City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you for joining us live for the city of Southport city council meeting. We are proud to introduce the leadership entrusted with guiding our city forward. Mayor Carmelita Gums, District 1 Councilwoman Dr. Katherine Ralph, District 2, Councilman Aaron V. Johnson, District 4, Councilman JC Sebastian, Mayor Pro Tim, Kosha B. L. District 6 Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown. District 7 Councilwoman Linda Becker Pritchette. Supporting the work of this body in the operations of our city are city clerk Corey Adams, city manager Sharon D. Subet, and interim city attorney Sarah Kelly. Thank you for being the best part of the city of South Florida, a city on the rise. All right. Good afternoon and I will officially call our city council work session uh for May the 12, 2026 at 400 PM to order. Mr. Clerk, can you please sound the role?

Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, Madame Mayor, members of council, and the general public. This is uh today's roll call for today's work session. The honorable Katherine F. Ry, District 1, present. The Honorable Aaron V. Johnson, District 2, present. The Honorable JC Sebastian, District 4, present. The Honorable Kosha Bale, District 5, present. The Honorable Natasha Williams Brown, District 6. Present. The Honorable Linda B. Pritchette, District 7, here. And the honorable mayor Kalita Gums here. Madame Mayor, you have a quorum. All right. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, can you please sound the next item?

That brings us to city manager items. Uh our city manager, Sharon D. Subidan, will be presenting her monthly report.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. The um monthly report was submitted to you. It's also available online. I am subject to any questions you might have. And um before we jump in, mayor, would you like to take an opportunity to introduce the summer college interns? All right, council while you all are preparing for your questions. Please uh log into the queue. Um but I would like to take a moment and have our interns uh for our business amnesty program. This is a 10-week paid program for the city of South Fulton and they're going to help us and I would like for each one of them to stand uh tell us your name and what college you're representing or graduated from and um I don't know Mr. McClendon did you want to come up and share how Okay, he does not. He just want to show them where to go. So, please join us at the podium. Oh, and we're going to have um our assistant city manager, Miss Carmen Davis. She's going to share a little bit about you all. I had an opportunity to meet some of you all yesterday and see some familiar faces as well. And um I sat in on one of your sessions and you all have a lot of great ideas to help the old fogies like myself. Um, well, I'm not that old, but I appreciate, you know, the insight of helping building a city that will be all-incclusive, especially of young people and what they want to see in our city. So, thank you for that, Carmen.

Yes. Thank you, Madame Mayor, City Council. Good evening. I have the privilege to introduce these college students who are so awesome and dynamite. Uh, here to help us with the Amnesty program. As you said, mayor, uh, this program is a 10-week program that we are calling the city government city learning program with the support of the amnesty program. And so this is a six six-w week program that will start that started yesterday and will go to July 10th. And in the program, there's two components. One, it is a city learning uh tour or sessions that we're uh conducting where each each of them will go to um well as a group will will be um uh hosted by each department and they will learn about the department, their mission, their service to the city. They will also learn about career paths and also get some hands-on experience in some departments depending on the department and what they have planned for them. So it'll be a very robust plan. We also would like to invite city council to come and address the the um the the students and share about your career paths and some insights and wisdom that you would like to share with them as well. The point of this program is not only to support the amnesty program and get the support that we need to process um the different applications to reach out to businesses and also supply to the data that you you require to find out what is the outcome of us increasing our compliance with our business uh community. but also this would be an engaging governmental uh learning process for them so that we can uh feed them into our future public se

sector leaders. And so with that I will then turn it over to uh the students and they will share their names and the and the schools they represent. Thank you. Good afternoon. Bailey Boyd, Southern University Agricultural and Mechanical College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm Diani Meltter representing Georgia State University. Go Panthers. Panthers. Good afternoon. My name is Gia Bortoku and I'm representing Bthun Cook University. All right.

Good afternoon. Audriana Davis and I represent Georgia State University. Go. All right. Good afternoon. My name is Ryan Hendricks. I represent Georgia Southern University. All right. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm SA Jones. I'm representing Albony State University. Oh, go. I love the personality. Good afternoon. My name is Princess Black and I'm representing Georgia State University. All right. Good afternoon. My name is Shamar Craropper and I'm representing Georgia Military College. All right. Welcome. Good afternoon. I am Madison Zobish representing the illustrious Tuskegee University.

Hello everyone. Uh my name is Solomon Ibido and I attend the Tuskegee University. Okay, that is wonderful. So we see a lot of Georgia State and Tuskegee. We all welcome you. Of course, there's a lot of George,

so please come and stand in front so we can all take a picture. We hope that your experience here will be a lifelarning experience. Some of you all may decide to get in politics or you may want to just help local government, but we appreciate the work and the effort. And remember what I said the other day, government is supposed to be boring. Okay, it's supposed to be boring. Wait a minute. You got to take pictures with the council. Can y'all come in a little bit more? Some people will have two. All right, that's good right there.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. Can everybody see me? Perfect. Three, two, one. All right, that's good. All right. I believe Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown have a question. I recognize you at this time.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, yes, I have have a couple of things. Um the on page 10 where there's the general fund expenditures and incumbrances by department as of March 31st. The public works administration says, it's noted that 81% of their budget has been used. And then parks and wreck, it says that 84% of their budget has been used. And I know that we're going into summer with summer programming and summer camps. Um, so I just wanted to ensure that with 84% of the budget gone that we are going to have enough money to run summer.

Sure. Thank you.

Thank you for the observation. Um, if you notice under the third column under incumbrances, public works has a very large incumbrance. Some of that is to cover expendit expenditures through the end of the year. And so it is um it's not linear. You'll find that they've already encumbered some dollars for expenditures coming up. So they should be fine. On the public um on parks and recreation, I do believe that we need to I noticed it as well and I do believe we need to go in and liquidate some purchase orders that are no longer needed, but staff is already working on it and we are we are um we are breast and on top of it. But thanks for the observation. Thank you. Um, the other question that I had was I noticed that this is the second month in a row that there's no report for economic for the economic development department. Will we be able to get um an update from them?

Yes, absolutely. So in in response to some of the complaints that the report had become very long and voluminous, what we've been doing is staggering some of the departments. So when they come with their next report, you'll have a good body of of information over the last two or three months. So we did that to condense the report because it had gotten to where it was close to 80 pages. And so if you'll notice, this report is quite is a quite a bit shorter. Um and we can share the schedule with you. So, if there's something you want to know in the in in between, um, we happy we'll be happy to provide that to you during our one-on- ones. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Williams Brown. Councilman JC Sebastian. Thank you, Mayor. Um, Madame City Manager, I have a question about Wilson Park, and that's I missed it in here. Is there a recent update as to what we're doing with Wilson Mill Park? I know we talked about some things last year. I'm not sure how far we've gotten with that.

So, Councilman, we're close to being able to schedule a meeting with you. Um I think we should schedule with you before we schedule with a with a public around what we want in the park, where you want it in the park. um staff has reached out to me a few times and um I think it's time for us to go ahead and schedule with you and then with the community to talk about what the long-term vision is for the park.

Thank you much. And do you do you know if the um I think the park advisory board they have not really been meeting. I know my um my appointee reached out about um possibly not serving anymore because they have not been meeting. And so I promised her I would I will check in to figure out when we can um get some activity going with that group because we're doing a lot of stuff in our parks. We we should have that board as part of the community input to help us figure out, you know, those things that we're doing with these parks. Sure. I can follow up and get back to you on that. Thank you.

You have a question response. Okay. Um I'll let you follow up. You want to yield to her? She had a followup to your Okay. Well, let me uh go to Councilwoman uh Pritchette and then we'll come back to you. Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you. Um, madame city manager, um, this is I'm saying this for the benefit of the seniors and the public who made these requests of me and, um, just as you have indicated that you would want a meeting with Councilman Sebastian, um, back when we discussed the police headquarters and I made a request based on what seniors and community members asked for, which was a community building so that the community can meet and um I think in a casual conversation last weekend I discovered that that's not happening and no one had a conversation with me. No one exp no one had I I in a casual conversation I should not find something out that now I have to look at residents and explain you're not getting this and I have no idea who made this decision and this is related to something that's in my district which I really would appreciate the same courtesies as other council members are afforded. So I guess I want to understand how this happened for the benefit of the public and also for my own understanding. So, in actuality, when we looked at the scope of the project um and the amount of money that we were going to be able to afford, we programmed in the green spaces at both sites um and really were not able to do anything that wasn't public safety centric outside of those green spaces as a matter of of affordability. Um, as I shared with you, we have land acquired. Um, Fulton County, which we heard a lot about it today, is getting ready to do a very large hum health and human services um venture in South Fulton that would include a senior

center. Uh, it was really just a matter of of affordability. And my apologies if we didn't bring you into the conversation at the appropriate time.

Well, I do appreciate that explanation. Um, but in addition to all of that, the residents of District 7 feel like the redheaded stepchild that get nothing because I don't know where um, Fulton County plans to put this senior center, but I keep explaining to residents that we have 16 parks in this city. None of them lie within um, district 7, and people can use other parks. um that's not a problem, but I would love to see something prioritized that people are asking for in district 7 like that community center. And if these conversations and negotiations happen, then somebody please consider district 7. We have land. We have lots of land in district 7. Thank you. I yield.

Thank you. Uh Councilwoman Pritchette. Um, we will return back to Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Um, and I guess just a follow-up thought from Councilman Sebastian, and I know this is something that I've heard Councilwoman Ralph say a couple of times in terms of us needing to review all of our boards and all of our commissions to ensure that they are active and they're functioning. Um because I've also been one of my appointees has reached out to me about the veteran affairs and that he's not getting any communication from that.

Um which I think I had already sent to the clerk or maybe I imagined I did. I'll check and see. But in any event, um do we need to take a vote as a council to get that underway? Can we just madam city manager put that on your plate and have that um come back to us at the well but we don't meet in June at the July council meeting the budget or the budget or at at some point can we get this done so we're not keep hear we don't keep hearing that boards are not meeting and people aren't being communicated with.

Okay. I think the clerk wanted to respond to your question before we take that consensus. Yes, I was just letting the uh city manager know that this is an appropriate time to address this issue. Um, as many of you know, in January, I think I sent the um appointees uh boards and commissions report which outlined uh your appointees for the various boards. Um there has been a push in the first quarter um with the departments to convene um the various boards because there are some that haven't met in over two years.

Uh in particular I would like to address the parks and recck department. They did uh I think in February or March try to schedule a meeting and they said some of the appointees didn't respond to them. So, I told them what I was going to do is send a group communication to you to just check in with your appointees uh to make sure they still wanted to serve. Um, regarding veterans affairs, I don't know if I missed that. I think I did get that and they actually met uh in February. I I think was the last meeting. Yeah.

Yeah, they met in February. So, if there's any other there are a couple other boards that are still um in the convening process, but that was one of the uh processes we were coming up on in June uh to give you quarterly um reports in terms of the boards and commissions. So, um with regard to parks, I think there are some efforts to get that done. Veterans Affairs. I know they have met recently and uh but I'll send an update report to each of you um to see if any further action is needed.

And maybe in the budget retreat we can set aside some time uh in July to I guess look at those boards to see what is ready to sunset. Um if not, which boards we want to keep keep moving. So um let's put that as an agenda item to talk about in July. and then the next quarter we'll make sure that everything is on the up and up. Followup.

So my followup to all this, at some point we discovered that um legally all of the boards and commissions have to be created per ordinance and has that been done? Have we retroactively gone back um city attorney's office? Have we retroactively have we've gone back to look at the list of all the boards and made sure that there is an ordinance um for each board to make sure we're legally properly um establishing these boards.

I think that some boards have been um with the ordinance I think she did some of them. I'm not sure if all of them have been uh assessed, but that is something that we can ask our city attorney to make sure and to be prepared for our July meeting. All right. Any other questions in the queue? All right, Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item. That brings us to presentations for this afternoon. The first presentation is a presentation regarding SB33. some new property tax law will be presented by Mr. Ed Wall with Piper Sandler that better.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. How y'all doing? So, uh next page, please. So, um, Senate Bill 33 was approved on sin die, last day of the session. Actually, it was approved on April the 3rd, which is a day after the last day. They went on to about 1:30 in the morning. And at 7:00 that night, House Bill 116 that you all have been hearing about, it failed in the Senate 24 to 28. And we thought it was over with. And um about 7:30 senators started sending me text messages and says it ain't over with yet. And I reached out to Miss Suban and y'all got this great lobbyist. He was working well with me named Andrew Long. And um they said it's coming back up. They're stripping the language out the marijuana bill, Senate Bill 33 and adding a bunch of stuff from House Bill 116. And so, um, Miss Stuban gave me Andrew's text, um, thing. I could, I said, "Can you give me a copy of it?" And he was able to screenshot copies of it. And I was able then to screenshot it to senators who they didn't have a copy of the bill. They didn't know what it was. And it was passed. It went over to the House and it was approved yesterday. The governor signed it. And so the particulars for that bill, um, if I can get it up and I can't see that I got it on my screen here. So, um, there you go. Thank you, sir. So, it passed the legislature on April the 3rd. If you can see the first bullet point, the governor signed it yesterday. I did this presentation on Saturday and he hadn't signed it yet. I put in here the third bullet point. The Georgia Municipal Association was neutral on the bill. I thought they ought against it. One of the reasons they were neutral on it is the leadership of the House of

Representatives, Speaker of the House, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. This had some heavy hitters behind it and so they didn't want to make a mad. Fourth bullet point. What is the main thing Senate Bill 33 does? It creates a new local homestead option sales tax. We call it Lhost. So all y'all familiar with Lost, the local option sales tax, we split that with the other cities in Fulton County in the county and it reduces property taxes dollar for dollar and it reduces everybody's property taxes, businesses, apartment owners, commercial, residential, and that's a loss. Y'all are familiar with a Tesla. Fulton County levies 75, not 1% but 75 for Tesla. There's a splast that Fulton counties never had that the other 158 Georgia counties had. Well, this is a new one penny called a Lhost and the legislation raises the cap for sales tax from 8% to 9%. Uh what does a LHOST do? It's a new 1% sales tax to be split between counties and cities for property tax relief for homestead property first. So, if you have a house and you send a homestead exemption, you have all the exemptions that we at South Fulton give already. Those exemptions stay in place. If there's any other property tax that you owe to the county or to the city, this doesn't affect school boards, just for counties and cities, that number is reduced equitably among all homestead property as far as the LHOST collections will go. If there's any money left over, then the LHOST would go toward other property payers. But given all of the residential in a county the size of Fulton County with a million people in it, I would imagine the LH host will never get to any other property owners. It should be revenue revenue neutral to

you. It's only designed to replace property taxes with sales taxes. The key to that will be in the details. This the Lhost is collected by the state revenue commissioner and they pay it to Fulton County. Fulton County is required under Senate Bill 33 to keep it in a separate account and let it earn interest. The tax commissioner will calculate how much money each homestead property will pay after the current exemptions are applied in Fulton County and each of its cities. And then the tax commissioner applies what was collected prior to July 1 to reducing those property taxes. And I've written here a little bullet point. I got to imagine that's kind of going to be tricky. You know, the tax commission is going to have to get new software to calculate all that with some million residents. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of folks all over Fulton County have a homestead exemption. The tax commissioner has to do that. All the cities and the counties have to get their millage rate to the comm tax commissioner by one September. If they don't, then the commissioner gets to assume what your millage rate is going to be based on what it was from the previous year. And so on my second bullet point, thank you for showing me how to do this. There you go. Thank you.

Yes, sir. The things I wanted y'all to consider, the sales tax rate in the city right now is 7.75%. Atlanta, Hateville, College Park, and East Point have that 1% most, which is for water and sewer, municipal option sales tax, but they're the only cities that have it. So, what are the sales taxes in South Fulton right now? The state has four pennies, 4%. The school board has 1%. MARTA has 1%. You have that local option sales tax. The loss between the cities and Fulton that's 1% and Tesplast is 75. So your current rate is 7.75%. And so this Senate Bill 33 adds the ability to have another 1% that'll push us to 8.75 for local homestead option sales tax. The things you all have to consider as you negotiate with the other cities in Fulton County and the county. How much sales tax is too much? Next one is what happens to T-splash renewal? That's coming up soon. Will voters turn down Tesla and pick a Lhost? Um the other thing Senate Bill 33 did was everybody is automatically opted in to House Bill 581. Y'all remember all that rigomearroll we went through last year? Well, now there's no opt out. You are opted in. So, since everybody's opted in, now all counties in the state are eligible for a floss. That's another one penny called a floating local option sales tax. It's like the lost. It applies to all taxing classes, all taxpaying classes, not just homestead property. So, it's just like the lost. You can't have a Lhost and a floss. You

and the cities in Fulton County, Fulton County have to choose whether you want a floss or LHOST. Um the last bullet point, this new Lhost doesn't take effect until after January 128. And then you have to have an election. And there are only two dates for that election. March or May, the date of the primary in 28 and November of 28. So y'all know in a week, maybe it's just one week, I think, we got election for governor and lieutenant governor and legislators. Then in November is the general election between the Democratic or Republican candidate. So January 27, you're going to have a new governor, a new lieutenant governor, and a whole new legislature, House and Senate. What are the odds they going to fool with this Senate Bill 33 and 27? So whatever I'm telling you today might be different in April of 27 after they come in there and fooled with it. And so it doesn't take effect in January 1 and 28. Um and so we'll watch it in 27 to see what happens. But as you talk to your other leaders in other cities in Fulton County and the county itself, how much sales tax is too much? Do you want a floss or elhost? And what will it do to the Tesla? And how do you time the election for the Tesla? Um, and the last thing I I wanted to say was that um um the bill Senate Bill 33 was much better than House Bill 116. If you all remember, House Bill 116 took away from local governments the ability to set your budget. You would have to take it to a voter referendum or a local act by the local legislators. All that got cut out when it got defeated at 7:00 on Sinai die and what got added to

Senate Bill 33. They had all that taken out. So, it's a better bill than 11:16. and it does give us an option for an L-host, but you're opted into House Bill 581, but you already had a homestead exemption that um said that the property couldn't go up by more than 3% a year or inflation, and that's what 581 did. So, the optin of 581 really hasn't affected you. Mayor, questions. All right, council, do you all have any questions? City Manager, did you have something you wanted to share?

And you kind of glossed over House Bill 581, which we did opt into last year, but for the benefit of those listening and for a reminder to the council, and some of the council members are new, could you remind them what House Bill 581 does in terms of the mil the existing military?

You bet. So, um, h House House Bill 581, um, completely redid a lot of the way you go about levying property taxes. And all of us as citizens, we get a tax assessment notice sometime in March or April, and then you all as a city and the school board and the county set a millage rate, and then we pay our property taxes in November, December. House Bill 581 mandated that the tax assessors has to get to you an estimated tax digest by March of each year and you're supposed to do an estimate of what your millage roll back would be and then you have to um get the final tax digest in June or July and come up with actual millage rate. And I think that is very confusing to citizens because people like Altha are having to figure out what the roll back would be based on an estimated digest in March and it's not even going to be final to June. And so it's a lot of rigma roll to the citizens. Um and I don't think it helps improve anything. House Bill 581 says that homestead exemption property will not go up in value when you get a reassessment notice by inflation or 3% whichever is greater. So if y'all notice today the inflation came out at 3.8% because the price of gasoline and diesel so high it's really run it up. And so, um, this in a lot of my, uh, clients, the CAB counties, they've come out with their temporary digest and it only went up 2%. So, it wouldn't really affect this particular year in the cab. Have you got any temporary digest in Fulton yet, Althia? I haven't seen one. And so, I don't know how it would affect that, but House Bill 581 would limit that portion of the digest.

Why is that important to you? your tax digest. Um the gross value is um let me pull it up real quick. I did it for Miss Suban the other day and I can't remember now what the exact numbers are. Is it $5 billion? Um give me just one second. billion. the the point I'm going to be making is about 60% of your tax digest is residential and um you already have you already gave your residents a big homestead exemption and so your gross tax digest way it works remember is all the property is valued at 100% of fair market value and then the assessed value is 40% of that and then you all levy a millage rate on the 40% value where the 40% value of all the property in city of South Fulton is $8 billion. That's the gross digest. There's 972 exemptions to get to the bond digest. That's for general obligation voter approved bonds and that's 7 billion. And then there's 2.2 billion of exemptions for the M digest. That stands for maintenance and operations. And your M digest is 5.7 billion. So, every one mill in the city of South Fulton raises $5.7 million. Now, that's the 25 digest. We don't have the 26 yet. So, let's go back up and look. What is the residential number? What percentage of residential is your is in your gross digest? Your gross digest was 8 billion. The residential was 5 bill150 million. That's about 60%. of that 5 billion150, you exempt um nearly three billion of it

already. And so I think the Republicans in the legislature were trying to give property tax relief to homeowners and it's kind of piling on for you cuz you'd already done it. Well, you're a new city. You got created in 17. You did it already. Um, anything I left out, Miss Udin? Yes, ma'am. Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown is in the queue.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, and thank you, Ed. This may be asking for a lot. Um, but is it possible to perhaps get some modeling forecast for these different scenarios so we could see what some potential numbers could be based on all of this all of this this this.

So the answer is yes, but let me tell you a little bit about that. So, um, any of y'all ever call the Fulton County Tax Assessor? And it's hard. You can't hardly get nobody on the phone and then they don't ever call you back. And so, the way I would model the numbers, you know how a lost you get a percentage based on your population. Well, Elhost is just allocated by the tax commissioner on all homestead property. So, I need from the tax assessor and the tax commissioner all of Fulton County, the 15 cities in the county. How much is homestead property? How much in exemptions do they all give now? How much is left? And then I know that the sales tax in Fulton County, I know what it raises, how much of that will reduce property taxes. And so, um, if it was up to Althia and me, I'd give you numbers in the morning, but I have to have the cooperation of the tax assessor and the tax commissioner. And so, um, I represent a lot of cities in Fulton County already. They've asking me the same thing you're asking. And I know we'll get you the numbers as soon as we can, but it's not within totally within my control. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that does. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Councilwoman Ralph. I see. I want to say what she said, but I won't even take it a step further because if we're talking about compounding this problem, we and I understand we really don't know what it might look like, the exemptions that we currently have, can we afford them and maintain what we've projected? It does not sound like I mean, it's just envelope math. You don't have to be rocket science. So, um I'm trying to figure how soon do you think because I'm sure other cities are asking for the same information,

right? So, if I could I'll interrupt you just a weak minute. This L host is designed to be revenue neutral to you. But the reason why what y'all asking me is so important, the tax commissioner is going to be calculating for you how much of your property taxes the LHOST is going to pay. And then he'll send out the tax bills cuz you hire the tax commission as your tax bills. And so it'll be minus whatever the property taxes that Elhost is supposed to pay. He sends the tax bills out in maybe September, 30 days after according to this Senate Bill 33. 30 days after the tax bills are mailed, they tell Fulton County to send you a check for the LHOST that replaced the property taxes and how much to send. So, the tax commissioner tells Fulton County how much to send you 30 days after the tax bill is mailed. Well, it's going to be incumbent upon Althia and me and Miss Subidan to make sure that that number is right. In other words, we won't know till we get the Elhost check and then figure out what the property taxes were sent out if those two numbers match. So, we can't just trust that it's going to work out, right?

But the way the law is drafted, it should be revenue neutral to you and it's just simply substituting sales tax for property tax. Okay? And so it's nothing that you all can have input on, I don't guess, because the legislature does it. But you know, sales tax is a regressive tax. It's the poor people pay it.

The rich people are getting the break on property taxes. You take5, $6 million houses, they could pay zero. But the poor fella on fixed income buying groceries is going to be paying an extra 1% sales tax. And so it's very regressive. I think um Tennessee may have a 9% sales tax and we'll be at 8.75 and so they also don't have an income tax, we have an income tax and um um it's just a wholesale shift of the burden of financing local governments from property tax to sales tax, but it's designed to be revenue neutral. It should not cost us any money. Okay. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Councilman JC Sebastian, you're in the queue.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have a quick question. I um I'm still very uneasy whether we know all what we have here in the city. Um and whether we are fully aware of the totality of businesses. I I I've always been uneasy about these boundaries. Um, Mr. Ben, do we have a way of checking that tax digest against anything that we have like in CDR to make sure that cities around us are not getting some of our tax money?

Well, we use the GIS. Um, we certainly could do a run on the GIS with the parcel numbers to ensure I think we've done it a few times. um feel pretty confident that the number of parcels and the value of the well when the number of parcels are okay. The big challenge I think we have is the value of the parcels and that becomes kind of a more of a political um assist with the um the assessor. Now the chair of the coun the county has called for an audit. I don't know that we've seen the results of that yet, but all 15 cities in the county are complaining about assessment and assessment generally being low. And with all of these new, especially on commercial property and all of these new tax um laws that are getting passed, it hurts us exponentially. We also have a problem with commercial businesses appealing their their assessment and the assessor just sort of says okay which impacts all of us who receive property tax both us the county and the school board

and this is a just a comment in as I give her the mic we are now into 2026 I haven't heard anybody around here talking about preparations for the 2030 census. That that's that's a problem really. And I'm hoping that us as a city, as the largest, second largest city in Fulton County, that we can do something to get on this soon because it is on our best interest to make sure that every single person who lives in the city of South is properly counted because based on what's happening at the federal level, they're not going to care whether we get the census correct or not. But we are going to be depending on a lot of the monies that we get um based on that census count being accurate.

So I hope we can put our our brains together and try to figure out how are we going to ensure that this city is properly counted for the 2030 census.

And so if I could mayor just to comment about what Councilman Sebastian was talking about. So your commercial property tax digest is 1.6 billion. your industrial tax digest is 1 billion. So there's a fellow named Julian Benet. He used to be on the um I think the Invest Atlanta board or maybe it was a Fulton County Development Authority. I forget which, but he was sort of this citizen activist sort of fell and he did this study and he said he took 200 commercial properties in Fulton County and I guess Atlanta and they had sold in the previous year and he compared the sales price to what the tax assessor had it valued at and the assessed value was like 10% of what it actually sold at. So the odds are that 2 billion6 of your digest is half of what it ought to be. So there's your point.

All right. Well, thank you so much. We know we still have work to do. We appreciate your time and we'll be talking very soon. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item. Yes, ma'am. The next presentation is the Soul Food Connects U presentation. will be presented by Shaheen Solomon, director of department of public affairs. Good evening, mayor and council. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. How to work this left, right?

Trying to figure out how to work this. Oh, there we go. Okay. So this afternoon, I'm excited to introduce SFU Connect, the city of Southton's new citywide communication and mass notification system. This initiative is is designed to strengthen how we communicate with our residents, businesses, and visitors in real time. As one of the of Georgia's largest and fastest growing cities, our communications infrastructure must evolve with the needs of our community. So SFU Connect is more about text messages. is about building trust, improving responsiveness, increasing transparency, and ensuring that our residents stay informed, prepared, and connected. Let's see here. I just learned how to do this. There we go. Okay. Sofu Connect was developed to close communication gaps and create a more direct line between city government and the public. Residents today expect information immediately, whether they're related to whether that's related to public safety, road closures, severe weather, or important community updates. This platform allows for the city of South Fulton to communicate quickly, professionally, and strategically across multiple channels. So, this is this initiative is essential for seven reasons for several reasons. First, it strengthens transparency in and public trust. Residents want timely and accurate information directly from their city government. Second, it helps reduce misinformation during emergencies or fastmoving situations. Rumors can spread quickly online. SOFU Connect allows the city to become the trusted source of information. Third, it it improves emergency responsiveness. Whether it's severe weather, outages, public safety announcements or concerns, and emergency notices, um residents will have this right in their hands. So there are two pillars to SFU connect. Uh it would will include emergency

notifications in the first phase and the second phase fall 2026 to potentially expand to citywide events. At this moment the system is built around two core communications functions. The first is non-emergency communication. These are the everyday updates that help residents stay informed about the city life. things like road closures, city-wide meetings, trash schedule changes, surveys, and city initiatives. The second is emergency communication. This includes severe weather alerts, evacuation notices, police advisories, major utility out outages, and urgent public safety information. So, the system is powered by Civic Plus of which Corey uses every day um for his announcement information to you all. and it is widely used um at various municipalities across the country. One of the strongest features of this um system is GIS integration which allows for us to target notifications geog geographically. Um for example, if there is a water outage or road closure impacting one area, we can communicate directly with only those residents affected in that community. This platform also supports multiple communication methods including text messaging, email notifications, voice calls, and mobile communications. So this slide highlights the communication workflow process behind SFU connect. Every message goes through a structured process to ensure accuracy, professionalism and consistency. Messaging is first drafted, then reviewed and finalized through the Department of Public Affairs. Appropriate templates are selected. Recipients groups are verified. Deliver delivery methods are chosen and messaging is monitored after distribution. So, this process is designed to be simple and accessible for residents throughout the city. QR codes will be placed on promotional materials, social

media, city facilities, and and at community events. Once scanned, residents can quickly register for SOU SFU Connect. During sign up, residents will be able to customize the types of information they want to receive, from emergency alerts and public safety updates to traffic updates and citywide events. They can also choose how they want to receive notifications whether by text message, email or phone call. If you guys realize we're doing a lot of branding around SofU and Sofu connects. Um several months ago, if not over a year and a half a year and a half ago, um we found out that our brand was not trademarked. So we trademarked both our logo, our seal and the word SFU. So from a branding perspective, we wanted SFU connect to feel modern, approachable, and recognizable. The design direction is mo is mobile first because the majority of our residents and users interact on a platform with their phones. So here you'll see an example of someformational pieces, flyers and social media content. These are designed to inform the community of the initiatives, its goal and how they as a community members can be informed, prepared and connected. examples of billboards. Our you are here campaign that recently ran over a six-month period scored over 3.5 million impressions. We're expecting this particular board run to um have about the same impression impact across our city as well. Examples of posters to be placed in facilities throughout the city of South Fton and businesses. These will also feature QR codes for people to readily sign up for these in our facilities across the city. So the first phase of the campaign focuses on public awareness and visibility. The goal is simple. We want residents to know that SFU Connect exists and understand why it matters to be a part of the campaign. So the roll out will include press releases, website

banners, pop-ups, QR codes, billboards, you name it, we got it. Once residents sign up, the next priority is maintaining engagement and building long-term trust in the platform. The phase focuses on sustaining the connection between the city and the community. We'll implement welcome messaging, ongoing reminders, and annual reporting that highlights how the system has helped the residents stay informed. So the slide outlines the implementation timeline. Even though the training and development was much longer than the winter winter, uh there was a phase of training and integral development to ensure staff understood the system and communication protocols. The next phase included testing and pilot implementation. Uh and then we also have with a public affairs. Our department is recommending that we launch this this summer. At its core, SFU Connect is about empowering residents through communication. Rapid alerts improve public safety. Transparent communication builds public trust. Consistent engagement strengthens community relationships. When residents feel informed, they feel connected to our city government. The initiative helps reinforce the city of South Fulton as being responsive, modern, proactive, and focused on serving the community effectively. SOFU Connect represents the future of communication for the city of South Fulton. This is more than a technology platform. It is a commitment to transparency, preparedness, responsiveness, and community engagement. It positions the city of South Fulton as forward thinking u and understands the importance of direct communications with its residents. I am subject to your questions.

Well, thank you. First of all, this is very very exciting. Um, great work. I think South Fulton is moving towards the future. So, oh, you got a lot of questions. You ready? I am. All right. Councilman JC Sebastian. Thank you so much, Director Solomon. Um, I am very happy for this. Now, I get to stop texting Dr. Cooper in the weekends whenever there's a boil water advisory that no one hears about. Um so my question is this first question QR code here I try to sign up. That's not the real one, right? That is not the real one recommending lunch this summer. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. But um are we are we going to send a mailer especially to the older folks? By the way, we um for those who haven't heard, we are teaching um some of our seniors how to use this modern technology. Then classes started uh two weeks ago at um Clifton Dale Park and at uh City Grove Fire Station 6. But are we going to do something specially for our seniors because you know this will be out there and they're all social media and every place and they were like plus there's a lot of mistrust around QR codes now. So we have to make sure um we communicate it in a way that people can trust it, you know. So those are my questions.

Understood. Councilman, we understand that a majority of our legacy residents don't have access to social media. So it would be beneficial for us to send out a mailer campaign to be able to reach them with a QR code. A great suggestion. Yes. I always say that you don't know how many seniors are on social media. It's a lot of them. And they they may not know how to use it, but they on it. Yes, Councilwoman Linda Pritchette. Thank you, Mayor. So, this sounds really exciting. Um, however, will this mirror our city's website?

So, the purpose of SFU Connects is to update the community in a time of need and urgency. So whether there's going to be a road closure, whether there's going to be a fire, whether there's a blockage of any sort, we have public safety officials who will be communicating through the platform. Public affairs will be communicating through the platform. It will not replace the website. It will mimic the website, of course, based on information that's being provided and flyers that have been shared. So yes. So this is similar to like Clayton County's Nixl. Um the sheriff has access to Nixl and Clayton County. Um so that's almost the same platform. Yes. platform for

our residents have to actively engage this um portal and sign up themselves. We can't add numbers into it. Okay. So, they have to go to it. Yes. Uh download the app, not download the apps app, scan the QR code which will take them through our website where they'll be able to sign up to receive notifications. There is no app. It comes through your to your phone through text messaging like Fton County. Okay. So, a few things. Um, so who's who will what mechanism do y'all have to keep up with all this? Like y'all hired new people or who's doing this?

No, city manager hired us. So our department will manage it. And so what there's a workflow process in place with public safety. We have fire will have access to be able to update um the items that are happening with fire. Police will have access to update the things that are happening with um with police. But public affairs ultimately controls the dash. will be um reviewing and controlling all information that comes through and approving that information as well for consistency and brand. So with that being said, there's a designated person in each department that has anything to do with something that could be a potential issue. So there will be a designated person for this. Yes. From each department.

No, not from each department. It it is not to update the community about departmental events. They're citywide events. No, no. I don't mean by events. What I mean is emergency situations.

So, okay, because I I did present um something to um ACM Davis about uh being broadband ready. Um and all it needed was a designated person in our IT department. And for some reason, it wasn't a great idea. Well, for some reason it's on the shelf because I guess there's some hesitancy about designating a person. And so going in that direction, I have some new um some new housing in my district. And what I discovered is that in instances where I have called 911 to report something, some of those street names do not show up in Fulton County's GIS. I don't know where they show up. I don't know what the issue is. So, um, I really want to make sure that our GIS is up to date like Fulton County is an RS mirror because Fulton County has no idea what I'm talking about when I mention the name and I'm looking at the street sign and I wish I could take a picture and text it to them. But that's a problem for um South Pine um off of Oakley Industrial that has about 150 homes and if something happens there then you have to spend all this time trying to describe where you want somebody to respond to. So um if we can make sure that those type of issues u get updated on their on somebody's end. So,

we'll work we'll work with um it because the program does use GIS and when people sign up for the software, they're asked to put their address in as well. So, that way if we're targeting specific districts, we're able to know where they are and where they're located. So, we'll work with it to see that that happens. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilwoman Pritchette. Next, we'll have uh Katherine, excuse me, Councilwoman Katherine Ralph.

Thank you for um the presentation. I have a couple questions. I know we have several apps that have operated in our city. I think the police department had the Guardian and we've had how how do they work? Cuz I don't want it to be that we have these 500 apps. I would like everything to be in one place. If we had this app, I I don't want to have another app. So, so what this So, so it's a a messaging system that works through text, phone, and email. So it just texts out information.

It textes out how you however you like to receive the information is how it sends it to you. So if there's a an an event that happens in your community, like I said, there was a power outage or a down tree or ice on the roads. We can geoarget your district because it's happening your district and not cast it out of the entirety of the city. And so it's really going to serve as an emergency and a safety protocol for us when communicating with the residents. Okay. So like uh storms, trees down road. Okay. Yes. and they can opt out at any time, but we don't want you to opt out if you see.

I got it. So, um Okay, I got it. But that leads me to another question about I know we have several apps and I know a lot of cities are looking at similar things where it's one app that kind of is your go-to and you kind of get everything. And I do think we need something similar to that because, you know, cultural affairs, I get emails from culture affairs. like, you know, uh, Park and Rex has their page, code enforcement has their page. How do we make it so that you can look in one place and truly see what's going on? And it's always a lot going on in our city. Like the the residents should never be bored, literally.

Yeah. You know, that's a good that's a good problem to have. We have so many events that are happening in the city. Um, and it's going to be our job as public affairs to highlight specifically why this app is what app why this messaging system is is important. is important for safety. It's important for knowledge. It's important for education and awareness. This could be our job as public affairs to inform the community of why they should actually be able to access this and sign up for the program and then be able to be formed better informed should the emergency happen in our community.

Okay. And just one follow. So you're naturally c you know communicate with residents right now. You know we have emails from the various events we have. We just had state of the city and you know all these. Are you going to start with something? It it seems like versus getting them to sign up necessarily want can we can it be a text sent out to say hey you've been receiving communication with the city can we put you on the sou connect platform or something like that because you have a lot of data right now maybe you don't have it in all the ways you want it I don't know if you can tell you know what district or so that you can geocode and whatnot but is that something you'll be able to

that's how you all will come into play Yeah, we'll be sending out information and details that will feature QR codes,formational pieces and flyers that you can put into your newsletters to be able to reach your constituents. We work also with our departments who have heavily heavily engaged community members, uh, cultural affairs, parks and recreation, the police department to be able to amplify our messaging as well and that way we can get more people involved and signed up through that process. Okay, but think about what I said about that whatever that one app that has everything like this. know what you're talking about. I just want to check on one place and look for everything and yeah. All right. Thank you. And is there a possibility for it to create and convert to an app?

I'm not sure. I have to talk to it about that. I know they try to make it Well, Civic Plus tried to make it as engaging and as accessible as possible. And so the way that we have it is it runs through Civic Plus. We're able to gather the information and analytics through that platform. And um once it's sent out through email and or if they reply back to it, we get messages back. I'm not really sure if it can convert into an app. I can ask about it, but I hadn't heard about that process yet. All right. Okay. Councilwoman Kio Bill.

Thank you, Mayor. I just had a few questions. I know you mentioned um that residents would have an opportunity to either opt in or opt out, but also to select which information that they would like to receive. And so um that just brings a concern as far as if we're getting safety information. Are there ways that we can almost require them to receive certain information? Um, and then with residents have the opportunity to go back in and maybe modify, say they didn't check a couple of boxes, but now they want information about community events or, you know, fire or police and so forth or does it give the flexibility for residents to be able to log back in and

Yes, Mayor Pro Tim actually does and that was a concern that we had about the the software initially. Okay. Um, we thought about doing a phase tier into council events. Um, as you know, we have so many events that are happening a year. We didn't want to inundate those people that signed up for the software with events. And so that's why we focused on phase one for it be emergency contacts and things of that nature. Um, so they we can require for them to have certain ones they sign up for um public safety um in emergencies, community emergencies, things of that nature. We can most likely make that a requirement as the priority and then anything else you want to join, you can along.

Okay. And I think my additional follow-up question would be I know many of my colleagues mentioned about having information from various departments. Is that an option to possibly have where is if I'm setting this up and sign up for this particular um emergency response messages? Maybe I just want information from fire and code. Yes. Maybe I just want information from fire police and code. you know, I just want to, you know, I think that would be an option versus I'm not an app person. I'm not going to download any more apps, but I like I see her and and my young my my younger is like, "No, no more apps." So, she gets it. But I think for, you know, if we're trying to fill the gap and the need with our seniors and our legacy residents, they may not need may not want to download an app. I think having it as an option may be something, but my mom's 77 and she's on everything. Tik Tok, Snapchat, well, it used to be Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and she comments. And so, I think the QR code may be a a better option, but we can also share the information in our newsletter. So, and I would love to see the information. I don't know what's I know you mentioned that there will be posters and billboards. I would love to see the information in parks and recreation um actually posted in all of our facilities because

that's what a majority of people are. I know I was moving fast for time, but we are going to place those inside of our facilities. Yes. Okay. And next is Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown. What? No, this is going to this this is going to be quick because I just want to point out that emergencies have no time. And so if this system is going to be used to let people know about emergencies and situations, then the expectation is going to be that if a tornado's coming through at 1:00 in the morning, I expect to get a text message at 1:00 in the morning and not when everybody gets up the next day.

The best part about that, um, Councilwoman Williams Brown, is that, um, we have templates that are already available and fire has access to it. I've talked to Chief Chad Jones extensively about this, which is one of the conversations we had about getting information out at 1, two, three o'clock in the morning. So, we're prepared for that. All right. Well, thank you very much. I don't see any additional questions in the queue. I am excited about this and ready for you all to get this going. So, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. All right, Mr. Clark, please. The next item. Next item is executive session if necessary. Um, it is 5 o'clock. Do you want to just go into the next meeting?

All right. I will go ahead with unanimous consent. We will adjourn this meeting. All right. The meeting is now adjourned.

Meeting adjourned at 5:07 p.m. Okay. Council, make sure you switch over to your next meeting in Civic Plus. All right, Mr. Clerk, I will call the next meeting, which is our alcohol license and zoning public hearing meeting for May the 12th, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. uh to order at 50:08. Please sound a roll. Roll call for today's alcohol license zoning public hearing. The honorable captain of District 1 present. The Honorable Erin V. Johnson, District 2, present.

The Honorable JC Sebastian, District 4, here. The Honorable Kosha Bale, District 5, present. The Honorable Natasha Williams Brown, District 6, present. And the Honorable Linda B. Pritchette, District 7, here. And the Honorable Mayor Carmelita Gums, here. Madame Mayor, you have a quorum.

All right, Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item. Madame Mayor, that brings us to the first item. And I would like to note that we do have two cases. Uh there was a case that was added uh late Friday after the agenda was published, but it was publicly noticed and uh included on an amended agenda. So the first item, alcohol license resoning, variance and modification cases for presentation and public hearing only. First case, KC26-002. It's a public hearing application by Mike Lee Care of Wii Partner Group LLC request reszoning from HG1 to CUP to develop 35 single family homes on 15 acres at 4700 welcome all road located in city council district 3. Staff recommendation was denial. Planning commission recommendation was approval conditional.

All right. Uh you want to go ahead before we open up the here?

Absolutely. Good evening. So KZ26-002 again the address is 4700 welcome all road and just to reiterate reiterate staff is recommending a denial as we feel that the site plan submitted by the applicant does not meet the intent of the CUP zoning district. The planning commission recommending approval um of the CUP with the R5 zoning regulations. So, at the planning commission meeting, they asked what if they didn't approve it with the CUP zoning district, what other um zoning district closely relates. Um so, off the cuff, I did tell tell them that R5 would be the most appropriate zoning district. Most of their lots on their submitted site plan had 7,500 foot lots and I'm sorry, they had 7,000 square foot lots and the minimum for the R5 is 7,500. So again, you all can just take that when you look at their recommendation from the planning commission. But again, staff is recommending a denial. Should you all go with the planning commission recommendation that will require the applicant to revise their site plan to have all the lots meet the minimum of the R5, which that's 7500 ft.

All right. Thank you. At this time, I will open the public hearing. Is the applicant here? All right. Please stand to the podium. All right. And I need to read this to you to open a public hearing. At this time, I am opening the public hearing for item 3A on the agenda. Sir, you have a total of 10 minutes to give your presentation. You do not have to use all of that time. You may want to reserve that time for rebuttal. Also, keep in mind that if the time allowed includes public comments from any of the citizens who are also in favor of your application, the same time granted for those in favor of the application must be given to the opposition. if any, you may proceed with your presentation.

Okay. Thank you very much. Uh my name is Mark Burns. I am a strategic advisor for we partner group. So I'm representing the owner of the land. Uh our company purchased this land about seven years ago and uh with the intent to develop it at some point in time. Uh we partner group is a woman-owned uh private equity company. We manage about $300 million in assets be it commercial and retail. We have a very vast experience in uh ownership of properties and uh our plan was to develop this into a residential community that would be uh add value to uh to South Fulton. We started the resoning process about I want to say almost three years ago uh to look and see what the opportunities were. Uh there is a single family home on that 15 acres. We got serious about that back in the end of the fourth quarter last year into January and we partnered with a development company tributary to help us determine the best use for the property. Uh we initially uh submitted a request for a CUP which would give us what we felt was the maximum number of lots that we could build on the property and still uh provide some um land or grass or yard for our our community. We held our public uh hearing uh back in the beginning of the year. It was very well attended. Uh we did have questions uh which was good. We wanted questions. We wanted to understand what concerns uh could um come up so that we could address them. There were some questions about buffers and whether we would put trees and things of that nature. We then

had our um zoning meeting which uh the gentleman mentioned a few m moments ago. We actually had several meetings uh with the initial denial because we they said we did not meet the CUP guidelines which uh was correct. uh we went back and changed that a little bit to try to meet that requirement. We added a walking trail uh in that on that 15 acres which is almost one mile trail that would be used by the community. We then had the meeting um back in April. Uh initially we were denied and then later we received notification that they had given us a conditional approval to uh to an R5. What we're asking for is some variable of between the two. Uh the property or the community to one side of us is a R our five the community on the other side of us is a CUP. We're asking that so that we can maximize the number of lots which would be 33 that one side of the community be rated at the R5 and the other at the CUP. That gives us uh about 34 lots that we can build on. If we maintain the R5 because of the $7,500 uh $7500 square foot requirement and primarily the width, we will lose uh a number of lots. Uh I think it would be 30 lots. I will just say in closing, we're good people. We want to build a nice home. Uh the homes that we are have designed to build on that property, we think are going to add value to that area of Welcome All Road, we feel like uh it will be a home that uh the people

residents of the community will want to to buy. All right. Thank you. Do you have anyone else here? to speak in favor. Yes, Mr. Veronica Lee. Good afternoon. Um, like you said, my name's Veronica. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. It's a little high for me.

Um, I work for Tributary Homes, Tributary Real Estate Group. Mike Lee was here last time. Um, he is at the Georgia Home Builders Association event. He's on the the board. Um, we're based out of West Georgia. We would love for anybody to come see the product that we build. We build beautiful uh well built really good quality homes. Um some of the houses that we would propose building on um this property we're building currently at a new neighborhood in Carolton, Georgia called the Overlook at Oak Mountain. Um there are twotory homes, twocar garage, ranging from about 1,800 square ft to 2100 square ft. um great homes that we really think would add value to this community. Um as Mark mentioned earlier, we did go in and add um the walking trail. Um some areas that the the homeowners would be able to enjoy the property, have some green space. Um we think that's important. Um especially now, you just it's good to have those kind of amenities for for the community. Um, we did initially start with the CUP zoning and the maximum amount of lots was 475. Um, Mark mentioned that they tried reszoning this property several years ago and that group was trying to go for the 75 lots. It didn't work out. So, we initially proposed 35, which we thought was a very good difference from the 75 originally, especially with keeping that green space. Um, so we are we're at the 35 lots with the cup. Um, this mix between CUP and R5 brings us to 33 lots. Um, and so we still think that's a great adjustment compared to the the 75 that would be allowed with the cup. Um, the other thing I'd like to mention is there's a creek on this property and with us keeping the lots at the front of

the parcel. We are not going to do anything to cross the creek. That would cause a lot of um development to protect that. Um, we would have a little bridge going over it so the community can access the walking trail and things of that nature. Um, but we won't be doing anything that would drastically uh affect the creek. we wanted to keep that protected there. So, um 33 lots compared to a larger amount. Um and we we think that we can bring a great product to the community. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Do we have any opposition?

No, ma'am. We did not receive any cards in opposition to this case. All right. At this time, I will be closing the public hearing and we'll take questions from council. And right now, we have a vacancy in district uh three. Is there anyone that will like to speak? Okay, there we go. All right, Councilman Sebastian.

Hi. Thank you guys for your presentation. I just want to get some clarification. I think I heard um staff said that you guys are in between a couple different zoning categories, right? And in order to match the existing what what by right should happen there, you'll need a further reduction in the number of homes. Can you clarify that for me? Because I'm hearing these different numbers 35 33 right. So

yeah, it's uh it's been a bit of a fuzzy math over the last three four years. Uh we started out with 75 way back when and then we determined that that really wasn't a realistic. What we're asking for now is 33 lots uh which would uh allow us to have a CUP uh requirement on one side of the street and an R5 requirement on the other side. We then match our neighbors on on each side. If we do strict our five, we will have 30 lots. Uh but we feel like we could be um and we have to also keep in mind that if we can get to 33 lots, we reduce the land cost and we make a we're able to spend more on the home itself and and make a better home for the value that we're given to our buyers.

Okay. Um, for me it would have been nice to see some pictures of the products. It's I I I always look for that because that's what our residents look for. What have they been in there? How presented those postponing uh the planning meeting pictures of our of the products themselves. I do have that. Uh be happy to show you if you can you make sure they get submitted to the clerk's office so they can Yes, I'd be happy to. But this is kind of the product that we would Yes. I was under the impression that you guys had that, but I'll be glad to get that to you. Okay. Yeah. Please pass them over to the clerk so we can get copies of those. Thank you. Yes.

Next in the queue would be I think Councilwoman Pritchette.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, from what I just heard, you're you're saying that half of the half of the development you want to be R5 on one side of the street and CUP on the other side of the street. So, also for the clarity of everyone listening, you mentioned something about a denial. These are recommendations. a denial has not happened or um or an approval has not happened. So, and this may be a staff question. If this is what they're trying to do, then why don't they split the parcels where one side configure the parcel to split it so one side as he's saying would be R5 and the other side I don't even know to be honest CUP is not a Z I get confused on CUP. So, if you can clarify what it's not like you you can tell them what they should do, but based on what they're trying to achieve, I'm trying to understand what they should do so that it could line up properly with the future land use plan. Um because if you have R5 on one side, you know, other R5s on one side and the CUP on the other side, we just want to make this right if this is something that anyone is willing to entertain. So if it was to be right, how would it be right? How could you make it right?

Absolutely. So just to clarify a few things, um we're this is the first time of us hearing where there will be a split between the CUP and the R5. To clarify the planning commission's recommendation was to reszone it to CUP with the R5 zoning regulations. And again, that was to give them kind of a um a hand so they wouldn't their recommendation wouldn't be a denial outright. So we we don't recommend doing a split zoning between CUP and R5. The planning commission the planning commission's recommendation was to do a CUP with the R5 zoning regulations. That will essentially be a C a CUP zoning, but they follow the R5 zoning regulations. Our recommendation again is a denial because their site plan does not meet the intent of the CUP. Um I can highlight six um elements of the CUP zoning so you all are familiar with them just for the record. So the first one is to encourage the development of large tracks as of land as planned communities. Number two is to encourage flexible and and creative concepts and site planning. Number three is to preserve the natural amenities of the land by encouraging scenic and functional open areas. Number four is to provide for the efficient use of the land. Number five is to provide a stable uh residential environment compatible with the surrounding residential districts. And number six is to protect the neighboring properties by requiring large peripheral lots adjacent to larger lot developments. Again, as the speaker mentioned, their site plan, um he said it himself that they're trying to maximize the number of lots and do between 33 and 35 lots. Unfortunately, that's not the intent of the CUP zoning district. So, that's where our recommendation of of a denial stands.

Thank you. And so, sir, you understand you understood what he said? Yes, I do. And we we are fine with the uh C R5. We were just uh hoping to get a few more lots so that we can maximize that space, but we we very much understand what the requirements were in the steps and we tried to meet that by adding that uh that trail uh walking trail in the community. uh we're not trying to avoid uh those those needs.

So for staff based on I know that you all make your recommendation on the front end, but since we're on the back end and he's saying what they are willing to do, would it meet the requirement if they did what if they are willing to do what you just said? Would it meet the requirement? So, we actually met with them after the planning commission meeting when the plan when the planning commission did a deferral and they came back with um the adjustments to the rear of the lot that added the walking trail, but again, we still felt that the entire site plan still did not meet the intent of the CUP zoning district. So, even though that they added a few walking trails, that's still not what the CUP zoning district calls for. So, it just seems to me that there is still a gap somewhere or a disconnect and that probably um if it's possible or if it makes sense that some more conversation or something else needs to happen. But thank you. I yield.

All right. Can do you care if I say few words? Sure. You can probably um I just wanted to speak to some of the concerns that have been brought up. Madam Mayor, wait, this is not a hearing though. I just want you to know and and please state your name for the record, please. Okay. I'm Brian Howell with HRC Engineers. Uh thanks for having me tonight. And you're responding to her. Um council.

Yes, sir. I uh some of the concerns that were brought up from um the staff in regards to um not meeting the intent of the CUP. I just wanted to kind of go go over in more detail on how we met some of those with our most recent site plan. Um so one of the items was mentioned that the intent of the CU zoning district is to encourage development of large tracks of land as planned communities. So the uh requirement for this is 10 contiguous acres. Our property is 15 acres which exceeds this requirement by 150%. Um, another one was to provide a stable residential environment compatible with the surrounding residential areas. Um, so we're proposing a single family detached residential subdivision that's compat compatible to the adjacent single family residential neighborhood which is to the north and to the south of us. Um, the proposed density is actually less than both of these surrounding uh developments. Um, in addition, uh, the plan incorporates meaningful open space on the other side of the creek like we've discussed, um, which preserves natural vegetation, um, and reflecting the aesthetic and environmental qualities in the adjacent communities. Um, another concern was um, protect neighboring properties by requiring larger peripheral lots adjacent to the larger lot developments. So, what we did with this latest CUP, um, and this is a CUP zoning with R5 zoning regulations, not we're not trying to go for CUP and R5 zoning at the same time. Um, but there's no specific lot size requirement in the cup, but we are basically the lots to the south, we're within 300

square feet of those lots that are existing. the lots to the north we're going with R5 which was recommended um by the staff which is 7500 square foot lots. Um one other concern was the area east of the creek is labeled as common space but it's unclear how the homeowners would be able to access the common space as it is on the other side of the stream. So what we've done is provide access from our culde-sac across the creek via pedestrian bridge and we've got a trail that pro traverses the what would be technically undisturbed other than the um walking trail. Um and also to mention the open space and as far as how much of the land we're actually disturbing I would say it's close to half. I mean maybe a little more than half the land that will be technically disturbed. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of clarification on those items.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Ralph. Question for the staff. I think on page six, um I just want to make sure if I'm looking is the site plan the most recent one. this one. I see the stream and I see another section above it that doesn't have anything laid out on it from what I can see. Is this where we are now? Is this the most recent version? You said on page six, correct?

Six of nine. And then my follow-up question, if R5 was the conversation you had with the developer, what would be the maximum houses on this site? So I was just want to do a point of clarification on that. We did not recommend R5. We recommended a denial. The planning commission recommended the R5. Okay. Gotcha. Right. And I believe that is the most update site plan that you're seeing on page six.

Okay. So if if the Okay, I have another question. So based on the future land use for this area, what is the maximum number of homes that will be allowed?

I would need to look that up. Give me one second. suburban neighborhood. So that would be under this application that would be up to four units per acre, up to three or four units per acre. But that's at the time of application. As you all know, we just updated the comprehensive plan. So right now technically it's larger, but at the time of this application, I would say it would be up to four units per acre. Four units per acre. So I'm sorry, it's three units per acre.

Three. Three. Okay. So like our three. Okay. Um, so 45. Okay. I don't have any further questions. All right. Thank you so much. Applicant, we will be hearing this um case if you all are not able to get to the point. We will be hearing this case I believe May 26th. May 26. So the council will vote at that time. Okay. Thank you for being here. Mr. Alert, please sound the next item.

That brings us to Roman numeral 4, walk-on items, case M26-002, located at 07,62006190 Kawita and 4675 Dodson Road. Um, but Benton Court Construction LLC carab law is requesting a modification to a site plan associated with zoning KZ25-020. the CUP district to reduce the minimum lot size to 6,600 square ft and remove multiple lots from the 75 ft stream buffer and required buffers areas around the perimeter of the property to develop 293 single family detached homes on 130.19 acres. This is located in city council district 4. Staff recommendation was approval. Council, if there is no objections, we will approve walk on item 4A as sounded. No objection.

It's still a It's a public hearing. It's a public I know. I'm about to read about But it's a walk-on item though. Okay. All right. You want to give your brief? Yeah, absolutely. A brief presentation. So again, uh this item, this reasonzoning came to you all in the fall of last year. There were some lots that were identified that were in the stream buffer. Um, and our ordinance prohibits development within the stream buffer. So, the applicant uh app apply for a modification uh to 2E for the minimum lot size. Uh, and that lot size went from 9,000 to 6,600 ft². Again, staffers recommend approval.

All right. Is the applicant here? I do see. All right. Let me read this to you. At this time, I'm opening the public hearing for item 4A on the agenda. Ma'am, you have a total of 10 minutes to give your presentation. You do not have to use all of that time. You may want to reserve any time for rebuttal. Also, keep in mind the time allotted for public comments for any of the citizens who are also in favor of your application. That same time is granted for those in favor of the application must be given to the opposition, if any. You may proceed. Thank you. Michelle Battle with Battle Law 3562 Haberssham at North Lake, Tucker, Georgia 300084. As staff has indicated, we um were able to obtain the approval of this application unanimously last year. Um after the client began um working with their engineer uh to prepare the plat, they realized that a number of the lots were located within the buffers. The land development code actually prohibits that. not the zoning ordinance um which we were not aware of. Um and so as a result um we had to go back and modify the site plan. What I will tell you is that um we started out with 293 lots. We are now actually down to 286 lots in order to achieve that. Additionally, while the minimum lot size is 6,600 square feet, um we are actually um at an average square footage of 8,873. So, as you can see, we were not doing this in a way to obtain more lots or more units. Um we were simply doing this um in order to make sure that we are in conformity with the requirements under the land development code. Um the plan in front of you just shows where the

property is located off of Kawita um near uh Datson Road. Um this is the site plan. Um basically it is the same identical site plan that we was was approved last year. Again um you can see that we are um at a density of 2.20. That is actually less than what we were approved at um because again we lost lots. I believe that's seven lots. I'm not a mathematician, but I think I got that right. But let us hope. Um and um and so we do have fewer lots um that are shown. Um and you can see also the minimum lot size along with the um average lot acreage. So um we are hopeful that this is a very dimminimous request. Um, we are now out of the buffer areas along the entire perimeter of the site. Um, inclusive of the buffers for the Cliftonale overlay as well as the buffer that applies because we are adjacent to property outside of the jurisdiction. And that will all be owned by the HOA and maintained by the HOA um, as required under the county's under the city's ordinance. So, thank you.

All right. Thank you. Do you have anyone in favor of the application? We did receive in addition to Miss Battle, we had Stephen Fakara and Herman Spearman. I don't know if you're with the applicant or you wish to Okay, they're with the applicant. So, we did not receive any comment cards in opposition. All right. Well, that's easy. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm in opposition. All right, please come to the podium. Please state your name and your address.

My name is Herman Spearman. Um, I live at 6170 Kawita Road. I am right next to uh 6190. And if you would go back to the map, I would like for you to see um my lot size on Calita Road. Um, and that's my opposition. Uh, I moved there in 20 uh 2001 and I moved there because it was peaceful and quiet and it was natural. But now what what's happening? Um, and most of the properties on that street are probably I'm going to average 5 to 8 acres, 10. Um, but uh to take that space and bring in that amount of homes is not fair to the current residents. I mean, if you would if you would add lot sizes that are the average of those that are existing and those that face cow road, that would be more fair. But now it seems as if it's all about the money. You can make more money with more houses on the lot on those lots. But then what about me? What about me? And you know, so I just take whatever you give because it's most most profitable for you. What about my my lifestyle? How about how I like to live? So now I just got to pack up and move. So be it. I mean, I don't have that many more years. I know I look like I'm 25. I don't have that many more years. Can I have my years in peace?

I don't think that's too much to ask. Maybe you can you can still make money. You can still have a profit, but be conscious of people that live there currently. That's it. And what about the the natural environment? What we going to see more deers laying on the side of the road? They got to live somewhere. That's a lot of acres of land that deers live there now. Rabbits, squirrels, geese, raccoons, they all live there. And then what about how you going how is that going to affect that lake behind me? How's that going to affect that lake? There's going to be mud. They they gave a permission for the the subdivision down the road said, "Okay, it's going to be all right when we put these homes up." Now the lake is smaller because mud came down in that natural stream to the lake. And that's what's going to happen. It's going to be mud. I mean, come on.

I mean, ju just be fair to the current residents of Kawita Road. That's all I ask. All right. Thank you, Mr. Spearman. Do we have any more?

No, ma'am. The um applicant does have approximately 7 minutes left for rebuttal. I will be brief. Um I certainly appreciate the comments of Mr. Spearman. Um what I would say is that this project again was already approved for 293 lots that happened last year. Um we are not asking um to do a new project. We are asking to make a modification that quite honestly will provide more protection along the perimeter uh including adjacent to his property because the lots will not extend to his property line. There will be green space um that will be left around the perimeter and around the side that is adjacent to his property. Um that will not belong to the homeowner. will belong to the HOA, will be maintained by the HOA and be there to allow that privacy um that he has. While growth is continuing to occur within this community, and it has already been determined based on the other developments that have come within this area, um we are trying to do all that we can to make sure that we are preserving those areas. Um there are lakes on this property. That's part of the reason why we are also um have been required to remove the lots that encroached into that space so that those areas can stay um viable and environmentally sound. And so um we are required to meet um all of the requirements under the land development ordinance. Um this was one of them. And so we came back to make sure in fact we volunteered the information that we didn't realize that we had encroached into it and approached staff and said look we want to make sure that we get it right and that's why we are back here. Um so that happened actually before we submitted anything we came back and said oh we think that we that there was an error made and so we

addressed it and made made sure that we um brought that forth before not only the planning department but also um council member Sebastian. So once again we would ask for approval. Um we are not seeking to have more lots. We are actually reducing the total number of lots by seven lots and we are providing the protections around the perimeter of the property um that are required under the land development ordinance. Thank you.

All right. Thank you Miss Battle. Okay. At this time I am closing public hearing and we'll take questions from the council starting with the district representative district 4 Councilman Sebastian. Thank you, mayor. I have a question for staff about the future land use designation for this property. What is it um now and what are we projecting it to be in the future once we adopt our new maps? I need just a second to look that up. Um so if you have another question uh we can look that up. We can look that up while you're

Yeah. How will we how will be and I know this is not probably your department but the concerns are expressed about the the lakes especially on on this property and we do have a lot of communities here in in um South Fulton with lakes on their HOA properties. Um I can think of the lakes in city close to me. um and those lakes are looked after and they work with the state to make sure that those lakes are kept up well and not affected. So how would we ensure as a government that that doesn't happen or is that strictly under HOA? All right. So the current at the time of the application the future land use was suburban neighborhood which allows up to up to three units per acre. I believe the applicant has about 130 acres. So she could get however however amount that math maths out maths out to.

Sounds like almost 400. Correct. And they're only asking for 293 and then reducing it to to around 286 287. And then again the future land use changed when you all approved the new future land use map at the April 28th meeting. Um and I believe that area likely stayed the same as suburban.

Okay. Um the reality is that um we as a country we have shortage of what five million homes right that's a reality we live in the suburb of metro Atlanta and I think anyone of us who are up here including the government would say that we moved here because it was peaceful and it was quiet. We moved here before there was a city. Um but now we are a city and we do have the responsibility to balance the needs of the community, the needs of the land owners and the needs of um the residents. Um I appreciate the the comments that that were made and the concerns cuz they are legitimate concerns, but we do have we do have improvements coming to Kawita Road, including the replacement of the bridge there on on Kawita Road. We share that area with Union City as well. So we don't have total control over what happens there on on KA road. Um but rest assured we have concerns over traffic and quiet and lighting and all of that and we we're addressing that as a government. Now I have to say sir it's not going to happen overnight. So, you know, so give us give us some time and some grace, but we we do have plans to make sure that area is better taken care of. Um, one of the issues that we face out here in district 3 and district 4, um, is that years ago, the way how South Fton Parkway was designed, um, there were some ulterior arteries that should have ran parallel to South Fulton Parkway that we, as when we were not city before, when other folks made the decision that those roads are no longer there. So, Salt Fulton Parkway and roads like Kawita Road are taking

heavier traffic. So, so basically we have to do what we can to mitigate the circumstances, but we also um have a responsibility to uh to be fair to land owners and also to provide um more housing for our citizens when we're able to. Thank you. That's all I'll say. All right. Thank you, Councilman. All right. There are no further um comments in the queue. Mr. Clerk, can you please sound the next item? brings us to executive session if necessary.

All right. If there is no objections, we will recess into executive session for purpose of litigation. Real estate cyber security and personnel. I think we got them all. No objections. All right. We will adjourn for um we will recess for executive session. recessed at 5:48 Man.

It looks like we have a quorum. If there's no opposition, can we please reconvene? Can we reconvene? All right, Mr. Clerk, were there any actions taken in executive session? No, ma'am. There were no actions taken in executive session that requires a public vote.

All right. At this time, if there is no um action and no objection to um there's no objection, we will now go ahead and move for adjournment. Mr. Clerk, we are adjourned at 6:57 and we will be starting our regular council meeting at 700 p.m. And council, can you make sure that you switch over to your regular meeting in Civic Plus? Thank you. 27.

Thank you for joining us live for the city of South Bton city council meeting. We are proud to introduce the leadership entrusted with guiding our city forward. Mayor Carmelita Gums, District 1 Councilwoman Dr. Katherine Ralph, District 2 Councilman Aaron V. Johnson, District 4 Councilman JC Sebastian, Mayor Pro Tim Kiosha B. Bell, District 6, Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown, District 7 Councilwoman Linda Becker Pritchie. Supporting the work of this body in the operations of our city are City Clerk Corey Adams, city manager Sharon D. Subed, and interim city attorney Sarah Kelly. Thank you for being the best part of the city of South Florida, a city on the rise.

All right, good evening and thank you all for being here. We will officially call this meeting for our city council regular uh meeting to order on for May the 12th, 2026. Mr. Clerk, can you please sound the role? It's roll call for tonight's meeting. The Honorable Katherine F. Ri, District 1, present. The Honorable Aaron V. Johnson, District 2, present. The Honorable JC Sebastian, District 4, here. The Honorable Kosha Bale, District 5, present. The Honorable Natasha Williams Brown, District 6, present. The Honorable Linda B. Pritchette, District 7, here. And the Honorable Mayor Carmelita Gums, present.

Madame Mayor, you have a quorum. All right. Thank you. I want to take a moment to uh recognize Councilman Sebastian. He will be reading the civility pledge today.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. City of South Fulton civility pledge. The way we govern ourselves is often as important as the positions we take. Our collective decisions will be better when differing views have had the opportunity to be fully vetted and considered. All people have the right to be treated with respect, courtesy, and openness. We value all input. We commit to conduct ourselves at all times with civility and courtesy to each other.

All right. Thank you, Councilman Sebastian. Each uh council meeting, we will have um a council member read this uh civility pledge. We had our mayor prom last council meeting so they can all become very familiar with it even though they already are and you as the audience will as well. So Mr. Clerk please sound the next item.

That brings us to Roman numeral 3 invocation by our city chaplain. Thank you for standing. Let me just sing a little verse. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord for comes. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord for all these wise councilmen. Oh thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord for Mayor Kale Gums. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord for all these council members as we lift our minds and hearts to the Lord. Heavenly Father God, tonight we pause with grateful hearts to thank you for the city of South Fulton, for the citizens and for the privilege of serving this growing community together. Lord, we thank you for new leadership, for renewed order, professionalism, vision, and stability. We thank you for the mayor Kale Gums and for her steady leadership and her experience and her commitment to the city from very from the very beginning. We thank you God for every council member, every city employee, contractor, public servant,

every volunteer who works daily to make South Fulton stronger, safer, and better for all. Father, we acknowledge tonight that all is not perfect. There are still needs and challenges and vacancies and concerns and growing pains. But we are grateful

for the progress that is being made. We thank you God. We thank you for the improvements that we now see for the res restored order, for completed projects, for safer streets, for new developments and renewed hope throughout our city. Now Lord, grant us uh this mayor and council the wisdom beyond human understanding. Give them discernment to make decisions in the best interest of our citizens and our and the future of our city. Let integrity lead every conversation. Fairness guide every vote and unity overcome division. Bless our police officers, first responders, city staff, attorneys, managers, workers, and every hand helping to make South Fton the be the greatest city

in the United States. Protect them, strengthen them, and give them grace for the work ahead. And father, may the citizens of South Fton continue to stand together with patient support and accountability and hope as we move this city forward for better, for truly great in your holy name. Amen. Amen.

United States of America to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible.

All right. Thank you um to our chaplain. That was wonderful. This council uh we all need any type of prayers that you can drop on us anytime. We are welcome. Thank you. Oh. Uh oh. Okay. Never mind. Um next, Mr. Clerk, can you please sound the role? I mean the next item.

Yes, ma'am. That brings us to Roman numeral 5, adoption of council agenda. I did not receive any additions except for a correction to a title of a resolution which is on the consent agenda sponsored by council member Sebastian. Resolution proclaiming June as men's health and wellness month uh for the month of June.

All right. If there is no objections, uh we will adopt the agenda as amended. Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item. brings us room number six. Approval of city council meeting minutes, regular meeting minutes, April 28th, 2026. Work session minutes, April 28, 2026, and alcohol zoning public hearing minutes, April 28, 2026. All right. If there is no objection, we will adopt this with unanimous consent without any corrections. All right, Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item. brings us to Roman number seven, consent consent agenda items, items A through G.

All right. If there is no objections, we will adopt the consent agenda with unanimous consent without any corrections. All right, Mr. Clerk, please. The next item

brings us room 8, alcohol license resonings, variance, and modification cases for motion and vote. We have one case this evening. It's a second read and request council approval of a zoning ordinance for KZ26-007. An application by Dorothy Crowley requesting reszoning from R3 in the Sandtown Overlay District with conditions to R3 to develop 18 single family units on 13.82 acres at 2210 and zero Wallace Road rear. This is located in city council district 1. Staff and the planning commission recommend approval with conditions.

All right. If there is no objections to item uh 8A, this will be adopted by unanimous consent. Do we have any objections? Okay. Okay. Um you have in front of you the staff um conditions. Um for number 10, it should be the home should be all exterior brick, stuckle or stone. and 12 that hardy plank or wood can be incorporated into the portions of the rear elevation. This item 8A is adopted by unanimous consent. Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item.

That brings us to public comment. Speakers will be granted a total of two minutes each and public comments will not exceed 30 minutes. Speakers will not be allowed to yield or donate their time to other speakers. Speakers must identify themselves and the addresses prior to speaking. Speakers may only address the presiding officer shall observe all rules of decorum. No debate, disrespect or obscinity shall be tolerated. The presiding officer shall rule any such individual out of order that fails to comply with the foregoing. Additionally, comments regarding zoning cases will not be heard for public comment. With that said, m Madame Mayor and Council, we we have two two speaker cards that do not address zoning. Um we have Gary Benching

Bing, Congressman's Scott's office. Yes. As well as Mike Johnson. All right. Please uh come to the podium. Good evening, mayor and council. Good evening. Press the button.

I already pressed. Hello. Yeah, I'm Gary Bing from Congressman David Scott's office and I just want to say thank you for all the proclamations and thing you did while we were funeralizing Congressman Scott first of all. Secondly, this item needs to be recalled because of certain conditions that apply the time limit that was allotted for this project.

Mr. Bing, what what item are you speaking of just for clarity? Because we can't talk about zoning. We're speaking about the houses that are being built. Okay, that is a zoning item that we just voted on. So, based on our our rules, um we are not able to discuss that item at this time. Well, I'm only here for that item. Okay. Um and uh I think the people should be represented that are electing these officials and I think the people should be heard. Um the these people vote understand you ought to take care of them

and I think they should be heard in this situation before making votes. I understand but this is and unfortunately this is the second hearing. Um and this is the one where we actually have the vote and you all are now allowed to speak on the zoning issue. No one is allowed. We weren't told that. I'm I'm We weren't told that. I'm just hearing that. Okay. Okay. At the last meeting, I thought that's what they told us. No, the item is to be voted on, but there's no other uh comments that are able to be made. So, I apologize. I do, too. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Being. Mr. Johnson.

All right. Uh, Mike Johnson, District 4. So, um, basically, um, I want to get into the proceedings here. I've listened to the chaplain say something about accountability. Yes.

Um, getting into that accountability thing here. I hope when I'm not hearing uh, word on the street to this particular board speaking about Commita Gums, he about to try to ask for a raise. I hope that don't happen because this entire board struck down the last mayor for asking about a raise. So, I'm hoping that don't happen because if it do, I'm sure you're going to get some push back. But, I want to get into this accountability for as uh our taxpayer dollars here being spent within this city. They had a funeral that took place down in Savannah, Georgia that took nine of our officers away from this city for a period of time. And it cost us tens of thousands of dollars. That involved an individual that was not even employed here at this city. It didn't involve a fallen officer. It involved an employee of this city. Now, to take nine officers down there to be charged for me to be paying out of my taxpayer dollars, that type of money is unacceptable. Now, madam, city manager, you were uh actually at the helm of this this uh city at the time and uh we would like a response on that if you don't mind as to how this thing happened. Um I'm going to go back and address that piece that I talked about last week about Helen Willis receiving that money from uh Forton County, the inmate welfare fund. She we all received that check on December the 3rd. Thanksgiving is in uh November. What did she actually do with that money? What did the city do with that money? Now, my thing is she need to be held responsible to pay that money back. And uh I will continue to come in here and speak on it until we can see where that money is paid back. Thank you.

Okay. No, please make sure you refrain and be in decorum. Mr. Clerk, can you please sound the next item? Next item is council comments. All right, starting with district one.

Uh, thank you for recognizing me. I just want to take a um point of privilege just to explain that what we experienced here today is no different. This is the standard process for every zoning case. So, um, I'm encourage people to get involved and really understand our process. I think that's really important. Um, and I'll just say that as it relates to my announcement for this week, on May 23rd at 10 a.m., we will be doing the District 1 cleanup with the Cascade BMA community cleanup um cleaning the commercial corridor. We also have the upcoming um Chalk the Block Festival on Saturday, May 30th from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. There will be chalk art competitions, prizes, live art battles, and a bouncy house. If you didn't come last year, it's an amazing event and it really showcased the talent we have in our community, especially with our young people. They did some amazing art. Um, we have an upcoming volleyball clinic. The South Footen Police Athletic League Girls Volleyball Club invites girls ages 9 to 17 to join the club at Santtown Park on Saturdays from 2 to 4 pm. This program helps young athletes develop their skills, build teamwork, and promote physical fitness in a positive, supportive environment. We also want to make sure that you're taking advantage of your bulk trash days. I've been including those uh flyers in my newsletter. Um, this is included with your basic solid waste fee. So, please take advantage. You have to schedule that service, but they can pick up at your home. So, I want to encourage you to do that. Look for the dates. They try to do it the Wednesday before the first Monday of the month, which is the pickup days um for district 1 and two. Actually, our Citizens Fire Academy take place on June 1st through the 5th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Fire Station 11 located at 4760 foot industrial boulevard. The academy is a unique opportunity to

educate the public about the fire service and provide insight into everyday fire department work through a hands-on approach. Uh we really want to take advantage of that training. You know, we pray we don't have to deal with emergencies, but things happen. As you know, in our city, we've had a couple tornado and emergencies, and we want to make sure that citizens are prepared and know how to respond in emergencies. So, this is a great program. Take advantage of it. And last, but not least, um I want to encourage you um to have your kids participate in the Unear Story, which the Cascade Library summer reading program kicks off June 3rd at the Evelyn G. Larry Library. I think our mayor will be joining us for the kickoff to read to kids. So, we're excited about that. As you know, um several of the council members and I'm sure all of us will join in before it's over making sure we read to our young people. So, that concludes my announcements for district 1.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Uh District 2, Councilman Johnson.

All right. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Couple things. The street dedication ceremony honoring uh Pastor Pard was held last Sunday and it was a wonderful event. I want to take the time to say thank you to the staff that uh made sure that it was an amazing day. Dr. Cooper and the rest of the staff, thank you. Uh, Pastor Pard's family was really, really grateful for the outpouring of love and support that they received from the city. Uh, we have one more street, we have another street dedication coming up on uh, Saturday at 11:00 a.m. for Senator Danzella James. It will be on the corner of Pitman Road and Stonewall till come out and support uh, Senator James if you can. Um, we also want to recognize National Police Week. Um, uh, this week, May 10th through the 16th. I want to take a moment to acknowledge our women and men in blue, and ask my colleagues to join me in applause for the work you all do on a daily to protect us, make sure we're all right. I need a piece of gum, though. And, um, thank you all for the work that you do. And uh I'm telling you like no other from California to Florida say twin is everywhere. Um and congratulations to the also for the South Fulton Police Department on the groundbreaking for our new headquarters as well as the fire department for our training facility that took place last week. Uh both events were amazing. Uh we're looking forward to uh it was just great for the city and we continue to move the city in the right direction. Uh last week I had the wonderful opportunity of spending uh teacher appreciation week with uh teachers all across district 2. Um each

day we gave them donuts. I think I gained about eight pounds. So I'm going to have to go walk that off. But uh the teachers uh we really appreciate the teachers in the city of South Fulton and in our Fulton County school system, but to uh teachers all over. It was a great week for them. Uh we're looking forward this week to spending time with our seniors. I got to get my two-step together for this Friday, May 15th, for our all-white affair. I still don't have a white jacket, Madame Mayor, but I'm got to tighten up, man. Just get me a little shirt or something. Uh, Amazon, you're right. Uh, we're looking forward to that. Uh, inviting all the council members to stop by if you have an opportunity. And we did get a little relief this weekend from the road closures on I 285, but I wanted to remind everyone that they're moving it to this weekend. So, starting Friday night at 7 pm, I 285 will be closed from Martin Luther King all the way to Cascade Road. So, pack a lot of patience. Think about some people you might need to call because you're going to spend a lot of time in your car if you come through that way. So, those are my only announcements for tonight. Thank you.

All right. That was good. That was good. We might as well go home now. Okay. Okay. No, I'm just teasing. But uh I agree with that traffic on 285. Make sure you spend all your money in South Fton. So if you get stuck, go visit some of our businesses. All right, District 4, Councilman Sebastian.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. And I I'm reminding our police department say they're ready to give um Cam Newton an honorary badge and all that stuff, but I've been out here in these streets trying to control the traffic. So, just saying um for us, I want you all to join us in District 4. We're going to have our town hall, our legislative town hall uh meeting on the 21st of this month at Fire Station 6 starting at 7 p.m. And those who represent District 4, uh Senator Rashan Kemp, uh Robert Dawson, Representative Robert Dawson, and Representative Lydia Glaze, they're going to be joining me so we can learn about some of the things that happened in the session and some of these bills that the governor is now signing. So, I'm looking forward to a a packed house uh that evening. There will be no streaming, so you have to be in the place to get it. Um the other thing I want to announce is a partnership with Representative Lydia Glaze again. Um, we're doing a men's health and wellness event at Fire Station 6, uh, Fire Station 6 on June 6th, and that will start about 11 um, 11:00 a.m. We'll have free screenings uh, for us guys. You know, I know some of us don't want to go to the doctor too often, so we're trying to bring health care to you. And speaking of health care, congratulations to Union City, Fulton County, and the entire South Fton region, and the folks from Grady who has brought this wonderful facility into our area. And I'm telling you all, it's worth visiting there if you're not sick, just to see the artwork. It's great in there. And so, um, I'll, um, I'll just say, I believe it opens to the public on June 2nd. So, don't go down there yet. and quite not ready. They said, "Make sure you all spread the word that we're actually open officially on June 2nd."

So again, those are all the announcement that that I have and thank you guys very much.

Thank you, Councilman Sebastian. District 5, Mayor Pro Tim, Bill, thank you so much. I'm going to just take about uh 15 to 20 minutes of your time. No, I'm just teasing. But thank you all for coming out and tuning in live. I want to thank everyone who came out to the Can't Look Away documentary on the impacts of social media. If you missed it, parents and youth, I'm sorry, but it was a lot of information that was given to address the impacts of social media and how it it impacts our students behavior. Um, but I do want to thank the culture affairs department. We had this event at Southwest Arts Center. I want to thank the parents and the youth who came out and residents and also our phenomenal panelists. Again, if you missed it, you truly missed out on a treat. Um, maybe next time we will have this, you will definitely come out because this was a lot of information about big business and the effects of meta, Snapchat, and so many other uh social media social media platforms that impacts the negative um or the negativity that we've seen amongst our youth in the media. And so again, it's important for us to be educated. It's important for parents, community leaders, teachers to be knowledgeable and educated specifically as it relates to social media. So, nevertheless, thank you for those that came and we moving right along. So, I also want to thank Maternal World Health Organization. This past Saturday, we had a community baby shower where we were able to bless over 60 women that are currently caring and looking forward to be becoming mothers, whether they're new mothers or adding their new bundles of joy to the to their families. Um, I definitely want to thank the volunteers that came out. Each of um our parents that participated were able to receive

either a play pad, some type of crib, car seats, as well as bundles of bottles, onesies, and Huggies diapers. Um so they also had an opportunity to learn about pediatric health care, um pediatric CPR. Um we talked about SID as well as SUD. Um we talked about crib care and provided maternal health resources. So again, I want to thank all of the mothers, even the mother in our city that just had her baby came to the event on Saturday and had her baby on Sunday. I just want to say congratulations to her. Um, yes, she went straight to labor after working at the voting poll as a pole worker during that day, attended the community baby shower, and was in the hospital on Sunday delivering her new bundle of joy. So again, I want to thank everyone that made donations, but most importantly, the Maternal World Health Organization for partnering and making sure that they brought this to our community where it's such a great need. Um, this Thursday, on a positive note, starts our new 3D construction design program at Berdet Park with our workforce with our triple award-winning workforce academy program. So, it starts this Thursday, May the 14th, at 6 p.m. If you or anyone that you know of over the age of 18 years of age and older that is interested in a new field, upskilling or reskilling opportunities, we have a 3D construction, printing, and design program that will begin this Thursday, May the 14th, at 6 p.m. So, I do encourage residents, come on out. this a great free opportunity for you to upskill and receive new skills so that you can become a part of the qualified workforce pool. On Wednesday, tomorrow we will have our annual and quarterly D5 town hall meeting. Um, let's talk. It's

at Berdet Park from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. We do have our special guest, the principal planner, Miss Selene Benoy from ARC, who will be discussing important information as it relates to data centers. So, if you have any questions that's been bursting in your soul regarding data centers and you want community updates and an opportunity to address complex situations where we can go in detail, then this is the time for you to join us at our district 5 let's talk town hall meeting. And again, it is tomorrow, Wednesday, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Berdat Park. And as my colleagues mentioned, we we love literacy and education on our dis from our mayor down to our council. So I just want to encourage our residents, most specifically what I consider our season elite, to please join us as we continue our generations read together program at Berdet Park. Um we have seniors that have committed to coming in and reading to our babies um at least once a week. So if you're interested, please reach out to my office, Mr. widely. My constituent services is right behind. If you need any information or want to sign up or want any um any additional information on how to be connected at our newsletter, he has a QR code. You can scan it. Easy peasy. And so, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our office. And as always, thank y'all for coming out tonight and tuning in.

All right, that did take 20 minutes. No, I'm just teasing. Moving on to district six. Councilwoman Natasha Williams Brown.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Um, no, I'm not going to take 20 minutes. Um, couple of just a couple of quick reminders. Uh, this Saturday, May 16th, is going to be the District 6 um monthly food distribution in Creole Park from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. As always, please get there. Um, people start lining up at 9:00, so please do get there. um insufficient time um to be able to get some fresh fruits and vegetables or if you know somebody experiencing food insecurity, please send them our way um so that we can service them um Saturday beginning at 10:00 a.m. Thank you as always to the to Principal Smith and all the teachers at Love T. Nolan for all of their hard work this year. Um, it was a pleasure to be able to celebrate them during teacher appreciation week with lunch. Um, I understand that we were also able to get gift cards from Zachbies that were donated and so thank you to Zachbies. Um, they are a wonderful community partner. Please do go patronize them. there at Old Nashville and Flatsholes Road and the manager is always extremely supportive of what we do here in the city of South Fulton and always willing to give back to the community. Um, let's see. Reminder that this month is mental wellness month. Um, and so I believe that we have these mental awareness cards that are available to everybody um to um take care of your mental health. So please do pick one of these up on your way out. Um if also if you

have not gotten word um state rep um ammeritus and come sit by the water and just fellowship. And I got the opportunity to um meet one of the representatives from Kroger this morning who has been kind who is kind enough to support this event and she's got a couple few little surprises planned for us again this year. Uh this is the part of the program where I look in the back and ask did I get it all? Uh having having been reassured that I got it all. These have been your what? church announcements for the week and we are all going to do what? Govern ourselves accordingly.

Really quick, did you say your food distribution is Saturday or is it Sunday? Saturday. It is Saturday. Saturday. Saturday. It is Saturday at 10:00 a.m. But the cars start lining up at 900 a.m. Okay. I just I'll get with you later. There's something that says Sunday and somebody Okay. See the hardest. That's why he's the hardest working man in show business.

Thank you very much. All right. Moving on to district seven, Councilwoman Linda B. Pritchette. Thank you. I hope that everyone had a nice Mother's Day. I did. And I want to give a shout out to our sanitation staff. We had a recycling and um shredding day this weekend and the staff actually brought lunch for us that they prepared and they also gave out roses to all the mothers that came in line. So I thought that that was really a nice touch and I appreciate all that they do to accommodate our community. So that was real nice. I wasn't expecting that but I appreciate it. Um, also uh again it's uh National Police Week and tomorrow I'll be traveling to Washington DC because our first fallen officer um Captain Elio Armando Garcia III, his name is on the national wall that recognizes fall fallen officers around the country. Um our Ara guard is already there um and I'll be joining them. It's going to be very bittersweet, but I uh feel that it's important to represent our city and support um the memory and honor uh our first fallen officer. And uh I think that's all I have. I yield. Thank you.

All right. Well, thank you to one of the hardest working councils that I've seen in quite some time. U first of all, I want to thank you all uh that attended our state of the city. Uh it was a great time. very proud. Um, many of you felt the energy that was in the room and again I'm proud of this council and the work that they continue to do. Um, so we are a city that is definitely on the rise. So I continue to um ask you all to make sure you just keep doing what you need to do to move the city forward. Um, also I want to say congratulations to the May graduates as well as the ones that are coming up in June. Um, I'm telling you all this is your season. What's wrong?

Oh, my son is

So, you have parents up here saying, "Amen." Amen. Um, I always tell our our students to go be great and remember to bring their talents back to South Fulton. Um, I also, some of you all were able to meet some of the students that are participating in the college prep program, as I said, uh, for the city and they're getting real experience as well. So, um, great times with that. I think we also talked about celebrating National Police Week and that has been a wonderful wonderful thing and we do have quite a bit of our officers that are going up to uh DC along with Councilwoman Pritchette to you know celebrate actually not celebrating well we celebrating the life of Garcia and the work that he's done and making sure that he is recognized properly. So um thank you all for um keeping this family in your prayers. We talked about the legacy brunch. Also on May 20th, Amazon will be hosting a v virtual workshop on how to do business with Amazon. I don't know if many of you all are small business owners um but they are actually participating with the city um because they are a community partner where they will be teaching you how to register your products online as well as get everything straight to be a Amazon um provider. So I think that's important because I want to learn how to sell some stuff on Amazon. So I'm ready to register for that. So the flyer will be coming out very soon. Um, we all have been b working extremely hard. Last week was a whirlwind. There were plenty of events. We attended Lucy McBth's safety meeting over in Dicab County. Um, hopefully they will be able to do one over here. We had municipal swearings in of our judges and our solicitor. Many of us attended uh Cong Congressman Scott's

funeral um as well as the um celebration for Pastor Paul. We also um had the wonderful groundbreaking South Fulton Development Authority recognized myself and councilwoman uh Pritchette uh for the work that we've done especially I think it was Cinco de Mayo. Yeah, it was it was pretty u fun. We also had a metro Atlanta's mayor's meeting. So all of the mayors for the metro Atlanta area came together. We met we talked about AI and government. So, as we know that that is um a new trend that a lot of people are um getting on board with. And as well as I attended the Atlanta Fire Rescue Foundation breakfast and one of our very own residents that live in South Fulton, Captain Cedric Langford was awarded the officer of the year. Um so, please give him a round of applause. He lives in our city and I I wish we could steal him to come and uh work for South Fulton, but I I mind my business. Um and lastly, um there was also at the Atlanta airport Rotary Club lunchon today one of our honores the city of Southton police officer of the year, Lieutenant Charles Cook, and the city of Southton firefighter of the year, Mason Bray. So again, I think I have covered mostly everything. Um, I will tell people please Oh, I'm sorry. It is municipal clerks week as well to one of the baddest clerks

in the metro Atlanta area and our deputy clerk Audrey Codwell and their staff. They are awesome. Um, so we also celebrate you as well. And let's see. Lastly, I would say don't I'm stealing this from another uh mayor. Don't try to steal my joy because you can't find your own.

Secondly, the more you continue to come for me, the more God will continue to bless me. And that is for everyone on this council. So that is facts. There is no such thing that Miss Gums is trying to go and get a raise because I make my own money. So, I really don't appreciate the lies that are being told. Now, based off all the work that we do here, we need a raise. But that is not something that I am doing. So, I'm going to put it on the record now, that is not what Miss Gums is doing. So, whatever lies that you all continue to spread on this council, spread on me, God will continue to bless us. So, with that being said, Mr. The clerk, please sound the next item.

That brings us to Roman numeral 11 agenda items under administration number one and second reading. request council approval of an ordinance to amend title 3 building regulations chapter 3 miscellaneous provisions of the south south code of ordinances to require new conveyor car washers to recycle water to comply with the requirements of the metropolitan north Georgia water planning districts 2022 water supply and water conservation management plan to conserve water resources. All right, council. You all have had the opportunity to read the agenda um for item 10 11 AC through C. If there is no objection, we will adopt this through gross unanimous consent. Are there any objections? All right, Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item.

That brings us to first read ordinances, letter D. We have four this evening. Number one, first read, an ordinance of the city of South Fulton, Georgia to amend Title 15, public safety and offenses to prohibit unauthorized public camping. To define camping in related terms, to establish notice, removal, and storage procedures, to provide enforcement and documentation requirements, to protect health, safety, and access to public spaces. This is sponsored by Council Member Williams Brown. Number two, first read an ordinance to establish standardized protocols for the planning, coordination, and conduct of city sponsored special events to define roles and participation eligibility to provide for recognition of elected officials to establish enforcement mechanisms. This is sponsored by council member Williams Brown and co-sponsored by council member Bridgetette. Number three, first read. An ordinance of the city of South, Georgia, amending title 15, chapter 7, panhandling to establish mandatory incident documentation and enforcement reporting requirements to ensure consistent enforcement. This is sponsored by council member Williams Brown. Number four, first read. Zoning ordinance for KZ26-002 an application by Mike Lee Care of We Partner LLC requested reszoning from AG1 to CUP to develop 35 single family homes on 15 acres at 4700 welcome all road city council district 3.

All right. Is there any more? All right. Mr. Clerk, please sound the next item. Next item was walks, which we do not have any. And the next item is executive session if necessary. All right, council. I don't believe there is an executive session need. If there is no objection, we will now adjourn. All right. Thank you for everyone that has attended and have a wonderful week ahead. Good night. Good night. We adjourned at 7:43 p.m. I feel the spirit.