City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It is six o'clock and I call this regularly scheduled Dunwoody City Council meeting to order unless there's an objection. Seeing none, we are called to order. Councilwoman Harris, can you lead us in the invocation of the pledge, please?

For those who are able, please rise. 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 the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Next is public comments. Pat Eubank, if you'll approach the microphone, introduce yourself, please. And you'll have three minutes, ma'am.

Good evening. I'm Pat Eubank. I live at 4804 Leeds Court. I'm concerned about all these expenditures you're going to vote on tonight. $17 million worth, $17 plus million. I just asked the city manager about the city hall renovation. I'd ask you, Chief Carlson, how much of that space, which is 2,500 square feet, do you need? It's between you and I.T.

So, ma'am, under state law, you can engage with him after a public comment, but he can't respond during public comment.

I don't know that that needs to be done. I don't know how. You know, great. I do not object to the approval of the bike lanes on the Ashford connector concept. How many of these items tonight on the list have already been budgeted for?

Can you answer that? We'll get to it during this. We're not allowed. It's a one-way conversation. You speak to us.

All right. I want to know if everything has been put out to bid on these. I think the stormwater maintenance is critically important because I certainly wouldn't want problems because of stormwater in my neighborhood. So that's my concern. All this money. By the way, I'm unsure about the $600,000 of the $4.2 million project for Homecoming Park. We've been talking about Homecoming Park for like three years because I asked Michael Smith when we were going to get... proper signage on that street since my neighbor was hit and killed in the in a crosswalk and people race from vermac and womack right down there they don't pay any attention you have to you know and particularly the families with little children are concerned those people that want to take their kids walk their kids either to vanderland or to dunwoody elementary They're very concerned and they've all said this is a dangerous intersection.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sharon, you have additional cards. Wendy Taylor, approach the microphone and you'll have three minutes.

I'm Wendy Taylor. We have a stormwater situation all across the city of Dunwoody. WSB-TV reported last Friday that some soccer players, I assume kids, had spotted a goat stuck in a sinkhole. I'm proud of our Dunwoody police officers who came to the rescue of that goat, but I'm disturbed that kids found a goat well after the rest of the goat crew had been picked up. The sinkhole that trapped the goat is near Roberts Drive in Dunwoody. It was caused by a compromised stormwater pipe. I'm glad the goat was rescued before it was too late, but I sure don't want this to become a regular call for our police officers. Instead of a goat, the next victim might be a small child, your beloved pet, a delivery driver, or your grandmother. And the next sinkhole might not be as shallow or as dry. Dunwoody Stormwater Department must proactively fix citywide every stormwater system component that poses a danger. Dunwoody homeowners each pay an annual stormwater fee for maintenance and upkeep of our stormwater system. The city of Dunwoody has chosen to use these assessed fees very selectively across our city, mostly in support of new city projects while neglecting much of our current stormwater system. The city's intent on moving quickly ahead to install miles of 12 foot wide concrete paths throughout our city. Large shade trees beside our roads, which draw up tens of thousands of gallons of stormwater, are being removed. Very expensive stormwater collection systems are being designed and built for runoff from these new impervious surfaces. The city plans to discharge this additional stormwater into unsuspecting neighborhoods. And what's shocking is that the city expects the homeowners to pay for all repairs and upgrades to the neighborhood properties stormwater system components to deal with this stormwater. Dunwoody's public works director, Michael Smith, told me just recently, the city no longer considers much of the stormwater system in Dunwoody neighborhoods as the city's responsibility. Last week, I spoke with surveyors from a subcontractor to Dewberry Engineers, which is working on a stormwater basin design project on behalf of Dunwoody. What I learned was alarming. The city is ignoring all downstream impacts of its projects that increase stormwater runoff. It is not included in the scope of work that these engineering design companies are doing. Contractor employees and some city employees are afraid of pointing out the issue. So they do what they're told to do, and they keep their jobs. Dunwoody residents will get to pay the price financially, and probably as the GOAT did.

All right, we will have another public comment section at the end of the meeting if anyone would like to say something then. Next is your city manager report.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. This is the report for June 2026. In parks, we have Brook Run Park multi-use field. We'll be receiving a muraled kick wall and soccer ball themed bike racks by mid-July. So that's something new we have going on there at Park Brook Run. We also have our solar panel installation at the Cultural Arts Center on North Shaliford and on North Shaliford Annex are scheduled to begin in mid-August. It's been a long-term project we've been looking at, so we're looking forward to getting that underway soon. We're also, we have our staff is progressing through the schematic design phase of Homecoming Park. The kickoff meeting with the construction manager risk and design team is scheduled for late July. For some of our events, we had 2,700 in attendance at the grooving on the green. We also had six more bricks have been engraved at the Brook Run Veterans Memorial. I'm bringing that up just to let everyone know that we have those available. If you'd like to purchase a brick, please contact the Parks Department and we'll get that underway. Also, eight proposals were received for the Springwood Park concept design services solicitation. Here again, that park is in the perimeter area, and we think it will be a neat concept that will come up for that unique piece of property. It has some hilly areas. I know some of the council members have walked that property, and we're looking forward to seeing what those proposals bring. And the police department. on the 5th of June officers participated in the coffee. I mean, excuse me, cops at donut shops fundraiser. We collected nearly $4,000 for the special Olympics team athletes. Also, we had the promotional ceremony back about a month ago for major fondness, Lieutenant Nelson and Sergeant green. We're all promoted. Um, we have July the 14th from five to seven. We have a community event. Um, At Chapito's Aztec Grill. So please attend that if you can. That's tomorrow. August the 4th from 5 to 8 is National Night Out, a community event at Brook Run Pavilion. And we have applications are now open for the Fall Citizens Police Academy. So if you're interested in that, please sign up. Public Works. We were awarded $1.06 million grant by the Georgia Department of Transportation for improvements on Chamblee-Dunley Road from Peeler to Vermac. Also, we have Mount Vernon Path Phase 3 from the village to Vermac. Its online public comment period is scheduled to begin in late July. Ashford-Dunwoody Phase 2 path right-of-way acquisition is at 55% complete for the west side of Ashford-Dunwoody Road between Perimeter Center West and Meadow Lane Road. Here again, that's a long-term project we've been working on. It's right in front of us here at City Hall. We're looking forward to having that project to continue the path up Ashford-Dunwoody and into the village ultimately. Communications, we had a city tent at Juneteenth celebration. Of course, that's a shared celebration with the city of Sandy Springs and Dunwoody. That was well attended. We also had another city tent at the 4th of July parade festival. That was a very crowded event this year. I felt there were more residents at this year's parade than in the past. The weather was beautiful. A little warm, but nice weather. No rain this year. Also, we've done a code enforcement video for the public to watch. What we're trying to do within communications is show more videos so people understand government better. And this is an enhancement to our Dunwoody 101 class, is they have a video element. So far, those are getting very good responses from the public, and the information on there is up to date. Community development, we have the department started the DRI, which is the Development of Regional Impact Process for the second phase of Campus 244. That's underway. Also we have Ashton woods homes is presenting their plan for 122 townhomes on 1200 Ashwood Parkway. That's on the July 14th tomorrow's planning commission. So if anybody's interested in that, please come to that meeting. The city council will also discuss the Georgetown small area plan during its July 27th meeting. So our next meeting, we'll have that, um, Lanier Homes will be presenting a 33 townhome development on 4891 Asher Dunwoody Road on the 11th of August at the Planning Commission meeting then. So please attend those meetings if you have any interest. and what's going on in community development. As a note, we had the valuations of all permits issued in June of 26 was $4.1 million. I point that out from the standpoint of what's going on in the city economically. We have quite a bit of interest for new developments within the city, and especially right here in this perimeter area. Economic Development, we had a ribbon cutting last week for the newest piece of public art located on the Chamblee-Dunwoody Road in Georgetown entitled Lemongrass. When you drive out Chamblee-Dunwoody from 285, look to your right and you'll see that sculpture. It's pretty cool. We had the artist there with us to tell us a little bit more about the project. About the artwork, it's a very unique piece. Under technology, our director, Ginger LePage, will begin her third vice president for Georgia GEMIS, which is the Government Management Information Sciences. So she's in line to be president for that organization in the future, but right now she's started her third vice president role. So I just wanted to congratulate her on that role. The city clerk, we've processed quite a few open record requests for the month of June, 557 requests. They go through Sharon's office. Quite a lot of volume there. And for municipal court, we had 846 citations were filed. We disposed of 696 cases and reset 31 cases. So a lot of volume as well goes through our court. Last week, the parking lot was very full for one of those sessions, but we are very efficient in getting people through the system quickly. And it's a department that is well-operated. Human Resources, in partnership with the Finance Department, implemented the city's new compensation plan, which includes creation of a new police officer two-level position. We've talked about this a little bit in these meetings before, but I wanted to point it out one more time. It's something we're trying to do within the police department to create more roles and more levels for officers to want to stay with the city of Dunwoody. So we're very proud of this and It was worthy of pointing out one more time. That concludes my report, Mayor. I'm glad to answer any questions you all may have.

Who has questions? Go ahead, Tom.

Thank you, Eric, for the report. A couple of things I just wanted to point out or ask questions on. First is that GDOT grant for improvements from Peeler to Vermac. Does that include the intersection there as well? Is that included in the scope of that project?

It is. It is. And Michael can come up and explain more if you would like more detail. But that actually is included.

Okay. Yeah, actually, there's two intersections. The Chambly-Domity-Shallifer-Peeler intersection and the Chambly-Domity-Vermag. Yes. Or they're both included in that scope?

Yes. Okay.

Thanks. I have a question for Michael before. Go ahead. So with the Google Fiber, I know we required them to have a person. How has it been going? And Roberts is really rough when they put in the Google Fiber. Is that going to impact the repaving that's going to happen soon?

Well, Google shouldn't have a significant impact on Roberts, and if they do have to cut it at some place, we have pretty specific requirements about what they have to repave. It won't just be a patch. um as far as houses how it's going i mean there have been some utilities that have been hit here and there um we have a person that's staying on top of that and as far as i know google is resolving those issues as they occur they've i think they're uh They've been in about probably four or five neighborhoods so far, and I think they're finishing up in some of the first ones they started. But they're making progress, and we're staying on top of it. Go ahead.

Just because it's a public works. Related to that GDOT grant for the Chamblee-Dunwoody-Peeler-DeVermack, So that's federal funds, right? Right. So that's just for design, right? Correct. So if we decide whenever that's done, we could potentially still just use local funding to construct?

Yes. It's very easy to start federal and then switch to local funding.

it's almost impossible to start local and then decide you want to switch to federal okay that's good because i just want to see about flexibility for future depending on cash flow but um understand the time well thanks go ahead more thanks thanks catherine do you have question too i just wanted to so i in the uh in the it section uh that was mentioned about gender wait

Go right ahead. Absolutely.

Sorry. Michael, so we just heard some, I just have some questions about stormwater. Okay. So when we design projects, or for example, DeKalb County is coming in to repave a road. We, like a road where there's major stormwater infrastructure or even minor stormwater infrastructure that's ready to be replaced. We work, well, stormwater's us, but DeKalb County also does water work, right? Right. So when people see big pipes and stuff, it's often DeKalb County Watershed Management. But sometimes it's us. So when we design a project that's going to impact stormwater, which is pretty much any project we do, correct, of any significance? Right. What are the metrics that we use to see what the impact is on stormwater?

We look at the flow leaving the right-of-way or leaving where, you know, the edge of the project, where it goes off public and onto private. We look at what the flow is before any improvements are made, and then we look at what the flow is going to be after the improvements, you know, if the impervious area has changed. And in most cases, we're matching or – We're matching those flows. The only time we're not doing that is if it's very minimal change, like you wouldn't, you know, negligible change in flow. But we're like on the peeler project. That's the whole point of the Dewberry study is to figure out how much water we can detain in that detention pond at the park so that it does not increase flow downstream.

And simultaneous to to stormwater projects that are related to city projects. We also have stormwater repair projects going on correct.

Yes. I mean, the vast majority of the repair and maintenance funds that we spend on stormwater are to repair or replace existing infrastructure.

Right. So right now we have projects going on in neighborhoods or sometimes all over.

Yeah. I mean, whenever you hear about a sinkhole or that's all, you know, if it's if it's a city maintained pipe, then that's we go in there and fix that.

So the project on Kellogg, no, on North Springs Drive, that was stormwater, right?

Yes.

And it was because the ditch literally was, land was eroding, the trees were falling.

The sidewalk was in jeopardy of falling into the creek.

Right. It was that severe of erosion. Right. So we came in and we did the necessary work with the, what do you call the sides of a the banks. Thank you. The banks. And that was stormwater.

Yes.

And there are projects like that all over.

Yes.

And can you speak to the situation with the goat? And I know that the,

Yeah, it actually turned out not to be a goat. I mean, we use goats. There's a contractor that brings goats to basically mow our detention ponds. Right. And they had been out at the park, but apparently this was not a goat that was part of that herd.

So I'm a little skeptical of that, because we also found a goat once when they had goats working in Dunwoody, and they claimed it wasn't their goat.

Right.

I'm a little skeptical. But regardless, the hole itself.

Yes.

What's the plan for that?

It's been blocked off for now until we can come in and do a repair.

Okay. And is it a simple repair or complex? Or you don't know yet?

Don't know yet. I mean, it's probably not too complex, but they're still assessing that.

Okay. That's it. Anybody else have questions for Michael? Okay, thank you. Go ahead. Go ahead, Tom, you can finish.

All right, thanks. So in the IT section, you mentioned that Ginger taught a class down at GMA, and I just wanted to give her a shout out because I was actually at lunch uh over the weekend and somebody saw that i was from dunwoody and they were gave rave reviews of her her knowledge and the way she taught the class so they they said you're really lucky to have her so i just wanted to let her know that uh say thank you for how well she represents the city but also for the work she does um and then while on the subject of i.t i noticed that uh central square phase two i don't know who's the appropriate person to ask this question to The initial rollout didn't go smoothly, to say the least. I met with a bunch of staff, yourself included, after that to find out what we're going to do. And my understanding was that they had a patch and a fix and updates that they didn't deliver what they were supposed to in that initial rollout and that it was all going to be updated by the end of the second quarter. Well, we're into the third quarter now. So where is that now? And Ginger, she's actually online. She's going to chime in.

Hello. So first, thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciate it. So about Central Square, where we are right now is they're going to roll it out to our training, our testing environment first so that we can play around with it and try to make sure that it is what we're expecting it to be. And also so we can kind of understand on our side. And so the biggest hold up right now has been with the payments piece, because what they're live with right now is when you're using their version of the payments. So I can get an update on the timing and everything like that and get back to you with the exact dates and what the true schedule is as of right now.

Are they behind schedule as far as what they had promised us initially after that initial rollout?

So I think that there was some misunderstanding about the person that was giving us the information because I think he was under the impression that we were using a different payments piece than what we were. And so he was giving us the dates and timing information for if we were using the other version, the central square payments, and we were using Pementis. So I think that's kind of where that miscommunication came into play for the second phase, at least.

Okay. I mean, I trust our side to get it right. I just want to make sure that we're holding the vendor accountable and that this is fixed, tested, and ready to go long before the next permitting process comes through because it wasn't as smooth as we had promised the public. And I don't want to have that fiasco. So please, whoever has to, please hold them accountable. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Joe?

Ginger, if you're still on. This was for Eric, but Ginger. Thank you. Earlier this year, we had one of our service providers that we have a lot of different technology platforms with. We decided to create a master service agreement to keep everything of the different services we have. I know we have other companies that we work with like Central Square and so on. I don't have the whole topography of every software vendor that we use. But I had asked at that time, and whether it has to come back to council for budgeting or not, about an independent third-party audit of our IT systems and our IT processes. I did note, though, and Ginger, this is great, I looked it up online under department items, GMIS accreditation, stage one completed. Now, that in and of itself may be, and I'll let Ginger chime in or Eric, that might deserve its own little... presentation because it sounds like it's a good thing. I looked up GMIS accreditation and it's looking at security and governance and operations and so on. So anyhow, the IT audit and or I'm looking at this GMIS accreditation that sounds like we're moving in the right path. Eric or Ginger, do you have any thoughts about just the overall IT system audits and so on and how we're looking on those things?

Ginger, do you want to give an update or you want me to go into that?

Yes. So right now, as far as the GEMIS accreditation goes, we are as far along in that process as GEMIS is ready for us to be. So I'm working with them. I'm also on their committee. And so I'm helping them to, it's a new accreditation that they're building out and they're really trying to perfect. So it's been around for a long time, but they're updating the way that they do it and the depth of what it is. And so we are working on that. And I'm hoping that that'll be ready for the next stage here pretty soon. But we have completed the beginning part and we're doing pretty good in that. And then we I've spoken to the to the internal auditor trying to get we're working with him to try to figure out what the next step is for your second part of that request. But I have been out for a little bit. And so I'm coming back now. And that's on the list of things that I'm going to work on again.

Does that satisfy what you were looking for? Yeah, if you could just keep us updated. We will. And this will also go through the audit committee as well. We'll talk to them. Anything that has to do with our internal auditor goes through there. But there are audits done during the year of different types of audits. But this particular one, we're working with the internal auditor.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Ginger. Thank you, Eric.

Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you. No, Kevin, right. You're not good. All right. Next is Dunwoody. Oh, it's Rachel.

Good evening. The next two are my partner annual presentations. First up, we've got Dunwoody Senior Baseball.

Do I just forward it myself? Good evening. So first, Eric, I passed that sculpture myself and I agree with it. It really is pretty cool. Nice job. Hello, everyone. So my name is Peter Cohane. I'm the president of Dunwoody Senior Baseball. And Rachel asked me to come tonight to give you a little update of our program and also talk a little bit about something we're interested in constructing. That is the indoor practice facility, which I think I've shared with some of you already. So. This isn't new. DSB has been around for a very, very long time. In fact, this coming fall is our 51st year of running a baseball program, and our mission has not really changed very much over the year. We're there to support recreational and travel baseball programs in middle school, in high school, and then more recently in adults as well. And we've had a long-term relationship with the city before it was the city, and we continue that today. Our organizational structure, again, this is not new. We're an all-volunteer board, so I'm a volunteer myself. All of our league directors are volunteers. All of our coaches are volunteers. Our team parents are volunteers. We do have a small handful of paid employees. These tend to be related to our Diablo's travel baseball program. And then we also have a group of what we call the red shirt guys or the field managers. So they actually attend and supervise the fields while we're using them for games, both before and after the game. Things like pick up the trash and all those sorts of things too. So we are very much a volunteer organization and that's really the heart and soul of how we make this work. So we have five distinct seasons throughout the year, plus, of course, the Diablo's Travel Ball and occasional clinics. And I'll get to those here in a few minutes. So, again, none of this is new, but if you're unfamiliar with how we work, I thought I would just give a little summary of each of these programs. So starting chronologically, we start with our middle school season. So these are obviously middle school players. This is the one league that we have that are school affiliated teams. So most teams are come from schools. They are organized by schools. They have their own tryouts. They find their own coaches. Oftentimes, middle schools will have two teams, maybe an eighth grade team and a seventh grade team. They might have an A team or B team. It just sort of depends on the interest of baseball within that particular middle school. In addition, DSP itself offers what we call in-house teams. So these are players, middle school players who maybe attend a school that doesn't have a team, perhaps are homeschooled. Maybe they tried out for the middle school team and run successful, but still want to play baseball. So we offer an opportunity for those players to play as well. In fact, this past season, we had two in-house teams. So we had enough demand for that. The season operates, we start usually with practices sort of middle of January or so, and games start really middle of February and run basically through the end of April, right around lemonade days is when we try and wrap up that season. This past year, we again have had over 60 teams, 6-0, 60 teams spread out across 20 different fields around metropolitan Atlanta. It's an enormous program, and far and away is our biggest program of any of the five that are on the list. It has been enormously successful. As I said, it was our 27th season this past year. So we will have a 28th one next January. And it's certainly well received by a lot of the community. In fact, in our sort of brief research, it's probably one of the biggest, if not biggest, middle school league in the country. So a great effort on the part of all these teams to come together. And as you might imagine, trying to organize 750 games and nearly 1,000 players across 20 different locations is a Herculanean task. So kudos to all of our volunteers who helped to make that happen. So that's our middle school league. Following that, we have our spring season. This is more traditional recreational league. There's a middle school division and then a high school division. They play either. So those teams are formed either individually. So people sign up individually. They're evaluated and placed on teams with volunteer coaches like myself, actually. Or you sometimes have players who come together and decide they want to form a team of their friends and high school classmates, etc. They're not school affiliated, but sometimes they all attend the same school, which kind of makes sense. That runs basically late April to the first week of June or so about an eight game season. And this year we had 25 teams sign up for that program. Next comes our summer adult wood bat season. It's exactly what it sounds like. These are adults, so high schools, rising high school seniors and older, and they play with a wood bat instead of a metal bat. They basically start their season right around Father's Day or so, and they run. or now through about the first week of August. Because they're adults, we limit when games are scheduled to weeknight evenings and Sunday afternoons. And given that, you can see how some of the changes to the usage agreement had a real direct impact on this particular program. So that runs through early August. Next, we have our fall season, which the model mirrors our spring. This again would be your middle school division and your high school division. They play basically from middle of August or so through about Halloween or so, maybe first week of November, somewhere around that time frame. And lastly, we have what we call our winter season. This is something fairly new and actually came out of a community need. We actually had folks come to us and ask if we could organize this sort of mini fast-paced winter season. As you see, the ages are a little younger, so it's late elementary, so basically age 12 and and the middle school-aged players as well. Games there are limited to one hour, and they use a machine pitch as opposed to a kid pitch. It's, again, a way to kind of speed things up, give kids an opportunity to put a glove in their hand, put a bat in their hand, play out in the field for an hour. Again, it's very fast-paced, and it's something, as I said, that came about because of a request from the community as something that maybe we could accommodate. Lastly, you'll see there on this slide is our Dunwoody Diablos travel ball program. That's a very standard sort of normal travel ball team. You have evaluations sort of now, then their season starts next month with practices and they roll into tournaments in the fall, practice over the winter and early spring, take time off for their school seasons, and then pick it up again in the early summer for regular travel ball tournaments. So that's pretty typical and normal for most travel programs. So in addition to all of these distinct seasons, we also offer educational and training clinics like catchers clinics or pitchers clinics. We also offer coaches clinics, too, for volunteer coaches who want to learn a little bit more about coaching. Again, those came about basically as a response to a community need. We had folks who say, hey, can you help us out with learning how to coach correctly or learning how to bat or pitching, etc. ? So we offer those sort of periodically throughout the year when the fields aren't being used, sort of in between seasons, that sort of thing. So that's sort of an overall snapshot of our program. As I said, none of that's really very new. And we hope to continue all of that next year as we have this past year. WANTED TO SHARE A LITTLE BIT ABOUT OUR FINANCIALS. AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, THE YEAR'S NOT DONE YET. SO A LOT OF THIS ARE ESTIMATED NUMBERS, BUT AS YOU CAN SEE FROM OUR PROGRAM REVENUE STAYS PRETTY STEADY YEAR OVER YEAR. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WE'VE BEEN VERY, VERY CAREFUL ABOUT MINING OUR EXPENSES AND OUR SPEND BECAUSE WE'RE TRYING TO ACCUMULATE FUNDS FOR THIS INDOOR PRACTICE FACILITY, WHICH IS SOMETHING I THINK I MENTIONED TO A FEW OF YOU A BIT EARLIER THIS YEAR. and something that we've certainly been involved with the city about designing and engineering as well so something that dsp has long been interested in is an indoor practice facility it's it's a great amenity for brick run it gives teams the ability to practice when the weather is too hot or the weather is too cold or it's raining or otherwise the fields are unavailable and this practice facility would be located sort of in between the two fields. There's an open space right now that today is basically a pile of wood chips. And it's something that would essentially be a big rectangle that could be then subdivided into pitching lanes or batting lanes or You can remove everything and have sort of indoor clinics if you want that sort of thing. So this is something DSP has long been interested in. And so we've been very, very slowly and carefully and methodically putting aside funds that we can that would allow us to fund the construction of this facility. We're nearly there, which is great. So we hope to have most of our funds. We're going to kick off a capital campaign here in the near future to take us over the finish line so that we can actually start construction with this facility. We've been working very closely with the city on the engineering aspects and the permitting aspects. Fortunately for us, one of our board members is an architect and we have another board member who's a contractor. So they have been really taking point on working with the city and the engineers and the permitting folks to make this a reality, which we're very, very excited about. That gives you a little sense of what it might look like. Obviously, it will mirror as best we can the current building that's there, the field house in IN TERMS OF COLORS AND STYLE AND ALL THOSE SORTS OF THINGS. SO THAT'S A SNAPSHOT OF OUR PROGRAM SO FAR. THE ONE THING I WOULD ASK FROM THE COUNCIL TONIGHT IS YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEEDBACK ON THIS PRACTICE FACILITY. WE THINK IT WOULD BE A GREAT AMENITY FOR NOT ONLY THE CITY BUT FOR DSB AS WELL. And then assuming that you guys are in favor of this, then what we would do next is work with the city on formalizing that arrangement. Thinking here, the model will be similar to what you've seen with the Dominique Nature Center when they constructed their new building. And maybe we would work with Eric and his team on sort of putting the bolts and nuts around that particular program. So that's all that I have. I don't know if you have any questions for me. I'll do my best to answer.

um okay uh go ahead rob thank you for the presentation i appreciate it i appreciate for uh all you guys do to uh provide some baseball for the city um not so much a question as a comment with the um the practice facility and this is also for city staff that we have a usage agreement with the school system just make sure that we're all kind of squared away with how this is handled with that and with our own um our own city agreement to use that property. Cause I would hate to get to the 11th hour and, you know, the school district to raise an issue because we haven't kept them in the loop. So that would just be one suggestion there. And then, you know, a second, and then a second question might be, you know, it's right there at the middle school field, you know, to maybe factor in a way for that middle school team to be able to use that facility, you know, during their baseball season to, to practice, you know, on a rainy day or something like that. So anyway, but I appreciate the presentation. Thank you so much.

Right. They see. Okay. I'll go ahead. Joe. Sorry.

Hey, Peter, I just dropped you a note. I'd love to have a chat. Just meet for coffee, just say hi anyway. So yeah, and maybe we can even meet on site. I'd be more than happy to just kind of see what it looks like and eyeball it. So I'm seeing what you're available. So anyway, that one. And I ask, I generally, and I ask this of all of the different partners that bring in activities here, not that they always have to live inside the city limits of Dunwoody, And I'm not sure if you have metrics that would show your membership of to show whether it's not in today's presentation, you know, where do the residents out of the teams that are based here in Dunwoody. how many of those members are Dunwoody residents versus how many are not. I'm not putting you on the spot here, but I just want to be curious to see that we're doing things that our residents are beneficial for, and it is an amenity for the community.

um i can certainly find that we don't normally ask the residency status but there may be some data that we can pull that would help out on that address or something yeah yeah that would be nice let me make a note that should be pretty simple it's a database search or a spreadsheet search thanks all right that's it uh tom uh yeah peter thanks for the uh

for the presentation and the information and all you're doing for, for the league and for the community there. I think when we talked, I told you, I'm a former coach. I have coached at the program. My son played there. I coached for several years.

Would you like to coach again?

I don't know. You might be able to get me there.

I do miss the coaching. It was always looking for wrong.

It was, it was great. Of course, I'm going to date myself when, When I was coaching and my son was playing, we were out at Dunwoody Park, so we didn't have the privilege of playing at the new beautiful fields at Brook Run. But, yeah, so – but the league, it provides such a great service for the community. Not only – I mean, the middle school league is outstanding. It's such a great program. And to comment on – just to add a little bit to something you might not have considered, obviously, you know, like – The Dunwoody schools have several teams in there. You know, Chamblee's got a couple of teams and probably half those kids live in Dunwoody. The Marist teams, the Pius teams, the Wesleyan teams, the Weber team, all those. A lot of the people on those teams actually do live in Dunwoody. because the majority of them do, that's providing – that league, you know, those kids wouldn't be able to play baseball without the league. So it's a good program, and I appreciate what you're doing there. You asked for feedback on the batting facility or the indoor practice facility, I should say. I know that's been on the – on the wishlist for a while, I think that would be a great asset to, to the city, to the, to the program. Um, you know, one of the things, as you mentioned, the number of teams and the league keeps growing. I know one of the challenges we had before the turf fields, which would be ready to play quickly was, was just practice time and getting on the fields. Um, you know, and especially in weather events. So I think that would certainly allow, uh, you know coaches and players a lot more time to practice uh and more opportunities for that so um i think overall the the idea is a good one um and i'll just echo what was said i'd encourage you to keep working closely with with eric and the parks team uh to make sure that we're dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's and not going to run into anything um

unexpected along the way but uh but appreciate the presentation and all you're doing thank you yep um you are right that uh with all actually all of our leagues once games start there's really no more practice time because we have to pack in all the games in the limited amount of time having the indoor facility will allow us to continue to offer practice slots to teams who want to take advantage of that so thank you for that catherine

Hi, Peter. I can't be there tonight, but I appreciate your being here. I'm wondering how many kids can practice in that indoor facility at one time. Do they get short shifts or what would happen? How many people can do it?

So a little depends on what they're practicing. There would be room for three full length pitching lanes. So you would at the minimum, you could have three pitching and then three hitting. You can then subdivide it. A lot of these indoor facilities have netting that you can then subdivide into either in half or in thirds. And so you can have as many as, you know, 12 all doing something at the same time. Maybe not all pitching, but some might be pitching, some might be batting. If you removed all the netting entirely and had the whole space open at once, you could do indoor practice. So hitting grounders, that sort of thing. So depending on how it's configured and what the coach wants to do, you could have an entire team, which tends to be 12 to 13 people all in at once.

Okay, and then when they get a shorter time, you know, a defined time period. You know, I'm just thinking how many people can run through this program, through this indoor facility.

Yeah, we used to use the indoor facility back in my Murphy Candler coaching days. The softball team had converted the gym behind the old Shanley Middle School there in Shanley-Dunwoody into – into a batting cages and stuff. And we would get two or three teams in there and, you know, you have to be efficient. You have to be smart and you have to have a practice plan to make it work well, but you can get two or three teams in there at a time. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you for being here and thank you for all you're doing. This is a yeoman's lift and a job and we certainly appreciate. We would like to see that data. I know you're new. It's sort of in a standard request of our reports, just because we need to know and we're not going to Actually, under federal law, we can't say that people have to live here and all this and that. But just as a curiosity point, I'm curious. I love that you have these two in-house teams and that you made space for that. Is there much more demand or is that pretty sufficient for I mean, you have a lot of kids that aren't getting to play that.

Go ahead. So as an in-house coach myself, I'm one of the ones who does the evaluations and we will take anybody who is interested and available. The challenges come usually when, and as you might imagine, teams tend to be 12, 13, 14 kids. When you have 16, that makes it a little harder to have enough playtime spread out amongst a single team for all 16. So sometimes those last two end up being on a wait list. But even then, we'll have other in-house teams that may be short a player or two, and we'll ask, Can you take some more players? And oftentimes they will say yes. And so we try very hard to to accommodate as many as we can. I can't promise everybody, but, you know, as as someone whose kids also were on those in-house teams, we always I know the league tried very hard to make sure that everybody who wanted to play could play.

That's great. I like hearing that. With the practice facility, I think it's going to be important that we not exclude softball. And so whether they, we ask, I don't know that there is, I don't know how much organization exists behind softball in Dunwoody that they could raise funds to participate or they can just become a tenant, some arrangement so that if they choose to, they can have some access. Softball seems to kind of ebb and flow in popularity, but I think right now it's... Very popular. And so locally anyway. And then we have a parking problem on Saturday mornings. And while I was out of town, I got a frantic message about the amount of baseball parking that's happening at Brook Run Park on Saturday mornings. We need to solve it. My job is to define the problem. I would hate to have to start towing cars, but I also might not hate it so much. They ignore the signs. It clearly says no baseball parking. There's a level of arrogance when we ask them to move. It should be shocking, but it's not. And And so I'd like you to work with Rachel to figure out what it's going to take. Also, I realize that a lot of Saturdays are tournaments maybe. I don't know. I could be wrong. I have no idea. There's a lot more activity on a Saturday morning than, say, a Tuesday afternoon sometimes. And I think we can put some burden on the volunteer coaches. I know they're volunteers, but you can say, look, you've got to tell them to park at the middle school, put it in big letters, ask the kid when they walk up where their parents parked, that kind of thing. Just, we've got to fix this. You know, the farmer's market is becoming increasingly more popular and it's not, it's not right because they have the whole middle school parking lot on a Saturday morning to park. So thank you for addressing that. Anybody else have questions? Okay. Next is Rachel again.

All right. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Yep. Next up, same thing, is our annual presentation from Rush. Let me get Neil going here. There you go.

Good evening, guys. Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk and getting to go second. We got to hear some of the questions. We do track the zip codes and it's about 60 to 70 percent. But I don't have financial information to share tonight. We do hold an annual meeting in April. We record it and we do send it to Rachel and the team. My name is Neil McNabb. I'm the executive director for Russian Union Soccer. I was going to open with a joke that the a German, a Scot, and a Brazilian all walked into a bar and the bartender said, hey, where's the Englishman? He's still at the World Cup. I'm originally from England, so We'll see what happens this Wednesday, because I know that there's the Argentinian consulate is based here in Dunwoody, too. So it's been a wonderful summer. It's been exhausting. I don't know how anybody builds in six hours of watching soccer games on top of everything else that we've had to do. But we've we've struggled through it this summer. We have been very blessed to be stewards at Brookrun Park and utilize the facility for soccer. We've seen tremendous growth over the last several years. I've got some numbers to share with you, but I think it's really important that we start with that we just have fun. You know, soccer is fun. I personally don't mind what children do if they play baseball. My oldest swims. We're looking for a new family for him. But my younger two both play basketball. And what my youngest is actually coached by a young Argentinian coach who I used to coach when he was a child. And so it's been a wonderful full circle moment for us. And that's what sports do. They help in the upbringing of children and supporting a community. I do believe that community and competitive are not mutually exclusive, that we can do both. And I do want to shout out to our 2010 girls team. team based here out of Brook Run Park that participated at Nationals this summer. Nine of those girls go to Dunwoody High School and it was a wonderful achievement to make it that far. It's the first team that we've had at Nationals since 2019. And one of those players is now on the US Women's Under 23 squad and is playing professional. We've actually got two alums currently playing professional in the NWSL. We've got three locations here in Georgia. I'm actually tasked with the oversight of our Alabama location, too. Don't ask me about the commutes. Rush is a national organization. We have 65,000 players across the country, 110 markets. Locally, we have 150 rec teams, 100 competitive teams, and about 100 adult teams who are really good at kicking the ball over the fence into the field. area below sometimes the safest space to park and parking is an issue is actually in the goal because you never get hit if you're parking the goal having seen some of the guys and girls play All right. Large player base. We've got about over 5000 that we serve in all of our programs and about 250 years combined coaching experience, which if you've met Steve Reed, who's in charge of our community outreach, I think he's got about 100 of those years. But good news is he's not here tonight to push back on me. Don't worry, specific stats. This is from previous seasonal year. We're about to start a new one. We run fall and then spring. But our numbers for last year, 609 in our competitive program. Recreational was just under 300. We had summer programs totaling 185. A summer futsal program, which is in partnership with Dunwoody Baptist. We've been supporting the program there with scheduling, inter-scheduling with them, some coaching education, and we were able to utilize the gym space, indoor space, this summer we served about 80 children playing indoor this summer, playing futsal. Winter programs, about 86, 216 players played in our 77 leagues, and then just under 400 adult recreational players. So we actually break that. We're actually a little over 1,800 total in Dunwoody, and it's about 60 to 70% based here in Dunwoody. This is a picture of our girls teams, that top left small image there is the team that went to nationals. This is in an all-female league, and we're all about supporting our female athletes. The national average is 55% to 45% boys to girls. We're actually right at 50-50, and so we're really proud of those stats that we've got. Our girls program is just as big as our boys program. A few other numbers for you. This is a total combined on the right here, but hundred and fifty wreck teams age you forty nineteen. This involves our Milton, um, and the killer programs as well. Uh, we also, uh, have an itself partnership, which is the Atlanta, uh, amateur district league. which is Terminus Legion, which now provides the highest level of amateur play with our partnership there, because we do have folks that graduate out and then want to continue to play the game. We've got the casual 77 league, or if you're in the over 40 league, that seems to be the competitive one. And then we've just got an image here of us at the 4th of July parade. This is last year. We did have the privilege of walking in it this year. I think it's our fifth year in a row. that we have participated in the parade, and we always have fun. We know we can't throw candy at the spectators, so we've been working hard to volley the candy gently. into the spectator's arms, but we definitely enjoy being in the community. We're able to run several tournaments throughout the year. Fall Cup serves about 318 teams, up from 268 and 24. Spring Cup was 264, up from 252. We had a winter indoor tournament that's hosted our Milton facility. We do have an indoor facility there. And then we did have just under 50 teams at our second annual recreational tournament. We have to utilize about 10 to 12 sites when implementing tournaments and hearing some of the scheduling challenges from our good friends at Dunwoody Senior Baseball. We definitely face some of those. We have similar stories to share with regards to scheduling. Some images here from our kids and teams. It's always nice when they make the finals and we get to celebrate them and their efforts. You can't have players without coaches. We put a significant investment into our coaching staff. We host official coaching education pathways with U.S. Soccer. I'm a U.S. Soccer educator. We've actually got two on staff. We have a partnership with Positive Coaching Alliance, partner with Soccer Parenting Association. And then we as an organization, Rush Nationally is one of the few, maybe the only organization in the country that has its own license pathway as well that we implement locally. We have a national competitive program that we get to nominate our players for, but also our coaches. And so some of our coaches go on and represent Russia Union and represent the Dunwoody community in coaching at a regional and national level. We had coaches, 15 coaches move up the pathway this year, including seven coaches making their C-level license. It goes up to A. The highest they expect you to have in youth is a C. They want you to have a minimum of a grassroots. And we have multiple that are now breaking those barriers. And we expect continued investment in these courses. For an example, a USSF B license now is about a four-month course. With assessments and homework, it's like sending the coaches back to college to continue and further their education. Continued commitment to coaching. Last year, we actually established our first annual awards. And instead of going for which coach had the winningest record, we actually went and based it around our mission statement. Our mission is serve, develop, inspire. Our tagline is play it forward. And so we actually based the awards on our mission statement. The coaches that exemplified the mission the best, their service award went to an individual that was helping clean up, pick up trash and fix nets and goals. Development award went to a coach that had a team that really struggled to find the wins on the field, but they found the wins everywhere else that they could. And that team continued to develop. Our Play It Forward award was two coaches that hosted a social event and got the community involved called our Fall Bash. And so just to kind of give you guys an idea that we're looking at ways to celebrate our coaches and staff members based upon our mission and not just on the score on the field. Special recognition to our two amazing administrators. I was once asked, how do you know if your club is doing well? It's when my administrators are not complaining about anything. That's never happened yet, but we're getting closer. We've got two very special administrators here. Kara Murray was recognized as Administrator of the Year for Georgia soccer back in March, and Juliet Melvin, was recognized as an inductee into the Georgia Soccer Hall of Fame. She's been involved in the, gosh, a whole lifetime, over 40 years as a player, a coach and administrator. And actually her parents were part of building Blackburn Park back in the day. So you can see how long they've been involved in the community. So special recognition to them. This year, like I said, has been a very special opportunity for us with the World Cup. We started talking about the World Cup long before it got here. We actually shared our activation and growth plan to our staff last December, and we were working on it for about 18 months before that. We knew that the fun stuff was going to happen, right, that watch parties and go into the games if you're willing to sell a kidney, and that there was going to be good things to get involved with. The problem that we posed to ourselves and actually to other rush clubs across the country was how do we manage that growth? More players means more referees. It means more field space. It means more qualified coaches. It means more of everything. And so we actually helped develop certain tools and assets and built relationships to tackle that problem head on. Georgia Soccer is our governing body. They're actually based just down the road, not too far away. We are heavily involved in Georgia soccer at this time. I actually am the current serving president of the organization, closing out my second year. Maybe reelection, we'll see what my wife says about it when the reelection comes around. We actually started the U.S. Soccer Insiders, which is the official supporters group of the U.S. national teams, all of them. There's 27 of them. We actually started this in conjunction with Georgia Soccer. And so we have been going all around the Atlanta area with watch parties and showing up. We showed up in Marietta, Gwinnett. We showed up in DeKalb County. and Fulton County too, during the World Cup and also before the World Cup. We have worked closely with the Soccer Forward Foundation. This is the foundation that was established by U.S. Soccer to take the funds that FIFA gives to the host country. In the previous World Cup in Qatar, those funds went towards infrastructure. For this World Cup, those funds have gone towards programmatic. issues, specifically soccer in schools seems to be a huge push. And so by getting closer to governing entities and working with them, we're now more nimble to be able to take advantage of in the right way to implement, to support, to help guide and also to help lead. All that means to the impact beyond the World Cup. We knew that the World Cup was going to come. We knew that there was going to be some teams do great. Our U.S. men's national team caught us super excited for a short period of time there. And we also know that there's an opportunity for lasting impact. Because of involvement in these things, the soccer in schools, the pitcher in the middle there, that's actually Josie Altidore, a former men's national team player. Those are all of our coaches surrounding him. We participated in a soccer in schools initiative to pilot. This was actually in a Fulton County school. We were featured in ESPN about the new national training center. We supported the Adapt and Thrive, which is a special needs program that was hosted down at the National Training Center. We helped staff it and support it. We were involved in a World Cup commercial. The picture on the bottom left there was a World Cup commercial. That's my daughter in the white uniform and her BFF in the red uniform. They got to play against each other at Piedmont Park, and our kids got to go be part of a World Cup commercial. We're closer to U.S. Soccer and the Forward Foundation. Now they're actually asking for our advice and input on where and how to support programs moving forward. And we were actually highlighted in the U.S. Soccer Resource Hub. One of their initiatives was to create a resource hub for all clubs, schools, and soccer partners to use to go get resources. We've been highlighted in there twice. We were highlighted in there with schools initiatives and framework that we've built. And also we built a club support toolkit around the World Cup. that clubs can use and how do you manage the growth? How do you assess what your needs are as an organization so that you can handle that growth and be best prepared for it? And I had examples of letters and templates and spreadsheets and things like that that folks could take advantage of. What's next for us and specifically what's next for Dunwoody? We're taking advantage of two amazing initiatives this fall. One is called Just Ball. And it is exactly what it says there. It is just the ball. It's organized pickup play for our teenagers. It's actually going on right now at Dunwoody High School. We've got 54 children signed up for it. And our aim is that these are the non-registered players. Yes, our existing Rush Union players are welcome to come, or if they play for a competing organization, they're welcome to come. But we're trying to find ways to keep our teenagers involved in the sport. And this is the unattractive age group where kids drop out. It is fully funded. It is free for the kids to attend. We're launching it this summer at Dunwoody High School. We'll follow that up with a season-long play at Peachtree Middle School. And our aim is that our middle school coaches and high school coaches have an abundance of children wanting to stay involved in the sports well beyond the club seasons. We know that there's a lot of activities and pressure on these kids, and we want to make sure that they have a positive outlet to keep them involved in the game. Get on the Bus is actually a transportation support system that will take children from their schools and drive them to participate in recreational leagues. We actually have 16 students signed up so far from Title I schools that will come and play in our rec league this season. This fully funds everything, not just the transportation, but this is uniforms, this is kits, this is cleats, this is everything that you can imagine. And so the net... uh end result for russian unions we're actually made whole through the through these grants and um i know that there's always the question of what what what do we need to do to continue to to grow and we're always in the need of more fields we're always in the need of more coaches but if we're being very very honest the best money to spend is somebody else's And we're finding ways and there's a lot of funds and resources and programs out there that we're because of the relationships that we've built. We're now trying to take advantage of to bring those in here locally and use community engagement as a growth strategy. These are all of the initiatives that we have been involved with over this last year. Soccer and schools, US Soc wants to get into 80,000 schools over the next five years. We have already attended Dunwoody Elementary and we went and ended field day. We've done PE there. We're involved in a charity called the Father Christmas Cup, which actually helps support families that have lost somebody over the holidays. The game format initiative was we tried different game formats and were funded through it through U.S. Youth Soccer. We're a project play champion recognized by the Aspen Institute of Sports. Just ball I've mentioned. We're actually in the formation of Soccer for All. This is a Georgia soccer initiative. We have a fund at Georgia Soccer that will help support all sports. Programs is being launched this August. We've helped actually build this in conjunction with Georgia soccer. This could be used for anything from referee facility development, programmatic needs, coaching, and we will have our member clubs throughout Georgia. This is a Georgia Soccer Initiative, not just Russia Union participate in this. AYSO and Georgia Soccer had a partnership grant. The Soccer Forward Resource Hub, I mentioned to you already, Atlanta Insiders, and Get on the Bus, we've talked about too. We know that field space is a challenge at Brook Run, and we've sent our practice map that looks a lot like a Tetris grid to Rachel and her team. And... we're looking at ways to not just fill the fields that we have access to, very fortunately, but how do we take the game to where it doesn't exist currently? And that real opportunity is to work with the church programs, that's to work with our schools, that's to work with other parks and recs and other community, others involved in the community that are in the soccer space. And I think that's how we can really win in the long term get more children playing keep them active keep them away from you know roblox or minecraft or whatever your poison is um and hopefully there'll be more young coaches coming back to coach children that have played you know that are playing in the program and they're coming back to do it full full circle so that's our initiative moving forward i would welcome any questions um and if i don't have the answer tonight i promise to get it okay

Catherine, do you have any questions? No, thank you.

OK.

Anybody have questions? Go ahead, Tom.

Don't have any questions. Just wanted to, again, thank you, Neil, for being here tonight and everything that Rush Union does. It's a great program. I get a lot of positive feedback from neighbors and friends who participate, both at the children level and some adults that are playing as well. So I appreciate all you're doing there. I went by a couple weeks ago just to watch some games and was sitting there and brought back memories to me because my daughter was a soccer player from first grade all the way through high school. But I think you nailed it on the head right at the first slide. It's about just having fun. And that's what I saw when I was out there. People were enjoying themselves. The kids were having fun. And I appreciate you being focused on that part of the game and being such a good community partner as well. So thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else? Stacey? Stacey? Is England going to do it? Argentina is our home team. Okay, then let's talk about France-Spain. Who's your pick there? I'm going to go with France. Okay. Okay. Also, thank you for your program. I know my son actually played, I think, one of the first adult leagues because he was home from college for COVID forever. And I just know that you guys do a good job over there. And he's one of those kids who kindergarten on and his first job in Virginia. First thing he did was find a soccer team, moved to L.A. First thing he did was find a soccer team to have fun. So appreciate you.

I just want to thank you and your volunteers. Like I said before, this is a yeoman's effort. It's a large organization. I have some parking concerns. It's a little different because it's not the farmer's market, but they're parking everywhere they're not supposed to be. And I think, I suspect Rachel's working on that already. Communication is key and consequences. I'm a big, big believer in consequences. And so, yeah, If we could just, because what we get is, what I get is complaints about safety. You know, I was trying to whatever, because it's not just a soccer park. It's a 90-acre community gathering space. And so people come in not knowing that the soccer fields are right there and getting enmeshed or meshed or stuck in the traffic. I'm curious about your Just Ball initiative, which I had seen and really forgot to share. Of the 54 kids, are many of them new to your program?

We have asked that question. I can get you the data.

Okay, it's not important. I was just curious.

We know that some are.

And then the Get on the Bus program, which I think is really important because you probably are not aware that the DeKalb County school system provides no resources to kids to participate in after-school programming. Let me know if you need connections. The school system is not always so easy to work with, but... There is some commitment to athletics that wasn't there before. And also with the baseball fields, one of the benefits of having the baseball fields at Peachtree Middle School is that kids can walk over, which at least during the week, which I think is key. And I'll be really curious how these initiatives work. I'll send you an email with some local nonprofits that are working with kids that probably could benefit from this. And if you need connections after that, just let me know.

With the Just Ball, what's the breakdown between girls and boys?

Right now, it's the same, about 50-50. 50-50, that's great. We also have some of the school coaches involved in it. And that was part of our push, specifically the middle school coaches are all involved with it. And we want them to build a rapport with the athletes and then help them keep them involved. And then when they hold their tryouts, not all of those children are going to make the team. We actually have two opposite end issues. We didn't have enough girls trying out. We had way too many boys at the middle school level and at the high school level. Our aim is to grow those pools of players, but then this becomes the program that they can still play in if they don't make the team. What we find is they don't make the team and they hang their cleats up forever. And there's just one step in the journey. And I think everybody's familiar with the Michael Jordan story, right? I mean, I know he brews six inches or whatnot. That's the... The story behind it, you know, didn't make his team as a freshman or something. These kids need to face the adversity. That's great. But we also need to provide another pathway for them to come back to the sport. And so our aim moving forward is how do we keep them connected to it? Even if that's as a referee or as a mentor coach, we want to keep them involved in the sport for as long as we can.

With that said, because I had asked baseball, I had asked Peter, how many kids are you turning away each year in Dunwoody? You probably don't know that. There's not many. Okay. Because... So I don't know if you've paid any attention. I've been a little obsessed with how Norway does youth athletics versus how we do youth athletics. This is good for Peter, too. And they don't have the travel ball. They have a lot of participation. They're having tremendous results on the world stage. And I know we have a field space problem. I'm hoping we can work with you to solve it. Maybe it won't all be in Dunwoody. It's unlikely that it will all be in Dunwoody. But I'd like to see all these organizations not have... I mean, I get that you have to have a certain skill level, I guess. And maybe we need to bring back city recreational programs, but we don't have space either because we're sharing space. But something along the lines where kids have opportunity to learn, and maybe this is part of it, the Just Ball is a skills development, and then they can maybe get good enough to play the next year or something. But...

we know that keeping kids busy is key to keeping them out of trouble so anyway we are definitely more in line with that approach than maybe some i won't name competitors in the area um however we you know community and keeping the kids involved is super important to us we're looking at and devising additional programs all the time for how do we bridge the gap between How do we get them into rec? We believe that's new schools. How do we bridge the gap from rec to competitive? We've got pre-academy, we've got academy junior. We're looking at layers of programming. But we also want to break some of the barriers down, the access barriers. And that's where the outside funding is looking at. This fall will be our largest recreational program that we've ever had in Dunwoody. We also have a director that's leading that that is bilingual. That was an intent that we put somebody in there that can reach beyond communities. and into communities. And so we're trying to be very intentional. And my one request was going to be, could you help us with some of the connections that you guys have so we can continue to build our portfolio of relationships and connections? Because we're definitely stronger together. I know that we're in a World Cup year. I know that our men's team, by the way, achieved actually what they should have from the ranking. But there's a – this is – The mission statement of U.S. soccer is to be the preeminent sport. And for a short window here, we have been. And yes, we may go back to viewing others, and that's okay. We want to take advantage of the moment that we have. This is our moment. And it really is about leveraging children playing, not just the competitive children. Or in some cases, the competitive parents. Yes, that's a lot of it.

Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Next is chief Carlson.

Good evening, mayor and council. I'm here to talk about proposing a Dunwoody Police SWAT building, but essentially what it would be is a storage building. So over at the annex, what we're trying to do is propose a construction of a dedicated metal building to house all of the North Metro SWAT teams. As you know, it's us, Brookhaven, Doraville, and now Shambly, since Sandy Springs and Johns Creek have pulled away.

Okay.

So, um, we also have our anti-vehicle barricade that we've been using for the past two events. Um, uh, we can also keep that right now. It's in our parking lot, but we need a place to keep that, um, uh, to keep it out of the weather and, um, and out of our parking lot, because we're getting quite full over here. So we are a full tactical team, about 40 operators. I mentioned the cities, but at the bottom of the screen there, you'll see some vehicles that are going in there. What you don't see, we also have an MRAP, which is a very large vehicle. So right now, DeKalb Fire Station 21 has been, they've been great hosts. They've actually been storing one of our vehicles there and keeping it up with shore power. The glass alone is like $10,000. So we have to keep that out of the weather. Does impact their operations though. So, you know, at our earliest convenience, we've wanted to pull that out of there. Just, you know, they're not going to be there all the time. And, you know, yes, we have a way of getting in, but we want to keep that under our watch at all times. So the annex facility is basically centrally located between all the cities that are participating in our North Metro SWAT team. So having it right here in Dunwoody, it would have all of our vehicles. Right now, our equipment truck's over in Brookhaven. Our SWAT truck, yeah, our Bearcat is over... You know, at our fire station, the MRAP is over in Brookhaven. We're just kind of spread out right now. So we would like to kind of centralize our assets so we can respond equally to each jurisdiction. And also right now we're doing our physical agility test. This is the basic test for new applicants to get into the academy. And right now we have it over in one of the parks by Austin. This will actually allow us to bring it in-house so we can do it in all types of weather. We have to plan it around the weather because obviously we don't want anybody getting hurt out there. So this will allow us plenty of space to conduct the physical fitness test to get in. These are just some of the plans. Right now, I'm going to turn it over to CPS, and they're going to discuss a few of the milestones and the project schedule.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Jacob Adams, we're the program managers with CPS assisting the city with this project. A little bit update on where we're at schedule-wise. There's been a lot going on here recently that we're really excited about, so Last week, we put the project out for bid, looking for a general contractor. It will be a low bid project, so we look for the lowest responsible bidder based on the documents that we have submitted out for review. Concurrently, with procurement of a general contractor, we've also got all of our submissions for permitting in with both the building permit as well as the Cab County for the LDP itself. So those reviews are taking place simultaneously as we're undergoing procurement right now. We have a site walk scheduled for this week, so we will meet with general contractors on site where they can ask questions on the layout of the site itself, anything in the documents itself. And we'll be able to answer those on site and also through the procurement website. So it's all documented during the review and the. and the building of their bid package itself. We were looking to have those bids in and received by early August. We will go through the review process of those to make sure that we are selecting the lowest cost and what we feel can meet and fulfill the needs of the project itself. We will then come back and present those to you all slated for the council on 8-24 right now. And as soon as we get a general contractor selected, one of the first things that we want to do is begin the P&B procurement process. That will be the longest lead item, so to speak, in terms of making sure that we have the P&B coordinated in itself. They're coordinating with our structural designer to make sure that the building and the structural capacity meets the needs in place based on the current design documents that we have. And then we will ultimately procure the actual P&B equipment itself.

I'm sorry, what's P&B?

Pre-engineered metal building.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. We will then look to start construction at the end of this calendar year. The site work component will be one of the larger components on site, just with the utility upgrades, the grading itself, the stormwater management process. And the actual construction of the PMB will be relatively quick once we get it on site. It will fit together similar to a puzzle piece, and that will all be mapped out and planned and become prefabricated, if you will. So it will be put together like a puzzle piece, and then we will have the PMB in place, and we're tracking completion by March of next year.

Okay. Anybody have questions? Catherine? No. Okay. No. Go ahead. She said no.

Hi, Chief. Thank you for the presentation. I had to go back in and I was talking to another council member. I didn't remember that this was on the budget and it was in. So I just want to make sure that, you know, just the level set, I had to go back and look because I didn't remember. So, yeah. So right now in the current budget, we have from 25 and 2026, $1.1 million set aside for this project. 700k in 2025 and 400k in 2026 um as far as the next steps of when it'll be brought up to council again when would that happen for a vote if there if it exceeds that budget well that we would have to prove the count the build it has to be approved by us regardless right um so You will know approximately when, do you think you'll know about when the bids will come back from having a swag closer price estimate? I'm curious on that. August 28th. So August 28th. Is that what you're saying? Yes. That's when you're going to have the bids back and present. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that, Mr. Gaith. Didn't need to have that.

How long does it take to evaluate the bids? Like when do you think we'll see it on a council agenda?

About two weeks.

Okay. So sometime at the end of September. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

And we have already made sure, because there's the, there's a, we haven't updated our transportation plan, but even the Georgetown small area character plan, it does refer to a possible Peachford Road connection. And I believe that this does not preclude that. Just want to make sure that this does not preclude that it should that, in the future want to have that connection, correct?

That's exactly right, Councilman. And this drawing, this plan accommodates for a road to go through our five-acre track. And also, I looked earlier today at the plat of our property. This, where the current building is, is there now. And then the proposed building is up at the top of the proposed building is about the halfway mark of that property. In other words, that's on the first two and a half to three acres. There's another two to two and a half acres above that. When I say it's above it, I'm stacking it from the road up because it's a rectangle is the shape of the property, roughly a rectangle. And so we have about two plus acres available still to be developed or to be...

remain natural now that does not include the road into that two acres but the road is accommodated within that design right thanks thank you uh eric i also had uh that question because when i looked at the slide i didn't i kind of zoomed in i thought it was the entire property rather than it's just the front. And I appreciate you showing me that we have that extra space because eventually to the west of that, that might be redeveloped. There's one story, low density office buildings, and there's a new developer potentially, and they could do something. So, you know, we want to kind of keep flexibility as long as, you know, obviously I'm assuming that community development is involved and aware and so on. So, okay. Well, those are my questions. I appreciate the level setting and updating. Thank you.

All right, anybody else? Thank you. We look forward to seeing the next steps. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, everybody. Before you start, Sharon, I have a question. For these public hearings, are we doing each one individually? Where is community development?

It depends on how they're planning to present. Okay.

Which would be community development?

The way we handled this at Planning Commission was I gave a presentation for both the rezoning and the special land use permit, but we did, they are separate items, so we had separate public comment periods, but I didn't do the presentation twice.

What about number seven? You did that separate, but that's Allegra.

That's Allegra, so she'll go after. It's a totally separate process.

All right, so you're going to do one presentation, but we're going to have two public hearings. Sure. I'm sure I can manage that.

Okay. I'll go ahead and read both resolutions for five and six, correct?

I believe just one at a time. You read one at a time and then I'll open the

So number five, the resolution reads, an ordinance to amend the zoning conditions of landlot parcel number 18-350-01-167 in consideration of zoning case RZ26-01 for 4725 Ashford-Dunwoody Road to authorize concurrent variances from Chapter 27, Section 98B6, Section 98D7, Section 98D8, and Section 209 of the zoning code.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. The item before you this evening is both a combined rezoning and special land use permit, and then also some associated concurrent variances. And this is all to consider the redevelopment of the old Walmart parcel, essentially reusing that old building and allowing a new grocery store to operate there. A little bit of background i'm sure we're all familiar with the walmart building, but it was reason back in the early 90s for commercial use and then walmart came back in 2004 with some changes. To their building and that pushed them into another rezoning process and so those were modified in 2004 the building has been vacated since 2024 when walmart left. The current proposed development, and I'll go into a little bit more detail of the specifics of the rezoning requests, but I just want you to understand the project overall. So the proposed development is to utilize the existing building in site, and on the right hand is a site plan. You can see that the Kroger is highlighted in red, and then there's a little orange box. That's because this building will no longer serve one tenant. It will be split into two essentially two units. So the Kroger will be about 116,000 square feet. And then the remaining 185 out of, oh gosh, I can't do math. The remaining 60,000 square feet would be the other tenant. The main changes that they're proposing to the building other than the interior reworking is to modify the front facade and add a drive-through for a pharmacy. I just zoomed in on the site plan just to show you that drive through a little bit better. They would just be along the front. It would essentially add a lane up to the front facade and they would have a pickup window. I drew some red lines just to show how we would propose that the landscape island there be made a little bit bigger so that pedestrian crossing is a little narrower and safer for people walking across there. But otherwise, this was the proposal for the pharmacy drive-through. And then on the bottom is just an elevation of it. Essentially, it's literally just a pickup window in the front facade. And then the third proposal portion of the new project would be a fuel center. And that would be, again, I zoomed in, but this is up at the front near Meadow Lane at that intersection of Meadow Lane and the entrance to the shopping center. And that would be not a traditional fuel center with like a convenience store. It's more just a small kiosk and then just the gas canopy. And then lastly, they are also making some site improvements, so that includes parking lot improvements like new landscape islands, replacing some of the dead and dying trees that are within the islands, adding new islands, and also adding a new pedestrian connection from Meadow Lane. Right now there's not a good pedestrian circulation system on site. And so that would be a great improvement to the project. There are a lot of people in this area that walk, so it would provide sort of a shaded walkway to the front of the Kroger from Meadow Lane. I also marked off in a white X down at the bottom because they've also closed off one of their internal drives just to make that pedestrian connection more seamless. That was a suggestion from the Planning Commission that they incorporated into this plan. And then the red arrow up on the right hand side, that's just marking where they're deficient in their pedestrian circulation requirements. They're not connecting to the adjacent parcel. And then the sort of section here is showing the pedestrian walkway. So you can see that there is a sidewalk that's grade separated from the drive aisle. It will have pedestrian lighting and it will also have tree canopy as well. And these are the elevations the facade materials would remain the same, they are just making those minor modifications to the. exterior to refigure the entrance and to add the drive through and then the bottom is the elevation for the gas station, which again is very simple because it's just mostly canopy and a small kiosk. So to get into a little bit more detail about the actual zoning requests. The first one is for the reasoning, which is a modification of the zoning conditions. They're not actually requesting to change the underlying zoning, which is C1, which is our local commercial district. Essentially, they have to amend the conditions because the conditions are very specific to that Walmart that was there and they are making changes. You essentially can't do anything without updating the site plan. And then the Kroger has specific uses that they're requesting to add. Those old zoning conditions do restrict the gas station use. That is an allowed use within the local commercial zoning district, but it's specifically restricted by the zoning conditions. They're also, and this is maybe a typo from... Before they're not wanting to remove the time restrictions, they're wanting to amend the time restrictions on deliveries. And they also want to remove minimum parking requirements. That's actually conflicting with our code. And then the special land use permit is for the drive-through use specifically. And then they're requesting for concurrent variances for design requirements, pedestrian circulation requirements, and streetscape. So I'll break this down a little bit more. The site plan is to accommodate the new parking lot improvements and the changes that they're making with the gas station. They are again wanting to remove that condition, restricting the gas station. They want to amend the allowable delivery hours. Those specific delivery hours were determined at the planning commission meeting. This is what the applicant has proposed and what the Planning Commission accepted. So they are proposing delivery hours from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday to Sunday. Their current allowable delivery hours, which were based on Walmart's model, were 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. We also included new conditions for the dedication of a floating easement for future trail development. and a security camera plan. The security camera plan was also requested by Planning Commission and the applicant has provided that. A little note on the trail easement. They have agreed to provide an easement to the city for the construction of a portion of the North Nancy Creek Greenway. This is a pretty big connection and an important connection for that project. We've actually built out a little bit of it already down at Two Bridges Park. The green would be the actual trail as it's shown on our master trail map. And then I just added an orange line where we would need a temporary construction easement in order to be able to build that portion of the trail. As far as the special land use permit goes, it's to allow the drive through. drive-through and perimeter center, as we know, does require a special, it requires special permission. Because of the specific design of the drive-through, with it being on the front of the building, and with it being in an existing shopping center, they're not meeting the technical design requirements of the perimeter center overlay. Those design requirements are For what you think of more as a traditional drive through and a small standalone building. And this is not that. And so they are having to request concurrent variances for the design of that drive through. And again, I mentioned this briefly earlier. But we are requesting that they make that landscape island a little bit bigger to make those pedestrian crossings. Shorter that was actually on a previous version of the plan, and we would just like them to to bring that back. As far as the drive-through impacts, it's so far from the street and the parking lot is so big that we don't really anticipate it having any impacts on our public right-of-way. And it also has a fairly wide drive aisle in front of the Walmart as well, so we don't necessarily see it posing much congestion in that area either. There's a lot of room to move around. For the concurrent variances, As I stated about the drive-through, it's not necessarily meeting the model that we've set forth in our code. And then same for the gas stations. The gas station design requirements are written for a gas station that has a convenience store, essentially, and it requires that to be built in front of it. And it just really doesn't match up with this specific model, and so they're requesting relief from those requirements. They're also requesting... relief from the pedestrian circulation requirements. They are making significant pedestrian circulation improvements. But like I said, they're not meeting that connection to the adjacent shopping center property. And then as far as the streetscape requirements go, they have a very small frontage on Meadow Lane, and we don't necessarily have any plans to update that streetscape majorly. And so, rather than do the streetscape requirements, they are to mitigate that providing the trail connection, but they still technically need a variance. The planning commission did recommend approval. They did have some suggestions. These 4 additional conditions number 1 and number 4 are actually. in the written conditions of the recommended conditions that we've provided. And then number two and three were worked into the site plan when they provided an updated site plan. So overall, this is staff's recommendation. We are recommending approval subject to four exhibits, the site plan, the elevations, the trail easement. The trail easement still is in a draft stage, but we do anticipate having the final document ready for the next council meeting. And then the last exhibit is the camera plan. And that's basically just showing the location of the security cameras on site. And then several conditions tying them to the site plan, you know, and the architecture that they've shown in our elevations. Some other key restrictions in here are for the truck deliveries as well. So if you guys have any questions about these specific conditions, I'm happy to answer them. And I'll also bring up the applicant here so they can give their presentation.

The applicant comes first before we can answer questions. We have public hearing before we ask questions. Hello.

Evening, everybody.

Evening.

I'm here for Kroger. Laurel David with the Galloway Law Group. I've got... Madeline's done a great job summarizing everything, but we have some renderings and some other illustrations, so I'm going to go through at least some of the facts pretty quickly, but I do want to go through the full presentation so I can show you the renderings of some of the things that she already talked about. First I wanted to introduce rendering of the new store, and you'll see it'll be an improvement over what is there now, in particular, to the parking field, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Kroger will have some new departments in this particular store, in particular the baby section, which will have children's clothing. They'll have some home goods section. Actually, there's one in the Kroger store that I shop at. It's great. It has lots of kitchen gadgets that I buy and then never use. And then specialty cheeses and meat section as long as with their normal delicatessen offerings. Kroger has a lot of philanthropic initiatives, which I'm not sure, certainly I wasn't really familiar with them. Their Zero Hunger, Zero Waste plan has donated more than 3 billion meals. They've got donations in kind and surplus food, as well as 1.3 billion in charitable giving for hunger relief. And in Metro Atlanta, they donate not only food and money, but help establish and support school food pantries and to nonprofits addressing food insecurities. And then they also donate to and are supportive of community nonprofits and neighborhood groups. Here's the site plan that Madeline shared. The trees and landscaping that are in that bright green, those are areas that are being added to the existing parking field. They've also reduced the parking spaces by about 100 spaces. It's yielded an overall net increase of, or rather, decrease of lot coverage by about 35,000 square feet. Here's the metal lane connection and the cross section of what that pathway is going to look like. As you see, it will connect metal lane to the actual main entrance. And then there will be bicycle parking there at the main entrance as well. And here's just a rendering of what that pathway will look like. The truck circulation in the fuel center, which is canopy with pumps, is sort of typical Kroger one or grocery store fuel center, if you've seen them. You'll notice on the right to the actual fuel center is a sort of pale yellow area. Those are the fuel tanks. The hashed area next to it is where the trucks will be able to pull over out of the way of fuel. people who are trying to access the fuel center, and they can fill up the fuel tanks from there. This also shows that the location of the existing drive, there was a curb cut there, and we removed that at the recommendation of Planning Commission. And here's the fuel Center sort of a a prototype a typical one sort of similar to what this one will look like notice there'll be an attendant will be present during opening hours. There also will be a small kiosk there with sort of grab and go snacks and drinks and bottles of water, but no alcohol. Here's the drive-through. This is actually the revised drive-through. We agree we will revise the plan so we can take that condition out and we can just tie it to the plan that we had originally, which had the shorter throats for the pedestrian crossings. Making those access points wider was actually a recommendation of Planning Commission, which is why we changed the plan. And here's a rendering of the drive through area, you see the the screening will be provided by the landscaping as well as providing a separation and between the pedestrians will be accessing the sidewalk, which is on our side as you're looking at the landscaping. The security overall for the area is got a fairly extensive camera plan. It didn't come out very well on the PowerPoint, I'm afraid, but you can just kind of sort of make them out in blue Basically, there are a total of 13 cameras as well as a mobile camera station that will be in the middle of the parking area there. There are also going to be gatekeeper stops on all of the shopping carts. Every store will have a loss prevention officer. There'll be lighting in the lot as well as along the pedestrian walkway in addition to those cameras. And I did want to point out, well, you can just fuzzily make out the frontage. You'll notice that the dash line is quite far from the property line, which is also the right-of-way line there at the bottom from Meadow Lane. One of the main reasons for that distance is we are giving an extra five feet of right-of-way for future potential treescape improvements as part of a city's overall project. We accept staff's conditions with two caveats. One, it will make that change to the drive-through, which I've already mentioned. And the other is the addition to condition number nine, which is about the location of a temporary construction easement. We are still working on that language exactly. And one of the main challenges actually of working out this easement agreement is trying to create an easement agreement for something that is going to go in a general area, but we don't know exactly where. But we thank to Public Works, Michael Smith in particular, for helping us work through that. I believe there's some input as well from the city attorney. We have agreed to everything conceptually, and we're just finalizing the actual agreement document, and that will be presented to you at the next meeting. With that, I'd ask for your approval. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. I'm going to open the public hearing unless there's an objection. Seeing none, the public hearing is opened and there will be 10 minutes per side. If anyone would like to speak for this application and this project, you can approach the microphone. And if there's more than one person, you can line up. And that side would have 10 minutes.

Okay.

If anyone would like to speak in opposition of this application, approach the microphone and introduce yourself so that the clerk will have your name and you'll have 10 minutes or if there's other people waiting, there's 10 minutes per side. Go ahead.

Hey, good evening. My name's David Mann. I live in the Asford Chase community, which backs up to this development. I'm actually for the Kroger being in the facility. I received a letter, so I'm seeing the information for the first time. The one aspect of it I would oppose is extending the delivery to 11 p.m. So if there's a pool, a tennis court, and a park, Um, and then there's also homes that are along there. When Walmart was there, you can easily hear the trucks, you know, beeping as they back up and then you hear them hit the dock plate and it can be pretty loud. So it's, it'd be not ideal for neighbors that are trying to go to bed late and they hear a truck. It also is a noise pollution when you're trying to enjoy the pool on a Saturday or take your little kids to the park, but can understand that, um, it would want to limit the noise. I mean, Walmart set a precedent, would prefer not to extend that. I don't know if you can do some sort of neutral sound absorbing wall where the truck docks are, but that's really the one aspect that I wanted to call out. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone who else would like to speak in opposition? Come on up. There's plenty of time remaining.

and just introduce yourself for yes good good evening i'm yolanda castles and i also am a live in the same subdivision ashford chase and i've been there for 20 years now so i lived through the walmart um era and the trucks delivering very early and very late at night and uh my heart breaks to think that we're going to have to go back to that schedule when we fought so hard to get that delivering schedule reduced. So I would definitely oppose to those hours as well. Thank you. That's it.

Thank you. Is there any further comments opposing this? All right. Seeing none, that concludes, unless there's an objection, the public hearing. And now it's time for council discussion questions of the staff or applicant. Catherine.

Thank you. One question I have is about the pedestrian walkway. Was the applicant stating that the pathway in front of the proposed drive-through is the same width as the painted lines on either side.

I'm not sure what I said exactly, actually. And I can't see your face, Catherine. I'm sorry about that. I think the confusion has arisen because the original design that we had for the pedestrian crossing On the drive-through, you can see the crossing markings on the entrance and at the exit. Those were narrower on our original design. At Planning Commission, the recommendation was to make those two access throats wider. And staff is now recommending that they go back to their original configuration, which was a shorter distance, a lane wide, which Planning Commission was concerned that there wouldn't be enough room for cars to turn into the drive while there's plenty of room. I mean, it's been designed and looked at by our engineers. So making those or rather, I should say, putting those crosswalks back to their more narrow state is not going to be a problem. Hopefully that answers your question.

No, I don't. I don't understand. Are you talking about the painted lines? Yes.

Yes, I don't know if my cursor works. Does my cursor work there? Yes, there it is. Yeah, right here. This width here.

Yeah.

And this width here. You can see actually the hash marks. That's kind of sort of where the original curve was there. And then here. So what we do, and if you can remember Madeline's drawing where she had red lines, we'd make this landscape island longer, continue the sidewalk to there, and then they cross at the crosswalk. Similarly here, we make it a little bit wider here, extend the sidewalk, and then they pedestrian across on the crosswalk.

Will the sidewalk be the same width as the crosswalk?

I don't know. It's five feet. Yes. I'm getting a nod yes from the civil engineer.

Okay. Now moving right on my screen, what is your objection to getting a pedestrian connection from your shopping center to the next one?

There's a very small landscape island there. And the struggle was, and it has a tree in it. So the struggle was, do we make that connection and basically take out that landscape island and the tree? Or do we leave it the way it is? And ultimately, we work with staff and decide to keep the tree and the landscape island. It's not very far. There would be a crosswalk for them to walk over towards where the landscape island is. And then even if they got onto an area, there's another pavement area they would have to walk across to get to the next building.

So you would put in a crosswalk to that landscape item that I see is at this corner greenish area?

Yes.

Okay. About the 6 a.m. Yeah. Oh, no. So.

Yeah, I was hoping it's not on this plan because it's the plans only for the Kroger parcel.

And I'm going to presume that they did not have any kind of crosswalk prior. The Walmart didn't?

No. No, ma'am.

Okay. About a 6 a.m. delivery time and 11 p.m., that seems like a very, very broad window with housing units behind it. Is that required or preferred by Kroger?

I'm going to let our Atlanta construction manager come and talk a little bit more about the operations. I will say that those times were discussed with immediately adjacent owners who were at the planning commission and immediately adjacent people who shared property boundary with this parcel. And part of the challenge is making sure that there are delivery time windows that coincide with the opening of the store. But I'll let Taylor Jenkins address that further.

Thank you. Hi, thank you so much. I'm Taylor Jensen, the Senior Construction Manager for the Atlanta Kroger Division. When we modified it, when we were looking at it, there was the original about when we could do the delivery hours. And for our process, by making that adjustment, it also reduces the traffic and the number of trucks that come through, as you mentioned, on the weekends and things like that by balancing it. It allows us to match those hours. It also allows to be a lot more enforceable, a little easier because they match our business hours as well. We found those to be successful. in the areas where we do have restrictive delivery. So we were trying to kind of balance those pieces out to match both working hours and also be fair to not increase additional trucks through the parking lot and in the areas because in terms of how we're running the regular business. So that seemed to be the best compromise. Normally we don't have restrictions. So we were kind of working through The two pieces of making sure we don't have more trucks during the daytime hours in the traffic areas around it by balancing out to that little bit wider net matching our business model.

Well, they're not really daytime hours. You're saying working hours because into the night, that'll be.

um well i what i was saying was that and i'm actually you're right i can't see her so you kind of feel really weird um when uh when we don't have them the full hours that we normally do most of our deliveries um a lot of them are at night or frozen food deliveries are dairy deliveries that are non-dsd meaning not the mayfield dairy trucks not the free-to-lay trucks but those are always during the day but the big tractor trailers usually come at night knowing that that's closer to our community and our neighbors We're pulling those back in. So our overnight truck works all night long. That's how we stock our stores to not have as much daytime traffic of the trucks in the parking lots in delivering. So it's that balance. That's why when we can adjust it a little bit closer to our working hours, which we, even though we're not open to the customer, we are open all night long. Our employees are stocking overnight, right? So that's how we balance the work. And so they work inside the stores.

Why did the adjacent neighbors stay about the 6 a.m. or 11 p.m. delivery time?

That seemed to be the compromise we made at the time because originally we were asking to remove the delivery restrictions. And so we made the compromise because, like I said, normally we don't have those. But in the jurisdiction we have, this seems to be the best fit to Matt. And it's also a lot easier to confirm with our vendors and making sure that there's no Mistakes, I guess, is a good way to put it, where trucks come at the wrong times.

Did the Walmart previously have these same hours? Because they had a grocery.

The Walmart hours, those nighttime deliveries stopped at 9 p.m. and their morning delivery started at 9 a.m.

Okay. All right. Those are my questions. I'll yield. Thank you.

Go ahead, Stacey. So I did have a question with the word in the variance with the delivery. It says deliveries, but what about dumpsters? What about pickups? Because that is something that we would want. to fit in those hours as well?

The dumpsters would always be during daytime hours. Our contracts are along those timelines. They wouldn't be dumpster pickups overnight.

But I guess, and I understand that, but shouldn't that be in writing too?

Sure. We'll be glad to put that in writing. I believe our contracts with our compactor, we use a compactor system as well. With those providers, we can get that information to you and add it to them.

I just...

I think dumpsters make as much noise as no that's a great idea I mean thank you for pointing that out we can certainly adjust go ahead Rob um so I have I guess a mix of questions for I guess both the applicant and staff and since we've been talking noise I'll stick on on that first and that's just if there's any noise abatement that could be added to the project um I just brought Google Earth up and the back of the closest house to the closest loading bay is not even 60 meters. So some of these neighbors in the adjacent neighborhood are right next to this loading dock. And if you're wanting longer hours, I would love to see some way to reduce the overall noise that might leave the site.

So currently, now remember, we are not the right-hand tenant.

Yeah.

And on the left-hand side, there is currently, when you're looking on Google Earth, there is currently a, I want to say it's a 15 foot tall wall by the full length of the dock block wall that now we did due to testing that the planning group asked us to review. And you could still hear some of it, but there's not much more that we can improve. We are keeping that wall to help buffer the sound for sure. We're not removing anything, but on the, is this still sharing?

Yeah, it's got the site.

So let me see if I can zoom in. right here the existing block wall is that full length there so when the trucks are operating you know obviously when they're backing in there is the sound but once they're at the dock while they may be running and then floating the sound is complete is covered so i i do understand that sound carries but i believe that's why it's a highly unusual wall i'll be quite frank in terms of what we see i'm sure that's why walmart built it That way, because when we looked at it, we're like, boy, that solves a problem. So I'm sure it was tremendously louder. We did do the testing we asked. And so that's kind of where we looked at it to make sure that nothing was removed in that area to try and help reduce the sound.

Right. Security, you guys talked about. cameras and all that i'm sure you heard the stories about um shoplifting at the previous walmart so i would just encourage you to work with the police department to kind of coordinate um efforts there for the gas station just a curiosity if there's any infrastructure for potential future ev chargers um or if that would have to be are you putting any laying any any wire or giving yourself the potential to include that at some point?

So one of the things that we usually do with the EV chargers, we partner with one of the local vendors, whether it's EV America or Volt or Tesla. We don't do that at the same time because of the requirements on the power. But usually what we do is we work with them to find the areas that they're interested in and then after we open a store we come back to it or in other areas where they're interested so it's a mutually beneficial agreement where we work within the parking lots what we would do in this situation because it it changes that we don't power it straight from ours they usually work towards bringing in an additional transformer if that helps but we would work with our um our real estate partner to try and find a vendor that would like to be in the area and work with them to bring some of those to the community. But at this time, I don't have a partner yet.

That's fine. I just was curious since you're wanting to offer gas if at some point you would.

No, we do. We try to work through that. I will be honest, I'm kind of disappointed it takes so long to do it. But we're working through multiple ones now. We have some other stores recently that we've been trying to get, but there's been a lot of change in the EV charging industry. And so we're kind of working through those challenges that they have.

And then looking at the, and this may be more of a staff question, looking at the request for the drive-through for the pharmacy, I can definitely see the need for a drive-through pharmacy. You could have people with mobility issues, people with sick kids, you don't want to get them out of the car. Is there a way to restrict if we do approve a drive-through that it only be used for pharmacy purposes? Just in case, Hypothetically, Kroger starts doing gangbusters and sub sales and they also want to start selling subs out of the drive-thru. Can we keep it so that it would only be for a pharmacy?

I have that same exact thought. Let me check and see if I wrote it into the conditions, but if not, we can certainly add it. the text is so tiny. I will double check and make sure that that condition is in there.

Yeah. Um, last comment I had, I, I think I like our staff's recommendation on the, the drive-through entry and exit. I, I don't know that you'll get a tremendous number of people walking by, but I think you can get people parking and then walking across those driveways. And so I think a narrower, um, pedestrian crossing would be safer there. Um, and then just one, my last comment is more of just an observation. Uh, you had a slide with all the, um, The charities that Kroger supports, there's a nonprofit called Second Helpings that rescues food, you know, eggs with half the eggs cracked or, you know, produce kind of past its prime to deliver to food pantries. Just throwing it out there as an idea completely unrelated to the project, but just I think a nice organization in the area that would be a good one to add.

I'll be glad to share that with our community affairs manager. I don't know. Last night on Family to Family, they did a piece about some of the different organizations that we work with. And we can share those. I think some of those we do participate with. U.S. Foods.

You may. I'm not sure who all they participate with. I just know it's a great way to save stuff. It'll reduce your dumpster costs, right?

Because you're not going to be... We absolutely do. We do really try towards work to it. And also our construction projects have objectives where we recycle and try to shoot for 95% of our construction waste is recycled and diverted away from the landfills during all of our construction projects, whether new or existing from the sites. so that we can prevent that. And we require all of our contractors document that and turn it in with each one of their draws.

Well, that's all the questions I have right now. So if anyone else.

Thank you. Yeah, just overall, I mean, I think this is a You know, a great use for this site. You know, I'm sure the other tenants in that shopping center will be glad to have an anchor there as well. Overall, I like a lot of the improvements, the improved pedestrian access, the additional landscape islands. I like the thoughtfulness at the fuel center of the placement of the underground storage tanks and the dedicated parking for the tanker trucks. That always bothers me when you're trying to get into a gas station and there's a delivery and you can't drive through it. So but the fact that that one also on that crossroad won't be blocking that as well as good. I have two questions and they're they're kind of probably more directed at staff. So, Madeline, there you are. I could see behind the pole. So there was questions on the proposed delivery hours. I know that we're dealing with the Kroger side, but this is one big parcel. If we accept the delivery hours as proposed, does that also apply to the adjacent part of the building that Kroger is not? So whenever that is filled by another retailer, because there's another loading dock on the other side, would those same Would that negate the entire conditions from the original movie? zoning the way the condition is written now the this reasoning is for that entire 4725 parcel which is inclusive of both of these tenant suites so it would apply the new deliver as would apply to whoever goes in next door as well correct okay um and I also have another question it's kind of related to even though I know this is the Kroger parcel uh up in the front where the uh where the existing guarding center is in front of the Walmart it says that it's going to be removed is that going to be removed as part of the Kroger Construction, because I have a reason for asking that, because I'm concerned that if it stays there, that people pulling out of the drive-thru are going to have limited sight trying to pull out, because it's right next to where the drive-thru driveway is for the pharmacy, and I'd hate for people to be pulling out in front of cars or something like that.

My understanding is everything on that side, the garden center would be part of the second tenant suite. And so I don't believe that's in Kroger's proposal to remove that. So whoever is doing that work would remove it unless you guys want to make that as a condition.

I would like that to be evaluated to make sure that there's not a visibility issue with the drive-through because that garden center goes right up to the parking lot. Yeah.

Michael Ogden with Kimco Realty, the owners of the shopping center. We're actually working with a tenant now. We're working on a lease and thought we had revised the language of that. But the intention is to actually pull that front wall back. So it lines up more with the fronts of the stores. So it would be a big gap. It wouldn't be a wouldn't be a sight distance issue as you're coming out of the drive through.

I'm going by memory, but there's like brick pillars and

John Gerstle, Like iron fencing or something around intention is just if you could magically pick it up and slide it back 30 or 40 feet that's what we would be doing.

John Gerstle, Okay, so there won't be any visibility issues of people going out of the correct Okay, that was my question, thank you.

Karen Hollweg, i'm. Karen Hollweg, Joe.

Thanks. Yeah, I think that this overall is a really, it's a good improvement as the other council members have alluded to. I appreciate the additional landscaping, additional trees, improved pedestrian access from what is there, the future trail easement. I think it's a good overall redevelopment opportunity because it's an empty, vacant area. building and the whole shopping center area needs an uplift. So thank you for that quality grocery store. Of course, I'm over at Orchard Park. Wink, wink. I go over there. Dot, dot, dot. Um, but, um, with that said, um, I do support the overall project, but it doesn't necessarily mean every component. So I've got some questions primarily regarding the drive-through of the pharmacy and I'm going to ask staff first. And I just like you to respectfully just kind of talk staff and then the applicant just chime in on your responses as well. But so basically, um, Madeline, originally you all recommended putting the pharmacy over on the West side of the building, right? Um, um, What was the impediment? Why didn't that west side of the building continue moving forward there on that side?

The applicant has always proposed it on the front of the building. At the beginning of the process, we did ask them to explore putting it on the west side of the building. They said logistically they cannot make it work. One of the main reasons that they've cited, if you can see my mouse on the screen, is the distance between the side of the world market and the corner of the Kroger building. It's very narrow. And they also, and they can maybe speak more to it, but...

the circulation for that they didn't want people having to go behind the loading docks of these buildings in order to access the drive-through right i mean i've talked to some other folks in the planning world and they seem to think that the west side could have been feasible um so let's kind of just go about the layout of that frontage we talked about the pedestrian access and points have we i'm not an expert of designing that safe access okay i mean are they Are we doing everything we can? Pretty much have you looked at any alternatives that we haven't even discussed regarding just making it easily accessible, making sure that when people are in cars, they're just so distracted driving and everything. Are they raised crossings? What are we doing to the nth degree to really make sure that people sitting in cars are going to slow down and be anticipating and expect potentially some people walking in front of their paths?

Um, 1 of the main, um, improvements from the previous iteration. Um, 1 of our planning commissioners, Elizabeth is, um, is actually a civil engineer. And so she recommended, um, closing this used to be a driveway. If you can see my mouse and it used to connect all the way through, and it was fairly close to the intersection. Um. And that was a good suggestion on her part because it does make that a more seamless transition. It makes that intersection safer as well. And it makes it better for pedestrians. There's two crosswalks across the drive aisles. They essentially took this parking bay here and made it just basically a green land strip all the way with the sidewalk. So you're really only crossing the two drive aisles. Those drive aisles do have crosswalks with decorative paving. They're not raised crosswalks, but that is certainly something that can be explored.

Could we ask the applicant if they would be fine with having those raised crossings versus just at grade on the... I mean, you don't have to commit to it right now, this moment. You can confer with staff and

I think we can look into with our engineers. One of the things that we've learned is that with every solution creates its own set of problems. So I would hate to speak with it without really evaluating that. I think speed humps and speed, you know, the mechanically fastened speed stop items, we've seen that when we've had to mitigate certain areas. With the fuel trucks, I'm a little hesitant to raise that because of that particular type of thing where it causes wear and tear. a little sooner, but we can certainly investigate if there's some more tactile options that we can do without raising it, which might be an opportunity to assist in what you're concerned about.

Okay, yeah, if you could just chat with staff between now and the next time, as well as the raised around where the pharmacy access is there.

The thing that I wanted to share with you there that may not be as available, as aware here, is that what we did to also make it safer was the walkway between the trees, right? The landscaping divides the cars between the walkway in front so that there's a defined space to make people feel more comfortable as they traverse in front of it, giving them, you know, just that ability where the cars are delineated. They're very, you know, they have a clear line. And we thought that that would help as opposed to the other side where the landscape would buffer. So that was one of the compromises that we worked with with staff.

Sure. Yeah. No, that's that. That's appreciative. Was there any discussion as the flow of you got, which direction, did staff look at evaluating, this is, you know, which way they were flowing through, so the entry and exit, did you look at both ways and was there... Anything better because of the lesser conflicts would have been lesser or does it doesn't matter would have been just 5050.

No, I think it has to be the driver's side has to be next to the building. Sorry, I just didn't want anybody to go down an unnecessary route at all.

OK, thanks. Thanks. All right. And then so just for the applicant as well. Look, I understand, you know, you have other Kroger stores that don't have a drive through and they have pharmacies. We've got one in Orchard Park, one in Georgetown. What is your operational reason that you need to have a drive-thru?

So since 2001, almost all of the Kroger stores, the locations that we've done, have opened with a fuel center and a pharmacy drive-thru. It's part of our service to our customers. It makes us unique and gives us the value add. It also helps customers. We're a family-based company. We're about making sure that we service all all of our customers. That's part of why we do pick up online ordering, the deliveries to your home, and to be able to shop inside our stores. This is one of those values for our pharmacy customers as well because, you know, and then one thing to remember is they don't normally, they drop off or they pick up. We don't really allow people to wait the 20 to 30 minutes because it does take longer than five minutes to fill a prescription. So as a rule, it turns very quickly and our architects and engineers are make sure that there's a longer breath so that you have the ability for a longer vehicle to be in there and not block the queuing. So this one is designed thinking in mind because for the most part, people drop it off, come get it later. And it allows for our customers that are picking up kids from preschool or on their way to soccer practice or whatever to just grab that prescription. One thing to help you as well was we have limited, our pharmacy hours are different. So even though in the later evenings,

this when our pharmacies usually close about 8 p.m and so we have a little different timeline on that it's not that that pharmacy drive-through is open until 11. all right thanks i mean and i do have a bit of concern regarding the two homeowners that are jason in the back regarding the extension of the delivery hours and i'd like to see what we can do to mitigate that you ma'am okay all right thank you for this application

We're eager to see that this project happens. However, we are smart people. And I did a little Googling and found that in Livonia, Michigan, I didn't try very hard. They have some restrictions on the delivery hours. It was approved 20 years ago. No idea if they're still following them. But it seems like to me that we can figure something out. Whether we have... we can figure something out where we can make some adjustment so that we don't disturb the peace. And whether that is, or disturb the peace more than already was, whether that is some kind of cone of silence, which might mean additional noise, something I know you said the wall is unusual, or there's a store open at 6 a.m., So there's no front door delivery. Because I shop at Georgetown and there's a fair number of deliveries that come through the front door there because the back is so congested or whatever. But there has to... We can figure this out. We don't have to figure it out right now, but I think we can work with staff. We can figure out if there's a way to limit the number of trucks. We've already said we're not doing overnight, which is good. I will point out that none of the Dunwoody stores do overnight deliveries. I don't think. They're not supposed to based on what I found. Maybe they are. The point about the trash compactor is really important. Can we push it so I can see the store now? I'm just seeing the parking lot. Okay. All right. So Madeline, will you use the cursor? And that's where the trucks are, right? Isn't that white area? Correct. That's the leading dock. And then where is the trash compactor going to be? Or we don't know yet.

It's actually this. I'm trying to make some difference, but it's here.

So it's to the side. So it's further away from where people live. One of the points in something I read or something is that, I think it was a letter from a citizen, is that, and I just had an experience with this at a hotel, which is maintenance needs to be restricted. Like if you're maintaining the property behind the store near the residence, that needs to have some restrictions as well because it was hot. They started working at four in the morning in Texas a few weeks ago when we were at a hotel. landscaping for maintenance, but it could be a pothole that needs to be filled. I mean, I think that if we could insert the word maintenance into that, but we have, No, you're right. There is code restrictions. There's actually code restrictions related to that. So maybe Richard's saying it doesn't need to be in there because there's code restrictions.

Other than just non-emergency.

Right. Well, there's always emergencies, but you don't need to put it in because our code addresses it. I don't know what we're going to do, Laurel. Is there some room for compromise here for the delivery? Like, can we change it by a half hour on each end?

an hour is there anything go ahead I think what I could do is I can go back to our operations department and I think what I'd like to propose if it's acceptable to you would be keep it simple stupid and we'll do 7 a.m to 10 p.m Monday through Sunday like all week long every day seven it Let's see, wait, did I say that wrong? 7 a.m. 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. So that way there's not a variation on the different days. It still allows us to have that extra timeline because keep in mind with getting off the 285 and that traffic and everything like that, part of that is making sure we don't add to it, right? The trucks in the back, the ones you see in the front, those are DSD vendors, which happen during the day, but they're not late at night. Those are strictly usually end about 2 or 3 p.m. in the afternoon. We don't control those. The tractor trailers are the piece that we're really talking about, which creates that extra noise. And it's the dock driven items that you were requesting. So if I'll take that back to our leadership and see if that's more favorable and works both for the community as well as us. OK, we'll get some feedback on that, too.

I did see that in Statesboro. They just approved, it hasn't started, but there was some limitations on the delivery hours at that store. We haven't fully worked through all that on the Statesboro location, but yes, it's a new location down there. I'm paying a lot of attention. So, okay, we're going to work that out. We can figure this out. Is there not a way, I know we talked about the wall that's there, and I know that inherently trucks are noisy, but it's 2026. Is there not a way to control, beyond like sound controls, like absorption stuff. Is there not a way just to make the truck be quieter? No.

No, that's not something that I have within my construction. Okay.

Well, I would love to, but I didn't know if there was policies that you could say like no loud music and no.

Yeah. I think.

Yeah. The beeping of the backup and they have to have that.

Yeah.

I think that's the safety. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think that's federal.

All right. Thank you. That's it for me. There'll be another public hearing in a minute. Somebody's got their hands up back there. All right. This is a first read.

We'll work with Seth.

Okay. This is a first read. So we're not voting, just so everyone knows, we're not voting tonight. This will come back in like, what's the new rules? When does it come back, Madeline? For the second read?

The second read, it'll be the second meeting this month.

Oh, so it's now two weeks again?

Because we were... Second read has always been two months following.

It has not been two weeks forwarding. I promise. It's not been. Okay. But it is two weeks forwarding in this case. Okay. I don't think it has been. All right. Then, so this was the first read. I think Sharon has to read the second one. And we have to have another public hearing. but we don't have to have another presentation.

In ordinance to allow a drive-through facility at lot parcel number 18350-01-167 in consideration of a special land use permit, case SLUP-2601 for 4725 Ashford-Dunwoody Road.

Okay. We've done the presentation for both of the things. And so now I'm going to open the public hearing unless there's an objection. Seeing none. If anyone would like to speak in favor of this application, there's 10 minutes. If anyone would like to speak against or has concerns, there's 10 minutes. Come up, introduce yourself so the clerk can hear your name for the record. And go ahead.

David Mann again I live in Ashford chase I wanted to just comment on a couple of the comments that were made and I sincerely appreciate the questions from the. City Council you had made a great point that homes are only about 60 meters away in the comment from Kroger was that was the other side of the building. is actually not, it is the Kroger side of the building, so I do want to call out that the Kroger side is very close, particularly to the neighbors on glenshire. The sound that I hear would be off Chardonnay Street, and it's even worse on Glenshire. So just want to make sure that it's known that it is the closest. The wall, it's not an acoustic wall. It's more of a safety wall for the trucks. And just looking on Google Maps, it's paper thin. So it's definitely not to suppress noise. There's acoustic sound walls everywhere. that respect to absorb noise, absorb noise. So I'm still in favor of restricting the hours more than what Walmart had and would appreciate some sort of diligence on what could be done to soundproof it. I'd be very interested in understanding it sounded like an acoustic study was performed. If that could be shared with the public and the neighbors, that would be appreciated as well. And then the other comment, too, There was two other comments that were concerning. One, that some of the frozen deliveries get made at night, so it sounded like there's a high volume of deliveries at night, so it'd be interesting to understand the volume from the store. And then also, it is a smaller footprint than Walmart, and Walmart was able to operate within those hours. If it's a smaller footprint, I'm assuming that they should be receiving less trucks in total, which should make it easier to operate in those hours. So... Thank you for your listening and thank you for all the questions that you guys are asking.

Okay, would anyone else like to speak? With that, I'll close the public hearing. And though we've asked questions and made comments, we can still ask questions and make comments. And where's my property owner? Did he leave? No, he's back there. So you should know that I got GDOT to put up a sound wall on 285 that they were not going to put up. And if that's something that needs to happen to reduce the noise or allow for noise absorption, I'd love, Laurel, for some discussion to happen about that. Because again, I think we're smart and we can figure this out. And with that, Sharon, I think we're ready for the next one.

There is no ordinance caption to read on this one, but it's first read of MMSP 2601 for 4725 Ashford Dunwoody Road. Kroger Company seeks a major master sign plan. Allegra.

All right. Good evening, everyone. Let me skip forward to mine. So... Kroger, as part of their project, is going to be installing some new signage. And so they're here tonight to seek a master sign plan. As a quick reminder, the master sign plan process was designed to ensure visual consistency among signs for larger campuses. And then it also allows for some requests from deviation for the sign code. There's two different processes. There's an administrative one and a major one. They're going through the major one tonight. And so they need to provide for visual consistency based on three of the following factors, color scheme, lettering style, materials, locations of signs to be posted on buildings. And they are an existing development where the signs are changing. So that's why they're before you all this evening. So we brought this to the Planning Commission in May. There were no public comments. They voted unanimously to recommend approval for the master sign plan with the condition that a sign labeled M, which is a monument sign along Meadow Lane, be removed. from the master sign plan application. Subsequently, the applicant reduced the size and height of sign M slightly, amended the design to move the Kroger logo and remove proposed lighting, and moved sign M to the other corner of the intersection. Staff is still recommending denial of this particular sign, and so I'll give you all a bit more info about that in a second. Madeline did a great job highlighting the proposed Kroger project, so I won't go into it further than that. So you can see the site plan here they're proposing some signs on the building and then some signs on the gas station to the south and and so. These are the proposed building signs so. Sign A on the left is larger than what would be allowed per code. It's approximately 400 square feet. That exceeds the maximum allowed size of 180 square feet. While large, that's pretty similar to the previous Walmart signs, so sort of keeping in line with that. They're also requesting an exemption to have two building signs on the same facade. And they're also proposing a canopy sign that's sign D for the pharmacy drive-thru. They're requesting some gas station signage as well. It's all a little bit larger than what will be allowed per code. The maximum size for gas station signage is six square feet, and these range from 7.8 square feet to 30.3 square feet. So the color scheme is consistent throughout the proposal using several dominant colors that are paired with complimentary accent tones to ensure visibility and cohesion. The proposed signs use the same font family and typographic hierarchy to maintain brand consistency for Kroger. And all of the proposed signage is constructed from durable weather resistant materials. So overall staff finds that the master sign plan proposal does provide visual consistency with the proposed and existing signs. The topography of the subject property is a little unusual. It slopes down approximately 30 feet from Ashford Dunwoody Road, limiting visibility for the development. And the development consists of multiple buildings with a mix of uses, creating the need for signage to indicate the location of each tenant. The existing building facade is pretty large, so a maximum size of 180 square feet per sign would look a little out of scale. And like I said, the previously existing Walmart sign was a very similar size. And because of the multiple coexisting uses at a typical Kroger, supermarket, pharmacy, allowing two wall signs per facade and a canopy sign will permit customers to navigate the space more easily and find where they're looking for. Unlike a typical gas station, the proposed Kroger gas station is surrounded by parking lots and commercial drives, necessitating clear signage for customers entering from those surrounding areas as well. The proposed Kroger building is located near the perimeter marketplace and Ashford Lane developments, and all of those developments have signage of a similar size and shape for the proposed signs for Kroger. However, staff considers the proposed monument sign labeled M to be an unsuitable sign for Kroger. So the applicant is proposing three monument sign panel swaps on two existing monument signs for the common development. There's one located on Ashford Dunwoody and one located along the entrance to the development on Meadow Lane. So they're gonna do two monument sign panel swaps on those existing monument signs. The monument sign panel swaps meet code because the substitution of sign panels on non-conforming signs is allowed. Both of those monument signs are non-conforming due to their size and height. They wouldn't be allowed per code today. So staff doesn't find that there are unusual circumstances that warrant an additional monument sign since Kroger will have signage on two large prominently visible existing monument signs. Additionally, staff finds that wall size M is of a conforming height and size. Its installation would be excessive and unnecessary when considering the total square footage of monument signage on the property. We're also concerned about individual businesses providing exclusive signage in addition to overall development signage. If other tenants would follow Kroger's lead, significant sign clutter could be created. So overall, staff is supportive of the master sign plan with the exception of sign M.

We get to hear from the applicant now.

Thank you. First, I'd like to thank Allegra for working with us with a sign plan. We were working with a sign consultant who had never done a master sign plan before, and I had never done one either. So we went through about four or five different drafts, and she was very patient with us, and we appreciate that. However, I will push back on the monument sign. The main reason for having the monument sign that Kroger is proposing is because it has the LED with the cost of the gas on it. the text panel switches that she was talking about elsewhere in the shopping center that is text only they cannot have led fuel pricers on those signs and also we are asking actually less than what the code would normally allow the code allows a maximum of two monument signs per curb cut we We are adding another monument sign to a curb cut that has one monument sign. And for a shopping center of this size, there are a maximum of 10 monument signs allowed. So I think there are three or four on the rest of the shopping center now. The area for the monument sign allowed is 36 square feet. We have reduced this in size. It's only 24 square feet. And the maximum height for a monument sign is allowed at six feet. And we're proposing a sign that is four feet tall. So we have made some considerable concessions for this monument sign. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts as always. We will always try and work with staff to make sure all of our applications go through smoothly. But I do wanted to point those out to you and hear your thoughts on the monument sign. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. I will, unless there's an objection, I will open the public hearing. Anyone here to speak for the master sign plan? You'll have 10 minutes. Seeing no one. Anyone here to speak against the master sign plan? You'll have 10 minutes. Hello, Zach. I didn't even know you were there. Oh, gosh, I'm having a hard time with my microphone today. Please introduce yourself and go ahead.

Cool.

Hi, Council. Zachary Humphreys, 1509 Trotters Cove. Yeah, I just wanted to see all of it before commenting on it fully. I appreciate there being a proposal for there to be a grocery store here. I appreciate Kroger coming here. and having this proposal but it is of course that with any uh zoning exception and new tenant you know we are changing this area into perpetuity we never really know how long this tenant is going to exist there so you know there is ultimately a conversation to be had about There is already a grocery store right across the street with the Publix. And I'm not necessarily sure how much the land It is important to keep areas more versatile for potential future projects and future tenants. And, you know, you have an addition of a gas station, of a drive-thru. And, I mean, unfortunately, that parking lot is there and it's just a big parking blight. And additional signs, all of that. So I...

um urge i'm speaking out against it thanks thank you so anybody else would like to speak being none unless there's an objection i closed the public hearing and now it's time for discussion questions etc anyone want to go first yes thank you

The marquee signs, the tall signs, will they say that they have Kroger grocery and fuel on them?

It'll just say it'll say fuel and pharmacy as well as Kroger. I don't. OK. Yeah. But not the prices of gas.

Right. So then let me ask staff about the other pricings at Costco. I mean, that's a membership only, but maybe at the is it quick trip right by the Publix right across Ashford? Can you see the prices of the fuel there?

Yeah, the quick trip has a sign that was included as part of the zoning conditions for that specific development. That was a negotiation that was worked out then.

Is that a monument sign that is on Ashfordony?

It's attached to the building. Yeah, it's attached to the building.

Okay, so it is not on the road.

It is not on the road.

But you could see it if you were driving by or no?

Yeah, you can see it.

Well, I guess you're going to be driving perpendicular to it, so it'd be harder to see. Now you can see it.

I have Google Earth up. It's visible from Ashford Dunwoody. It's behind the overall developments. The overall development has a very low wall monument sign, and the Quick Trip sign is taller and behind it.

Okay. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Just I may not need to make this clarification. But just to be clear, we are proposing this money one sign on metal, right, not on Ashford.

There were two monument signs.

There are two, there's one existing one on Meadow Lane at that intersection, which is like the one that's on Ashford Dunwoody. It has various panels for the various tenants.

You want two monument signs or is it just one?

One that's existing.

They're just going to swap their name out. They've got multiple businesses on them. Those are the two that we're talking about. Right.

And then they would like to add one on the Meadow Lane intersection.

Right. So there will not be a gas price on Ashford Dunwoody.

Correct. We're not allowed to put gas prices on Ashford Dunwoody because we can't change that monument existing monument sign, its size and current configuration are labeled non-conforming. So all we can do is change the text panels for the names of stores.

So that isn't the monument sign. They're not the four, the four foot sign you're talking about. There's just one at Meadow Lane.

They're technically a monument sign, the existing signs, but they're not Walmart only monument signs.

Kroger only. So sorry.

They were not also Walmart only. Right.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

Stacey. So I guess this is more to staff and just making sure I understand for the, the sign M. It's an allowable sign. So if all they were doing was wanting to add this monument sign, sign M on Meadow Lane, it's an allowable sign per code.

Correct.

But staff has recommended against it, and I heard your reasons, but staff has recommended against it within the whole sign plan.

Exactly.

Okay.

Melinda, over. Tom.

Yeah, thank you. All my sign concerns are centered around the fuel center. I agree with staff's recommendation about the monument sign, and I'll tell you why. Because the canopy is going to have the LED price sign on both sides. I'm not aware of any... gas station in the entire city that we have a price LED sign on a canopy, and there's going to be two. So if you're on Meadow Lane, I think it's very visible. It would be very visible, the prices from Meadow Lane and having it on the opposite side coming from the store itself. If you were exiting, you could also very clearly see uh the the price is there so i think it would be quite in my opinion overkill to have a monument sign there um so i agree with staff's recommendation personally there um while i'm on the subject of the of the canopy um i'm just kind of curious allegro like so we have we have a standard um as far as the amount of signage that we're and we're we're far exceeding that here um i Given the unique circumstance of the location of this, I don't have a problem with the long sides of the canopy having the price sign and even the Kroger, you know, emblem up there on both of the long sides facing metal lane and facing the store. I'm not sure why we're allowing it on the shorter sides. Again, you know, we talked about the quick trip earlier. They have one small QT emblem there. And that's it. The rest of the canopy is blank. We have a standard. There should be a reason if we're abandoning our standard. I don't see it here. I'm willing to be flexible with the front and the back because of the unique circumstances. I don't think we need it on either side. And while I'm at it, I don't think we need it on both sides of the fuel attendant shack either. I think it's a little overkill. They have the little shopping cart on the... And none of that is, as I read the memo, conforming to the to our standards, or it's in excess of our standard.

Yeah, so they're all larger than what would be allowed, but signs J, that is allowed, the number of signs for the sort of pump islands underneath the canopy, but they are larger than what would be allowed.

Well, that was my part too. Yeah, so the ones that were on the, I was talking about the one on the attendants, checked like the little again the little shopping cart logos again it just seemed a little overkill to me but um so why why do they need bigger on the pump islands uh bigger signs than what our code currently allows i mean i'm sure we have a reason for a standard and i don't want to get incredibly nitpicky here but again if we're going to allow an exception i'd like to know what the reason why we're considering allowing a larger sign than our code allows

Yeah, so that's definitely something we can take a look at. So they are allowed, one, they're allowed canopy signs based on the canopies that are facing street facades and they're only facing one street facade which is a little unusual right for for gas stations you know they're typically on the corner and so they're usually facing two um so they're a little bit hindered in that way um but so just to test my understanding so the signs that you're um not enthusiastic about are signs h and j labeled on here let me look at it hold on uh uh

Correct. And yeah, H and J, yes. Okay. And then the second, and again, I understand it's a unique circumstance here. I'm not crazy about having the two on the canopy in excess, but I think it's a reasonable ask. I'm not going to, I mean, I'm not, you know, on the long sides, signs K and G. But also the pump island signs, is there a reason why they need bigger? Because those tend to be advertising and can, if they get big, they can get obnoxious. I used to be in the... fuel consumer C-store business. So I know all about those. So I'm just curious why we're considering larger or why the request for larger.

Yeah, I'm not, the applicant could maybe speak to why they've picked the sizes that they've picked, but, you know, in terms from a staff perspective, we're, you know, not supportive of the additional monument sign they're wanting to do. And so sort of willing to allow a little bit more flexibility for the signage on the gas stations in return for that per staff's recommendation.

okay but is i mean is there a reason why they need a larger than the applicants let maybe the applicant answer the question sorry um the uh first off i'm pretty sure we changed um h and it's only on one side part of our challenge is um and I'm not familiar with how many people go a particular way on Meadow Lane, but if you're coming in, I guess, on the northern side and you're coming around the corner, you'll be able to see the pricers. from there, but it's coming from the other direction. You won't be able to see the pricers on the canopy, which is why Quigger wanted to capture that visual clientele with the monument sign. For that reason, and I can't remember if it's plan left or plan right, But one of the narrow sides, we propose keeping the small Kroger shopping site logo, but taking it off on the side that actually faces the driveway that comes off Meadow Lane. Because that was, we agreed, didn't really need it on that one side. So there's only one H. So that'd be the right elevation?

Maybe.

Yeah, I think maybe the plan, I'll go back and make sure that you've got the correct information. for that. As far as the, and I'm going to jump back, the J is actually the attendant kiosk. It's not the fuel pump. So that is an identifier for the person who's in the, that that's a Kroger employee. The The other thing I'll say generally about the signs, and we struggled with this with the drive-through as well in terms of design, as well as signage. For the fuel center, everything is written to which contemplates a quick trip, basically. There's a convenience store. The convenience store has got at least one, if not two wall signs. There's got a few signs on the canopy. The canopy is standalone. They've got a big monument sign with fuel pricers. We just have a canopy. We don't have a building. And same with the pharmacy drive-through. A lot of the building design standards were written for a drive-through basically on the side of a standalone building, think a bank. So that's why the variances me at first appear excessive but they're really not we're just having to address a different design prototype that's not really contemplated by the code can't contemplate everything by the code, but. That is the reason for the additional signage here on the canopies.

And so but I don't I think there's a little bit of confusion, too, with the last question I had, because I'm not talking about the attendant building. I mentioned the attendant building because I mean, I think if you've driven under a canopy with a big Kroger local audit, you know, the guy sitting in the hut also works for Kroger. And it's a pretty reasonable assumption. But in the memo, there is a gasoline station pump on. I imagine that's the pump toppers. Yeah, there's the only signage that we're proposing for the fuel centers, the signs that are marked, and you can see on the screen, G, J, and K, and H. On the, Allegra, maybe you can help me, in the memo, gasoline station, on page four, gasoline station pump island signage, two per island, the code allows for six, and the request is for 7.8 square feet.

Yeah, we're considering those signs J.

So that's for J. That's not like pump toppers or anything like that. That's correct. Okay. That's for J. Okay. So it's not necessarily on the pump island. That's the, okay. That was my confusion. I was thinking of pump toppers and why we're having extra large pump toppers.

Where you get to watch, maybe we'll go to a cup on the fuel pumps in the future.

Okay. That's just my concerns. I'll pass it on.

Do you have anything? All right. Have you already spoken? Okay. I really have a question for Allegra because I don't care. But earlier you said that if every business had a standing monument sign, that would be a problem. But is every business going to be able to submit a master sign plan in that shopping center?

No, it depends on, you know. Right. Yeah. No, not every business could submit one.

So I happen to think this doesn't matter. I think that Meadows Lane is a commercial street for all intents and purposes. I'm not 100% sure why you want to spend the money on a sign there. Quite frankly, the gas station, you're going to be able to see it from the street. Both directions, everyone's going to know it's there. But for me, this is just... It doesn't really matter. If it was on Ashford Dunwoody, that might be worth a whole different discussion, but tucked on Meadows, it doesn't mean that the sushi place can have a monument sign. Anyway, that's my two cents for what it's worth. All right. Yeah, that's all. See you in two weeks. Council, we are going to take a five-minute break. Come back at nine o'clock, seven-minute break. Sorry.

Five minutes, be fast.

Thank you. I'm not sure, because that's the inside design of the store. I can tell you that they did come in to talk about the space that I mentioned. I think self-checkouts are always a problem for me. I don't think they did a good job of security. Yeah, I don't know. Universal employees, they just have to operate. I go to the portrait art brokerage, there's always the employer kind of hovering around the six self-checkouts. Yeah, and so I think just having, so I suspect that they will do something similar. Someone kind of floating just because there's always, you know, something that's a flame. I assume someone's always fixing it. I mean, that's just, you know, I wanted to store succeeded. Like, you know, people live there. Rob, I can hear you.

IT, we're ready to start again. Just give IT one minute. Okay. That was fast. All right. Consent agenda. I would like to move number 18 to, I don't know what it would be. discussion no business um because i think we were going to vote on it i don't think i can move it to discussion it'll be the new 19 i guess i don't know just i'm no i'm moving it to business and i don't think we vote on that i think i just get to do it i had a question about that okay um anybody else okay consent agenda that is where we are on the agenda no two proof Second. All right. Any further discussion? Yes. I would like to introduce our newest ZBA member, fresh graduate Catherine from Leadership College. perimeter, as well as a longtime Dunwoody resident. And I'm thrilled that he agreed to serve on the Zoning Board of Appeals, Dr. Melby. If you want to stand up, just recognize you. Thank you. Melby! Congratulations, Ken! What'd you say? Congratulations, Ken. That was Catherine. So welcome to the ZBA. I don't think any of my other, the other appointees are here. Correct me if I'm wrong. There's not many people left. Um, so with that, um, we have motion and a second on the floor all in favor of approving the consent agenda as amended. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? It doesn't really work that way. Um, Thank you. All right. So now we're back to number 18 on the consent agenda for business item. Do you read it? Do you need to read it or Michelle? All right. This is approval for a contract. All right. Come on up. All right. I didn't even know this was on consent. I was a little surprised to see it. That's on me for not catching it in the agenda. Um, I am concerned about this project. And I don't know if this is going to pass or not. So I'm going to express my concerns and see if there's a way we can do something about them. I'm uncomfortable with removing all these lanes on Astro Center Parkway. do we have federal funds for this project? So there's nothing that says we have to have 10 feet. I know that that's the definition of a path or a trail, but there's nothing that says we can't reduce the width because we're not getting federal funds. But what worries me the most is that we're putting a design contract out and maybe I'm just confused because it's possible, but it feels like we're telling the designer what the end product is we want. Or does that make sense, what I'm saying?

So there will be a traffic analysis as part of this whole concept phase. And that's really going to lend itself to what the actual typical section will be. So we have said that we wanted like bike and pedestrian accommodations, really looking at the cycle track scenario because we're connecting to do two different sections. projects that have cycle tracks with them. So we're just pretty much connecting those two projects with another cycle track just to extend it. But we're not, the typical section has not been, even as far as like what side it will be on and any of those things, those all get analyzed during concept. So

We're about halfway through right away acquisition for the next phase of the Ashford Dunwoody Trail. How much longer do we estimate that's going to take?

Um, so we're in the first phase of, of that, um, right away acquisition. Um, we're very close, um, you know, we in, in getting the other 50%, the other 50%, correct. Um, we have been in constant, um, discussions, um, waiting, you know, just for some potentially signed options, um, to come our way, but we're very close in on those negotiations.

So what parameters do you, so if they do a traffic study in July or August, until school starts, like what instructions are you giving?

They wouldn't do a study, like we would get counts and all of that after school starts. It would not be now, but we're just setting up for that. that timeframe. So we'll do contracting now. We would do counts in the fall and then the analysis. I can put that together a schedule once if this is approved. Okay. Rob?

Just following up on the traffic issue. Just one question I have is there are basically two big commercial buildings that are empty right behind this and then there's the the Blood Center that is potentially redeveloping. I don't know how you would go about doing it, but if any of those parcels are redeveloped, that will change the traffic patterns on Ashford, Dunwoody, on Meadow Lane. And I think it's important to factor that in to whatever we decide to do with this area. And I don't know how to do that, but I think it needs to be a consideration.

SO WE CAN DEFINITELY TALK TO THE DESIGNER AND THERE ARE ASSUMPTIONS THAT CAN BE MADE FOR EACH OF THESE DEVELOPMENTS, EACH OF THESE PARCELS. IT'S VERY DIFFICULT, LIKE YOU SAID, TO DEFINE EXACTLY WHAT TYPE OF DEVELOPMENT THAT WILL BE AND WHAT TYPE OF TRAFFIC THAT WILL GENERATE, BUT WE CAN MAKE BROAD ASSUMPTIONS AND WORK WITH COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.

AND TO LYNN'S POINT, I I think we need lots of options. I mean, I think this really is kind of – I think we really need to treat this as what would work here without causing undue impacts, rather than here's our design, give us a preliminary concept. And so I don't know if that changes what we're asking, but – i think we just need to see lots of different options and ideas for for what might be here because i think it's an important project but i think if we do it wrong it could cause some real issues um with with use of this road and traffic flow on this road go ahead yeah for this particular project i think that the concern is the choke points at at the bookends that at ashford dunwoody and a chambly dunwoody and those intersections and i i'm

cautiously optimistic that if designed properly, we can improve what is kind of a horrible, or not horrible, but underperforming...

Challenging.

Underperforming or challenging intersection right now. And so I'd be curious to see what the engineers can come up with in improving the vehicular traffic flow at those intersections as part of this project. I think that would be an important part of this. And... In between, I ride that road almost every day. I like the idea of reducing from two lanes to one because, quite frankly, I think the two lanes encourages people to drive well in excess of what the speed limit is. And we've had some accidents. We've had a fatality on that road. So, you know, removing a lane of traffic could help or at least, you know, some sort of road diet would help control speed on that road, which I believe is only 30 miles an hour. But people drive double that. And I think the fact that it looks like a highway, people are more compelled to do that. So I so, you know, for me. i don't i don't want to shoot shoots up shoot the horse before it comes out of the gate right i mean so uh let's see what we can come but i would hope that a part of this will be making sure we address the intersections at either end because without that it's it's going to be a major challenge um joe

Thanks for putting this forward. I think it's a connection when we look at the timing as well on Shamley Dunwoody, the Village Crossing project, right? So it's to get from the village to the mall. This is the missing little link. So I appreciate, you know, I reviewed the original RFP, all right? And I looked at the scope of what they're gonna do here. And so they're gonna look at all different sorts of things. They're gonna do field surveys, traffic operations and safety, look at drainage. Right away, they're going to develop different alternatives to concept. That's what is in there. Estimate cost, hold public meetings, gather community input. So that's what this step is. It's a let's go forth and conduct more studies and develop, you know, collect, gather data and come up with solutions. Here's some options. That's really what we're doing here. We're not committing to a specific design. I will echo what Councilman Lambert talked about, the stacking and queuing at the end, because that's the Village Parkway. Remember in 2011, the city spent $1.6 million and did a road diet on the Village Parkway, and they had more public meetings for the Village Parkway than Cobb County Commission did when they brought the Braves to Cobb County.

I don't think that's an app comparison.

And so, you know, they did that. But the stacking and queuing on the parkway on the village, yeah, that gets backed up. That's clogged up. So if there's ways we can tweak, fix it to make it so that both ends work better, that would be great. Other folks have asked me about tree preservation, of course, those kind of things. And I'm not solutioning this right now because I look at the scope and maybe the scope is just a little bit too large for because it's saying both those are the protected bike lanes which is called a cycle track it's not a t-r-a-i-l it's a protected uh buffered protected bike lane separated by traffic but also saying wide sidewalks i like pedestrian scale lighting by the way that's an rfp pedestrian scale lighting instead of the big one so that's nice um extra lens in but so anyway um I appreciate the moving forward. I believe in it's let's just move forward and gather some data and collect the data and make the analysis. Thank you.

And I do want to be clear that this is just the concept phase. So there won't be any survey involved. And at this level, it's just traffic analysis, concept, public involvement, and then some high level like drainage analysis. Catherine.

I would like to reiterate what Rob had said, just with a multitude of options. And again, what Tom said, the actual intersection areas are flooded with traffic. That is what I'm hearing. I don't drive it, but that is what I'm hearing. When I'm on that road, there's nobody but me, generally. Yes, I would. I think that the traffic study is very, very important. And I want to say to those residents that that is what we're going to do. We're going to study it and we're going to look at all the options. That's all. Thank you.

I know this is one road that we asked to speed limit to be lowered. Just out of curiosity, we heard back. No, no, thanks.

So I think what we're saying, because we may not agree on everything, Eric, but is that we don't want to see one set of assumptions come out of this. We want to see, because what I'm hearing to Catherine's point is the, the back. So I experienced it. So if, Now, since we've started this discussion, when I'm on that road at key times and there's the ninth car back and there's eight cars on the other lane, that's a lot of cars to stack to Joe's point. But what I'm hearing is a lot of panic about Womack because they're worried that the traffic from Womack won't be able to get off. So when they do the traffic study, I presume we're going to look And a bigger picture, I would assume they do that with that. But just, I don't want this to be one of those things where they come back with one picture and it's this, or we don't really have another choice. So, okay. This is an action item. Stacey, did you have more questions?

And I would just, to that end, we're asking for a lot of data because we actually want to see it. So rather than just a picture and this is what they came up with their concept design, we want to know what went into that. Sure.

And we'll have a traffic report as part of that.

Move to approve.

Moved by Joe.

Second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. All opposed, say nay. Me, nay. That passes five to one. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Michael Smith.

Good evening. This agenda item from Mount Vernon Tilly Mill was presented last meeting. There are a few changes in the funding that I wanted to point out. One thing that is a positive for the city, We got to looking at the bid and talking to the contractor, and there's a traffic control line item that is associated with the water main, and then also a traffic control associated with the city's part of the project. And after discussing with the contractor, it was apparent that They put too much of the cost on the city's portion instead of the water main. The water main actually has a good bit of traffic control because they're going to be in the road, and that'll be part of the detour and everything. So that changed the county's contribution by about $200,000 more, which brings ours down a little bit. And then I went ahead and identified the cost for stormwater storage detention on the project, and that funding is proposed to come out of the stormwater utility, then plus paving costs that we were carrying in our paving plan that for this section of Mount Vernon can be allocated to this. So the bottom line of all that, instead of having a last time it was presented as a $500,000 difference that we were going to have to maybe move around from some other projects. We've identified all the funding now for the full project so that we shouldn't have to dip into any other projects. And that's really the only update. Once it's approved here, it's going to go through DeKalb's process. They have to approve the funding on their end, which may take a month or two, and then we'll be able to issue a contract. So we won't issue a contract until we have the county's approval of their part.

Okay. Anybody have questions? It's the action item. Move to approve. Move by Stacey. We'll do what I got to get it. Let me see if I can get a second and then you can do it. Second. Second by Joe. All right. Any further questions or discussion?

It's kind of a side question and one that I think we bounced a couple of times about running a water line for a potential fountain at some point. How tied to this project would that addition have to be at some point? If Could that easily be done in the future?

Where's the fountain going to be? A drinking fountain or a decorative fountain? Okay. Well, I didn't know. I'm all into decorative fountains.

It's a side conversation. Okay.

Okay. Well, educate us.

There's the Georgia Power Rite-Away. Right. And a lot of people use and recreate on there. And if you could have a little water fountain with a little dog bowl for a reasonable cost. And could it be tacked on now or at some point in the future? And I guess my question is, do we need to try to figure out if we want that now or could that be tacked on in the future without too much disturbance?

It would be best to do it while they're out there doing the water main, but that doesn't have to be decided right now. I think Michelle shared... It's probably to run the water line to it and get the fountain and everything is probably a $15,000 to $20,000 cost. If that's what council wants to do, we can. I'm a little concerned about the maintenance aspect of it in the right of way. It would have to be, because it's stand-alone like that, it would have to be winterized and turned off in the winter and all that kind of thing, but

It was just a thought. I don't want it to hold up the project right here, but just one, I hadn't followed up with some additional questions that I had. So I wanted to get those in now. So thank you.

Okay. There's a motion on the floor. Is there any further discussion?

Go ahead, Joe. I support the drinking fountain thing. We talked about it, make a little bench there and people to sit there and kind of recreate in the future. So do you need that decision now or you need it in the next few months from the council guidance? It doesn't have to be now. Okay.

Also, Georgia Power is not always so eager to put things in there right away. So... You'd have to.

Yeah, it's an encroachment permit. And they said as long as they can have something that can be bolted and can be removed and they have access, they would be fine again. So, OK, future conversation. All right. Thanks.

OK. Motion on the floor. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? That passes six to zero. Next, Michael, again.

Yes. This item is for some additional paving. We feel like we probably have enough money left in the contingency to add this, but just to be safe, we're asking, we wanted to bring it to council and then ask for another $150,000 out of the current paving budget if we need it. Lockridge Forest is on the list for next year. Sumac is probably one of the poorest condition streets in the city at this point. So since we had some capacity left in this year's project and they're still coming back to do some more paving, we're just proposing to go ahead and get this neighborhood done this year under the current contract. And so the ask is for a contract amendment with Blunt with for up to an additional $150,000 that would come out of the existing paving budget.

Okay, go ahead, Stacey. Oh, Tom.

Yeah, thank you. No, this is going to make a lot of people in Lockridge Forest happy. I go to their annual homeowners meeting every year, and every year, when do we get... And we knew it was on the schedule for next year, but getting it moved up, because as you said, that road's in pretty rough shape. One question is, do we have an anticipated timeframe of when that paving would actually take place? So we...

Probably August or September. We don't have a definitive time yet, but probably September.

And will we be providing all those residents sufficient notice that the payment is coming in and everything? Okay. Because I know sometimes when projects get added, I don't want anything to slip through the cracks. I want to make sure that they're aware so that they can take whatever necessary preparation for that. But no, this is a great idea and I'll move to approve. I'll second.

Move seconded. All in favor. Oh, any further questions or discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes six to zero. All right. Michael again.

The last item I have is for our final contract extension with Triscapes for the road and stormwater maintenance. Last year, the Council approved a one-year extension that expires September 30th, and so We wanted to go ahead and bring this forward. Triscapes has proposed this would be under the contract terms. This will be the final time to extend it. And then after this, we would re-advertise a bid for this. But Triscapes has proposed about a four-point contract. 8% increase, which is consistent with the municipal cost index, which is what we use for a lot of our, when we index costs from year to year. So staff is recommending approval of a one-year extension.

Okay. Any questions? Consent? Consent is fine. Catherine, you okay with that? Yeah. Consent, okay. All right. Thank you, Michael. Thank you. rachel you are up next christmas in july christmas in july ready y'all it's too hot winter holidays the hallmark channel's already running christmas movies or holiday movies Oh, they don't stop. I thought they did something special for July. Probably love it. Yeah.

It gets earlier every year. Good evening. So, yeah, so we're already gearing up for holidays. This is very familiar to y'all. We've been working with Chitwood Studios since 2022. They've given us some great displays in the past. We, because of the success last year, we put out a survey and thought, okay, why was this year so much bigger? And most of it was because people liked the fact that it wasn't stereotypical Christmas holiday lights. Interesting. In keeping with that theme, we've pitched Chasing Aurora. So think kind of Nordic, I don't want to say frozen, but kind of Nordic, you know, adventures, lots of lights, lots of magic is sort of the feel. I have the proposal ready in case you want to look at a few pictures, but the big theme The big pieces this year will be the entrance marquee sign. That'll be the kind of rainbow colors that'll say Chasing Aurora. You drive in under the kind of glowing trees. Of course, the mega tree, which they've added this year, some faux kind of glass-styled fire pits and also our D logo that we're very proud of. But again, you see these big, you know, we've got a 12-foot star. We've got an 18-foot like moon and stars. It's very interactive, which is what we saw was so successful last year. Families really want to kind of have a moment with the photo, take pictures, and kind of move on to the next thing. So the frozen mountain we're very excited about. That'll have some fog elements along with the hot cocoa. Kind of looks like some steam. But again, with this year, this will be the last year where with Chitwood we're due to put this back out to bid next year. but we're in the same budget. So it'll be with a 10% contingency funding for the project in the amount of $88,000 comes from our parks operating budget as it has in years past. I'm happy to answer questions or show you some pictures from the proposal.

I was going to say, I thought we should be surprised.

It always looks different in person. Right. Okay.

You can show her the pictures.

Stacey, was there something you wanted to... Actually, I mean, I looked at them.

I just... Okay.

I had a question I actually wanted to display. Is the hot chocolate thing, it looks like there might be a cutout for a counter in there, is that?

So you, it's where kind of the blue Adirondack chair is now. From what I can tell, you kind of get inside of it in that window.

Oh, I gotcha.

It's got kind of the steam coming out of it.

Last year, the photo opportunities were huge. They were very popular. So they, I did, I wanted to be surprised. I didn't look at the pictures, but I did not. In fact, I was surprised that we see the design. Like we don't approve public art. So, but are they going to make, like, do they know, does Chitwood know how popular all that was last year? And so they're going to make sure we have enough of that again, because it was just darling the families last year. That was last year. are they bringing back the star? Oh, I don't know. Anyway, stop. You're ruining it. Okay. So, okay. This sounds great.

I just have one question. So yeah. And I agree with me. I like those Instagrammable things. I like the lines. I was like, it was packed. It was, it was great. I loved, I loved it. I loved seeing it. One question.

Yes.

Last year we had an issue with some of the displays not arriving on time. And I think like two or three years ago, we had the same issue with, I know containers getting stuck in the port or whatever, but it's July 13th. Can they make sure that everything is up and operating on time this year? Like, are we going to?

I think usually I don't bring this to y'all until August. So he's like, let's get let's get moving sooner.

Yeah. Want to make sure that let's let's make sure we get this all constructed and in-house. Yes. Very early. Thank you.

Understood. And just because the question was asked this morning, this is budgeted, right? Yes. Right. OK, fine. All right. Consent. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Chief Carlson.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Presenting before you an IGA, an intergovernmental agreement between City of Dunwoody and the Chattahoochee River 9-1-1 Authority, also known as CHATCOM. This is actually the third amendment, which is going to, I'm requesting to go ahead and extend the terms of the agreement. The term of the agreement commences on May 1st of this year, terminates at midnight on September 1st of 27th. Following that initial term, the agreement will continue to renew automatically on an annual basis. So I am requesting the City Council approve the IGA agreement between us and Chiapas.

Anybody have questions or comments? Go ahead.

Hey, Chief. Thanks. Yeah, we've we've doing well with them. I understand they had some they changed the way they were organized, the authority. Right. So is there anything really changing materially or substantially the way they're doing services with us and from the past from now with this contract?

No, the only issue we're making. run into, and maybe Richard can speak better on it, but obviously their fees are increasing and we use our emergency 911 fees to cover the costs in chat com. So there may be a little bit of a difference that I may have to come in and request approval for the increase. That's the only change that I've been seeing, but they've been pretty consistent and they perform flawlessly for us and they do a great service for our officers on the street. Exactly.

So come basically we're saying, so this, this, this amount, this contract term is, is through the September 1st, 27. And then obviously they're going to come to us with, if they're going to change that rate. Correct. Yeah. Of how that count is calculated here. It looked like it was calculated by call volume or something like that as well. It is. Yeah. Okay. So fair enough. Are we on, do we have, do they have like an advisory board or commission? So the chat com members, we are a member of them. We're not on that board.

We're not on their board. I'll get in and I'll watch their videos, but I have to say so. I'm not a panelist on Zoom meetings.

Thank you.

Consent? Consent. Thank you.

Thank you. Public comments? Oh, I do. Okay. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Zach? Comfrey's. Approach the microphone. Introduce yourself, sir. You will have three minutes.

Hello, Zach. Comfrey's 1509 Trotters Cove. I wanted to talk about the PCID, but I also wanted to talk about, you know, our 250th anniversary as a country. Very festive. Lots of fun. I've been going to a lot of the FIFA stuff as well. But it's also important for us to recognize sort of one of the founding principles of this nation, and that is taxation with representation. No taxation without representation. And I come here to sort of question the structure of the PCID when it comes in terms of taxation without representation. A community improvement district charges a 0.3 millage rate to commercial properties within the district. So that excludes homeowners. um of course given our kind of structure this uh you know there is no uh homestead exemption or um you know hard freeze on anything like that so if you're a renter in dunwoody and you live within the pcid no they don't have to pay okay well i'm done

right so now that you've walked away i can say that the in georgia cids don't improve include apartment complexes literally it's commercials i know that apartment complexes can be considered commercial but it is not they don't include so they i just want to tell okay uh that concludes public comment uh city manager comments

Mayor, we do not need an executive session this evening.

Okay, council comments? Anybody? Okay, so I just want to say, Zach kind of reminded me, because it's been a long meeting, that Dunwoody did a bang-up job with the 250th celebration. We had almost a week's worth of activities that were really well attended by lots of people, and... It really it's a credit to our staff that we got it all done and we pulled it off into our community. Lots of the events have lots of volunteers. And I mean, from my story time at the library. to DPT's house, open house, which was maybe one of their better, best attended events ever. And the ceremony, the blue star ceremony at the memorial and the concert. And then of course the parade. I have to say that I think we had more programming for the 250th than really any other city. And I didn't fact check myself. So but it was really great. And then our business community has done a bang up job with the FIFA stuff. As you heard earlier, we are now all Argentinians because the consulate is based in Dunwoody. And so therefore, that is who you are to cheer for. And with that, I need a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn. Second.

Moved by Stacey, second by Rob. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we stand adjourned. Bye, everybody.