City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. It's 6.30. I hereby call this meeting to order. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We'll observe a moment of silence.

Thank you.

Our first order of business tonight. It's my favorite time of the year. We have presentation of the July 4th parade float winners.

I'm sure everyone

It was Peachtree City's absolute best. Everything from the floats, the parade, the Georgia Mass Band, the afternoon events, live music, Luke Morgan, the Peachtree City Wind Ensemble, the drones, the fireworks, it was amazing. And we have staff in our recreation department, in our public safety departments, and throughout the city who spent months planning and preparing for these wonderful activities. Would you join me in thanking them? And now, as I call the winners, would you please come up, and we'd like to take a couple of photos too. First of all, the most patriotic winner, Better Way Ministries.

I think this is the first time we've been a recipient, right? Not the first time. Here, you hold this, that's yours.

The winner for most creative goes to Air Heat America and clap really loud if they cooled you down when they came by. The Spirit of Peachtree City Award went to our own Peachtree City Dog Park.

For the doggies.

Our Mayor's Trophy winner went to Peachtree City Hockey.

Congratulations. Who was to give me a ride in the morning?

I got dropped off a little early, and I had about a mile and a half more to go. Good morning. How are you? I mean, good evening. Good morning.

yeah small guys in front

on to that and finally the Grand Marshal's trophy winner goes to dirty South strength and conditioning And again, thanks to all. It was our best ever. Congratulations. Next on the agenda is public comment. I know that we have several people here tonight who would like to comment on our upcoming discussion item in this evening's agenda. Discussion item A is a solid waste management collection and related services item. And we will be enjoying a presentation. So I would like to ask if you want public comment tonight, first of all, thank you. I'm glad you're here and we want to hear what you have to say. but if your public comment topic is on this particular topic then i'm going to ask that you wait so that we can all see this presentation together and get the information together and then we'll take your public comment to follow fair enough do we need a motion on that madam mayor no no

Mayor prerogative on this one?

That's it. Mayor presides. Let's see. Public comment. Do we have others?

Yes, we do have two speakers, Madam Mayor. The first speaker is Paul Schultz.

Mayor and Council of good evening Paul Schultz I live in Macintosh corner subdivision you probably know me as chair of the transportation advisory group i'm here speaking as my own person tonight, though. I would like to say thank you very much to our police and code enforcement for working and I can tell there's been report outs from the PD. about enforcement activities on the cart paths to get some of the things off the paths that are not legal to be there, specifically some of the e-motos, the performance electric motorcycles that really should be on streets and registered with licensed drivers. So I really appreciate that. I would like to ask for enforcement also of the 50-inch cart width that's now in the standard. So standard golf cart is 48 inches wide. That's a typical club car, easy go, something like that. There are carts that have been modified to have a wider stance, higher performance, possibly off-road type tires. Our cart paths, the standard for construction is 120 inches. With the 50-inch standard we have on cart width right now, that gives two carts that pass each other 20 inches of space. That's about this much. If everybody takes five inches on one side, then that's 10 inches between two carts approaching each other at 40 miles an hour, 21 way and 20 the other. That's a very difficult, at that speed, space to navigate. And curves will tend to eat that up because most drivers don't hug the curves. And I'm also thinking, you know, a 30-, 40-year-old driver is probably okay, but with young and experienced drivers and elderly drivers who maybe have less reaction time, that's a big deal. and in some cases our our paths are not even 10 feet wide so that space cushion of 20 inches on on a nine foot section due to right-of-way issues or trees right hugging the edge of the path so anyway in short please work on and encourage enforcement too of the maximum width per the ordinance thank you thank you next please the final speaker is james clifton

James Clifton, Fielding Ridge Precinct. Actually, I'm gonna speak on a couple topics, and one of them is trash. I'll make it brief. Tonight, there are many important issues on the agenda, including monopolizing trash service and annexing land for a possible data center. Regarding trash service, Peachtree City already limits citizen choice on trash providers to three companies. An ordinance that would reduce the option to one provider and require every household to pay for this service regardless of need represents an unnecessary expansion of government authority. In 2019, this council wisely backed away from a single provider, no choice, mandatory system after hearing strong public pushback. We should not revive that idea now. Forcing residents into a mandatory service eliminates competition, risks higher costs, and treats citizens as subjects rather than free individuals who can manage their own property and waste responsibly. Government has no compelling interest in mandating participation and limiting it to a single provider when private options and personal responsibility suffice. Next, I want to talk about the annexation saga. This whole process started with secret meetings and a faraway retreat. The public was entirely removed from the process. We later found out through uncovered recordings that the Fayette County Development Authority presented information about data centers and encouraged Peachtree City to annex the property abutting Falcon Field Airport in Coweta County. The mayor asked on two separate occasions during the meeting how city council could move the conversation about annexing the land in Coweta County forward. City Council decided unwisely that secret two-by-two meetings with the data center developer, the seller of the land, and the Fayette County Development Authority would be the best option. Two days after the secret meetings, City Council agreed to the annexation study that is going to be presented tonight. The head of the Fayette County Development Authority who made the presentation and participated in those secret meetings has since resigned. The lack of transparency in this process has been appalling. If it weren't for the diligent pursuit of information by concerned citizens, the people of Peachtree City would likely be blindsided tonight by an annexation plan that included property in Coweta County earmarked for a data center. My sincerest hope is that over the last five months, you have heard the voice of the citizens and that there are no plans to annex property that would include a data center. Recently, City Council planned another retreat for August of this year. I was thankful to find out today that the retreat has been canceled. Since Memorial Day, the Daughters of the American Revolution have twice read the entirety of the Declaration of Independence before City Council. Yet, parts of it seem to have fallen on deaf ears. In the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following among the grievances. He, the King of England, has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them, the people, into compliance with his measures. Peachtree City Council should heed this warning and ensure that all future meetings remain local and accessible to the public. Jefferson summed up the Declaration of Independence in one very essential sentence. Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whether it is a mandatory trash service, annexing property for data centers, or council retreats in faraway places, we do not consent.

Thank you. The next item is agenda changes. Council? minutes June 18 2026 City Council meeting minutes June 18 2026 executive session minutes June 22nd 2026 special called work session can I get a motion madam mayor I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes at a B and C

I'll second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Consent agenda item A, ordinance 1261, reorganization and dissolution of the engineering services division. Can I get a motion?

Madam Mayor, I'll make a motion that we approve consent item agenda A, ordinance 1261, reorganization and dissolution of the engineering services division.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. motion carries thank you discussion item a RFP exclusive solid waste management collection and related services Jonathan Miller and before you start I will mention that this came up in our council retreat in January the topic came up and so we're discussing it tonight because council felt that this should be a priority for discussion and exploration so with that good evening

good evening mayor and council okay good evening mayor and council tonight's discussion item is going over the residential solid waste collection proposal so this item covers five topics that will kind of go over Uh, the request for proposal overview. So what the requirements that the city put out for the, for the RFP, the evaluation criteria proposal evaluation summary that we have cost comparison, and then we'll have a portion for questions or council discussion. Okay. All right, so an overview of the RFP. So the primary purpose of this was to select a single qualified contractor to provide exclusive residential solid waste to approximately 13,700 households in Peachtree City. So what we outlined in the RFP was an initial contract term of one year with annual renewals up to five years based on satisfactory performance. primary goals are reliability high quality customer service consistent citywide service and predictable pricing and environmental responsibility some of the key performance requirements that were we outlined in the RFP was we're 99% route completion so all routes need to be 99% of all the scheduled collections on the service day, routes not completed within 24 hours would be considered a service failure. Missed pickups cannot exceed 1% of the scheduled stops per month, and verified missed pickups would have to be corrected within one business day. Customer service standards that we put in the RFP were 90% of all calls had to be answered within 30 seconds. Their call abandonment rate needs not to exceed 5%. complaints have to be acknowledged within one day and complaints resolved within two business days some additional ones especially when we get into technology and reporting that we put in there is we wanted gps equipped fleet onboard cameras route verification and monthly reports from the waste haulers so we want to know the route completion their missed pickups any customer complaints they've received response times We wanna know their collection tonnage of trash, recycling, and yard debris, if that's included, bulk collections, cart deliveries, replacements, property damage claims, safety incidents, and non-payments. The recycling requirements that we put out were fairly extensive. We worked with Keep Peachtree City Beautiful to kinda decide how this needed to look in the RFP. Weekly curbside recycling collection had to be for all residential units. Recycling services had to be included in the base rate. it was not an optional add-on that would cost more available to every resident and we have participation by individual households voluntary and the reason that's kind of in there some of this is municipalities or trash services will put stipulations that they won't pick up the trash if the recycle cans not out so we're providing it to every resident but whether or not they put it out is not gonna stop their trash from being picked up as well And then one new contractor provided recycling cart for each resident. It has to be a distinct color different from the trash cart. Separate recycling collection vehicles, so no co-mingling of the recyclables. They can't throw it in the same vehicle that they're picking the trash up with. implementation of a recycling contamination monitoring and cart tagging program so that we can see if they're collecting a lot of contaminated items and then track and report recycling contamination rates and work almost like a educational piece with the city to reduce those rates. And then the monthly reports for the recycling, recycling tonnage, participation rates, contamination rates, GPS service verification data to back all that up and identify their processing facility, so their materials recovery facility, in markets and processing methods to their recycling. Another thing that we included in the RFP were liquidated damages. And this was just to kind of ensure that we get consistent service and encourage, you know, encourage the, the waste hauler to ensure they're going to do what they said they were going to do. So we have violations such as miss pickup, uncorrected miss pickups, route not completed, repeat miss pickup and the applicable liquidated damages that we put in there and this is just a continuation because we couldn't get it all in one sheet but spill or leak not cleaned failure to respond to a complaint late incomplete monthly reportings or unresolved property claims are all what we put in as liquidated damages that the city could enforce against the waste hauler so now we get to the options that we put in the rfp so we actually asked them to look at three different options for the city the first would just be base service very similar to what everybody has now which is weekly curbside trash collection and recycling but we did i know some of the haulers i think do bi bi-weekly recycling but we wanted it weekly um in this rfp And then option two has everything that option one has with the trash and recycling, but we also wanted yard debris collection of limbs. And we did put in there that we wanted the option of a yard debris container for each person as well. And then option three is what we call full service, which adds the collection of bulk items. So that would be things such as mattresses or just large bulky items that, you know, we do the spring cleanup once a year, but these items would actually be picked up with the waste hauler as well. So now we get to the evaluation criteria. So this is kinda how the RFP is based. It's not solely based on cost. Cost carries a weight of 30%, but all of the evaluators on the committee that did the evaluations for the RFP were looking at their operation approach, transition plan, the experience, qualifications, and references, customer service and reporting, their fleet staffing and continuity of service, recycling performance, and any contract exceptions they may have. So cost is really only 30%. We're looking at can they service us and how well can they do that? So now we're gonna go into the evaluation summaries. So we had six responses. Amwaste, GFL, Ryland, Red Oak, WastePro, and Republic all responded to this RFP. So for option one, you have the evaluations. And I also wanna state, all of the evaluators on the committee, nobody knew the prices. So we did this based, everybody was evaluating their operational approach, experience, qualifications, all of the other items. Cost didn't come into play. Actually, our purchasing manager put that in at the end after we had everybody's evaluation. So we were just basically writing among how well presented in the RFP that they would provide the service to the city and as you can see in in option one am waste is is at the top However, you know, Amwaste, I would say Amwaste, GFL, and Republic, based on all five reviewers, were very, very close in their operation approach, experience, qualifications, customer service, fleet staffing, continuity, recycling, performance, and contract exceptions. They were really, really tight on that end of it. Option two, again, Amwaste is at the top. And again, those three are very, very high. I will say Red Oak, I believe, and maybe Ryland were the two lowest cost. And you can see they have the highest rating in the cost bracket as far as the one through five scale. So this is option two. Amwaste again, edging ahead. The next one, is option three for the full service. Very similar, you know, with cost being 30% and the way they kind of, everybody put their price in, the scores haven't really changed much from one option to the other. The top three still seem to be the highest. And then the next slide, cost comparison. So as we get into the cost comparison, So here are the top three when we finally got cost. And I know it's a lot of information, so if there's any questions, I can stop and pause right here and answer. But the top part shows you option-based, and they provided that monthly, but we also put it in there as quarterly because that's how most people pay their trash service. For just the base recycling and trash service on a weekly basis, for AmWaste was $63.45. Republic was $89.40, and then GFL was $82.50. For option two, AmWaste was... Amwayst was 75, Republic was 103.92, and then GFL was 99. And then option three, which includes the yard debris and the bulk, Amwayst was 85.56, Republic was 111.45, and then GFL was 115.50. And there were some additional service pricing that we asked. So a couple of things to note with each one. Backdoor service. So Republican GFL both have charges for backdoor service for ADA or medical need. Amway said that they would do ADA or medical need backdoor service at no cost. Christmas tree collection was also at no cost with both Republic and Amway's. GFL was 25. And then they have the cost for an additional cart if you needed an additional cart. Cart replacement. am waste again that was included at no cost and then we asked for a bulk pickup option if we added it to option one or two like what it would cost if somebody called to do a bulk pickup um if we went with option one so you can see am waste is is 175 for that bulk pickup where republic is 75 and gfl is also 75 um another thing because we have no intention of not doing the annual spring cleanup like we do every year is we asked you know what would you charge to to facilitate that that's usually how we we do that we get dumpsters from one of the waste haulers and our guys work it um amway said they would do it at no cost And then Republic was $38.50, and then GFL, you know, we didn't really specify how to answer, but theirs is $100 a haul, $55 a ton. So what that means is they're going to charge $100 to dump the dumpster, and then the tonnage is priced out at $55 a ton after it's filled up. um a couple of additional notes um amwest actually offers a premium backdoor service if it's not ada or medical for 75 if if somebody chose to use it um per quarter per quarter per month so um so i mean it's expensive obviously for the premium but the medical need or ada is totally free um and also neither one of the other ones actually provide like a premium you have to have the ada or medical need for the backdoor service um so a couple other things we we discussed so they will also provide bulk pickup bi-weekly without calling our rfp stated that it would be an on-call type System if you went with option three like you would actually call them and set up a time for them to come pick it up We we actually discussed Asked the question with all three if if that was an issue or if that changed anything if we actually made it a route as opposed to having to call in and All of them were more than willing to do that to actually have it be every two weeks and they'll come through and pick it up I And then M-Waste, you know, Al with Keep History City Beautiful, he liked the fact that they own and operate the material recovery facility, so the MRF. And their reporting, what they provided in the RFP as far as reporting was very extensive, so we'd have a very extensive reporting on the recycling side of it. And then contract exceptions, most of them were none. Republic had a couple, but it wasn't, you know, they wanted 90% of the calls answered in 90 seconds as opposed to 30 seconds and less than an 8% abandonment rate. So it wasn't a major exception. So that kind of sums up the cost. I think the next slide, So this was actually done, Keep Peachtree City Beautiful did this, and it doesn't have a ton of responses. There's only 191, but for two weeks at the recycle center and compost, I think Al and Tyson, they asked people who they had and how much they paid. So we kind of put that data together, and this is something that could be expanded to like a larger survey or something citywide, but overall, You know, Pollard, Republic, GFL, the current providers, you can see the average monthly cost based on those responses. We got 55 from Pollard, 101 from Republic, and 35 responses from GFL. But a couple of the numbers that we were kind of looking at is, you know, the base rate was $63 with Amway. So we wanted to know what percentage paid more than $64. And you can see with Pollard, it was 87% paid more and 95% paid more with Republic, 97 paid more with GFL. and then we also it's it's not a true apples to apples comparison because obviously the full service at 85 includes more services but just so you all had it how many people currently pay more than 86 which would be over the full service so um to kind of gauge like who would see an increase in their bill so 12 there's only 12 of pollard customers that pay over 86 so there's a you know, based on our survey, and that limited data, a large portion of them would pay more, but you're also adding services.

So like this job, I see average monthly costs on here. That should be average quarterly costs, correct?

Yes, I'm sorry.

Just just clarify.

Yes, you're correct. Thanks for and then the overall results are a you know, 93% of all of the people surveyed pay more than $64. So you kind of have that number and 56% of all the people surveyed pay more than 86. So just kind of an example of what we could expand. So 191, if there's 13,700 households, that's not a very big percentage of the overall city, we could potentially you know council could decide to expand the survey broader if they chose and I believe that is the last slide that we have so it's really could you go back I'll do a couple council questions but I do want to hear from citizens imminently can you please go back one more

So, so I'll, I'll go first. I pay $87 per quarter currently to Republic. And so if in a hypothetical am waste situation, if we went to option three full service, my bill goes from 87 to 85 56. But what is added is at no additional charge, My every other week recycling would go to every week recycling. Correct. My trash gets picked up weekly. Yes. My yard debris gets picked up at no extra charge.

Every other week, biweekly.

Every other week. And bulk pickup looks like what? I make a phone call and...

actually i think the best way to do it because they're they're open to it is you would have your yard waste and your bulk picked up at the same time so if you have bulk because the one issue that i would feel concerned with the on-call is a missed pickup right so if they're running the route they're going to go down that street and if you have a bulk item on the curb it's going to get picked up so i would tie them bi-weekly both of them together where you get your yard waste and your bulk items picked up at the same time.

Okay, thank you. And then currently, I guess it's been 27 years since I chose Republic, but we choose our hauler from a shortlist that the city has approved. Is that true?

Yes, through a franchise agreement.

Three. We have three options. Currently, we all have free choice of three. Okay. And then I have one last thing and I wanna hear from the other council members and then we'll have public comment. Part of the impetus for this discussion is we've discovered, I think when we were looking at the amount of dollars that our haulers pay to keep Peachtree City beautiful, we know how many households we have. We know how many dollars go to keep Peachtree City beautiful every month and we know the difference. And the difference is how many households in Peachtree City do not contract with anyone for trash removal.

Jonathan, do you have a number for that?

Yes. Al usually keeps track of it via the stormwater bill, but I believe it's approximately 1,400, somewhere in that neighborhood.

So you're talking 10% of the population doesn't use trash recovery.

And so we see that, though. I mean, nobody produces zero trash. We see that trash...

Well, you know, Alice spoke on this extensively, he collects it from the cart path all of the time. We have code enforcements, even this last week, a code enforcement was sent to somebody's residence because their trash would, you know, they hadn't, you know, crab legs for the fourth and a lot of stuff and, and Tyson and then went through each bag with gloves to find a piece of mail. and code enforcement went to the house and issued a citation, and they stated they didn't have trash.

Thank you. I'm going to stop for now. And, counsel, I'd like to hear from you and then open it up for public comment. Is there anything you want to say at this time? We'll still discuss later.

Yeah, I have, but you want me to go? Are you good? No, no, no.

I'm glad that you came up with a number of about 1,400 people, 1,400 households. That's one out of every 10 neighbors doesn't use trash collection. And they end up going, as poor Al over here in the orange shirt knows, it goes onto the cart path dumpsters. And guess what? That's your tax dollars that are picking up that. You're paying for the people who don't pay. you don't know you're paying because that comes on the bills of a dollar a month per i think it's a dollar a month mayor dollar per month so you're actually paying for those people who don't take a trash hauler so i'm really glad that we're going to be including everybody no exceptions did i read that right jonathan right and and whichever option would need to be everybody like whatever

If Council moves forward, yes, whatever option you pick in the RFP, it's stated it's everyone.

Good. So there's no opting out. And, yes, it's basically an honest bid, just like anything else that we do. We had RFPs out there. We've done exactly the kind of work I would expect of our staff. They figured out a best way to evaluate these people. And obviously, I think I've got a few brains left in my head. It looks like AmWaste is heading in the right direction is what I see on the chart here. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the others, but in a free society, in a free bid, where you all had a chance to bid to the same specifications, one is going to come out on top. I think that's kind of the American way, isn't it? There's first, second, and third and everything. Are we going to be doing one of those, everybody gets a trophy, so therefore we can choose any of these? well to me that's really defeats what you're trying to do here is have one hauler take everything and you've got one hauler that has to be responsible to everyone in the city and in my mind that's exactly what we need in our state on our city that's all I got for right now thank you Jonathan and for all the work

putting out these RFPs and bids, and partners, because it's the first time we're seeing this, are kind of breaking all this down. Thank you. Thanks for letting me know. So on the, we, okay, so thank you for clarifying the performance guarantees and financial penalties. That was a question I had. And also the fact, so you said on AMways, they have their own recycling facility?

Right, they own and operate it.

Okay, great.

um and that's different than any of the vendors we have currently well i mean i think a lot of that material ends up at amway's facility because there's not a whole lot through here but um you know having their own facility and getting the reports that we're requiring that is a plus to you know they they own the facility we need to get the reports from right yeah um

Obviously, it's no secret I've been advocating for yard debris pickup. And when I ran last year's probably what inspired me to run. I didn't really get into the whole burn ban of repeal debate what frustrated me was that there was no one talking about alternative options for yard waste and you know it was a big vote for this account for the previous council but there were no alternative options for citizens and what we're seeing is more collection on the green belts and then also when it comes to more collection on the green belts also the trash of the folks who aren't contracted with anyone to have a trash service And I see that on the paths all the time when I take my kids out on the golf cart, especially in a piece of city that prides itself on trying to keep our greenbelt so beautiful and clean. So on the yard debris, and I apologize if this gets in the weeds a little bit, because I really want to break this down for residents to understand what that looks like. So it's every two weeks. And in the previous city I lived in, we would have to bag the leaves and the grass clippings. Here I see that there's a 96 gallon cart. I'm looking at Amway's, obviously it's the cheapest one. For 50% of option, I don't know if that's a typo, but can you explain, is that additional cost if I want a cart

no that's that's if you want another trash can like you know some people need to need to pay or want another trash can right they have so that's basically whichever option you go with if you need a second can not a yard debris can not a second trash can it would be fifty percent of that cost of whichever option you choose so for example the base would be around $10 and 50 cents or, or so for a second can trash can. So we didn't ask for like a second yard debris can price or anything like that. And I will say too, to that, when, you know, and it's really getting into the operational side, which could come further down the line, but yeah, My guess is if we do the biweekly pickup with bulk, so you want the bulk picked up, we probably would have to do away with the can. Just from an operational perspective, they're probably going to want to pick that all together with one truck, and they'll probably use a claw truck. So they're not going to want the can where they have to send because, you know, the can, they're going to send the trucks with the automated units to to dump the can so but again that's that's something further down the line we would discuss with whoever with any of the vendors like i said they are all fairly open to different options without really changing the cost or operational wise so well let's let's make note of that for future discuss once we get to that point if we get to that point because you know been hearing from a lot of folks think vast majority of people are excited about the yard debris

The question that pops up is do I have to do more work and bag my own? I know some cities out there, you can get an additional cart if you don't want a bag. So once we get to that point, I'd love to explore that further. And can you explain Amway's, performance and other cities. Have y'all looked into that research, right? If I'm applying for a job, I'd love to get a referral from someone from hiring someone.

So we look through all of their references. I don't have their actual RFP, but that was part of the RFP. I know for a fact they service noonan locally. So like around here, I know they're, they're servicing noonan. I'd have to go back through the RFP when we did it to see all of theirs, but I will say they were right there with Republican GFL as far as having the equipment ready to service the city. That was our main goal. That's why cost was hidden from every evaluator that evaluated it. The difference between a bid in an RFP is a bid, you're looking for the lowest price, right, the lowest responsible bidder in an RFP, you're, you're looking at a multitude of things, because this is a major undertaking, this is a huge service delivery that could make or break, you know. So you're looking at all of those things before you even remotely look at cost. Because, yes, cost plays a factor, but the execution of the service is more important.

Thank you. And memory one, One more question in terms of how this is from a admin standpoint, this essentially is that there's no pass through the city. This is between household and vendor. There's no administrative costs added to the city for this transition, just to be like with the city is taken out of the equation here.

I would say sort of, right. It's taken out on the admin. We're not doing the billing, right. We're not doing that. cinnamon in public works currently right now people will call when they have issues with their trash service she has contacts with all of those vendors she typically resolves a lot of those issues I'm not saying we'll be completely pulled out of that stream because we're never gonna you know if somebody calls us we're gonna try to help them and try to fix it the beauty of one provider is it's one contact right and again all three of them are willing they're gonna provide a portal so like when somebody says they have a missed pickup instead of calling a bunch of people to get the data to get the camera footage to see if the truck went by there to get the GPS like there will there will be a portal that the city can actually access and kind of get that information instantaneous from that that vendor so it'll actually probably improve that aspect but yes to your question we are pulled out of as far as the billing or any of that goes but we we still play a role in helping resolve issues or or stuff that may come up thank you mr johnson um so this is an issue where i've definitely been torn and i see both sides of this um a couple of questions i have um

And I already know the answer to some of these, but some of the things weren't in this presentation. So there are questions that I had previously, but one of them is the price. How long is this, the contract with this company, whoever we choose, how long would that be without changing?

I think there's a couple of slides after the questions. okay so let's start here so this is what the rfp stated right um the rfp gave an annual adjustment factor based on cpi fuel index and i i put in an example from last year but we capped it at three percent so like if we did this last year based on those those two factors you would have had a 3.36 increase but it would have been capped at three now what we did do is we reached out to all six vendors and asked them okay is there any way that you could guarantee a rate for the term well actually if you want to go to the next slide i think it's got the actual questions and responses so yes these were the questions that were sent out by angela would you be willing to lock in your proposed first year price and hold that rate with no escalation for the full five year term. If not, what is the lowest maximum price increase you could commit to for years two through five? So Amway said, They would hold their price unless fuel increased above $5.50, at which point they would want to implement a fuel surcharge, and they would hold it for the first three years. Year four and five would just be calculated based on what we put in the RFP up to a maximum of 3%. Republic said they can't keep rates firm for the first two years, for the first two, or for years two through five, the adjustment rate would be 3%, or 3.5%, but you know, The RFP capped it at 3%, so that's just the response we got back. If we're not able to, or GFL wasn't able to commit for the entire five-year term, they would work with the city to establish a reasonable, predictable escalation structure. And then the next slide, we get into the others, Red Oak, Ryland, and WastePro. they can offer no rate increase for, they'll hold their rate for the first two years, and for three, four, and five, they would cap theirs at a maximum of 2%. Ryland said no with a 5% cap for two through five. Waze Pro said no, but they would hold it at 3%, which was essentially, what we had in the RFP. So out of all of the responses, and then you go to the top three that actually were at the top of the reviews, that would be the first page that had AmWaste, GFL, and Republic. with Amway saying they would lock it for three years and wouldn't increase unless fuel rised above $5.50. So that's kind of what we got from them. So that's great.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I know in speaking to some people, one of the things that they experienced with their trash hauler is an unexpected price increases. So if this is something that we were to do, I would definitely wanna be able to have a system where our residents would be able to anticipate what those might look like. So thank you for doing that. Another question I had is someone was worried about if their services are canceled, that there might be a penalty that they have to pay in canceling a contract in order for the city to come in and provide the service through a single hauler. What would that process look like?

Ted could probably answer this as far as them having a contract. I believe the Solid Waste Act allows a municipality to move forward with the exclusive waste hauler and it voids all.

Once the city enters the arena under the intergovernmental or supplemental powers clause of the torture. Under the.

There we go.

under the supplemental powers clause of the Georgia Constitution, the city can provide waste services. Okay. The cases that have interpreted that provision along with the Solid Waste Act, allow cities and counties both to provide for a sole provider to do it legally, it can be done.

And so if a resident has a contract with a company, then that company because the city has the right to do that, that company could not make the person then pay a penalty correct because they no longer have the authority to do the business in the city okay all right thank you um you may have mentioned this earlier i think you touched on it but with the customer service requirements how do you track things like how many seconds does it take to answer calls they have to provide reports monthly reports and they're reporting okay um do would yard debris go to our compost site no

they have just wherever yeah wherever they chose to to take the yard debris but they would not be utilizing the compost site and the compost site would stay open for anybody that wanted to utilize it as well okay I also had the same yard debris container question and that sounded like it wasn't think we have options but I mean we didn't we didn't really pry real deep into all of those options I mean we're not as we move in if if we move in any direction like those would be the I guess the smaller things we would kind of figure out with whoever Because we stated we wanted the container, so that's the way they approached the RFP.

Yeah, I have a feeling that no part of this is going to feel like a small part to our citizens. They're going to definitely have some opinions on this. I know one was, you know, they definitely were worried about having to bag up things versus being able to just put it on the street curb. Okay, you answered that one. Oh, there is. So there was one comment that I heard. So, for instance, this this one resident had a question that she has a business and she takes her residential trash to her business because her business pays for a dumpster. If you if a resident is able to prove that they take care of their trash in another way, that isn't going to ICL shaking his head at me. But if they're already paying for a trash service in some other way, Is there a way for them to opt out?

I mean, not the way, not the way we were directed to write the RFP. I mean, I guess that's a decision that council could make. I mean, as far as.

All right. And I kind of think, you know, I know the answer to that, but I just wanted to ask. And right now, currently in our ordinance, even though we have three providers that our residents can choose from, we don't have it mandated.

they have to have a trash service is that correct and so we would have to make a change to our ordinance in order to implement this i think yeah we would have to make a change regardless if you move forward with this because we currently have the franchise agreement and everything else in our ordinance so yeah you would you'd have to change the ordinance um pollard is one of the three currently right correct why do you know why they weren't one of the ones that came to the table they didn't submit a response um i i didn't ask angela or anybody to reach out to pollard to ask why um i do i you know i think when this has come up before in the past they've never really responded to it i think they prefer the way they operate but i i can't i don't have any could i answer yeah

I'm actually friends with Sunny Pollard. Okay. And I think the upfront cost of getting the equipment necessary to serve this many customers was not something they wanted to embark on.

Okay. Thank you. I guess one of the hesitations I have is that because Amway isn't one of the current three, no one in our city has a standing relationship with that company. And so I guess there was a hope that I had that one of the three that provide services right now would win out and there would be some, percentage of our current residents that would have a history with exactly with that company. So I guess it just gives me a little bit of pause. And I am just very interested to hear the comments coming at us tonight. So thank you for anyone who is here for this. I'm anxious to hear what you have to say.

Thank you. Ms. Brown?

Okay.

have a couple of questions as everybody obviously has okay landscape debris when it goes to the curb can be bagged or in the cart depending on how i mean the contract no contract's been written right but they were all open to either options our rfp stated that we wanted the yard debris cart so that's still a choice that could be made we just asked if if we wanted to do it this way, would that be an option just to know, you know, where we stand option wise, but it could go either way as council chooses. It could be in a cart for yard debris and whatever fits in the cart is what goes and you can set limbs on the side, but that's it. Or it could be bagged and limbs on the side, um, picked up, you know, with bulk, it depends on the operation, right? It's all operational based how many how they run it.

So then I understand you said also that they could come around with the claw and pick things up with the claw, whether it's bulk or landscape debris, but you can't pick up leaves with a claw. The companies that pick up leaves curbside that are not bagged or whatever, have one of those trucks that actually suck the leaves up. Well, is that an option?

i don't believe with any of these providers that they have that capability i think you would if you didn't do the cart where you would put the leaves you would have to bag the leaves and then they would pick them up okay so in florida where i had landscape debris pick up for 14 years where i lived in port charlotte

If you put things out in a trash can, they would take it landscape debris. But if you begged it, you had to put it in a paper bag, the big paper bags that they sell at Home Depot and some of the other stores, you could not put it out in plastic because the plastics is not biodegradable. And they could not dump that with the leaves where they had to dump it. So I guess the issue I mean, I need to know where I feel like I need to know. You know, because bags, when you have to buy paper bags to put the lawn debris in is not the cheapest option either. I mean, you have to do a lot of work to bag your leaves like that.

I don't know that. Okay.

I know. I mean, these are questions that we may have to ask some more answers of various, you know, whoever, you know, we decide to go to, if anybody. So large lots that have a lot of trees are, how is the tree matter going to be dealt with? So like cutting down a whole tree.

Yes. So cutting down a whole tree and throwing it on the curb is probably that that's probably not going to be you know the way to have it picked up um could they cut it into four foot lengths i you know i think five foot lengths are what they they prefer to have um but i believe you know diameter is going to play a role and typically if you have something that big fall down most people i mean they may cut some of it up but it depends on if they can even move it right so um i i

you know there's going to be a limit on the size i'll say that there has to be a limit on the size okay but okay let's talk trees then did anybody along the trail discuss where they could actually go onto the property pick to pick up trees with the claw or not an option at all or

I think from, my guess would be that none of them would be willing to do that from a liability standpoint.

Okay, because some of the lots that we have, let's take flagpole lots or flag lots, shared driveways. Would they go up a shared driveway to remove tree debris further up? I mean, I'm looking at this as an alternative to we banned burning. So now people that have large lots that have to deal with a lot of trees, have to haul the trees away themselves. If they can cut the trees and get them to a certain point on their on their lot. You know, how is it going to be picked up?

I mean, the way the RFP it's all curbside. So if it's a shared driveway, I don't think they're going to drive up somebody's driveway to pick it up. It would have to be at the curbside. Like, it would be curbside yard waste and debris pickup. So, you know, again, we didn't ask those questions. We didn't dive that deep. So I don't have those.

But if you move further with this – you know, and we can ask those questions. Yeah, we decide who the, you know, who the potential award winner would be. We could have a meeting where we bring them in and you all, we can ask questions and you all can kind of decide.

so then let me switch off to a different part of this okay recycling exactly what do the major the companies the top three that we're looking at do you have any idea about what things they will recycle is it just like what we have going on right now or is does it include anything additional am waste uh does everything that we have now plastics one and two paper cardboard um

aluminum metal uh so it's it's very similar to the recyclables that you have now um but no glass and no styrofoam no styrofoam okay but they would take cardboard yes ma'am al's probably sitting there going that's a good thing um

I mean, obviously it's a concern to me if it'll reduce the amount of recycling that we're having to handle through the recycling center that's operated by Keep Peachtree City Beautiful. I mean, we certainly don't want to increase what we're burdening them with. We'd like to decrease it if we can. I already asked that one. Okay, that's the end of my questions for now.

Okay, with that, I would like to hear public comments from our citizens at four minutes each. Would you raise your hand if you wish to speak public comment? I see two. Jasmine, do you have a list? Three. Three, thank you. Do you have a list or no? All right, if you have your hand up, first person, please take the microphone. And again, we'll pull up that four-minute timer, guys. And thanks for being here. Thanks for doing this.

Well, thank you for having me.

Hold on, Randy. That's not on. We can't hear you.

Is it on?

Is it?

Get up close.

Get close. There we go.

There you go. Get close.

All right. You served up on a big platter, Mr. Miller, exactly what I'm here to talk about. And that's the continued. Well, first of all, let me introduce myself.

I'm Randy Huff. I've lived here for 55 years.

I live at 289 Speer Road. in Peachtree City. That, by the way, is a road without curbs, which is essential to understand your argument that we bring things to curbside, but I'll get to that in a moment. I live on a common driveway with three other persons, the property for which aggregates to about 13, 14 acres, something like that. My home is on 3.4 acres. I'm up here, away from sphere road, and two houses here before you get the sphere road and we share a common driveway that's 800 feet long. It would be a misjudgment once again to get this one-size-fits-all mentality where you look at all these options, all right, and then you say we get for yard waste a 16-gallon container. I have 16 tons of trees lying on the ground right now that have been on hold because they can't be burned without the burn list. In the past, I've burned these trees. It's impossible. We can't have people come up on the property through our driveway, as you just mentioned, and we can't burn them. What do I do now? I can't put 16 tons worth of tree trunks. I have 362 linear feet right now of pine trees that are 16 inches in diameter. that are lying on the ground waiting to be disposed of. Your RFP apparently didn't cover that kind of yard waste. And well, you didn't think of us. Well, that's what happened when you banned burning. You didn't think of us in the state residential three acre and plus or even two acre and plus properties. So I'm quite dismayed that I'm sitting here having to go through this again. I spoke once before. about what about us over here in the state residential area. It's not gonna work. I can't participate in something like that with yard waste because you haven't accommodated it and nobody knows how to claw it up and take it away. You're not coming up my driveway with industrial machinery and tear it all up in order to, and you couldn't maneuver. And once you get up there, it's only nine feet wide. No one considered that. And so I ask again, and you're coming to these solutions, that you think of people with unusual properties, we're not that numerous, but our problems are 10 times bigger than what you've, talked about here tonight and we deserve consideration when things like this come up and that's all I have to say I know I have more to say I've invited councilman Holland he came and mr. Palachuk he came out to my yard to look I invited Ms. Johnson, Councilwoman Johnson, I left you a message on your phone to come out to my house, and I'll show you what I'm talking about.

It's still open if you want to come. Okay.

Okay. And my good friend, Councilwoman Brown, seeing the property, she understands it from drone services that she has apps to. You have to see it to believe it. If you come out to these properties, sir, you won't fail to think about what their needs are when we make these kinds of changes in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please. Yes.

can i make one comment mayor sure yes i want to say mr miller did not he put this rfp out at the request of council so when you were addressing mr miller he did what council instructed him to do so please refrain from please remember that this is a council issue

I understand.

All right. Thank you. Jane Trammell, Lakeside Drive. One of the things that bothers me about this is this is once again a government entity taking away choice. And that really rarely ever works out that well. I'll give you I graduated from high school in 1960. We were our country was number one or two in the world. We went and let the government give us the education department, and hasn't that worked well? When you take away competition, you're hurting the American, as far as I'm concerned, the capitalistic system. I want to be able to choose who I want, and I do not want five people or six people making that decision for me. I think we ought to be able to choose ourselves what we want. We have three companies, and we also, I want to remind you, that if we go down to one, we put a lot of people out of work, of companies that have been here for years, and I don't particularly like that idea either. I just think competition is better than anything else, and I don't like the government coming up with every single idea because it quite frequently does not work out well. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Hi, I'm Valerie Alexander. I live in Braylon Village. I only am speaking because three questions came up in the course of this discussion for me that I would love it to be considered or addressed in the future when you present this. My first was to Councilwoman Johnson's question. We have what seems to be a winner who none of us know. Is there any room for the top three to then be asked to resubmit given the parameters that the winner came back with so that maybe a company that we are familiar with can see if they can be made to match what has been offered by the company that's leading out in front. And I don't need that answered. I'm just pointing out that that would be a wonderful consideration. The other is I wasn't clear if I'm going to get a choice of which of the options there's going to be that they have option, you know, I guess tall option, grande option venti. And I did it does that mean this council is going to choose which of those options the city gets or as Or is the company being chosen and then I as a homeowner get to choose which of the three I want in my home? And then the third question I have is included in this was a study done of the environmental costs and the damage to our roads of having three trucks. I know in my neighborhood we have three sets of trucks coming through our neighborhood every single week. And that's a small it's a small neighborhood. And I don't think it's great for our roads. And I know it's not great for our air. And I would love to see that being brought into consideration in the further conversations about this. But I really appreciate all the work everybody did on this. And I just wanted to present those ideas.

Thank you.

Can I answer these questions real quick, Mayor, before we have our next?

Yes.

Can you stay up there, Valerie, in case I missed something? All right. First question was about rebidding or re-asking for prices. I would say the answer to that is no. We don't usually do it. Like, we will... We will go back and say best and final when we're doing RFP reviews and stuff, which we did with this. And we did go back and ask questions about locking in price and things like that. But once companies know each other's prices, then you lose that competitive edge. And going back to free market, this is competition. What we just did is the definition of competition between these companies. Options one, two, and three you're talking about. Your first scenario that you said is the correct answer where council will have to select if they want the basic option of just what we have now with the three companies of trash recycling. Option two, just adding yard waste. And then option three, adding yard waste and bulk. that would have to be selected for the entire city. You as a citizen, we cannot select a company and then every citizen chooses which version they want. It'll be scenario one that you said. And then your last question was?

Are you including the environmental cost of having three separate companies in your consideration?

We didn't break it down this time because it was broken down very thoroughly in 2019 when Jonathan presented this in 2019. It's the same person who presented this in 2019 when he was asked to by the council then as well. That was the big analysis then was the damage to our roads with that many trash trucks on them. I don't, we care about that, we obviously do, because it does make maintenance where we have to do it more often, and repaving. But I got the feeling from citizenry that that's not a huge concern to citizens. What the concern is is price, like what's the price? So to me the focus was, can what council requested and what my focus is is can we save citizens money at the end of the day like by doing this can we make it cheaper for our citizens um overall day to day month to month quarter to quarter and What was I gonna say? I think the other big one is keep Peachtree City beautiful when we talk with them. There is a real problem of folks that do not have any trash service in our city. And I'm not saying all of them don't do it correctly or take it to the transfer station in Fayette County or whatever they do, but there's a major problem of people that don't have trash service in our city dumping stuff all over in our public bins.

You don't have to convince me that. Where I walk my dog, on the trail where I walk my dog, there's one can. And I can't tell you how many times that can is overflowing with bags of somebody's trash and I don't have a space to put the bag that I have.

So really the major focus, since we already did the analysis a few years ago, the big thing what we know that they damage the roads more so the big thing was this is price can we come in a price that is reasonably cheap for our citizens for us to bargain every single residential single residential in the city how can we solve the problem of trash everywhere in the city on in our public bins and another was I know in the retreat was a talk about with Councilmember Palachuk coming on was the burn ban, was the burn ban that we did implement of how do we help some of the acres or some of the lots that can't burn anymore. I know it doesn't solve your problem, but that was one of the big conversations as well because some folks can't get to the compost site, they don't have trucks, so how can we, if we're gonna do a burn ban, how can people get rid of their landscape debris without dumping in our greenbelt and things like that, because we know people dumping our greenbelt all the time too, which is forbidden in our ordinance, but you know, people do it. So, you know, those were kind of three or four big things that we were thinking about our council mentioned in the retreat while we were developing this. Can I respond?

Justin, can I respond to one other thing you said then? I understand that the cost of repaving the roads and road repair is hidden. It doesn't show up in our stormwater bill. It doesn't show up on our tax bill. But I think the people of Peachtree City are intelligent enough to understand that when the roads are being damaged, that costs us money, too. And so the idea that we just want to save money for everybody by having the lowest dollar cost. The last time I stood at this microphone and spoke, I was saying the cost of creating an unhappy workforce is one of the most expensive hidden costs we have. The cost of destroying our environment is maybe hidden, but it doesn't not exist. And I think the people of Petrie City are smart enough to see it and to understand that. And so if that becomes part of the discussion, I think there's value to that.

Okay. Totally agree. Thank you, Valerie. Yeah, you brought it up earlier. Don't leave a... Okay.

She might want to sit down.

Go ahead and feed her. Go ahead and sit. That's okay. I'm concerned. I ran some of the numbers. Okay. So if we have 52 trash trucks a year going through on a weekly basis and 26 recycling trucks going through biweekly, that's 78 trucks per year per company times three is 234 trips through your neighborhood by trash trucks and recycling trucks. Under the new proposal, if the 52 trash trucks go through your neighborhood once a week, 52 in a year, 52 recycling trucks, now that may be 26 if it's a biweekly recycling, I don't know. I think the recycling truck is gonna go through, but not everybody will be able to put their recycling out. every week, according to what I just heard. I don't know. But that would be 52 times that truck goes through. If they pick up landscape waste weekly, that's another 52 trips in a year. if they pull up the bulk pick up the bulk 26 trips in a year on a bi-weekly basis that adds up to 182 trucks through the neighborhood so 234 then goes down to 182. so i think that does that's a reduction of 22 percent and if i'm wrong on the number of landscape waste or recycling trucks or whatever, it could be even lower. But that's about a 22% savings. My way of looking at it, I think that's significant enough that it needs to be looked at. It's not necessarily the overarching primary decision making factor. But she's right. It's not cheap to pave a street.

And if I could adjust your math a little. Yes, we're going from 234 to 182. But we're adding an extremely valuable service. Right now the 234 is based on just getting trash pickup and recycling. Now you're talking about getting trash pickup, recycling, bulk waste and yard waste and still getting a 22% reduction. So that is that it increases even more greatly the value of that change.

well prior councils had discussed it that's why i've always focused on that part of it so okay thank you thank you and now you really may sit down thank you thank you i'll go back i'll go back to council mr holland oh yeah oh i'm sorry please i didn't see you over there yeah that's all right i was high uh al felds i'm a lakeside drive um i guess i have to do a real quick retort to the number of trucks because Those same streets right now are handling about, on average, probably six delivery trucks per day, every day. So this is like 1%. This is a 1% or 2% issue we're talking about with garbage trucks. I think my biggest concern is the idea that that you're gonna select for the entire city the level of service that we have to have, all right? So for many of us, that means our costs will actually go up. It won't go down, right? Because if we just have basic service and now we have to add yard service, cost is probably gonna go up, okay? I'm not saying there's no value. I'm just saying cost is gonna go up. I am concerned that I'm concerned a little bit about the history frankly of the vendors that we choose here because I've seen too many times with the police station with Drake Field with the bridge going over to Spike sorry Chip Island to you know multiple other situations where we've had to go back a year or two later and redo something that was done apparently not properly I don't know if that's because of The vendor we chose or their equipment they used, I don't know the details. I just know there seems an awful lot of rework here. So I'd be concerned about the lowest price, right? Because the lowest price isn't always the best answer, unfortunately. So I have to be careful about that. And I'd also be concerned about once you get somebody into that situation where they have four one-year options, They'll tell you I won't change my price in three years until year two comes and they go, I just have to raise my price. And then what's your option going to be? Your option is going to be, okay, well, we're not going to do business with you. Let's start this all over again. Now, I've got no garbage collection. Okay, so let's just be real about it. Once you get in that situation, you're kind of locked in that situation. That's it. That's all I've got.

Thanks.

Thanks very much.

Can I answer those two?

We still don't.

Yes. Yes. And then I still have one more member.

Oh, well, lowest vendor I'm not going to get into. I'll let council get into. I'll get it. Let council get into previous projects. And why? Well, I'll talk about it. I mean, it was it was a previous managers, a previous administration with a lot of the things we're having to go back and fix. And that is not the way we operate anymore with projects. A lot of the projects that we're doing, we're not going back and fixing them. And I agree with you completely where lowest is not always best. It's what do we have to pay for this thing to, and I'm talking about just infrastructure at this point, handle thousands of people over decades and not have to go back and fix it. So we are absolutely aware of that. And I will point out that this and waste was not the lowest bidder.

Yeah, I was going to interject on that, Justin. They're actually the... There's two bidders below them that were lower.

So we didn't go with ABC Cheapo. We're not just cheaping out.

They were lower between GFL and Republic, which were the top three, those three. But they were not the lowest bidder. And then what was the third question you had? Okay. Okay. Okay. But, no, they were not the lowest bidder, and we are very cognizant of not wanting to go back and spend money over and over again and just put Band-Aids on things.

It was the contractual obligation.

So that goes back to the RFP where our RFP says you cannot increase more than 3%.

Well, actually, so AmWaste came back and answered those questions about holding price for three years. When we get to the process of actually establishing a contract, it'll be written into the contract as contractual obligations to hold to what they said.

So there's that, plus in the RFP you can't increase more than 3%. But like you said, they come back and say, oh, we can't do this. We have to increase our price. I mean, honestly, we have a lot of vendors we work with, with PD, with fire, with recreation, and I've had people come to me and say, we're going to raise our price, and I say, we're not paying it. You can stay where you are right now or we're going out like you're done. And so that's.

Sure, yes. Yeah, we're rolling that way, aren't we?

One more quick question. We say there's 1,400 houses currently not contracted with anybody. What happens if those people decide they're not going to pay?

good question so we've talked about that as well and I've updated council on how that would work if we update our or and Ted just tell me if I'm speaking wrong if we update our ordinance to require it and everywhere I've ever lived has citywide and countywide service even I was this county manager of a county that only had 8,000 people and we did countywide trash service if your ordinance says it and people don't pay it we get the report from them that they don't pay we can come cite you and we can cite you every single day that you don't pay your bill and if you don't pay your bill then you eventually end up in municipal court so we're wrong that is what other cities and counties have implemented you're correct okay i think i saw one more hand up yes

Good evening, Council. My name is Chandra Wright. I live in the Everton community, and I, in my house, am the recycle warden. So my question is around recycling. I would like to understand, will the types of things that we can recycle be expanded? I'm very conscientious of we can recycle this. I'm the one going through our recycling bins saying, you can't recycle this, and this goes into our normal trash. So I would like to understand if that service will be expanded for us. I'd also like to hear a little bit about how the recycling waste is disposed of by these vendors. And then also, I think you just answered my last question, which was how are we going to actually reduce the number of people who were dumping in the public waste bins. So I think you just answered that. That's what I'd like to understand more. Thank you.

Thank you.

So. Amway's can probably do this way better than me, and maybe you may want to actually bring them in and have a presentation done by them. They did a phenomenal job with their recycling presentation, so I will try to do it as much justice. But I know plastics one and two, right? Cardboard, paper, all of those things we live now. I don't think a market exists for the styrofoam or for the glass currently, but I would say if we want to have a big recycling conversation or even further details that we invite them for a presentation and let them speak because they own and operate recycling they can tell us way better than I could even convey did I hear you say they are servicing noonan they are currently maybe if that's the one that just pops out when I when we went through their references and what they do so that was the one that popped out just because it's it's close I think this is a big decision because we are going to this would be mandatory

I think it would be a great idea to have Amwayst come in and talk about what their services are and what the possibilities are. I know you could maybe prime them with the questions that were asked tonight, and we could have a pretty meaningful conversation.

I think all of the vendors are here, so they have heard you loud and clear. Oh, got it.

That's wonderful. Yeah, no, no more questions. We have opportunity coming up April 6, August, August 6, and August 20, with City Council meetings coming up. And that might be a good opportunity to hear from at least one of our vendors. Jasmine, did you have a comment? Anything you wanted to add? I think Paul Schultz wanted to make a comment. Yeah, I see some hands up. I thought you were done. Paul, you want to take the microphone? We'll pull up that timer again.

So just a very quick comment on data. I like to pretend I'm data-driven. I like the idea of the city negotiating a contract. I know there are exceptions that are really meaningful to people to have them, so figuring out how to do that. February of 2023, per quarter, I paid $59 to haul trash away. And I'll just go through the numbers, how it has increased until May of 2025. So in three years, 59 to 78 to 82 to 84, then $87 a quarter, a 49% increase. And so I really, really like the idea, and inflation hasn't been 49% over three years, right? It's been high, but it hasn't been 49% high. So I like the idea of someone can get in there and negotiate and say, whatever it starts at, I mean, 3%, 4%, 5% a year is great in comparison to 15% a year. So that's my point.

Thank you. I did see other hands up, and that's how we're rolling tonight. Did I see another hand up? Yes, in the back.

Mayor, can I address what Mr. Schultz just said? Please. Other jurisdictions that have done it typically have, it's normally a year-to-year agreement, but with the ability to have automatic increases based on CPI. That is how other jurisdictions have done this.

Thank you. Yes, welcome.

Hi, my name is Amber and I was just wondering why the two issues of switching to one trash service and making it mandatory for all citizens is like lumped together. They have to be connected or I just don't understand why they're one.

Thank you.

I think on an operational standpoint, That's the way you get the price is by bidding out the entire city. And then the second one is an issue we talked about is that we know there are 10% at least of households out there that don't do anything. And again, I'm not saying that all of them dump in public places, but some are. And so I think it comes back to how do you solve that problem without making it mandatory? is my you know so I think she's asking what if we just made it mandatory oh and then have three well and I think but that comes back to again getting the best price you can with the one and then also from a city standpoint this comes back to where we talked about cinnamon who works in public works is dealing with three different companies don't answer to us in any way we don't have any teeth to make them do anything when you do a single city contract we actually have teeth we can actually negotiate we can do competitive negotiations when we need to we can enforce what we need to with the company and keep keep track of everything a lot easier than if you have three operating or even five or six in the city And I think that comes down to what does the council want to do via the citizens? Because, you know, we don't have to mandate it. We don't have to. But I do think operationally, it is an easier system.

Thank you. Thanks for speaking up. Did I see any other hands up? Speak? Yes.

Hi, Rob Sassenti, Rolling Green. If a trash company had increased my rate by 49% in three years, that's up to me as the consumer to then go to one of the other companies and see if the cost is lower. I don't rely on you guys to negotiate that for me. And I want to know, to answer the question, what really is in it for you? Because I don't buy the excuse that it's the number of trucks on the road, because like the one gentleman said, delivery trucks nonstop. I don't see you guys limiting the amount of construction going on. It's the most amount of construction I've seen in Peachtree City in 10 years. So what's the real reason? How many jobs in the city government are getting created because of this? Because you guys said you're just going to track the trash. there's there's a whole lot of data that's gonna be collected about the trash is collected. So how many city jobs now are going to be collected are going to be created as a result of this zero. Thank you.

Justin zero. How so?

We're not creating any jobs. It'll be.

No, the company tracks all the company provides reports.

If you all could step to the microphone.

So the reports will probably, I mean, they're going to all come to us as a city as a whole. It'll be very easy, very detailed. I mean, Cinnamon will look at those reports. Obviously, if we have an enforcement piece for people who haven't paid or don't have service, code enforcement would get involved. I mean, there's obviously, there would be people involved in it, but there would be no job creation out of it. um it would be people serving the roles they currently do now we track who doesn't have trash service really we get reports as it sits now from the three providers of who has trash service this is how al gets his number we have the people who get stormwater bills and we can compare the numbers and see the discrepancy from stormwater billing to our goal

So my goal as a city manager is to not do anything ineffectively or inefficiently, ever, with your tax money. We take it very seriously as a staff. And this is the best staff I've ever worked with in my career. And every single person that we work with, especially our directors, our chiefs, people sitting over here, they don't waste money. They don't. and just answer your question about just why are we doing this from a staff perspective we were asked to by council council talked about it as a group and they asked us to look into it and that's where this came from so that I guess really not to pass the buck to council but the question for me would be why are the council members asking us to do this

I think for me the impetus was it was definitely number of trucks on my residential city street knowing that we have a good 10 percent of our households who are most likely dropping their household trash into the blue bins in our parks and along our paths. Also we did a cursory look at 14 different communities and learned that in comparison with Peachtree City the same communities when we did our pay and benefits study. A couple years ago we compared ourselves with other communities ranging from Johns Creek, Suwannee, Chambly, Noonan, you name it. We've learned that out of 14 communities that we often compare ourselves with, 11 of them have some kind of a municipal program. The three that don't are Suwannee, Chambly, and Johns Creek. Out of those three, two have a burn ban and one doesn't. So I don't know, it just helped me to know, it isn't, anomalous to want to have a municipal service. We get economy of scale, we get reduced price, we might get improved services at a reduced price, and I think that's worth looking at. We're not going to make a decision tonight, but I would like to continue the conversation, get some of these questions answered, and hear from at least Amwayst.

I'll also add, for me, the yard waste thing in response to the burn ban, and there was no alternative options for folks. So when I was campaigning last fall, which is grueling, but one of the best parts is talking to citizens about local issues that are impacting the quality of life of Peachtree City. And when I would go door knock and bring up an idea to do yard debris pickup, majority of folks are very excited about it. And that is what inspired me to elevate that after the election at our council retreat, which then transitioned to the idea of maybe transitioning to trash haul service. So we said it was worth researching for our staff to look at what that would look like in future city.

I'll pile on with councilman polachek in 2022 when i was running this was a a thing that was talked about quite a bit was how do we get the six trucks per week going by your house which is what i have at my house six garbage trucks a week go past my house so i don't know if your calculations are quite what my neighborhood is suzanne but certainly there is a lot of trucks on the street but that's not the issue the issue really is a quality of life taking care of business and let's remember we're getting to be a bigger city now we're not a little city we're not 5 000 people anymore we're closing in on 45 000 people here we got a lot of people to serve and we got to make sure that we keep our city clean we don't need our cart paths to be a dump site and so that's another reason why i'm in favor of this but more importantly is we've got a staff that did a heck of a job on this i talked to them over the past few weeks as they put it together and i can tell you what they spent a lot of time on this and they really asked the type of questions you're all asking so i'm glad that you stepped up to the microphone we're going to have two more meetings madam mayor is that right on this topic

We'll see. We'll see.

We'll continue the conversation. We'll continue this conversation. So if you do have some additional ones, certainly bring them back. Last but not least is the yard waste issue. That was a big one for me. And I know that some people, one of the gentlemen here just got up and said, I've got three and a half acres of land and I got a lot of yard waste. you know what i know that those big claws and this is what something that the garbage people can that the waste haulers can come up with those big claws can have a lot of hydraulics to them and they certainly can pick up large pieces heavy pieces you know pick up a five foot 18-inch round log and throw it in there for recycling. The question is, can they do it? And I believe they should be able to answer that when they come in here and talk to us, because that's going to be a big deal, even for a lot like mine. I had to pay to have it all taken away. A lot of citizens can't do that. So I think it's not only is it a cost reduction and a cost stabilization with what we're trying to do, but the additional services you're going to be getting for the same price seems to be something that I think everyone should embrace. But I will look for more of this later, Madam Mayor.

Council Members Johnson or Brown, last comment?

I take it the citizens were done. That was the end of everybody. Yeah, I'm not gonna make any, I'm just gonna say it straight out. I voted in favor of the burn ban and have regretted it every day since. I think we need to provide something for the people with one acre or larger lots that's a legitimate option so that they don't end up stockpiling dead trees, debris, and burnable material and end up with some sort of a fire danger like California faced. That's all I'm going to say about the burn ban. I have very differing opinions on both ends with regard to this. I see all the advantages I hear and I see all the disadvantages. Go ahead. We're not making a decision tonight, so I have time to decide.

Yeah, and ditto. You know, I feel like of anyone on council, this isn't something that has been my platform. But as a council, we work as a majority. So when my fellow council members choose to go this direction, and even though it may not be the direction I'm looking at going in, support my fellow council members the way that they care for this city may look different and we may have different opinions about how things should be done but I will tell you that I respect every one of them up here and they they care about all of our citizens and you know just because I one of you has a opinion in one way, we listen to all of our citizens and each of them talk to citizens that I don't talk to and I talk to citizens that they don't talk to. And even though this wasn't something that I was necessarily pushing, I've had a lot of conversations about it since this has been an issue. And it's been interesting to me that far and away, The conversations I have have been greatly in favor of this. So if you sit here and if this is the way that this decision is made, that we bring in a single trash hauler, I understand that there will be a lot of some loud voices that will be very much in disagreement with that choice and I understand and that is and that is our that's our job is to listen to everybody and to make those decisions so I appreciate your question tonight and the opportunity to answer this and I want you to know that even though we make a decision that you don't agree with it doesn't mean we don't hear you it is us as a council trying to make a decision for the best of our community at large and There is no decision that we make as council members that all of you like. That's not an experience that we get to have. Every decision we make, someone's going to be upset and someone's going to be happy. There's no way everybody in this room is going to say, we're all 100% on the same page. That's just not going to happen. And I think as leaders, I think a good leader goes back and considers decisions that they made in the past. And so when we talk about the burn ban and things like that, I do believe that making a decision, I like to have it in place for a period of time before we go back and look at it. But I do believe that good leadership, we don't sit here and say we make perfect decisions. I think we are willing to be humble and say, okay, we made this decision, it's served this number of people, can we tweak it? And I think that's a conversation worth having. Anyhow, so to answer your question, that is why I am here talking about this.

All right. And with that, we're going to move on. Thanks very much. I will ask one question. Yes. Yes.

How, how does council want to proceed with this? What's the next step?

So I think the majority of us want to continue the conversation. Uh, we have an opportunity in the future to what bring in am waste. And, um, let's find out what the, some of the questions that were asked tonight. Let's see if we can get answers. Uh, the, the track record of success in surrounding communities. how yard debris is picked up, bagged, binned, neither, or something else. And I think we just need to talk with that potential vendor about the level of options that we might choose as a city.

Okay.

So if Amway can do this, would everyone on council be okay if we scheduled that for the work session in August?

So we will also so my So we're all on the same page.

We will not be asking for any action or vote at that meeting as well It will be a discussion with em waste.

Thank you. Okay All right, we have discussion item B annexation study draft Justin, yeah Okay, Thank You madam mayor

So I'm about to call up KB Advisory Group, who is our partner in performing our annexation study for the city. Since 2023, council's been discussing a potential annexation study. The last study we did was in 2014 before this council, before a lot of us on staff. And it was time to look at our borders and see about updating that 2014 study and what it would look like potentially on some key areas of focus around our city for potential annexation. So with that, I'm not gonna ramble on, but I'm gonna introduce Mr. Jeff Koski and Mr. Trevor Butler, who are both with KB Advisors to present us with the first initial draft version of this feasibility study for annexation. and they'll go through their findings so far. And I will note for Jeff that this is not the final version. As with trash, we're not asking for any kind of action tonight. This is just an initial draft of their first findings. And after this meeting, we will have a public feedback meet and greet probably next week on this since we're gonna release it to the public. And then at some point in the future, we will be coming back for further consideration with council. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Kosky.

Thank you, Mr. Strickland. Mayor and council, pleasure to be with you again. You may remember I was here a few months ago as we kicked this thing off, the Petrie City annexation study. We are, let's. Let's be clear up front. We're not done. This is an interim update. As city manager Strickland said, we plan to be back in town probably next week. We're working on some logistics, but but we've got a date and time set up next week that will confirm that we'll, we'll be here to kind of talk, um, and over an extended period of time about our findings. Um, so, so we are still putting some of the findings together because we want to wait and make sure we hear public input at that final meeting.

So this does Jeff, can we call that an open house? Is that fair?

Fair.

So we invite the public in, ask questions, walk around, look at some drawings.

That's it. Okay. Yes. Yeah. And we'll be here for about three hours to chat through it. So thank you. Yeah. And so therefore, like I said, this is not a finalized draft yet. For some reason, the tea is found a different line over there. It's having a hard time. It's drooping. But this is a draft. And like I said, the answers are not final yet, because we're still getting feedback. And we want to do that public part first. so know that as we get into this um so this again is the draft is coming together this is really the the initial kind of context setting piece up front um you can see that it's hard to see the methodology i apologize for that but but basically what that what you're seeing there is that we did a a data analysis we looked closely at the budget we looked at your land uses we looked at your costs in your budget and by by line item we also looked at the revenues by line item We lumped the costs and the revenues together, residential and commercial. And so that's gonna be a big thing to kind of keep in mind as we go through here, residential versus commercial. And so we got a real good sense of how the city's working, how the service costs go out to your citizens and to your businesses, and how your citizens and businesses pay for those costs. And then we applied those to potential annexation areas, right? And so a potential annexation area is a place that must be attached to, go back to page, sorry, page five. So again, this map is a little small to see on the screen, but you can see the big green blob in the middle, sorry, go back to page five, please. The big green blob in the middle, that's your current city boundaries, right? If you see orange on the map, that's another city. So you see Sonoy to the south, you see Tyrone to the northwest, and you see Fayetteville to the northeast. And then you see the different colors, other than green or orange, those are the potential annexation areas. So those are the larger areas that we looked at and we said, if the city wanted to do what we might call a proactive annexation, right, If the city says, let's go out and annex some land in a large swath, what does it look like? You know, would it be feasible? And those are the areas that we looked at. I want to point out, real, to be very transparent, there is no color on the other side of the county line, right? So to the west, to the left of the big green blob is Coweta County. And I just pointed out here, we did not, KB Advisory Group did not look at anything outside of Fayette County. So there was to us again, our instructions were to, to only look at things inside the county, not outside the county. I know there's been discussions about things outside the county. I know some of you, you know, we heard that people are interested in hearing about what's going on over there. The, the, this report and this study, did not look and does not look and does not anticipate and will not recommend any annexations outside of the county. So just know that. Again, I know there's been discussions. I'm not trying to say we're not aware of what's going on, at least at a top level, but the instructions to us in this report is that we're looking at only these areas on the map that are not green and not orange.

Can you go back one page, please?

So just want to be clear upfront about that. The map, I think it's very important. And so on page four, again, just the big idea is why are we doing this? This is what was explained to us. Why are we doing this? Again, really looking for commercial opportunities. That's why it says industrial land availability, commercial tax-based growth, desire for expanded employment opportunities. All of those deal with commercial real estate. And at the core, I would say of that, is that, you know, the idea is, is that if you were to annex land, commercial land is potentially more preferable because it's more economical. Right. And so it costs over $6,000 per residential acre to service your residential acres. And and you all have a high, high service level right in the city. You all been talking about it tonight. you have a high service level, it costs money to service that. So when you bring in residential properties, when you bring in residential properties, they are for 90%, they're a money loser, right? They don't pay enough taxes to service the costs. And so our number crunching was looking at these different areas and basically the bottom line is if the area had a lot of residential, the large proactive annexation idea is a fiscal loser, just to be kind of frank, right? If we took these swaths, next page please, the map again, if we took these swaths, right, and we'll go through them one by one here in just a second, but all of these swaths, the more residential you have, the bigger money loser it is. And so what we've done is we've done some number crunching in the back to say that Um, you might annex these, you might choose to annex these and, and change the land use, right? Because you have land use controls as a city. They could become profitable if, if some of this residential became commercial and commercial landowners built on the land and they paid higher property taxes. But as it stands today, a lot of these areas would be fiscal losers to annex in large swaths. Okay. The one that we are kind of leaning on right now is a largely commercial area. It's the area between Fayetteville to the northwest and the city. So it's that light blue section along 54 up there. That one is largely commercial. It's between Fayetteville and Peachtree City. And so we think that that one could be a option for a large scale annexation in the near term. These other areas, They have good potential. There's reasons you might want to annex them. But fiscal benefit wouldn't necessarily be one of them because of the large areas of residential. But there could be other reasons to annex areas rather than just fiscal. And last thing I'll say, and then we'll go through quickly. I'm going to hand it over to Trevor to go through each of these large scale areas that we looked at. The last thing I'll say is that the annexation possibilities are not limited to these large areas, right? And so I think that's where this is going is that this first look at these large areas to say, could we, should we go and preemptively, proactively annex large swaths of land next to the city? I think our analysis is, you know, there's not a compelling reason to do a lot of that. There might be one reason to do that, but there might be compelling reasons to go micro, right, to go smaller. to say there may be parcels within some of these larger swaths that council may choose to annex over time. They may already be commercial. They may have a planned development. They may be conservation areas that you want to keep for a park. I don't know. But there could be opportunities for annexation that are not necessarily large scale, but they're parcel by parcel or groups of parcel at a time. And that is a possibility. We'll address that in the final report. tonight we're going to go quickly through these larger areas just to give you a sense of the the analysis that went into these larger areas these are pretty much the only areas that could be annexed into the city because they're the only they're contiguous there's a little bit of land that we we could have looked at but it's all residential already that's probably not going to make sense anyway so um so Trevor's going to get up talk about these large areas that we looked at just briefly but also know that there could be other potentials at a smaller scale. And then also know that we'll be back next week to kind of be here to talk in detail through a lot of this because it's a lot. There's a lot going on here. It's a lot of numbers. So anyway, we're going to spend just five more minutes going through each of these pieces just so you can kind of get a sense of what our analysis was like.

Thanks, Jeff, for setting that up, and thanks, Mayor and Council, for having us again. So I'm just going to go through kind of at a high level the areas we look through just so everyone's familiar with what we are looking at. I'm not going to belabor some of the tables and things that we have on here, but just trying to hit the highlights. So 1A, as Jeff spoke to, is the the 54 corridor sort of between yourselves and Fayetteville. The idea behind looking at this area is really, you know, the it may be in the interest of Petrie City to control this corridor a little bit more and to control the design guidelines to control land use on this corridor so that you all can have that buffer zone between yourself and Fayetteville to preserve kind of your own community character to create a gateway between yourselves and Fayetteville. So that was the idea behind this. But and I think also what Jeff is talking about was sort of the trimming is the direction we're going in with this, because as you can see, this area is we currently we're looking at it is still primarily residential and that really comes from sort of you know south of the corridor north of the corridor there so really i think the future of this is taking a look a little bit narrower kind of just along the corridor um if we can move on to 1b One B is to your east, and one of the key ideas that was guiding the analysis here, Ebenezer Road is the eastern boundary here. The idea here was that there's a number of relatively large parcels that may not pose as much of a challenge on the assembly side of things that could be good for different industrial endeavors, economic development, corporate recruitment, that sort of thing. And so we looked at this. As it currently exists, this is a very residential area. It's over 1,000 acres of residential, so heavily residential. But again, the character of it may change upon annexation. And Jeff, if you have something.

Yeah, and I'll just say, too, the Ebenezer Road, I mean, I think over time, over decades, Ebenezer Road probably commercializes and changes in character. It doesn't seem imminent today, and a lot of these parcels are residential that butt up to Ebenezer that probably over time become commercial. So we've done some analysis looking at that and to how much of this would need to turn over before it becomes feasible. But I think in the short term, you know we see the we see the the and and again one thing we didn't mention is that we talked as you all know we talked to y'all we appreciate your input we talked to staff so we've got a lot of stakeholder input and we heard that it would be nice to go out to ebenezer road to clean up the boundaries it just makes sense that that is that is peachtree city's ultimate east boundary is ebenezer road I just think that it's a medium to long-term, probably, project to bring that in, until and unless you see commercial projects that you want to bring into the city pop up along Ebenezer Road. So it's a logical place, but again, because there's so much residential in there right now, to reach out to Ebenezer Road. Again, you can't just take Ebenezer Road. You'd have to take all the residential to get to Ebenezer Road in an annexation scenario. So to bring in all of that residential to get to Ebenezer right now is not a fiscal winner. But again, over time, as Ebenezer will evolve, this could be a fiscal winner and a fiscal reason to do this. We're just not going to recommend it in the short term.

Exactly. And also just in relation to your other goals around staying competitive and whatnot. I mean, there's no danger of another city swooping in really and taking this from you. So I mean, it is more of the interim long term sort of goal as we see it. One C is south of your city. This is a, again, a largely residential area that we've heard that there is some commercial industrial sort of interest in some of these larger parcels. There are quite a few relatively large parcels that could be used for more commercial uses. So that was the idea on this one. And then just moving on to area two. This one we heard was key because it does contain Stars Mill High School, which we know that most people in the community sort of associate as one of the, you know, one of, if not the, you know, high school of Petrie City. We know that there's another within the city already. So the idea is sort of, you know, this area already feels consistent with the character of the city. Why not bring it in? There's also several other large parcels over to the east that could, you know, represent industrial or commercial development sites in the future as well. There is a lot of exempt land in here, so it's not as much of a fiscal loser, even though there is quite a lot of residential in here. But most of the land mass is really exempt land. And there would be other costs, including police, Curtis Airs, safety officers at each of the schools. That is a cost that we've also anticipated in here as well. Three, Is the last area, this is north of your city, kind of, to the right of Tyrone, north of the city. This area is almost exclusively residential. It's the heaviest sort of residential thing. The idea is that there would be sort of a chance for maybe commercial along Dogwood Trail. Most of these parcels are quite long, which could pose challenges to commercial conversion. So this is certainly sort of the longest range annexation prospect as we see it. And Jeff, if you have another comment.

This one is a good one to refer back to our conversations with fire and police and thinking about servicing these areas. This one in particular, the feedback was it would be really hard to get our vehicles up there. You've got to kind of go around your elbow to service this area. So again, a lot of this was number crunching. It's also taking this qualitative input from council and staff and department heads. And so again, this one, the numbers didn't make sense, but also the department's heads, without even looking at the numbers, the police and fire were mostly like, this would be hard to service. So unless there's an otherwise compelling reason, this would be an area that we're not gonna recommend. So those were the main areas that we looked at. Again, I don't think any of them are overwhelmingly compelling to take in the swaths that we looked at. I think 1A between here and Fayetteville along 54 is compelling. I think it needs to be trimmed and that's part of what we want to kind of talk to the public about next week as we look at maps and things like that. We can kind of hone in on what the trimming looks like. So that's really where we are. Again, I think the recommendations are that you really look closely at your 54 commercial corridor as an immediate opportunity and that you've got some of these other places that are medium to long-term opportunities, but more importantly, you probably have some short-term opportunities, but they're just much smaller and sort of opportunistic, right? As opportunities come around, as people want to be annexed, or as economic development opportunities come around, you may pull pieces out of some of these areas to accelerate, but at least you'll have the background now to know that. So that's the big idea. I know I'm sure you have questions. Just the last thing I'll say before questions is that Next steps, as I said, we'll be here next week. And then we want to come back in August with a fully baked report that incorporates all the feedback that we're getting right now and present that to you, and we can kind of present it as the final recommendation draft, and then you guys can kind of decide what to do with that at that point. But so we'll be here next week, and then we'll be at one of your meetings in August with the full draft, and then you tell us where to go from there.

okay thank you what a great summation council questions comments first blush I like what I see I like your ratings that you put on there from 1a all the way down to 3 I may have a little movement here and there but basically I agree with you we may end up having to put this thing through a sausage grinder and and come up with whatever, and then take those but leave these behind. That's the reason why we hired you, to help us go through all of that, because getting big swaths are great. It looks good on a map, but is it really good for us economically and for the surrounding area? And can we service it properly for police and fire? Those are important things that we've got to take into consideration before we say, yeah, damn the torpedo, straight ahead. No, we got to look at what we're going to be doing. And I appreciate the stuff that you're doing, because that's going to help us a lot.

Council, other questions and comments?

I have a question. When you come back, is there any way to break down any of these individual, like 1A and some of these sections, break down and show us which of the lots on there are commercial, which are industrial and whichever is that I mean, I'm residential, you can pretty much tell it's a housing development. So that's kind of like the obvious, but if it's a vacant land, we don't know which way it's currently zoned.

Right.

So I mean, color coding would be perfect. Okay.

I don't really have any questions, but thank you. This just needed to be done. I think our last annexation study was like 14 years old or something like that. So I'm grateful to have something that we can refer to and make decisions from. So thank you.

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Thank you. Why it's recommended by associations in the state to do this every five years. Because you mentioned there's medium, long-term goals, but we haven't done one in 14 years. Who would have thought Fayetteville would grow so far out west 10 years ago, even five years ago? so that's that's one area definitely mindful of making sure it's not sharing our services that there's not a revenue loss to the city be smart about this and also preserving some of that growth fables coming towards us so that that's an area for me personally we have to be really mindful of preserving what that looks like so thank you for your work all right we'll look forward to um details about an open house and invite the public in uh sounds like an afternoon next week and um

Thanks very much. This is a wonderful start. Justin, did you have anything else you wanted to add?

No. No, I don't think so. I think we are right on track to where we said we would be at this point, and I think working with KB has been great. They've been great with staff, and I appreciate the efforts they've put forth so far, and we'll see this through to the finish line. Yes, sir.

We're here to win.

Thanks again. right old agenda items we have none new agenda item 720601 continuation of deer management program all right good evening mayor and council tonight we're gonna

kind of provide an overview of our our pilot season with the deer management and kind of the goals and I believe this does have an action item to approve a continuation so we'll just kind of get started next slide wow that slide is really messed up um so why do we want to manage deer population in an urban environment so As wildlife, as deer populations increase and it gets larger than what the urban environment can sustain, it causes a lot of consequences. We want to manage those populations and this is, we kind of went over this the last time we did it, but prevent vehicle collisions, minimize property damage, reduce the risk of tick-borne illnesses or diseases spread, and then just to maintain a balance ecologically in the environment and biodiversity. Next slide. So this is kind of the data we've collected. There's been over 200 reported deer-related collisions in Peachtree City since 2022, mainly at the intersection of Peachtree Parkway and Interlochen. Fayette County is ranked second in Georgia with 514 deer-related crashes per year. and collisions cause property damage and injuries. Next slide. So this is where we kind of get into our actual outcome from the pilot program. So some of the season outcomes and success metrics. So this last season, a total of 16 deer were tagged during the 2025-2026 season. 15 of those were doe and one buck. So we considered it a success because the idea is to remove the does from the population to control the birth of new deer and to kind of curl the next generation. So we deemed the outcome highly successful and it aligned with the herd management expectations that we had with our wildlife consultants. Next slide. So what we did after the season, we conducted a comprehensive review of the season to identify operational areas for improvement, utilized the harvest data and hunter feedback to review and refine any safety protocols that we could make it more efficient. evaluated new zones and acreage. And we're still currently evaluating new areas where we could put boundaries for expansions with our GIS team. And then we're continuing the partnership with our consultants. Next slide. So the conclusion is the pilot program was a success as we see it and warrants continuation. It's been successful, models exist. believe we went over this last year and then safety can be insured with proven methods i think our pilot season showed that we can we can do this safely and so we're really asking council to consider proceeding with the program for 2026 2027 and we're going to consider expanding so a couple of things i do want to note here is we are still looking at expanding areas right i'm working with harold and recreation his goal is to expand those areas if possible another thing we want to look at with georgia wildlife is we're reaching out to them we haven't gotten a response we're looking at possibly having city tags that we can issue to the hunters that way the the tags so the hunters tags aren't counted against them for hunting so it would hopefully entice them to do more hunting in the city because they're not worried about it counting against their tags on their license as as a tagged deer so those are those are kind of two things we're looking at doing at this time we're really asking for the continuation harold said we needed to hurry up and and and get it because we need to really open the lottery right we need the time to review the applications and go through that process so that we can set it up georgia wildlife hasn't officially released the hunting season it usually comes out late july and i believe begins sometime in september but this will give us with the approval it'll give us the ability to go ahead and open up the application process so we can get started rolling with another continuation of this program council questions i'll jump in okay

This is a pet project of mine, obviously. I was on the DNR website today, and I believe they have set the dates because it didn't say proposed. It says clearly archery only, either sex, starts September 12th of 2026. Okay. And then, of course, we get to do archery hunting all through all of the other seasons, and then we get the extended season, which ends on January 31st of 2027. Correct. So I think they've kind of said it. The other thing is, is there a need for city tags? Because the state authorizes that a hunter can take up to 12 deer, 10 does, two antlered, which is 12. Are there a lot of hunters who are taking more than that?

I don't necessarily know that they're taking more than that. Um, I'm not sure during their preference, like where they like to hunt or what, what, where they're wanting to get them. I think Harold just looked at it as another incentive that it won't count against their tags. Cause a lot of hunters kind of have their own places they like to hunt. And what we're really looking for is them to come here, right. To do a population control for us. So I guess, You know, hunters can be very picky about which, which deer they want to, which tree they climb, which one they want to take. So I think if they know the tag doesn't go against their tags, they may take, you know, a smaller one or, or may take something that they wouldn't normally take that would count against their tags, depending on, and we're also. The other part is we're working with processors in the area to see if we can create a relationship there because obviously they're not gonna wanna keep all of it. So we're gonna try to figure out that methodology too.

well anything that makes them take more deer i'm good for um i do agree our first hunting program it was a pilot i agree it was successful you know taking any deer out of there is great if we could start on september the 12th the opening day that would be even great greater because last year and a lot of you probably don't know this but i mean i traveled the golf park cart path through a stinky trail all the time. The first several weeks of hunting season was nice and dry. And by the time we started, it was a swamp. So, and I don't know that the weather pattern will be the same or different, but it was just miserable the first few days of hunting season to watch that they had to go through this, I mean, deep water to get to the tree stands and stuff.

That was the goal in the conversation to, if we can start the application process, we should have no issue starting on open.

And just to echo what Jonathan said, obviously we're thrilled to death that there were, there were no accidents. So a lot of the people who were very vocal early on saying, Oh, somebody is going to get killed. Somebody is going to get shot with an arrow and all kinds of other stuff that did not happen, which is a wonderful thing. Um, I'd like to suggest though that the deer management program really run the full season and I know it worked out very well at the tail end where we open stuff up to city employees and I know they were forever grateful for that so I mean if we could take advantage of the entire calendar instead of taking a break in the middle if we can do that that would be even better if you expand to some other areas do you know which areas you're looking at

I know Harold was looking at some areas towards the north possibly, but he's still waiting for Georgia Wildlife to contact them because he wants their opinion on sizing and making sure that we're designating areas that are adequately sized for hunting and that we're doing it properly.

I know there have been several times where I've suggested that we open up city-owned greenbelt areas that are abutting private property for an individual hunter to ask for permission to hunt into the greenbelt adjacent to their house. Is that still something that you guys are looking at?

We can look into it. I don't remember Harold actually mentioning, like, doing it to that extent i know him and chris were were talking about just finding more green space to hunt but we can we can look at that option possibly i've looked i've looked at the if council wants

I've looked at the Q public net maps with the trees and green belts and cart paths and stuff pretty extensively trying to figure out if there are some other areas. And I, I came to kind of sort of the conclusion that even being allowed to go 50 or a hundred feet into some of those green belts, if your property abuts, it would be a significant addition to land that you can hunt and how many deer you're going to come across in a particular area. So, I mean, I would seriously like to see that explored as an option. And that would have to be something that a hunter would have to apply or a property owner would have to apply like for a special permit where we would have to look at it and designate it, make sure there is no path running through there or anything that would be a hazard the other thing is i've suggested a couple of times um not always on the dais but i've had conversations with chris last year about trying to have a registry and it's really it's a when i say a registry it's not like we're trying to make you all register for stuff but it's actually a way to take people who are interested in hunting and property owners who have lots of land that they'd like to have some of the deer removed, but they don't necessarily hunt and link them up. So if we could get hunters to register and property owners to say, I'm open to having somebody come on my property to hunt and then provide them with a way to communicate with each other. let them make their agreements on who they're gonna hunt on their land, give them the express written authorization that's required by law, and that would allow more individual hunting on some of the larger lots we have through Peachtree City, because as I know, I didn't ask for this, but we have, what, 1,113 lots of one acre or more throughout the city, that are residential single family homes, not necessarily all of them could be hunted based on where the streets and roads are. But I mean, it's certainly an opportunity where somebody may have a piece of property that could be hunted, but they don't hunt, but they'd like to have the deer removed or at least thinned out. I think, you know, meshing up the hunters and the property owners is like a really efficient way to do it. And we don't have to manage the program. We just have to make it available for them to get in contact with each other. So, I mean, I'd really like to discuss those two options a little further. I mean, if you want to come back a second time, I know we're looking to make a motion on the start of the program tonight. I mean, I'm ready to make the motion right now, but I'll let the other council members say a thing or two, but I think that we should definitely explore the other two options.

I put out, so. Council members, any other comments? I'm for continuing the program myself.

same. She covered the one question I had. Yeah.

Mr. Holland. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm in favor of continuing it for, uh, another year. Uh, I think it was a good success. I like, uh, what councilwoman Brown said about the connections with people who have land, but don't hunt, let a hunter come on and hunt on their land. I like that concept. I don't know how it can be done through the city, but I, I like the concept of that. And, uh, looking at other places all over the city where there's enough room and a proper place to let hunters go in there. It doesn't have to be just the one along that we've done down on the south side. There's a lot of deer in the north side where I live, and we'd love to have you come up there and do some hunting. So otherwise, I'm in favor of this. And if anyone wants to make a comment, we want more discussion before we move on.

Just real quick, there's every Facebook page under the sun. I don't know why there isn't a Facebook page that does exactly that. I have private property off of Robinson Road. DM me if you're interested in talking about hunting on my private property. Maybe the city doesn't have to get involved, but I think the forum is a good idea.

Between now and our next meeting, I'll explore the social media and see if there's something out there or somebody that I can reach out to to... to kind of take that on to administration, you know, administrate the page. Can I get a motion? I would like to make the motion. No surprise there. Um, uh, madam mayor, I'd like to make the motion that we approve, uh, agenda item 0 7 2 6 0 1 continuation of deer management program, um, for archery season commencing on September 12th, 2026 through January 31st, 2027. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. New agenda item 720602, Fire Station 85. Good evening, Chief. Good evening.

bet you didn't think we'd ever get to you it's a long night um no i was i'm fine i was learning some stuff so thank you all for uh having me tonight um the we're about to take the next big step uh towards building this fire station um so This is gonna be the guaranteed maximum price for the project, and I'm gonna introduce Tim Simons, who is our project manager from Morgan Mill Consulting, and he's gonna go over the details with you.

Thank you, Chief. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council. Having a bit of a mic issue here. Okay, so I'm here for the to seek your approval for the guaranteed maximum price for Fire Station 85 project for Meeja Construction as their construction manager at risk in the sum of $7,981,687. As you recall back in, it was the April 16th council meeting you approved the appointment of Meeja Construction as construction managers at risk, and since that time, We've been working with them and the rest of the project team to kind of come up with this guaranteed maximum price. That's a process of them going through to their subcontractors and looking at getting the best possible price for it. Also doing a constructability review so that we kind of do a sense check on the design of the fire station to make sure that there's nothing there which isn't going to cost too much or if there's a better way of doing it. We did all of that kind of review. And we've come to this point now where, after checking all of their subcontractors' prices, we've got this GMP of just under 8 million. If you recall, back in April, the award was 422,500, which was initially for their general conditions and general requirements and their overhead and profit fee. So this will actually be change order number one to increase from that 422,500 up to the 7.9 million. That's a big jump. But that's the way that generally we do this with construction management at risk. If we are given approval, we're planning to break ground in August and hopefully we'll be complete by the end of June in 2027. So happy to take any questions that you might have.

Council? I'm very excited about this. Ready to move. All right, can I get a motion?

Yes, Madam Mayor. I'll make a motion. We approve. Item number 07-2602, Fire Station 85, Construction Manager at Risk, approval of the guaranteed maximum price of $7,981,687. Second. Second.

have a motion and a second all in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries thank you very much thank you that was really easy to spend 7.9 million dollars wow public hearing uh 7 26 03 fiscal year 2027 operating and capital improvement budget justin strickland all right everybody in here ready for another two hours here we go yep

Oh yeah, you gotta read the protocol, public hearing.

Where's Jasmine?

Oh, she doesn't have to do that. We'll have Kelly read the protocol.

Do you need one?

Okay, before you begin, we're gonna take a five minute break and we will reconvene at nine o'clock sharp. I'm not kidding, nine o'clock. And now we need Justin.

After all that.

They get away herding cats here.

Jasmine's not here to read the protocol either. Do you have it? It's right there. I can read it. There they are.

Usually it's them hurrying us up.

We were at public hearing 7-26-03, fiscal year 2027, operating and capital improvement budget. And this is a public hearing.

Yes, and the protocol is as follows. When the public hearing is open, members of council will become hearers. No action on their part is in order until the mayor declares the hearing complete. First, city staff will present the item. The mayor will then allow a total of 10 minutes for the members of the public to comment. No individual members of the public will be given more than five minutes to speak. Time limits may only be extended by a majority vote of council. Prior to closing the public hearing, city staff and the public will be given the opportunity to ask questions. When the mayor is assured that input is complete, the public hearing shall be ended and council may then debate the issue and render a decision. All speakers from the public are asked to follow these rules. One, please wait to be recognized by the mayor. Two, come to the microphone and state your name and neighborhood prior to making remarks. Three, keep individual remarks under five minutes and please do not repeat others' comments. And four, address all comments to the mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Justin Strickland.

thank you mayor okay thank you to all of you who've made it this far so we're going to talk about the fiscal year 27 budget as you may all recall we had a special workshop session in june to specifically talk about the budget and the budget only i think we spent about two hours on it with myself and jonathan and kelly and dustin going through the slides trimmed I have the same slots tonight but I've trimmed some out I've really only kept mostly the general fund in here to talk about the general fund I've taken stormwater and some of the other funds out of this to kind of just simplify this presentation tonight we I think we went over them in detail at the previous meeting but if you do have any questions about any of those funds as we as we go through or after we're happy to answer questions with those but I I knew we were I knew we had some big topics tonight so I'm gonna try to get through this as expeditiously as possible for you all so talking about market trends like we talked about last time I was hitting next and I remembered I couldn't but thank you One thing I like to always hit out is the consumer price index. What has it done over the past X amount of years? Lately, we've been going back to 2009. Oops, did I accidentally click it? okay um the big highlight here like we said last time is since covid since 2020 which was a changing point we all know that and what the economy's done since then you see how how steep the line has gotten since then um 27 increase in just six years on cpi and that is just year to year that's not including the compoundedness of those year-to-year increases But basically, what cost you $76 in 2020 will now cost you $100 today. And that is real for you in your pockets. It's real for me in my personal life and my family. And it's also real for the city. We are not immune to price increases in things that we purchase, just like we're not in our personal lives either. So next slide. Another big factor in just the markets in general is labor. If you look at the labor market from 2009 to 2020, when COVID hit, over those years, which are 12 years, during those 12 years, 25% increase on average salaries in the U.S. In just the previous six years, half the time, the same amount percentage 25% growth in average earnings in the US over the past six years as compared to the previous 12. So it's just a different reality that we live in post COVID for people who are no longer in the workforce or retired pre COVID. The market competition even in local government is intense and that's why we try to stay higher up in the market so we are actually a selection for good employees where we have employees that want to work here and choose us because we do have highly competitive pay for our markets such as police and fire. public works every every position we do but police and fire have definitely become very very competitive and hard to hire and so and that's throughout the country we've seen tons of fire departments and police departments that are just having major major problems staffing and fortunately we don't have that problem at this time because we are competitive in the market so next slide Next one is our citizen to employee ratio. This goes back to 2009 as well. What the orange line shows you is our number of employees, and that's measured over, or it's our employee to population ratio, which is the orange line, which is measured over to the right. Over to the left is our population, which is measuring the blue bars. So since 2009, you see our population has grown. our staffing has also increased but the ratio of staff to a thousand residents has stayed fairly flat you see during covid we actually did do a reduction in force which decreased our ratio and since then we've brought that ratio back up in years since covid next slide state legislative impacts have huge impacts on us as local government we We have to do what the state tells us to do. They're our bosses as far as our budgets go, how we can raise revenue, what types of revenue we can raise. The state are the ones that tell us what we can and can't do. So a few years ago, HB 581 was passed, which extends a floating homestead exemption to all homesteaded properties in the city. It's for the county and the school boards as well. Homeowners that are already granted a homestead, if you have a homestead exemption that you've applied with the tax commissioner's office, then this automatically goes on to your tax bill. It ties increases to your assessments to the rate of inflation with a cap of 3%, I believe. Is that right, Kelly? 3%? Yeah. So your taxes cannot go higher than 3% any given year. The rate of inflation is based on the... revenue commissioner of the state of Georgia decides what the rate of inflation is every year. And the year this year, they decided it was 2.7%. So everything is capped this year at 2.7%. The reason I'm bringing this up is because this is the first year this is in effect. Last year, all homestead values were frozen to the previous year. This year, it actually the cap goes into effect. And this is the way it will work in following years. And this does not apply to commercial, industrial, or non-homestead or residential. Those will be assessed and taxed the same they always have been. Next slide. All right, this legislative session, SB 33 created a new sales tax called an L-host, a local homestead option sales tax. It allows counties to adopt a 1% local sales tax to provide property tax relief exclusively for homesteaded properties. So you see the state is very heavily focused on homesteaded properties. It does not expand revenue for the city. So if the county and all the municipalities ran this 1% sales tax, it would not be a new source of revenue, quote unquote. It would replace homesteaded property tax revenue. So whatever is brought in with that 1% tax countywide would then be applied as a exemption, as a relief to homesteaded properties in Fayette County, Peachtree City, Fayetteville, et cetera. It requires a local act of the General Assembly. last month council you did approve a resolution to submit to the General Assembly for us to potentially run an l-host with Fayette County it runs for ten years so after the General Assembly approves it it would go to a voter referendum if the voters approve it then it would run for ten years before renewals required distribution is automatically calculated which is a bonus for us we don't have to negotiate with the other jurisdictions in the county And the way it works is the previous year's sales tax collections would offset the next year's homestead property taxes. Any excess proceeds above 100% exemption would then lower the total millage rate for all properties in the county. distinction from floss so the floss the floating local option sales tax was created with HP 581 a few years ago it reduces the property tax burden for all properties what's what I think is really good about l-host is it reduces the tax burden specifically for homesteaded properties As I said in the workshop last month, I'm a big fan of El Host. I think the process to get there was very frustrating for local governments to watch with the state, but I think what they ended up coming up with with El Host actually is beneficial. I think it would be a very good thing to run in our county. I think it would relieve a lot of homestead of properties in our city. As I said last meeting, I think, you know, with my calculations, somewhere between 80 to 100% of our homestead of property, you know, would be exempted. So your property, you know, let's say you've got an 85% reduction on an average house in Peachtree City with with an L host. your property taxes would go from $1100 to $100. Like it would be a massive relief for our property owners. So I'm a big fan of this. And I hope that the state keeps it in place in the next session. I know that they've, you know, are prone to kind of reevaluate and redo things. But I do think this is a good one. And I hope that they keep it and I hope that we are able to run it. And one thing I forgot to point out, I'll point out now, The soonest that we could collect AL Host is January 1st, 2028. So no matter when it goes to the General Assembly, when our voters would approve it, it cannot collect according to state law until January 2028. The property tax relief would not be seen until calendar year 2028 later in the year when tax bills go out. So we're looking at two years from now.

Would this be in the election of 27 then? Because it's a municipal election. Not as of right now. Or 2027. Yeah, 2027 is the next one.

Yeah. So in the special session that the state just called, no LHOST resolutions were approved. If they don't call another special session between now and then, the next time is the general session in early 2027. So we, as jurisdictions in Fayette County, are hoping that they would then approve our resolution then, and then we could put it on the ballot in 2027. Okay, next slide. All right, general fund revenues. Next slide. So overview of the general fund for this upcoming fiscal year. You see our original budget for fiscal year 26 over on the left at 57.9. Our projected is coming in revenues at 59.3, expenditures at 62.3 for a cash revenue, basically a fund balance deficit of 2.9. That entire 2.9 is the major building, the major property that we are about to purchase and close on next week. We are purchasing for $3 million and we intentionally are using reserves to purchase that. So that is the difference you see there. And then proposed for this year, we're at 60.7, really 60.8 when you round up. projected fund balance is fifty seven point two percent but as we get further into the PowerPoint will show how we actually plan to reduce fund balance using some cash reserves over the next year or two so next slide major revenue impacts ad valorem taxes we recommend a flat millage rate we did the full rollback last year we roll back the year previously we do with 581 and the impacts of it and also the potential The potential benefits of an L-host, we recommend that we keep the millage rate flat. We anticipate the digest to increase by 3.36%. Homesteads, as I said before, are capped at 2.7. Reassessments are not flat, but we're not seeing the growth like we had before of reassessments in the relief period. soon post-covid years after covid we're not seeing massive inflation with those assessments recently so estimated total property tax revenue is 24.6 which is about a million dollar increase from 2026 and i will say uh I'll say it when we get to the pie chart, but basically our portion of ad valorem taxes of property taxes for our revenue sources is actually decreased by 1% this year. So what that means is, let's say our property taxes are 44% of our revenue, last year they're going down to 43 this year so an entire percentage point of our revenue is decreasing with property taxes which means that our other revenue sources are growing faster than property taxes which is a good thing Local option sales tax, we estimate it to increase by 3%, which is actually pretty low for local option sales tax. Most years we see it increase by 5%, but we have seen Lost and Sposs both kind of, they're not decreasing, they're not flat, but they're not growing as fast as they usually do. So we're being conservative with our estimate for loss this year. And then interest income, we're also decreasing what we usually budget and interest income because we have spent all the ARP funds. And so we are decreasing our interest projections on revenue. All right, next. Here's the breakdown. Yeah, I said 44. So last year, ad valorem taxes were 45. And this year, they're 44% of the budget. And you see losses are second there with about 22% and then all the other categories there as well. And we, I know Kelly last meeting went through what other taxes and franchise taxes and everything that's included in that. So next slide. General fund expenses. This is just a review since 2012 of our millage rate in the city. In 2012 it was 7.178. Over that time, over 13 years, we've decreased it to 5.840, which is where we are now. So that's 1.338 mils we've reduced in 13 years. And that adds up to what, Kelly?

Do you have your notes? Total value of production since a day's dollar since 2012 with a cost of $5,650,795 to the city and a $273 in savings to the average property owner. Per year. and that does not consider the compounding effect.

Right, okay, next slide.

Proposed budget highlights and expenses, and these budget, these bullet points that I'm about to go through are basically the increase that you see in the budget this year are these bullet points three percent cola for our staff uh technology costs have held steady there are two percent increase there we do have some software costs that are increasing this year like our police dash cams for their cars last of our three required nine new firefighters for station 85 which you just approved to construct uh in the previous item So we will be ready to staff that when it's built, and next year we will not have to budget for three firefighters like we have the past three years in a row. So that will be rolling off in fiscal year 28. We have three other new positions we're recommending in police, a police admin, one more planner, and then a EMS training coordinator for fire. um the addition of the youth council and public art the 2027 comprehensive plan we did decide to contract that out for next year's comprehensive plan our ongoing competition well ongoing competition for labor and then increased utility costs mainly that's electricity and i have already tasked kelly with going through with finance on is our electricity going up the past two years the way it has because rates with fayette coweta Georgia power or is it our usage I'm sure it's a little bit of both but what is really driving this electricity increase we've seen over the past two years and then increased health care costs health care goes up every single year and so these bullets that you see here are the increase in the budget this year we do have we found savings as well we have tons of lines where we've gone down we have other lines where we've gone up But these are kind of the big just additions in the budget this year. All right, general fund expenditures by division. We have what we call the big four. So police and fire make up a little under 50% of the entire budget of the city. When you add in public works and recreation, which are our four big operational public facing departments, you're at about 75%. So 75% of what we spend money on in the city is for those four departments to operate and serve our citizens. Next slide. And on the other side of that, expenditures by category. So not department, but what are we actually spending on? 70 or 66, two thirds of our budget is personnel. It's either salaries or what it takes to fund those personnel costs such as healthcare, FICA, all those things that come with having employees. And the reason why employees are the biggest part of what we pay in two-thirds is because what we do is services. What we do requires employees. We have to have our fire and PD 24-7, 365, and that drives a lot of that cost as well as public works and recreation with a lot of the labor that we do in-house. Purchase contractual services is the next biggest category. And that comes down to back to services, some services we don't provide directly or we have support with. And that eats up 20 more percent of the budget. So really, when you get into the rest of 10, you know, under 10% of the budget is supplies and capital outlay and things like that.

Next slide.

So the general fund go next. So here's the general fund budget summary. This is basically the balance sheet for the budget. You see on the left, total source of funds we have at 60.779253. On the right is our total use of funds, which is our expenditures balancing at 60.779253. So we are presenting a balanced budget to you. Next slide. The five year financial model. Do you wanna talk about this, Kelly? I'll talk about it if you.

I'll talk about it.

Okay, go.

I say I'll talk about it this is this is the next slide is going to show the six million dollars the six million dollars for the renovations to an expansion for police and for what we are looking to do facilities authority bond for the debt service on that but this doesn't include that this is just status quo moving on we would be putting 62 around in the next five years 62 into fund balance um it's

yeah so this so this this this version of the model of status quo this version is we don't use any reserves we don't potentially take out a bond and you see that our fund balance keeps increasing to 62 point almost 5% by fiscal year 2032 so next slide This model shows, you're welcome, I'm sorry I called on you. This model shows what it looks like with taking six million out, which the six million we wanna use in reserves is planned to supplement the grant we received from the Department of Homeland Security for our police and emergency operations center upgrades. The police upgrades include the renovation of the gun range we purchased and the current police building. To outfit it into a more modern Situation and since we bought the gun range and we purchased the major building Police admin and fire admin are both going to run out of the major building the gun range is going to become a training center and emergency operations center and then the current PD building will be renovated and potentially expand evidence because they don't have a ton of evidence storage and also format it better for patrol and detective operations for the current PD building so that's what the six million would be spent on and then we do potentially want to look at a twelve million dollar fifteen fifteen year bond that bond would fund the improvements to Kedron also the Braylon multi-purpose field And if we had some money left, which we think we might between those two projects, we could come up with one other project. We have plenty that we're looking at to fund as well. So that payment's gonna be around a million a year. And you see with keeping the millage rate where it is, not increasing it, not decreasing it, You see down at the bottom the percentages of where our fund balance will end up there. It ends up in the mid-40s, and it stays steady in the mid-40s as we move forward to 2032. And I do want to point that out as, you know, okay, we're going to have to take on a million-dollar payment every year. We will absorb that, and we will not increase the millage rate. We'll be able to do that with growth of other revenue funds and things like that. So next slide. All right, I'm coming up on the end, capital, no I'm not, capital funds, oh gosh, the font's all messed up there. But it's 1.416 is the font there. I just wanna point out that our capital funds, we finance things, and you see the things we're financing there, and we finance things on a five-year rotating basis. Every year, we basically have five different bonds that we're paying off with equipment and vehicles. One rolls off, one rolls on. The reason we do this is it helps us keep our capital steady every year. And I'll point this out by saying the 1.416 of this capital budget is only $15,000 more than last year's. So it helps keep us smooth out. the capital outweighs and it keeps it keeps us from having years where we have to spend five million dollars and then another year where we only only spend one it keeps it very steady every year with how we fund our capital all right next all right what does it cost to live in Peachtree City and what do you get for your money next slide so when you look at our millage rates Peachtree City does have the highest municipal millage rate in Fayette County although we are getting very close to Fayetteville with rollbacks we've done next slide when you add in what the county does, and you guys, council, you've seen this ad nauseum. But when you add in what the county does, the county does provide services to Tyrone and Fayetteville that they do not provide us and this is because we do them ourselves. So this right here is the county fire. So county fire covers Tyrone it covers Brooks and it covers the unincorporated parts of the county Fayetteville does have their own fire department but they do not run their own EMS so the kind of more peach color here is they do also have to charge Tyrone and Fayetteville Brooks and Fayette County unincorporated and EMS which we do both of those things we're one of the few municipalities that does both fire and EMS ourselves and our citizens benefit from that because we do it more efficiently than the county does and we do it better in my opinion so basically what that does is you take our municipal rate you take the county maintenance and operations rate which everyone pays and you take the e911 Our millage rate with the county added in adds up to 9.813. With Fayetteville and Tyrone, they actually surpass us with 10.619 and 10.682. And one thing to note, too, is no matter where you live in Fayette County, if you go to the next slide, I think it, does it cover the schools? Yes. The reason why I don't include the schools until the very end is because once you add the schools in, you can't even really read what the cities and county charge because by and large, and you all know this as council, what you pay on your property tax bill is mostly to the schools. About two-thirds of your property tax bill is going to the Board of Education. Only about 20% of it is coming to Peachtree City for everything you get. And so when you actually take these millage rates, 30.282 down to 27 in Fayette County unincorporated, the difference of what a resident in Fayette County pays no matter where they live is less than $500 a year. Go ahead. So in Peachtree City, where do your property taxes go? On an average house of $508,000 in Peachtree City, you're paying about six grand. About 4,000 of it is going to the Board of Education. About 1,100, 1,200 is coming to Peachtree City. And then the rest is going to the county through their 911 and their maintenance and operations. Next slide. So what do you get in Peachtree City? You are already paying less for an average value house than Fayetteville and Tyrone. And you're also getting an ISO 1 fire and premier EMS department. You're getting great parks and recreation. We have over 40 parks. our in our city which is a big number for a city our size one of the best libraries in the state of Georgia you know Tyrone and Fayetteville the county they have some paths but they do not have the paths we have so you're getting a hundred mile multi-use path system that we maintain ourselves. You're getting neighborhood and median maintenance, which is not done in other places. And you're also getting one of the best police departments in the nation. And the sentence up there is one to really take in. It costs just $1.13 more per day to live in Peachtree City than in an incorporated Fayette at the end of the day. I think it's a pretty good deal. Next slide. I'm not gonna talk about this one. Next slide. I'm not gonna talk about that one. Next slide. Okay, budget calendar. I skipped some because we talked about them last time. But so on June 22, we had the workshop. Tonight is June, July 29, or July 9, we are having the public hearing. And the anticipated approval for the budget will take place on Thursday, August 20. And I will entertain well, we'll do the public hearing and I will entertain any questions.

With that, I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in favor? We have one, and, sir, you get five minutes.

Can we give them 10? I'm just kidding.

I'm not going to take five minutes. So I'm here for a repeat of last year. I was in favor of the budget last year. It's a solid budget. Council staff did a great job, again, this year. um the the thing that you lived here since 2007 and a couple years before that what i've seen in the past past administrations past city city staff they have we have assets in the city parks roads things like that and they're allowed to fall into disrepair people stop using them And then because nobody uses them because they're kind of junkie, then then the city says nobody's using it. We're not even going to take care of this anymore. And that's the most disingenuous thing that I see. And so I really appreciate again this year budgets come forward to maintain and keep what we have. THINKING ABOUT THE SALES, VARIOUS SALES TAXES, IT'S THIS ALPHABET SOUP OF LOST AND SPLOST, E-SPLOST, L-HOST, FLOST AND T-SPLOST. I KNOW THAT THE STATE CAPS US TO AN 8% MAXIMUM. I THINK THERE'S OPPORTUNITY COSTS BETWEEN L-HOST AND FLOST AND T-SPLOST IN THERE SOMEWHERE. SOME, IT MIGHT BE GREAT TO HAVE SOME HOMESTEAD OFFSET. THAT WOULD PRECLUDE US IF WE GO TO 8% FOR MAYBE A T-SPLOST. IT DEPENDS ON, I THINK, WHAT THE RESIDENTS OF THE CITY WANT. I LIKE THE FACT THAT HB 581 HAS CAPT THE TAXES TO A 2.7% THIS YEAR. I LIKE THE COLA FOR CITY STAFF. professional city staff. I want to see that they get paid. When I interact with the city and the staff, public works, fire, PD, just nothing but professionalism, that's what we should expect in our city. THE FIVE-YEAR MODEL, THE 47% UNASSIGNED. I THINK THERE'S SOME ROOM TO TAKE A LOOK AT WHERE CAN WE GO THERE. IT'S A FAIRLY LARGE RESERVE, AND MAYBE SOME STUDY COULD BE DONE TO WHAT DO WE DO WITH THAT IN THE FUTURE. COULD MILLAGE COME DOWN SOME? I'M NOT SURE. IT'S SOMETHING I THINK MERITS SOME STUDY. I like the focus on stormwater. Cities 50 years old, infrastructure starts to wear out. I live close enough to Peachtree Parkway to see continual main breaks, and I know stormwater doesn't do that, but there will be stormwater facilities that will deteriorate and need to make sure that those get maintained before there's a huge problem there. YEAH I LAST COMMENT IS I THINK I LIVE IN THAT AVERAGE HOUSE AND BASICALLY 1200 A YEAR GOES TO PEACH TREE CITY I HAVE THINGS THAT I PAY FOR GYM MEMBERSHIPS MY WATER BILLS HIGHER THAN THAT I FEEL LIKE I GET SO MUCH VALUE FOR WHAT I GET IN PEACH TREE SEE EVERYTHING JUSTIN MENTIONED IN THE SLIDES SO THANK YOU GOOD BUDGET THANK YOU IS THERE ANYONE WHO WISHES TO SPEAK IN OPPOSITION

Seeing none, I hereby close the public hearing. Council? Who wants to go first?

Let's let them go first.

Mr. Polachek, any comments?

Thanks, Justin. And thank you, Paul, for your public comment and everybody else who's still here with us. So this is my new guy, it's my first job at a city budget. So first just wanna give thanks to your time with me going through. I had a large range of questions that I sent over and they're all answered promptly and quickly. So thank you for that. I just wanna reiterate a few of the topics that we had discussed. and one being the expenditure increase. And you know, sometimes with public budgeting, and I saw this with agency work to there's many line items that are common expenses across all departments like health premiums, you know, they're not one time line items that are underneath a certain department, but you see them across and sometimes it's easy to lose track of some of the increases in the budget. So What I had asked Justin for was a breakdown in which he provided in the slide as well so that our residents know where the 2.8 increase is going. I think that's important and something you've provided. And when I look at those additions, they're justified, in my opinion. And a few of them we've voted on this year, like the Youth Council and the Public Art Program. Obviously, I am in full support of the 3% COLA program. as well, and one point on the COLA, which Paul elevated as well, And I'll tie it to maintenance, right? Sometimes the, which I think the team does a good job and there's always room for opportunity, but the idea of always having to add more people to solve an issue, sometimes you look at the retention rates and let's say we don't add a 3% COLA, you know, those maintenance folks are going to go somewhere else. It's going to then take three months to hire a new person, get them on board and trained. And that's where we start you know, creating a backlog of projects. So, you know, of course, what usually you think 3% going to our police and fire department, very important, but there's also these other positions that impact our quality of life as well. And it's, it's something we're seeing with the healthcare premiums across, you know, every company, private agency, public it's something that we're experiencing here that though at the local level too and that's a big chunk 840,000 out of the 2.8 for the health health premiums of course all the new new positions that we're adding that you had a slide on whether it's for our planning department or our police and fire all I've seen the justifications for that in full support. The one question I have on the expenditures, they're all annualized costs except, and this is the one question I forgot to ask you, so it's not too much of a curve ball. The comp plan, that's a one-time cost. In your eyes, what's the justification for putting that into your annualized big budget versus just pulling that out as a one-time cost elsewhere? Or is that how you view it?

Oh, I could. I mean, when I sent you that list, I could have I could have pulled because it is a one time cost, but it is coming from the general fund. Okay, yeah. So it is the general fund is paying for that to be done. So it is an extra expense just coming up here. So that's why I put it in there because it if I tried to find the 150,000 and other places, I was kind of running into just smaller incremental increases in that list would have kind of gotten bigger or longer. So it was like, what are the big

expenses being added this year and that's one of them it'll go away next year go away fiscal year 28 but it is a big expense being added this year thank you and i don't think you gave yourself enough credit for dissolving the engineering department and finding cost savings there so you know what what it's hard to see unless you understand public budgeting you may not see that cost savings capture in the line item anywhere but the that is cost savings that you are seeing in the budget I think you told me about a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand that you're able to apply to some of the new budget ads as a result of removing a department reclassifying some of those positions so I just want to give you kudos for that and then one more man mayor just want to briefly mention property tax relief because last year you know and it's been the trends to look at the millage rate what has happened in the past six, nine months, as you reviewed, is additional mechanisms being given and granted to local governments to deliver property tax relief. And I think this budget has gotten to a point where you do a cut a millage rate cut, and those cuts are going to be felt somewhere. I do agree that you run a very lean budget. And any cuts, the millage rate are going to be detrimental to a certain department, we will see that as as residents. And what I appreciate that the state did was given additional mechanism for states now considered the L host. And the thing is, you do a full rollback and correct me if I'm wrong, that's few dollars a month of savings most likely um versus setting us up for a path in the next two years where potentially you mentioned a thousand dollars on average home of savings across the year so that is a more responsible efficient and more impactful way of delivering tax relief in my opinion than looking at the millage rate and putting our services on the cutting block that i as a resident raising two young kids here value highly um so that that as an area that you know since november and last summer a lot of talk about military and what you guys have done previous councils done the last two years i think there's a new path for local government so i appreciate your opinion to support the whole host and something i'm i'm looking forward to supporting as well um that's it thank you great great budget all right mr johnson

I echo many of the sentiments here. I feel like this is one of the best nights of the year and I wish we had more residents here. I just feel like there's so much good just information, education that comes out of these, this presentation last year. think we were afraid that we wouldn't have anybody so i dragged my husband here um and he may have been like one of two people in our audience he paid attention because he was actually very impressed because of all the graphs and everything to see what you really get in the city for the amount that you pay it's very impressive and i think you spell it out very well in that presentation and it never gets old to me because i think it's very interesting um Anyways, I'm very proud of this budget. Thank you for your work on it. I feel like we're focusing on the things that we need to focus on. I think maintenance is massive. I feel like we're doing a good job of that and taking care of the things that we need to take care of. And I feel like there's, like you said, more in that area that I feel passionate about that we need to do. So I look forward to the future and taking care of even more things. Will you explain just one thing? I feel like there's another word that we also use for reserves, and it's fund balance. Is that the other? Yeah. Okay. But I feel like these two are not synonymous. They're not. But I feel like sometimes they get tossed around as if people almost think they are the same, but they're not. And can you explain the difference?

Well, unassigned fund balance is what you – all of your assets that you don't – well, not all your assets, but – all of you want me?

Okay, I'm okay.

Now I say because cash cash reserves is cash like it's cash and anything liquid that you have available quickly. And it is different. It's a part of fund balance. Fund balance is a little bit more fund balance. So usually your fund balance is higher than your cash reserves. cash reserves is actually cash you have fund balance includes a little bit more which includes accounts receivable does include accounts receivable what

sorry does it include accounts receivable yes yes yes but it it also includes um inventory and prepaids and you know every year at the beginning of the fiscal year i come back to you and i we do a surplus carryover for things that were budgeted in the previous year that we couldn't get because we have to we have to charge it to when we get it We can't say, oh, we're going to get the service and not get it until October and still charge it back to the previous year. So we carry forward those funds. And I think this year it was like close to $2 million that we carried forward. So that's in fund balance for fiscal year 25. But it's not actually money to spend. It was money that was already committed for something else. Does that make sense? Yes.

Yes, it does. Thank you. But in the slides, it was talking about the percentage that we have in fund balance, right?

Yes, that is fund balance, which cash reserves is a little bit lower.

So when we see that percentage, it's not all cash.

I believe our fund balance is 34.

You mean the reserves?

The reserves is like 34.

Well, no, fund balance is like 34 and cash reserves is like 30.

Well, it's on that slide. Yeah, I think I thought it was that like you have like 40 something.

I'm talking just total number.

Oh, gotcha.

did my my copy is so small 32 projected for this year yes 32 32 percent or 33 right at 33 million okay okay and cash reserves are like 29 30 so it's the biggest part of fund balance but it is a little bit lower yeah okay

um all right thank you for that and also anyways thank you for the budget and thank you for all of our staff that that worked on this i know it's a long process and i appreciate your work thank you thank you all right miss brown um i'm sure there are other communities who may have more money than we do but um i think we are we're sitting in a good position um

Again, echoing what Councilman Plumchak said, I think when we passed the consent agenda, I don't know if a lot of people really understood all of the things that we did with the one vote. And that was to take three engineering positions, shuffle them around, reclassify them, put them under departments that they're actually working more closely with and saving money in the process, which was a really smart way and a smart time to do it. Downgrading two of the three positions to a lesser grade But we're not requiring engineers to do those positions. So that really does save us a lot of money. So I think that was a really smart thing that we've done. You know, I look at the number for healthcare, we went up three quarters of a million dollars in our budget this year, that's the increase. But healthcare costs have gone up for everybody, every place and We have 378, I think it is, or 380 employees. Forget the exact number. Forgive me on that one. It doesn't matter. But, I mean, health care goes up for them. 389.

Dr. Tagg had it. How many?

389. 389. Can't keep up. And, you know, seeing a three quarters of a million dollar increase just in health care costs, you know, you don't realize how much that goes up. I know how much my premiums go up every year. But, you know, that's my own personal budget. Then you do it and you extrapolate how much it goes up for the number of employees we have.

On that, we competitively bid on our health care every year. And we switch if something's cheaper.

So and then other things that we have done, or should say that the city staff have done the two new positions that we have for Youth Council and public art, those are part time positions. So there's no benefit package with that. So That's, that's a good thing, even though we're adding them as a position, you know, we're trying to, you know, kind of toe the line on what we have to add. And they are part time employees. Now I'd like to kind of briefly talk about the L host. We've talked about it, we've put it out there. That is one thing that we have looked at that really could, if we go that direction and it gets approved by the voters that could really have a significant impact on saving residential homeowners who are homesteaded a lot of money on their property taxes. And a lot of people sit there and say, well, I'm still going to have to pay it because, because I'm going to have to pay the sales tax instead of that. But you always have a few people from outside your county, not necessarily everybody, but that come in, spend some money, And for us to be able to use Elhost, which is sales taxes, to reduce property taxes, I think that's going to be a big bonus across the board. So we're still tweaking all of the numbers, and hopefully that will work out when we put it forward to the legislature to put it on a referendum vote. The other thing is, last year we did do a full millage rollback, and I know that Our fire chief was very dismayed when he lost his fire tower and halfway through the year, we were able to build his fire tower anyway. So there are always those things that get tweaked in the middle of a year. And, and a lot of people don't necessarily always see what's going on and focus what's going on. But a lot of that is just to do all of the things necessary to maintain that ISO rating, um, to make sure that we have, you know, a well-trained, you know, staff in our fire and EMS departments. The other thing is our fund reserve. We have taken money out of it, which is something that I recommended that we do. We took money out of it and we used it for a big ticket item. So we did not have to do that purchase as either a bond item or increasing the millage rate in order to do it. But we're enhancing the quality of the buildings that we have. We're doing better maintenance than prior councils were able to do. And I think we're going in all of the right directions with some of the things and the decisions that have been made. And I think it's working out well. Mr. Holland?

I promise you, Madam Mayor, I've only got one comment to make. We've had a lot of them already said, and I'm just not going to repeat all of those. But I hope you all saw the one thing that I saw that jumped out of what Justin said. He says, we're going out, and we're going to borrow And oh by the way, we're not gonna raise your taxes. We'll pay for it, we'll absorb it, we'll take care of it, we'll manage it. That to me, thank you city manager, that tells you you're managing your business correctly and this business is our government. So that one, I hope everyone caught that. We're borrowing money but we're not raising your taxes. How many cities do that? I don't it's it's crickets. I don't hear anything. Very few cities will do that. Our city's going to do it. Madam mayor. That's all I have.

Thank you. And we're scheduled to approve our budget on August 20th in our city council meeting. Uh, that's all I have. Justin last comment on budget or no.

Just think, thank you, council.

Thank you. Council staff topics. I just want to mention that boards commissions and authorities, uh, the application is open in July. volunteers and we are looking for citizen volunteers on all of our boards commissions authorities citizens group groups go to our website and there are a lot of options there council staff topics mr. Paula check just a big thanks again to staff we're successful fourth of July the World Cup watch parties takes a lot of work I heard very positive feedback about the drone show so kudos the staff for coming up with that idea

maybe that's what we do in future years but i hear that they need some time to decompress before they start strategizing next year next year's fourth of july but i just want to give thanks to everybody who made it i think the best fourth of july in our city's history thank you miss johnson yeah i think harold was so tired from all the work that he put into the fourth of july that he's not here because he's on vacation now so even though he's not here

Thank you, Harold, for all of your work and Michelle, all of our recreation and all of our stuff. I know all there were many, many meetings where all of the staff and directors got together and worked together and collaborated. I feel like there was so much social media information that was out spelling out everything going on in the city and where people could be. So just thank you for all of that planning. I think I went through that day almost kind of like waiting for the moment that something bad was gonna happen and nothing did. And so anyway, it's a great job. All of you FIRE PD, thank you for a wonderful day. It truly was the best 4th of July.

It really was.

I agree the fourth of July was excellent. The only comments that I saw that were a little bit less than wonderful were a handful of people who are not positioned in the right location to see the actual drone exhibits, you know, when they got up there and they actually did a formation, if you were off to one side or the other and not looking at it straight on, or at least from a decent angle, you didn't get to see what it really was all about. It just was like a line of all these lights. So I don't know whether, Those drone shows can be done once they get set. I don't know if they've got that technology to rotate it 90 degrees so that everybody gets to see it or not.

You pay for the 3D version. Thousands of drones.

Thanks. Okay, thanks. But anyway, that was the only negative thing that I heard anybody mumble grumble about. I had no idea it was an eagle that the wings were flapping. And it's like, oh gosh, it's too bad because it was great. It was great. So the other thing is our council retreat for the end of August was canceled. I'm very happy about that. We're gonna do shorter, I guess, special cold meetings to deal with certain issues that come up in three or four hour intervals or less.

Yeah, well, the plan is to, because it retreats, we'll have departments come and give you all updates and talk about operations and some needs they have or things like that. So the plan is to have four per year as of right now, one per season, one per quarter, and to basically headline each one with one of the big four. So basically one meeting would have PD, one would have fire, one would have public works, one would have RAC, and then also pairing one of those with a smaller department to give an update, and then the rest of the meeting, you all would have some open discussion. But it's a way for so they can come give you updates because our agendas get so packed and we go until 10pm that I just don't have enough room on agendas to put, you know them to have enough time to really talk with you all and you all feel you don't have time to ask them questions. So I think that's valuable. So we'll do that. And then any open discussions that you all want to have with each other will also be but yeah, the plan is to have them from about 830 to 12. on whatever day we choose. Sometime in September, I think, for this first one. And Jasmine and Stacy will probably be checking all y'all's calendars and asking y'all what day will work best.

Anything else? Mr. Holland?

Madam Mayor, I'll save you on this one. I think we're about done. I was going to give a long talk on shared use path safety. I wrote it all up. I think it's too late in the night to give that, but I'll save it until next meeting and let everybody go home and go to bed. But I do have one comment, other than all the great comments about the 4th of July. I honestly believe that the TV that Harold bought which he did a good job in buying that giant TV, is not big enough. I was in the back of this thing, and it looked like a postage stamp out there. It needs to be bigger. And that's all I have, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Justin, do you have any council staff? Mr. Meeker?

actually do mayor um mr holland may actually make fun of me tonight because i'm going to need a minute or two when i was down at gma one of the discussions there was a city attorney breakout group talking about this year's buzzword a little bit last year's buzzword as well and that is the word transparency um It is not a unique issue to Peachtree City, though tonight, yet again, we heard about secret meetings and so forth. I think the first time I met with each of you, you heard me say very clearly that I'm not elected to an office. I am not a policymaker. I'm the legal advisor. So to that end, I tend to stay out of issues. Tonight's a great example. We were talking about the single trash hauler. I advised you what the law was. You're not going to hear me say my personal thoughts about that entire argument. That's for council to decide. So what I'm going to talk a few minutes about tonight is process and procedure. um in my role as a city attorney obviously compliance with the georgia open meetings law and georgia open records act is pretty darn important is one of the things i a hold very important and b have a track record of showing it somebody asked me recently how long i've been a lawyer believe it or not tomorrow will be the 34th anniversary of the day i took my oath as a member of the state bar 32 of those 34 years have been representing local governments cities and counties I'm proud to tell you that in that time period I've dealt with two lawsuits one each one with an open records issue that was in 1995 and we successfully defended the city in that case. The other was in open meetings for a potential issue. That matter was resolved by simply canceling the meeting. I will tell you that a lawyer typically takes the facts and tries to apply the law to those facts, so I'm gonna give you a couple of facts tonight. The city council, as we all know, held a retreat in Kennesaw earlier this year. The notice for that meeting and the meeting itself complied with the open meetings law, period. A number of topics were discussed at that retreat. No final action was taken on any of those topics. For matters that there was consensus, those matters were put on either agendas that have occurred or future agendas for final action. the city zoning ordinance I think everybody understands this concept it has permitted uses in each district in order to amend your zoning ordinance under both city ordinances and Georgia law you have to conduct two public hearings one is before the Planning Commission one is before the City Council before any changes can be made to those permitted uses I will tell you that if there is an annexation or rezoning a property or a text amendment to the zoning ordinance, the same requirements apply to public hearings, one each before the City Council and the Planning Commission. I do take issue with implications or challenges to secret meetings. I've suggested to more than one person If you believe there's been an alleged violation of the Georgia Open Meetings Law or Georgia Open Meetings Act, you have alternatives. One, you can report it to the State Attorney General's Office for enforcement. Two, there are actually criminal penalties, which is why I take this so seriously. I would never want any of you to be charged with violating one of those laws. But you can report that to the solicitor's office. And, of course, Georgia law does avail private citizens of the right to challenge actions taken if they believe that any violation of the Open Meetings Law or Open Records Act has occurred. Thanks for your time. I will tell you that we do have to have an executive session tonight to discuss pending or threatened litigation and real estate.

Thank you Mister maker can I get a motion to go into executive session.

Yes, madam a woman make a motion that we're going to executive session for real estate and pending litigation to say right you do have a second.

I have a motion in a second all in favor say aye.