City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon everyone. It's good to see you uh all one, two, three, four, six of you on this cold Monday afternoon. We just had a house full of folks. Uh we had students from Tiff County High School as part of the CTAE program and um future business leaders program. We did some proclamations for them. So, it's always good to have all those young people who have such great um futures ahead of them and and they're really working hard to uh to wrap up their high school career and enter into the college and work career. So, it was good to have all of them with us this afternoon. Um we do have kind of an unusual meeting this afternoon. Normally, this would just just be a workshop during which we would just discuss items, but we actually have a combination council workshop and special called meeting. So, I'm I'm going to kind of run everything together, not end one and start another because there are only two items we'll need to vote on this evening. But you have the agenda in front of you. The first of those items we'll vote on will be the approval of the agenda. Then we'll go into new business, which is part of the workshop. Then we'll take action item number four, which we'll need to vote on, and then we'll wrap up with city manager report and the mayor and council comments. Does that sound all right to y'all? So, if that sounds good, I will need um a motion and a second to approve the agenda as it is submitted.

Move to approve. All right. Is there a second? Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? And that carries. All right. I'm going to call on Larry Lawrence. Uh Larry, if you will, we um have put out an RFP, a request for proposals for uh auditing services. So, I'll let you go over that with everybody and uh see if we have any questions. Uh over the past five years,

Malden and Jenkins has been providing auditing services for us and that contract has come to an end. Uh so we put an RFP out in November asking for bids for the next five years and uh we received two bids in of course Malden and Jenkins bid on it again and then outfit out of Atlanta CKH CPAs and advisors uh out of Atlanta and uh so we took both those bids and just did a comparison and both auditing firms are well qualified to to do the work for our uh needs, you know, for our auditing services. Uh Marlin Jenkins has been in business for 100 years. The other one's been in business like 23 years. So they've both been around a while. Uh so it basically come down to who had the lowest bid. And of course, uh Maldin and Jenkins came in with the same price that they had for the previous five years with no increase. In fact, I talked to Justin on the phone and I told him I was surprised at that, you know, because inflation thing. He said that we are one of his best customers. We have the cleanest financial statements of any of their clients. So, that was good news to hear.

Very good news. Congratulations on that compliment. So, we were proud to hear that, but we're also proud uh we recommend to accept Maldin and Jenkins for another five years. and uh we've worked well with them and we're pleased with them and their services. So, okay, that's the re recommendation. All right. And gentlemen, the uh the breakdown on everything, those two proposals and the scoring and everything is in your packet. Does anyone have any questions for Larry on the uh recommendation? All right. Thank you, Larry. All right. All right. I'm going to call on Jeff. Uh there is a letter in your packet from the Tiff County Board of Education uh regarding the uh potential abandoning of a portion of Sunny Brook Avenue. So Jeeoff, I'll let you go over that for us.

Uh, yes, Madame Mayor, members of the council. I I printed out a map off Q public identifying there's a roadway that dead ends on the school bus maintenance garage property and the school board has requested that we vacate that and turn that over to them. The staff staff recommendation would be to approve the vacation as we move forward. This would take a section of road off of our maintenance requirements. Uh the school board, my understanding is their intention is to keep it in place but use it internally. Uh one on consultation with city attorney. Uh there we do not we're not aware of a survey of this property in existence. So we'll be reaching out to the school board to discuss that to move that forward with council at future meeting.

Okay. All right. Any questions, gentlemen? And like Jeff said, you've got the the map from Q public here at your seat to to see where he's talking about. Any questions? Say there's no survey or legal description that I can prepare a valid right deed. So that's why we're going to have to have the survey. Gotcha. Okay. Put a survey. Would the school pay for the school system pay for the survey? That was my question. Absolutely. Good question. Good question. If they're asking if they're asking the rest of Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. And you'll you'll make that contact, Jeff, and you Rob, between you, and Rob. Okay. Perfect.

All right. Any other questions? All right. I'm going to call on our esteemed city clerk, Jessica White. Jessica's going to talk to us about some exciting things coming up in the next couple of weeks with our uh shortened paw renaissance project redevelopment plan and the Carl Vincent Institute of Government with University of Georgia coming in. So Jessica, I know you've handed out uh schedules for us. So turn it over to

I want y'all to um you know put some eyes on it and know included in the packet, but just kind of look over those activities. They are this will be the start of that plan. It'll take about a year for them to complete it, but this is really their public input. So they'll be here for three days. Um the focus groups that are in yellow are the ones that we've advertised to the public. there are links that people can sign up. Um, and we are encouraging them to do that. Um, so if y'all know of anyone that y'all want to make sure we receive their input and they're there, please pass that along. Um, reach out to me. I'll send them an email, give them a call, whatever the best way to to get get people in the door. Um, at those sessions, they're going to have three people here. Um, and they can have up to 12 people per and they'll be like three groups. And we're going to be at Short and Paul. So, y'all seen that facility will be spread out. Um,

uh, and the the February 17th, 6:00 p.m. That one's just open. Anybody come, you don't have to register. Just trying to get that afternoon crowd. Maybe it would be a larger crowd. Um Danny Bibbons has a a way that he's wanting to kind of um guide those discussions. So we're hoping people if they can't come and sign up to and commit to one of those focus groups, they'll at least come to the 6 PM and we'll get um ideas from a range of people in the area from business owners to people that live there, people that are just interested. So, um, yeah, please pass it along. I included both the advertisement and that that schedule.

Okay. And I should have y'all should have seen something. So, y'all please sign up. I know um the uh uh Mr. Cromer is in his district. He's on the um steering committee. Mayor Smith and um Council Member Hall are all on there. A couple people from the DDA, the URA, some of our staff. Um And so that steering committee would kind of kick off those things, right? Um in that meeting and work with Carl Vincent for till the end of the year. So

the other Josh and Michael, y'all please join us on one of those focus groups and um they're going to have a website that they're going to hopefully have done and ready to so people can go on and learn about it. Um and they'll be doing additional survey. We've kind of got a survey out there. there. We've had pretty good response and input and ideas from people. So, we'll just continue that for the rest of the year.

Okay. All right. So, um the challenge to all of us is uh just get with people within our districts, our constituents, family, friends, church people, you know, neighbors, and encourage them, like Jessica said, particularly to come to that um open meeting on uh the 17th at 6 PM at the Short and Pulk property. And uh because it's really important. This is a big step for our community and um you know we want to make sure that we have lots of input, lots of ideas from the from the community, what the community expects, what the community would like to see, they'll support what they want to see. And so um there's no idea that's too outrageous or anything like that. Now is the time to dream big and then we can can back into whatever ultimately will come. But it's going to take us a while to get through this. So, uh, so hope to see everybody there and just share share the word with your friends and on all your social media. All right. Any anything else, Jessica, on that? Did y'all have any questions?

I say it looks good. I see that guy when it cleaned it up. Yeah, looks pretty good. Saw ESG there the other day working. Yeah, it looks really good. So, thank y'all for getting that cleaned up. We appreciate that. All right. Anything else on the short and pot? If that's what you want. Sure. There's a nice ditch in the back. We'll get you a float. We'll push you down that river.

All right. The next item is an action item. So, gentlemen, we will need to vote on this. And, um, Lester is going to recuse himself because this impacts his business. So, um, Rob, is it okay if Lester stays here or does he need Okay. So, Lester will not be voting on this, but um, Jessica, do you want to talk about the, um, resolution authorizing the alcohol sales on Sunday the 8th for the Super Bowl? Yes. U Georgia law allows for bar uh governments to allow bars restaurants can already sell on Sunday, but this allows um bar locations. Currently, Lester is the only one that I can think. Well, Donatello's is um also a bar um one day a year. So, Lester has requested it and that's kind of the way we've done that in the past is, you know, let let the business decide what they want to do, that opportunity is um available. And so he would like to um he's also moving to his location and maybe it's a part of a re regrand opening. So we hope that that will be good and um if y'all will allow them to to serve on Sunday coming up this Sunday and that's why we put it on for a special call to go ahead and get it um taken care of. Sale times would be the same that it always is in sun. Sunday sales are um start at 12:30 right after lunch and close at midnight. So,

okay. All right, gentlemen. I'll take a motion concerning the Sunday sales on May 8th. I'll make a motion for Sunday sales February, 2026. All right. So, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? And so, that does carry. All right. Uh that's really all the business that we have to come before us. Next are just uh reports and comments. So I'm going to call on Jeff for the city manager report.

Yes. Uh madame mayor, members of the council, thank you. You have my written report. I would like to report in addition we uh we did have the warming stations uh open for the weekend. We had between seven and nine average per night over the weekend. uh with the warming weather warming and all. I've spoken with Chief Bennett and we we're discontinuing that moving forward and it we're but we are ready to reopen should the weather uh move into that direction. Outside of that, if you have, you know, have any questions, comments, I am available. Okay. All right. Any mayor and council comments, gentlemen?

I don't really have anything. Do y'all have anything? Okay, I think we're good. We do need to go into executive session this evening. Um, we have some real estate matters and some personnel matters to discuss. So, we'll need a motion to go into a quick executive session soon as we close this meeting. Make a motion going. So, we have motion second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. We'll go into executive session in about 15 seconds.