City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. If I could have your attention, we will get our meeting called to order. It is good to see most of y'all in the room. I'm looking at Adam. Adam, you cannot sit there with that look on your face. I'm sorry. It's good to see all of you this afternoon. This absolutely positively gorgeous day in Tiffan, Georgia. And the biggest event of the year, Rhythm and Ribs, comes up this weekend on starting on Friday afternoon. So, um get ready for the party under the pines. We are uh I know ESG and and all of our public safety, everybody's working fast and furious to get everything set up and ready for everybody. Um Abby, Caroline, Jessica, Morgan, I mean, everybody is it's all hands on deck. So, we're really excited about the weekend. Do want to remind you that tonight's um meeting is our workshop and so we will only vote on one item and that is the agenda. Everything else will be for discussion only to give us time to vote for these same items at our next meeting in two weeks. what we call the regular meeting. So don't be surprised if you don't see voting uh happening, mostly just discussion. Um so gentlemen, you have the agenda before you. Uh Jessica always does a great job of getting that out to us and to the um media and plenty of time for review. And so I'll take a motion concerning the agenda.

Move to approve. Second. Okay, we have a motion second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? And actually, we also approved the minutes. I don't know why I said just the agenda.

Huh? Oh, okay. Never mind. Okay, take that off. Sorry, I don't remember us doing that. Um, I do want to note that um, Commissioner Lester Chromemer is not with or Councilman Lester, I don't know why I said Commissioner. Councilman Lester Chromemer is not with us this evening. He's not feeling well. So, if you have a chance, just shoot him a text or send him a call and uh, let him know that we missed him this evening. All right, we do have a couple of presentations and one that I'm very excited about. Um, I'm always surprised to find that the citizens or visitors aren't aware of our citizens art collection. And for many, many years, we as the city of Tiffan have collected beautiful art from regional artists, from Georgia artists, um, and filled all three floors of city hall for the citizens art collection. So, the art collection actually belongs to the people. That's what's called the citizens art collection. And you are actually in basically an arts museum where you can wander all three floors and see the beautiful art that we have. There's all kinds of um different there's there's oil paintings, there's watercolor, there's uh photography, there's just every glass work, there's all sorts and it's all over on display. There's a little brochure that you can get when you come in that will tell you about the artist, tell you about the art, what the medium is, you know, maybe a little story about what you're looking at. um if it reflects the Tiffan scene or if it's something else, maybe a wildlife scene or whatever. And um anyway, it's really special that we have this. And so um now that we have the uh arts affair that happens through the museum uh the SID um each year MJ and I have the opportunity to go and pick out a new piece of public art preferably be preferably by a local or regional artist. And uh we've done that this year and we have a made what I think a very beautiful selection. Um, I'm going to come down and ask our artists to come up and join me in just a minute. But if you look at this painting that's right here on this easel, it looks like a

photograph, but it's not. It is absolutely exceptional. And um, just want to share with you a little bit about the importance of supporting the arts in our community. Um, we are very happy on behalf of the entire city council and staff, we're very happy to welcome this new piece to our citizens art collection. Our featured artist is Kenny Barfield. I'm going to call Kenny up in just a minute. We want to say thank you, Kenny, for your sharing your vision and your talent and your heart with the city of Tiffan. Uh we often talk about Tiffan being the friendly city, but it's the art that gives us our our friendliness. It's color and our soul. When people walk through the doors of city hall, whether they're residents paying a utility bill or a visitor discovering our town for the first time, they should not just see a government building. This building is so much more than that. I hope that they will see a reflection of our community's character. And the impact of art goes far beyond our time frame. Uh in a world that's often divided, art can be the glue that binds us. It can spark conversation. It invites reflection. It reminds us of our shared humanity. Um it can be a catalyst for growth. We know that a city that values the arts is a city that thrives. We've seen that all over our country. And by investing in local creators, we're investing in the vibrancy of our downtown and the economic u future of Tiffan. It's inspiring the next generation. By hanging this painting in city hall, we're sending a message to every young person. And we just had a um a fun time with the Girl Scouts. They were here. We did a little proclamation for their anniversary. But having this art on display shows every young person that their talent and their creativity matter. It has value and their voice matters and there's a place for their talent right here in their community. And so this painting is now a permanent part of Tiffan's story. uh it captures a moment, a feeling, and a perspective that now belongs to all of us as part of the collection. And we're brighter, better, and more connected city because of the work that local artists do that we display in this building. So, on

behalf of the council and the citizens of Tiffan, want to congratulate you, Kenny. I'm going to ask you to come down here and join me if you don't mind. And um I'm going to grab the microphone here. Grab that because I'd like you to share a little bit about the story. If we don't use this, YouTube doesn't pick up. So, uh, Kenny, turn it over to you. So, I'll let you tell us about this beautiful painting.

Well, this is a pastel painting. Um, it's a dry medium, so it's instant. Uh, there's you don't have to wait for dry times like oils or acrylics or anything like that. So, um, I mainly do animals and a lot of wildlife. That's really my main focus. And I really loved the retrievers. They have just a great personality. And um so this one, it was a challenge for me because I wanted to get a depth of field, which is get that focus, that blur in the background and the the focus up front. And then the fur was a big challenge for me. I really wanted to do that. Well, thank you. Everybody looks at it thinks it's a photograph. Well, thank you. It's not as soon as our meetings, I mean, it's just exceptional.

Well, I really thank you. Thank you for doing this for me, too. And um but thank you for everyone who you hung it in your office. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Right away. She said, "This is mine. It's going in my office." Well, thank you. Thank you. So, but I I enjoyed doing this piece and I love detail. I I get caught up in the details and um I've tried looser paintings, but I keep going back to details. So, and that I love it. Yep. I absolutely love it. So, this is this has been a really good piece for me and and I'm just grateful that you guys have have bought this. So, you'll now be a permanent part of city. Well, I'm I'm very excited and honored to be that way. Yes. Absolutely. Well, I'm excited and honored. So, thank you. Thank you so much.

You're very welcome. Thank you. is going to give us a presentation on our 2025 audit. If you'll recall, Justin was on a previous agenda. And um we thought he had flu, but he said he had COVID after a nice cruise with his family. It's

There you go. It was fun. Yeah, it was a It was something. It was something. I bet it was. Well, Jess, we'll turn it over to you to uh present the information. All right, I appreciate it. Yeah, sorry about that. That was a last minute change last I guess two weeks ago. But y'all should have a couple documents in front of you. Um, one's the financial statements and one is the auditor's discussion and analysis. I'll be going I'll be keeping to that one, the smaller version. You should see that one. Yep, you got it. Yeah,

I won't go through everything in there. I'll try to keep it to the highlights and you I know y'all are probably pretty busy, but uh before I get going, thank you'all for having me. Um, how I'll probably do this presentation for the most part will be I'll cover it in three phases. The first phase will be discussing the independent auditor's report which is located in the front of your financial statements. Um, as well as discussing the compliance reports which are issued in conjunction with the audit. Um, and I'll also run over a few highlights uh from the financial statements, some numbers from the general fund, some things that you all probably are interested in. So moving on to page four is uh kind of the overview of our audit report. Kind of hits all the highlights regarding it. Uh as as you can see on the second paragraph, our responsibility as your external auditor is to express an opinion on the uh final statements of the of the uh based on our audit which was conducted in accordance with government auditing standards. Um, as a result of our audit, I'm happy to say that we were able to issue an unmodified opinion, a clean opinion. I mean, that is the only opinion you want. That's the highest level of assurance we can uh provide as your external auditors. Uh, basically what this means is your financial statements are considered to be presented fairly. Uh, that's really everything you want to hear from on your audit report. Moving on to page uh the next few things, I'll touch on the compliance reports. Uh you have two different ones. You can I'm kind of flip they're kind of uh it's on page I forgot page 11 or 12. Yeah 12. That's kind of give you an overview of the technical jargon. But the main thing is you have a yellow book report we issued and the single audit report. Um yellow book report kind of covers over the city's uh internal controls and compliance with laws, regulations, uh grants, etc. the single report which is um based on our

testing of your federal expenditures which the city did have $2.7 million in fiscal year 25 both reports I'm happy to say again we had no issues no findings nothing came up so that's a good thing it's another good thing so that's I mean not all cities can say that all right so moving on to the financial statements kind of overview of that back to flip if you want to flip back with me to page six, we'll mainly be covering the general fund considering that's where the majority of your, you know, activities are, the majority of your operations. The first couple pages on six and seven, you'll see kind of you'll see two graphs regarding your general fund revenues and your general fund expenditures. Your general fund revenues had $17.8 million um in fiscal year 25. The largest source of your revenues was taxes. um that was at $8.9 million which is about 50% of your total revenues in the general fund. Uh following in second place will be your sales taxes at 4.7 million or 4.3 million sorry and that would be 24% of your total revenues. So that's for a city of your size. Nothing unusual very very common. Uh moving on to page seven you'll see your total expenditures uh graphs here. You can also see that the total expenditures are 18.2 million of that. Your largest one is public safety which is at 55% and the total for that is 9.9 million. Uh this I think y'all has some increased payroll and repairs and maintenance and things of that nature during the current year. Nothing nothing significant. Increased I think nearly a million. Uh the next largest expenditure is your general government and that is at 19% of total expenditures. Uh both of those you can see everything was very I from last year your revenues increased your expenditures increased

everything's moving in the right direction. You'll see that in the next few pages you can kind of see how your fund balance has increased on page eight. Over the last six years I believe your fund balance has increased $6.7 million. I think for the most part there have been some ups and downs over the last six years but all in all you are moving in the right direction. Um as you can kind of see down we have another graph at the very bottom of page eight where we like to compare the balance and the expenditures because a lot of that's there's use you can kind of tell the leverage between the county each year. when your your expenditures get further away from your fund balance, it means you kind of have less leverage. But at the city, you all have a very healthy fund balance. So, you'll soon see I think y'all have nearly 11 months in fund balance for your expenditures, which is a a good place to be for a June 30 year end. Just to make sure y'all know about that. You can kind of see some additional numbers on page nine where you can kind of see your your percentage of your uh your you can see there's like from 2020 to 2025 your basically your your expenditures compared to your fund balance has steadily increased which is a good thing. Moving on. So there's a few more things out your business type funds for the most part they have stayed very healthy. They've they've continued to grow. Another good thing you're you've had on page 11, you can see you've had continue to have good operations uh good cash flows from your operations. I believe it overall you had a $5.2 million from operating revenues, which is a good thing. Um that's for the most part. There's some additional information in here that we I won't go over some required communications. Uh but if you want to look over there and you have any questions, let me know. But for the most part, everything was good. I just want to make sure to recap that y'all had no findings. Y'all had an unmodified opinion. Y'all had a clean

opinion. Um, everything was good for the most part. I think you had another another good audit. I do want to make sure to thank Frank and Lisa and all their, you know, Frank, sorry, uh, Larry, all their uh, hard work this year. I mean, we wouldn't be able to do it without them. We are very proud of them in that department. Yeah, they had I mean, it was good. Yeah, it was a great year. It was uh we just I think the overall I think it it was smooth sailing. I know when it gets down to the end of the year, we try to get knocked out pretty quickly. It gets kind of hectic around the holidays, but I'm sure they seem to, you know, they kind of they got they're on top of it. All right, gentlemen. Any questions concerning the audit? Okay. Well, we'll definitely read through all of this. If we do have any questions, we'll reach out to you or to Larry.

And we really appreciate you being here tonight. Glad you're feeling better. Yeah. Glad you survived the co and uh yeah, I can imagine. But uh we appreciate the work that you do as well. We It's a good partnership and we're thankful for that. So, thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. All right, gentlemen. Uh now on to new business. Um our first item of new business is to discuss a resolution designating the Arts in Black as a festival. Jessica, any news on that? This is pretty much standard procedure year after year for this.

Yes. right now in front of their original and um just for that Saturday planning to use the whole park. Um the hours uh till 1000 p.m. Um I think they're meeting tonight. Okay. But I wanted to kind of go ahead and uh push it forward and by the next meeting if there are any changes um they're trying to plan an event on Friday at the SID and they may utilize some public area but I'm not sure. Okay. So, um, but right now just move forward with what they originally submitted, which was this Saturday, May 2nd in the park, and I'll let you know if there are any um changes.

Okay. Any questions, gentlemen, on the um that resolution. Okay. Uh the next resolution would be expanding the city's enterprise zone. So, I'm going to call on our main street director, Abby McLaren, and she can explain that.

Yeah. May and council, tonight staff is recommending the expansion of the existing enterprise zone to include three contiguous parcels, T043,178A, 177, and 178. Uh the enterprise zone was adopted uh the incentives were adopted in 2000 by the city of Tiffan. So they've been doing these out for quite some time. The current enterprise zone has been adopted was adopted in 2022 and there was a an additional um area that was added last year. So this would be an addition to the already existing 2022 and then second edition of 2025. Um these parcels are directly adjacent to our current enterprise zone boundary and meet the statutory requirements for the inclusion. Expanding the zone will allow us to proactively encourage redevelopment, reinvestment, and historic preservation within downtown. Parcel T043178A, which was the former Ammeris Bank building, has been vacant since 2022 without any connected city services. So, it's been vacant for quite some time. Without intervention, the properties risk further decline, which could negative negatively impact the surrounding investment and economic vitality of downtown. Under state law, an enterprise zone area must meet at least three of the five criteria. The proposed expansion area qualifies under the following. Pervasive poverty. The parcels are located within census track 9607 which includes a 20% poverty um a 20% of the residents within that district fall below the poverty level under development and blight general blight. This inclusion of these contiguous parcels will encourage private reinvestment, support historic preservation efforts, help stabilize poverty conditions, promote economic redevelopment, and strengthen the

surrounding commercial corridor. Staff is requesting that these parcels be entitled to all exemptions and incentives un authorized under OCGA 36-88-6 which include property tax abatement and other redevelopment incentives designed to stimulate investment within downtown staff respectfully recommends the approval of the enterprise zone boundary expansion to include these partials shown in your map included in your packet. Um the incentives that are offered by the city, I just wanted to make reference to those include business license abatement, city property tax freeze. Um it's just city property taxes only, building permit fees, uh utility installation, and landfill fees. So it really helps with reinvestment in some of our historic preservation um you know, buildings and downtown rehabs. Any questions for me?

Any questions, gentlemen? Okay. And once these I just want to say this also once someone applies for the enterprise own incentives a um you either have to meet the criteria by a number of jobs or a number of investments. So these these are just things that we are able to offer you know uh developers or um people who are investing in our downtown community. And I think we've had a long um very positive reception of the enterprise zone with with other property owners and business business owners uh in our downtown and also in our urban redevelopment area. So it's a very good program and um and really does help impact the bottom line for someone who's doing a significant investment. All right. Uh seeing no questions on the enterprise zone. Thank you, Abby. I want to call on Larry Lawrence. Uh Larry's going to talk to us about adjusting the Tiffan Tiff County landfill tipping fees. Good evening, mayor and council. Uh I got several re resolutions here. The first one is uh increasing the tipping fee at the landfill. Of course, we've been trying to do that and uh we finally got the county to put it on their agenda for tomorrow night. So, uh, in conjunction with that, this is a joint resolution with them to increase the tipping fee from, uh, $42 a ton to $47 a ton, which is about 11.9%. We haven't adjusted that price 7 and 1/2 years. So, it was time that we did that. Plus, we needed to to uh increase the operating bottom line, plus to generate more funds for the expansion where we'll have construction cost there. So that'll help on both those ends. Uh then also we had a request from the contractor that runs our inert landfill uh through we haven't changed that price

in five years and inflations has eaten up his profit plus the volumes decreased another 33%. So uh he was needing some help. So, uh, this is increasing the tipping and fee of the inert from $18 a ton to $28 a ton. So, that should get him back to where he was five years ago where he can have a profitable business operating the inert landfill. So, okay.

And then the third resolution is uh an amendment to Ryland's contract to incorporate these increases in the tipping fee at the landfill and the inert landfill. And uh Erin's here if uh you have any questions on that. But uh basically that just changes the pricing for the uh residents and the commercial businesses for these two price increases on the tipping fees. Okay. Um how will we need I know you may have a conflict of interest when we go to vote on this. Would it be for all three of these Rob or just for the Ryland contract? just make sure we do what we need to do and

just for the Ryland contract. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. All right. All that's pretty straightforward. Larry, any questions, gentlemen, on um those fee changes? Is um Bobby, are you you or Larry going to go to the county meeting in case they have any questions or anything on our discussions or Okay, that's fine. Okay, good. Yeah, just let them know that we've talked about it and um I don't sense any push back or hesitancy on anything. So, we should be should be in good shape. So, yeah, I I think Jim Carter's on board with it. He's just got to convince the commissioners that this is something that we need to do. So,

Sure. It Yeah, exactly. Okay. If there are no questions, then um thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you, Erin, for being here. So, you got off easy tonight. Sure did. That's all we really have on the agenda other than our mayor and council comments. So, gentlemen, anything any any words of wisdom or um anything you'd like to share? I just want to thank Larry uh his staff for a job well I've done again another great year. It's always good news to see an audit like this. So,

we love it. So, thank you very much Larry and his staff and looking forward to Rhythm and Ribs this weekend. I get the honor and privilege of being a judge. So, I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing. Bad thing. might be might be tired of barbecue by the end of the day, but nevertheless, it's going to be a good event. It is. It is. MJ same thing. Mayor and his team, thank y'all. And uh everybody have a good time and safe time at rhythm. Absolutely. Mr. Franks, I don't have anything. Anything other than that?

I just want to say I'm proud that Mr. Bennett shows up for work every day and he is in it up to his eyeballs that he is doing a terrific job. And I was telling MJ a minute ago, if I had a nickel for every time someone has said he's the right man for the job, I'd be very, very wealthy. I'd take a solid vacation. But we are very, very proud of you, um, Bob, for just jumping in and and and getting things done. And, um, I came up this morning. He was out front picking up some trash off the curb. I mean, that's that's dedication. That was really very very good. Well, if there's no other business to come before the council, then we are adjourned. Thank you gentlemen.