enforce those code enforcements or enforce those laws we have set in Dunwy to protect us. That would be very helpful. Um, again, my fear is as we get closer to the World Cup, we will have more and more visitors um for the foreseeable time as Atlanta attempts to clean up um their supposed image. Uh the second thing is we are getting towards I guess election season. I think we all notice that with the mass amounts of phone calls, text messages, letters, um media, all sorts of fun stuff. And what I would hope that the city could maybe assist us with is, you know, this is the one time a year

where I like to make the joke that we're actually important. Um, so our supposed uh government officials kind of now supposedly make comments that were important and things are actually relevant. Um, but as we get farther up the scale, it's harder to get in front of those people. But if the city could assist in any capacity, especially with some of the more community oriented ones or even some of the local judges, have some type of or organize some type of meet and greet or an opportunity for us to actually ask question of these supposed local officials and maybe be able to kind of talk a little bit more about what's important to Dunwy and our residents as they supposedly campaign for different things and advocate for us. I think that might be useful from a citizens perspective in the city of Dunwy. Uh besides that, I appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you. Um, and thank you again.

Thank you. Uh, next, Danny Ross. Sir, you'll have three minutes um when you get to the microphone.

I'm Danny Ross. I live at 5165 North Peach Street Road in Dunwy. As founding member in this organization, Baron Council, we started the city in 2008. We had no money, no laws, no no police part department, no offices, no place to meet. But we had something even more important. The trust of this p the public trust. Tonight, while the citizens of Dunwy are eating dinner, putting their children to bed, and simply assuming that government is applying policy fairly and consistently, more than $327,000 in storm water repair projects are quietly moving through the council on the council's consent agreement agenda. No debate, no controversy, no constitutional crisis, no lectures about gratuitity clauses, no warning about private pro property, no wall of attorneys, just approval. At Lakeside Drive, Hidden Branches Drive, and Layfield Court, the city openly acknowledges responsibility for failing storm water systems, collapse of pipes, sink holes, structural deficiencies, and aging infrastructures integrated into the city's storm water network. And the city is doing exactly what the citizens expect the government to do. They're repairing the system. But when the same issues came to Keley Lake, suddenly everything changed. At Kingsley, six city storm water drains collect runoff from hundreds of upstream acres and discharge it directly into our lake. The city uses Kingsley Lake as part of the storm water conveyance system every single time it rains. Water exits through a damaged spillway into a city-owned detention facility downstream and continues through the city drainage

network. The city uses the system. The city depends on the system. When the system fails at Kingsley, the answer suddenly becomes private property. That is not consistency. And what makes this even more disturbing is that Kingsley residents are effectively we've lost our representation. Councilman Hennegan, who's up here, and Representative Lambert. Uh, they've all been silenced. They can't talk. They're our guys. We have nobody to talk to for us or to us. Our elected representatives have been instructed not to speak with us in public to discuss issues because there's an alleged conflict for our own representatives to represent us. It's a conflict. Think about that for a moment. An entire neighborhood dealing with one of the city's most significant outgoing storm water failures has effectively been cut off from normal dialogue with his own elected government. Meanwhile, these other storm water projects are moving quietly through the consent with no discussion at all. So tonight, the public deserves an answer to a very simple question.

What standards being applied here? Thank you. I have some pictures I want to leave with Sharon. Not like we're in passing. Okay. Thank you. You need to have it. Thank you, Jason Hunar. You'll have three minutes when you get to the microphone, sir. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Jason Hunar. Uh Lynn, on the 13th, you claimed the city was acting as transparent as possible while you privately met with the CEO Flock. despite that I had sent you documented evidence of him lying directly to the city council in Denver. Yet you choose you chose to met with him over one of your actual constituents. On top of that, on February 12th of this year, the city privately hosted three crisis management firms from Washington DC. Oh, that sounds really fun. Uh these firms websites literally describe crafting a proactive narrative and driving activations of their networks of over a thousand local operatives. Glad we had them here to represent Flock. Um, and this secret meeting is really supposed to be transparently, apparently. Then I found out that Director Leage had solicited $2,000 from Flock weeks before she completed her security assessment where she changed the scoring rubric from the assessment to what she presented to you. There are over 30 line items that should have been marked red according to her own rubric that she sent to Flock. PLC has so many blatant security security vulnerabilities, they've been documented by the Congress, the Senate, and the Department of Homeland Security. But don't worry, I'm sure the Dunwitty IT department is on it. Um, let's go back to the creepiest thing that's ever been exposed in this room. On September 11th, 2024, Patrick Creek told the JCC in writing that access to their private security cameras was needed, and I quote, solely for realtime critical incident response. But on September 30th of last year through Dunwoody's Flock Network, Flock Vice President Bob Carter logged in and viewed one singular live view camera. This camera was in the gymnastics room at the JCC. He didn't view any other cameras that day. Flock and now apparently you suggest that it was for a sales demo. Can someone please explain to me how middle-aged man logging into the Dunwy Police Department's network to look at a private gymnastics studio for

little girls could possibly be a sales demo. If you were a police officer, would you want to see that as a sales demo? Mayor Deutsch, fresh off your meeting with Flock, you mentioned a demo agreement with the city. When I asked Eric to produce that demo agreement through open records requests, literally quoting their blog, it doesn't exist. So, which one is it? Was this allowed or was it not? Is Flock's vice president allowed to log into the Dunwhaty Police Department's network and look at all of our children? Can any of you tell us what actually protects us and protects us from Flock employees? What guard rails you put in place? And who gives a [ __ ] about any of those if Flock employees are using Dunwhaty Police Department's network to log into our camera network and look at little kids and no one's being held accountable? What are you guys doing? You guys clearly have something to hide. There's something going on here and I'm going to find out about it. You guys should be representing your citizens and you should be ashamed of yourselves for selling out to corporations and putting the security and safety of every single person in this room and the families of Dunwy at risk.

Good citizen Joe, approach the microphone, sir, and you will have three minutes. I hope y'all listened to Jason Hunar's comments a minute ago because they're important and y'all don't seem to take them seriously. And Danny Ross, y'all don't meet with people. You don't discuss things with people. It's a common thread amongst his council. But meanwhile, I want to speak today about fairness, personal choice, and the importance of consistent regulation. Let's consider some very scary statistics. In 2023, there were about 350,000 bicycle injuries in the US with 120,000 of those needing emergency department treatment each year from crashes involving motor vehicles. Nearly 1,400 cyclists died in 2023. Adults aged 55 to 69 account for the highest death rates, while children have the highest non-fatal injuries. Our city leaders, I implore you, you must take action. You must do something to protect both adults and our children. So, I'm calling for the city to enact a total ban on all stores that have more than 25% of their inventory being bike related products. Rather than educating the public or making safe bike lanes, you must ban bike shops in our city. Which brings me to tonight's proposal to ban vape shops, or rather any store that has 25% of their products being vapes. But that doesn't apply. You know, of course, you can still buy vapes in any gas station, but you want to ban vapes, vape shops. It's a legal product. It's like banning bicycles because some people ride them unsafeely. Most bike riders follow the rules. They wear helmets. They use bike lanes. They stop at red lights. A few don't. And yes, accidents happen. So, if we decide that vape shops have no place in our city, we must also prohibit bike shops. Since the proposal seeks to punish a small small businesses because of the actions of a few, it would feel unfair to ban not to ban everything that

might be dangerous. It sounds like Councilman Seconder, who authored this proposal, doesn't trust residents to make their own decisions. Thank God he doesn't have kids. Vapes are legal for adults just as bikes are. You have seen the But have you seen the flashy colors, the cute lights, and the sparkles they put on bikes to attract kids to start riding bikes? Wow. It leads to the inevitable dangers for them. Scary. And perhaps Joe Secondary doesn't like the looks of ape shops. But one surely can note the biggest image problem we have in our city is actually the appearance of men wearing spandex shorts. That's the real crime. But in all seriousness, this asinine proposal wipes out a lawful business category that has rules, checks IDs, pays taxes, and operates openly rather than the black market or having a shady market where people can buy vapes not in a regulated store. If the city bans vape shops despite them being legal under state and federal laws, it would not be applying the same standard to other or uh businesses such as we don't ban alcohol stores, gun shops,armacies, fast food restaurants, or even ice cream stores that cause diabetes. So, please think about how dumb this proposal is. Thank you. That concludes the public comment cards I have for this session. There will be another public comment section at the end of the meeting. Uh, all right. Next, Rachel. Welcome. Good evening. Um I'm joined here this evening um with two of our wonderful partners from Jack and Jill. Um just a quick note for the um this was our 10 year 10th year celebrating MLK Junior Day of Service. Um that's why we've added a proclamation to tonight just to

celebrate um the long tenure relationship and and the wonderful give back. Um we're just so thankful that y'all approached us all those years ago and we're able to build on this event every year. So more than 10 years ago, representatives of Jack and Jill approached me about the idea of doing a day on rather than a day off for Martin Luther King Day, Junior Day of Service. And I think it has been so much more successful and had so much more staying power power than any of us could have imagined um all those years ago. And it really is one of our proudest uh accomplishments and one of our more successful events. It brings people together. It can be 20 degrees outside and the ground can be frozen hard, frozen solid, and people are out there shoveling and planting scores of trees and daffodils and all the other projects that we get accomplished. And I'm really proud to present this proclamation and it is a really great I've used really too much. It's a great example of a private public partnership that has just thrived in the city and we so appreciate and I'm going to come down and present this proclamation if that's okay. We're going to come. And you know what?

Good evening. Uh my name is Dr. Odyssey Fielder Kimbro. Uh I am the vice president of the Dunwitty Atlanta chapter of Jack and Jill. and this is Christina Cage who has served as our community service chair for the past two years. Uh Jack and Jill is a mother member organization um who is committed to the uplifting of not only our own children um but all children and we do that through multiple aims and programming in community service, philanthropy, uh financial education, cultural and um social engagement. So, we are proud um to bring our children and our uh community out every January, sometimes on very cold mornings um to keep the um spirit and ethos of what MLK was about and that service. And we thank um are very thankful to the city of Dunwy for this opportunity and that this will has grown and is so well publicized and attended every year. So, thank you.

Thank you. And the and this summer we're doing a joint blood drive um which is in the middle of the summer is when the supply is the lowest. Um and we're excited. We're it will be in conjunction with the city country's 250th anniversary. Um I think it's right around the 4th of July. July 1st partnership with American Red Cross.

Right. Partnership with the American Red Cross. It's a great initiative. you brought that to us too and we're grateful and Jack and Jill is such a wonderful organization and really lifts up everything they touch and also gives their members and their members children an opportunity to serve um our community and beyond. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Y'all ready for me? Yes, I'm ready for you. Sorry, Jennifer. Go right ahead. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm so pleased to uh be here standing before you tonight to recognize some of the graduates of our most recent class of Dunwy 101. um many of them could not make it. So, thanks to all of you who could join us tonight. Um this was the third class held on April 17th. It was made up mostly of residents who were on the waiting list um for the first two classes. You'll remember this is a revamp of the citizens academy and we started it last year as a one-day immersive experience. I'm going to let a couple of the graduates um briefly tell you about their experience. Starting with Lori Cutler.

Hello. Um I'm Lori Kettler and I'm proud to say that I completed the um citizens police academy course and because of that I am a baith and because of that um I very immersed in Dunwhati and um unfortunately couldn't make it for the I think it was the first class. So I was excited when um um Jennifer reached out to me to be able to join the most recent class. So um Jennifer asked me to say a few words and I have a minute. So you can put the timer on if you want cuz I do babble. Um so the first thing that I want to talk about is just the administratively how beautifully run the program is. It was from 9 to 4 and when 4:00 came around I was like wait is this over now? Like it felt like it had just started which means it was engaging, involving um we never skipped a beat. Jennifer had us, you know, you wouldn't know that we were on a schedule, but she gently and quietly uh worked us through the the day and we met um all the all the tentative um parts of the agenda that we were supposed to. So, I want to say a great thank you to Jennifer. She made the day absolutely fantastic. So, that's part A. Part B was understanding. Um, and I will fully admit I had no understanding of what it takes to run a city. I've lived in Dunwy. I moved from Florida to Dunwy in 2000 and just over the last couple years I've learned about the city of Dunwy through these programs. So, um, it was amazing to learn the financial piece of the city, how the government piece of the city runs, parks and recreation, um, permits. Uh we um it just you know city planning and how all that takes place um the development the city development. We even got to spend time with um an engineer who designs the the

traffic lights. So there was never a dull moment the whole day and it and it was I was ingratiated by the fact that all these city employees gave their time to us as citizens of Dunwitty, residents of Dunwy um to be able to be exposed to um the makings of the city. So I encourage everybody in this room to um participate participate in the next one. And um I'm just thankful for all of you and all that you've done to make this city as great as it is. So thank you. And I've also asked Andre Abamante to say a few words.

I'm Andre Abamante. Um I was weight listed the first time around for the Dumbo 101 course last year. So I was very excited when they approached me via email and said, "Hey, we've got openings for this uh new term." And so I signed up. Um, like Lori mentioned, we spent the day together with various members of the uh, city of Dumboody government and we got to learn about the different functions of the city government. Um, we got to go on a trolley tour around the city and see some of the highlights of some of the uh, commercial developments, some of the parks. As Lori mentioned, a highlight was learning how the traffic system in the city works and getting to meet with one of the engineers. and I personally enjoyed being able to share some concerns with him regarding traffic lights and sensing motorcycles. Um, it was a great experience. I really uh enjoyed learning about each of the different pieces of the government and it was eye opening to me as a citizen of the city to realize the importance of economic development for the longevity of the city of Dunwy. So, I really appreciated the opportunity to be able to participate in it and I would hope that this program could be expanded so that we could get more citizens of Dunwy uh the exposure that we were able to get through this program. Thank you.

At the end of the day, we had everybody fill out a survey and the results of that are in your packet, a summary of those um survey uh that feedback. Um we already have a date for the next one. It's Friday, September 18th. And I just want to thank you all for your support. Also want to thank Eric and staff and department heads who really work hard to make this program a success. And we'd love it if y'all could come down to take a picture with everybody. Thank you so much.

Round of applause. Thank you, Jennifer, for spearheading and leading and organizing this great effort. Um, and also to all the participants because you give up a day. It's a whole day. It's not like we asked you to come in for breakfast once or twice. It's the whole day. So, we appreciate everyone's interest in um taking the initiative to participate. So, thank you, Eric. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. We have the um city manager monthly report ending May 1st. Got a few items in parks. I want to talk about the uh STEM camp which will be held on at Winward Hollow Park uh Monday through Friday in June and July. So, sign up for that. Also, we have the Two Bridges Park Splash Pad and the Brook uh Brook Run Park playground stream are both on for the season. And so we got those on earlier this year and I appreciate the council's support on getting those turned on early uh for the citizens to use. Upcoming events, uh, kids to parks day is on the 16th of May. Next week we have Touch a Truck at the maintenance shop ribbon cutting. That's on the 21st. The 29th we have the summer kickoff at Two Bridges Park. And moving into July, we have the Blue Star marker unveiling and patriotic concert. That's just a sampling of some of the events we have coming up. Please check the website. The citizens should check the website to find all the events that are coming up. We have the tennis court resurfacing at Winward Hollow Park is scheduled for this week. And we also have the um our April babysitting boot camp class sold out with 20 participants. Uh under police, we have the coffee with

a cop. It's actually tomorrow from 8 to 10:00 at Ark Coffee House at 4448 Tilly Mill Road. And also we had uh Cops on Doughut Shops fundraising event to benefit Special Olympics is in June June 5th from 6:00 to 10 at the Dunkin Donut here in Dunwy. Um moving on into some of the uh workload activities for police. you'll see of various amounts of uh crime that have occurred in the uh resolution that we have for those. Also, there's a crime stat crime stats are within your report. This is available to the public as well. It has a link to the Dumby crime stat comparison report. Um moving into public works, as I mentioned a moment ago, the maintenance facility and there's a picture of that facility within the report that we have the ribbon cutting coming up for. Also, Dumbity Nature Center Wetland Restoration received project of the year award from the American Public Works Association Georgia chapter. So, that turned out to be a great project that uh I appreciate the funding for that and the staff's hard work. Also, uh hosting an invasive plant removal event at Two Bridges Park with volunteers from the Southeast Stormwater Association. We had over 10 dump truck loads of invasive species were removed. Moving into paving. Uh paving was completed on Glaze Drive, Winter Rose Court, and Winter Haven Court. We also applied for a grant for a stream uh stream restoration at Brook Run Park between South Georgia Way and the park boundary. Um Ashford Dunwy phase two path rightway acquisition is ongoing with five parcels south of Meadow Lane Road. We have um as you just heard the Dumby 101 all aboard uh was a few weeks ago. We also promoted the new PET microchip reader with a video and website of how to use that and that's out front. Uh when you leave the building today, take please look to your

left and you'll see that pet reader out front. Um we will have a city tent at the Junth celebration on June 19th. that will be uh a tent that we have in uh with Sandy Springs. Also within this report are the April 26th um Dunwitty stories report. Please look at those. That goes into much more detail over what I've said tonight. Community development. We had our household electronics recycling event with 467 residents dropping off 24,000 pounds of electronics for recycling. And we had also we received 101 permit applications in February and issued 103 permits out of those applications. Economic development, we had the um opening of Mr. Clean car wash, stage kitchen and bar um stable restaurant and bunker golf. So quite a few things have been continue to open in Dun Woody. We have in their finance, we had our first quarter 2026 ARPER report for the US Department of Treasury that was submitted by the due date of April 30th. And also we have our we had our audit committee meeting today where they covered fuel and purchasing cards. But I'm glad to answer any questions y'all may have on this report. And the staff is available as well.

Joe. Hey, Eric. Thank you. Um talk loud. Joe, sorry. Can Can you hear me? Yeah, but you got to talk a little louder. so everybody can hear you. All right. Um I want to just also thought give a shout out for economic development the announcement of infor three billion dollar company coming to Dunwy. That's an awesome uh recognition. Uh Eric, could you explain the delay uh and the rebid for the Mount Vernon Tilly Mill uh intersection project, please?

Yeah, Michael Smith is on his way to the podium. So the question was just because I'm not sure everybody can hear them is what is the delay in the Mount Vern the rebidding of the Mount Vern and Tilly mill project? Correct Joe? Got that right?

Yes. We evaluated the initial bids and the low bidder um didn't really demonstrate that they had all the qualifications necessary particularly for the water main portion of the project which is a big part of the project. So, we decided the best thing to do was to reject all bids and rebid it. And it's out. It's being advertised again right now for new bids. And is there any change in the actual proposal then or a criteria change or what is your gut feeling of what's going to happen with this next round?

Um, it's hard to say what what will happen. And I mean, we do feel confident that some of the same biders will bid again. Um that that we're not the low bid, but um it's hard to say what'll happen, but we just thought that was the in consulting with purchasing that was the the best thing to do with with what we had on the pre on the original bid. Okay. Thank you. Oh, John. Sorry.

That's all right. Thank you, Michael. water that is really not our purview isn't it? Is it the cab county in the sense the water man? It is the cab is paying for the water man, but as we've done on some other projects like Georgetown Gateway, they the the water man is within the overall construction contract so that it can all be done at once. And so um the cab will be paying for it and overseeing that but it is our it will be our contract with the general contractor and that water man is part of that contract and then Dicab reimbures the city for that portion of it.

If that's the case then why do we have to up the amount that we have to pay now? Why are we moving funds around? The original bid should still be within the purview. Decap just pays us more for the water man. or am I incorrect?

Um, well, we don't know um until we get the new bids in, we don't know what the the prices are going to be. The other the agenda item tonight for to put more money towards that project is just based on where we think the final costs are come going to come in. the the original bid was within the budgeted amount for the construction contract, but then we're going to need some contingency like we have on our projects and there's, you know, construction management cost. So, we feel like, you know, when the when it's all said and done, the overall project is going to need more funding. But

okay, since I have you at the podium and we're talking about the project, I'd like to raise one point if I could. Looking at the drawings, Cedar Chase is a oneway iss right near that project and it's going from a in and out going both ways to a right in right out only. It seems detrimental to those residents that live on that street. Why are we doing a rightin, right out only on that? Is there any way we can modify that to allow the residents to have access going both ways?

Yeah, I I need to look at the plans. I think I think that was um updated that that that we can Yes, we can address that. I would appreciate if you could look at that. Thank you. Again, I looked at the plans based on the conversations of the the costs and that jumped out at me as being unfair to those residents to being being forced to into a right in right out right in right out only for a culde-sac. Yes. Yeah, that we can address that if it hasn't already been uh changed on the plans. All right. Thank you. Anyone here?

Stacy. Um, and this just uh this is actually a question for I guess Paul for community development and it's okay if you don't know. Um, the Sandy Springs subdivision I know it's gone to the Sandy Springs Planning Vision and then it's just three lots in Dunwy. Sorry if I'm I don't know. Um, do you know when it's going in front of Sandy Springs City Council and like where because I saw that it just been applied for here. So, I just kind of the time and everything because a lot of um in my neighborhood, many of the residents are getting that 500 feet or whatever and the letters and whatever whatnot. So, I just kind of want to be able to answer their questions.

Yeah, I'll I'll send you the um I'll send you the exact dates. It should go to Sandy Spring City Council very very soon, either either this month or or early next. But I'll I'll follow up with that and I'll send you that information. Um, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the planning commission recommended a change or maybe the city the Sandy Springs planning commission recommended a change so that the entrance was going to align with Pitts Road. Is that correct?

Okay. So, just yeah, if you could for that information because I do get some occasional questions about it. And then the other thing I kind of wanted to point out that Eric didn't point out, but um, April 25th was national was a DEA National Drug Takeback Day and we collected 192 pounds of medicine. I think that's pretty phenomenal. Anybody else? I should have asked you when you were here, Michael. Sorry. And I don't think it was in the city manager's report, but I'm kind of hearing rumblings about the quality of the paving that the cab county like is doing with the water pipe project. I haven't actually checked it out myself, but I

I think it's the on Roberts and Doney Club where they've patched. Okay. Um they were supposed to start the full paving on Dominique clubs last week. I'm I have to They didn't. So they're supposed to start that any day. And I know on Robert's we told them last week to go out there and fix some of the patching because it was pretty bad. Are they going to pave over that patching? Yes. Okay. So this is So just so I understand this is temporary. Yeah. Both Club and Roberts is temporary. Uh there was a little bit rough on dem. It was a lot rough on Roberts and we told them they needed to fix it right away.

Okay. Thank you. That is any no any nobody else. Okay. Thank you, Eric. Consent agenda. Okay. Go ahead. Uh this uh Michael back or maybe Cody. I have a question on uh the hidden branches.

So, so, so I was looking at at this and it appears it looks like that that's like the polyethylene pipe that they use when they're boring and putting utilities and the peers from the picture they just boarded right through our pipe. Correct. Our storm draper. At least two uh gas lines that are also going through. Um we don't know uh when it was done um but it it's pretty egregious. Um and so we are actively working on the utility uh repairs uh relocating and uh so that these pipes can be repaired when we do pave the road there.

Right. And so uh so is there any recourse that we have to go after the utility companies or for damaging our infrastructure and to have them pay for this repair? Uh yes, they they generally are held responsible. Uh if we cannot find uh who the utility owner is, uh we kind of reserve the right to you know um uh remove it ourselves and a lot of times that uh brings people to the surface rather quickly. Um so uh but we we don't uh like to do it that way.

Yeah. And and uh so first of all I want to thank public works for being proactive, you know, going in before we're repaving a road to check all the infrastructure in the area to make sure there aren't any problems that we're just going to have to tear up later. So So that's great that we found this before we repave the road. Or is is because we're dealing with third parties that we might not know who they are yet. Uh is this going to delay the repaving in those for those two streets? who was that one and it was late uh was it um 2026? Yeah.

Yeah. For for this year. Um no uh I don't anticipate that. Uh you know, we know who most of them are. Um and I actually think we've identified all of them. So, uh that that can pretty quickly be taken care of, you know, before paving. And we can we of course are also working with you know paving scheduling to uh re uh to to schedule that one to be like last.

Okay. Uh and then this is unrelated to these particular projects kind of maybe tangentally it is but um so it got me thinking because we're obviously Google's laying a lot of fiber in the in the city this over the next whatever couple years. Um, do we have any program where we go in and kind of back check to make sure that if if we have known infrastructure in the air to make sure things like this haven't happened as a part of that because I imagine they're going to be doing a lot of boring as well and so that we can maybe address it um more quickly if there is an incident like this. So I know we just had a a new um person on board who's doing the utility um inspections specifically for Google Fiber. Is that correct, Michael?

Yes. Yes. Uh, so I and Google pays for that just right for the public to be clear. They work for us. Is that right? Work with us, Michael. Is that correct? Sorry, I don't know the answer. Yes, they they work for the city. They work for the city and Google will reimburse the cost for that. Okay. Is this is this something that they look for or is it more just managing the

It's more managing the process. We haven't in the past. Well, very rarely we've had such a large deployment of a utility at one time, but uh we can talk internally about ways we might be able to you go back behind them for our infrastructure like storm water pipes and inspect that. Um yeah, that would be great if we could. Yeah. so we can tackle it when it when it happens. All right, thanks. That's the only questions I had. Appreciate it. Anybody else? Move to approve. Move by Stacy. Oh, wait. Joe, wait. We'll come back. No, that's fine. Move by Stacy. I need a second. Second.

A second. All right. Is there any more questions and discussion? Joe. Oh, no. You were just vote. Okay. Sorry. Um, any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, I call the question. All in favor say I. I. I. That's everybody. Sharon. All right. Next is Michael. I think sorry. Yes. Michael Sterling is next.

Ready. Okay. Thank you. Uh thank you, mayor and council. I'm back tonight to talk about theou between the development authority and the city of Denwy for the development authority to manage an economic development sign program. Um and so to clarify these are banners. So the b same banners that lemonade days or the the um art festival does. This is what these signs are. Um, we've received requests over the last few years from economic development partners like the perimeter community improvement district to put up placemaking and branding signs. So, the messaging behind these would be, you know, live, work, play, perimeter, shop done, that kind of of thing. The messages would not be shop at a certain place. It would not be directional signage only banners. um staff believes that development authority is in best position to uh determine which partners, proposals, and messages are appropriate for these economic development purposes. Uh last time we talked about a one-year um pilot with um automatic renewals. We took that out um at your request and so it's a one-year pilot. At the end of that pilot, we'd come back, talk about what worked, what didn't work, and then we would do a brand newou between the two parties if the the council wants to, and move on from there. So, happy to answer questions.

Questions? Um, any questions? Oh, John, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Michael, I'm trying to wrap my head around the uh the how you're going to assess the impact so that we're putting up these banners and we're going to reassess it in a year from now. How are we measuring impact and whether this program is successful or not?

Well, I I think the biggest impact would be do we get a lot of complaints about it? Do we feel like there's too many signs? Do people, you know, not want to see signs up all the time? Uh the way do we we do banners right now it's really based on an event. So they're up for for short periods of time. I think six or eight weeks is the is the max that they're up. Um we will also then for a positive um metric we'll look to the partners who put them up. So PCID would like to do some fairly soon and so we'll work with them to see if did did they find it? They're they're paying for it and so are they willing to to put them up? um again would be would be one. Um I'm sure there's some other ways we can go about um looking at the metrics, but it there's no doubt it's it's it's going to be pretty hard to find people say, "Oh my gosh, yes, I I chose to move to Dunwy because this banner was up." But it is a sort of an overall branding and placemaking that big communities do all the time just to sort of send a signal that this is a place you want to be and um people want to invest here. I guess I just look at it from the PCID uh aspect. They brand every one of their street signs. There's branding that happens in a lot of different ways. I'm just not sure that we need this additional signage. So, I'm I'm still not um sold on the matter, but I'm willing to listen to what other council members have to say. So, thank you.

Yep. And and I would think that would be one of the biggest takeaways at the end of this pilot. If if they're overdone and the community and council feels like it's too much, we can either decide to pull back on the number or just scrap the whole whole project. Thank you. Yep. Anybody else questions? Go ahead. I'll just make the comment. I I think we made it last time. One year seems like a reasonable trial. let's see if uh we think there's any benefit or drawbacks and then uh we'll know whether or not we want to look at doing it further after that. So I'm I'm comfortable with with a one-year pilot on this.

Yeah, I think it's all about setting a vibe and in a year we can tell like it's you know we just got a huge corporate relocation um from New York City which has a vibe. We're not going to be New York City. We don't aspire to be New York City, but uh it's also setting an an identification and we just got another relatively large corporate relocation uh from within the metro area. Uh and so I think that's all about it's a little beyond branding. It's making people want see the value in investing here. And it's just it's just setting a vibe. If it works, that's great. If it doesn't, then it's it's really just a year.

And and I will say that the PCID and their organization Perimeter, which is what I think they call it now, yeah, they do really good data dives. You know, they do a lot of surveys. They talk to people and they do them scientifically. They sit on the MARTA platform and talk to people. They, you know, sit in hotel lobbies. They do so they do really good data dives. And so I have a fair amount of confidence that they'll be looking at this analytically. Yeah. and we'll bring all that and also I trust the development authority because they're pretty particular. So agreed. That's all good. All right. This is an action item. Move to approve. Move by Rob. Second. Second by Tom. Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, I call the question. All in favor say I. I. I. Uh Sharon, that's unanimous.

Thank you. Thank you. And no, none opposed. Unanimous. Unanimous.

Thank you. And then Michael, again, congratulations. It was a good week. The next item on the agenda is approval to purchase ballistic panels for sworn personnel. Deputy Chief Bladrick. Thank you. Um, as you know, our highest priority is always officer safety for the officers that are patrolling the street. And we are requesting rifle, ammunition, rated um plates that go in the front of the soft body armor that we have right now to cover the vital areas. Uh, the expense, as you saw on the uh in the package, is about $33,000. And we uh definitely would like to encourage you to uh show your commitment to protecting our officers with all this great equipment. Don Woody's always been phenomenal. Council's been great to help us get protective equipment for our people.

Okay, any questions? Catherine, move to approve. Oh, okay. Wait, because they you can't see, but they all had their hands up. It's okay. Um Katherine, uh TC Flickric, how much do they weigh? How much is it going to be on the body? So they're more pounds obviously extra. Uh we have tested these plates with various sized officers and everybody is completely forgetting them. Um few more pounds and you know we already carried 33 pounds. So what's a few more right? All right I'm Oh I will vote yes for police safety.

Thank I was just going to comment. I I did the um Citizens Police Academy a couple years ago and the old rifle plates that you had a few of Yes. were unbelievably heavy. So the fact that you have found something better so that they can actually be used in you know everything except the most extreme situations I think is a real positive. So yes it's about a third less than one of the old plates or I'm sorry twothirds less. Stacy, my question was I wanted to hear the results because I knew you were testing them, so I just was gonna ask about that and you answered my question before I even asked it. All right, Joe. Now move to approve. Moved by Joe.

Second by Rob or Rob, whatever. Um, any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, I call the question. All in favor say I. I. Opposed? Hearing none. Thank you. That carries. Thank you, chair. I think you have to read the next item.

The next item on the agenda is an ordinance to amend chapter 27 of the city of Dunwy code of ordinances to define and provide use regulations for vape shops. Paul, good evening, mayor. Good evening, council. Uh this is the second read for this text amendment that was before you all in April. Uh I will not repeat the entire presentation that Maline gave at that time but I have uh responses to three lines of inquiry that I heard the council make at that meeting. Uh first I want to go into a comparison with other Georgia communities. Second uh I want to describe how this ordinance would be applied. And then third, I want to summarize the results of our legal review. Uh first comparison, I think there was a question at the last meeting. Um we're not the only city that has uh this line of uh an approach to regulating these uh vape shops. uh city of Dublin has a similar 25% limit on floor space uh of these dedicated products um of inventory uh gross revenue from from these products. So so both like a limit on uh the overall uh floor space or inventory and a limit on uh the revenue from these products. Uh John's Creek has just to the north of us has a limit on of 25% uh on the sales of a business of these uh specified products and Milton has has the same has a limit of 25%. So similar to what we're proposing tonight um there was a question about

distance requirements. Um there are cities that do use distance requirements to regulate. This is uh comparable to liquor stores for instance. Um typically 1,000 ft from other uh dedicated businesses, from uh schools for instance, from uh from homes. Sometimes it's typically 1,000 ft. Um, we're not recommending uh this line because uh city of Dunwy does not have uh a lot of these stores. It doesn't have any stores, any dedicated vape shops at this point. Um having a distance requirement alone wouldn't wouldn't preclude um sort of a concentration of these stores to come in. This makes more sense in a place like Roswell Road, you know, where you have along that corridor in Sandy Springs, you have seven of those stores and and the city may have interest in um not um preventing them from operating but from having a concentration of these types of businesses. I think there were questions about the application of this ordinance and how we would approach it. Um and we would do this as part of the business license application process. Um any business in the city limits gets a business license um that is administered by the finance department but community development has a dedicated review for every new application in the city. So planning and zoning staff reviews these applications for compliance with the zoning ordinance which is what we would do here as well. Um, the way it works is a business provides like a short description of the line of business and provides us the NYX code, the North American industry classification system. And what that is is from the US Census Bureau. It's a

standardized list of uh the type that type of businesses that um that that are operated. So, every business falls into one of those types. And um we re view that for compliance with the ordinance. Now, I'll give you two scenarios. First is a convenience store comes in comes in with a code for a convenience store. We would review it. We would flag it. We would provide them with the information on on vape sales, but we would approve we would approve the business license application because that is not captured by by the ordinance. So, they can operate in compliance with the ordinance. If a business comes in and it's classified as a vape shop, we would we would catch that business and we would not approve the application um under uh if this ordinance gets approved because it is predominantly uh a place of business that sells vapes. Um from an enforcement standpoint, how do we catch this if someone provides uh incorrect information? And then if you if you remember like we're regulating two things here. We're regulating the square footage and this would be done by code enforcement really just going out with the measuring tape and and measuring. But we have on the business license side the finance department has and this is in the current code as is you know this is not just for vape shops. This is for every business that's operating in the city. The finance department has the right to inspect the books of of a business if they determine that something is um ary with something or to determine the sales numbers. An example for this is alcohol businesses have to provide a certain percentage between food and alcohol

sales where we're doing this type of uh inquiry um regularly. And then last item, um, want to quickly summarize the legal review. This was reviewed by a city contracted attorney specifically, uh, to make sure we're flagging any concerns. Um, he did not uh, mention anything. It was Thomas Mitchell who you who was before you all um, a few times already because it is a very typical time, place, manner restriction. you know this generally um from a zoning standpoint we're very concerned if it is an issue that um that touches first amendment issues and where that comes up is for instance signage uh can be tricky uh religious operations can be very tricky sexually oriented businesses there's a heightened standard in in the constitution uh to uh ensure free speech 14th amendment issues are similarly difficult and we're very careful when we touch those um that that relates to equal protection under the law and due process. Examples for this are um senior housing or the drug treatment facilities or entities that touch um disabled people pretty much. This is not not one of those. This is neither first amendment nor 14th amendment case. This is a a breadandbut sort of uh zoning issue. Um so no no concerns here from the legal side. We asked specifically to review case law too um cuz someone had mentioned um I think a case in Georgia and the attorney didn't flag any any issues with this as well. Um this is a second read. We

also uh the moratorium was specifically worded in a way where the moratorum expires at midnight tonight. So we'll need a decision one way or the other. Uh in the absence of that we need to um extend the moratorum. Okay. Any questions? Katherine, go ahead. I and wait one second. Paul, can you do me a favor and take the presentation down until somebody needs it so I can see Joe and John? Thank you. Okay, go ahead.

I don't smoke. I have never smoked. I don't wouldn't do that to my lungs, but I presume I I feel that this is an unreasonable scenario. It's all-encompassing. It's like you just can't have it. except you can have it just in a smaller section of all these stores which is already age limited. I don't see the need to ban it fully and I I would prefer to see limits the distance limits from the schools what have you. But I will be voting no on this one. Anybody else? So I think if Go ahead. Go ahead Stacy and I'll get to John. um question. And actually, one of my questions is to um Deputy Chief because it is a controlled substance and you do have to be 21 in order to purchase this. Um and one of the public speakers was like, you know, kids are doing it. Have we ever I mean, I know we do occasional stings to see if stores are selling um alcohol to underage. Have we ever done a sting to see if they're selling vapes? To my knowledge, we have not done that yet, but that's certainly something we can entertain.

I would think just because we're getting the data that it's increasing that let's go ahead and go after the bad guys that are selling this this poison to the underage kids. Um, it just we're doing it for alcohol. Just throw that product in there, too. Um, my second question is actually for Paul. And can could this still be called a vape shop, but it just could only sell 25% of vape products and the rest has to be, I don't know, bottled water, but it could still be called a vape shop. So they they can call it what whatever they want. You know, we're just regulating we're having two tests like is these products is it less than 25% of the overall area and is it less than 25% of the overall sales uh of a store? what they call it, you know, that's that's not something that we regulate.

Okay. So, just to be clear, we can still have a vape shop. It just has to sell a smaller amount of vapes and vape products. Yeah. It has to be accessory to the sales of something else. So, they need to predominantly sell something else and then they can also sell vapes. Okay. So, I guess I still kind of have a question of what problem are we solving with this? If we they can call the vape shop, they can sell vapes. What problem are we solving with with this regulation?

And well, that's I think a a policy question. So that there are cities that have been seeing a lot of these stores coming in and it's it's often it's a very attractive uh retailer for a landlord especially in a shopping center that is on the decline. Um so we see on Roswell Road is sort of an example you know where there's not one or two but there's seven now just between the river and the county line. Yeah that's right. Right. just between the river and the end of Sandy Springs. Just Go ahead, Tom.

Yeah. Um, yeah, I've been I've been struggling with this one because I think the intent is great. Um, and um, you know, for public health and for obviously the marketing children. Uh, my my biggest concern was if if this is a land use issue. Um ba based on the comments that you've said, it sounds like we're pretty confident that this will stand up to illegal has I believe you said in during the presentation uh has has there been a legal challenge to this that you're aware of in the state of Georgia

to any of the other cities that have these complete or or similar bans? No, the the attorney didn't didn't find anything specific about this, but it's it's not really different from not not every city allows every land use under the sun. Um, and this is sort of the same way. This is not one of those that you have to allow. This is not one of those that you have to um have a specific way. This is just like a land use that some cities regulate a certain way and others do a different way. Tom, Tom, if I can, let me answer the legal part of that to help Paul out. There's some folks that do a lot more than this, and they're still doing that. This is a middle ground where you're regulating time, place, and manner only. There's been discussion thrown around about whatever. But if you think about everything under the constitution that you regulate by land use, it is time, place, and manner. And whether this seems to not fit perfectly in the box, that's all you're doing here. Now, it's a political decision whether you do it or not, but legally, it's fine. Thomas Mitchell vetted it. I followed up after Joe's question to make sure it was vetted legally. And while we're not insurance companies that can tell you 100% what a future court might do, it's it's in it's middle ground compared to what others are doing.

That's all I have. Thank you, John.

Thank you, Paul. I'm uh council. I'm still not sure 100% where this is coming from. I understand Shambley had an issue with the high school with a store opening directly across the street from the high school which um was problematic to some. I understand that the as Paul said these stores are in high traffic, lower income, declining areas and sometimes the signage and the look of the store might be jarring in the sense of the way some of these stores look. And then the third issue I'm trying to wrap my head around is that there's a THC impact of this. And all of these things can be sold at convenience stores, but we're going to outlaw them within the city completely without any other regulation. I um again, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. I I don't understand what the goal is. I understand that we're not we can't have one near the high school because there's nowhere to sell it near the high school. The signage I

I think we need to do a better job on the signage of in all convenience stores and the THC aspect. I don't think we control that enough. Uh I heard a story today of a grocery store in the city of Dunwy. not a grocery store, a convenience store where a THC drink was directly next to the uh Coca-Cola products and uh you could easily, you know, get one of those, but these vapes, as far as I know, are all behind counters. So, again, I'm trying to understand the issue. I want to control and make our residents safe, but I also don't want to be such a nanny society that we outlaw everything. So, I'm just wrapping my head around that. I don't think I'm voting yes for this. I I think I would prefer to have it more limited. Yes. But I don't think a complete ban is within what I really want to do. I don't think it's it's a place. It's a slippery slope once you start doing that for one thing. We're not doing that for alcohol. We're not doing that for, you know, smoking. We're not doing that for anything else. I don't understand why we're doing this type of product.

John a total ban, right? Like a vape shop is allowed to open and be called a vape shop with under this ordinance. Am I correct? Yes. This is not a total ban. Like this is a regulation, but I could still open a vape shop and call it a vape shop. Correct. You could. Okay. Okay. I just want to be clear that this is not a ban. And as I understand it, if you're a convenience store that sells vapes, you still have to follow the 25% rule. It's just that you have a big advantage because you sell lots of Coca-Cola and candy and oil for the cars. So you you the 25% of floor space is generally not going to be an issue.

Correct. Yeah. So I'm trying to wrap my head around the we are allowing vape shops. You just can't sell more than 25%. Is that what we're trying to say? Yeah. Time, place, what was the other manner? So, I think that my concern is that um if this isn't going to pass in its current form. So, I'm a little bit about all about the vibe, right? I don't we have shopping centers that are old. I we actually do. I think we have one of these on Winter's Chapel at Peeler on the back side of the center facing

I think it's technically in Gwynette County. No, I don't think so. Is that center split? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, who knew? Okay. Well, I didn't know the center was split. Um, but so what I'd like to ask council to do if this fails is to extend the moratorum because while it can't be by the high school, it can be pretty close to the middle school, right? And also I looked up like in the city of Atlanta it includes daycare, childcare facilities, secondary schools, elementary schools and um and so what I don't what it what where I see my responsibility is in um not first of all I'm where I see my responsibility is is is in making sure we ensure the highest quality commercial products we can have in terms of retail in the city. It's one of my responsibilities, I think. But also, I have heard from lots of parents and maybe it's an enforcement issue and it's not a zoning issue in this case that their kids are going after school starting in middle school to some of our local businesses and buying vapes. But again, they can still sell them. So, this doesn't necessarily solve that. What I what I'm concerned about is is that we are not including the distance requirements um in here uh as well. And I understand why we didn't because uh that wasn't the focus. But if this fails, I'd like to extend the moratorum and give ourselves a chance to because we do have the potential of future schools in places and stuff like that. So go ahead.

I think I actually want to, you know, echo a lot of what you said there. I think I'm hearing enough concerns and various concerns that probably this isn't right for approval tonight, but I think that the issue of vapes and vape sales does need some attention for kind of where and how it's allowed. Um, so I would definitely be in favor of extending the mortorium to try to figure it out. And it it's not critical to to this city, but there are colleagues in other cities that are paying attention to this very ordinance that there I know for sure other cities or at least other council members in those cities considering some sort of ordinance to um regulate um vape shops in their communities. So, u it's a it's a a hot issue right now kind of around metro area, metro Atlanta. Um, I think it behooves us to try to get it, um, right enough where we can get I like, you know, 7061 votes that show that we've really kind of worked out and kind of come to the best consensus. Um, and I don't see that happening tonight. So, I think my preference would be um, let's don't approve what we have. Let's extend the moratorium for a couple more months and try to come up with something we can

Madam Mayor, can I come to a better agreement? Yes. Can I ask this? If you are inclined to pass on this version and you the progative of the chair could recognize Paul to read a draft of the text amending the moratorum to an extension date. He has that prepared if needed before you move to the next item. Okay,

Joe, go ahead. So, um, you know, my my words are already in the attachment for the, uh, council agenda of of what my thoughts were. And echoing Lynn's uh, comments, they they look pretty damn ugly. And when I talk about citizens saying we don't want don't look like you know we don't want Dumby to look like Roswell Road and it comes into lower economic neighborhoods and it's targeting people of lower economic means. I will just say that and it is in the lower rent portions and edges of our city. So yes, we may never see it in Dunwhaty Village. We never may never see it around Ashford Duny or never see it around perimeter mall because of the cost of the rents. But as Paul has alluded to, it's around the edges where the rents are very very low uh or they're a absentee land owner that has had a vacancy and they purchased a property and they just need a tenant. And so I'm just going to just offer that the will of the council says I'm I'm putting this out here, right? And if it's political, it's fine. Uh I leave it to you all and and appreciate it and uh move on from there. Um if you're fine with having a vape shop in Dunwy, then and if you say, "Well, we'll define a and then just just just say that from your heart that you're fine with having a vape shop in Dunwy and we'll provide some kind of limits." uh uh and and then you're just fine. And that we'll just move on and and and and come what may. So just wanted to speak from my heart and thank you.

Thank you. All right. So can we hear the language for the moratorum please? Am I not doing that right?

What madam madame mayor what you could do is we could def we could simply table this item. Number one, table it rather than reject it and hold because there may be some words in it you like and some you don't. We could entertain a motion to table and then consider a motion for an extension of the moratorum and Paul can read that and to to get it off if you table it and you don't table it to a date certain it will never come up until it's put on an agenda and there's a deliberate act to untral part what I don't like about deferred is it sends it in outer space and then So I I my preference from under Robert's rule's order would be simply to table this and it' have to be put back on the table one day to consider or you consider a whole new one if Paul does a complete rewrite if you consider a mortorium extension.

Okay. I think

so. We would need a motion to table and then a motion to continue the defer to the moratorum. Okay. Uh the motion to table could be that it be put on an agenda before the moratorum expires and then Paul could bring it back put it on agenda before an extension expires so that y'all could untable at that time and consider it or he may bring you a completely new rewrite. Guess what I was trying to say is if you do entertain a motion to table, table it to be brought back to council before the expiration of any extended moratorum.

Do we have a date for the extension of the moratorium? Do we have how many days? 90 days. So I have um I have some versions printed out here that I could distribute. Um go ahead and distribute it if you would. I don't think Madame Mayor. Yes. Well, just a point of personal privilege while Paul is passing that out. I need to disiss myself from this meeting. I have a prior engagement.

So, I will be leaving the meeting here in a minute or two and uh wanted to I know that we've had other items on the agenda or possible I've raised items on North Peach Tree Path and the G dot agreement in prior meetings and I know those might be coming at a future meeting. Uh, I'd love to be available for that, but I will be missing the meeting of May 26th, our next meeting. And I would love for those two items to not be spoken or, you know, dismissed discussed without me. If I could be there, I wanted I want to have some input on the North Peach Tree Road Path and the G dot agreement, especially as it maintain pertains to the underpass. So that's a that's a item that I think is

agreement is right. But it's the G dot agreement is not on this agenda, right? No, it's not. It's I just want to make sure on May 26. I'm going to be missing. I'm getting confused because I thought you talking about Okay, that's fine. We hear it's not on He was passing. Just wanted to say that. I'm sorry that I need to dismiss myself from this meeting. Um, but I will um I will be missing the May 26th as well because I'm on a 30th anniversary vacation. Okay, we hear you. Thank you. You confused me a little bit with the G dog because I was like there's nothing on Sorry about that. I just wanted to raise that issue for your for your awareness. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good meeting. All right.

To make sure the record's clear, Mayor. Yes. Paul's proposal is a moratorum to be uh extended through through 11:59 p.m. on August 10th, 2026. If you adopt the moratorum extension, you could adopt the resolution before you as presented by Paul. I move to table the ordinance amendment to no later than August 10th. Okay. Uh there's a motion to table. I'll second.

Rob second. Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, I call the question. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Uh that Sharon, that was 60 because we John left. And now I need a motion for the moratorum extension. I move to extend the um vape shop moratorum until August 10th. What's that? August 10th, 2026 per um text of the uh draft extension we have uh in front of us. Second. Any further discussion or questions? Okay.

Just one question or one comment. Just hopefully we don't need another 90 days. We can um give the business community some clearer resolution quicker than that. Um just a personal comment. Okay. Any further discussion or comments? Seeing none, I call the question. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Hearing none, that carries unanimously. That that was 6 without John.

Yeah, I'm sorry. 60 without John. That's John's gone. All right. Thank you. Um, next is Nicole. And I just want to say before she presents this item that several months ago and a um after some deep soulsearching on my part, I went to Eric and I said, "We've got to figure out if there's something we can do differently to recruit, retain, and recruit police officers." that while I thought we were doing lots of things, I wanted to know what we could do differently if there were things out there that we had not thought of. Um because as you know, we consistently have vacancies. I don't know how many we have today. Nicole may know,

five. We've been holding at five for a few minutes, but I wanted to know because it is for those of you who may not know and that is listening at home or watching at home, whatever, is is that this is an incredibly incred uh competitive market, for lack of a better word, are we're we're all cities and we're all like literally next door to each other. So, it's not like you're taking a job across the country or even across the state if you choose to go from one agency to another. And I know we have the best police department and we certainly have the best officers, but how do we enhance their career experience and focus on retention as well as eventually on recruiting? But retention was my question to Eric. Um, it is the focus of myself and a lot of my peers, a lot of mayors across the country is what do we do to help retain our public safety employees. And with that, I turn it over to you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. We did just complete a compensation and benefits study. Um, we worked with Evergreen Solutions, who's been a partner of ours for some time now. And our compensation consultant, Stacy Witchell, is here with us tonight. You may recognize her. She's been with us before. um we did um a very comprehensive study. There's a full report in your packet. Stacy is not going to go through all of that in detail, but she's going to do a a briefer presentation for you to discuss the findings and our recommendations, including a recommendation that will benefit the police officers and we do believe will benefit the city with retention of police officers. So, after Stacy presents, um we'll both be glad to take any questions that you have. No, that's okay. We we'll start on that slide. Hi, my name is Stacy Mitchell, project manager at Evergreen Solutions, and we did just complete your compensation study like Nicole just mentioned. Thanks for having me here in our continued partnership. Um, we'll go through today. We'll kind of do a refresh of of the project. We'll start on goals. We'll talk about the assessment of current conditions, move us on into market, and then and then those recommendations. If you have questions along the way, uh please ask or we can hold till the end, whichever your preferences. So, your study goals, just to remind us, kind of reset where we were where we started. It was to review the current compensation system and assessment pay plan, right? We wanted to look at your plan right now. how you're using it, the strengths and weaknesses of your plan, and if it's meeting your needs currently. Externally, we wanted to look to see where you land in the market. We want to see if you've shifted any since the last update because we know that's not a static target. Things are constantly changing within our labor market. So, we want to see where you

fall in relation to where you want to be. Um, and then we bring all that data in together, internal and external, together to bring in and recommendations for you because we want to make sure that the system that you have is equitable. Um, it meets your needs internally, externally, you're as competitive as you can can afford to be, want to be. Um, and it's also sustainable and it's adaptable. It can grow with you moving forward. So, speaking of the assessment of current conditions, uh, job families, you had u we looked at 57 classifications and that's kind of divided loosely up into administrative group, the operations side of the house, a general, and then uh police off obviously the police department. Uh you had 125 employees that were covered under the unified open range pay plan that you have right now. Um you have one salary schedule that houses all of your different employees and classifications. Um your plan structure right now um it's a midpoint progression of 8%. So I mean 8% between each paygrade. Okay. So as people move through that pay plan that's the space in between. Uh your range spread is 60%. That's the distance from minimum to maximum of any given pay grade. When we looked at where your employees were placed on that plan, you've got 46% of your employees are sitting about more than 10% ahead of what the market would predict. Um about 54% of your employees are within 10% of where the market models would predict. That's on your current pay plan. Okay. Um that split mirrors well with your tenure. So that that's not a surprising thing to me. and having your individuals that are up higher than what the models would predict. Primarily, that's going to be due to hiring experienced um employees when you bring them into the city. Um and sometimes market conditions can also require you to hire somebody above a minimum. More times than not with your hiring practice, you are hiring quality employees that already have experience. So, we're not going to bring them in at a minimum. Your overall average tenure for the

employees included in the study is a little over six years, about six and a half years. Again, that mirrors well with where your employees are falling on the pay plan by and large, right? A midpoint position with a plan of your size range spread. Midpoint's somewhere around, you know, 10 to 12 15 years. Your average tenure 6.6 years. So, that makes perfect sense and aligns with your staff and who you have here currently. Externally, purpose of your market. We want to check for the competitive compensation by comparing the city's positions with those market peers. Um, we want to identify and address any inconsistencies or disparities in pay across similar positions. And then we also want to review peer offerings for benefits to find out you guys have a good healthy benefit package now. Do you still have you has have people gained on you in in the market right now. So looking at your market peers um we had 20 peers that we selected um collaborative you know we all we all always talk about this together about who does the peers. We want to make sure that we're comparing and pulling data from within your market. Um, we did have two of those peers that um did not quite get data back to us in a timely manner. Um, but we got a 90% response rate um on the data from those peers. Um, for your classifications, uh, we got over 600 quality matches. That's almost 11 quality matches per classification. And I always say quality because remember, we're not doing title matches. We're looking at the functions of the positions to make sure that those essential skills, functions, the roles, where they live in the organization aligns well with yours. It won't be a one to one, but at least 70% of those things, do they line up? Um, we had 57 uh classifications that we used as benchmarks and um we had data for all but I think just two of them. We didn't have quite hit that five threshold that I need to hit. Um otherwise, that's a 96% response rate and match rate.

So looking to see where you fell in the market across all your different classifications. If you look at the 80th percentile, you'll see you're slightly ahead of the market at the minimum of your ranges all the way up through the maximums. The 85th percentile, which has been that target place that you've wanted to kind of align to, you'll see you're approximating. You're slightly off of it at your minimums. You do gain ground going to max, but you're gaining ground because if you'll look over there to the right, your overall average ranges are a little bit wider than your peers are on average. You're averaging 60%. Well, you are at 60% minimum to maximum. Your peers fall somewhere between 50 and 60 and so it drops to 56.6%. So your overall earning potential is greater than most of the peers at that really leading edge of that curve. If you look about that one, 90th percentile, um, there you're about 5% behind the minimums and you gain ground to the maximums to about 3.84%. Okay? So, it gives you a good idea where you're at in the market right now. You've slid a little bit off of that 85th percentile, but you're you're approximating it. You're close. So, I did split this out to look at both the the city overall and then I looked at police by itself. And so we wanted to see if there's a difference there because um madame mayor as you just mentioned the the competition right with recruiting and retaining police officers is is a challenge up here. So general obviously everybody else you're looking at about 2% behind at the minimums but if I switch on over there to police you'll see you're about 3% behind at the minimums although you do gain ground going to maximums okay and that's across that pier set overall. So, I'll touch on benefits. You've got more benefits information that's in your chapter, but I just want to do a quick highlights if we could. Um, you still have a good healthy benefit package in comparison to peers. Um, by and large, you're covering a higher percentage and cost value of benefits than most of the

peer organizations. I the snapshot here includes health insurance, um, where you're covering the employee portion of that. Uh, the dental, the vision, disability, and life. And I'll switch on over to the next one real quick. um leave acrruel and holidays. Um this is really the one of the areas where I saw you're not quite as competitive and that was on your sick leave acrruel, but across the board leave acrruel, you're you have a very competitive offering there. Um your uh what was I going to touch on? Housing stipens. So for your housing stipens, we did look at that for swarm police departments and the offering you have right now of 800 a month. Um, four of the other 20 peers did offer a housing stipen. Um, but it was very limited in who offered that. Uh, tuition reimbursement, 86% of your peers offer something comparable. And then life insurance, again, 75% of your peers offer something comparable.

So, with all of the internal Wait, go ahead. Okay. I was wondering if you're going to um so with the benefits package we're we're above our peers but then with the salary that's slightly below. Do those two negate each other? Not completely but it helps. Okay. Yes. Absolutely. Um this is Joe uh if you did did you hit uh pension as well in there retirement?

I did. Let me go back to that one real quick. There it is. I can't I can't see you, but I hear you. Um, so, uh, your your retirement there, your primary plan, we've got that entered here in your employer and the match, but again, there's more detail on that within that, uh, report that you have, but you do have a a a good competitive retirement package and and comparison of those peers. Yeah, I'd really like to know a little bit uh I'd really like to highlight that uh what we do for for the uh 401A uh and the retirement and pension as compared to our peers um in a little bit more detail. Uh yes. So I don't I don't have that full reporting for me right now, but I know with your match when I looked at your match opportunities that you have with your peers right now in comparison to peers that 4% match that you offer and provide in relation to some peers, not everybody provides that level of match or match at all. So that's a that's a big benefit to your um employees here. And then the 11% of the salary overall that defined contribution,

right? And um so my my day job I used to work at ADP and Peopleoft and Workday and Accenture and I worked in HCM and payroll and benefits and all those things on the application side and we would present a report that would be called total compensation. Um and that would show everything employees are eligible to receive or would receive etc. And in one big pie. Did you do a comparison of everything we deliver on the table uh in total compensation and benefits compared to our peers with their total compensation and benefits package and where do we stand on that?

Yeah, it's it's in the final report. It's in chapter third in it's it's in the third chapter. I'm

and Joe if I can too. I think one of the things you're referring to is as well there's a couple I think one the pay benefit statements. We used to all get those with our pay stubs. We all do electronic banking now. Nobody gets pay stubs anymore. But that used to highlight for employees the value of all their benefits. They don't see that anymore. So there are um some organizations that will actually uh in part of the contract we do what we call a total compensation study. And the total compensation study is a little bit different scope of work which would get a little bit more into the detail. So it it ties the value of your benefits to each individual classification. Am I understanding you right Joe? That's what I'd like to get to. Okay.

And uh Stacy alluded to it's in the report. Um if you tell me I don't want to if you happen to know the PDF page number. I have it open on my laptop right now and I like it's pretty much all of chapter 3 but like pages 37 and 38 have charts that you can show comparison to yours. Thank you.

Move forward to recommendations. So for your recommendations, uh we're going to look at imple implementing an updated pay plan and we want to assign all the classifications to pay grades based on internal and external equity and then we implement new pay plans using a defined implementation strategy. So I want to start off with police. I want to start talking here about the the structure currently and the assignment to pay grades um with your police classifications. Um, we want to make sure that the goal of the framework here is just what we have there. We want to make sure that Dunwood is competitive within this local law enforcement market. We want to provide officers a clear and attainable path for advancement, professional development. We want to reduce attrition by rewarding demonstrated competency and tenure with advancement and um increase compensation. And we want to support the department's ability to recruit and even more importantly retain high-quality officers committed to serving this community. So when we looked at uh your your classification right now and the tenure of some of your police officers, we wanted to be able to recognize and reward that that tenure for those those officers that are with you for more than three-year time frame but have not yet promoted up through those other ranks more so than just moving them along within that grade. We want to create actually that police officer too. Okay. And really what it's intended to do is, like I just said, recognize that the uh ongoing experience, the commitment to the city, their ability to help train new incoming officers and and separate them um from that one line that they're on right now. In recognition of that, um we also want to recommend moving detective up to that same level. Um because again, we're looking at the same type of tenure and experienced officer to move into that detective level. So really now it gives these officers an opportunity in two different uh tracks if you will to continue their growth before they move up into those leadership roles. So that's what we're going to propose here. And so that's why

you see optional up under police officer 2 and detective because they really are intended to be growth tracks so we can recognize them as they continue to to serve the community here. So updated when we're looking at the recommendations for the police officers and uh all your swarm positions within the police department. So this is what the pay plan would would look like. These are the grades they live on within the existing pay plan. Okay. So we would shift these all up. Pay plan looking at the entire thing now just not the ones where the the swarm police officers um inhabit those grades. there's uh looking at your pay plan, looking at CPI around right now, looking at the proposed 3.9% adjustment, that covers the gap that we're at within um the market. So, if we were able to do that, then that gets you back up to where you want to be at that 85th percentile um short of just a couple of positions um that we do want to recommend a pay grade adjustment for. I do want to point out here that we want to keep the midpoint progression still with that 8%. It serves you well. it works well to delineate between the levels. Um, but since your range spread is wider than the peers, we can make you more aggressive in the market on the minimums and I can hold those maximums a little bit so we're not driving it further than it needs to be. Okay? So, if I bring your range spreads in from 60% to 57 and a half, you're still competitive. you still have a slight edge and we're able to focus more on that front end and make it more competitive for the titles that we want to recommend. Um, pay grade adjustments. Um, these are the ones that within a market uh, findings came in a little bit more behind the market than that 3.9% would cover. So, these are ones we would want to recommend um, an adjustment to a pay grade. So, we were looking at fleet maintenance coordinator, technology, the

IT positions, a couple of the finance positions, uh, and your planner positions at building official. These came in further behind market than, like I said, the 3.9% would address. For recommendations moving forward for implementation strategy, we want to have a little bit more of a targeted approach to this. So what we would recommend for your your general classifications is that we align them on a a bring to minimum approach because you are going to be applying that cola adjustment there. For your other positions within the swarm positions within police plus the police service representatives, we do want to place them accordingly within the grades and then address the compression within the police officers. So, we do want to provide kind of a two-tiered approach, if that makes sense, to handle the needs of both groups individually. If we did that, um it's about 28,000 in total. Um the bulk of the people they're getting adjusted obviously as police. That's 43 of the police. Um of that, 37 are the certified sworn positions and then six are those police service representatives. There's only one general that um position that would be adjusted. Everybody else would fall within even with the great adjustments they fall within a range of where they already are. Recommendations uh going forward, conduct a classification study to further just investigate any internal equity and update job descriptions if you need to moving forward. Uh conduct annual smallcale market surveys. You guys do a great job of this on a regular basis. Uh continue to do that uh to make sure your plan stays where you need and want it to be. um conduct class and comp aggressively every three three to five years if you're looking at that comprehensively and then review compensation guidelines annually revise them as needed just so all of our current public sector documents stay current and relevant and with that I'm happy to take any questions

questions questions this is Joe so the the police officer one and police officer two from My understanding is we have some amazing officers but just with then with a what problem what problem are we trying to solve and then I have a question of how you go from one to two.

So the problem we really want to try to solve there is to recognize their ongoing tenure with the organization. We want to keep that as far as a retention factor to allow them for that continued growth and it's growth demonstrated growth. So I'm kind of looking at so to go from one to two it's three years no discipline above average response but it's not so then I guess I would kind of ask how many does that encapsulate enough that to make that difference to to to to make a difference? Does it encapsulate enough

does the that the move to that one pay grade? Yes. Does a move from police police one to police two? Do we have enough officers that would that that would fulfill those requirements where it's going to move the needle to where it's a difference? It's attainable. It's not, you know, we're moving the goalpost, but the goalposts aren't attainable. Is it attainable to solve to to solve the problem? Eric,

say that again. So my question is the move from police one to police two. I understand why we're doing it. My question is is it attainable enough or are we just putting up goalposts that it's not attainable? Are is it attainable enough that it's people can say yeah yes I want to stay because I can do this or are we just saying well you know it's it's three years it's this. It's this but only three of you are ever going to qualify. So

right. No, no. I I think I think it's very attainable and that was part of the reason we came up with this with this strategy was because part of everything we've wanted to do with the police department here is to have ways that they can grow within the department. Not everybody wants to be into the management level. This provides that other opportunity, which also includes the detective level. That's still considered a police officer, but you have that kind of gives three opportunities there. And um and that's what we really want because you know a lot of people want to be a career police and they don't care to go into upper management. So this provides a level to reward them. And down the road there probably other opportunities because right now you know we've been around since 2009 or you know as far as with the police and during that time period this is the first time we've made a move to separate it out. And if you notice a lot of things that we've done within the department over the past 10 to 12 years that we have um given additional levels and tiers and y'all have been extremely supportive of that Stacy and mayor and everyone's been on the council a long time and that the reason that's so important is because you know we do see the retention issue we do see recruitment issue and and there those two are so related. We have an excellent department we operate and everything that is you know being accredited. A lot of people that come to Dunwy say I want to be in a in a top-notch organization. So yes this is very attainable and it's something that we'll automatically move certain positions into and then go down the road from there.

So I guess so three years no discipline but okay so police officer one it's at 83,000 is the midpoint. Then if you were going to go to police officer 2 the low end is 69. So how would you move from police officer one to police officer two? And what would this salary determination be? You follow your the same policies you have in place right now with how you move between the grades. So it would follow their same this one we would do a 5% minimum move between the one and the two and then after that they 5% salary increase when you move from one to two. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

I know this is really getting in the weeds, but I also know that this is an important tool to retain our police officers. So I just want to make sure that it's gonna work. My go following up. Sorry jumping without go ahead. Go ahead and I'll get to following up on your question is that higher lower range is perhaps more attractive to a new officer we're trying to bring in that has a lot of experience or a unique skill set um where it doesn't make sense to bring them in as a as a PO1. So that was my interpretation at least. But I think no in them is as a police officer one. You have to be here for three years before you can go to police officer two. Misunderstood about retention. This is really

yes it's three years tenure here and in speaking with the chief that was important to him. It was part of the retention factor is that this is a something it's a reward basically for staying three years. So he did not want something where we're going to be bringing in outside or new employees at that level. So it is three years. So that low end probably will never be met right. If I may say one more thing on that. So we do hire further in the range. So we're still looking at education and experience. So for um even though they'd be hired as a PO1, it does not mean that our officers are being hired at the minimum. I was commenting that the the low end of police officer two would probably no one would probably ever actually get that pay if they're coming in

for three years with experience as a police officer one. They're not going to they're going to be paid more already. They're going to be paid more. Correct. Correct.

Right. And mayor, the only thing I wanted to add was was just that to say just what Nicole said, which was, you know, very we've hire very few at the starting salary because we are looking for people with more experience or education or combination of both when they come into the city. Very few would come in with what I call zero zero. In other words, zero experience and zero education. And so the minimum levels are sometimes kind of funny to look at. But also going back the we've also discovered the longer people are here the more the benefit package they enjoy that because you know when somebody's in their early 20s the health part none of us really looked at that when we first started work but now as time goes on hey those issues become more and more important or if they have a family becomes more and more important and that's why we were saying that the uh employee benefits and the health care we're knocking it out of the park when it comes to what other folks are doing and the retirement portion is very generous as well. So we have very good benefits there and that's part of the total package.

I would like to speak to that too just in response to what Joe was asking also. Two years ago Dunwy was named by plan sponsor as the retirement plan of the year for our size for a government um account. So our retirement plan is very competitive um not just in the local area but on a national level also. I have one more question. Sorry. And and and I know this is getting a little bit in the weeds, but I just want to make sure that we have it because once it's adopted, you know. So, Nicole, you had said when when somebody goes from P1 to to P2 that it's a 5% increase. Is that in here in writing and I just missed it. I just

it's in the um chart. Yeah, I think it is. I believe it's in the chart, but the chart is just the range, right? So, so, so, so you're saying if you're like at the if you're at the 10% at the chart in P1 and you're going to go up to P2 the way the chart is, that would give you 5%. 5%. And but you're not moving up the chart. You're just moving up in range and therefore it's 5%. Gotcha. Okay. Uh Tom.

Yeah. Know I'd like I just like to say uh I think it's this is a really good idea uh with the the pay grade 108 for recognizing a great way to recognize the tenure of some of our police officers and also our detectives giving them like really a true promotion um uh for our detectives. So I'm happy about that. And the one thing reading through all of this and and the report that made me happy was just it it appeared like we're not just competitive in benefits, but we're we're peers were basically best in class. Like we were significantly better than the average of our peers. Um, and I I do believe that's something that we really uh should be proud of, but also making sure that we're making our employees aware of. Um, and not only in recruiting, but for retention as well, because I was really impressed at how much better we were than the average.

We got an award for it. Come on. I give I give credit to the council for that because it's a strategy that you all set I mean from the beginning with setting us at 85% in terms of pay but having best-in-class benefits and it really has worked well for us. Also to address the question that Joe asked earlier, we do total compensation statements for our employees. We try to do them annually. It hasn't always been every year, but that shows the employees how little really they're paying for their benefits and how much the city is paying and accompanying to a bottom line of what their total compensation is, including their benefits. And we hear all over the city from employees saying, "I had no idea. Thank you so much for doing this." So, it's it is something that we try to keep in front of them.

To Eric's point, as the longer they're tenured and maybe have a family, the more important those benefits really become, right, Joe? Sorry. Thanks. Uh, these are more for Nicole. First of all, can you hear me? Okay. As I'm speaking up louder.

Um, so these are questions more for Nicole. I know that this is focused on compensation again. I was I mean salary. I'm going to say the word salary. I don't want to talk about and I'll talk about total cop in a minute, but I know we're a small organization when I'm I'm dealing with I'm used to dealing with much larger organizations where they have more um bandwidth and they're doing more things uh surveys to employees uh dashboards uh and and and communicating. So, I'd like to know um I've got a series of a couple of questions. Uh Nicole, do we do uh pulse surveys to our employees? How are you doing? How are you feeling? Uh are you feeling worthwhile? How is your total compensation? I I'll wrap around these these questions. I'd like to hear from you, Nicole. U the surveys now and and do they understand would they like more housing allowance? Would they like a better tuition allowance? Um and and do we do exit interviews and do we know why those people are leaving and is it purely out of what what is their salary amount and they they don't care about benefits and total comp and and really I did want to see us analyze to our peers of the total pie that we give to all those different peer cities and where we stand. And I think we should talk to about that to our employees and talk about the value benefit that they do have like you say as much as we can. So I just said a few different things Nicole but you know how do we communicate with our employees? Are we getting surveys to them? Are we asking them questions throughout the year? Are we get getting exit interviews of why their people are leaving and so on? Could you just maybe just chime in a little bit Nicole please?

Sure. We are not doing pulse surveys in a formal way, but we are, like you said, we're a small organization. We're very in touch with our employees. We're talking to them all the time to find out what interests them. And Joe, we actually did so many surveys a few years back that the employees started saying what they wanted was fewer surveys. So, we curtailed some of the surveys. We're doing it a little more informally now. Thank you. Um, I have is that okay, Joe? Well, and then do we do exit interviews? And has we have we found out that one of the reasons they're leaving is because of the salary that we're losing the police officers, uh, Eric or or chief to to to confirm that

we have not found that compensation is an issue with in the police department. Um, some of the feedback that we've gotten is that they want more specialized opportunities, which is where we've really focused in recent years is creating more special opportunities. And we're not hearing much of that feedback anymore. it tends to be when people are leaving. Um, a lot of what we're hearing is that they're leaving law enforcement as a whole.

Okay. Thanks. So, I I I understand the the the meaning of this conversation. I appreciate the additional uh pay bans and sal uh uh uh scales and so on to uh retain people. So, um thank you all. Thank you. I I have a qu anybody else. I have a question and it's what I'm police aside. We're not We'll give them That's aside. But for the rest of the positions when you came up with these ranges because you looked at 20 governments, two didn't respond. Many of these are much larger organizations than we are. Um how do you rank that? So, um, as opposed to Tucker,

it's clo, right, Tucker. I mean, there's some that are right at our size. Um, I know you looked at functions rather than titles, but if a city has I'm not picking on you, Sharon or Jessica, but if a city has a city clerk and three associate clerks and they're only say 120,000 people and we're 50, so they're more a little more than double our size, but they have triple, say, the workforce in that area. How does that work? Does any of that factor in or that's just too nuanced? It does on some level because it plays into where we're looking at what the role of the position is.

A smaller organization and I've worked at smaller organizations and worked at bigger ones myself. At a smaller organization, the the maybe the scale of what you're working with is different, but it's almost more complex because you're wearing more hats to get the job done. So, where you can silo at a bigger organization and be more focused in a certain area. So they almost end up trading off when you look at that. Um but when you're looking at the details of what they're doing, if it starts to greatly differ at a bigger organization, I'm not using it in the data set anyway.

Okay. And then similarly, one of the things that Dunwy has had at least at certain levels is tremendous stability. So when you look at the minimum, midpoint, and maximum and you compare us, does that play a role or you're just looking at the roles? So if you're looking at this position and you come up with you recommend a proposed minimum, a proposed or you say how we compare does factor do you factor in the years of experience that like our staff may have compared to some other community that doesn't have the same kind of retention

or no? It's literally the I don't I don't look at the I don't look at the the time in position. Um but we do look at the the range spreads and the comparisons and if something is very small in comparison to yours or very large that also gets called an outlier and I'll Okay. Uh anybody else? Can this be consent? Y yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you Nicole. Michael Smith, you're up.

Good evening again. This is a discussion item um for allocation of additional Lmeg funds, local maintenance and improvement grant funds from the state. Um, we recently were notified that we're getting an additional 604,000 uh from the state that we can use on local projects. This this is an addition to 564,000 that we got through our normal annual um LMIG process. And this the second chunk of money, 604,000 doesn't require a local match. So, it's just all money that we can use without any additional contribution. There are some limitations on how it can be spent. Um, for example, it can't be spent to acquire right away, but it can be sent spent on things like intersection improvements. And they they want the money spent they want the project that the money is used for completed within three years. So, public works is recommending that we apply this to the Mount Vernon Atelli Mill project just based on where we think that the total cost is going to come in. And just um for something that came up earlier, just to be clear, none of this money would be used to pay for the water main installation. It would go towards the city's cost for the project. Um, and then also I looked up the uh question about the no write in right out at Cedar Chase. Um, that was in an early version of the plans. That's not in the final set that's out for bid right now. So, if you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them.

I have a question because I don't think any nothing personal, but nothing ever goes on schedule. Would it be better to take the $600,000, put it towards paving, and then reallocate some of the money from paving to um this project so that if we hit the three-year mark? That's another option. I mean, we could we could do that.

I mean, I'm just I'm concerned. I I don't want it to take more than three years, but I'm just concerned that one rainy year, one uncooperative utility company, whatever, whatever, messes us up. And we're not in the best position. To me, it's safer to spend it on something and then move money if if you can work with Richard Plateau and figure that out. We'll talk to him about that. We probably maybe put it in next year's paving and then use then put that money in the other project. Okay. Yeah. It just it feels like dominoes. Joe, I know. I see Joe.

Um well, Michael, uh just to play a devil's advocate, what if you just said that first 600,000 is going to be paid in year one and he and you just pull it pull it and use it just, you know, that was our intention. Um, but I think the way it reads is that they want the project completed within three years. So, I I'm confident we could get the money spent pretty quickly. But to the mayor's point about the entire project, um, we we hope it will be completed. We expect it to be completed within three years, but it would probably be safer to put it in paving and then move that money

paving. I mean, we also have uh peeler path projects. Are there other projects that may need additional funding that you're aware of as that that would that could be built in the next 24 months or used?

This is the I mean, this one's the closest to construction. Um we, you know, we feel like from everything we know right now, we have um you know, the projects that we're planning to build in the next few years. we have the funding covered, but I will say, you know, things have been go costs have been going up for several years and we've been able to absorb it, but it everything is getting tighter and tighter budget-wise. So, but we we put it towards this project initially because it is the closest one to construction. Okay. Consent. Oh, no, it can't be because you're going to come back with Okay.

Okay. All right. you're up next to. Okay. This the next one here is to receive 200 a $200,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration from their safe streets for all program. This is a um a supplemental they call a supplemental planning grant. Uh it would be to conduct safety studies on the high injury network that was identified in our road safety action plan and come up with specific small projects or improvements to do on those corridors. Um extra money.

It's a $200,000 grant and it requires a $50,000 city match. We we feel like that could be allocated in next year's budget by the time this initiative actually starts. But to get the 200,000, we need to approve the U agreement that's included in the agenda.

Consent. Can I ask a question though? Just sort of related but not really. Um, so I was just in a suburban area of Fort Worth, Texas, and at in neighborhoods at inner like where they're residential neighborhoods. That's all I you know, it's more like a grid, but they're residential neighborhoods. And at places where people cross, where there's stop signs, they have added flashing red lights, not beacons, but literally a flashing red light. When you look, I understand because I struggle, frankly, with these yellow lights on the beacons we have in most places. They are not always so noticeable. And so, and I get that feedback a lot from people. So, I'm wondering if in this plan you get a full range of options to consider on how to improve some of these areas.

Sure. Are you you're saying in neighborhoods are these at stop signs? These are at stop signs. So, it's just like an extra is it overhead? It's overhead. And so, it's just like an extra reminder. Yeah. So, we have a few of those, right? Like Dumby Club and Ball Mill, I think. And Vermeck and WAC. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

But I just it's just one of those it just struck me and it's in an area where they connect to a park with trails so there's lots of people crossing different places and it just struck me at how much more noticeable that stop sign is and we have it in a few like to me Vermach and WAC it's so busy half the time you have to stop because a car in front of you stops. But I just wondered. So when you get this thing, this is to plan solutions. Correct. Right. Okay. All right. Consent. Thank you,

Rachel. finish this out the night. Here we go. Good evening again. Um first first of my three um items we'll speak to the Dewey Trailway the retaining wall. I'm sure you've seen these these barrels out there for quite some time now. Um so just a little bit of background on this. We did try to solicit a formal proposal um late 2025 early 2026 we received zero responses. Um so at that time purchasing allowed us to start um soliciting quotes from experienced contractors. Um, a lot of vendors we've used from either concrete or for wall. Um, we we didn't get very far with who parks used. So, we actually have um recruited uh public works. Um, they happily put us in touch with a company called Rhino Design Build that they're very familiar with. Um, and they did offer the the lowest proposal for this for this quote. Um, again, we we worked a couple works closely. Um we did some NOVA reporting um just to field test the existing backfield and subgrade conditions in this area just to figure out what what was going on. Um again public works um been speaking a lot with with their team. They feel very confident that Rhino would be the the perfect company. Um my understanding is they specialize in wall repair. So we're not just sending out someone who does trails and concrete. This this is very specialized. We want to make sure it's done right. Um the timeline they've given us, their work would be anticipated to start within 3 to four weeks of contract approval. Um and then um repairs would take probably 10 to 15 working days. Um part of what um makes this a little bit challenging, which is why we want to make sure we have the right person is because of its proximity between Verrron

and Perosial. Um a lot of this work has to be kind of done by hand. So you're going to you're going to park at Posial Court. Um, I think that was outlined in their packet. And you're going to have to kind of take wheelbarrows and things like that to this area. We're right up against the fence there with the columns. So, we don't want to disturb any of that. Um, it's very very specialized, which leads me to this slide. Um, because of that, we are going to add a 20% contingency. Um, again, we're dealing with subgrade and and failing wall. We want to make sure that once we once we start working that there's not going to be um anything crazy we haven't prepared for. Um, so because of that, we are asking for funding for this project in the amount of $154,420, which includes the 20% contingency, and that will be allocated from parks general capital. Um, Rhyno does provide a seven-year warranty on the structural stability of the design of their wall. Um, and because of that, we are recommending we move forward with with Rhino design build um, and authorize the, you know, what we need to to get this work started.

Comments, questions? Did we find out what caused the failure in the first place? I believe there was some question around maybe the initial geo fabric. I believe I don't know if Michael remembers um so we did find the original um uh scope for the wall. It was is from 2015. Um granted we should be getting a few more years out of it, but um speculation is that the the geopabric has eroded. So now we've got that constant water going under there which has caused the crack in the concrete and some of that sinking. Okay. Yeah. So, did we fix that all that? Okay. Go ahead. Sorry.

And um the proximity to the homes that are right there behind the wall is do we anticipate any issues um I mean I guess they'll be happy that it's coming in by sound probably less big heavy equipment. Uh but are are they aware of the work that we're going to be doing and um do we need any sort of easement or any access on those properties?

So no no easement. Um we've already talked to um how to get the um we're going to put kind of like the door hangers if you will for the the town homes on the the fence wall and then also the columns just to know um that the work is coming. It won't, to your point, it won't be blood. I mean, you're going to get maybe a little bit of jackhammer. Um, but we're going to work with the residents around to make sure we're as minimally disruptive as as possible. Yeah. Consent. I wasn't here for the discussion. Sorry. Consent. Okay.

Right. Next. still you moving forward with our it's for repair season. Here we go. Um so next is when Hollow Park playground reser surfacing. Um again this one we we put out um proposals um for to remove and replace existing porn in place and PIP safety surface. Um the current plastic curbing is just is not working anymore. So that will be um redone with concrete. Um and again because of some of the spots you'll see in the pictures here coming up. Um this vendor will also verify the subgrade and the drainage conditions. Um plate works playets received the highest score. Um we have not done any previous work with them but we are familiar with members of their staff who have worked with us on other projects. So we're we're very comfortable with this group. Um, we did do some roll coating um, a few years ago, but as you can see here, this gap, the roll coating is only going to repair or really just kind of skim over the top of it if your foundation isn't correct. Roll coating really isn't going to going to um, get those deeper cracks and the kind of foundation issues, which is why we're doing the full resurfacing. Um, this work is expected to complete about 5 to 6 weeks. That's what they had in their proposal. We have gone ahead and looked at the Windwood Hollow rental calendar for June and July. We have a lot of birthday birthday parties coming up. We're not gonna we're not going to move people away from that. Currently, August is completely open. So, we've gone ahead and blocked that rental calendar so we don't disrupt any anyone's birthday, graduation, things like that. Um funding for this project um in the amount of 159720 will include a 10% contingency um about normal from our parks projects. Um, and this will also come from Parks General Capital.

Go ahead. No. Uh, yeah, just quick question. So, looking at the the picture on the front slide, I know I know I've seen those old plastic with a spike through them and they're but they're like what 8 foot long or 10 foot long, whatever they are. So, you're limited as far as how you can configure them. Is the curb going to be placed moved out to the sidewalk so you don't have that extra area or like that extra two or three feet, whatever it is that has to be maintained and landscaped. Jet. You talking about the little like a nook. This will be for landscaping initially. Yes. We're just spot. So, we're going to be doing a pouring concrete curb. Is that just going to be right up against the the the sidewalk that goes around the playground?

It'll it'll have um the same footprint as now with the exception of that little there's like a little U-shaped cutout. Um that will that will be filled in and then we'll have our ADA ramps leading up to it. So, the the footprint itself isn't going to change much. Okay. Is is there a reason why we didn't push it out to the curb and and just have the whole area be the the the port in place where the like the existing sidewalk is around it? It looks like there's about So you have the sidewalk and then you got like maybe like two or three feet. It's hard to tell exactly. Yeah.

Um between the the the soft surface and the sidewalk and that that's an area that has to be maintained or mulched or land or whatever it is. So, and I was wondering if it was going to follow the same configuration or be pushed all the way out to it would seem to me to probably for just routine maintenance easier to just push it out to the curb. So, it'll it'll come out just a little bit just between them ripping that out and putting the new curb in, but it won't you'll still have that border around the outside. Okay. Is there a reason for that, though? I'm just curious.

No, it just it just worked with the with the current footprint. Um, we have a couple things. So, this is a little bit outdated picture. We um we've added since then the communication board. So that'll be towards one of the new entrances that they're going to ramp. Um and there's a little bit more landscaping than here, but yeah, it'll it'll be we'll still have that little bit of of a buffer, if you will. I mean, is there a reason why would we want that? I mean, I'm you understand why I'm asking, right? It seems like it's a maintenance issue and Yeah. Right. And thinking since we're pouring a concrete curb that we can bend to whatever shape we want, uh it it just seemed logical to me to just move it right to the sidewalk and just step right into the but again there might be a practical reason not to do that. I wasn't sure.

So a a few a few of the spots we'll have we'll have ramps. So you're going to have that gap anyways. Um so really I guess visually would you'd have a ramp and then kind of a step in other places then ramped again. Um, I can I I need to get with purchasing on on making that change now that we've received the proposal or recommendation, but I can maybe get because right now what goes I mean in picture I don't know if it's mulch or dirt or whatever that's between the sidewalk and the makes a mess the plastic curb. It just seems like it's something that doesn't serve a purpose.

I think if you're going to you should bring us back a mockup of what? So because because I see the point like it feels like it should run into each other. I mean, is there a drain if there's like a drainage reason or the ramps are such and such, whatever. But right now, when you look at this picture, it kind of looks like there's a missed opportunity to expand the play surface plus a tripping hazard plus whatever. You know, people will be tracking the dirt. I guess it doesn't really matter because it's a play whatever, but it feels like there's an opportunity potentially to enlarge this area or not, but we need to understand the what, the why. So, thank you,

Mayor. I'll get with Rachel as well as John Gates to come up with a plan for that and because it could be it can be modified and make much better. And I'm thinking it's probably the timing of how when it was put in, how it was managed and you also notice in the picture the runoff that it creates. We can solve a lot of problems that right just to to echo mean you may not even need a ramp if you can do a you have enough space in several places you could just kind of slab it slope down and connect with the um the sidewalk. I mean I don't know. Anyway, yeah. Right. Or maybe there's a reason why they can't like Yeah, but it's a question of making sure that that we're doing as as Yeah, we're make it as as as we're going to resurface as make it as good as we can. Right. Y mayor, if y'all can make that discussion, we'll bring it back.

Yeah, we won't no consent for that. Obviously, business item. I'm sorry. Right. Either way, if there's not whichever Rachel wants to put it on the agenda as a business item or con, we're just not going to do it as consent. So, or discussion again, that's fine. All right.

All right. Your next last one. Last little facelift here. We'll be at Spruel Art Center. Um these windows have been a topic of conversation for several years. Um we've again we've we've had we've had a lot of um a lot of vendors um not be able to to perform um the work we're looking for. Um the key reason for that is is we really want to want to match what's there. Everything needs to be aesthetically pleasing for both both parks and for spru um we met a modern glass and mirror out there. Um they've given us the lowest quote. Um, we recommend option two from their proposal, which again just better matches the the front side of the building. Um, right now some of the window frames don't close all the way. There's there's duct tape in my next picture, I believe, of how they kind of leave it closed. We just spend all this um this money on the HVAC work. We want to make sure our insulation is um, you know, is is working. Um, and again, just outlaw for for better ventilation in this in this area. Um, right now the um, the current window frames, a lot of them are are original. Um, as you can see, um, the expected lead time, um, with modern glass is two to four weeks to to get all materials in and then probably another two to three weeks for installation. Um, again, like like everything we do the art center, we're going to work closely with with Allen and his classes to make sure there there isn't disruption while he's got people in there. Um, and they do offer a one-year workmanship warranty um, from after the date of completion. Funding for this project in the amount of $79,346.30, 30 cents which includes a 10% contingency because again we're working with glass um will be allocated from parks general capital. Um so the

recommendation is to move forward with a modern in glass for this work. Okay. Anybody? Rob. So, um it's I'm kind of excited to see this project because I think I talked to some park staff a couple years ago trying to identify um energy savings projects and I don't maybe maybe it was Gabe that mentioned to look at the windows at school because they were in horrible shape. Are there other windows that we should also be looking at replacing? Or does this kind of give um all of their worst windows an upgrade so that maybe we get a little bit of energy efficiency and and for certainly, you know, better use out of them? Yeah.

Yeah. This side definitely needs it the most. Um a lot of when we switch when Allan did his expansion, a lot of the interior windows that became exterior, they were upgraded at that time. Okay. These have kind of been on the list since then. Um yeah, this this area definitely is what needs it. All right. Thank you. got a quick question, Lynn. Go ahead, Rachel. On a related subject, I I have a sidebar about the library. I know it's maintained by the county, but are do they need anything? Uh and are we talking to the county about their maintenance and their replacement in general and windows like where they had the early voting area? Is that included in this area where they do early voting?

Uh this is not currently. We're still um working through the roof evaluation that came out of last month's meeting, I believe. We're waiting to hear back um on that on that report. Um but so far, just the roof, sir. Okay. Well, um Commissioner Robert Patrick uh suggested a willingness to at least have a conversation about the county potentially having skin in the game and, you know, helping fund some of that. So, I hope we're in communication with them. Yeah. I think if I don't know if for windows it matters like if there's a a cost of scale if they do like somebody should be looking at the windows at the library

just to make sure I haven't necessarily noticed anything but I don't spend that much time but if they're say we can then work with the county maybe they get their well it's really our building we really struggle with this it's our building and so um if we could just work on that and then come back to us. All right. Consent. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. That concludes the business meeting. Um public comments back. You'll have three minutes, sir. It's not only public here, but he wants to

just one. Uh, hi, I'm Zach. Um, first early voting is going on right now. Primaries are on Tuesday, so everybody vote, but y'all are well informed about that. I do want to talk a little bit about the Kingsley Lake. I know that there's a lot of legal stuff going on around that and that there's sensitivity to that. I get that and I understand that. I do hope that once this sort of legal stuff gets blown over that there could be a potential solution with that. I think that there are a lot of possibilities that could happen with Kingsley Lake. It could become public property. I know it's private property, but it could become p public property and could become a park potentially. I think that that would be really cool. maybe take over a little bit of um the Kingsley um the country club or whatever area. We could also maybe buy that area and then you know we would then have to assume the responsibility potentially of that uh change or the fixing of that area. From what I've heard that it is it was largely because Kingsley was keeping their lake too over full of water and so it was causing a lot of pressure on that flume because lake homeowners wanted their docks to be like all nice and high. So I don't know. I guess that kind of just sometimes you reap what you sew. Um but um I do I do think that it is important for us as a community to make sure that the the longer term effects of that happening of of a potentially bad event

happening with that are avoided. And so I think that there are a lot of potential possibilities with that. I think that if there were a future parks bond that could be included in that, we were to implement a um special purpose tax district, that could be maybe money diverted into that project. I just see a lot of opportunities potentially to kind of bring the community together with the Kingsley Lake issue. And I do hope that once the sort of legal aspects are sort of settled out, that could be a possibility. And that's it.

Thank you. That concludes public comment. Um and that uh council city manager comments. No comments, mayor. We do not need an executive session this evening. Um anybody have council comments? Go ahead. um just because this is the last meeting um before uh Memorial Day. Um but please join us out at the Veterans Memorial on uh May 25th for our Memorial Day ceremony. It is always uh moving, touching, and uh a way to remember those who gave all. And Council Locker is speaking. Um

well, even better. and um early voting. Zach took what I was going to say. Um there's a lot on the ballot. He didn't say this. You cannot take your phone in. You can mark a piece of paper. You don't even have to mark a ball. You can just write notes to yourself and you can use a piece of paper because there's a lot on the ballot. You go to my you can Google my Georgia voter wherever you live. You don't have to live in Dicap County. And you can pull up your ballot. It's a it's a partisan primary. You pick a Republican or a Democrat. If you pick nonpartisan, you only get to vote for judges. So, keep that in mind. Even if you It means you get to vote for nothing else, which is fine if that that's your choice. Um, so anyhow, that's what's on the ballot. Uh, and it's a long ballot, so look ahead. Anything else?

One thing to add to that is that the the judges races are decided in this election, not in the fall. So, the judges and in DAB, I do not believe any of the CA county judges had opponents. Um, but uh there are contested judges on your ballot. Uh, as well, anything else? All right, I need a motion to adjurnn. Moved by Rob second. Second by Katherine. All in favor say I. Opposed. Have a good vacation, Joe. Good night. Bye-bye.