Remarks by Reneé Perkins Johnson
130 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 6
Okay. We're talking about voting. Election is in, what, eight days or six days? No, eight days. So is this something that... And I don't know. Maybe nothing will change with the majority, but, I mean, you've got your shirt on and we're talking about it. There is a possibility that this could change, right?
Okay. Thank you. So that required the minimum for us to, to have certain standards or requirements for, for minority and women businesses.
Okay. I just wanted to put that out there for the public to understand. And so then we are changing our language to just align with the state language. That's exactly right. Council member Johnson. And if we don't change it, then we have to follow that law anyway, right?
All right. I would just recommend, and I don't know how council feels about it. If we could, could we defer this until after the election? That meant... Councilmember Graham, do you have any thoughts?
vote against the one in university city. And that was, I believe, well, I think it was nine 18, 2023.
So, and I asked the question about health or effects on health at that time. So, and the one in university is already under construction. I believe the Morris chapel, they've already started the, I don't know about the building, but they're in fact They are 90% complete as far as some of the infrastructure. So my concern is if we find, and Council Member Anderson, you said the safety provisions. If we find that it's harmful being too close to residential, that's a concern. And I've shared that with our city attorney numerous, numerous times. And we did learn last month or a couple weeks ago…
But yeah, so I just, again, for the district four residents, I see at least one in the room, please know that your representative, I did oppose that petition. and continuing to ask the questions. We have a university city data center roundtable that feeds the task force or feeds information to that task force. We've got two members who are on the task force that attend the roundtable meeting. So I don't know if our general assembly is going to be able to change the language imminent harm or some change, but just know as a city we have two hyperscale that are close to residential areas. Is…
That's fine. Okay, all right. If I can get that email and we have that information, that's just something that... And send it to council, not just me, because that's something that we do need to consider. If we learn... in these next 11 months that there should be a requirement of a distance between residential areas, what then do we do with the ones that are already constructed? Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor. I want to lift up the University City Partners. I had the honor of attending their 23rd Annual Meeting this past week. It was wonderful. There was Councilmember Anderson was there and several staff members were there, so I want to congratulate Keith Stanley and also Janelle Goodrich, who's been there. She's the Director of Operations, I think. She's been there since the beginning, so I just want to lift them up. It's a dynamic district to lead, and I'm honored to be a part of it. As far as our referral tracker, we had a conversation earlier about a referral that had been, I…
So the night that I saw, I don't think it was passed to us, but I saw a copy of it, and I shared with you at that time that I didn't think that that actually addressed the procurement policy.
But when councilmen, and we can talk about this, but when Mayor Pro Tem and I discussed it, it was because there was going to be a referral for the procurement policy. So I don't think that that met the mark, but we can certainly talk about that. Lastly, at some point we used to have an ASL interpreter at every council meeting, but I'm looking at our council meetings now and I don't see that. So I don't know what happened when that change was done. but that was progress that we had made, and so I would like to see the ASL interpreter in our council meetings. I don't know how we went backwards…
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Thank you. I'd like to pull item number 31 for discussion, please.
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Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilwoman Mayfield. You bring up great points. I have an email right now in my inbox about an involuntary annex, and the sewer installation was incomplete, and the rest of the sewer installation is incomplete. is on the residents, the residents' responsibility. When this was done, it was their understanding that this was a part of the process. But the city attorney's office has commented on this. So you're absolutely right. And when we talked about infrastructure back in 2022, we have to seek a more balanced and strategic growth approach. So I would love to…
Thank you. And thank you to my colleagues for bringing up the concerns. I'm just wondering if this is something we should defer and get more information and then come back. Would there be a... Any impact if we defer this vote?
Okay, because that brings up another concern. When you bring things before council, we can't assume that the answer is going to be yes. So council has to have, and we've said this numerous times, council has to have the time. to consider it, I'm not comfortable if this is a roundabout way or it happens to be historic, a roundabout way to, as a tax deferment. So I think that when we have big projects, we get briefings about it, there are small meetings, we can ask questions, and I think that if this is a novel idea, and it may be a good policy going forward, but I do think that we've made…
Thank you. We keep talking about the tax benefits, but isn't this an abatement or deferral of taxes, the The developer is going to have taxes forgiven and the amount of, is it $346,000, 967. So we're giving a tax break. We're calling it historical because it was 1971, which I don't think this is for the record, but anyway, but nonetheless, I understood the other one is 1800 something. It was built. So in 1971 building, we're giving circumventing the tax and increment grant process because we're labeling it historic. There's 275 units. None are affordable and attainable, but we're giving a tax…
Thank you. So we're going to give Wells Fargo, the developer, a tax credit, if you will. But according to our tax increment grant process, there has to be some type of public benefit requirement. So this is that same outcome without the requirement of public benefit, or is there a public benefit requirement?
Okay. I'm sorry. So it's not Wells Fargo. It's the former headquarter of Wells Fargo. Excuse me. So the developer, do they get the tax? Is there a tax deferment or tax forgiveness based on the historical designation? Yes. Yes. Okay. So we're talking about the tax benefits for future projects. We'll get that anyway. So right now we are, we're not willing to defer to ask the questions that benefit our taxpayers, but I just wanted to confirm there is a tax. abatement, forgiveness, whatever we call it, that goes along with the historical designation of over $300,000. Thank you.
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Thank you. So I thought I saw it somewhere, but this is, in relation to a previous rezoning.
So I want to know, because I always talk about the cumulative impact, and I'm pretty sure when we approved this, it was in the ETJ, we still looked at traffic counts. We look at all the school impact and all of that, even though it's in the EPJ.
Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Thank you.
Just really quickly, I don't have the details of that petition.