Commission - Regular Meeting

You mentioned the airport enterprise fund. We recently purchased a $1.5 million piece of fire equipment. Was that out of the enterprise fund or was it supplied?

And again, thank you, Bob, for doing that again. I think one of the things we just really wanted to... the community know and our residents know about we do have these enterprise funds and what they're used for and I'm looking forward to when in the fall we get a little bit deeper into and the residents understand how we use those dollars and that you know these things are available to help as we move forward and look into how we do those type of things in the future especially when it comes to water and our sewer replacing stuff and I hope we would you know because we don't know but I'm hopin

Commissioner Myers let's go with it I think for those people who are listening or want to know there's an amendment to the to the to the mayor's budget and that's included in the agenda item And what's really good is that we had a lot of consensus on this as a group and we are moving through in a conflict-free, calm, responsible way.

yeah I know we had quite a bit of public input on the special events issue and I just asked the mayor to consider appointing some kind of task force so we can kind of reevaluate how we approach that and where funds come from and how they're distributed for next year so we can write the ship a little bit and maybe open up opportunities for other organizations and other locations to access local funds to put on special events.

I have one more comment regarding the flock cameras. I'm wondering if the manager's office could offer us some kind of memo or something letting us know the terms of our contract. And what kind of assurances there are that any information that's taken in from those cameras is only accessible to our local law enforcement officer, except maybe in special cases of a warrant, a particular warrant from an outside agency?

I mean, my concern is, you know, that accessing information that is intended for use by our own local law enforcement being made available to other agencies for purposes beyond local law enforcement.

Y'all just made me forget what I was going to make. I started off just piggybacking on what Obita had said, and I do appreciate it. the fresh way that we have been. And I really believe that we've been learning together, possibly just the same way the county manager is learning from being here and assessing things and staff supporting that and teaching us things and us learning what's going on and it being methodically You started really early, the Mayor Pro Tem did, in asking us what we're thinking and to speak, and he circled around several times to make sure comments were coming forward, ma

Commissioner Fischer. Yeah, thank you. And I apologize, Commissioner Rice. That's okay. So just a little bit of a comment on the flock cameras. And I've been constantly talking with the chief about our flock cameras. First, I think the public needs to know we only have 300 cameras that we have with the government. The rest of the 1,800 or so cameras are tied to either businesses, homes, or other neighborhoods. A community needs to know that. Secondly, we scrub, according to the chief, every 30 days, we're scrubbing stuff that's coming off that we have videotaped and things like that. Our chief

I was just going to make a little joke here. So y'all don't get too comfortable with Bob's way of doing things. I've been down, but I'm not out. So I'll be back to true form next budget season. Thank you.

for a gay pride day downtown, and it was really a good day. And I don't think, I think a lot of these groups, they bring in not just entertainment, amusement, fun day, but revenue also. And I do, after we just talked about the different enterprises, maybe, manager you can think about how can we do a downtown or entertainment type either enterprise or special revenue ahead of time um i don't want us to cut back i think like i said and i'll be downtown this weekend with hot corner so if we know that these events are important to the community. We should not wait till budget season for folks to m

And this has nothing to do with anything we're talking about, but I'm going to say it because it's a revenue opportunity. Why are we allowing Pilgrim's Pride poultry to park all over that place, which is our property, for free? That's a revenue opportunity. So, just putting it out there.

Yeah, I just want to kind of return the discussion, at least in my head, to what this budget is really doing and the responsibility that we're, sort of following through on on our commitment to the mission of Athens-Clarke County and to our employees because really the majority of the biggest probably funding is going to our staff and we are with the the amendment from the commissioners able to raise the market rate increase to 4% for our unified plan employees and the public safety plan has 3% plus they have all these bumps built in and then increased slightly our you know the initial the tar

Yep. This is a people decision, so we'll be voting in November.

I look forward to our rollout of communicating this. It is complicated, but it makes sense, and I think it's a good fit for our community, but again, it'll be for the voters in our community to decide, but I hope that we can educate them between now and then.

Yeah, and that's sort of my point, too, Mayor. If I can be so bold, and I do this respectfully, I really wish before, if we got some time, I really wish we could really just do a little bit of a work session on this and really start that conversation about the flaws and what it means and what it's going to impact on. It is, you know, and again, I say that I was genocided last week. It is a regressive tax, and I think we need to figure out what the impact is going to be, not on our community, but the people we're trying to help, you know, on homeowners, how much money we're trying to raise. Aga

I have prepared to vote no, but I will be abstaining. I do think that just with some past things that we voted on I just do not know where it lands that I'm pretty sure this thing is going to pass without my vote so therefore I do think that having some type of education, training as soon as possible is necessary, but I will be abstaining because this is too complicated for me. This is a bit more than I want to take on as a teacher.

We'll make sure we do a roll call vote so that you can abstain. Commissioner Davenport? Okay, y'all can sign up to my newsletter and my gym newsletter. I detail what a FLOS is, how it's a voter. Went out to more than 1,000 of District 1 residents. But if y'all want to educate the public, I will send it to you so I can. But yeah, FLOS is just... You know, we're doing it this early because we need to make sure to get on the ballot by November. But it's completely residential, the resident's decision. If the residents feel that, hey, we don't want to do this, they can make that decision in Novemb

Yeah, I'm going to be voting against this. I've thought a lot about it. I know it provides property tax relief, and we're getting revenue from outsiders. But I cannot get beyond the fact that it's a regressive tax, that 60% of the people in Athens are renters, that the people who don't vote are the ones who are going to be most impacted by this. So if we pass it and gets on the ballot, I can't see any way even with education, that it's not going to pass because of voter turnout and who turns out to vote. So I just have to do that. So I will be voting against it.

Yeah, I just want to make sure everybody listening understands we're not voting for this. We're voting to let it be on the ballot for the our constituents to make the decision. So, you know, I think that's why I'm going to vote yes for because I want them to be able to make the decision and it's our responsibility to make sure we give them the right information.

Yes, I would like to also comment that I'm not planning to vote for this for several reasons. The first one is when you first introduced it to us at the retreat in Gainesville, there were no questions. You did a great presentation. No commissioners asked questions. I don't recall any conversation about it since. And I get town halls. I get newsletters. But let's ruminate here over how close the T-splice almost did not pass. We are losing confidence. It's more than we have between now and November to educate folks. This is a transparency issue. This is a communication issue, at the very least.

Might as well be a no. It was going to be a deception. No.

No, I look forward to seeing what comes back to us. These are some significant changes, and I look forward to learning more after I see what they come up with.

You know, we don't have to get into it after words, but okay. No, no, honestly. I... I appreciate us going this route to have the planning department look into it prior to us. I'm going to keep my eye on it because I get this pit in my stomach that with all of the new development and all of the things that we're proposing, the high rises, you know, the balloons that's popping out of the sky, I'm weary because I still think about how it's going to impact the people who are already in place. And I don't want to, you know, always be a Debbie Downer, but I also live in the reality that development

Yeah, I mean, I have a little bit of consternation about the commercial downtown height regulation going above 10 stories. I feel like... developers are don't take advantage enough of our inclusionary zoning downtown because they can already get away with you know so much density within that 10-story limit so I hope that the Planning Commission will kind of do the math on that and and I mean I'm open to seeing flexibility and some of these and density regulations when it comes to funds coming into our affordable housing fund or affordable units being included in projects. But I don't want to o

Now this one I will be abstaining on. This won't be a no. This is gonna be an abstention. And I'm abstaining because, like I mentioned at our last meeting, in June, anything that we were dealing with with the last study was gonna be kinda passed off to GIC. Now I admit I'm in a, a campaign season, so I haven't really been paying much attention. And like I said before, it sounds like this may pass, and so be it, but I'm gonna abstain because of past experiences that whole school is, burn me once, shame on me, burn, shame on you. So I'm gonna abstain on this one, but hopefully it'll turn out bet

So, I guess one of the things, and I want the public to know, and our colleagues, this is just going to go to the Planning Commission. Then either thing that we do moving forward, though, we still have to approve it moving forward. So, I do want the public to know. Exactly right. You have to come and follow up. There's another project that we're we don't like, we don't have to vote on it. So I think, you know, it gives us opportunity though, the Planning Commission. So to go through it, put that two cents in it, send it back to us, then take a look and see what happens. Mr. Wright.

Yeah, and in that process too, that's other opportunities for public input, studying, learning it along those timelines. So it's also recorded to look back on similar to our work sessions when we have those. As soon as we do them, we can, direct folks back to those recordings for additional incidents.

We have an inclusionary zoning policy in place, so I have no problem with that at all. I just want to be clear that I need time to be more focused in my decision making. I have not had that time since election session had started. I'm still concerned about how things flow and how things happen. Please understand, I have nothing against inclusionary zoning. I just do not feel confident that I wanna take this step. And if it passes after this month break, I'll be refreshed, whatever, and be on board. Thanks, Commissioner.

I very fondly do this. Oh, wow. Y'all ready?