Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm curious, did the manager's office reach out to the public defenders, John Donnelly

No, I think it's great. I think it's good. And just for those historical sake, I mean, the fund balance here, most of this is coming at the recommendation. of the recommendation of the manager's office. And so I think we did a really good job during our meetings to talk about things, listen to some of the offices, and especially in the courts, and address the issues there. So I feel really good about this.

Yeah, I'd like to know where in the budget are the parking revenues? Yeah, because I am interested in taking a look at that to supplement the CEP fund and see if we can increase that $50,000, maybe get it up to $75,000. And I'd like to take a look at the parking revenues to find that money.

I mean I know in the past we've gotten kind of creative with those parking revenues to fund things that kind of come up at the last minute and it seems appropriate to fund you know community events with those revenues.

Yeah, I think some of that too, Melissa, might have happened before, some of the reproportionate apart, some of that stuff with the improvements for College Square. Wasn't that done, Mike, with the parking? So there's not as much from another time where it was.

Yeah, it's been committed. And for me, I'm not gonna pick apart the increase that has happened, but for the community events program, but it started with 250,000 and now it's up to 300,000. We have neighborhood leaders here wanting their funding restored and I think that a long-term improvement for our community events programs in the current way that it's done it can only be downtown special events and we have a whole community that deserves the attention that special event funding and locations can be. For me, a long-term approach that this little pie chart could help with is the Visit Athen

Yeah, I'd like to, you know, emphasize on that list, and Manager Cowell mentioned this, the hotel-motel tax. I think, I feel that's clearly a tax that would be on people coming to Athens, not on people's grocery bills as is the case with our possible FLOST tax. So the hotel motel tax, in terms of the process, and I think we have to get the state representatives involved in that and such, and hopefully this fall, we can, late fall, we can actually have a formal meeting with our state representatives again on this and see if they could help us with this and other issues.

Yeah, I would like to explore increasing parking revenues for the long-term parking in the decks. In the past, we've increased it for on-street parking. But from what I understand, are we charging $80 a month for parking?

I mean, this may not happen for this budget, but those are untapped revenues there. And from what I understand, a lot of our parking decks, which we've spent a lot of money on, are basically serving as car storage facilities for students.

Yeah, I mean, I do believe we should, and this is, I guess, would be directed through the ADDA, like, we really need to look at that long-term parking.

I mean, I also want to initiate a discussion about the neighborhood leaders and, you know, seeing to it that we can assure that that program is fully funded. The economy is in dire straits. There are three families on my block in Boulevard that have seen job losses due to developments in AI and the economy. A wave is about to crash, and we are going to see families that are in dire straits that we wouldn't typically have expected. And these folks have their hands full as it is to cut that funding. There are people who have never, ever had to ask for anything who are going to need those resourc

I don't know if that's the easier, but I know that we have asked this question about the enterprise fund for ever and a day. I don't know if, Just like we're looking at this sheet right now, all we would like to see is the enterprise, what enterprise it is and how much it is. I don't think that the viewing public wants to go through the mayor's budget and try to find it. And I know that's not what I want. It just seems like it's elementary third grade to put, which, what enterprise it is and how much money is in there, and if this was not the first time this question was asked, I probably woul

Just break it out and put public utilities and what that dollar amount is. I mean, just, can we just do it, just?

Yeah, that's, I'm just saying, list the things and just put the. Right, amount. Yeah.

And you would list them? Mm-hmm. and then we will see that dollar amount and it'll be a lot clearer.

So the five enterprise funds are listed on E4 and it's just the budget, the recommendation, the change amount and then you would look up each one of those and get their page.

Just break it out. Pretend I'm in the third grade, and it's probably not even a pretense right now.

The question I have, for some of the things that were not originally included in the budget and you're tweaking it and working it, are you trying to find ways to fund some of those things? And the one that I think that Commissioner Taylor was talking about, like the investigator for...

Because we all worked on it together. Right. versus two teams, three teams, one team.

Well, I think that we need to commit to talking to the school district in earnest. I agree. I think that we've talked about that several times in several cycles, and I think the new teamwork, the new team that we have here with the new manager and the new operations, that that would need to be a commitment to get the school district to join in.

And we already have a partnership with the youth development and after-school programs, too, so we can start talking about these together.

Yeah. I mean, I just want to point out that $380,000 loss from the Neighborhood Leaders Program is a 35% budget cut. Right. I mean, that's astronomical. And I really feel like it's just really unethical to ask them to take that kind of cut all at once. Yeah.

It was to be phased out. It originated and the world has changed a lot.

I mean, in addition to approaching the school board, I really think, I mean, being that Communities in Schools is a nonprofit, I would hope that, you know, some private entities could be approached in other communities. Often programs like this and, you know, youth development programs get generous assistance from corporations and other community partners and, you know, the school district. I really think we need to start asking some of the major employers in our community to start contributing to these needs.

But if it's in here listed like you just did as a one-time allocation, because this is from sales tax revenue

And it also speaks to the fact that this funding in this listing is funding that came up when the budget was handed over to the commission, too. So it also speaks to how it wasn't available in your process or the mayor's, but in our process.