Board of Mayor & Commissioners - Regular Meeting

All right, everybody ready?

All good?

All good. All right. This is the City of Avondale, States of Georgia, Board of Mayor and Commissioners. This is our regular meeting. It's September 9th, 2026. It's 530. I'd like to call the meeting to order. We have an agenda before us. Do I have a motion to adopt? That was Lida. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. All right. Commissioner comments. I'll start. I rarely do. My only comment is on September 20th, there will be a 5K run-walk to raise money for Huntington's disease. It's a neurogenerative or neuro... What is the word? It's degenerative yeah degenerative uh disease and uh anyway the raising money for it i'm doing it uh if you'd like to go to my facebook page and contribute that'd be great but uh it is a incurable disease it's pretty terrible uh dear friend of mine's wife has it uh it's unrelenting and it uh eventually fatal. But they're doing, raising money for it. There are some breakthroughs. There is hope. It's in that same family of diseases like Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's and stuff like that. But anyway, that is September 20th. So at the least, come out and cheer everybody on. It starts at the lake. I'm not sure about the route, but it's in Avondale. But it's a good cause. So show up, cheer everybody on if you want to contribute. That's my plug for the evening, but thank you, and thank you all for being here.

Do you know how to sign up for that?

Online. Just go to the Huntington's site, and yeah. I had nothing to do with bringing it here. I wish I did, but they're choosing to do it here, and so I hope that we get a good turnout, and then we'll return. Thank you.

My only comment is a big thank you to the city for the Centennial Street Festival kickoff celebration.

It was a lot of fun, and I think it was a great way to start our celebrations in the city. Thank you. Yes.

I don't think I have anything. Thank you to the city for continuing to work on the town green and all the transition work from the Dale down to the park. Once all that's done, it's going to look great. It's an exciting area, so I encourage everybody to go to the Dale as often as possible and town green as well. Yeah, it's great.

Louis? Continuing with gratitude for the centennial celebrations. The street party was fun. The celebration at the lake house with the community club, that was really something. I'm not going to pretend to understand the extent of work, the amount of work that went into that, but I know it was a lot. You could tell. You can tell a lot of work. And I am not going to pretend to know everyone that was involved, but definitely Margaret, Connie, Sally, Morgan, Ashley, and Tyler. Like, wow, that was an event. That was great.

They were responsible for the decor.

Okay, well, that's what I saw.

Extensive. I'd like to also thank everybody who was involved in both kickoffs of the centennial, both the street project, the street party, and the gala. I mean, they were both wonderful and a good way to start off our centennial celebration. So I appreciate all the hard work that went into that by everyone. The other thing is Louie and I are going to have a commissioner chat at the Lost Druid on October 5th at seven o'clock. It's an opportunity to have dialogue with the residents. So we hope y'all will come and join us. Thank you all for being here.

all right very good uh mr manager yeah a couple of announcements tonight uh the first is that uh the city will be holding a 9 11 remembrance ceremony this friday at dewey plaza across from city hall ceremony will begin at 8 30 a.m and include bell ringing by resident peg wise at 8 46 to mark the time the world trade center tower was hit Attendees will have time for silent reflection in memory of the thousands killed in the terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Please join the city in honoring those impacted by this tragedy 25 years ago and mourn those fallen heroes. Also of note, weekend wind-down concerts are back this weekend from 5 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, September the 13th. The series returns to the town green, where we will kick off Hispanic Heritage Month with the Latin Fusion COT Band, salsa dance lessons, and a variety of Hispanic foods from Avondale's own Santo, Catina, and Cocina. And the Buen Provincio... Sorry, stumbling over some pronunciations. Banjo Coffee will also have beverages available for purchase. The city is again partnering with the Avondale Arts Alliance on a Latinx artist's art exhibit on the town green. Check out the exhibit along with the story walk, which is titled Alma and How She Got Her Name. by Juana Martinez-Neal. The event is free to the public. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. Music begins an hour after the event starts. Additionally, we will have a makeup concert for the Rained Out June concert on September the 27th. The band performing that night is Blue Talk, so mark your calendar for a night with funk for the whole family.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, all good up here? Okay. All right. Public comment. Yes.

Jan. Jan. Jan Hover, 89 Berkeley. I just wanted to, for later on tonight, I just wanted to say how glad I am that the police chief is asking for important equipment to keep them a little safer, hopefully. It's a very dangerous, more and more I see that it's a very dangerous job. And I really appreciate what our police do. And I think that's a great thing. on an adjacent but non-adjacent subject that when we talk about the golf cart thing, that I hope the people that use it know how to secure their golf carts so that they don't get stolen. I'd hate to think our police have to go around chasing people that have stolen their golf carts. Thanks.

Thank you. Yes. It's Lizzie, right? Yes. Yes.

Lizzie Buer, 712 Stratford Green. Just wanted to bring to y'all's attention, if you weren't aware already, there is a change.org petition to cancel the flock contract here that has 562 signatures already. And 69% of those signatures are from our zip code and the surrounding zip code. So wanted to bring that to y'all's attention so you can check it out and stay informed. A lot of people are pretty fired up about this topic.

Thank you.

So the 69% are from the zip code 3, 0, 0, 0, 2. Maybe that's too many zeros and then 3, 0, 0, 3, 0, and then 3, 0, 0, 3, 2. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes.

30, 48. Just to. Bookend that a lot has happened since we talked last week. So we did some more aggregating of cancellations and found a lot, 90 municipalities in August alone. And then since last week, the Florida DOT banned flock cameras on all state roads. Greg Abbott in Texas banned state funding from going to flock. And Thomas Massey in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation to ban flock nationally. So there is a lot of momentum, and I just want to bring that up. And I got bedtime tonight, so that is it for me. Thank you.

Yes, Stacey.

come up here since that's what agreements do. I'll echo the Dale comments from earlier. Thumbs up to the margaritas and the team at Green Coyote. I'm fearful of what that means. But I do want to talk about graffiti. Article 8 of Avondale State's Code of Ordinances outlines how graffiti is to be addressed. The code's purpose is no different than other municipalities nationally that have similar ordinances. To quote our text, graffiti is a public nuisance that's destructive to property values, and I totally agree with the city's take on that. I'd also submit that the graffiti that we have in Avondale State, some of which has been around and apparently unaddressed for an extended period, stands out more now because of the improvements made downtown. Our business owners are investing. We as taxpayers are investing. Y'all have put a lot of time into developing downtown, and it's really paying dividends. So the graffiti stands out a lot more. But beyond the aesthetics, graffiti also sends the wrong message on vandalism and crime tolerance. Our ordinance allows a cure time of 15 days. Some cities only allow 24 to 48 hours, after which penalties are incurred. Working for a big retailer, we were on the receiving end of that in a whole lot of cities where we literally had 24 to 48 hours to paint over it or to clean it off. Quickly removing graffiti sends a message. While we want to be a welcoming community, that type of behavior is not what we are welcoming. The last meeting, I used the written question process to ask why we aren't enforcing what seems to be a straightforward requirement of for property owners. After 13 days, I was told that staff is aware and is working with a property owner to resolve it. I think that's great. Based on our own court of ordinances, I would expect that we would be able to see it removed in the next couple of days. But beyond being curious about when the notice, which Section 5-474 actually provides, was given to these property owners, I I'm hopeful that going forward, we will have those charged with enforcement be more timely with notices and follow-ups. We're all investing way too much in downtown to do anything any different. And just to illustrate why timeliness matters, I'm out literally drove just from the post office to over here. And on a route that before there were only three tags, today there are a heck of a lot more when you drive that same route, at least 2x, almost 3x. So I really would encourage us to stay on top of it. That is the only way to kind of get it to go away. Thanks.

Thank you. Is there anyone alive that wanted to? Okay. Seeing none. Any others from the audience this evening? Okay. Well, I will close public comment. And move on to item number five. We have before us the meeting minutes of the August 26, 2026 regular meeting in the August 20, the August 26, 2026 work session. Do I have a motion to engross the minutes? That was Lina. Do I have a second? Second. That was Mike. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's five. Okay. All right. One second.

Where is it?

Okay. Well, I'll read the title and then see if we're going to entertain a consent vote. We have before us an ordinance to amend Chapter 18 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Avondale States relating to traffic and vehicles, Article 7 regarding motorized carts, personal transportation, and low-speed vehicles to provide that such vehicles may cross US Highway 278 at a designated and marked crossing to repeal conflicting provisions in and to provide for the conditions upon which this ordinance shall become effective. This is the first read. As our ordinance allows, we can do a consent vote to go ahead and vote on this if we want to. Do I have a motion for a consent vote?

I'll motion for a consent vote.

Okay, that's Louie. Do I have a second?

Second.

That's Graham. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay, so we will have a second read on... Two weeks from today. Two weeks from today. The 23rd. If you don't get a consent vote, you can't move to vote. So we'll have a second read as the manager outlined.

Can I make a comment real quick? Sure, of course. Just on principle, I think any time we make an ordinance change, we should have two readings. It's not anything specific to this ordinance.

Okay. All right. All good. Okay. Last item of a regular meeting. Let's see. We have before us an easement agreement. This easement agreement, dated today effectively, would be between the City of Avondale Estates, a Georgia municipal corporation, and Maple 278 Ventures LLC, a Georgia limited liability company. Perhaps I should ask Mr. Manager to explain this once more before we make the motion.

And Maple Ventures 278 LLC. And so, as we talked about before, throughout our downtown, there are a series of alleyways. We approach understanding the system of alleyways on a case-by-case basis as necessary because some of them are actually private and some of them are public. And upon tidal research here, this narrow stretch of alleyway to the northeast of the westernmost corner of Olive Street before the building located at 120 Olive, formerly known as the Rorick property, is being requested by Avila for their use during construction and then to landscape that following construction so as to not provide a hidden hangout in between their development and 120 Olive for loitering, you know, stop loiterers. We think this is an easement that you should grant, and we are appreciative that Avala has determine that they are capable of using their resources to landscape that alleyway in a nice, inviting manner.

Okay. Thank you. Okay.

Can I ask a question? Of course. So this alleyway, is it public property or is it just...

Yes, and that's why the easement request is being made because... And it's not going to impact any other property around it?

Not at all. Okay.

Okay. So I've read the title. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. That was Graham. Do I have a second? Second. Any questions or comments up here? Well, any questions, comments? Well, it's all up here. I've said it for 10 years. It's kind of boring. Okay. All good? So all in favor say aye. Aye. That's five. Okay. All right. Got all that. Yep. Okay. So do I have a motion to adjourn? That was light. I do. I have a second. Second. That was Mike. All in favor say aye. Aye. Do we need a break? Can we just keep going? Sure. Okay. I mean, we normally take a 10-minute break. Are we okay moving forward? Yeah. Do you want to stay up here or go down there?

Well, I mean, I guess it's up to you guys. Are you all okay if we take a break? Or do you want us to keep going?

You want us to move over?

Keep going. Okay.

Okay. All right. Well, wait. We're just going to stay up here. Why are we going to stay here? You want to just stay up here? You know what? You want to move down there? We're talking about comprehensive planning. Okay. I've got a lot of pages. Okay. I was just trying to keep rolling.

All right. Yeah. I just know she's going to do it.

But, uh, anyways, okay. All good this is, uh, city of Alabama state's board of auditors. This is our work session is September 9th, 2026 and is now. 552. 552. I'd like to call the meeting to order. We have an agenda before us. Do I have a motion to adopt? So moved. Second. Second. That was a lie. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. First item of discussion, review of the purchase of two police department patrol vehicles. Yes. Thank you.

So both the, well, each of the next two items tonight budgeted for in our current capital program. The first being the purchase and upfitting of two new patrol units. You know, we've discussed this before. We are now on a vehicle replacement schedule. So when vehicles age out, we decommission them, sell them, and then replace them with new units so that we have reliable transportation. We also have a take-home program. So each of our patrol officers actually takes their unit with them, which does provide for additional mileage to be placed on those vehicles. So we're even more mindful of the need to continue to have an operating fleet that has low maintenance costs associated as well. So, The memorandum you have before you outlines two separate contracts, the first being a request for the purchase of the vehicles themselves. These are Ford Explorer hybrids, essentially the same make and model that we have been purchasing for patrol purposes. We did take a brief reprieve from the hybrid vehicles because there were a couple of modeling we are utilizing state contract in order to recommend that purchase to you. And then in addition, as we purchase new units, those have to be upfitted or fitted with all of the light packages, guard packages, and so on in order to place them into the field for use. We received multiple quotations for the purpose of the update. We are recommending to you an update from Fleet Tech that cents, which is slightly under the amount we had budgeted for this matter. So we want to go ahead and move this forward so that we can place the purchase order for the vehicles so that we are ready to receive them when they come off the line. And then our plan will having two spare patrol units and one spare administrative unit so that we will not lose the ability to provide take-home vehicles to our officers, and feel confident that if any of our vehicles need to go in for repair, that we will have vehicles on hand for use so that

So this would be voted on September 23rd? Correct.

I have a few questions. So at the meeting where we discussed the reg X that needed to be replaced, Chief Hess mentioned that there were 23 vehicles. in the police department, but this inventory that you sent us contains 19. Are there four other additional police? No, that was just a misstatement.

I don't believe that statement was made. I wasn't asked the number of vehicles that we had.

Oh, no, I specifically asked. Maybe I misheard. Okay, so it's 19.

And then we're decommissioning and selling two of them.

Right.

So then we'll have... Well, you had three. Yeah, exactly. So... We're replacing two. We are decommissioning and selling the remaining two. So then we'll now have 17 vehicles in the fleet. All 17 will be operational vehicles.

Okay, so the ones that are being decommissioned, how are we going to dispose of them? Do we have something set up for that?

Yeah, there's a legal process that we have to go through where first we decommission the cars. can reuse in other vehicles. And then we have to go through an auction process in order to dispose of those vehicles. So we use GovDeals usually. And so that allows the general public the opportunity to place a bid on those vehicles and then we sell those vehicles to the highest bidder.

Do we have any idea how much we might get for this vehicle?

It varies, but yeah, because they're, you know, aged and high mileage and that high mileage is primarily city mileage or idle mileage. So or idle engine time. So you traditionally receive less for those vehicles than maybe a comparable vehicle that was driven for recreational use.

So, I mean, is this an urgent need to do this replacement now? I mean, are all our cars functioning well? I mean, is it something that could be postponed for a few months?

I think postponing is a mistake because then it takes you off of your replacement schedule. And, you know, the longer you keep cars in your fleet, the higher your maintenance costs go. So you could...

if you want to use it this year correct um i have one question about two questions about one subject the warranty and the number of miles

trying to turn over vehicles when they get seven years, 100,000 miles. And because of the type of use on these vehicles, we recommend purchasing the extended warranty on these vehicles because they're in and out of the shop and we need to make sure that we're not incurring outrageous expenditures on maintenance.

I was hoping there would be longer

warranty period. Well, this is when we believe the car's useful life is up. So we try and make sure that we dispose of these vehicles after the warranty expires so that we don't incur those high maintenance costs, which we have before.

Family members, police officers tell me that the take-home program is the number one factor in, you know, when new officers, let's say, are hired.

Retaining and attracting.

And that, you know, they take more pride in it, they take better care of it.

Now, one of the vehicles that is being replaced is the 2021, which is a seven.

That's six years old. We got it early when the model was released, and it's just hit its mileage.

Just curious about the process. The state contract, that's like a pre-negotiated price that the state pays to every city.

that the state's already done it. Right. Okay.

And then the only difference, the differences in fleet tech and the seen and heard was it just, it's the same stuff.

Fleet tech just came out $500 cheaper than that. Yes and no, but the quality that fleet tech puts out, they're used by many agencies. Nothing, not downgrading the seen and heard. Sure. But, you know, moving forward in the future, we need to try to stick with one. Yeah.

I like the schedule that we're on, I think, you know, because our vehicles, especially our police cars, and, you know, that's the one you want to run when you need it. So I like that we do it on set.

No, because previously some of the, especially the chargers, they were just a little falling apart.

No knuckle dodge or anything, but just kind of a little too far, and it got expensive fast.

Yeah, we replaced several engines on those Dodge Chargers. That's why we established the vehicle replacement program.

It's pretty predictable when they're going to give up the ghost. All right, so that would be, again, voted on September 23rd. Everybody get on this review of the purchase of Police Department technical equipment.

Yes, so if y'all recall after the incident that we experienced on July 4th, Although we performed incredibly well, as did the DeKalb County School Police in responding to that incident on July 4th, that made, you know, kind of a situation that we had, you know, occur throughout the country very real because now it's, you know, paying close to home and within our borders. And Chief chief came to me and said, hey, we need to be better prepared in case this happens again with equipment that protects our officers and ensures that our officers are able to go into an active shooter situation in the way that they need to and protect themselves from So the memorandum you have before you recommends the purchase of 16 of these kits, one for each sworn officer in the department and then two spare kits if any of the kits assigned to an officer were to become damaged or fail. So before you, you have this request for these kits. at a cost way less than the budgeted amount that we anticipated. So we're happy about that. If y'all recall, we added $70,000 to the capital program for the purpose of purchasing these kits. And what we are recommending to you have a long-standing relationship with. Prior to the recommendation for this, they are one of the vendors who provide upfitting services for our patrol units. Many of our patrol units have been outfitted by Dana Safety. We like them. They do a good job. So we're recommending making the purchase of the kits through Dana Safety at a cost of $47,772.99.

And we had a situation recently at the collision place, right?

Yes, different scenario, but yeah, I mean, you know, Incidents with firearms, involving firearms, happen everywhere, all the time. They can happen in any city in America. The more prepared we are to deal with those, the more effective we will be in saving people's lives and apprehending suspects.

Well, I mean, we are in a lower-equestrian area. We are inside the perimeter, and actually close to the perimeter, which kind of encourages some people to swoop in and do things they shouldn't do. I, as you said, based on recent events, I mean, I hate it, but unfortunately in this country, you can build all kinds of stuff.

Yeah. I was, I mean, this, I want to preface this by saying I want our police protected. I think that's very important and I completely support that. However, you know, as far as being fiscally prudent, is there a way that maybe we could phase out the phase the purchase of these items and is there possibly any room in the existing police operational unit to purchase some of this and I mean, do we really need gas masks?

Yes. Not only that, but this is an equipment purchase, so it's not an operational purchase, it's a capital purchase. On top of that, these monies are already budgeted for this purpose and so again, kind of like the vehicles, you would You would have to amend the capital program to remove that appropriation, to move it somewhere else. And yes, I do believe that the recommendation here will address all of the potential issues associated with an active shooter event.

It's less than... equipment.

Got a really good price. And again, it's budgeted for it. These aren't expenditures that were unforeseen that we are bringing to you. This has already been approved in the government program.

Well, I mean, I don't know what this, how this factors in, but I mean, last year we started in Avondale, got over the perimeter and DeKalb responded quite vigorously to it appropriately, I think, because our officer was getting shot at. But, you know, bad things happen around us as well. And sometimes agencies have to help one another out. And again, I, you know, I hate that this is the kind of world we live in where these things are probable, but watch the news. I mean, it could be in small town, Georgia. It could be in downtown Atlanta. I mean, it's just, it's unfortunate, but, but my point was, We are surrounded by other agencies, and sometimes we have to help each other out, and there are bad situations, and I think our guys should be prepared, and our officers should be prepared.

And we don't want to be the municipality that is, like, stingy on safety equipment.

Yeah. Our officers need to be effective and protect themselves, and small-prime inspection. Yeah.

There's a lot for you.

But

yeah that's kind of one situation you want to i'm just going to be like in the patrol vehicle ready the idea is that um every shift will have the one of the blisters that kills a set of entry totals will have a spare set in the office the reason being is they go to a routine called given up a tactical advantage that they already gained to go retreat and get entry towards the pits. And the ladder was needed because of a six and a half foot fence that our officers can broken their heads over from Fort McJuly. That's why that ladder's in there.

Excellent. Again, this would be voted on September 23rd. Yes. All good up here? Yes. Okay. All right, next item, review or request for renewal slash update of speed detection device permit, approved list of roadways for city of Avondale, state of Portland. Yes.

So this is step two of the process to receive a GDOT permit for the golf cart crossing. Step one, of course, was amending our own ordinance to allow for it. In order to receive that permit, The connecting road at the crossing, South Avenue 278, needed to be able to have a reduced posted and enforced speed of 25 miles an hour. We had already reduced the posted speed on that road from 30 to 25, but when we reduced the speed, that no longer allows for radar enforcement. That's kind of how that works. In order to regain radar enforcement. You have to submit to a speed study. And the speed study has to confirm that the posted speed along that road allows for safe travel. And so we perform a speed study for that purpose. That is included in your packet. What you will find is that our Consultant AECOM provided that it was a safe speed limit, 25 miles an hour, which would be required for GDOT in order to move forward with the golf cart crossing. So now that we have that, we can move forward with amending our list of roads that are able to be enforced using GDOT. radar enforcement and can move forward in the GDOT permitting process. So what this requires is approval from the local governing body so that the mayor can then send a letter to the state requesting renewal of radar enforcement on that roadway and then provide for the ability

yeah that's that's not an issue so the issue we had was that South Avondale before we

As a result of those improvements in the residential traffic calming, the bike boulevard and this additional stop sign, we were able to reduce that to 25 miles an hour. Now we have the authority to enforce speed using radar on that road, and that's what is necessary in order for GDOT to permit the crosswalk.

I don't have a question. It's not really totally related to this, but it kind of is. I had heard that radar is also limited by you have to have a certain amount of distance before you can stretch.

So there are, you know, and I can have Chief Hess speak to this in more detail, but for enforcement purposes using radar and LIDAR, there are sightline requirements and stuff like I don't believe that's an issue on this road, per se, because it is a straight road. But, you know, on other thoroughfares in the city, it is.

Other questions? So, again, this is something we need to vote on September 23rd? Correct. Okay. Once this is voted on, what's the turnaround time for it to actually

approved but you don't start having uh i do not know the answer to that question because um they tend to work at their own speed but it just allows us to move forward in the in the permitting process now that we have these two steps okay i'll go to sleep all right

And the last item of discussion this evening, review of the City of Avondale State's comprehensive plan and preparation for the September 23rd public hearing of the Trans-Military and the Avondale Regional Commission and Georgia Department of Community Affairs for final review.

Yes. So, Assistant City Manager Powell, who has been the lead on this project, is prepared to give y'all a brief presentation of the CDP draft. And I will let her take it away.

Well, this is the year plan. So the comprehensive plan, I think just to give you a quick run now, you'll remember this is going to require this plan that every municipality is required to do this by this week. Don't do it. If you don't do it by their timeline, then you're at risk of not being looked for otherwise, too. So it is, they've incentivized us to make sure that we do it. And there are very specific requirements as to what is included, what things you have to address, how you, how this is structured. This is an update. So they asked us to do an update every five years and then a full refresh every 10 years. This is much more of a, this is supposed to be an update. Because of the percentage of things that we accomplished from our report of accomplishment, it really was more of a full refresh than it was just a little update. But nonetheless, ARC, for cities of our size, volunteers to give us their professional guidance, direction to help us pull the whole thing together. And they have been our partner along the way throughout this process and continue to be our partner. And we're super appreciative of the effort that they put into this. This is a, you should see, this is typically five years. So you're looking at a five-year window. I'll talk about the community work programs a little longer than that. But this is a policy document. The way we use this document, somebody comes to you, you want a project and you need to apply for a grant. We use this as a document to say there is language within this document to help support that grant application or a task or a list that's there. So we use it that way. If there is a rezone, we use it for that purpose. This supports or doesn't support a request for a rezone. So those are the ways in which we use this document to guide our collective decisions, staff decisions, and your decisions on how we move forward. So I just want to give you kind of a framework for that. There is a community engagement, and I'm going to say implementation timeline for this plan that you have as part of your packet. It's probably the second. So look beyond the community work program, which is this yellow thing, and you'll see a timeline. This outlines for us the steps that we have taken to engage the community, all the pop-ups that we've done, all the various ways in which we have looked to reach out to the community to ask for their input and the process that we are required to do, which is the two public hearings, as well as the timeline that we're trying to meet in order to meet our state guidelines. I will tell you that this is a pretty darn robust community engagement process. Typically, we would have been expected to do two hearings, but it was just an update, in part because this is Avenue and the community likes to be engaged. We structured a more robust engagement process with pop-ups throughout at various locations. We were at the farmer's market, we were at the wine and art walks, and we were at these various events to try to capture people out and about, as well as we did a number of events in St. Paul. There's also a planning advisory group that's been reviewing and stepping in along the way. So they gave input at various points in the process, including having Reviewed and given comments on on the plan, as you see it there comes have been already incorporated. We also met with the planning and zoning. The planning comes with these backwards planning planning of different zoning committee. And last week I read core morning I incorporated their comments into the work program, we may have a few weeks to the main document, but. It will. collectively take all of your comments and come back to that so that we can give you a final comment. But we did have time to incorporate them into the document that I sent you yesterday. So here's where we are today. We're discussing these over the next couple of weeks. It comes back to the board for you to tell us that it's good. We'll get your comments. We'll incorporate it. We'll come back to the next meeting. We'd like to be able to have your blessing to move it on to ARC and the state for their review. Once they review it, they have 30 days, it comes back to you again for final approval. And our goal is to have this adopted by November 6th. That's kind of where we're headed. That's the fourth one. Oh, I'm sorry. Sixth, fourth.

Can you repeat the 30-day part?

Once you guys give us the, hey, this is good for us, keep on moving, we send it to the Department of Community Affairs, and they review it for compliance with their expectation. They give us any feedback that they have. They give us a review. They approve it, and they have 30 days to do their review. We then get it back. We have to address whatever comments they might have. We've had a lot of documents in this process. We'll have checked all those boxes, but nonetheless, we will do that and then bring it back to you. There will be a public hearing that's associated with that. And so that's how that process works.

There will be another public hearing after the 23rd of September.

No, I'm sorry. I misplaced. It'll come back to you for the readings in the BOC. The public hearing will be, the official public hearing Because we need to get people's final input before we go to...

So what is the date that you need the board to say yes, it's good enough?

The 23rd. So I'm hoping that we'll get on the 23rd. So basically we're going to hear from the public and make a decision on the same night?

Well, I mean, the public has had lots of opportunities throughout this process, but there is one final opportunity for them to make any comments that we would take into consideration and add into provide us with commentary for email or yeah yeah okay um i think that i think it's also we will post that we typically keep in mind you typically post up post more information in the friday before your meeting so if i don't have i have to have enough time in order to incorporate within and lay it back out so kind of early you know monday Tuesday before the Friday in order to have some time to really get that in and present that back to you. Does this work? I mean, there is a comprehensive plan and this is within it, but you sent us one. I've sent you an updated version of that. I sent you an updated version after we'd gotten comments from the other two committees.

Is this one to the public?

It will be in the next version. It is only available to you right now.

Will this be available before the public hearing? Yes, it will be. Absolutely.

With your commentary in Portland. Okay.

Planning Advisory Group reviewed it. EACB reviewed it and that was made public. It's public in this session. It will be public in the next session.

So what I can say there's a version out there next. This just incorporates the planning and zonings cause that we just we just gone. So we'll go ahead and post. We'll do a revised after. Okay, so I've tried to digest what I can. Let me keep going back through, and then we'll come back through. Okay. A couple of things that we've pointed out. During the report of accomplishments, we were very successful in doing that and really checking off many of these boxes. I think you'll notice there's a lot of things that say, explore this, because it's a policy document. That's really what we're doing. So sometimes we explore it and learn that, hey, not the right direction. Sometimes you explore it and say, oh, we need to move forward. So you'll see this document. I reprinted it. I reprinted it because Louis let me know that trying to print it from the last version that we sent wasn't coming out very well. So we reprinted it so that you have a hard copy version of that. If you keep going, if you keep going through this presentation and You'll see that there are the vision stages. So let me say something about how the document is working on. So when you look at the document, a whole first section is about profile of the community, the demographics, what's happened, what's changed, how people travel, all that kind of stuff. It's all part of a required set of documents. All that has been updated by the Atlanta Regional Commission through their data sources and through the input from them. We've also layered in branding language that we have, so that kind of shapes and influences how we talk about that section. So that's the whole first section. Then there's a full section on community engagement and the comments that we got. One of the things I have been And actually, Louie gave me some feedback on this, which is some of the ways in which ARC helped to quantify that could probably be stronger. So we're going to go back and take a look at that. It's not necessarily clear. So we're going to go back and re-quantify that. But you get a whole section on this is what we did. This is all the process. This is how people were engaged. Then you've got the vision, the goals, and the Community Work Program, which are the heart of the plan. There you'll find each goal is described. There's a whole land use section that's really based on the land use and zoning maps that we have. And each goal is given a verbal description. Once we have, and then we get that, and then that gets translated into our Community Work Program. which is an aspirational set of tasks and decisions that starts at the end of 26 and goes through 31. And it doesn't exactly match the five years that the ARC-1 used. So you have that, then you have the report of accomplishments, which I just told you we reprinted for you. We'll look and see why it wasn't printed correctly in the main document. And then there's a set of dependencies that's just back up for everything that's in there. So that's kind of how the document is structured. The vision statement is here. I'm not going to read it because it's long. I do know it's long. I have been told it's long. But I do think it encompasses a lot of the things that we were hearing and what is valuable to this community. And it is building off of a vision that we already had. So it's not brand new. It comes from influence by the It is influenced by the branding language to try to capture the spirit of the community where we're headed. So that is in the actual comprehensive plan document. Yes, it's in the very beginning. Yes, it's under vision. It's in vision and word for word. And this, what you have in front of you, what's there is word for word.

Do I have it? Yeah, page two. Back of page one. It's on the back.

Oh, this one.

There you go. All right, thank you.

sorry yeah I'm following along on this and now we got the vision and then we had five there are five really big goals and someone asked where did the goals come from a combination so we start with a base from the previous plan and then we have lots of community input lots of conversation with planning with the various groups. And out of that came these five refined goals, I would say. And so if you look at this, it's historic character and connected community. I think that really is bringing us through. We protect and preserve what we have and care for who we are. The second is environmental sustainability and resilience. I believe in our infrastructure, how we continue to move forward in a way that is sustainable And not just, but resilient. How do we continue to manage things happen? How do we respond to that? The third is multimodal. How are we connected? And that gets into not only interconnected, but also how do we connect to other trails and bike facilities, MARTA stations? So it's both, how do we make sure that the The opportunities for travel inside city work and how do we make sure that those that connect us to our outside neighbors work. Economic vitality, how do we grow, how do we grow in a smart way, how do we grow in the ways that we intend to grow. So there's a lot of language around support of small business and entrepreneur business. That's what you find in that language is. diversity of business. How do we help support and grow, particularly our downtown? Is that what you're talking about? And how do we do that? And then world-class government is how do we function as a city in a way that is economically viable, sustainable, provides communications, So you'll see all that kind of thing kind of built into the world-class governance. So those kind of big buckets help guide the F-30 somethings.

Did we come up with these labels or were they selections that the state offered that we picked?

A little of both, I would say. I mean, these really reflect I mean, you'll see common out. So if you look at pump plans across across other cities, you see, I mean, you know, the buckets are similar to these, but there are different buckets for different cities. These are just the ones that seemed, these are the ones that resonated most as you looked at where are our priorities as a city and a community and where we want to go and how do we kind of fit within it. So that would be how I characterize that. Yes, you know, you're not just pulling completely up. First of all, you have a starting. You had the previous ones. But you're not pulling out of the air. You've got some language and some experience from others that help you to pull off. So that's how I would characterize this. I think the other thing to remember is that the downtown master plan is going on at the same time. And that one of the times a way to think about this is the comp plan is up here. And the downtown master plan is going to get into many more details. So you'll see a map, it might draw a line, says this is what you're trying to do, show you three-dimensional models of what you build in downtown, where in this plan, we talked about it only from a big policy, big high level. version. So sometimes we get comments that were very specific to zoning, for example, and we say, okay, that's, you know, we're not trying to write the zoning code within the comprehensive plans, but there may be a policy that says review to ensure that the zoning requirements reflect the vision of the governance plan? You're trying to talk to a higher level, right? Where are we in the master planning process? So they've done a lot of the initial, all the community engaged, because they did it in conjunction with us. They are working on... through some of the analytics and the writing and setting up. And who do you mean by that? Oh, Lord F. Sargent, who is the lead on that tool. And we've got a consulting team that's thankfully leading our efforts around that. We will have a deep eye at the planning session. Yes. Thank you. We'll spend a couple of hours just talking about that. It's such a detailed plan for us. That's going to be where we do a lot of work. And then we'll leapfrog from there to take the next step. But they're really preparing for that and doing a lot of the groundwork that's necessary for the downtown. So then that kind of leads us down to the community work program, you'll see that each of the goals. So at the top of these in red, you'll see each goal. And you'll see each goal, it's the same set of goals that you saw on another page that I lost. And then these are specific, specific tasks, and many of them are very aspirational, exploratory, And you'll see those. We tried to put timelines on when to do this. One of the biggest challenges that I will tell you that we had in this process is that finding what was the priority. Because one person thought this was the priority, and then the other person thought this was priority. And a lot of communities, that kind of dovetails in, and the highest priorities kind of rise to the top. We saw a lot of, we want to accomplish, we see so much opportunity, we want to accomplish everything. And with a small staff and limited resources, it's important to realize that every time we had anything, it requires staff and resources. It's an important way of putting this, and you'll see as we look at responsibility, a lot of things are on staff. We have added cost estimates. Some of these things are actually in our, this is, again, aspirational. And we have to fill it out. It's not an option. So we do the best we can to kind of give us some sort of order of magnitude. I would call these orders magnitudes in terms of costs. Some of them are better than others because they're part of our capital improvements plan. And I already have the number. I already have something. that we can use, and some of them are . It seems like some of these are already in progress.

That's right.

If they're already in progress, A, they got listed, and B, I have to know about our non-reform, and I knew who could do it. But that's not necessarily true every single time, because this is intended to be aspirational, and this is through 2031. So that's how you... Read this. Certainly, if it's in the capital and grievance plan, I also put it here because we're going to be doing it in all light because it's already been edited through, you guys. And then that's fine. I'm not going to walk through this in great detail because it's just too long to do that. But I wanted to give you a framework for how that's going to work. what you can expect in terms of timelines and where I need to go. So thoughts or questions for anything that I can answer here at this juncture, or you guys have it.

I'm just going to wait until we get back to you via email or a meeting or something. I think it's just too much to open up right now. We have to talk for days. All right.

specificity of your comments. We'd be happy to digest it at your own leisure. And we will have an email chain where each of y'all provide your feedback on specific action items that you have before you.

Sounds good. So I'm going to say it one more time. I'm going to clarify. It's been authentically public. Thank you. The full document of the comprehensive plan will be publicly available on the various agendas on the website five times. I don't know that every time it's going to be an inversion, but there's five times to download it and see it for the both. And that's over two months, two full months worth of opportunity.

Some of it's already passed, right?

Yeah, but September 2nd was the first time and November 4th, so that's two months. is available um you have mentioned the accomplishments how like they're almost i if you go through this i did like a little color code like green like green it's done yellow is like done and being currently being and then there's only like a few for the reds two that were sort of just like don't apply anymore and two that are going to be reconsidered in the future The one that's the complete street project is six words. It's one line. So it's... Yeah, there isn't a lot of equity between these. Yeah. Some of these are really big. And then some of these, the sort of next round or your aspiration of the projects are, you know, it's one or two sentences, but they're big, important things. And so I went through this and I looked at these like the bucket, the order of magnitude numbers. And I looked at it like a total cynic. I looked at it like, man, like I don't care about anything over here. So the former, someone who said, I don't want to spend any money over here. And, um, And it's hard to do, like it all affects, you know, like just because it's a downtown grid related, it affects that. I tried to pull out the ones where like, all I do is sit in my house, walk in my own sidewalk and say, but things over there and over here and over here affect what happens in your little plot of land. So it really, but I wanted to read it. I put numbers to it and all, I wanted to see, how these things trickle back towards your own driveway, especially if you live at the bottom of the hill. They really affect your driveway. So it was very interesting. And finally, I just want to say, I was grateful to be things the pollinator event the uh uh we did it at the wine walk we did it at the thing like it was interesting i guess there are people from other zip codes who walked through but that doesn't diminish the fact because these things i mean it's not just a in the city, the region, the state, it all affects itself. And 50 years from now, you know, we're not going to be flying on hovercraft. We're going to be more reliant upon getting through other people's neighborhoods, going through their streets or their trains or their market, or our bus will have to go through their neighborhood. area. We're doing our part.

Bingo. Well, I think it's important. I mean, it's small counties in Georgia, you know, a lot of cities in the metro area. Yeah, everybody needs to be at the bar. But this is incredible. Once you see it written down, like Louie said, it's like only six words. You're like, oh, my God, that took 10 years. Are you kidding? I should be like, complete it, you know. But, yeah, I just keep pushing as hard as you can. Okay. So have we got the timeline? Everybody knows what's next?

Yes. And if y'all like, I'll set up that. feedback.

Sure.

All right. All good up here? Public comment. You guys, this report of accomplishments, please go look at this. It's, it's considerable. Yes, Bill. Sorry. I didn't recognize the report.

I should have.

I'm sorry.

Bill O'Brien, Berkeley Road, um, um, I've been around comp planes for a little while, and I know how tough they are to complete. And I can only express gratitude that you guys have been digging in and doing it. And even though a lot of it seems like it's boilerplate, there's a lot of work that's going into that boilerplate. And even some of the terminology and the language and the different buckets. I understand that you had to get some guidance from somebody to get to this point. But I feel fortunate because we've done this on several occasions. And the city and staff seem to be pretty good at it. That doesn't take away from the amount of work it actually does, even to put in the numbers and figure out the stuff that goes into the boilerplate filling in the blanks. So thank you very much for all you've done. And I read through it briefly, recognized all that's accomplished. I know there's still a lot to do. And I hope that as a visioning and big Asian item, it continues to be used to develop the plans that we're supposed to do based on the comprehensive plan. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Appreciate that.

Any comments online?

Yeah. Julie Fleming.

Hey, Julie.

Hey, Julie Fleming, 40 Clarendon. I hope you guys can hear me. I am learning more details about the ins and outs of policing in Avondale Estates and surrounding DeKalb County. If Chief Hess wants to implement these vehicles and added equipment for his team. I agree with Graham that it's a small price to pay. In the past, we've heard repeated debate about new cars at the same time as we want rapid police response and officer loyalty. I agree that officer retention is vital, as is team feeling. Thank you, Chief Hess. for always explaining your experiences, wisdom and ideas so that our understanding keeps growing. Thank you to the city hall team who hired knowledgeable consultants and move forward with all these steps needed for data-based speed enforcement.

Thank you, Julie.

Is there another one? Okay. Okay, seeing none up there. Any other comments from the audience this evening? All right, seeing none, I'll close public comment. Any closing anything up here? All good? All right, do I have a motion to adjourn? I'm delighted to have a second.

All right, thank you all for being here.