City Council - Special Meeting

I'd like to call this uh special meeting of Sandy Spring City Council to order for Tuesday. That's good. Do you have to start over?

Uh, no, not really. Uh, I don't guess we need a roll call or anything, right? So, I'll just turn this over to uh city manager to carries through. This is B budget workshop number one. This is where the city manager lays out the path forward with the budget, kind of the major issues, the highlights. Uh this is largely a opportunity for council to get engaged and understand kind of uh how she has taken the priorities that we set and the rest of staff set that we set in January and the path forward. Uh this is kind of uh I clearly you'll have an opportunity for questions but uh this will be uh more for the city manager to present us the path forward and then we'll have opportunities to provide input down the road. City manager,

good evening, good afternoon, excuse me, mayor and council members. Thank you for being here today. I am excited and pleased to welcome you to our first budget workshop for fiscal year 2027. I have to start out today by thanking our excellent senior leadership team and our esteemed budget team with Michael, Tanya, Tony, Kristen, and Caroline. Everyone has put in hundreds of hours into the budget documents that you see in front of you today that really are going to serve as the foundation for thoughtful discussion and deliberation as we work through the process of establishing our FY2027 budget. So to start with and in your notebook you have today a copy of the slides. This notebook will be built upon in each of the subsequent sessions. So our budget process actually began in January with a memo sent out by our chief financial officer to all of our department heads asking them to start preparing their budgets and their financial plans that supported council's adopted priorities. Given the uncertainty of the changes that to our revenue streams that were being discussed during the general assembly this year, our teams were directed to carefully evaluate the necessity of every item, whether it was an ongoing or something that they were hoping to propose as an enhancement in FY27. Everything was scrutinized to determine whether it was necessary to the good functioning of the city of Sandy Springs. So after the departments submitted their budget request at the end of March in April, Tony and Kristen and Caroline and Michael and Tanya and I met with every department to go line by line through each of their requests and determine what should be formulated into the initial budget plans that you see today which is our first budget workshop. After today's budget workshop,

you all of course will ask questions in this presentation, but also after the meeting, submit any questions that you may have to me, and we will bring answers to those questions back at our second budget workshop along with any suggested changes the council may have. That will be on May 19th, once again at 2 PM. That will then lead us to the city manager's proposed budget, which we will present on May 26th. And that will also be budget workshop number three. That'll be followed by our first public hearing June 2nd at 6:00 p.m. as part of our council meeting. And then ultimately our second public hearing and council's vote on the budget June 16th. As a reminder, our budget must be adopted by the end of the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30th. Any questions on the calendar? Hearing none. This should look very familiar to council. After your annual retreat, council adopted revised priorities, interweaving innovation into everything that we do. Our we practice a priority based budgeting philosophy here in Sandy Springs. We build our budget off of the priorities that are adopted annually by mayor and council and funding is directed to those needs that advance the priorities as well as those that are critical to accomplishing core service delivery needs across the city. Every departmental request is evaluated in alignment with the priorities and our operational requirements and then ultimately high priority investments move forward first so the budget stays aligned with council's direction. Let's talk a little bit about the purpose of today's meeting. Budget workshop one is truly the foundation of our budget process. This really orients mayor and council to the budget process. We walk through the assumptions that our

budget has been built upon and providing the highquality general government services that council as well as our community demands. Our primary focus today is to review the budget calendar and the decision points. Discuss our major planning assumptions for revenues, for expenditures, and for staffing. Discuss public safety, general government, and facility needs. We also, this is an open question and answer time for council to provide us feedback and direction as we move forward and then also preview our capital priorities and continuation items. This meeting today is not meant to be a place for any final budget decisions to be made. This is truly again the foundation where we are discussing what will ultimately go into the city manager's recommended budget. There will be no public hearing action today. There is no line item detail of the budget. You will not see a line item detail until May 26th. And in that, you'll get a detailed expenditure for each of our component funds that are part of the city's overall budget. You will also not see the full 5-year capital improvement program today. That will come in the meeting on the 26th. And then your follow-up direction will be brought back in May 19th and the May 26th meeting. We are projecting modest organic growth in our property taxes that are still below the actual collections that we are experiencing in FY26. This is still uncertain though because Fulton County does not certify the digest until September, which has been the case for the last few years. So, we're building our budget off of estimates that are based on prior year collections. Any questions on that? Can you can you say what they are what the what you what what the increase what you are expecting?

We'll get there. Okay. Yes ma'am. Uh with the bill that was passed the substitute bill for property taxes was an analysis done to the impact for this budget that is not anticipated to have any impacts to us because we already were opted in. What that bill did was require those local governments that opted out to opt in.

Thank you. Yes ma'am. Okay. So, in budget workshop two, we'll be reviewing our general fund revenues. So, Dr. Kelly, to your point, we'll talk about those actual amounts in our next budget workshop and we'll do the comparison to prior fiscal year. We'll address any questions that you've had from today's workshop and that next meeting. And then we'll go into a deep dive on our capital budget assumptions in the proposed budget and budget workshop three. That is the opportunity when you will see the entire full general fund line out of detail along with details for each of the component funds in our budget. You'll have a deep dive look at the five-year capital improvement program and a summary of our capital project funding. That first public hearing, it is anticipated that the public will bring forward any comments that they may have. council members would listen to those and could ask any clarifying questions of staff at that time. There is no vote that happens at that first public hearing. And then finally, the final public hearing and budget adoption is the opportunity to hear the last public comments before taking action on the budget and then for the city manager to present any final updates or revisions to it. At that point in time, council would vote on the budget that would take effect on July 1. Any questions? All right, Carolina.

Okay, thank you. So, we will talk today about capital budget assumptions. Just to make sure everyone understands, the capital improvement budget is utilized for major investments in city infrastructure facilities or equipment. Anything that has a long-term life to it. It is developed from our five-year capital improvement program which we implemented about five years ago to give council a look forward. It is important to note that the five-year CIP is a projection and things change within that from year to year. It is simply to have visibility on our future funding needs. We prioritize our capital investments based off of the feedback at the annual retreat, our service delivery needs, our asset condition, timing, and available funding. It is also important to note that projects that received partial year funding in a prior year, one of which you will see and hear today is the Allen drive at Allen Road at Lake Forest would be recommended as a budget assumption for additional funding needed to complete the project. All of the recommendations that come forward in our CIP program are always vetted by staff for cost, operational impact, and alignment with city priorities. First up, a couple of highlights. We obviously desire to maintain our position as being the preferred employer in the local government sphere in our region. And in order to do that in FY27, we are proposing a 3% cost of living adjustment for all city employees. We are also evaluating heavily our health insurance options to continue providing high quality but cost-effective coverage for our employees and their families. I anticipate that this year and remember our health insurance is on a cal

calendar year basis. So what you are budgeting for now is the worstc case scenario and it would come back to council in the late fall before it is put into effect in January. I anticipate we will be transitioning to a self-signed model. I also anticipate that after eight years of fully absorbing the increased cost of health insurance, we are going to have to pass some cost along to our employees this year. We are also estimating in this budget a 20% increase in our general liability insurance. Everyone is aware of the uncertainty within the insurance world. The Milton case, while part of it has been decided, has cast a lot of challenges on local governments as we look at our liability concerns going forward. So, in the worst case scenario, we are budgeting for a 20% increase in that. We're also proposing to fully fund our annual subcontractor agreements for our key public safety services, our 247 call center, public works, and recreation and parks maintenance, which we'll talk through those when we get further into the presentation. And then finally, we do have our continued debt service obligation for the public facilities authority, the fire apparatus, and some limited equipment. You'll recall that last year we issued new debt for fire stations four, three, and one. And that additional debt service is built into our budget assumptions. So next, and that is the first item that you see off the top, our debt service has increased this year to 15.5 million. Our call center subcontractor agreement has a contractually obligated escalator which has been built in the North Folton Regional Radio Authority operation which we are a partner with our fellow North

Pton cities of Roswell Alvaretta and Milton has an increase to 1.1 million. Our commu continued service agreements with community nonprofits is seeing a slight downturn which we will discuss when we get to that slide further in here. There are a couple of reasons for that. Our general liability insurance I've already discussed that we anticipate a 20% increase and that has us projected to get to 3.6 million. The 3% cola, the cost of that for all city employees is reflected in the far right column at 1.6 million. I want to make sure to call out and everyone to understand the amount that is shown in the 26 column was a 5% cost of living which is why the dollar amount is so different. Health insurance again we are projecting an increase this year in a worst case scenario of $12.3 million while looking at every option to drive that cost down. The animal control agreement with Fulton County has been adjusted for actuals at 420,000. Debt service for existing fire apparatus and equipment has also increased with the delivery that we took of our two new uh engines earlier this year. Jail service is projected to continue at 850,000. Our public works subcontractor agreements also have built-in escalators, taking that to 6.4. Our recreation and park subcontractor agreements are flat at 940,000. We also have a 3% increase and our buy down for enhanced services on response time for EMS. That will take us to $712,000. All right, I'm going to invite Chief Dimmon to come up and walk you through the request from the police department.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Afternoon.

So, we'll start out with some numbers from the police department. Uh, property crime and violent crime both down for 2025. This is following a nationwide trend which has been coming down since 2023. uh traffic incidents meaning wrecks and things on the roadways. They're also trending down is as well as the citations and warnings that accompany those and ask questions if you want do want to do this. Uh just some of the uh activity of the police department on the call service uh and 125 2,794 arrests. Uh we all don't like domestics, but they're a part of the job. 355 last year, a lot of traffic stops. Uh again, the uh crime going down, stolen vehicles recovered, not as many vehicles stolen, so not as many recovered. Our SWAT uh incident deployments are down, almost half. And then our QRF deployments were zero for 2025. Narcotic seizures. Some are up, some are down. It just depends if you have a big case or not. And sees a lot in one uh incident.

Question about the Oh, this is good. Okay. Uh top 10. Uh one thing I always point out there before the council approved our alarm ordinance years ago, that was always top 10, sometimes number one. So, we cut out responding to false calls, which was one of our top uh call service we had to go to. It's not even on there. It's not even on there. Yeah. So, that's that's been a success story across the board. I mean, anytime if you run it like a business, anytime you can uh eliminate a need that's not there, perfect. So,

and these are all calls initiated by outside of the initiated by others. Uh, not necessarily like business checks mostly are initiated by the offic. Okay. Is it do you think it's about 50/50 or

usually 5050 and even like a domestic call could be an officer initiated like if you see a domestic in progress then that's not initiated by a suspect or a victim that's initiated by the police officer who witnesses it. especially what's called rolling domestics. You see them in a car. Our traffic unit, traffic uh TRV, traffic response vehicle. Uh some of the things they've done, you can see in 2023 838 gallons. Uh we're dispensed. We're down to 99 gallons. Mayor's family hasn't been calling us since much. We're out there to help. there.

You did rescue my daughter off the side of 285. Appreciate it. I like pointing that out. She subsequently moved to London. That's why they dropped down. Their stats are way up. Yeah, in London they they're responding all the time.

Call out for serious injury accidents or fatalities or fatalities. We're doing pretty good with fatalities. Uh several years ago we were running about a dozen a year and now we're down to four for 2025. Uh here are some of the requested enhancements. Some are just routine uh like the $50,000 for the narcotics and identification. That's called the true narc. And that's a device that with the technology a laser can shoot through the packaging of a suspic icious narcotic and actually tell you what it is. Is it a fentanyl? Is a cocaine? Is it a heroin? So, we want to replace that. Ballistic shields after our shooting late last year where it was five rounds from the suspect's uh rifle sliced right through our ballistic shields. We knew it was time to upgrade and shot right through it. Alter was holding it. That was shot to him. I'm sure. Uh, additional staffing. Uh, right now we have three positions that are grant funded. One is a criminal intelligence analyst and the two others are crime scene investigators. All three are civilian and we would like to turn those into full-time positions. Some capital requests. Driving simulators. Uh, half the cost to be funded by the foundation, the police foundation. Uh these are to what they sound like driving simulators that officers who have been in wrecks or they they need more training with driving they can use it not only officers but it could be used by any citywide employee. Uh upgrades to the firearms upgrades to the the Fulton County school police fast system that is currently housed in police headquarters.

So we want to add two more screens to that. Ammunition. You always have to replace ammunition because the ongoing required training you have to do by state uh replace the canine and just uh upgrade SWAT gear equipment. Any questions on them? Okay. The community grant this is the criminal and analyst position. Some of the task he's done. The best way to describe this, I think it's a detective told me this. One criminal an analyst is worth two detectives. So you get two detectives worth of investigative prowess with one person. This the civilian role. These some of the numbers you can see from 23 to 25 just the assist and the leads resulting in apprehension of a bad guy.

You want three of those? Is that one of those and two uh crime scene investigators which is the next

and this is it the biggest thing with privacy investigators is uh anymore it's digital it's iPhones mobile phones iPads computers uh internet based things we use that more than we do DNA or fingerprints and these people really hard to get your hand on because they're so highly trained and they're very highly Maybe it's a little more as well. We've lost several of our former ones to Coca-Cola corporate steering. Any questions? Yes, sir.

So, Chief, uh, you and I talked a couple weeks ago about this State Route 400 Beach Partners project. They've got their own TRVs. Have you guys talked to them at all? And we have. Okay. Can you figure out a way to work with them? Yes. Um, it'll help us, but they're still not sworn officers and they they can't do the things that we do, but it'll it'll help. Yeah, it looks like they're somewhat limited. There's just really a pickup truck with some stuff in the back, I think. But if they can help take care of something we don't have to go do, that's good.

Uh, one thing, let me throw this in here before I forget. We're talking about those positions. We are we are down five positions right now with National Guard and Military Reserve activations. So I don't want to forget those men and women who are out there right now and they only one is in the US and two are in the US, one in Virginia, one Washington DC. The rest are overseas. We still mean they still get paid from is that how it works? It's still by the military. Oh, they have to retain their position. Got it. So it'll show up here. It shows

question about um K9 replacement. Um it looks like we replaced a K9 last year or we price has gone up dramatically. Oh for Yeah. And the shelf life service life of the police can between seven years. Okay. So every so often every seven years we're basically going to continue to have one a year as our dogs age out of service. That's what Okay. That's what I was curious about. Firearms sight enhancement. What What is that? That is the red dot site that is on your pistol. All of them on all of them

right now. It's a Louis gold delta pro is what we use. Very state. Go ahead. Um I just a question on the chart that was at the bottom of slide 18. Um, did you say what caused maybe I missed it and I was writing another note about real-time assists? I mean that jump from 188 to 677 and then investigative leads provided 456 to 862 and that that's those are big jumps in a positive way I'm sure. Yeah. Uh, and the question is why why is the jump? Yeah,

I think because they get better at what they do and uh I think the technology is getting better and probably the biggest thing is that we're in the new police headquarters. So everybody's right there. We're not in two different buildings because in the old building, criminal investigations was 100 yards outside down the hill in another building and the intelligence unit was up in the administration building. Now, uh, CD is right across the hallway basically and then command staff's right above them. They can come now. So, I think just the the proximity helps in solving cases and everybody working together.

Did we do any upgrades on any software as part of the police headquarters like so I think software and hardware. So, the collocation plus that is that's that's pretty good job. And we get visits every week from different police agencies, law enforcement agencies to look at what we've got, what we're doing. So, back to that uh Melissa's question going the real time assist from 188 to 677. That's expanded capacity that we have that we didn't have before. That's not crime has not gone up from 188 to 677.

No, no, it's just the assist gone up. And to your point, Councilman, if you go back, you actually see that crime has gone down. Looking at our overall stability, this may actually help make the crime go down. Okay. Yeah. Good. Good innovation. Yeah. Would now be an appropriate time to ask about um speed cameras and revenue generated and, you know, things happening in the legislature and what that would mean for us.

Yeah. Um well obviously they were because uh people they don't complain about them speeding they complain about getting the ticket. So if they said hey I wasn't speeding I would think but they don't work they're always complaining about I got a ticket not not the speed itself. So it's uh it's technology that works and I'm not sure what the legislature decided. It's all over the place before the word comes out. I don't think any of the the uh school camera bills made it past this. Yes, they did. One did. Yeah, one did. More signage or something really affect the ability of us to require as a referendum

before you renew six years. It said when you update your contract. I thought contract was up in June. Yeah. I thought we our contract was up in June with So, okay. So, go ahead sign it. We'll have a conversation about whether council wishes to extend the existing contract, but to the mayor's point, the governor still has a bit of time before he has to sign anything. I think we'll have a conversation. Yes, absolutely. And the funds that were coming in for this and we can get a full accounting of that are going into the general fund. Okay. And you

in the last budget session, we had the numbers. We had some numbers. Just one quick question. Has the GSP had any jurisdictional problems with working 400 or 285? No. It's in the state of Georgia. So, they can work. They still work fatalities. They will not. They've never worked fatalities since I've been here. 17 years. They've never worked one fatality on 400 in the city of Sandy Springs. It's kind of odd because usually they do. They They have not I've been here 17 years since 2009. They not work one fat alley on the 400. Well, they used to work them on the interstates in the city of Atlanta. In the city of Atlanta, but they they won't in springs.

Is there a reason for that? Uh, probably because we get there quicker. If you want the state patrol or wreck on 400, you may have the wreck sitting out for 2 to three hours. You have the fire department sitting out there with them. uh where we could get out there cleared and move on to the next. It takes the state a long time to respond. Okay. Yes, sir.

I've been getting an increasing number of questions about both ebikes and golf carts, and I know I'm not alone up here. Is there something that we could do from a budget perspective to help raise awareness of the rules or patrol unlicensed kids who are driving some of these class 3 bikes or things like that? because something I'm I'm very worried something's going to happen and someone's going to get hit and seriously hurt. Yeah, that's already happened. Okay.

Yeah, we've already had a very very serious crash with a child that ran into the back of a minivan. I think still on life support as a matter of fact, but we do have some training sessions coming up with our bike unit here with the ebikes and uh a lot of it comes down to parenting and that's the thing about a police department. We we don't parent, we enforce the law. Um, so some education and you know, maybe some education for some parents like the uh teen driving class we have every month. We will probably need to put something in that for ebikes. It's geared more to licensed drivers, 16, 17 year olds, but if they have younger brothers or sisters, it may be good educational, but it's something you all can do with your newsletter to your constituents. Put it out there. say, "Hey, these aren't toys." And they're they're very it's sort of hard to enforce because an ebike and an e motorcycle look almost identical. And I guess the best way that an ebike you can pedal e motorcycle have tags, but if you look at them, they almost look identical. But it's it is a concern not only here, but it's uh it's nationwide. But to your point about is anything else needed from the budget? No. We have built in the resources for PD to begin developing the training program for the bike unit to really warn kids be responsible. Don't try to ride them on the road.

Well, we have a lot of people with not only the bikes, but also particularly golf carts in neighborhood streets and they're not road safe and they come come by at a rather high rate of speed in some cases. So, somebody's going to get hurt. Can't really get that under control because it's mostly kids, underage kids that are that are operating with the permission and the encouragement of their parents. That's true.

This some kind of a PSA to the community to say, "Listen, letting your kid ride a you know, ebike out on the street, these are the rules and the laws and we've had accidents. Just be aware of the fact that bad things could happen." already done one round and we're going to do another. Well, I talked to a family member of the young man who ran into the back of the SUV today and he's still mostly in a vegetative state. Yeah, this is a sad case and he was young and riding a ebike, not no ecycle, not an ebike and doing a wheelie down road. So,

chief option, um, what would be the one or two, even maybe three things that you would like for us to keep in mind as we go through this budgeting process as those improvements that the police department wants to make for for for next year. And I don't know if you were at the Envision perimeter event this morning, but the your your department got lots of great kudos for how it contributes to the broader perimeter area. So, thank you for that. And um and there's always like, well, how do we keep getting better, right? So, how does your budget submission reflect the priorities to continue to do even better, more?

That's a great question. And the I think the single most pressing issue that we have at police department right now is jail and inmate housing. We are in a crunch time because Smyrna City closer jail. So that's the number one issue that we have right now. Okay.

And it's probably going to cost more money to house our inmates. But to clarify, the 850 that is built into the budget is the same amount as last year because our actual spending is less in the current fiscal year. So the amount that we've built in should cover us once we identify a new place. We've built in the request that PD had to continue to operate in the high level that they have into this budget. And and this number always surprises me. You think same spring when last year we arrested arrested 2,794 people.

That's a lot of people to be arrested. It's almost 10 a day. You arrest almost 10 a day. Yeah, absolutely. And it's down a thousand from last year. Yeah, I know. But yeah, we we'll arrest a lot of people. any sir. Chief, you mentioned there's a nationwide downward trend of crime and we're seeing that too. Just thinking about future needs.

Have you seen discussion about why that is and whether that's likely to continue? I know predicting the future is hard, but is there anything you could share with us? Uh it's probably a lot of backers and I think a lot of it comes down to border control is a big thing. Um and I think it is the US attorney's office has now more aggressively taken cases for prosecution. We still don't get u the level of prosecution I want from the county district attorney's office, but uh the US attorneys filling in a lot of that gap. So I think because of the the federal system and some of the pushes there, it has driven crime down. That makes the most sense because it's nationwide. I mean, it's it's from Hawaii to Florida. It's and the murder rate is is pushed way down. Some cities are going to have a record-breaking well I think 2025 broke some records in Detroit, Washington DC, uh Memphis may be trending that way. Some uh predom or historically violent cities, St. Louis, their murder rates uh really plummeted last year. And another thing, drug enforcement, too, because a lot of murders are gang drug related, just like our our latest murder a couple weeks ago that was over a marijuana deal and executed a a man in a parking lot. And if you drive up the drug market, there's nothing to fight about. So if you have if you have uh aggressive narcotics enforcement, that usually drives it down.

The thing that is hard to control is the domestics. So, domestic violence, we sort of help with that with our two victim advocates that get into a domestic situation before it escalates to a homicide and that that helps. So, our two victim advocates are are worth their weight in gold. Okay, all good questions. Thank you. Next is Chief Sanders with the fire department.

Good afternoon council. Afternoon.

So, uh 200 25 fire department responded uh and and AMR responded 20 22,565 calls. All the time there's questions about the other category that would involve hazardous u incidences that would also involve gas line ruptures. We have a number of those every month and then with intent calls where someone smells something burning in the house. we get there and um you know it may be a air conditioning unit that's gone bad and then just general complaints and then service calls uh that citizens often call and ask for assistance from the police uh fire department. our response times in 2025. Uh I will say that uh the the the increase in response time of station one uh that is the pitch road uh bridge closure that took place well over a year and during that time we did see little increase in response times. Then also station four with its increase we had to with station two which is located here on Sandy Spring Circle we did some uh rearranging of their territory because the number of calls they were responding to daily and we took that load out of the hospital district uh for um station 4 to respond to get a lot of those calls go to the senior facility over there um and and Mark and so we we felt like that was the has moved that we need to make increased our response times, but we are certain that once station 4 gets open there on uh at Glen Ridge, we'll see a significant improvement in our response time from that from that station.

Chief, can I ask a question here? Yes. Um station one, will we be relocated long enough to um look at what the response time is like and compare it to this at the new location? We're going to be tracking that. Okay. I feel observed that we'll see some benefit there. Be interesting. Good day to see

cardiac arrest. Once again, a lot of people give the background and kudos to Patrick and the fine job that he and uh the EMS team is doing, Paul is doing with the community parame medicine program. But as of today, we have 242 AEDs through the AVI program uh in the city departments throughout the city as well as we have 56 of those deployed in neighbors and residents homes and uh we are seeing already activation of those units and those citizens actually showing up on incidences to assist during a cardiac incident. Uh, as you recall, we made a pledge that we would train at least 800 a year in CPR. I really focused in on this past year to uh let's focus I know we do a lot of that training in our um in in our businesses throughout the city every year, but I want to focus in on this upcoming year into the homeowners associations where we're actually training the residents who live here um throughout the year. You'll notice here once again uh the yellow large areas where predominantly most of our calls are are continuously going on. And uh if you'll notice that's station 2's territory as well as the hospital district 400 corridor. It's really going to help with the improvement by relocating that station there. And if you notice what uh uh the council owner was mentioning on Rosal Road, we we still that's where we get majority of our calls up in that north end. And a majority of our structure fire responses are in that north end as well.

Can I compare this graphic to the one from last year? And if it's like brighter yellow, can I say, "Wow, it's hotter in that area." Can I Can I do that with the hot spot? We're not used to these simple things to push. Are we still going good? We're back. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. There it is. Stop. There it is. Yeah. So, if I'm looking at last year's hot spot uh graphic, can I can I compare it dot for dot? Okay. Because it does look like the north is hotter. Yeah. So,

and I can I can zero in on those type calls. A lot of it's going to be EMS, but that's the total response time calls in that area. You'll notice out there in the north uh part of the uh panhandle that is actually the senior facility out there. We get a a large number of calls out there. And the good part about we have a cooperation with Roswell. They're helping us with the response time in that um in that facility as well. So chief, what happens at Roswell Road in 285? That's a pretty big yellow spot right there. Is there any particular that's occurring in that area because

of car accidents. Okay. Okay. Thanks. The next one is a little bit easier to see. Yeah. All in 11,763. This encompasses everything in there. Um and then you have the fire incidences of 261. If you'll notice the red areas up on the north end, that was structure fires in those areas and 4,488 EMS responses. What does the color coding on the dots mean?

Sir, it's just actually showing you the darker the spots, the more repetition repetitive calls in those areas. community bear medicine program. We implemented it over a year ago. During that program, it was to really target the frequent users of 911 and EMS when they were really not non-emergency calls. U through that um Paul has really made a significant impact into those repeat uh callers, those customers. There was uh 219 service encounters with those folks that really did not need an ambulance response. They needed to more speak to a doctor or or a nurse, prescription, medication, those kind of things, but they always called 911. Uh 911 responses that were uh those are 911 emergency responses that they picked up instead of the fire truck. Uh and then also the truck was actually apparatus was actually cancelled uh to uh 74 calls and that's really a a savings to us. We don't have those large trucks running down the road to these non-emergency EMS calls. Savings this past year of $46,000.

So not to mention wear and tear has got to be less too I would guess. and we've not had one incident where it would have changed the the customer's outcome. So, it really wasn't an emergency. Chief, can you go back the slide before that one just to the councilman's question? The the understanding I have is that the red family of dots refers to fires. That's correct.

And then the green refers to other incidents and blue refers to EMS which is bigger the colors, darker the colors, the larger the pattern is the repetitive calls in those areas.

Thanks. So, the fire department are requested enhancements. As you recall, it takes 44 to 48 months to have a fire truck arrived to be placed in service once we submit the order. Uh we are needing to order an aerial, a ladder truck for replacement and also an engine. Uh we lease those through seven 7-year payments. This has been an increase of 534,000. That's one of our requests. That's for an engine and an aerial. And those would actually go into service in 2030. Uh new bonus structure. I'll share that with you in just a minute. It's 120,000. We're requesting a fire inspector as additional employee. We are really um oversaturated with inspections with the new developments coming on board and we really need assistance in the fire marshall's office for our inspect inspection department. And then the community outreach coordinator, we shared that with you the other day in the council briefings. That's the funds that the city received uh through the opioid initiative. And then the capital request. We have a number of pieces of protective equipment for our our fire trucks. Unfortunately, we have to put turnout. We have to put bulletproof vests on the trucks today. And uh helmets to protect our personnel. And some of that is expired and needs to be replaced. Fire equipment replacement. That's just general u tools and hose equipment that needs to be replaced. And then firefighter turnout gear. That turnout gear shelf life or operating live use life is anywhere 8 to 10 years. 10 years we have to replace it. And this is a continual replacement program. We have it staggered. Each person each firefighter has two sets of gear in

order to have a backup set once they have an incident and that other is being cleaned and processed. This can take our staffing from 124 fulltime to 125. and the uh the funded position through the opioid fund position would give us a total of 12 seven.

The bonus structure, what we tried to do is the police and the fire department have a uh a bonus structure for all their employees. We would like to bring ours in line with what the police department's uh structure is. And uh we think it it does a much better job and really focusing in on the market conditions and helping uh with making sure that we're fair with everyone. It's projected total increase of $52,500. Right now we have a maximum bonus that's given out annually for people that are in these various uh position titles. This is above and beyond being a firefighter. Um our what we're proposing to do with our technical rescue team, uh those are the folks that are at station two that is assigned there with our technical rescue squad. They do all of our hangle uh rescue operations as well as u expertations, those kind of things with that type of equipment. And then we have the tactical emergency medics that are on the SWAT the city's SWAT team. they have to train a lot more often as well as the arson investigators. We're asking to increase that um bonus up to $3,500. And then the other disciplines there as far as extra work that these folks do on an annual basis with training theirs would be $2,000.

Chief question how does the um new structure compare to other municipalities? Is that what they do? Everyone's different. I I would say that you have some that give no bonus and then you have some that have total different ways of of creating that structure. Um I think Sandy Springs has a model that we often are asked how how are we all you know awarding folks for doing that. I think uh the police department does an excellent job the way they have um incentivized those because there's they're spending a lot of time extra time here in the city. Um you know even on their days off they have to come in and and you know perform those extra duties. This one here uh this is our physical fitness agility assessment. Uh I did it again this year and did not have a heart attack. I was so proud of myself and did it under 10 minutes. But this was based on age, adjusted performance, scoring categorized, full turnout gear, full air pack. Uh they have to do 10 uh flights of steps, stairs, uh and and there is less based upon age as well as your time. Level one being exemplary, there would be a $1,000 bonus. And then level two, 500, level three, 250. Every certified firefighter must go through this annually.

And emergency management, our EMA preparedness exercise. We're just completing now. Williams done a good job in working uh with our third party vendor in and updating our our cognitive operations plan and our emergency operations plan. It will be available to you folks in the next uh couple of months. This we want to have actually uh exercises for this program uh this year at a cost of $30,000 an annual cost for our drone program. I want to share with you how impressed I've been with our drone program. We we deploy that drone now from station 2. We can get on the scene uh over a scene of an incident or an accident at 285400 in less than a minute. It's been a game changer for us because they're able to get there our our operator up in headquarters or they do it from their house. They're able to communicate back to the trucks exactly where that incident is at. really looking forward to seeing how beneficial it is for us on the river this coming summer when we're trying to find someone that's strangent or injured and we don't know where that location is. But truly getting on we were getting on the scene of structure fires with less than a minute with a drone and they're able to see if it's truly a working incident. They're able to see what's going on around that incident and give give that in that information back to those arriving units. It's been a great game changer for fire department and I appreciate you folks supporting that initiative. And then the annual cost of the AI program uh is is that's the operating cost and the management cost that is 70,000. And then the emergency access community gates program that we have. We are updating that and and and that goes to the gates or into our uh neighborhoods and we have to update the the program with that to stay

current with the technology. Any questions? Yes, sir. Chief, a couple weeks ago, we changed the the code when it come to fire inspections for new buildings going in. They had to do more work to make sure they got enough water for their structure. Is this adding a workload to your team? Because I'm asking, does that add a workload to your team? This evaluation of projects coming in and their the supply of water. Yes, sir. That's been significant, especially checking hydrants weekly. We've been monitoring the hydro press weekly. Okay. And but it is you're good to go with this staff right now. Okay. Any other questions? Yes.

So the So let's talk about emergency management. So the drone program um is something we could expect as a annual um capital will it it won't be capital won't be capital it'll it'll move to operating okay because I think last year 90,000 that was to purchase the equipment okay and then you've got that ongoing ma'am

I got you all right question about um the turnout gear I'm I'm trying to reconcile the ask with our and I understand that it's very it's we don't stick to the five-year um CIP. I just want to try to get an idea though. Um so for the five-year uh CIP, we have a 100,000 a year um you know over the five years, but it looks like we're just doing 200,000. We're doing twice as much this year. Does that mean

we also had helmets that have come uh expired and we have to replace those? Well, I didn't put that in the language there that helmets have to be replaced every 10 years as well. Okay. I I'm just trying to get an idea. Should we We're also I'll show you with there's there's there's chemicals that are used in that gear. They call them PFAS and they've been linked to hazardous um you know to the skin to the body. So, we looking to, you know, track that, make sure we're changing out, we're actually changing out some of our gear to a newer type, newer, uh, brand. Do you think that'll be around 200,000 each year? Uh, it's going to be probably around Okay. So, that may need to be adjusted in the CIP. Then

you're already making those changes and some of it is also the cost of increased. Yeah, that's what I'm just trying to get a an understanding of that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Marty is gonna need to come up now.

Mayor and council, good afternoon. uh for our operational uh budget enhancements for this upcoming year. Uh we're proposing that uh some additional support to our traffic management center as the uh first two line items you see there. Nexus Works fiber optic asset management uh provides software and technical support to ensure that our fiber optic system database that those records of our fiber optic system as configured and as those fiber optic systems get updated throughout the city. uh that maintain that database providing the integration of uh as you're aware fiber optic system integrating key city facilities and our traffic city signal system across the city. This service ultimately ensures the accuracy of the data maintained regarding our fiber optic system with the synic network management service. Again, back to traffic management center. Uh this three-year network management service enhances the operations and management specifically of our traffic signal systems. The focus here is on uh switches in a central part of any network and in each resident in each traffic cabinet throughout the city is a switch as well. This software manages the information being related to and maintaining currency with our traffic signal cabinets across the city as it is uh operating as a network. Utility marking services for Georgia 811. If you recollect just a few years ago, we're under a state mandate to implement 4811 services brought on a dedicated staff member as well, plus contract support in the field to locate the utilities. U additional funds are needed to assist in providing more accurate, more detailed locates within the field. Uh in some cases the

utilities say they're traffic or traffic fiber in conduit perhaps installed in years past without tracer wire. The accuracy the fidelity of those locates out in the field and become suspect. to this this service, this additional money this year allows us to more accurately pinpoint where those utilities are, our utilities that we're trying to protect from other utilities damaging them as a part of utilities construction within the rightway. uh potentially installing tracer wire. Potholeing is needed uh to further define where our systems are. Be it traffic fiber optic uh dedicated power supplies to our traffic signal systems or our street lighting systems. Traffic pole maintenance at $50,000 services to repurpose and restore our traffic signal poles and continue pole maintenance adding 50,000 here. give us the ability as well to repaint those signal walls which we haven't uh undertaken in a few years. Increase in street light maintenance and painting 150,000 provides services to regularly more regularly paint and refurbish existing city-owned street lighting poles. In this case, we're targeting about 325 poles on Roswell Road as a part of this year upcoming year's efforts. uh where we haven't had a dedicated uh program. Uh years past, we've on a case-byase basis uh refurbished bowls in particular areas. Now with a far greater inventory uh more dedicated program sand and salt spreaders replacement at $70,000, we're proposing that we replace two of our dedic uh city-owned sand salt spreaders that uh were originally procured in 2013 and 2014. uh take the gear that still works off of the chassis, the hole that we maintain

over at our Trobridge facility uh and then replace that hole and new gear to go along with it. These are the city-owned assets that then a contractor provided uh truck mount it mounts to a contractor provided truck in order to for us to perform our winter response capabilities. So Marty, do we we have two today? We have a total of five. We have a total of five. So within that 20 of five that we have, we've already replaced two. We did that about two years ago. Okay.

And so this replaces two more in the interest of keeping the uh the inventory fresh and reliable as we we go through it all. And as you rec may recollect as well for winter storm treatment capability, not only do we have five spreaders that we maintain for factory vehicles used throughout the city, but we also have brining equipment as well that we can use in response to certain winter weather conditions. Are finally an overdue requ. Are any of these expected to be recurring? Like for example, the maintenance maybe every

Well, the street light maintenance probably recurring, but not every single year. So, in the case of the 325 lights, I'm talking about for painting, refurbishing. That's 325 out of an inventory of about 900 city owned street lights. So, this year get some of them done. Next year we hope the budget allows get some more done and then that probably that program probably takes a vacation after about three years in investment. We probably go back to it or at a much lower level now to keep a maintenance level on as well. We also keep a backup stock on some of our street lights for total replacement for accidents or whatever the case might be of taking out street lights along the way. Uh an overdue position request that we have on the books for this year is our utility permit specialist. As I stand here today, uh we have some 700 active utility permits across the city. And those permits will span greater than a year in many cases. And an average year, we'll use 2025 here. For instance, city received about 420 uh permits, utility permits. Those from initial design all the way to final restorations putting the site back together. And many of these permits that our staff overseas and uh permits are miles long at a time. Say it was a telecommunications permit along Rosal Road. There could be five miles of telecommunications installation associated with a single permit. And that's just al to save lots of road and permits off side streets whatever else the case might be. So a fairly significant workload that we've uh staff has been able to manage with technology as best they can but the workload increases and the level of detail needed to get these permit holders through the

entire process is growing as we speak. So with this, we're asking for a dedicated utility permit reviewer here on staff that would take those utility permit requesters through the permitting process and then to include field and field site visits as well. And that's a complement to the two permit inspectors that we maintain out in the field to track those permits, those 700 active permits we have across the city day in day out as we manage utilities within our rights away here within the city. Does the term utility extend to like Fulton County sewage or it does

Atlanta wershed? Okay. Because we have a map, right? like a a GIS map that allows the public to see active utility permits. Is that we we maintain a database along these utility per how descriptive it might be based on when you're talking about a series of lines that may overlap each other along that x number of miles road. So it it can get confusing at that point. So you need the fidelity down at the permit level to actually understand what's going on there. where we looked at our permit technicians to provide that clarity.

So, I guess my question is, and it's more um operational, but I want to ask it since we're talking about utility permits and bringing on a another staffer. Um, so on our GIS site where we have like a menu of GIS options, um, we have a utility permit map and for for the life of me, and I could just be missing it. I I know there are active things going on relating to Fulton County in my district. And hold on, I might be wrong. Let me check. But I don't for some reason like that doesn't show up. Exfinity shows up. Gas mains show Southern Gas Comp Southern Company gas shows up, but Fulton County doesn't when they're doing things in the in the neighborhoods. I'm I'm only asking because I've gotten complaints and I don't know what to where to point people.

If it's an emergency repair that they're doing, yeah, it might not be reflected in there. So, if it's a planned upgrade or fix, then we will get it in there. But emergency, we try to hurry and get them going for obvious reasons. Okay. So, so under a typical situation, they come in, they get a permit, and then it would be reflected here. So if I'm a member of the community, I can go in and see, oh, they're going to be or they can call us if they don't see it out here and somebody's up in their neighborhood, they can call and say, "Hey, this looks what's going on."

If they see work in a in a neighborhood street, they see marks on the sidewalk, on the pavement, whatever. By all means, the call center is a great place to start. Again, back to especially those two uh existing people, superintendent we have out there, they know where the active permits are. they can track down who it is if if there's an active permit out there and they can also answer the question as well is this emergency work whatever the case might be outside of whether it's an active log created permit right thank you

I have a public works capital request uh I've been a few projects by all means if there's a particular project you want a little more information on today but I propose in the interest of time in the presentation of overall budget and we'll start off with ATMS5. We're proposing to add based on current cost estimates an additional $100,000 to the some $500,000 we already have on account to integrate 12 signals into the city's IT system once the work is finally completed and accepted by the transform 285 project. So this work to integrate those system those signals in and around the perimeter area has been on held in advance pending the final work of conduit installations, utility installations, roadway reconstruction, etc. So that we can finally fully integrate those signals primarily resident and perimeter into our overall traffic management system and enjoy the benefits of adaptive traffic signals. scoot as we try to integrate these particularly we'll probably see the impact once we're finally we get to this work along the Abernati road corridor we don't have uh the best integration possible on Aberati right now pending this work via a slide

would that include Mount Vernon highway as well

it would any any of those areas for instance we've now effectively replaced signals twice okay on Mount Vernon Highway once transformed it and then now in the interest interest of getting 192 completed we've gone to yet another signal configuration two intersections over there associated with TS 192 this project ultimately brings those two intersections into uh the system as well bridge and dam maintenance a little bit about the program uh we're we're about to bring a bridge or I think we just did bridge maintenance repair contract to you for a contractor ctor out work on 13 bridges this year. This would be the engineering year on the bianual cycle bridge inspection. So this is 300,000 dedicated engineering uh investigation. So we'll get the bridge deficiency report from the Georgia Department of Transportation later this year. We'll ask consultant to first field validate the the work identified by G dot in their inspections and then build from that the maintenance and repair contract that we use to go up with the next round of maintenance and repair. So it's a offon cycle this year 300,000 our capital fiveyear CIP will call for a much larger number associated with the bridge maintenance and repair as part of that cycle. city beautifification $135,000 continues the sidewalk uh cleaning program that we've been successful with the last couple of years as well as interstate wildflower planning where those opportunities exist but interstate reconstructions in front of us as well right now um guard rail replacement program is skipping ahead a couple of adds uh 250,000 proposed annual sustainment into the program for guardrail replacement enter internally illuminated street name signs 160,000. Based on that number, approximately 12

intersections can get updated, refreshed, re repaired uh internally illuminated street name signs with that investment. Uh Lake Forest at Allen Road intersection improvement, $1 million. As you're aware, we've been working design and rideway acquisition for the Lake Forest Road at Allen Road intersection project, ultimately to construct roundabout there. uh we're all but complete with rightaway at this point. This $1 million reflects the most current construction cost estimate for the dollars needed to take the project through construction and get the work completed out there. So this is $1 million this upcoming year's budget to construct the project neighborhood street lighting program proposing a relatively modest ask of only $14,600 in this case. If you recollect about oh maybe three years ago now we created a neighborhood lighting program which allowed for a 5050 match neighborhood and city of Sandy Springs to install uh postmounted decorative lighting systems and those would probably more appropriately be in neighborhoods that have underground power uh in most of the city where we are the large parts of the city where we already have or have overhead utilities The more simple answer is attach an additional street light to an existing pole if it's out there. This would be for the neighborhoods with underground power to the power has a s a program where they install a fiberglass pole with decorative fixture and attach the lighting to it. Uh this would bring the program fund the kitty back up to $100,000 as the city's 50% match for that program as neighborhoods may choose to participate in it. Nesbbit exploding intersection $500,000. This funds design work uh for a problematic intersection where our current signal infrastructure

is deficient. The signal heads are actually too low. And part of our challenge with that lies some degree of urgency to it. The poles that in this case box span to suspend those traffic signal heads out there we don't own nor control. So utility adjustments to move other utilities out of the way in some cases wholesale. So this gives us an opportunity to the dedicated project to not only address the traffic signal constraints out there but we also have some geometric issues at this uh particular intersection site distance issues etc that we want to get get ahead on with some uh design work now in the interest of providing the proper alignments facilities and pole reconfiguration or signal reconfiguration out there we need is a relative mod this year in payment management program at $3 million that recognizes that we do have some surpluses within the payment management program right now. We've had pay bids for a couple of years as well. It also recognizes that GOT is participating both in the case of LIG and L to the tune of a little bit just under two and a half million dollars this year. So, we take advantage of those state contributions that we receive as well. Uh you'll see a couple of three different PCID related projects. Those are city matches to 50% match to projects we've identified with the PCID staff. In some cases, PCID is already underway with some level of effort on these. The Glen Ridge side path and the peach tree down road sidewalk reflect PCID investment as a part of their 50%. They're already moving ahead with design studies on that. In the case of the Glenidge connector at Johnson Berry Road, they're performing currently uh traffic level of service studies that assess traffic into and out of perimeter CD. The work the monies we're talking

about here for that project would provide further scoping work to define say the full needs of that particular intersection before we move into proposed design work etc with the upcoming two spots. One other couple others I'd like to highlight. Sandra circle multi-use path at $500,000. initial concept work and design work uh to develop a plan for a side path on at least one side of Sandy Spring Circle from Johnson Berry Road at the fire station over to an area that had been uh just not included in previous uh development activities here around city hall in the interest of providing that complete around another

Marty question on that sidewalk the new townhouse s or or condos that are going in there. They're required to put in uh sidewalk there, right in front of their place because there's stretches along there. I think the reason why you're saying we need this there there's places that we don't have sidewalk. Right. So, this connects this the intention is to connect. VO has a sidewalk in front of it. It's the portion when you get the side driveway at Aldi. Yes. Forward, but there is no sidewalk.

Forward meaning to Roswell Road. Sorry. Uh over at the stormwater improvements, the stormwater capital, our stormwater team has already developed for 27 an estimated 22 stormwater capital projects that they intend to pursue across the course of the year. Pretty ambitious goal with that. And if you recollect from a presentation you heard in council retreat a couple of months ago, uh we performed a pilot study on storm city-owned stormwater assets where we looked at 20% of city-owned assets across the city and within that uh the consultant provided us a system condition assessment and along with that an estimate of cost to own and maintain that system. uh this study this year in stormwater operations at 650,000 uh part of that budget is forecasted to go look at the remaining 80% of the city's storm water assets condition assess the condition on those as well so we can look for the pictures projected cost to own maintain storm water system city owned across the city with each year

so we'll have that next end of next year So, we'll see how long the days go, but we're after that. Okay. Storm water operation. Um, how much of the 650 do you expect to be associated with what you just described? About four. That's what I thought. Okay. So, so after that's done, maybe storm water operation will go back down. It it surged this year for the sake of the state. It's spiking, but I I understand why. I just want to make sure that okay cuz the 5year CIP has us at around 200 or so under 300,000 for that. Okay.

Any other projects I missed as I hit some highlights there that you have more interest in? I have a question about traffic calming. Uh I don't I don't know what what we did last year. Uh looking at it now. Yeah, last year looks like we did 50. Fiveyear CIP looks like it calls for 50 each year. Um, so we're doing 100 this year. So is it really we should expect about a hundred for traffic calming each year.

We put 100,000 in the budget. And we know as we talked a lot among council last year that there's an interest in potentially modifying the rules and the policies associated with the program. Okay.

So we're proposing in the budget an additional investment about 50,000 more this year uh as we further explore with council hopefully sometime later this year. uh what potential changes adjustments the council desires to make to the traffic column policy. So that's why the uh hedged slight increase I'd call 50 50,000 100,000 slight increase in the overall program budget in the interest being prepared for how those policy changes might develop. Well, Marty, is that also because not just from the council perspective, but you've seen uh an increase in requests from neighborhoods. Does it kind of like duel the reason why you're thinking that

we have seen a few more come in and we're trying to be prepared a if council wants to change the policy on how much we contribute and b what that impact might be to others wanting to have traffic calming installed and is there a way when they come in to our districts that we could just get an FYI just to just be aware that there is a request in that neighborhood? we can incorporate that into inside Sandy Springs. That's probably the easiest way to do it because when the request comes in, it takes staff a little bit of time to triage it and then do the study and figure out what's going on.

They do keep an active roster of traffic calming request within within the city updates and the inside streets update. Right. Thank you. So for the Allen Road intersection improvement, um if G do follows through on the DDI and Culdeacs Allen Road, will it still make sense to move forward with that project? I think they're culde-sac carpenter. No way. They do. Right. That's right. Yes. So

very long time into the future. So qualify the the G. So the intersection interchange and improvement whatever that project might become is I would qualify as you heard the same from I believe years in the making yet to go. So, I don't believe so. This is more so at Allen Road and uh Lake Forest. This is more so about the north primarily that northbound movement and we're to safely accommodate moving the traffic through there uh short of some other efforts that we built create more accidents and solve there. So hopefully this roundabout ultimately keeps traffic moving and it's primarily driven by that north south movement. Um, I don't know that the culde-sacing is going to change that. It It will change.

There's a pro there's a problem there of of sighteline. Uh, you've got two lanes. The one turning left and one turning right. What they do is when one on the left pulls up to see what's coming from this direction. One over here pulls up to see what's coming from this direction. And they're jockeying there. And so that leads to a conflict which created a lot of of accidents. very similar to the situation up here at Long Island, which we're dealing with with uh with signalization. So, yeah, even if they culde-sac it, you have enough residential and other movements through there that are causing problems on on Lake Forest getting onto Lake Forest from there. So, you still have those people who live there. There's not a lot of through traffic. I mean, there's some that comes down Allen Road off of Rosel Road, but it's mostly the residents trying to get out on Lake Forest, so they don't have to go directly out on Roswell Road, which oftentimes they can't. They have to go out and come around to get on Cliffwood or some other place to access

and we successfully implemented a little bit of traffic calling, some of you may recollect, on Allen Road just a couple of years ago in response to the neighborhood request. So we're already treating that as a relatively low volume roadway that is eligible for traffic call on that case especially park across the street etc. Sorry Andrew I was describing Northwoods. Yes sir. So but it's still a similar still it's still similar also gets called same it's a similar problem. You have a similar problem at Northwoods and at at

Yeah. I appreciate I I I don't want to spend $200,000 tonight and a million dollars later for something that is obsolete or not needed in 10 years. I think that north south movement on Lake Force that demand is stay there inherent conflict. I understand something now you're talking about Allen Road and Lake Forest. Yes. Uh the traffic that seems to be of more concern would be north.

Our traffic studies in our traffic studies show that we can keep the or prevent the traffic from going into an always stop which is what it does today at Lake Forest and Allen. That movement allows for a freer and safer movement down at Northwood. It it's the downstream consequence that improves the condition is one car making a left turn on the Northwood that stops up the whole thing and it backs up to the intersection at Allen Road. So to me it would make more sense to have the roundabout at Northwood.

We we look we look hard at that. It it truly in the interest of pulling the traffic away from the northwood intersection, especially doing geometry and roadway, Alam mode at Lake Forest was a better place to make the intersection improvement the traffic movement. Well, it's something we'll continue to look at because there is there is a conflict there at Allen, excuse me, Northwoods, right? And and and Lake Forest, too.

So, it's something we'll just have to monitor. What we've done at Markwood and uh Lake Forest in the last couple of years has been an emphasis on improving sight distancing. We had a lot of vegetation, shoulder road, whatever. They were cleared that out to improve sight conditions which is part of just lack of visibility at that intersection that was creating access. A big improvement there would be a left turn lane south on Lake Forest to Northwoods with a through lane being a through lane being independent of the left turn. So you want the through lane would just keep going south on Lake Forest and not be stopped by that.

If there's a a left turn on Lake Forest going into Northwood, that stops your southbound traffic. But there's only one lane there. It it does. Now, I'm saying if they had another lane to the right that could go around that left turn lane, then they would just keep on going. I don't know what the odds are of you expanding it west. More rotting there. We're just effectively I think about the older we Well, yeah. I'm just thinking down at Northwood. Well, it it bears once once once you get the roundabout in, if it if it has the uh impact that the uh traffic study indicates, we might not need it, but it will

it will justify some ongoing investigations. Yeah. Wasn't the original design? We contemplated two roundabouts. So, Frank, so that was and then the decision was to go with the one like Forest and Yeah, you may still have to come back and It it is it is problematic. This was prioritized higher. Okay. Thank you, Marty. Next up is Brent with Recreation and Parks.

Afternoon, Council Mayor.

Go through the budget real quick. cover requests for this coming year and some of the changes we want to do. The first up uh is the $22,000 we're asking for the software replacement for our recreation uh registration system. We're moving away from Civic Wreck, which is a program we've been using for quite some time, but it doesn't have a very good mobile application, which is what everyone is using now. So, we're replacing that with a local design firm that created an application called Auto App. It will be something that's better conducive for handheld devices, make it much easier for people to reserve facilities and also registered programs. Uh the next one is the 34,000 for program supplies. Uh we are increasing some of our programs going into next year, some additional adaptive programs. Uh we're also going to be doing our first ever stand up paddle board showdown with Murf Surf out at the Paddle Shack at Overlook. Uh so there'll be some additional expenses for that. We're also increasing our girls youth sports programs. Uh we do a girls sports day and uh increase some of our uh girls football programs. So there will be some additional cost to run those programs. The next one is our site improvements. Um throughout the year we get a lot of requests either from um city management council sometimes general public to just make some improvements to the parks that we didn't account for or prepare for in the budget process. Uh so as we receive those we we look at the situation to see if it's something that would be a good idea or viable for the system and make those improvements. Uh and then also just things break that we didn't anticipate breaking. So uh sometimes we have to make improvements to those and there's costs associated with that. Uh one request we have this year as well is

additional staffing uh as an additional assistant program super I'm sorry additional park supervisor position. Um these are our maintenance guys that work in the districts the north and south districts. Uh Jimmy and Corey if you're familiar with those guys maintain the parks do an excellent job. But what we're seeing is our we have a lot of turnover in our part-time ambassador program and those are guys that are there in the nights and weekends. Uh it's a very difficult position to hire for just because of the hours that they do work. It's typically someone's second or third job. So as they get other jobs, they they may move on. Uh this position would be full-time and would be working within those nights and weekends. We're just seeing an uptick in park usage. Uh, and this will help us uh, keep an eye on the parks better in the evenings for weekends and to make repairs during those high usage hours. So, we're requesting that additional staff person. Uh, in the capital request column, we are looking to replace the playground at the Avenue Arts Center. It is long overdue. Uh, if you know where it is, it's kind of tucked away there on the back side of the parking lot. A lot of that equipment you can't even buy anymore. They have to make it. Uh it's been there for quite some time, so it is due uh for replacement. We are looking for another location for that playground on the property. Uh so that makes more sense uh for our summer camp usage over there and just for the general public to access it.

How big is that um playground? The one that's there now, probably a thousand square feet maybe and tucked away in there. It's pretty old. It's probably 30 to 40 years old. We're looking to do something really cool and innovative there, especially with the art center coming fully online.

The next one is the heritage playground. I'm working with Dave and facilities at looking at that green space over there and trying to design in the new signature playground as well. Some of the very cool um oneoff that would be dynamic for that area as we have events over there, the amphitheater, something where families can go over to and enjoy that green space. So, so question on that, Brent. Are you envisioning a small child, smaller child playground? I know last year, um, during the campaign, a lot of parents said Abernathy Park is great, but it's kind of an art park. It doesn't really serve for the small children. They like Morgan Falls, but that was a long drive. So, are we looking at something targeting younger children?

Both. The way program playgrounds are set up, you typically have a 2 to five playground equipment and 5 to 12 playground equipment and it's designed for their body types and what they're physically capable of doing at that age. So, we're looking for something that would accommodate both. Comments I heard were mostly about the small child playground. So, we have a couple of options. uh we won't show those today, but we'll be coming back soon to where we can actually include some options for adult playground in addition to it. So I think house will be very excited to see that. Not building pulse in a golf course are short course. We're gonna have to start. You mean the pull-ups and No. Well, you know, we physical fitness is important to us.

A quick question on the Heritage playground. Is there any contemplation of improving the look of the Sandy Spring area? Okay, you're gonna see that in Dave's portion. They're both there. All all wrapped up into one. So, is is the is this expense for the design or that actually will cover this is the playground portion then the funding on Dave's slide is the fix to the mosquito pit basically. Sorry. Yeah. Fortunately, playground um

companies are usually really good about providing a redesign. Buy their equipment. They'll give you 3D renderings. They'll lay it out for you. They'll do all that um ahead of time. So, they want you to buy their stuff. So, they're usually pretty good providing a nice concept for you. Um the next one we have is our $2 million for the Morgan Falls Athletic Complex. That's the uh next round of CIP for the school and water and turf replacement project. We've been working on a while for quite some time for design. Uh we are almost complete with that uh construction document. We're we're going to submit it for permitting here very soon. Uh we just worked out uh or had a conversation with Bul County on the lease amendment for that. Uh we had to submit documentation to EPD because the landfill status over there at that property. We got approval from EPD to do the land the service for the entire project. Uh and then now we are working through the uh amendment to the lease we have with county for that part. Uh so once we get that cleared up, we'll be able to take that to bid and start looking at scheduling that hopefully to commence this year for next year in construction. Brent, if I may. Sure. So we have been spending a couple of million dollars at Morgan Falls Park every year for a good number of years. Are we getting to the end of that list of things to do?

Yeah. Okay. Yes. This this one will fix a lot of the storm water issues that are out there. A lot of the ponding that they have on the on the fields. Um it just there hasn't been any infrastructure changes out there. There's been a lot of of modifications for lighting and shade structures and stuff like that. So, we're trying to kind of pitch the bones of of the park to maximize the longevity of the turf and new parking and things like that. The five-year CIP seems to show this fiscal year as the last fiscal year of, you know, funding. So, and it's improved greatly just

it can't be forever. Well, you know, we're we're somewhat out there in a competitive environment, you know, because of you've got several youth sports programs and parents choose based on the quality of the of the facilities where they're going to let their, you know, where they're going to enroll their kids. We've we've gone uh we've improved the the facilities to the point I mean I know most of us were out there for the opening ceremonies and we had way more kids now uh than we had last year and many many many more kids than we had four or five years ago. So the the program is attracting more and more of our families to stay in Sandy Springs and and enroll their kids in our youth sports programs. And I think that was the original idea the for not it it it needed enormous amount of investment just to get it up to where it was playable. I mean we're playing on bare dirt out there in many fields. So it's come a long long long way. Uh and we're going to have to maintain some uh resources going into that facility over a long period of time. It's that the needs are not going to decrease. They're going to continue to at least stay this at this level or maybe even more going forward just simply because of I mean we're sitting at on top of a a landfill. We forget that sometimes and there are all kinds of environmental issues that we have to monitor and maintain. I mean county the county still maintains all the environmental mod uh monitoring and so on out there but there's a lot that goes on around that place to make sure it's safe for the kids to play. So there's a this is not going to be a something that that goes down very much in in future years.

Yeah. Just to the mayor's point. So our competition I think of NYO at Chastain Park and also Murphy Canler Park and Brook Haven. I think the gap between Morgan Falls and those other two used to be like very big and we've narrowed it a lot. There's still a gap I think. Um I mean the caliber of the facilities. Yes. Yeah. Go down and take a take a look at what they've done with NYO. Well, no. I I try to park there when I play golf. They're working so hard I can't even find a place to park. Well, they're building So, to that point, they're building a very expensive parking deck at NYO. That's going to take several years to build. Where? Right along Wuka or whatever the the main road is. So, it's under construction now. You can go see it. It is a big deal.

Capital. Big deal. That's a parking deck there. Okay. There's going to be a parking deck there. So then the city of Atlanta, they give some money, but basically they've got a foundation that works to raise money to keep that up. And Murphy Candler has stepped up their game a little bit, too. So when I say competitive, it's a friendly competition, but we want to create an environment where our families want to stay here and participate in our programs. And that's going to it just means we've got to look around and see what other facilities are doing and make sure we're maintaining relative parity. Yes, sir. Is any of these funds going to the uh the football area at Morgan?

Yes, sir. So, that's that's one of the advantages of the enhancements we're making by putting it in the artificial turf on all the fields to make it easier for us to transition from one sport to the next. Right now, we have to put a chain link fence up and carve out those baseball fields in the upper fields and then transition that back to flag. Um, one of the goals too with the artificial turf is we'll have either permanent marking or tick marks to strike the fields to that dimension of whatever we want to play, whether it be flag football, soccer, cross. It'll make the space much more flexible and allow for more programming and more opportunity sports.

We had a conversation before about some of the private schools might want to use that football field and you mentioned something about the facilities are not not up to par. Yes, sir. So, uh, Mount Vernon did come out and look at the at the field at one point and the issue primarily that we have is the sideline width is not uh enough for high school football and also we don't have indoor facilities that house the teams in weather or things like that. You have to be able to provide space.

The Georgia State Sports uh they they have standards And unfortunately that field it meets the standards for youth programming but not for high school programming. That's right. So and we're we told them that we're happy if they wanted to come out and use a practice facility or scrimmage or anything like that we'd have we'd be happy to accommodate that but unfortunately for a game it just wouldn't be able to accommodate and there's not enough real estate unfortunately if there to widen it or make it bigger to accommodate. Well, how many how many teams actually use that field now?

Um, I I can get you the number from Sandy Spring Youth Sports, but as the mayor said, their numbers are increasing year-over-year. Uh, and they are trying to grow their flag football program, which we're um we're working with them on as well along with S Middle School to try to create a middle school flag football program for all sand boys. And so once that turf field is done, we'll be able to better optimize the space and grow that program.

And and the kind of programming that parents are looking for and families are looking for have expanded. You know, it's no longer just football flag or otherwise. It's lacrosse, it's soccer, it's all kinds of field sports that that the high schools are are getting into. I mean, lacrosse is something that's really been the last 15 years before that was non-existent. soccer was more of a a niche sport and now it's you know it's a it's a mainline sport in in uh in our high schools and other schools and so families are looking for us to provide that kind of programming too and that field has to serve a a multiplicity of uses which when it was built was not designed for. So, we're going to have to continue to put resources in there, too.

Questions boss? Uh, yes. Actually, interestingly enough, we approved around 400 or so thousands for the park, not the athletic complex. Um, what what did that go towards? Was that for the restroom um renovation? Yes. Yeah. So, that um that's correct. the restroom renovations and just some miscellaneous repair lighting things like that. This bigger lift is for major storm water infrastructure art re for the athletic complex. Yeah, I was this is the uh Morgan Falls overlook.

Yes, that is for just some uh we did some erosion control repairs out there, upgraded the restrooms which aren't done as of this past weekend complete. Okay. and back open. Uh so yeah, that was there's also a dock uh extension that we're working on right now with NPS, National Park Service, uh to get the permit for that to expand the kayak launch and dock.

Oh, okay. Um I'd be curious as to why, but we'll we'll I'll talk about that at another time. I I want to get I want to make sure I understand um what we could expect to be recurring. Uh the uh the Rocket Center capital contributions, will that happen every year? Yes. So, part of their uh contract is they pay their their rent and then an additional $2,000 every month to be put into a capital fund, little small projects or improvements to the facility. That was part of their negotiated contract deal with the city when it started some five years ago.

Oh, so you're saying they pay that in? Yeah. Okay. So that 24,000 is not it's revenue or is it sorry is budgeted is both revenue and expenditure neutral and so it's it's shown as an expenditure but that's really budgeted authorization. It doesn't mean we're actually spending. We can say that I understand. So apologize for the interruption

question on the um tennis center. I thought last year we had there was a dollar amount for improvements and then after the discussion it was scaled back. So when we toured that center it it was um it needed some TLC. I don't see a line. Will there be anything else up there for that or is it just 24,000 this year that we're going to go and reinvest?

So that that's a facilities project. It was originally a million dollar ask. We shaved it down to just over $500,000. for the restroom renovation upstairs, the deck replacement on the back, new concrete entryway, new doors, entryway. So, we are wrapping up the bathrooms now. Uh then we're going to go into concrete out front. We've already replaced all awnings. If you go out to the facility, the old uh pergola that were kind of rotting and falling apart, we removed all those and made them shade structures. Um and then we'll go into the deck. as soon as we get done with the concrete up front. Um so we're working through that work plan. Um we're working with the rolls operator to identify some other things that we can do uh with the funds that they submit to the city. Uh we we try to partner with them to come up with a work list of improvements with the money they put into uh the contract. Uh so we're not completely done. Um long-term vision is part of the park to master plan that we're working through right now. We will get a hopefully shortterm work list any cost associated with that to do a major renovation to the the park as a whole the building and the grounds.

Thank you. Uh the next one is the uh trail segment 2C construction. There's a $2 million request for that. Uh that is again as they continue building the coffers towards trail 2C that goes from Overlook Park up around Harbor Point uh and Gley's Ferry. Um we are at 30% plan set with that project. So we have funding for the uh design uh in construction documents. that we're working through now uh and that will continue to put money towards the project. Uh we will apply for the good grant again in 2027. We had a very good meeting with DNR. Um a wrap-up meeting with them a couple weeks ago to see kind of where our application fell short. Uh so we feel good going into this next grant cycle of improving that application and being a contender for that $3 million to again go towards construction as well. So we will continue working on that project fully funded. Um next up are all the tree fund uh apple requests from Mr. park and he provided me some very detailed notes on his uh his budget request. He's going up and down a little bit in different bonds. He uh he's asking uh flat $50,000 no change in invasive removal. Um they done quite a bit of removal bamboo over falls. Uh and then he is continuing u identify areas in the parks especially as we build off the springway where we can continue to do invasive claim removal of pest management throughout the park system. In the tree pond

capital project uh that you will see a uh a significant jump. Um last year was $175,000. this year we're asking for 300,000 and that is primarily because of the uh cost associated with TS 191 and TS192. Um he's going to be doing all the planting reforestation along those on and um

yeah. So for for the new council members um correct me if I'm wrong. The way this works is the tree fund. There's no line item in project budgets for trees. So, we use the tree fund money to fund the trees that go to those projects. So, that's what this $300,000 is for. The reason for that is there are restrictions on where we can plant trees trees on public property. We can't do it on private. Um, what's the tree fund balance? We have a is our current balance. We can pull that and have that at the next meeting.

These add up to what? 65,000. Is that right? Something like that. I don't know. got them all up just Are we getting low? I know we had discussions over the years that got up and then we brought Willie on board and so we've been so we have had uh some pretty significant contributions lately. We've had quite a few folks taking trees down. So we're confident in the amount that we're showing, but we'll have the full detailed fund for you guys. Thank you.

Um I just want to bring this up because now is as good a time as any. I was uh something was brought to my attention the other day in Publix no less. Um apparently along where we're planning to see there's a considerate amount of um a significant amount of invasives. Someone wanted to make sure that I knew that so that we could be intentional about removing them along that trail. So this is me saying it to you and I'm done with it. Thank you. Next one is a survey, tree fund survey. Last year was $35,000. This year we're only asking for 15. It's a decrease due to a large portion of the tree inventory was completed in the pre previous fiscal year. Um so and there are funds that are carrying over from the last fiscal year. So that is a reduction in that line item. Uh for maintenance, uh there's a decrease of $25,000 uh from previous year. uh will stated that a lot of the catchup work along Sandy Spring or Sandy Springs parks and rec facilities is completed and he's seeing a um an expansion of the Eco Stewart program is is sharing a lot of the maintenance cost. So that program is paying off in dividends where we're training these volunteers to then train other volunteers that are really helping us keep our cost down for these invasive removals and things like that we're doing in the parks. Um the pre-und education fund last year was 20,000. Uh he's requesting an additional $5,000 to go up 25 this year. Uh again, it's a increase in funds for the successful expansion of the eco sewage program. Uh and then we've also um increased capacity to host urban forestry and sustainable natural resource management programs. We've done several programs in Spanish for tree contractors here uh at city hall which

has been getting them certified uh and trained in tree removal and public tree care uh which is hopefully going to pay off the dividends as well. Um the next one is the tree fund for trees Atlanta. Last year was $50,000. We are requesting only 40 this year. That's a decrease in budget. And what we're seeing is a decrease or decline in the request for those front yard trees. Uh and it it seems to be happening across the metro area, not just uh in Sandy Springs, but they're seeing a decrease overall uh in in that program. This past year, we we planted 77 trees for a total cost of $25,5. Uh, so we we decided it was best.

What are the varietals that they plant? They're they're natives. I I don't have a list of me, but I can get it for you. That's I just was wondering, you know, they're faster growing slow slower growing oaks or faster growing something or others that Yeah, I think it's kind of a mixed bag of what you can get, but there is a list. Make sure we get that. Trees Atlanta, plant their trees where front yard. So, this is a program that Trees Atlanta started uh several years ago. is called the front yard tree program. And what they're trying to do is get private property owners to plant more trees so that the responsibility doesn't just go on public right away in public parks. Paying them for that.

That's correct. It's a program where you can sign up through the city to have a tree planted in your front yard and then the city carries the cost for that tree. It's it's to increase our overall tree canopy because again the majority of the property at Safety Springs is privately owned and it's funded out of the tree fund. That dollar amounts coming out of the tree fund that people paid into as recumbents for taking down trees project 300,000 at the bottom. The 40,000 at the bottom because you're asking about the trees fund. I just wondered why we're paying Trees Atlanta to plant trees in somebody's yard.

So, yes, sir. So, we're we are legally able to plant trees in people's front yard and then not be a gratuitity. If we were to do it on private property, it would be illegal basically be a gratuitity to that property. So we partnered with them as a nonprofit to expand the bridge canopy by putting the trees in front yard. So we help fund that through the fees that are paid into the tree fund by um Tell me how many trees they planted. I I can get that number. I know this past year was 77, but I can get you the number from previous years.

$40,000 for 77 trees. Well, this this year was only $25,000 that was spent for the 77 trees that were planted. We we anticipate maybe the the project will have increased numbers next year. So, we're requesting 40 for next fiscal year. Uh but we did reduce it from 50 down to 40 because of the decrease that we're seeing. So, you're requesting 40? Yes, sir. For for next year. Next year. $1,000. Well, we only paid them $25,000 in FY25 out of the 50 that was budgeted in.

But we only pay for what trees are planted, right? So, it's not like a flat fee. They have to invoice, I would think, on That's correct. The trees actually planted. They kick into that at all. The trees Atlanta fund this as well? Yeah, I'm sure there's costs associated from their end, too. They also have a a two-year maintenance program. They come out and prune and water after the tree is planted. They do a lot of things afterwards. So, we're not carrying the whole load on this whole program. It's all That's correct.

Be good to know what that breakdown is. And then um fulltime positions again we're requesting that one uh position increase of the assistant park supervisor but our part-time positions are are staying flat.

Brent, I have one comment on the project list. Go back. So, and I'll pull a little bit of that. I'm still the new person on council, but to see the $2 million for that segment to see to in my mind, I balance that $2 million against the progress we could make on the sidewalk list that people use to get to school, work, bar stops, everything else. So, I don't know when the right time is for us to have the conversation about I don't know. And how much more money? I heard you say it's a the design is 20% funded or

is completely funded. Yeah. So we we have $5 million currently in that um this will give us question $7 million to go towards that project. The go grant is three. So would give us 10 if we are able to get that grant. The estimated cost on the trail is roughly 14 now. So, we're just trying to build up that fund uh in anticipation that once the design is completed, we'll be fully funded and ready to go to construction.

So, maybe this Ian, this is a question for you, like when do we get to the point of because $2 million seems like a lot of sidewalks. These are the conversations that we need to have through this process. You guys should give us feedback if you want. Okay? If you want that money to be removed from here, that will stop that program, which is fine, but you need to get consensus among your fellow council members that you want to not appropriate any funding to trail 2C and instead because it would have to be a vote. We haven't adopted trail master plan that includes funding these and getting them constructed. Can change. Well, that project, what I am hearing is that that project's not going to move forward anyways until we get another three plus4 million dollars.

It will delay it. It will delay it significantly, right? Not a stop. It's a delay. Um, but $7 million more of sidewalks. So, okay. I will I will be talking to people to figure out how we want to Huh. Okay. So, please email any specific questions you have. We'll go ahead and work up a breakdown of how much is already funded for this project because there is already some funds that are already set aside for it so that you all have a full picture and can make an informed decision.

In concert with that, what has the conservancy done when it comes to trail 2C terms because they're really good at going and getting land donations and stuff like that. So a full accounting of where we are with 2C both our our money set aside as well as what the conservy's done would give us a more complete picture of just where that project stands. Sure.

And by the way on that subject since you brought up the end of that trail 2C there was a question about where it landed in Groen's Bluff and there was a you know more about this than I because some of the neighbors didn't were not happy with how the thing terminated. anything you can share with us about where that is. I don't want to fund the project where the end is in dispute. Right.

So the the current uh design shows it coming out onto Adair downhill from the entrance to go um on Harbor Point's apartment property. It then crosses to the south side of Adair and goes uphill to that intersection at Groven Fairy and Adair. uh stays on the south side and the curves and attaches to the existing side path that is already constructed on Grovis. So it doesn't go I thought it went by the clubhouse at one point in time.

No, there they had some concerns um about it being on the north side uh which is not. It's on the south side of Adair. Uh and then they were had some concerns about uh people parking at the clubhouse to access the trail. So what we're working through is a design to minimize that, keep it away from the entrance. Um okay, working if they want additional signage to make sure that the trails continuous through that area that there's no really good option to get off and on there. So people, it's not more desirable to park at their location that we want people to go to to overlook and park there and get on the trail. As it continues on, uh if we continue springway around, eventually it will go to Big Trees, which has a very large parking lot, and that's where we'll be making a more kind of a grand trail head location at that at that park. and you'll present that to the neighborhood next week, I think.

Any other questions? Thanks, Brent. Sure. Thank you.

Uh just real quick on some of our programs. This is just a snapshot. Uh we still are seeing an increase in our programs. Our facult does an excellent job. uh in particular in our adaptive programs. We had a lot of positive feedback, people coming from all over the state to u be part of our adaptive recreation programs to change and an excellent job with that. She's got new adaptive programs like I said before new program. Uh we have a lot of herers in Sandy Springs. Uh they actually spend a lot of money in city springs. So we try to increase that program we can and also add an adaptive program to it. Uh so you can see our program numbers uh and where they kind of stand out. Uh our back to school bash that we do out here with police department is by far one of our most popular. Uh our national kids park day which is coming up here in the next few weeks is a big one for us. Our soccer program still does very well. And then our daddy dollar dance is still very very popular. has been expanded to two nights now, which consistently sells out. Our Mother Sundance sold out this past weekend. Had a lot of moms calling and begging to get in, wanting to get a seat at the table. Unfortunately, it was it was all sold out. So, uh, our guys do an excellent job and we will continue to see increases in our programs moving forward. So, um just so last year it looked like you, um reported a cost per person of around $16. I don't know if the calculation maybe there's something happened with the calculation, but it's like it appears to be double that um the average cost per person. So, um I do have a couple of questions. Again, comparing this slide to last year's slide, um looks like a pretty significant decrease in uh youth basketball, for example, 964 last year,

115 this year. Um and soccer track looks looks like it's down from 240 last year to 70 this year. So, so part of that is our access to facilities.

Thank you. Um, we're seeing a little bit of a decline in our our access to gymnasiums and some of the school facilities with brings pushing all their sports programs out to the middle school some other locations. Uh, and then uh we had a change in staffing to previous youth athletics coordinator left and we brought a new staff person and she's rebuilding a lot of those programs. Okay. Uh so we we expect them to trend back up and primarily was facilities. Yeah. Okay. Because total number last year was 8,400 is what the registrance were. So hopefully we can get back up there.

Yeah. And then the next slide. This is our Sorry, I have a question about um I have many people ask me about senior programming. I do realize we have the Dorothy Benson Center, but um residents uh when I talk about that, they say, "Well, couldn't the city partner and expand some of the programs there because they don't feel that that's filling the need for the senior community?" Yeah. And I was going to say senior services is a topic of discussion in the service delivery strategy. It is with the county.

Yes. And it is a function of county service provision. And it's not typically a city service. Uh but we do offer a lot of programs that aren't maybe geared towards seniors. They're open for adult. Yeah. And that's when Kristen, that's what the response was. You know, we try to design multi- multicultural kind of events. Um but it's just a recognition of something specifically targeting seniors. and we'll probably hear about that as we go through the programming discussion recreational parks master plan as well. So we'll be asking about programs, what people are looking for, what we're missing, that sort of thing.

So just I know that's a scene that's a SDS, but why do we why is it separated out senior versus other age groups for services? I'm just curious.

Interesting question. Well, it's just historically Fulton County has spent a lot of money on senior centers around and so they took the lead on that several years ago. I mean, I'm talking probably 25 30 years ago. The Benson Center was one of the last senior centers that was built in the county. There were a lot of senior centers on the south end of Fulton County and they just took the lead in doing that. And in the SDS discussions, it was just, okay, you're going to you're going to manage that process. We'll focus on the other generations. But that's something that's uh now's the appropriate time to have that conversation because we are just in the early stages of SDS, service delivery strategy. In case somebody doesn't know what SDS stands for, that's a process where the city, all 15 cities and the county get together, look at all the 60s some odd services that are provided and we divvy them up uh based on who's the government level that is best suited to provide that service uh and then who pays for it. Those are the kind of discussions that that we're just beginning to have right now.

And part of it on senior services again goes back to facilities. We don't have the facilities to be able to host an expansion of programming. I have broached the topic with the county manager. Could we potentially have access to the Benson Center? Don't really have a response on that.

We have we've haven't had a lot of uh positive conversations with the owners of the facility. Secondly, the Atlanta Regional Commission has a huge uh senior uh program. It's it's more oriented not toward recreation but for other senior services. So, but the senior centers here are the ones who additionally have provided you know they got we worked on the botchi court that they built a few years ago and some other facilities that are there but it is it is managed and operated by the county.

Yeah. I just think we have a lot of active seniors that you know maybe would do things not just at a center but through a service provider partner somewhere. We've done a lot with like pickle ball which is more oriented toward seniors. Uh, so we put a lot of money into creating new pickle ball courts, but it's worth having conversation about and a lot of that data will come to the parks mastermind. as we get through that and the and this point seniors aren't what we remember seniors being recreation that definition has changed quite a bit as to what they used to be what they are doing as seniors much more active well to to council

they're sitting on our porch and rocking any council member Mueller's point I mean we could also focus on multigenerational programming too if there's a gap of that which we do I mean citywide maong tournament or something. Our arts program, that's something, you know, it's not it it's a recreational program, but it's open to all ages. And uh so that there's some things out there that we probably haven't labeled senior uh they're not specifically for seniors, but we have a lot of seniors who participate.

Our learning groups are a lot of seniors. the crafting buddies program, photography club, some of the other programs that we have. They're not senior specifically, but we do have a lot of seniors this year.

All right. And then uh our contractor programs, these are the folks that provide uh programs within our facilities through that shelters. Um as you can see in the graph over on the far right my left your right uh it year to date those numbers were pulled as of March 1st based on historic data from the racket center gymnastics and jam sports uh and mers uh we expect to see another 34,000ish uh increase to year end. Uh so we anticipate surpassing FY25 members. There is some reflected because when he died out of school um so and of course uh this will be Mer's second year uh at the paddle shack and again we're doing the stand up paddle board race with him. He's providing some new services over there. Uh so uh we we certainly expect to see increases with our contract programs as well. As you can see year to date uh the small blue boxes at the bottom uh city programs have already exceeded last year's numbers um from year to date. So again we expect to see quite an increase over 25 for the city questions.

Okay. Thank you, Brent. As Bill comes up, one of the next changes that I want to introduce to council in the budget presentation is that you'll recall last year council appropriated $200,000 for signature events to offset the cost of the free events that the city puts on each year. This budget includes increasing that to $500,000 to offset the cost of those events, which will include $250,000 from our parking revenue. Last year, we transitioned our parking program from one management company to 12 Oaks. We are currently on track to receive $250,000 in revenue from that program this year. And we are looking to apply that directly to signature events because that is not technically taxpayer dollars, but it is money that people are putting in when they come here to City Springs for an event and it will help offset the cost of the free events. Uh we also are happy to announce that the Sandy Springs Foundation has committed 20 thou $25,000 to state Sandy Springs for the upcoming year. Bill will walk you through um the profit and loss on that. Unfortunately, it was a very warm winter and it resulted in some losses on Skate City Springs. And then Stars and Stripes, the foundation has also committed $20,000 and is actively working to secure additional sponsorships. The Junth committee and the Sandy Springs Foundation are also working to secure additional sponsorships for 2026 and in excuse me for yes for the current fiscal year and have in the last fiscal year received 17,000

raised 35,000 this this year. Excellent.

All right, Bill, why don't you come up and talk about the rest of the signature events, too. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Um, the signature events, I'll just walk through them. Um, Blue Stone Arts and Music Festival, which is, uh, one of our newer events. We are, um, looking right now at trimming that budget a little bit by eliminating a second stage. It actually is strategic trying to keep people more up towards city uh green. Um city green live program we're keeping the same. Um one of the interesting elements of this program this year is we brought our uh talent buying inhouse. So we're getting we are spending uh getting better talent that we come in because we're not paying buying commission. So, um, you there's some really good shows coming in. Sister Hazel actually is kicking it off and then Starship. So, it's just a different level of what we've been doing out there. Concerts by the Springs. Um, we're keeping the same budget. Five shows over there. We had our first one this past weekend. Um, the crowd was full. It was a wonderful event. Um, the farmers market, we're anticipating that to stay the same. and um that has had really good crowds that it has already opened. Here's a new addition to the program is the FIFA World Cup. We are in the process of going back and forth with FIFA, a very fun process of trying to get our licensing to do events here. We will do opening weekend, a couple of in between and there'll be the three that'll hit next fiscal year. um those are the um quarterfinals and the third place playoffs and then the finals. So once we get that licensing, we'll be doing

events out on the green. We'll be bringing in another big LED screen and doing kind of what we do at Signature Events. We're going to have a little party out there. So I'm asking for $50,000 to pay that licensing and bring in the the elements of the event. FIFA also finally sent me the uh application for our 200 soccer balls. So, I filled that out. Hopefully, they'll get here before FIFA gets off. That's a good sign. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, they're finally beginning to move and make some decisions. So, that's helpful. So, food the rocks is a partner event uh that we partnered with um Atlanta. I'm sorry, can't think of the company. Taste of Atlanta.

Taste of Atlanta. Thank you. Taste of Atlanta. Um, so they pay us a fee to come in and do it and we help them out. So, it's uh it's kind of a wash out. We've already talked about Junth we budget 15 and they do a wonderful job of you budget 25. That additional money's in marketing. Oh, okay. It's not here. It's not in the actual. The So last year it was 25, but you mean 10 of that went to marketing? Is that what we're saying? That's how it's budgeted in our budget. Okay. Are the other events budgeted like that? Like they have a separate kind of budgeting number? I mean a separate marketing number? Yes.

Oh, okay. And Oh, can we see what those are for the events? We'll go back and reconcile that. Okay. cuz I know last year we specifically increased the budget by 10,000 to make it 25,000 on this sheet. Okay, we'll go back and look at that. I'm not sure. Which is still cheap considering the number

um MLK. Uh that's a nice event. We have it. Um we show the movie and do a bunch of crafts. $4500. It does very well. Um movies by M Moonlight $15,000. We're we're not upping any of many of our uh events. The another addition is a night market event. So, we're look talking to Lman's Plaza and looking at doing a night um farmers market up there the first Thursday of every month. If you are aware, we have sundown social every other Thursday. And that first Thursday, we would now do an event up north at Lman's Plaza. Those discussions are going well. I anticipate that we will move forward with that. Right now, we're looking at a threemonth trial to see if people come up where we're inviting vendors to get them into the flow of things and then if it's successful, we'll start running it like we do here, charging the vendors to come up. So, it's I think it's a good test.

There's a question. So, will the vendors register? Is this going to be um free for them to come and participate? Right now, just for three months. three months. So, this pilot period, yeah, this pilot period is kind of make sure there's a need for it there and that it's functional and then if it's rewarding enough for the vendors, then they'll be happy to pay our small like a week night. Is that what Thursday night? Thursday night. That's what I say. Thursday night. Okay. We didn't want to cannibalize the market. Absolutely. Which is what would happen if it was on a Saturday morning. But see, I mean, I think this was talked about last year, so I think this is this is good.

Um October feast, we're not using that wonderfully baby tent that we did last year. So, we're reducing that down to um 35. Sparkle, it's about the same. We're looking at a new way to do the sparkle houses if uh right now we pay for sparkle houses. So, we're thinking of either not doing them or finding a way where actual people actually pay for them and and it's more of a slice. cost on those houses. I mean, do we have a rough cost of what what it cost us to put those houses together and then we build them and then they decorate them? Is that

Yeah, we build them. They we deliver them, build them, decorate them. I think I'd have to go look, but I think it's about $7,500 just to do that not including staff time. The staff go pick them up, drop them off, bring them back here. Um, Spooky Springs will stay the same. Stars and Stripe. It's the 250th anniversary. We We're looking for more money because we have a surprise artist that I really wish I could say today who it is. When will we be able to tell us? On the 18th. It will be a big announcement 18th of May of May. So, coming up

real soon. fall, scream it from the trees and be very happy. Um, Sundown Social, we're um we're elevating that with some better talent. So, we're asking for a little bit more money to make it more of a uh fun event. It's doing really well with what it is, but we really feel it could be much better. So, so Bill, that it's I just sort of circled that because the attendance was down yeartoear, but then we increased the dollar amount. Do you think that's because of the talent, the caliber of talent?

I do. I feel like it initially was new and people came to it, but as it got as it extended, people came, it was the same thing. So, we're going to try and really step it up. We I mean, you if you've been to it, it's been one and two man band. So, we're creating a little staging area. We're bringing in a stronger level of talent. I think it'll drive more attention.

What about the food trucks? I think certain times when I've gone, they may not have been. So, um, some of the the food was good, but maybe the choices uh weren't always there like we have for some of the other I know we can have a whole bunch, but maybe can we look at the food types of food trucks for those events because I think that also might play a part in just the music. Certainly, we've also had situations where we've had food trucks scheduled and they didn't show up. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a challenging program to manage the food truck

and uh so you don't always get the choices that you want would like and uh secondly is they get a better offer somewhere else they may not show. So well they may just they may have other things to do that night and decide I'm not going. So, so the lantern parade is uh we're asking for a little bit more money next year because we're moving the starting location. We're anticipating more co slightly more costs. Uh we're going to be starting at that lovely uh police facility, the headquarters, the lantern parade. So, another quarter of a mile walk, huh?

Yes. Yeah, but if you had to walk anyway up to where you were parked and we have street lights this year. Question and comment. Uh Eden, you mentioned that the funding was up from 200,000 to 500,000 for signature events.

So where where is that? I guess this difference is only about 60,000. So where would we see where that money is going? You'll see it in the when we bring the line item detail on the 26th, it's in the performing arts center fund as a transfer from the general fund to the performing arts center and then it's applied towards this. The way that these have been paid for in years past is that the pack is having to generate enough money off of their produced events to pay the cost of the million dollars, which is not entirely fair to the performing arts center to pay for the free events that the city does.

Okay. Got it. Um, one other observation. So, just looking at I guess the dollar per attendee, um, Blue Stone strikes me as kind of a little bit of an outlier in how much we're paying per attendee and I'm just candidly not that surprised considering the turnout last year was felt a little bit lackluster. So, I would really love to see maybe some reimagining of that event. Um, and then we have to ask is it worth the cost moving forward if people are not coming? Um, just I would like to keep an eye on that.

Staff has been charged with revamping that and not relying on contractors as much and instead to bring in more local volunteers to help with things.

This was something that uh Sandy Springs used to do and they had a huge volunteer base and they had the infrastructure to operate this. When they went out of business, this died. So, what was it 2, three years ago, the community kept saying, "Where's the festival? Where's the festival? Where's the festival?" So, the city decided to uh to relaunch it. Uh we don't have the volunteer base that Heritage had, so we've had to use contractors. Uh but we've got some people in the community, I think, that we can can bring to the table to help with that. And hence the reduction in the in the proposed budget. Uh but uh this is something that we're trying to get back to where it was at one time. Uh because there was a lot of interest. I mean it was it it was the highlight of the social season in Sandy Springs. Uh I mean before we had all these other things, the festival was the time of year when everybody kind of came together as community. We've lost that and this is an effort to try and resurrect it. Sometimes it may be like underground. You can never get it back. But uh and I know that dates me some too. It's a different event, too, because the old ones, they had blocked off Sandy Spring Circle and they had vendors along tents along there. Yeah.

And that's gone. So, it's more of an entertainment thing now than it was a an arts show, craft show, festival kind of thing. Yeah. We are looking at the arts side of it to increase what we're doing. We're also looking at the talent side. Again, having brought that element in the house, we're hoping to get some stronger talent on the stage. So, we're we are we have in charge of revamping it and we are working on well the arts part and the tents part and the the shopping part was a big part of it.

It was because those vendors were paying a fee to be there and they knew how many people were going to be there. They'd been there most of them year after year after year and it was just, you know, we got to see if it if if if the community sentiment is is strong enough to make it make it work. So it was also a Christmas present shopping weekend. Yeah, it was all kinds of there was a lot of things wrapped into it. A lot of volunteers who were Yeah, there were. Yeah. So,

and a lot of people get this confused with the the arts of Palooa that is a separate totally separate from us um from the city. But I I just wanted to make a comment from a standpoint of the lantern parade. What kind of community um I'm going to say splash. It's the 10 year anniversary, right? So, it's a big should be a big deal. Um, I felt last year more so than any other year, there were more people not from Sandy Springs there. That's great. They're coming, but how can we get our people there? I have an idea.

Oh, y'all, I've emailed about my idea, which is leveraging the local schools. So, it turns out that in the uh elementary school curriculum, there's a part right now that fits uh sculpture. And so lanterns fit lantern making fits right into the curriculum. So the art teacher at the local school and just to be clear those students live right there and can walk out of their homes. They're actually going to make lanterns. Oh, good.

You know, so so that's I mean to me that's the easy way to get people engaged there. So we can certainly look at the marketing element and get some local initiatives going to for next year and maybe next year. I mean the schools I think that's that's a great idea. Yeah. So Sandy Springs educ we put in some grants to Sandy Springs Education Force to help fund some supplies for next year to really make it robust. So,

um, as Ed mentioned, I talked a little bit about the Skate City Springs Skate Spring, City Springs. Operationally, we're doing a great job getting people in and uh, generating money off of the operation. The the big cost is the $200,000 that it takes to put the um ice rink in. So, we've been meeting with the foundation, working hard to try and find some sponsorship dollars to offset this from an operational standpoint. Last year, um taking out the $200,000, we were up by $80,000. So, there is some growth to have there. Last year, we initiated some theme nights on Saturday nights, which really did very well. So, we're looking at extending them into um Friday and Saturday nights. And we're also going putting a big push on private parties for nights that we don't normally have huge traffic. And I know um I met with the foundation this morning and they're putting out a piece to local corporations to have their holiday parties and stuff on the ice. So there's a lot of momentum with this. Uh but it's taken some time to grow. The first year we had 16,000 skaters alone. it doesn't count people that come and watch and um it was a new event so it slowed down the next year a little bit but I really feel that seeing what happened on Saturday nights when we put went put in an EJ and just asked people to come dressed up and we had lots of people filling those Saturday nights. So um I do hope we can get a sponsor and I because I believe in this project. Yeah, the theme nights were I think looked like they were fun for people.

They were they were gas. Yeah, people loved them. So, you said how old you said we had 16,000 skaters and 24 and then how many last year? Um, last year I think we're at 14. I can get those numbers. We have a We're at 12 and 14 last year. Yeah, I think the setup last year seemed a little better just the way that you all had set that up. Thank you. We added kind of a a place to watch um

Adam had that little platform where you could look and we're also talking about selling banner sponsorships around the rink to try and subsidize it. So, there's a lot of initiative to help this project move along. Speaking of moving along, we're running behind. So, we need to catch up. We got a council meeting later on tonight. Um, so the long and short, um, well, conference center is an import an important one because we made money in the conference center last year.

I'm sorry, I turned the wrong page. All right, conference center. We are making um, we have a staff that's just selling. We have so many events in the building that um this is just the third floor. So this has nothing to do with theater rentals or anything. So we are looking at um total revenue this year estimated to be a million dollars with a profit and loss of 612. Um, that's good.

What we're finding is that food and beverage sales are a little bit down, but we're It just shows me that we're getting less of the renters that need food and beverage. So, our goal is to move more into the food and beverage uh need of renters. that money what does does that go pays for salaries of the performing arts center stays in and also part of that goes towards contributing to the signature events to offsetting the cost of that

um self-presented events these are the concerts that we bring in that city goes on at risk on we did 18 self-presented events last year um we saw it In November, ticket sales start to slow down as the economy struggled. Yet the way the buying was positioned, we were still able to uh hold a profit of $41,000 on our self presented shows the space utilization. The top part of this chart, this we count the number of days that there's been an event in a facility. So buyer theater although there may have been two or three shows one day it counts as one day of use. So as you go through this you see the 964 uh days of use with all of our rental facilities and our function facilities of those days. beverage events were um this in um 25 or 374. If you just look at the year to date, you can see that our numbers are climbing. So, we're at um we're about 30 something% in the first quarter of what we were last year. So, we're anticipating we'll be o well over our budget this coming year. of the 244 uh buyers theater and lobby you states, how many of those was City Springs Theater Company?

Um, we'll break that down for you. It's hard to answer off the top of

So, our asks for this year, $18,000 for Everpass. ever passes a um license to show sports on the green and in our interior locations. And then um cost of goods sold for S signature event. We just never had that spelled out in the budget. So we're asking to put in the budget at $62,000 that that will cover the cost of goods for all of our bars and the things that we sell out on the green doring signature events. Um, and then there's an increase in seasonal positions. Seasonal positions, we we are unique to the city in that when we do the skating rink where we do a bunch of shows in the theater, we have people that come in and do crew work or they're running the skating rink, but they're not really hidden 29 hours a week or 30 hours a week. They come in, they do eight hours, and they leave. So what we're noticing is that our budget gets really pushed in that area. So we're asking to increase not the heads but the number that we have in uh in positions.

Any other questions for Bill?

Okay, we're going to try to move through the rest of these pretty quickly. Uh the next item that we have here is a capital request for information technology for infrastructure hardware. That is related to the aging out of switches and the network transfer infrastructure here at city hall. Those were purchased in 2016 installed when we moved into the building and they are reaching end of useful life and outside of warranty. So they have to be replaced. Workstation replacement and upgrades is a standard every every year. We have so many laptops and desktops that have to be replaced. Next is communications department. Tarter's going to go through these pretty quickly because they're rather technical and I just have one slide so that's good. Okay, the first two are related to our um management of the arts program. So we are um surprisingly have more than 40 sculptures throughout the city. Um, so they're displayed all throughout Sandy Springs and over the years they get some wear and tear, some rust, some maintenance needs. So this first $10,000 is to establish a maintenance program to use to clean and store those pieces that are in the city's art collection. The second is a utility box wrap program. So this is um an idea that we have that was kind of resident born and um we really think that this is a great way to add some beauty to our ride. So with this money we would wrap 10 to 12 of those large silver utility boxes throughout the city and we would use that to complement the city branding and also establish a little bit more of a sense of place within the city. The next um several are related to our website and digital development. Um so the first being a um WCAG stands for web content accessibility guidelines. So um

the DOJ as you may recall has um a law that we have to be compliant with all of our digital content by actually the deadline is now pushed to April of 27. So this tool will take um our PDFs that are on our website which PDFs are inherently incompliant um and it will allow them to be accessible. So they are are um open in a new tab and they're immediately accessible, searchable, assisted, translated as needed. So it's a really um amazing tool honestly um and needed to meet that compliance deadline that is next year. The next is a request for um a user interface and user experience design consultant. So as we shift towards digital first communications um this contract division would help us apply some design thinking um to better understand residents needs and really to improve usability of our websites um maintain visual cohesion across our platforms. Um so this will really help expedite development of our website. Um it's it's important to us to be able to advance um the city's mission of having modern, transparent um accessible and responsive citizen focused um communication services. The next is a document repository and auditing system. So um this will help both Keith and our AI project um but also our website to ensure that we have accurate documents um shared across all our digital channels. So this will allow us to centralize our documents, our policies, our reference materials that are used both by staff as well as the general public to make sure that that information and those documents are verified and up to date. Um this would

eliminate some duplication or outofdate documents that are on our um on our websites and make sure that we are publishing and what is published is consistent and up to our communication standards or messaging archiving too in that area.

Yes. The next is um another digital development that we um have on our our wish list for some time and this development project will help create um some streamlined processes around the projects that the city is doing. Um so you will be able to learn about current ongoing projects, past projects and see updated activity um that is happening. So this will be a a website that has a snapshot of project activity whether that's weekly, monthly, annually dependent on how you like to understand what's happening with a particular project. And these can be anything ranging from public works and facilities projects to recreation parks and each even our digital development projects as we continue with that um work with um Keith and all our data. So, this will allow people to have um just a little bit more understanding about what the city is doing related to all of the many projects that we have going on and really improve citizen engagement and reduce confusion related to those individual projects. As Brent mentioned earlier, um recreational parks is transitioning from Civic RA to auto app. So this money is going to be used to develop an agent that will scoop up all the information from auto app and automate automate it so it will be published on our city's website in the form of events and registration links. So this will allow people who may be less inclined to download an app on their phone to still have that um visibility into the recreation and parks programming directly on the city's website. So this will be an important discovery program or um mechanism for our residents across the city's website. And then quickly I wanted to touch on the staff request. So we are requesting

a social media coordinator for this year. Um in the fall of 2024 we hired our social media specialists and in 2025 um our Facebook page content generated more than 5 million views. 85% of that was organic. So that is all just quality content that we are producing. On Instagram, we saw 3 and a half million views and over 275,000 interactions. 97% of that was organic, which is truly incredible. And um even more impressive, just in Q1 of this year, our city Facebook has already generated 3.1 million views, 121,000 interactions, which is a 255% increase from the sum of the entire year of uh 2025. Instagram in Q1 has added 1.5 million views and almost 188,000 interactions. So, um, when I started, actually just shy of two years ago, we had about 1,700 followers on our Instagram and we've now surpassed 10,000. So, that is really a result of us being super intentional and strategic and consistent with our social media presence. We've done a great job with what we have with that one staff member, but believe it or not, there are 11 additional accounts that are representative of the city um that are not managed through communications. So adding this position um is really important as we've seen social media evolve from a c a simple communication tool to really a primary source of information for our residents. Um and a customer service channel you know engagement throughout social media is incredibly important to us and a brand reputation driver. So, this position would help to maintain um the social presence across the city, um manage all of those accounts, meet the workload

demands, increase sustainability, and really make sure that messaging is consistent um across all city accounts. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions if there are any. Could you could someone in staff um circulate to council the link that wasn't there a document years ago that art sandy springs did that documented the interior art program and so forth? It's in the council document for okay so it is there. So, I'm just saying if somebody wants to go look at it, you can. So, the capital request is um the continuation of that city hall focus interior program

and they're going to be I think this week um Arts Dandy Springs is releasing the RFP for that future wall. So, excited to see that move forward and that's what this money for. That will help that. Yes. Okay. Thanks. Okay, Ginger.

I'm sitting too long. Ginger heard anything.

All right. Uh I know we're short on time. So um here are our numbers uh for this past year. Things are pretty consistent uh with this. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. I'll move on if I hear any change. Permits process. It's pretty consistent uh from last year and the year before that. Um, with plans reviewed, it looks like a substantial increase, but in actuality, it would it's a result of our conversion from Energ. We had to transfer over some some files a couple of times and so the numbers are a little skewed, but but we believe that the numbers are pretty consistent with what they were the previous year. the same with inspections. That number went up as a result of the transfer over as well. Our developer meetings are pretty much the same. That number might be a little lower. Uh but we also uh have meetings that we schedule um throughout the week. Uh not just on Thursdays. That is not included in this number. Um for code enforcement,

why don't you capture those in that because that's a that's a interaction with a build or developer. Why don't you capture those numbers and put them in here as well next time?

We'll do. Total cases, um, the cases are a little bit down, uh, but our complaints are consistent. Sometimes there are multiple complaints, which is why that number might be a little higher than our total cases. Um, notices of violation are up sign. It looks pretty significant here. And we believe that's because of the increase in the business license inspections that we had to go out on. And as a result of that, we issue notices of violation for those additional inspections um as well as for the MRH uh code inspections on that bottom line there 131. So they all kind of contribute to the notice of violations. Um um also as a result of that very often the notices of violation when they're not satisfied turn into citations that probably accounts for why we have a slight increase in those as well. Any questions on this slide? Uh, MRH cold inspections is that like each apartment community.

Um, the MRH that program has separate which is not reflected here. I can get you those. I think in our presentation for orientation we have a separate slide for that. Okay.

Okay. We are not asking for any more employees and um we are asking for $150,000 extra for comprehensive plan um for things like meetings and um supplies and that sort of thing that we might need as we go through the process. So, we're asking for an additional 150 and that's it.

Okay. Thank you, Ginger. The next item that we have here is the creation of the new office of innovation and delivery. I am proposing and you'll find at the end of this section a one-pager that is an executive briefing on the creation of this office. We will not go through what that is today. You can read that and we can talk through that later. There will be one new position that would be created, a chief innovation officer. We will be realigning two positions that are currently within the city manager's office, the grants administrator and the director of data analytics, AI integration. And I am sorry, Keith, I always forget the last part of

you. You mostly got it.

I mostly got it. Thank you. I apologize. Uh we'll be realigning those positions to be within that office. The big ask that you'll see here is the capital ask of the million dollars which is to acquire and implement a replacement for Lucidity. We did previously mentioned in our quarter one report to you all that we had put out a request for proposals and after getting 20 proposals in realized that we had asked for too much because it was way too broad. So, we're pulling that back with the goal of looking at how we can get a functional system that will replace Lucid City to actually allow the public to be able to selfservice their own tickets, which unfortunately Lucidity does not allow that.

Make sure it'll integrate with whatever AI tools we're going. We're looking at that for the transition everything out of Lucidity into the new system. That is a huge requirement for us. The next section is facilities. I'm going to ask Dave to come up and quickly go through these and then I'll come back and kind of close this out.

Okay. I have a few small uh uh enhancement requests. Property management services for the Summit Coffee. We did this on uh more the uh Ham and Drive properties, the rental properties out there. We hired a company to manage the contract, uh, collect the revenues, the lease off of the, uh, the property, and then handle all the repairs, all repairs. Anything major would come back to the city, and this facilities would manage it. Uh, EV chargers out of police headquarters, uh, Georgia Power, we have an service agreement with them, uh, for $22,000, uh, that they're they are now active. So, we we have this new charge, uh, EOCC supported agreement. Um, you're going to have I got a couple requests here in my my capital for the EOCC upgrades. Uh, we're also looking to upgrade the company that's doing the uh EOCC to give us more coverage during emergency operations. Uh, HVAC uh contract and filter maintenance. We've never had a filter maintenance. We actually spend about $20,000 a year just on uh HVAC filters for the city. Uh the HVAC contract is actually since we're over the one-year uh contract warranty for police headquarters, that's bringing the company on board to do the the uh plan maintenance out there. Uh unscheduled plant uh plant maintenance. So we have seven facilities uh of course City Springs and Police Headquarters, the two biggest facilities. We manage all the flower beds out there. Uh we do have our seasonals inside the contract, but these are all the shrubs and the shrubs over in Veterans Park. Uh, every winter we get a cold snap and I'm replacing shrubs and it's amazing how expensive it is to replace shrubs. So, we we're just now right now this uh this year we're doing all the ones on Johnson's Fair to give that a refresh. So, this is just putting some putting some money back into the operational budget to handle the uh the shrubs and our flower beds.

So, the word plant is actually plants. Yeah, plants because I was thinking about plants. It's like plants and plants and equipment. No, this is actually this is for all of our flower bed,

right? And this is not for the trees. We we handle trees through Williams funding. Um additional staffing. We are asking for a security supervisor. This is a position that we used to have before COVID. We had a uh charming person down at the lobby uh and they greeted people. But uh behind the scenes though, that person will go to the performing arts center meetings, their operational meetings, their production meetings. They'll understand all the events that are going on in the building. So when people come to the lobby, they'll be able to assist them, tell them where to go. They'll be able to know what people uh in the performing arts center to contact. They'll also know city management and finance people and everybody throughout the building. Uh right now they have just uh contract security down there. So that that position will be sort of a a face to the city when they come in that weed and also manage the security here and the security contract security over at the police headquarters. So, our capital request, backup 911 center, that's over at the police headquarters up on the uh third floor uh where the big multimedia rooms are. Um we're looking at building out there. There's a design fee in there, a construction fee, small construction fee, there's not a lot we have to do over there. Uh and then the the FF&E and implementation with IXP, that's the biggest part of this cost. That's that's through a federal grant that we're going to receive, but we're just asking for it here in the budget. Um, City Springs District uh improvements. That is your um the uh future infrastructure investments towards our redevelopment of City Springs for part two emergency operations center video wall replacement. We have that was original when we when we moved into the building. Shortly thereafter, we put a EOC on the fourth floor. Those are old LE LCD screens. We've already had two that gone out on us, so we need to replace that. It's time to replace it. They're over

eight years old. Um the facilities maintenance. This is my capital fund. I have a little over a million dollars in it right now. This is where I draw from when I have to replace parking equipment, which we just replaced. Um I have to replace a roof or something. um some of the some of the requests this year that we have. So the EOCC video wall is in its own light item in there, but also all the different um software behind that is outdated now. We're having problems during merch operations getting it to fully operate properly. So we're requesting that there's a $210,000 fund in there inside the 500,000 plus our Genitech server. We have a very robust security system here. uh our server uh the bandwidth is is uh for all the cameras in the city. Uh we're we're peeking out of that bandwidth. So we need to upgrade our server and that's an extra 115,000. And then we have ongoing parking deck repairs. You see we're digging again uh checking out more cracks in the post tension cables down there. So that that really covers the 500,000. It's just sort of a a reimbursement back into the capital fund. Um I do do a uh facilities condition assessment uh every 8 to 10 years. We did it in uh 2018. That gives me my index on all my facility condition of all the facilities in the city. Um I'm redoing that right now as we speak. We'll be finished that about another two months. They'll inventory all of our equipment and give us another 5, 10, 15, and 20 year forecast. So that that's where that fund covers. Uh heritage lawn stream buffer. this my portion of uh uh Reckon Parks part over there. This is really to get you into the park. Uh and also um the the little area down in the green that is hard to utilize because

it's so mucky. That is that is we have now reached out Army Corps of Engineers that is a uh actual wetland. there's a 4 inch PVC pipe coming out of our spring and when that when that well fills up that water goes into that little area and that's what created it. But now over time it has been considered now as a wetland. So we have to do something with that. Plus we have to get we have to be able to get people down into the park. We're going to make it a playground park. We had to get people down in there. So we're looking at those options.

Ever since core of engineers quit building dams they've had to figure out new new things to do. When I was at HUD, we built a big homeless shelter and there was a spot in the middle of the uh property that stayed wet eight months out of the year. It was where we're going to put the parking lot and they declared it a wetland to put a parking lot there. Does that million dollars include like signage upgrades for the new Sandy Springs logos because the signs along the road? Does it also include um I guess updating and standardizing the boardwalks in the park?

Boardwalks, uh the walkways, uh the parking lot up on Sandy Springs Place. So is it really trying to connect that park if if people are going to come with their families, bringing it up to speed to uh the rest of our city parks. Yes. Excellent. And last one I got is the office uh modification up on the fourth floor. We do have a little builtout area there that's roughed out. Uh we want to uh turn that into five offices for the office of innovation and to expand Bill's office suite. If everybody's anybody's been out in his suite, he is way over in his suite. So we need to give him a couple more.

It's cozy up there. Yes. Okay. Any questions on mine? Um, for a City Springs district improvements, it looks like we have uh five million slated for next year. Do do we think that'll still be about or are we going up cost increasing? That really depends on what we end up doing with City Springs phase 2. Okay.

What we're really trying to do here is put some funds aside. We anticipate, as you know, that we'll have to build a new parking garage that would be publicly funded. This would go towards that or any other public investment in that area. Okay, next. Oh, and I know that we are really running short on time. Here we have a summary of the positions that are being, excuse me, that are being proposed this year. We have a net increase of six because the three that are grant funded are already city. They're already on city payroll, but they're not city funded. Those are in the police department. So that would take our employee count from 648 up to 664 this year.

Six. Yeah. 16, right? I thought you said there were six six new ones or 16. You've got part-time positions that are counted in there. I'm sorry. We have six full-time positions. I apologize. We tried to one one of my instructions was this year, let's put a break on and head count. Slow it down. We've been we've been adding a lot of personnel and and that's not to say that's not there's not reasons for it and justification for it, but our headcount's beginning to get a little concerning, at least to me. So, I I said let's let's break it and and put the brakes on headcount for a little bit.

As I mentioned to all of our department heads as we were working on our budget this year to only ask for what was essential to the service delivery here in the city. So, we're not asking for anything that isn't critical to meet the demand that is out there. Uh, next is a breakdown of our primary contractors. Uh, even though some folks like to say that we're no longer a public private partnership, that is not true. We are still very much a public private partnership. And here is a is a listing of our primary contract service providers. I will not go through all of these, but happy to answer any questions y'all may have about that. Next is our nonprofit summary that I mentioned earlier. Abernatic Art Center has a contract of 3% escalator for Art Sandy Brains. The community assistance center requested additional funding to meet the demand for services. We are recommending an additional $25,000 there. Keep Sandy Springs beautiful. The household hazardous waste event is going to happen in June of this year and that is every other year. So that is being reduced out for 27. We are continuing their uh allocation of $100,000 towards operation of the recycling center and continuing the 50,000 towards capital improvements at the site. Nonprofit arts and recreation program our contracts for services. Um, based upon some of our prior conversations, we've reduced that amount by 50,000 to better meet the demand that came in earlier this year for programming applications. Sandy Springs Youth Sports has a 5% contract escalator and that's included here. The Sandy Springs Youth Sports Scholarship Program is continuing at the same level and Solidarity Sandy Springs is also recommended at the same level as last year. What do we budget for our uh the scholarships we do just in house within um with our pimps

within parks and wreck? I do not know that off the top of my head, but we'll we'll get that answer for next time.

Okay. Next is the fleet fund summary. We have a request for a few fire administration vehicle replacements. Police, as usual, has their fleet replacement program in place. Public Works is requesting a new truck and then Rexen Park has a few trucks that they're asking for, including one that will be used to tow the Bobcat that they got last year and are putting into into good use and our parks. The capital budget assumptions for the tree fund, we talked through that briefly on rent slide earlier. Capital projects at 300, education at 2500. Our total there is 605. And then our full capital budget assumptions that you see here. We've talked about most of these within the departments, but one that we've noted and I would like to call out is a facade improvement program allocation of $500,000. That is contingent upon council adopting the design guidelines. And then staff will come back with a program that will allow us to allocate those funds out to businesses that are looking to make upgrades in their commercial business in their commercial buildings.

Question. Does that come from the development authorities budget? No, ma'am. This is general fund. This is this is general going to be g general fund because I know when we first talked about it there was some discussion of using some development authority funds and we can still do that but that's something we'll have to talk through with the development authority when we get to that point. Obviously, we need to talk with council first about what the structure of this looks like. What are the numbers going to be and then if we want to take something to uh the authority, we can do that. I don't know what what's that balance is. I think at one at one point in time it was I don't know. It's not that high. It's 150,000. I mean, it wasn't this high. They have a little bit. So, they could potentially add some matching dollars if we wanted to ask for that. Okay. Thank you. They haven't been doing any deals lately, so they don't have a lot of

fe. And this number is based on my past experience with working with similar localities. And given the size of Sandy Springs, I thought this was a good number to start with. We can certainly adjust that if council wants to change it. Uh we have talked through I believe everything else that is on this page. I also want to point out near the bottom, I know that Chief E. Simone mentioned this, but I must give some thanks to the Sandy Springs Police Foundation. Police Department had requested two of the driving simulators, and I thought that it would be a great opportunity to ask police foundation to help support the training needs, which is what their intended purpose is. So, they graciously have agreed to provide funding for one of those driving simulators, which is about $100,000, and the city general fund would look to contribute the other $100,000 there. Uh, going over to the next page. This one has all of the public works requests that Marty walked you through earlier. I will not go through each of those again. And on the recreck and park page, Brent walked you through all of these items earlier as well. That takes us to the question slide.

All right, Miss Paul. Quick question. So the 911 backup center, you keep referring to federal community project funding. Was that funded by somebody else? Yes, it is. So it's an earmark. We were very for you've got as expense item here. Congress spending. Thank you, mayor. I appreciate congressionally directed spending. I appreciate the correction. So it's not our budget. It's not. So they tax us but it comes from a different I mean our our representative McCormack and Representative Mcbath's office were both very helpful and secured that congressionally directed spending for us.

Did you say there was a summary for uh parks and rec budget? Well, maybe I don't have that in my slide because I go right from capital budget assumptions, which looks like a Do you not have a a slide 59? Okay. So, it's that's where it is. I thought there was one that said special parks and rec. Okay, got it. Any other questions?

I do. So, I I have something. So, we're out of time, so I can't really go over this, but as part of our either nonprofit summary or public safety, uh I've did some research on the uh program that um Governor Kemp had allocated $50 million for homelessness and there I know we don't have I want to say we have a small problem and there could be a small tool that we might be able to to just do some evaluation and some outreach. So, have you shared this with the city manager? I am going to do that now. All right. Would you please give that to her? I'm gonna give that to her so that she got an opportunity to review. That's that's what I wanted to do. I had a whole thing I was gonna talk about and then

Well, we don't we don't we don't surprise the city manager in the budget process with new ideas until you Well, I brought up the facade grant and what you had said at that time, Mayor Paul, you said, "Please bring your one pagers." Yeah. But you need to share We need to share it with the city manager so she can Absolutely. We'll do that. So that's the purpose. She'll share with us too. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, that's fine. All right. Any other questions? I look forward to it. I will send you all an email. Please send your followup questions to me and we'll be back with workshop two two weeks from today.

Let let me explain. The the city charter directs the city manager to do the budget. So, all budget requests need to go through her since she's the she's the one who's chartered to do that. So, that's that's the reason I'm asking that. I just thought if we wanted if people weren't interested then we didn't have to be no point. Yeah. Be no point. That's just trying to not waste time if people Yeah. You can share share it with your colleagues but make sure she has a copy of whatever you're proposing so she can look at it from the budgetary. Got it. Anything else? No sir. Thank you. All right. We are adjourned. That