City Council - workshop

Good evening. I'd like to call the Northwest City Council study session for Monday, August the 10th, 2026 to order. At this time, I'll turn it over to our city administrator, Mr. Jim Clifford.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. As per normal practice, we'll be going through the agenda review for next week's City Council meeting. Then we'll have department details from our various directors. And then we'll have a focus item tonight talking about concurrency, which will be presented by Tommy Paradise. What I would say is tonight is going to be a little different in that we have a number of smaller presentations layered into the agenda review, just Sometimes the picture's worth a thousand words as far as what the staff is recommending or what the council ought to consider for the agenda. So with that, if you don't mind, we'll go ahead and move directly into the agenda review. Given past proclamations and approval minutes, we'll go to new business of which we have many. So item number six under administration resolution number 2026-38 authorizing the mayor to execute an intergovernmental agreement between the city of North Augusta, South Carolina and Edgefield County, South Carolina for the collection of development impact fees. And so I don't have a hard copy of the resolution for you. That's something that Kelly Zero and Tommy Paradise are working on right now. But you had a previous presentation from the Edgefield County Administrator, Mr. David Cadell, basically indicating that Edgefield County was going to enact impact fees within Edgefield County or EMS services, which is different. then the North Augusta impact fees, which you as the City Council have levied on North Augusta development, which really impacts Parks and Rec and then also some of the utilities. So there will be a very small portion of North Augusta, which is really the Edgefield County residents of North Augusta that would be affected or new residents would be affected by this impact fee. So this would affect the developers that are building. And an example I know in the news that the Planning Commission had considered or suggested Um, as a recommended approval for a development, which we've called the bag at property that's off of regular lake road. And so that would be an example of a development that would potentially. Have the impact fees from North Augusta and the impact fees from edgefield county for 2 different purposes. But in order for edgefield county to collect those impact fees. Within the city limits of North Augusta, it has to come through our finance department and then you as the city council have to authorize. That that impact fee collection, if you will. So the city in North Augusta will not receive the impact fees, but this is an agreement where we would receive those impact fees on behalf of edgefield county, and then transfer those fees to edgefield county for the purpose of building capability in the southern portion of the county, mainly the Merrill weather district. So that's what is going to be before you for consideration at the next council meeting. And again, we've got a rough draft, but I know Kelly and Tommy are going back and forth on with the exact verbiage on that right now. But I'll pause for any questions from the council, and either Kelly or Tommy or I'll take a crack at trying to answer those for you.

Mr. Clifford, is there a handling fee for our time and effort that we put into this?

We have not added a handling fee. The impact to the staff is reasonable and low enough. And we also have some procedures in place because we have Edgefield County residents within the city of North Augusta and we deal with their finance department also for tax matters.

So we're saying this won't have any significant financial impact on, you know, as far as man hours, just to be clear. Not to my view. Thank you, sir.

Do we know kind of what those impact fees will be?

I'll have that in the final draft, but whatever the Edgefield County has passed within their ordinances, I know they've already done a first reading, which was approved. I think they're going to pass either second or third here fairly soon. And so that will be a pass through, if you will. So whatever those impact fees are, that will be listed in the resolution. Okay, second item here for us is listed as item number 7 under administration resolution number 2026-39, authorized in the city of North Augusta to enter under a contract with PCI Municipal Services LLC for Riverside Village Parking Management Services. JD has taken the lead on this for parking services in Riverside Village. My understanding is PCI has representatives here in the audience this evening if there were direct questions from the council. But we wanted to give the council members some additional time. Normally we do a presentation for having a resolution or an ordinance in the following meeting. So we made a presentation to council with PCI, gave an additional two weeks to have consideration time for council based on whatever feedback you may have gotten from the general public. And we're prepared to move forward with the resolution next week if the city council is so inclined to pass that resolution. But this is a second opportunity. If the council had any questions, I would defer those over to JD or to the winning vendor, PCI Municipal Services, if you had direct questions about this contract. But I believe they laid out what the service would be to the city, what the profit share was, and what that would look like.

Is there going to be any free time offered with this at all, or is this thing always going to be on?

So for the master parking agreement, there are two hours that are offered free to folks that come down there to frequent the businesses and the parking decks.

But it will never be free during non-event times. It's going to be on every day, but after that two hours, you're starting to get charged.

Correct. After the two hours free, you then are going to be charged.

And then just for clarification, street parking will always be paid parking. It will, as the design is to try to move long-term parkers into the parking deck.

If you want to be less than two hours, short-term, 30 minutes or so to pick something up, helps with the churn for folks to frequent the business and pick things up and take things to go, stimulate more business.

Any other questions?

Okay moving on to item number eight under engineering and public works resolution number 2026-40 authorizing the city of North Augusta to enter into contract for the stadium parking deck power washing and so this is a my view a one-time request from city council to go ahead and allow us to do a full clean of the deck I don't think that's ever been done under the previous ownership and that allow us to get up to a baseline service. And then once a contract is approved, if the City Council approves a contract with PCI, that's part of the contract for them is to do the maintenance upkeep of the decks. But I think it's our responsibility to get it up to a start point. And because there's been deferred maintenance and power washing in that deck, this is our request is to go ahead and get this cleaned up to at least a starting point as we go into the start of our parking contract. I'll push that to JD for any, if he's got any other commentary or if the council has any questions.

So when you talk about maintenance, there were just, We're just talking about their responsibility is like the maintenance for the cleanliness of the parking deck or any structural or elevators. Can we clarify that?

Yeah, so the maintenance is for cleanliness, trash, any of the structural things in elevator that falls to the city, you know, major capital expenses. That's that's on us. They'll help us by identifying things so if they see something failing or something that's questionable, they'll report it to me or engineering for us to take a closer look at, but that still would be on us, not part of the maintenance contract.

Okay, moving on to the next item under item number nine, finance resolution number 2026-41, authorizing CPST for software and technology improvements. I'm gonna have Linda give some updates on this in just a moment, but I wanted to refresh the council briefly if I could. So, at the Greenwood off site, we listed out a number of different projects under capital project sales tax for, and we've gone through the majority of those. We still have a couple that we're waiting on. Bowen road reconstruction is certainly an example of that. But we've gone through the vast majority of the road program. We've got funding that we requested for stormwater. We've got funding that we requested for the activity center and for the community center. So these are all things that the city council were presented back at Greenwood. uh and debated and then gave us guidance to staff to move forward on and this is also one of those items so if i can wind back the clock for y'all the city council authorized us to spend arpa funds on the gov sense program that we have now for utility billing and also for Planning and development, but obviously, as we rolled that out, we found a lot of things that our citizens have not found desirable. And so we're going forward with this change order. So they provided us the baseline contract of what was contracted for. But now we found a number of things through implementation that haven't been wildly popular and that's certainly understandable. And so what Linda is going to present to you is the changes that would be enacted through a change order through GovSense to make it have an easier experience for our citizens. And this is also listed under Capital Project Sales Tax 4 as an allowable use item. It's for IT improvements for Citizen Portal. And so this falls under that. funding source. And so what we're asking for is for a change order with GovSense. And you also recall we had a discussion probably more than a year and a half ago now about the financial back end of this going through Clover and FiveServe. And that didn't work very well with the GovSense interface. And so we have a way forward. But that project or the contract we had with FiveServe and Clover ran through September of this year. And if we had severed that contract prematurely, there was going to be a high buyout cost to do so. So the timing of this is good. So we're at a point now where we can come off the financial back end, move to a different financial back end, and then also go to a new or better portfolio for the customer interface side of the house. So the vast majority of the changes that you're going to see here that are proposed really have to do with the customer experience, not so much on the back end for ease of use for our own customers. employees but with that i'm going to go ahead and ask ricky to put the slides up and linda i'll turn it over to you

good evening next slide please so a little bit of history on how we got to where we're at right now so in 2024 beginning of 2024 we received notification that the processor of our online payments which was first data would no longer continue their service and the effective date would be december 31st of 2024 and first data is who communicated the payment to our csi software So we were already in the works of getting new software. GovSense planned on using a different vendor for their online portal. During our implementation, we found out that this discontinuation with First Data did not cancel our contract with Fiserv. That contract was effective until September of 2026. Fiserv was also bought by Clover during this time and this was causing major issues with the communication between the GovSense portal and the Fiserv portal. The cost to cancel this back when we were in implementation was going to cost potentially $500,000, so we did not think that that was a good choice to do at that time. So what GovSense did for us was rebuilt the portal to work with this new company, and it was a temporary solution until we fulfilled our contract with Vyserve and Clever. Next slide. So our current portal issues, while we have several, the login is difficult. We understand you have to have your account number and your exact billing name. Once your bill is paid, you cannot see your history anymore. You're not able to use a checking account to pay at this time. Fiserv and Clover, they do not support ACH payments. We can only pay one invoice at a time, and this is due to Fiserv not having a shopping cart to put multiple transactions into. When making these multiple payments, sometimes those multiple payments get lost and don't come over to GovSense. The convenience fee that is charged is charged on every invoice instead of being able to just charge one fee for all the invoices that you want to pay. It also does not work well with mobile devices. The payments get hung up and they don't process and the users have to kind of pinch and zoom and do all kinds of scrolling just to find their invoices they'd like to pay. Next slide. So what we are going to offer our citizens with the new portal is an account sign-in with a username and password, but there will be a guest pay option as well. So you won't have to create an account if you want to pay your bill online, but you have the option to do that. We will have the ability to reprint your bills. We'll be able to see your account history and your usage reports. So if your usage is going up, you can kind of see your history of where your usage is at. They will have the ability to sign up for automatic draft online. And they will be able to use different forms of payments to include eChecks. And they'll be able to sign up to receive their bills electronically as well. And so they'll have the ability to pay multiple invoices at once. And then the fee for the credit cards will be a 2%, 2.5% fee, and the e-checks will be free. And this will have less accounting posting errors as well. So during this new portal research, we decided to partner with Wells Fargo. One of the reasons we did that was they have an expertise in utility billing rules for online and credit card payments. They're going to reduce our office credit card fees both online and in office from 3% to 2.5% for our customers. And one of the main things that I think is going to be helpful is they are local. They will have a local representatives and will have an account manager. And I actually have Brent Weaver behind me right now with Wells Fargo. He came just to show his support. And if you had any questions for Wells Fargo, he's here to answer any of those as well. They will also handle the reconciliation of the fees charged against the fees collected for us. And they'll periodically analyze our costs and make sure that we're getting the best prices with any new regulations that come out. Other items that will be funded through this change order will be a tax portal upgrade. And the main thing is that this will allow for public search of properties a lot easier. When we're having closings on new sales, it's easier if they can just go find if the taxes have been paid prior to those closings and things like that. We will have the permitting portal. I don't have a lot of information on that one yet as our permitting planning is still in the implementation process, but we will have a portal for those customers as well. We're going to also add a business license, accommodations tax, and hospitality online portal so that they can make those payments online instead of mailing them in. or having to come into the office to pay those. And then another thing that we're going to add to this is new terminals for all the departments that take credit card payments. These terminals will be on the outside of the counter. And so the customer will complete the transaction on the outside of the counter. So they'll be able to use their watch, their phones, their taps. So we will not physically be taking the credit card from them anymore. And finally, other items that we're also going to fund through this, which are more staff focused and behind the scenes, is some tablets for field inspections, water meter readings, and disconnection updates so that we can see those accounts being Paid in real time We are going to do some utility billing enhancements Enhanced reporting for missed reads and active accounts that have credit balances try to get those payments back out Refunds to them Our new account initial recapture is a little confusing or not confusing, but it's pulling in two reads at a time so we're having to go in and fix those before we mail out the bills and automatic deposit application for when accounts are closed and the ability to post our bill pay payments on the date received versus when we actually get in office and receive them. That's kind of like when we're closed but the banks are open, we're not able to post the payments on the date that the bank received them or happen to post them when we're getting them uploaded. The accounts payable enhancements, we're just going to have purchase orders can be in a draft form while they're finalizing the numbers so that they can start purchase orders without them going straight to the department directors for approval before they're ready. Another thing that we'll be able to do is toggle between doing checks or ACH on employee expense checks. accounts receivable enhancements, being able to avoid a payment that's been returned to us on a utility account instead of issuing out a new invoice. And it'll do an automatic application of that return check fee. And that's about all the update, but I'm welcome any questions you have.

So I've had a couple people tell me in this speculation, because I don't get to see their bills or everything, so, you know, we kind of take the input at face value that they paid their water bill and on that same day they were disconnected. Having the tablets in their hands to see if somebody is paid up right there will kind of eliminate that.

It will kind of help eliminate that, yes.

I think this is great, talking about the credit card payments. So is that going to be where if a person is going to use their credit card, Do it right. I mean, what I'm saying, is that going to, are people going to have to wait in line while they're doing that? Are we going to have that where I could be missing my credit card and a person can come and walk up to one of the workers?

No, no, no, no. The terminals will be right there at the window while you're paying, so you won't, no one can get in front of you to pay while you're doing that. Yeah, it's just like when you're at Walmart and you pay right there.

Okay, okay. And the tax portal upgrade. So we're going to make it where, you know, people don't always have their previous tax bill. They don't always have their water bill. Correct. You know, all people want to do is pay the bill. Look at it. What is my bill? Yes. So this tax portal upgrade, that's going to make it easy. That's going to make it easier to find your bill. You don't have the exact number of the parceling, that kind of thing.

Yes, sir.

Will there still be, jumping around back to Wells Fargo, we still have people, there are third party vendors out there that people think they're going directly to the city, but they aren't, right?

That will still happen. Yeah, and that's not something that we can control.

That's not to do with ours, but okay.

Yeah.

No, but just, Mr. Mayor, and that was part of the reason, you know, among many why we opted to move to a .gov domain. It's hard to spoof that, and so ultimately we want people, when they're doing any kind of business with the city of North Augusta, to know that they're going to use a .gov domain. So if they... If you do a Google search and you go North Augusta utility payments or North Augusta whatever, you're going to get sponsored links that are coming in there that people are paying for that are third-party entities that you'll be able to click on that, and then they have some kind of overhead that they throw on there, and then it goes over to... North Augusta, and we've seen historically that people have done that. Sometimes those payments don't post right away, so there's a gap between your time there, plus then there's an overhead charge. And so we don't want that for any of our folks. We want to make sure our citizens go directly to the .gov domain spot because that's not being spoofed. That's a legitimate website that is not getting overhead costs for our citizens. So to your point, we cannot prevent other people from trying to profit on an overhead, if you will. But the fastest and the cheapest way for anybody to pay their bills in North Augusta is to go to the North Augusta website and to end up on a .gov domain.

So if people are already currently having it drafted like mine every month, you know, send me the bill in advance, say, hey, here's what it's going to be, I can do that. But for some reason, if I didn't want to do that and I just wanted to pick my date as long as it's within the time, with this app on my phone, I can go in there and do that, right?

I will get back with you on that one. I'm not sure about that because we pull those and upload them to the bank. With the online ACH sign-up, I am not 100% sure how that one's going to work as far as pulling what date it's going to pull that amount on.

So I can't make it like I want to make it today. I can't pay my bill today on my app with this yet.

Yes, you can pay your bill today. Well, once the new portal's up, you can pay your bill with your checking account that day, yes.

On my phone? Yes. Okay, but you were saying what were you not sure about?

So if you were auto-draft, so when you sign up to have it automatically drafted.

That's going to be done.

Yeah, that's just on a day.

Not auto-draft, I'm sorry. If I just want to. I do with my minion.

If you want to use your checking account to pay for that bill that day, you can do it right then and there.

A couple things. What's going to be the time frame of how we're going to communicate this? Have we used it? No, it is not ready.

So that's what we are going to be doing. this resolution passes, if it passes, that's when we're going to begin to work on the behind the scenes. And then once I get a good timeline of when we can expect that, we will start posting social media posts. We'll send out calls to our residents like we did with the payment sign up. But obviously we'll have signs in the lobby and whatnot. And it'll be on their bills.

That is something maybe we could put on the screen, walk through some examples of how you could use the app. Yes, we can do a how-to. So council can all see, because we're the ones who are going to get hit by the questions.

Yeah. Once the portal gets built in the background and while we're testing it, we can grab some of those screenshots and walk you through how it will look.

And the gentleman from Wells Fargo, the nice thing about that is we're not going to have to be getting on the phone and multiple different Zoom calls and all that kind of mess like we did before. We just have somebody we can call.

They'll be in the same time zone that we're in.

We know where to find you, right? Okay, good.

That's what I care about. Thank you. Are we still looking at incorporating PayPal?

We are not. One of the concerns I had with PayPal was they had been real slow about when I was trying to get new terminals put in with not answering us. And I felt that was not the direction I wanted to go.

This is Ms. Williamson. The September date is on here for the expiration of the next contract? Correct. Is that September 1st or September 30th?

I think it's like the 8th or something like that. It's a random date. But we're going to be doing month to month until we get the new portal up and running and it's been tested.

So we may have this after September. Correct, yes.

I don't have a date for it to go live yet, because once again, we want to test it thoroughly before we put it up there. And like I said, we'll just continue with what we have until the new portal is ready.

We have the ability to do that month to month and not have to sign it.

Correct. Yep. I canceled the contract and said we wanted to go month to month.

Do you view this as the best way forward to cut through some of the confusion and People perceiving that they've been double billed and this kind of thing.

I do. Yeah, the timeline when we were having the bill in catch-up, it did really confuse a lot of people, especially those that had the same amount every month, and they got confused. This is going to be a good way, because you'll be able to see your history, you'll be able to see all your invoices, and you'll know exactly which ones you paid and which ones you haven't, and it should alleviate all the confusion between, you know, I've already paid this bill.

Any other questions on this one? Thank you Linda. Thank you. We're excited about that.

Okay the next item is item number 10 under public services resolution number 2026-42 to accept a grant award from the South Carolina Forestry Commission. I was prepared to make this briefing and Roy reminded me that I had a hard time identifying parts of trees last time we had a walk through so he said he'd be the better person to do that. But the good news is this grant that Roy is going to talk about tonight is 100% reimbursable. So there's no match requirement, which is great. But the reason why we have to come to council, aside from the fact that we're going to be dealing with a state agency, is because we'd have to front some of the funds to do this work. And then we'd be reimbursed from the state to do this. So that's why this is coming to you. But what I asked Roy to do wasn't so much to talk about the mechanics of the grant. It's really to kind of show you some of the tree canopy and some of the impacts that this grant would have on the city and why he thinks this is necessary so roy with that i will turn it over to you i know the roots are on the bottom yes good evening mayor and council uh

As you can see, this is the grant through the South Carolina Forestry Commission. It's called the Natural Disaster Recovery Supplemental Fund. The scope of work is four different projects. There's a tree canopy assessment, tree risk assessment, tree pruning, and tree replacement. Next slide. The tree canopy study is one of the technical pieces to this grant. We had a tree canopy study in 2022, and this will directly be a good relationship to that to see really where we are as far as the development that we've had and the damage from Hurricane Helene. and where our tree canopy is today compared to 2022. So that's kind of one of the first parts of the project. Next slide. Tree risk assessment. We've got 289 trees that we've got slated to have tree risk assessment in five different neighborhoods, Arbor Place subdivision, Bergen West, Georgia Avenue downtown, the industrial park and the landing subdivision. And I've chosen these areas. They've got some larger trees, a lot of live oaks and a lot of trees that have really have not been able to have the pruning that really needs to be done to these to kind of handle storm, high winds and So this is one of the ways we can try and get that squared away. And through the assessment, we'll be assessing trees with storm-related damage, identifying hazard, lambs, structural defects, excessive end weight, canopy imbalance, and other conditions that could increase future storm-related failure. And so that's the biggest goal through the assessment. Next slide. So what we'll be doing, and these are a couple of examples of the current conditions of our Bergen West on the left and Arbor Place on the right, both live oaks. And in some of these areas, these trees were, they're the improper Free for this space, but that's what we have. So we have to. Work in and cope and try and manage the trees the best we can. And through pruning and start for pruning and. storm-related pruning to try and help alleviate some of the long lever limbs on the trees. We can subordinate those branches and that will help reduce the canopy some so that you don't have that large limb out there that's swaying in the wind and cause damage to the tree. Next slide. Georgia Avenue, all of Georgia Avenue from Center Street up to Martintown Road, all of the trees on the main thoroughfare will have a tree risk assessment. Again, we've got larger trees that have been here for 25 plus years that, again, more structural printing and to make the trees safer for around the buildings and citizens alike. The landings on the right, again, live oaks in a small planting strip. Again, mitigation for pruning to try and reduce and help reduce the size so that we don't have large limbs that are weighing out, growing out into the buildings there as well. Next slide. The next section, part of the grant is going to be the tree replacements. We've got 112 trees that we'll be replacing. And these are all the different areas that have, and these are all hurricane damaged trees. The trees have already been removed through all of the cleanup that we've done, but we have not replaced the trees. To this day, we have already replaced 236. Trees out of our inventory that were damaged by hurricane. And this will be another 112. That will be replacing through this grant and it's this is a unusual grant because. Very rarely I've never since I've been here, uh, have we gotten a grant that will actually pay for a 3 inch caliper tree? And that's what we'll be replacing with. We're not replacing with a small 5 gallon. Hot or a little, you know, a stem will be planning back a 3 inch caliper tree exactly what's in our code or development code. So, um. And city staff will be installing these trees. Our staff will install the trees like we have in the past. And we've got nine different species, so it's not gonna be one tree, 112 willows. We've got a broad species that we're gonna be using to try and give us a good diversity in our replacement schedule. Next slide. So these are some of the areas, Leroy Hammond Park. I am going back in with some pines in this area. Curtis Park, I'm going back with some more different hardwoods. We've got five trees, I believe, in Curtis Park, and I think I've got 12 trees going back in Leroy Hammond. Next slide. Riverview Park, the walking trail, a lot of the walking trail was really decimated by the hurricane and we have a lot of open canopy. So, actually, I've got probably, I think about 40 trees going in at Riverview. Park around the 1.1 trail in different areas Another section West Spring Grove street trees here we've got some Durable American Linden is what is slated spec to go back in this section here where the boss gowns were damaged by the hurricane next slide Oh, that was short. All right, to the questions. I'm all done. Any questions? I know that we went through that really fast. This is about a $430,000 grant. So it's one of the biggest grants that we've gotten for trees. And it is kind of good because it's broken up over different areas. It's not just for tree planting, but it's for tree risk assessment, technical assistance, and pruning and tree replacement. So it's a good kind of well-rounded grant to be handling.

Rory, under the assessment, is assessment just going to be the neighborhoods or the sections you have picked out? Yes.

The tree risk assessment is in those five neighborhoods that I've chosen to have, and it's basically the larger trees and the live oaks where we've got the live oaks that we need some. We need some help.

So if we get asked about it, our reasoning behind that is because these areas where we have larger trees, a lot of live oaks, and we are concerned about the importance of the pruning and moving forward so they can continue to grow healthy.

That's right. That's right. And have a good structure where the trees can sustain storm and high winds. And if they have a better tree structure, they're more apt to survive a storm.

I'm just curious. How many communities, how many grants do they offer this out to? How many communities?

You had to be a Tree City USA. That was one of the requirements. So only there was $2.6 million that the South Carolina Forestry Commission had.

We got 400 of them. Well, I'm just going to say this. You've heard me say it from this dais, and Rory's just another example of we can go down the line. I think almost every director that has a department that is able to find grants, the number of grants the City of North Augusta directors have gotten for this city are incredible. Incredible. This is mostly money that our citizens are not having to pay for to get $400,000. I know there are a lot of folks who thinks, myself and everybody on this council, we don't care about trees. I can assure you, Rory Kilburg cares about trees and his staff. has done just amazing. And your commitment to the tree canopy and continuing to educate us and to get this grant, I mean, this is impressive to me. I mean, this is huge. Well done. I appreciate it. This is impressive.

Roy, a couple just quick questions for you. Calhoun Park. Yes. Is one of the tree replacements possibly the Christmas tree?

No, it's not. OK.

Christmas tree is getting really, really large. I know it's getting hard for them to decorate it. Although we may have a new picker up there, I think, now.

We've got a new lift. We've got a new lift. I don't know if it'll reach the top, but we can see. But I haven't... The Christmas tree has not been one of the things that I've been thinking about as far as the grant, because the grant is... Oh, you've got to think about Christmas.

And we had actually talked about this before and wondered, you know, the Augusta National has reserve trees growing behind the regular tree, and I just wonder if it would be a good idea for us. I mean, if something happened to our Christmas tree, that wouldn't be good.

We could always start growing some Christmas trees at the country club.

So we have a backup in case something happens to that tree?

A lot of land. We do have a lot of land. We could start a tree farm out there.

The second item I had was Curtis Park. You identified Curtis Park. Yes. And that park needs a lot of stuff besides a tree. And Rick, I don't know. Do we have any plans for facility improvements? Amenity improvements in Calhoun Park, which may be part of where we put a tree. Curtis.

Green space. Ah, yeah. Did you hear that?

Yeah. So what I said is Roy and I have had conversations about removing what's there and just making Curtis Park green space.

Instead of the playground space. I drive past that park every day. That's a great idea. It needs some help. It needs some green space. It needs some help, yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

Who else? Any other questions for us to give? Do you think this is a one-time grant, or is this going to be something that we can go back to the well on in the future possibly?

For right now, it would be a one-time grant. I mean, if we saw where we ran into a problem and we needed more funds, we could ask and see if there's any funds. I don't know how many grants that they awarded to other municipalities. I mean, that's always, you know, we can ask.

But I reiterate, thank you for this. This is great. Thank you. Thank you, Roy.

Awesome.

Under the gender review, the last item here is administrative reports. And I would like, I was going to do this next week, but I understand there's a fair amount of concern about one of the developments here. So I wanted to go ahead and just put this in front of the council, just from an education perspective, and also for our citizens. So Ricky, if you could pull up the, there you go. So next slide, please. And I got Tommy here who will bail me out if I say something stupid. So this is the Woodstone development, which is north of I-20. And they have started construction here in this series of phases, which is phase two, four, and five. What I've circled there on the right is the Greenway access that goes through there. And you can see right in the middle of that circle or the oval that there's a roadway that crosses the Greenway. That roadway has not existed previously, but as this development goes in, it's going to cross over the Greenway. We have numerous neighborhoods that cross over the Greenway throughout the length of the trail, but this will be a new, not necessarily a connection, but a new crossing, if you will. But I do want to show the Council that this has been a long time coming. It had been approved. Probably the only person that was on Council when this all happened might have been Councilman Carpenter. So if you go to the next slide. So this is kind of the history of where Woodstone is. And so this development was annexed into the city in 1986. I might have been rocking out to a Journey album on my friend's IROC-Z when that happened, and that the general development plan was approved by the council in 2005 for the general development plan for Woodstone. So then you see phase one's approved in 2005. Phase three was approved by the Planning Commission in 2011, I think, which if you put your history hat on, you'll know that we had the fiscal crisis of 08, 09. So the pace of development as a whole in the city really slowed, if not stopped altogether. And then various parts of the city been restarted since that time. And certainly since COVID, we've really seen a resurgence in local development based on some of that macroeconomic factors, specifically Fort Gordon and the Savannah Riverside. So anyway, Phase 3 had been approved back in 2011, again, pre-COVID. And then most recently, the preliminary plats for Phase 2, 4, and 5 were approved by the Planning Commission this past April, so not too long ago. And that's where it shows the extension of the one street, which is Rippling Creek Lane and also crossing at the Greenway. It's also important to note that the Woodstone development ownership group had allowed the city to have an easement through Woodstone in 2021 to be able to take the Greenway up to Mayfield Drive to take it up to the northern terminus. So without that easement, the Greenway would have stopped south of where it is today. So that that I know it's an inconvenience for a lot of our citizens that are north of I-20 or the people that enjoy doing the full length of the Greenway, but we need to have that part of the Greenway if it hadn't been for the Woodstone folks allowing us that easement along with some others that have given us there. And so the current development of Phase 5 also shows they're going to remove some sidewalk and then reinstall sidewalks upon completion of the development itself before it gets Turned over from an infrastructure perspective. So, again, I know sometimes we'll do things in silos and, you know, look at it and look at it. The public works folks look at it, but I really wanted to show council on our citizens. That, you know, that's that's what's occurred. So, when you go, if you go back a slide to that development, that's happening up there. And you can also see I've had some folks complain about, hey, we were cutting a lot of trees that are near the greenway. And the answer is yes. And that's not the city doing that. It's the developer, because they're authorized based on the planned development that was approved by councils back in the 05 timeframe. So you've got some of these longstanding planned developments or development plans. The hive's a great example. That went back to 06. Allidade goes back to 2001. We've got some longstanding legacy PDs and general development plans on the books. So this is an example of one that was approved a very long time ago. But now we're just starting to see the movement on these portions of the phases. So that's the why. So people ask, hey, why are we allowing them to cut down trees near the Greenway? And why are we allowing them to do a closure of the Greenway to do this road? This is why. It's because this was approved previously. uh for this development and also that again this development group allowed us to have that easement in the first place uh to get the greenway up to mayfield drive so i'll pause for any questions uh or tommy may take a shot at them depending on how deep you go i'm assuming a lot some of these houses are going to be pretty much close to the greenway so there won't be any kind of replanting being done i would think I can't speak to that. Tommy can certainly talk about that, but I believe there's still a buffer requirement between the greenway and the back of the houses.

Would they do that? The developer would replant that? Or do we do it?

They will be doing the normal plannings that's required for subdivisions. I don't know of a buffer that's required there between the attached and the Greenway.

So there probably won't be anything in between.

Correct. Tommy, do you know the topography of that area? Is it hilly? Is the Greenway elevated? Is it flat? I'm not real sure. No.

It's hilly.

It's hilly. Is the Greenway elevated?

It is. Very good update. Thank you.

And I have one last thing. This is not listed under the agenda, but I didn't want to surprise our citizens. I'm going to be recommending two executive sessions at the end of next week's council meeting. The first one has to do with property, and the second one has to do with negotiations, contract negotiations. So those two items, I had to still get them through Kelly as far as the legal review. But my intention is to include those on the agenda for next week for discussion after the council meeting. And with that, barring any of the questions, I know that was a long agenda review, probably the longest as I've been here, but we'll go ahead and move into department details. And so I'll turn it over to Jamie Barton.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. First up for department details is Finance Director Linda Williamson.

Good evening again. Finance updates for tonight are that our Cycle 1 customers will have a disconnection date for their July balances beginning Tuesday, August 18th. The due date for their August 10th bills will be September 2nd. Our Cycle 2 customers, their due date for their July 26th bills is August 16th and the disconnection date for their July balances begins on Wednesday, September 2nd. And that's all I have.

Thank you. Next up is Human Resources Manager Kayla Ferguson.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Just want to highlight that we had one internal promotion and three new hires this period. And then if you look on the back of your department details, you'll see our list of open employment opportunities.

Happy birthday, one day late.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Engineering Public Works Director Brian Malek.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. All the departments in Public Works have been working to respond to storm complaints after the storms on Thursday, and we continue to work on that cleanup. Specifically related to that, I'm working with contractor at Westwood Lawn Avenue on that drainage ditch to address the issues that we saw with the bottom of the ditch kind of overflowing. That is not how it's supposed to work. And I think we'll be able to get the contractor to cover that. That project is not closed out yet, so aware of it and working on it. Just to keep all aware, as we talked about earlier, we're receiving the power washing bids tomorrow, and then we're also receiving bids for street name sign replacement. They're signs we had bought previously, but they need to be hung. It's a bit more than our internal capability to go to some of these intersections and put those signs up. And then finally, Streets and Drains is replacing sidewalk in Hammonds Ferry and the villages at Bergen to address trip hazards and sidewalks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Next up is Plan Development Director Tommy Paradise.

Good evening. The Planning Commission is going to meet on Wednesday, next Wednesday, August the 19th. There's a stakeholders meeting for the Chicago Lake corridor study. Tomorrow I'll be attending. That corridor study goes from Highway 25 in North Augusta to Canal Street in Graniteville. The county is funding that, but we're participating. And there's a public comment period being held for that study at Graniteville Elementary from 5 to 7 tomorrow evening as well. Russian Waters Phase 3B, the plat's been approved. We've done four certificate of zoning compliances since the last time I was here, a sign review, and 13 new addresses assigned. Code enforcement's done 19 new cases opened, closed nine, 100 illegal signs removed from the public right-of-ways, and 10 landscape inspections.

Thank you. Next up is Public Service Director James Sutton.

Mayor and Council, this week we have utility crews working at Riverview Park installing approximately 700 feet of two-inch water service line to the new bathrooms that are being constructed at Miracle League Field. We anticipate that work to be done and completed and tested by mid-next week. Moving along, property maintenance staff is scheduled to start Wednesday and Thursday along Knox Avenue between Bradleyville Road and O.H. Field Road, pruning street trees. During that time, crews will have pedestrian signs in place notifying setting them out for safety reasons. And also there will be notice put on Facebook tomorrow. And lastly, mosquito control spraying will take place this coming Wednesday morning between 4 a.m. and 6 o'clock a.m. It's going to be on the east side of Martintown Road and Million Heights, Ribbon Woods, and River North subdivisions. uh the product uh just a reminder that we're using to spray to control the mosquitoes is the organic material it's got essential oils and it's uh not as harmful for the environment good job next up is public safety chief johnson

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Over the next couple of weeks, Public Safety will be assisting the Aiken County School District in doing lockdown drills at the different schools that are inside North Augusta. And also, we are fielding calls from other municipalities across the state in reference to the four-minute city program that we received a grant for, wanting us to know how to implement it and how to get it started so that they can copy what we're doing.

That's awesome. Thank you, Chief.

Yes, sir.

Way to lead.

Thank you. Next up is Park and Recreation Director Rick Meyer.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Excited to announce that our Greenway Park playground equipment and installation team will arrive in the morning, approximately three weeks for installation, depending on whether we will have to close the entire park until the work is completed due to safety reasons. And a reminder that this was funded through FEMA emergency funds from Hurricane Helene and City of North Augusta A-Tax funds. Activity center improvements continue. Gym one and two have been refinished and reopened today. This was provided by Capital Project Sales Tax, four funds. Gym three and six are next up. They will take significantly longer as we'll be sanding down to the bare wood and coming all the way back on the floors. So we're probably looking at a three-week process for those four gyms. Another activity center improvement that's coming your way, arriving on August 26, the new cardio and fitness equipment that we have ordered is scheduled to arrive. We're excited about that. The soccer complex irrigation renovation has been completed. That was funded by the Riverfront Central Coral Redevelopment Fund that was approved by this mayor and council in the 26th budget. We're hoping that we'll see a great difference in the condition of the fields now that we have an irrigation system down there that will operate properly. Our fall sports evaluations and drafts begin this week. Right now we're sitting at about 1,300 participants. That number will continue to grow this week during the evaluations. And finally, the Riverview Park Activity Center will be hosting voting for precincts 27 and 28 in gym two in the morning tomorrow all day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for the United States Senate Special Republican Party primary. Thank you.

Sir? Yes. I've just seen some reporting about the HVAC system not working as good around the Pickleball Court area.

This morning we had a little issue for maybe, you know, an hour or two. It was warm in there. It was warm in my back office, probably warmer than the pickleball courts. We were feeling it. Yeah, we were feeling it, but that air is kicking now. It's back on. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.

Thank you. And to close out Department Details is Tourism Director Carl Waldhauer.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Kind of expand on Rick's last note there. Community Center is also going to be hosting tomorrow from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for Precinct 25 for the U.S. Senate Special Primary. Good morning. North Augusta is a monthly breakfast hosted by the North Augusta Chamber of Commerce. That'll be this Thursday at 7.30 a.m. And the last is about 9.15. Ms. Carroll from the Chamber of Commerce said tickets are still available for that breakfast this Thursday. And last note, if you've ever been on the Greenway, you'll notice those pucks, the emergency pucks that have like an N55. They're kind of... Good to have out there. They're every tenth of a mile. And we just refurbished all the missing pucks that are out there. I know you're never going to end chasing that between the weather, but we lost a lot of them due to and a lot of scraping that happened. We restored all those, and those pucks are Wired in the, or they're not wired in, but it helps our dispatch folks locate emergencies on the Greenway. And you're never more than a tenth of a mile, so never more than 250, 260 feet away from one. It helps our emergency folks locate an emergency on the Greenway when they happen. And lastly, I just wanted to send special kudos for that storm that Mr. Malik mentioned earlier. We got hit hard on the Greenway. We realized that Friday. Our Greenway team hit it at 7 o'clock Friday morning, really got after it. We realized early afternoon that we're going to need to call in reinforcements. Our friends with public services, Public Works, Parks and Rec, landed either manpower or equipment for us to use and kind of got us out of the ditch on Friday afternoon.

With that, I close out department details and turn it back over to you, Mr. Clifford.

Let me just say one thing. I just want to thank our directors. This is one of the most in-depth, detailed ones we've had. And I just want y'all to hear that why it's important and the information you're giving us is so important. We're very appreciative because as a council, the more we know about, the way we can answer questions. And as more and more citizens are watching us online, this is good information that they like to hear. So just please understand how much we appreciate y'all being here tonight and giving us this information. This is good data for us on this dais, but also for our citizens. which is important, so kudos, thank y'all.

So Mr. Mayor, last item this evening is under focus items. We had this actually queued up for a previous study session, but we had a couple of weighty ones, so we wanted to make sure the council could focus on the matters at hand. But this is really an information brief for you that Tommy Paradise has put together because this is a statewide topic. There's no resolution that's immediately following this, but we did want to make sure that the council is aware of what's kind of happening statewide and also, you know, how this can be applied here within City of North Augusta. So with that, I will turn it over to Tommy Paradise, our Planning and Development Director.

Let's talk currency. How communities manage growth with responsibility. What is concurrency? It means that it's the planning principle that public facilities and infrastructure must be available at the same time that the development occurs. The simple terms is that growth should not outpace roads, schools, parks, or emergency vehicles. Basically, the key question is can the community support this development when it's built? Without it, you get traffic congestion, school overcrowding, water and sewer systems, reach capacity, emergency response times increase, and residents experience a declining quality of life. Basically, growth should pay for growth.

Next slide.

Transportation is probably the most common, and you all hear about that as I do too. And in concurrency, planning staff would evaluate the existing traffic volumes, future traffic generated, road capacity, level of service, and the nearby intersections. And the question that would be asked is, can the nearby roads safely handle these additional trips? So how it works, developer submits his plans, traffic and utility studies are completed, the capacity is evaluated. If the adequate capacity is yes, they move forward with the development. If the adequate capacity is no, improvements are required before approval by the city. If it doesn't exist, the developer has several options. He can build road improvements, install larger utility lines, expand water sewer facilities, phase the development so that he doesn't overtax the infrastructure or wait until improvements are completed. As an example, you have a proposed development of 200 homes. There's 1,900 vehicle trips a day increase, increase in water demand, sewer capacity. And when you do that, you find out that a nearby intersection is already failing. Well, the developer is required to fund the intersection improvements before final approval. Now pay attention to that because whenever I get to the end, I'm gonna go back to that particular slide. Benefits of concurrency is it protects taxpayers, improves public safety, reduces congestion, supports smart growth, preserves quality of life, makes predictable development standards in sustainable communities. The challenges are is the infrastructure is expensive, road projects take years, growth may occur faster than the funding, Regional traffic affects local roads. There is political pressure oftentimes for rapid development. There's the balancing of the economic growth with the infrastructure investment. Now, concurrency is often referred to as adequate public facilities. These are close. Basically, concurrency is the infrastructure must be available when the development occurs. An adequate public facilities ordinance requires facilities to meet adopted standards before development approval. So that's the difference. One is infrastructure has to be available and good. The other one is it has to meet the acceptable standard that's been established by the city. Both aim to ensure responsible growth. So the role of the planning staff with concurrency is to review development proposals, coordinate with the engineers, analyze infrastructure capacity, recommend conditions of approval, ensure compliance with ordinances, and protect the community's long-term interest. The Planning Commission would ask, can the infrastructure support the project? Who pays for the needed improvements? Are transportation impacts acceptable? Will services remain adequate? And is growth occurring in the right places? The key takeaways is growth requires infrastructure. Concurrency ensures services keep pace with development. And it protects existing residents, promotes responsible planning, and helps communities grow sustainably. So we have an impact fee. And this was one of my questions. is what is the difference between an impact fee and concurrency? And I've got them laid out here. And we could go through each one. You know, concurrency determines if infrastructure has capacity. Impact fees provide funding for the infrastructure. So the simple rule is concurrency is about capacity and having that capacity already in place. Impact fees is about funding. accumulating funds to put the infrastructure in place that is impacting the community from this development next one okay so here's where it gets a little tricky in my mind too In South Carolina, there's no enabling ordinance for concurrency. Legal authority is kind of ambiguous. There is no standard law that gives us this is the way to do it. In the Senate this year, there was Senate 227 that was proposed, and it went to the committee, and there was a House that was proposed to the companion bill. The Senate bill got out of committee and there were some amendments there that I'm gonna talk about in just a second. The House never made it out of the committee. So both of these have died because the session's ending and it will be determined if they're reintroduced in the next session or not. Next. So the Development Impact Fee Act enables South Carolina fees, enables us to do impact fees. It tells us we can do it and how we do it. Senate Bill 227 was trying to take us there, but they didn't make it. But a couple of things I wanted to mention as it came out of committee because that may be how the roadway toward what we see in the future is, remember the slide I said we was coming back to? where the developer had to fix the already, the intersection is already out of compliance. Well, when it came out of committee, you would not be allowed to do that. The other thing, when it came out of committee, is the developers would only have to pay their proportionate share, similar to the impact fees, of any improvements that's needed to get that capacity. Next. So Lexington County has adopted a concurrency ordinance, allows the county to review and potentially deny major new residential developments based on public school capacity and emergency response capabilities. Let me go back to that three things that Senate Bill 227 out of committee specifically prohibited use concurrency for was public schools, parks, and libraries. You could only use it for transportation, water supply, wastewater, stormwater, law enforcement, fire, and EMS. Charleston County enacted a zoning amendment for concurrency that applies to rezoning to a higher density to prove that the existing public facilities are adequate to handle the proposed development. Next. Dorchester County currently is in the planning and drafting stages of an umbrella concurrency ordinance aimed at requiring developers to fund and build roads, fire stations, and utility systems concurrently with new housing. And Berkeley County has one established related to infrastructure capacity. And that is it. Questions?

those counties i mean because there's no state law i mean i guess those counties have opened themselves up to possible litigation and then as we've seen from the state in the past legislature they don't always grandfather in either so you could go down this road and then based on what you said coming out of the senate or the house change the rules of the game, right?

Yes. Possibly. What goes in, there's one thing I've learned about up there is what goes in the hopper out here and what comes out the other end, you might not be able to recognize it, Mayor.

Well, Tom, you've done a really good job being very objective on this. I will tell you, Elizabeth's employee, the post and courier, have written a couple articles uh about this in this this year in may february may that are pretty good actually and copied some of the things that tommy you have shared uh but the reality is you can't even get the legislators up their degree the senate's looking one way the house is looking at one way and um so anyway questions from mr faraday

I know there's not really an action that we're looking at taking here. This is more or less a study session. So I wrote a little something about this. This was an issue that's important to me as I ran on slow, sustainable growth. Are we okay with that, Mr. Mayor? Did I just read this real quick?

Sure, yeah, that's what we're here for.

When I ran for this council, I promised our residents that I'd focus on the real everyday concerns of our community. protecting our existing neighborhoods, being straight with our taxpayers, and making sure our growth actually serves the people who live here. Tonight's discussion on concurrency isn't about an abstract debate about planning codes. It's directly tied to the quality of life and safety of our residents. We don't have to look far to see the warning signs. Just look at what happened after last week's storms. Interstate 20 at Exit 1 had to be shut down completely because of severe flash flooding. Hole Creek breached its banks, pushing water past its capacity into surrounding areas. Pretty Run Creek, which runs through some of our most established neighborhoods like Lynnhurst, Nolwood, and the Rapids, backed up once again, largely because falling timber and debris left behind from Hurricane Helene are still choking the natural channel. When our major receiving creeks overflow and critical interstate exits shut down, our drainage infrastructure is sending us a clear message. It's operating past its limit. It is easy to blame the weather. but weather only reveals the gaps in our planning. Every time we allow high-density subdivisions or clear-cut acres of natural timber and topsoil, or we allow clear-cut acres of natural timber and topsoil, we replace ground that absorbs rainfall with rooftops and asphalt. That stormwater has to go somewhere, and right now it's rushing straight into downstream creeks that are already overwhelmed. I'm not anti-growth, though many think I am and try to call me out like that. But I am unequivocally for slow, sustainable quality growth. Existing homeowners in North Augusta shouldn't have their basements, yards, or streets flooded because of a new subdivision upstream was approved without looking at its cumulative downstream impact. Our residents shouldn't have to face higher utility rates or tax bills to subsidize tens of millions in regional utility expansions, while out-of-state track builders move on to the next project. Our current Ness Augusta development code includes adequate public facility guidelines. But as written, it acts more like a procedural checklist than a true safeguard. We need to turn those provisions into a binding, hard-stop concurrency ordinance. Simply put, concurrency means a common-sense rule. The required infrastructure must be in place and fully capable before major new developments are approved. I think that's crucial going forward for us here. If a proposed project empties into a Excuse me. If a proposed project empties into a drain basin like Pretty Run Creek or Pearl Creek that is already failing during heavy rains, that development should be delayed or resized until downstream capacity is fixed. Our roads, emergency response times, or schools are at capacity. Growth must pace itself accordingly. Tonight, I urge council to take three concrete steps. I would direct staff to draft a formal, hard-stop, non-concurrency ordinance. Under our development code, it requires developers to approve infrastructure capacity, including cumulative downstream stormwater impact, before final project approval. Prioritize immediate public works funding to clear Hurricane Helene debris, dams, and fallen timber along Pretty Run Creek and Paul Branch channels. so our existing stormwater networks can naturally flow again. Strengthen our site protection standards to prohibit total clear-cutting and require strong, undisturbed natural buffers along creeks and wetlands. Let's protect the taxpayers and the neighborhoods we already have before we rush to add thousands of more rooftops to the City of North Augusta. Let's ensure that when North Augusta grows, it grows with quality, responsibility, and respect for our natural environment. Thank you for your time.

Any questions for Mr. Paradise?

All right.

Very good. Thank you, Tommy.

Mr. Mayor, that's all I have from the staff this evening.

Um, I think I'll respond is that, um, again, this was something we need to get out there, out there because a lot, it's a lot out there in the media, uh, on Facebook. So we thought it was important for council to get some objective data. And, um, so I think it's good that we got this information out there.

It was just something to discuss and think about.

So, all right, with that, we stand adjourned. Thank y'all.