City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. It's good to see some smiling faces with us this afternoon. Always nice to have our businesses and residents join us for our meetings so you can see what's going on and be a part of your local government. It's really important that we all be involved. I do want to remind you that we have agendas that are back here on the podium. You're certainly welcome to grab one of those and follow along. And that tonight is actually our workshop. Normally, we would have met last Monday, but with the Fourth of July holiday, it kind of threw things off. And so we postponed our workshop till tonight, and then our regular meeting will be next Monday in this room at the same time. During the workshop, the only thing that we'll be voting on tonight is the agenda. Everything else will be for discussion item only. So didn't want you to be surprised if you didn't see us voting and that kind of thing. So we've got a fairly short agenda tonight, but I can tell you that once we complete our agenda, we will need to go into executive session for legal reasons. And so, gentlemen, if that all sounds good to you, I will, since I've called this to order, take a motion to approve the agenda or make any changes.

Move to approve. Second.

Okay, so I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that does carry. Our first item of discussion is the potential rezoning of approximately almost 30 acres on South Carpenter Road from wholesale light industrial to residential professional to allow for the multifamily apartments as requested by Stafford Coons Investments, and we did have the public hearing on that recently, and so you've heard that information. Where did Greg go? Greg, is there any new information we need to be aware of? Everything says it was presented before, correct? Okay. and that was all approved and everything. Okay, perfect. And if you'll recall, they had to delay that, so we kind of got the cart before the horse a little bit, but now we're back in line, and Planning and Zoning did approve that, so that is the recommendation to this group. Any questions or comments on that potential rezoning? No. Y'all good? Okay. Our next item, I'm going to call on our Main Street Director, Abby McLaren. It's new business to discuss a proposed downtown entertainment district. So, Abby, you've got the floor.

Council consider amending the city's alcohol ordinance to establish a downtown entertainment district. The proposed amendment would allow patrons to purchase alcoholic beverages from participating licensed establishments and carry them throughout the district in an approved disposable container. This currently is one of ours at this time in partnership with Think Tifton. We have our little QR code here that takes you to all of our special events. The proposed district boundaries would extend from North and South 4th Street to Highway 82, east and west from Commerce Way to Tift Avenue. At this time, there are six establishments within the proposed district that would be eligible to participate by offering beverages to go in the city-approved containers. All businesses would be required to comply with any provisions established by ordinance, including the use of the approved cups. Currently, downtown has our sip and stroll events that you all are aware of, where one Saturday a month or any other special event that I come asking for this designation, that's the only time that this would be currently allowed. So we're asking to do this concept on a regular basis. We've seen shoppers, family, and visitors enjoy downtown responsibly since 2019 when we first started this concept. When we first began, it was first Friday, so I came early asking for the specific resolution to talk about an open container district, essentially. The primary recommendation is to establish the entertainment district operating daily. Hours of operation would be Monday through Saturday from 11 to 10 p.m., Sunday from 12.30 until 10. The district could be suspended on certain days for specific events by resolution of city council if you guys did not want to have it, such as Christmas Day, Election Day, any other city special events. Alcohol would be only allowed to be purchased from these licenses established within the district. Drinks must be served in a city approved container, no cans, no bottles, no glass. Cups would be limited to 16 ounces or smaller, which is what this size cup would be. And only one beverage per person may be removed from an establishment at a time.

You can see here we have some of the Tifton Merchants Association members here in support of this. This was kind of at their request.

So they are here also in support of this submission. Any questions for me?

I've got a quick question for you. I know when we have special events like Rhythm and Ribs or First Friday, Second Saturday, whatever, there are armbands. Would armbands be required with this as well so we can be sure that identification's been checked by our participants?

We could do that. We did, Jessica and I both looked into other city ordinances trying to figure out if that would be allowable. But I mean, if that's something you feel strongly about us doing.

Just was curious if that was, if we had considered that, if that's something that we needed to. It's not. No, I was talking about, is that something we should do? I didn't know if that was, it just popped in my head. I just thought about it. Because I know we were required for other,

banks to you know to verify that sure so i just didn't know just a thought it's something we don't we're not voting on it tonight i would i would think for this for the just for the safety of the of the merchant that you know you don't want to get in a situation where you've got someone that's you know you're selling under yeah so

Just think about that. When's the next merchants meeting? Is that something you can talk about?

Sure. It would be in August. I did want to say when looking at some of these other communities like Canton and Thomasville, they did do a trial run, a trial test period to see how it went and shortened the timeline, but they did do a test period for six months to see how it went.

Okay. All right. Any questions, gentlemen? Okay. All right. Thank you, Abby. Appreciate that. All right. We have our city manager report, so I'm going to call on Bobby to present that.

I got one small thing, one big thing, and that's the Fourth of July event. All I heard was great things. What an amazing night it was. It was very hot, of course, during the day for everything that went on, but the fireworks were simply amazing. I had nothing but good comments and calls and text messages and it just shows with everybody working together like we did, it really turned out great.

It did. It was very nice. Very, very nice. Is that all?

That's it. You sure? Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Caroline, do you mind if I call on you to talk about, quickly, maybe you and Greg, to talk about the garbage bin placement and the historic district information that we hope will clear up some things for our residents and businesses.

sure so greg and i have been working just to reach our public better and better and make the rules that we have more clear to understand so we've put out a bunch of different rack cards and we also have implemented a booklet with historical preservation commission's reminders for what permission you need to change items on your home and that just helps preserve that sense of place we have in our historic district. So, you'll see those items and they're available for pickup at City Hall or at Community Development. Of course, they can reach out to me or Greg if they want to get their own copy. They're also going to be available on our website. Okay.

And then we also plan as well which is why I gave you all a map. We created that new map for everyone. We're gonna post on our website. Part of our new community awareness, giving education to the public, try to be accessible to them, because we are community development, so we wanna be easily accessible. So what we're gonna also do is we get the Southern Regional Council to give us an overlay of the area. So we're gonna be mailing out 700 copies, because that's about how many businesses and residential are in the downtown area in our historic district. We're going to mail it out to each individual person as well, so they'll just have that information.

Good. Thank you. I think that will help tremendously, both having the information on where to place your garbage can correctly and within the historic district what to do for exterior changes to your property. So thank you very much for that. That's very beneficial. All right. Mayor and council comments? Anything, gentlemen, you want to address or bring up? Okay. All right. I will need a motion to go into executive session for legal purposes. So, okay. So we have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. We'll take just a quick break.