City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the City of Roswell Mayor and Council Open Forum for Monday, June 29th, 2026. This is the fifth Monday, which means it's open mic night. I'm Mayor Mary Robichaux and I would like to introduce my colleagues and council members present. Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Sarah Beeson. Council Member Erin Brumley, Council Member Christine Hall, Council Member Jennifer Phillippe, Council Member Alan Sells, and Council Member Chris Zack. I will now turn it over to City Administrator Randy Knighton to explain how this meeting is run. Mr. Knighton.

Thank you, Mayor Robichaux, and good evening, everyone. We appreciate your attendance tonight. This is the City of Roswell's open forum meeting, which is a dedicated space for residents and business owners and interested parties to speak directly to the mayor and city council on any matter. of your concern or interest. We welcome your engagement and appreciate your participation. And as always, please feel free to reach out to our staff for any questions or concerns you may have. If you would like to speak tonight, we would request that you fill out a comment card. Karen Zittimer is there in the back. She has comment cards available. We want to ensure an accurate record of the meeting. Each speaker will be given up to five minutes total to speak, which may cover one or more topics and time may not be transferred to another speaker. The city clerk will, in this case, our deputy city clerk, will call speakers to the podium in the order the cards are received. And during that five minute period, we ask that you direct all of your comments to The mayor and council seated on the dais. The mayor and council will not respond to any comments or questions tonight. What we will do, as we've done before, is we will ensure an accurate record of the meeting. All questions will be recorded. And then within two weeks, we will place all of the responses and or answers on the city website. Thank you again for being here. We look forward to your comments this evening. Mayor Robichaux.

Thank you, Mr. Knight, and I would echo that. Thank you and willing to listen to everyone. Your concerns is, as we said, we are recording, so all questions will be answered online in a maximum of two weeks, as we did last time. So at this time, I'd like to call Roswell Fire Department Chaplain Dori Griggs to the front for invocation and a moment of silence. Thank you for inviting me here tonight.

Let us pray. Holy One, we gather tonight to discuss the business and concerns of the residents of our great city. Be with all who gather here tonight, the mayor, city council, and staff, and those who come before them with concerns. This week, when our country celebrates Independence Day, We focus on our country's founding and what makes our country great. The freedom to bring the concerns of our residents directly to the elected leaders is one of the most important freedoms we can exercise. Be with each person here this evening. We also ask your protection over our first responders as they work to keep our residents safe. Members of police, fire, 911 communications, and emergency medical teams work tirelessly each day to give and we thank them for their service. As we leave this meeting, may the spirit of cooperation go with each of us. Amen.

Dori, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Oh, certainly.

Pledge of 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. The meeting is now open for public comment. Deputy City Clerk Rachel Raines, how many speakers do we have for public comment?

Mayor, at this time we have five public speakers. Please call the first speaker.

First speaker is Janet Russell.

Welcome, Janet.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Janet Russell. First, I want two positives, a lot of positives tonight, but I wanted to let everybody know who's watching that the Roswell Area Park pool is open to the public. There's been no advertisement by the City of Roswell on their Facebook City of Roswell page except for the 4th of July. It is open every night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Fridays from 7.30 to 9 p.m. Cost is $3 per person for residents. It is fantastic. It was one of three Olympic-sized pools that we built in 1975. I'd like to say it's where I go to meet my neighbors that don't live on my street. All of you who live in gated subdivisions would be amazed at who you will meet there. Also, the Russell Farmer's Market is just going crazy, and it is so much fun. The people that are running it are doing a great job. The word is spreading. Vendors are going crazy coming. And it isn't about so much purchasing stuff as coming together and having a lot of fun. And it's not a liquor-oriented event. It's a person-oriented event. So I just thought, I was at the pool yesterday and I met a young man who moved here and he said, you know, I really like Roswell. I used to live in Sandy Springs and then we moved somewhere and we finally came back here. And the reason he said is because when you come here, it's like a place, a real place. And I said, yes, it has a sense of place. So I just wanted to remind you that we're celebrating America 250 this year, but 50 years ago, I had just arrived here. I was a young mother of a five-year-old and a two-year-old. Yes, that makes them 55 and 53 now. And we had a huge bicentennial celebration in the city where there were 5,000 people living. That's how many live in the subdivision now. We had a parade down Mimosa Boulevard. We all made costumes that looked like the bicentennial kind of costumes. All the homes on Mimosa Boulevard had open houses with live bands and we all brought food to share. It wasn't an alcohol alive in Roswell. It was actually really alive in Roswell. So I just wanted to remind everybody that the bicentennial was here before. I thought you might like to know that since the bicentennial, a lot of things have happened, as you can tell. But old Roswell, why that man knew there was a sense of place was where Liberty is was Roswell High School. Kids would get out of school and walk to the still there Dairy Queen. Why? Because it was what there was. When I moved here, there was two restaurants, Bob's Dairy Barn and Dairy Queen. There were two grocery stores, Reeves, where the Antiques Market is, and where the Southern Post is now was Food Giant. We called it Redneck Food Giant. It became A&P later. Canton Street was not paved, basically. It was shops at one end. 3,000 adults spent $2.2 million to improve it, put in sidewalks, removed the overhead electric wires. We dug up the water pipes. They were wooden from the Civil War. They're still in the Water Treatment Plant Museum. Some famous people that have come here, Ray Charles came and performed her during the Olympics 30 years ago at a free concert at the Mill. J.K. Rowling came and spoke before she was famous for Harry Potter at a bookshop. We had a children's bookstore on Bullock Avenue. I think it's important to know that the park and the pool were built in 1975 on a bond that 2,000 adults said they'd pay taxes for. The pool ferry did not drop the pool there. People paid for it. People just assume everything's always there all the time. This building didn't exist, it was trees. And today we're living in the hotter than hell time of year. I am reminded that people wanted to clear cut these trees 12 years ago. and moved the war memorial to behind the city hall, behind the slave quarters. And I remember saying, we live in the South. When was the last time anybody said, honey, look, the shade moved. Let's get in the sun. Why do I mention these things? Because I've watched this city grow up. When I moved here, I never thought I'd live here my whole life. I was planning to move to Maine so I could open a wooden boat company. But I'm here and I'm glad. I never leave my house without seeing somebody I know, from a little kid at the pool who sees me at the grocery store, to somebody at the gas station. You know all the minutiae of life? Not the country clubby, I'm going to have cocktails life. The minutiae. And I tell people, Roswell is like, you know how kids have a fuzzy blankie? And they carry around their fuzzy blankie? Roswell's my fuzzy blankie. I never go anywhere that I don't know somebody. Now that's not because I'm special. But I will talk to anybody, because I've been to 80 countries, and I've realized, like Langston Hughes, the poet, said, we are more alike than we are different. Put aside the BS, and remember, we're all humans. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Russell. Next speaker, Cameron Hoodcree.

Hello.

I mean good evening mayors and members of the city council. My name is Cameron Hood Cree. I am a lifelong resident of Roswell so far at least and I am here to speak about our city and how we can move our city forward in the future. The main things I would like to talk about are pedestrian safety around the city and things like how we can invest in them over time. I am currently 25 years old. Fast forward 25 years, it will be 2050, and Roswell will be in the hands of my generation. Many people in my generation don't want to see some of the things that certain aspects of Roswell right now, which might include things like lack of good land use and less walkability, but we want to see walkable neighborhoods, better transit options, mixed use zoning, affordable housing, less traffic, and more green space across the city, all while preserving our neighborhoods and older buildings at the same time. This is possible. and our southern feel, I mean. This is possible, but not in the approach that we are taking through the Comprehensive Plan. Instead of removing historic homes like we have, like the Vickers on Canton Street, we should focus on doing mixed-use zoning along major arterials and leave Canton Street and the downtown area the way it is now. If we avoid altering the historic district and focus on pedestrian infrastructure and building mixed-use development along roads like Highway 9 further up, Alfreda Highway, Let's see, Holcomb Bridge Road and Mansell Road and as well as over towards Roswell High School where bus service already exists in many of those areas and this could encourage more residents to use alternate modes of transportation like walking and cycling or MARTA as opposed to their cars and also allow us to invest in other areas of our city. It could reduce the need for parking along Canton Street even while bringing in money for the city. Once we get more people taking advantage of walkability and transit, there will be less of a need for parking and we can remove more minimum parking requirements and use much of that space for mixed use zoning in areas such as around Holcomb Bridge, Highway 9, and Mansell. We could also invest in bus service to areas like East Roswell, West Roswell, as well as neighborhood in cities and counties. Along with pedestrian improvement citywide as opposed to new roads like big creek parkway or the end of course the Georgia 400 express lane project that's torn down a lot of trees around the highway. This would promote mix you zoning on in over parking lots and the growth would encourage residents of other communities to come to roswell as opposed to let's say. downtown Alpharetta or the Crabbable area of Milton and could reduce traffic citywide, preserve our historic district and show Fulton County that they can invest in our area of the county as opposed to perimeter and Sandy Springs or Atlanta or south of the airport. Seas across the country have successfully balanced growth with preservation. Communities in other states such as I'm gonna name a few that you might not have heard of Golden Colorado and Ellicott City, Maryland are some example You might not have heard of those there near Denver and Baltimore They have invested in walkable commercial corridors while protecting their historic downtowns Roswell has the opportunity to do the same and we if we follow this strategy we can keep up with the growth of Metro Atlanta which is one of the largest metropolitan areas that Roswell is a large park city in and while preserving what we have and what makes Roswell a great place to live and work. Thank you. And I would like to make a point that, speaking of pedestrians, I would like to say that Roswell has a few of the most, a few roads that are extremely dangerous for pedestrians. Because of the high usage of cars and then some of them are made are among the least pedestrian friendly and in in the in all of Metro Atlanta the that Holcomb Bridge and I'm and Marietta Highway and and and I'm Alpharetta Highway are all all kind of a somewhat of a safety hazard for pedestrians and I'm in As there and and so that would be a good thing to improve on Thank you

Thank you.

Next speaker, David Woodrow.

Mayor, council, thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. I'm disturbed, not clinically, but civically. I'm a little disturbed. I recently attended what I thought was gonna be an update on the city's comprehensive plan, lots of visuals, so on. And I thought this was led to believe that it was gonna be focused on economic development, critical for our city, our tax digest completely upside down. And instead, what I encountered, in my opinion, was a lobbying effort for, quote, affordable multifamily apartment housing. The comprehensive plan, I'm not sure that our citizens in Roswell realize the importance of that document. A legal document, essentially, required to be updated by the state. And ultimately, if you get into a zoning battle, that comprehensive plan is going to be critical. As I understand it, the public input that came back on the comprehensive plan was overwhelming. Leave our residential areas alone. Do not come in and try and change the zoning. Subsequently, then, was able to watch a committee meeting where one of our council members was showing pictures of duplexes, triplexes, eightplexes. Really. But where would these go. This concerns me that we would have after the amount of public input that we had that this would even be proposed. So you know I wonder. Where's this coming from? Who's pushing this agenda to, in my opinion, radically change the comprehensive plan? It's a slippery slope that would lead to some zoning changes that I would be really concerned about. Is it past council people who were perhaps involved in some different projects that fortunately did not go through? And by the way, on that committee meeting, I heard a remark, get with the times. I'm not sure what that meant, but perhaps they could reconsider that comment and address people who might have differences in a slightly different manner. I think that it is important that this council takes a leadership position. I think it's important that the mayor takes a leadership position. I remember a political debate several elections ago, and the question was posed, who should lead the economic development of the city? A gentleman who was running at the time, I'm happy to mention his name, the Reverend Lee Jenkins, fine, fine citizen of Roswell, he came right out with I think that the mayor should be the face of the city. The mayor should help drive the economic development of the city. The challengers said, nope. I think that that's the staff's job. I'm gonna step back from it, and that's not something that I really should be leading. I strongly disagree with that, and I hope a majority of the people in Roswell disagree with that. So if you don't have that leader, who is the face of the city, who is engaged, who has vision, who has energy, then who's gonna lead the effort for economic development in the city? Who has the ear, then, of the mayor? Well, this leads me to a second concern. certainly everyone needs a job certainly everyone every mayor has the opportunity to hire who they wish but I'm concerned about the amount of money that we are paying to a new chief of staff I'm concerned about the background of that particular chief of staff who was formerly with quite a while, the Atlanta Apartment Association. So who has the ear of the mayor? Who has the ear of some of the people on the council? A lot of you all campaigned hard on no apartments, and yet, whoa, pardon me, I see a coming together of that type of a mindset. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm good for a cup of coffee any time to discuss this a little bit further. Thank you very much.

Thank you, next speaker. Steve Malika.

Hey everyone, I'm Steve Malika. I'm working with a property owner in Roswell and we're trying to develop some kind of public entertainment activities down on Azalea Drive. It's kind of a unique property. It's situated between two parks. I believe it's 201 Azalea Drive, but it's private, not public. It's zoned conservation, which is what the parks are zoned. And we've tried, we're trying to do coffee trucks. We're trying to do drink trucks because they're not as intrusive as food trucks. We're trying to do, you know, outdoor recreation and we're trying to do events. We're just, you know, lot of ideas but every time it just seems like we're stopped by people in zoning or people at the business license administration and i'm trying to figure out if it's worth continuing because it seems like a great opportunity to me and it seems like you know everyone who stops by you know they think it's a great idea and we haven't had really i haven't heard of any complaints i'm sure some people are but um we're just i'm just trying to figure out a way forward i don't know if i need to go through getting a variance. I don't know if it's worth the trouble. So I guess I would ask, my first question would be, is there a way that council members and the mayor could state if they were open to some sort of public activity on the river that's not owned by the city of Roswell? Is that allowed for people who are private citizens or do you have to be part of the city? I just don't really know. I'm not in the area, but I don't know the rules exactly. I'm on the other side, the Sandy Springs side, and we kind of run at the same issue. So I've kind of come over here because it's, you know, in my mind, it seemed like it was a little more, I guess, feasible, but, you know, getting into it and going through the process, it's kind of the same, I guess, issues, I guess. And I mean, they're really, to me, it doesn't seem like issues because, you know, when we say we want to do outdoor recreation, They say, no, you reserve zone conservation, but then you go look at the zoning and next door to us is Nantahala Outdoor, whatever NAC stands for. I don't know exactly. So it just seems like there's kind of some picking of winners and losers. There was a beer garden there in the past. People loved it. And for some reason it got shut down. I don't really, I mean, I came after that part, so I don't know all the details. I mean, this is just me trying in these last few months. And so now we've kind of pushed our timeline to potentially the fall, but I'm just really just trying to gauge if it's worth continuing the effort, you know, cause I don't mean to me, it seems like a no brainer. Like, you know, you want people to walk along the river, you want to give them a place to stop and sit and you know, that's not, you know, there's parks and everything, but also, you know, There's things you can do on private property that you can't necessarily do on a park, and that's inclusive to everybody. And so we're just trying to figure out, you know, what the next step should be. And if we're, you know, if a variance is worth it and if, you know, I don't really know the process exactly. I'm kind of new to all this stuff, but I don't know if there's any way when you do your answer, if you could have your people state, like, is there like a potential or is it worth pursuing? It's not like a yes or no, definitely, but it's just like, are you open to it? That's kind of what we're trying to figure out. And that's all I have to say about that, I guess. Thank you all.

Thank you. Next speaker, John Bridges.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm John Bridges. I have 10 acres on Riverside Road. I don't think there's anybody that's gonna be more impacted than me. Um, I feared this part coming down Riverside road for, since the moment we got annexed, um, the bicycle riders are taken over a, uh, horn honking, yelling, um, road raging and infrastructure. I don't know how much that's going to help. I've read the a hundred page, uh, multi-use plan. Um, there's it's complicated. Um, I talked to the, um, transportation director of the road department, um, and they're pretty sure that they want to do hardscape and, uh, steel barriers and, uh, lighting 24 hours a day and all of that. I'm against, um, if you could tone it down and keep it natural, uh, let people come through here, let them enjoy the beauty of the river. I think maybe a maintenance program would be better suited for this area. It could be really spruced up. The overhanging trees, I get comments constantly about how gorgeous that road is. People just love driving down it. Traffic calming is a big issue. I know they're going to improve the, go underneath Highway 9, and that's going to alleviate some hold up on going down Riverside Road and Azalea Road. So that's going to be opened up. So we're going to get a lot more traffic. So I know things need to be done. I just want to see them done right. Um, keep our neighborhood a neighborhood. If you just open it up as a park, um, I can see long-term it changing, just becoming, um, Something that we don't want to live in. Don't think our property values will be going up. I don't think the development rights of my property are going to get any better. I can't sell half million dollar lots like I was hoping to do. I wrote some things down. I can email it to you. Would that be better? Or I've got a petition. Could I hand this to somebody? And I'm done. Thank you for hearing me.

Thank you, sir, and thank you for providing that information.

Next speaker. Jason Yowell.

Hello. There are so many things that I would like to talk about, but five minutes just isn't enough time. So I'm going to start on the thing nearest and dearest to me, and that is my property on the river. It's clear from the way the city has behaved that they would prefer to acquire this property on the cheap. and it all started with committing an inverse condemnation against the property in the 2014 UDC, which is a big mistake because even if you were to want to do eminent domain, you can't do it because you already played the inverse condemnation card. Also, the city has operated as though they don't really believe in the conservation zoning. And when I had the beer garden, it was a huge success. Laurie killed it because she put a moratorium on special event permits, except for the Cultural Arts Center, which is an indoor venue. And at the time that she put this moratorium on, She exceeded the governor's executive order, which was unlawful. And indoor dining had already reopened. And council people were petitioning her to carve out an exemption for any special event that could conform to the governor's executive order. She declined to do that. She then went to council after we got shut down. Her opening was to have special event permits not be available for conservation zoned land. Well, there's only one person that's targeted at, and that's me. And that demonstrates a malice of intent. And then the compromise that council made with her was, well, you can still do it, but you have to come in for mayor and council meetings. So instead of having these things 30-day blocks, indefinitely renewable month to month. Now, every month, you'd have to come to mayor and council meeting and get a vote. Nevertheless, in the spring, I talked to From the Earth, who had joint ventured to Beer Garden with me, and said, Tim, you want to give it a try? He goes, oh, I'm so booked up with things, I can't do it. Well, you know what he was booked up with? He was booked. into the NOC next door. It didn't do a special event permit. The city attorney, the city administrator and the mayor at the time surreptitiously amended their lease to allow them to do that. Now, the previous leaseholder, Shoot the Hooch, had asked for the very same consideration for years and was turned down each and every time. When I contacted the city attorney and said, well, it's clear that you don't really believe in the zoning. The zoning was an exercise to masquerade as spot zoning on me. What it comes down to is, I'll have what you're having, because there have never been two properties more similarly situated. He goes, oh, no, they're not similarly situated. And he cites a reference to a case at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. And what it basically boiled down to was, Any government land cannot abridge Second Amendment rights to carry. But private property can say no. If you're carrying, I won't let you on my property. This was his idea of what constituted not being similarly situated. Fun fact, last week the Supreme Court ruled on a very similar issue. about differentiating between the right of private property owners to abridge Second Amendment rights in public. And they determined that no such a differential exists. Kind of interesting. Oh, it's ahead of my time. So the city keeps playing games. The city keeps operating in an unlawful fashion. And I think you've all, at this point, seen the document that I've crafted that basically gives a timeline and a history of the things that have been done. And it's time to make it right. And the only way to make it right is to negotiate a reasonable outcome. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

Scott Long. SCOTT LONG. Hi, I'm Scott Long, 1055 Martin Ridge Road. And I did submit most of this. This is all, or I submitted this to the, this is mostly, most of this is city documents anyway, but I did submit it. So I hope it's OK that if I put it up here.

Can we get someone to assist Mr. Long? I think we may have it. There we go. Okay.

I wanted to cover two things if I have time for it. One is regarding the data centers and the others regarding the comp plan, the new comp plan, particularly having the UDC being in sync with the comp plan because it's currently way out of sync. I definitely appreciate the data center effort, it's clearly the intent is to protect the city from data centers coming in with no ordinance describing how or where they can be put. So I appreciate the hard work everybody's been doing. It's very apparent that that's the case with the staff presentations and all the planning commission meetings. I wanted to see if there, to talk about the two districts or two sets of districts that we're talking about adding the use to. There's there's a corridor and nodes district area and then there's also the employment districts and we spent a good amount of time before the January or the before the June 4th Planning Commission meeting talking about where the where the data centers were gonna be added. And for corridor and node, the proposal was to add them to CC and add them to CH, but not to add them to PV. And what that means is that we would be adding them to CC, which is primarily Holcomb Bridge, and CH, which is primarily Highway 9, but not add them to PV, which is primarily Parkway Village. And at the Planning Commission meeting on the 4th, the request I made was, well, if we're gonna add it to Holcomb Bridge and we're gonna add it to Highway 9, why don't we add it to Crossville Road? And... especially because they're both big state highways, multi-lanes, high speeds, bunch of strip malls. And especially if it's conditional use, if conditional use prevents, you know, unintended approval, there should be no fear in doing that. And to my surprise, the discussion during the Planning Commission actually took it to another level and said, well, instead of adding it to PV to align Crossville with Holcomb Bridge, how about we just remove CC and that would and then only leave it on CH on Highway 9 which made a lot of sense to me and it seemed like a good way to address it and the staff in the following June 16th Planning Commission meeting seemed to implement essentially implement some of that. It sounded like verbally they were going to remove CC which was the request we had made but also remove CH, which is a different matter that certainly is worth discussing. During that 616 meeting, though, the next thing that came up was, well, we've got employment districts, too. We have OR, and OP that were also proposed adding the data center use to ORM, OPR office and the office zonings. And again, OR and OP have this attribute that they are in the comprehensive plan, in the most recent one and in the last one, allowed on Holcomb Bridge Road, but not allowed on Crossville Road. So we're in a position where, if you look at this, our data center uses, we are allowing them, and the no districts are allowing them in Holcomb Bridge but not Crossville, although with the update, verbal update, it looks like that has been resolved. But we're also, as far as the OP, the office, we are again allowing them for the Holcomb Bridge zoning, but not allowing them for Crossville. So my request is, and it was a request that seemed to be being made by the Planning Commission discussion as well is, Do we really need to remove CH? Could we add CH back and have it be OP and OR that we remove and align CH with our comp plan, and that would allow us to keep it in the dense commercial areas of Highway 9, but towards where the car dealerships are, but yet, so not remove that one, but yet protect the neighborhoods. So appreciate the time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Courtney Rosier. Good evening.

First, thank you to Mayor and Council for carrying out on the Mayor's campaign initiative to listen. The concerns regarding the last administration's expensive contract with a SEER consultant and highly paid part-time COO have been addressed. I've also seen the current Mayor and Council listen to neighbors and make adjustments, such as in the case related to noise and to pick a ball. at the old middle school. I appreciate the mayor listening to residents and recognizing how veterans are a unifying cause amongst our community and working to bring a veteran's home to Roswell. And I perhaps have a different opinion from a previous speaker and believe the citizens are at the top of our structure and that mayor and council Basically, I support bringing back the strategic plan, which incorporated implementing goals of the master plans, the comprehensive plans, which is the vision of the people, basically not a monarch.

Excuse me as I go back to what I typed up earlier.

In regards to the 2040 comprehensive plan, observations that I have so far is that in the survey, the information, the summary that was provided indicated that the number one concern centers around traffic. However, we wish that we could walk to local destinations like grocery stores, entertainment, and schools, but we currently prefer to drive. The survey with more than 1,000 respondents, and while we aren't crazy about high density and new apartments, there is still support for mixed use projects that include business, commercial, and housing. The contextual analysis report indicates that only a small share of residents live and work in Roswell. And also according to the analysis, The healthcare industry is the leading industry with the number of jobs, far exceeds the number of residents, resulting in a reliance upon commuters. And so perhaps the city and county could work with leaders across industries, but especially in Roswell's healthcare industry, if not already, to encourage or incentivize recruitment of employees who have access and utilize public transportation in addition to increasing or reinstituting hybrid work from home opportunities. Another idea would be for collaboration, especially amongst the healthcare industry, developers, city and county, for investment in local, excuse me, in local hero housing for nurses, technicians and other positions It seems like it would be a win-win reducing commuter traffic while gently increasing our population with options for young professionals and young families. Something that I believe we need to invest in based on also the analysis report which indicates that Roswell's public school enrollment has dropped from policy year 2010-2011 to fiscal year 2023-2024 by 13% overall, and it was broken down to 13.1% for elementary, 3.7% for middle school, and 12.8% for high school. There's also a high acceptance of the vision statement to be the number one family community in America. And while the interim report contextual analysis identifies the age cohort growing the most is 65 years of age and older. At the same time, there is recognition that affordable starter housing prices is a barrier to young families living in Roswell. Meanwhile, the most important issue to Roswell seniors and aging population, which includes me, is the ability to age in place. I also found it interesting that the contextual analysis report called out that hotels that are being renovated, but there's a lack of high-end accommodations for large conferences instead of calling out opportunities for adding family-friendly and eco-driven tourism that would complement our drive to be the number one family community, love for our parks and natural spaces, especially since the market analysis showed that overall The hospitality, which I've understood included hotels, is ranked low overall. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you.

Next speaker. Jennifer Donlon. Good evening.

Good evening.

I wasn't actually planning on speaking tonight, and I didn't bring my glasses, so I just typed up something really quick because I wanted to respond to some of the comments that were made tonight. Um, Janet beautifully expressed her love for the city, um, and how it has a sense of place. And the second speaker, um, talked about a new generation being in charge one day. Um, and I also wanted to respond to the housing comments because I think it's important to remember who we're talking about when we talk about housing, um, when people use affordable housing as something to be feared. or suggest that housing options like duplexes and triplexes and cottage-style houses somehow threaten our neighborhoods, they're not talking about an abstract concept. They're talking about people. They're talking about teachers, nonprofit workers, firefighters, young professionals, service workers, seniors who want to downsize, and families who already contribute to this community every day. We're talking about people like me. I work in health care. I've worked my way up in health care, but I'm still nowhere near a six-figure salary. Everyone deserves the opportunity to live in the city that they love. And loving Roswell shouldn't only be possible if you can afford a million-dollar home. Thoughtful housing choices don't have to mean towering apartment buildings in every neighborhood. There are ways to add housing that fits the character of existing communities while making home ownership possible for more people. I would also encourage all of us to have these conversations without fear or misinformation. We can disagree about planning designs or decisions, but we should not imply that people with more modest incomes are somehow a threat to our neighborhoods. They are our neighbors already, and they deserve to be welcomed with dignity and respect. I'd also like to respectfully disagree that the mayor absolutely should not be the sole authority to the economic development of the city. Love you so much, but I don't agree with that. The mayor and the council work for us. So the people are the ones that should be driving the economic direction of this city. So I hope that as everyone continues to discuss the comp plan, that you'll remember that the choices you make will determine whether Roswell remains a community that is open to people from different walks of life or one that becomes increasingly out of reach. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker. Mayor, there are no other speakers.

Is there anyone in the public who did not get a chance to fill out a comment card and would like to speak still? Nope. So again, I wanna make sure to thank everyone for being part of this conversation. I don't think we've finalized the date yet, but we are adding an additional open mic day. This one's probably gonna be on a weekend. We're probably gonna have it in a different part of the city, not here within City Hall. We're arranging some things to make sure, and this is also for those that are online listening, that it will also, we're making sure we can still stream the session. So as soon as we finalize, we think we're close. We're checking out some things. So please make sure you are looking out for that too if you would like to attend that. But again, I think we're looking more on a Saturday type setting so that we can give those people who may not be able to be here on a Monday evening for whatever reason that chance to also come in and speak to us and tell us their concerns or comments. The other thing, we do have two budget workshops coming up. Again, I apologize, I do not have all of the dates right in front of me, but please, that will be posted if not already. So there again, we are trying to make sure We're testing out some things right now. We are going to have those also at some slightly different times just to make sure the two will be at different times and days to make sure we can have as much opportunity for the citizens, the businesses, business owners, and our visitors to come and tell us and look at our process and understand that as we move forward. So that will be posted. We are trying to do those in August or July. I can't remember, I apologize. July, mid to end of July, I apologize. So be aware of that. Hopefully everyone here and then those online, so we'll be posting those also. As we said, all questions, concerns will be addressed within two weeks. Please make sure you're looking at that. Our staff last time did it very, very well. Hopefully we did not receive We received comments back that the questions were answered to the best of our ability also to share and we just wanna make sure we give out accurate facts. So make sure you're looking for that also. And with that, the open forum of June 29, 2026 is adjourned.