City Council - Regular Meeting

If I could have your attention, please. I'm going to recognize Mayor Pro Tem Chuck West Johnson for invocation.

Thank you so much, Mayor, if we can all bow. Heavenly Father, we thank you for allowing us to gather today, once again in service to our community. We ask you to give us wisdom in our discussions, patience in our differences, and clarity in every decision before us. Help us to remember the people we are here to call to serve, and let the work we do here this afternoon strengthen our city and move our community forward. Guide us, protect us, and keep our hearts centered on service. In your name we pray, amen.

I call to order the Thomasville City Council briefing meeting for Monday, August 10th, 2026. Welcome everybody in the chambers here this evening. We have some guests with us that we'll be recognizing shortly and our staff as well. Welcome. Our first order of business will be additions or deletions to our agenda. Mr. City Manager.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I do not have any additions or deletions from the agenda, but I remember.

Okay, what's the pleasure of counsel with regard to the agenda?

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve the agenda.

Is there a second? Second. Okay, you may record your vote. I have six votes in the affirmative, and that is a unanimous decision. And I'll just mention here that Council Member Doug Hunt is absent with an excused absence this evening. Our next item for our meeting next week will be the public forum. It will be for a two-minute time limit, the subject of the speaker's choice at that time. This evening we'll have a recognition that we're going to do in some presentations regarding the Piedmont Large Animal Rescue Association for helping rescue Miss Kitty, the donkey that was down in Fairgrove stuck in the mud here a few weeks ago. So I'm going to come down front and we're going to recognize those folks at this time. Okay, we're gonna call you up one at a time and we'll present you with a little token of our appreciation, give you recognition for the service you gave to our city. For those of you that's joining us on social media or YouTube, this donkey was stuck in the mud several weeks ago. A lot of our first responders went down there. He's in the Fairgrove area. They couldn't do much with the situation. They call out a wrecker company. They called these folks that we're going to recognize here tonight from the Rescue Animal Rescue Association. And with a collaborative effort of all, they finally got the donkey out of the mud. As far as I know, the donkey's recovered well and back to health and doing fine. So I got a thumbs up from Denise. So that's very good. So we would see the manager will call your name and what he does. Just please come up front and remain up front. And after we get everybody recognized that we'll have a picture together. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mayor. The members about the name are from the Piedmont Triad, a lot of large animal rescue emergency animal rescue. Thank you, Sandy Mayberry. Ann Slaton. Bruce Butner. Tara Stebbins. Kelly Emerson. She's not here, okay. And Michelle Brock from the Forsyth County Emergency Management.

Michelle's over every time. I didn't respond. It was the volunteers with big hearts that did that. She keeps us all together. Is Dr. Elisa Cole here?

She was gonna try to make it. She was from the vet that serviced the animal for many weeks, I think. Unfortunately, she doesn't look like she's here in the audience.

Okay, thank y'all for the service you've rendered to our city through the help of this rescue. And we want to recognize them. We're gonna get a picture. A couple of you come on this side, if you would, of me, and then I'll get in the middle, and we'll get a picture taken here.

Thank you all. As a donkey mom, that was probably the scariest time of my life.

I can't thank these folks enough. Thank you.

You're welcome. Have a good day. Appreciate you. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, we're now down to recognitions and presentations for our meeting next week. We'll have a recognition of Piedmont Crossing fire heroes, and I'll do that one. Proclamation for National Overdose Awareness Day. That's Council Member Hunter III, if he'll do that one. And Proclamation for Suicide Awareness Month for September, Mayor Pro Tem Jacquez Johnson. He'll take care of that one for us at that time. Also at that meeting, we will have a consent agenda. We may have more to add to it, but right now it'll be the minutes of the meeting of July 13th, 2026 and the meeting of July 20th, 2026 will be on the consent agenda. We have one item item 7, which is a regular agenda for this meeting this evening. And this discussion regarding 30 Salem Street enforcement status. So is our our county attorneys going to take that one.

I think yes, I am good afternoon. I never take time off. You can see what happens when I do so I'll be paying for it for at least a week and a half. So 30 Salem Street is owned by Mr. Leak, and there's a couple of issues going on simultaneously with this property. The concern is twofold. It is in a district that does not allow a warehouse operation. As you know, Mr. Leake owns one property that's in that district that is a prior non-conforming use, so it is a warehouse and we cannot do anything about it being a warehouse. This property, though, was not opened as a warehouse. It was opened as an operating storefront. To our knowledge, it doesn't appear it's had store hours in quite some time, so there needs to be a zoning hearing for zoning violation regarding that, where he'll have an opportunity to present evidence that he is operating it as a storefront, and if not, then it will cease to be allowed to be operating in its current capacity. The second issue we have is that the, as you know, It was deemed to be unsafe for the amount of property that was in it. There were fire code violations. He did have dumpsters on site for quite some time. When they went in and did the fire inspection, they found that the second floor had collapsed. And so our fire chief and code enforcement officials went in and made the determination what had to be removed. He did remove all of the property that was on the second floor. There is still property on the first floor that is still deemed not safe from a fire code standpoint. The other issue is in the order he was instructed to obtain a engineer's certification that the building was structurally sound without the second floor. When I had spoken with Mr. Leak, he had indicated that he had retained the services of an engineer and that the engineer had not yet been able to provide him what he needed. I have not heard back from that. So at this point, I think it would be appropriate to proceed forward with a condemnation proceeding on the building due to it being deemed unsafe from our standpoint. At that time, he would have the ability to obtain an engineer certification or make the repairs to deem it safe. Otherwise, we need to proceed forward with the condemnation and then at the same time, we can collect any liens that have been, excuse me, not liens, penalties that have been assessed. Civil penalties are different than liens. Civil penalties, in order to actually collect them, you're going to either they have to voluntarily pay or you have to sue on those civil penalties to make them become a lien that then they become a lien on the property. So it's better to resolve the issue so then you know what the outstanding penalties are and do it all in one swoop so you're not duplicating efforts. But something's going to have to be done to move it forward. It's not moving forward. So if council is of the opinion that they would like us to proceed forward with the zoning compliance hearing and the condemnation, then we can move forward on that. And I checked with Glenn and with Chuck. They've all followed through all their steps that they needed to thus far, so I think they're ready for that point.

Do either of you have anything that you would like to add? Yeah, come come forward to the police.

And please correct me if anything I said was incorrect.

This this actually started back in 2024, that I first reached out to Francis and spoke with him about wanting to do an inspection in his buildings. He kind of gave me the runaround for three months. And in January of 25, that's when I actually got an opportunity to go out there with search warrants or administrative warrants so I could do the inspections. That's when I found the collapse and we've been working on that ever since. But I can say that he owns the building right directly behind it. Used to be the barber shop, which is now storage for him now. So apparently most of the stuff he took out there, he's putting that building as well. So I know that's an actual business, not a warehouse. So I just wanted to give y'all an update of what we found with that. But there's no movement on the other building on Guilford. He put a dumpster out there. And it's just sitting there. But yeah, no other movement on the 500 Carolina as well. So yeah. So the barbershop turned storage, we can do a zoning violation on that one as well, right?

Is it operating as a barbershop now or is he just using it for storage?

No, it was closed, but now he's got storage in it.

So if it's being used as a warehouse, then there's a zoning on that as well.

So we've got two zonings and a congregation that we can move on like now.

And Glenn, I will tell you, Mr. Leakes, the last thing he said to me about Guilford was that he was waiting on you to contact him and tell him what he needed to remove at Guilford. Okay. So would you like to reach back out to him one more time and tell him that again while we're doing all of this other?

I can't. After two years, I can do that again. Okay.

I thought so.

I thought so.

And if I were up on the zoning and the condemnation letter, I'll try to get a hearing scheduled in the next 25 days. And we'll allow in 60 to 90 days use of what by the ordinance to get this correct. If not, then we'll print it before you. All right. Thank you.

All right, I'm gonna turn it over to our city manager now to talk about the next part of the items.

Thank you. We have a very light overall agenda, so I just need to know whether you want them on consent agenda or regular agenda. Item A on regular agenda is consideration of budget amendment 2027 T2-01, which is transferring funds to allow for hiring of staff. And item B is consideration of revised capitalization depreciation policy. I'm out. Consent. Consent, okay. Okay, so your consent agenda on Monday will consist of items 6A and 6B. and item eight C, excuse me, eight B on this agenda. And then your regular agenda will be one item at this time, which will be consideration of budget amendment 22.7.

or updates from anybody this evening?

I just want to give an update to council regarding a letter that you may or may not have received from a police association out of Texas that is basically soliciting funds from your residents regarding an attempt to bring before you a resolution that supports policing specifically quality of life policing. It basically accuses the ACLU and others of trying to prevent police from enforcing what we consider quality of life, which is homelessness violations or vagrancy or graffiti, things of that nature. This is not something put out by the city of Thomasville. It does reference city council because what they are proposing to do is send a resolution to you all to vote on but really it's a fundraising effort by a non-profit that is not associated with the city or the thomasville police department i just want to make you aware of it in case you get contact about it It apparently went out over the weekend, and people are probably getting it in their mail right now. It is not related to us at all, and quite honestly, it's not even accurate, because in this city at least, we do enforce those types of ordinances and take great pride in our efforts to address quality of life, whether it's through the police department, code enforcement, fire marshal's office, whatever it may take. So I just want to make you aware of that.

Thank you.

Thank you. And I asked a few of you when you came in earlier, the luncheon that will be next Monday, Gulfport Road Community Center, for the employer's support for the Guard and Reserve. I would like for all of you that can to be there. So if you would, just let Cinematica know. I think Lisa said she was coming. I think Dana's coming. for y'all, so appreciate that. Or any other conditions or updates? Okay, we're down to adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn?

lunch is at noon lunch is at noon