City Council - Regular Meeting

and we will get our meeting called to order on this damp Monday afternoon. But aren't we thankful for the rain? It was a beautiful sight. Hope we get more tonight. Do want to remind folks that we have agendas that are here on the podium. If anyone that's in the audience with us would like to grab those and follow along with us. And I always like to remind people to which meeting we're having at which time. So last Monday we held our workshop meeting where we talked about the things that we'll be voting on tonight. And so I don't want anyone to be surprised that there may not be a lot of discussion because we do that at the workshop. So we are called to order, and we have the first order of business is our prayer and our pledge. And Council Member Michael Franks has agreed to lead us in our prayer and the pledge. So, Michael, I'll turn it over to you.

To you all by your heads, Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to serve our community. Grant us wisdom, integrity, and compassion as we make decisions that affect the lives of others. Help us to work together with respect and to seek the good of all of our citizens. Bless this meeting and everyone present. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

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

Thank you, Michael. All right, gentlemen, you have the agenda before you, and I will take a motion concerning accepting that. Are there any changes to be made? Okay, so a motion is second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that does carry. Next item on our agenda is the approval of our last two meetings, the minutes of our last two meetings, the meeting from June the 15th, and then also last week's meeting that I mentioned, our workshop meeting on July the 13th, and those were in your packet that were emailed out to you last week. So we've had a chance to review those, so I'll take a motion concerning those two sets of minutes.

All right.

Is there a second? So we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that does carry. Jessica, any public comments that we need to? Okay. All right. I am going to go down front. We have something that I always enjoy, and that's swearing in newly appointed board members. And so the first person we're going to swear in is our own Lester Cromer, Jr. So, Lester, if you'll join me down front. Thank you. And then Brent will be swearing at you, I mean, swearing you in. and we use the microphone so that we can make sure that our voice picks up on Facebook and, not Facebook, YouTube. I got the wrong social media. Okay, let's see. Where's Lester's? Okay, Lester. Right hand up. Do you solemnly swear that you will, no I'm just kidding. Do you, Lester Cromer, solemnly swear that you will faithfully and impartially perform the duties as a member of the Downtown Development Authority of this city and that you will support and defend the charter of the city of Tifton as well as the constitution and laws of the state of Georgia and of the United States of America and that you shall attend all meetings of the body to which you have been appointed unless providentially hindered? and that you shall abide by the standards for conflicts of interest adopted by the city council and the rules of disclosure applicable thereto. Unless disqualified for, excuse me, unless disqualified by the standards for conflicts of interest, you shall actively participate in all decisions of the body to which you have been appointed, and that you will attend at city expense any training mandated by the state of Georgia, and also attend as scheduled any special training arranged by the city of Tifton. Do you solemnly swear? I do.

Say that louder. I do.

Congratulations. Appreciate that. You want to sign? We can get this later. We are very appreciative of folks who volunteer for our boards, and Lester's going to do a great job on our Downtown Development Authority. And now, Brent Justice, we have a swearing in for you, too. So same thing, if you will raise your hand, and I will read the oath of office. Do you, Brent Justice, solemnly swear that you will faithfully and impartially perform the duties as a member of the Keep Tifton Beautiful Board of this city, and that you will support and defend the charter of the city of Tifton, as well as the constitution and laws of the state of Georgia and of the United States, and that you shall attend all meetings of the body to which you are being appointed unless providentially hindered, and that you shall abide by the standards for conflicts of interest adopted by the city council and the rules of disclosure applicable thereto, and that unless disqualified by the standards for conflicts of interest, you shall participate in all decisions of the body to which you are being appointed, and that you'll attend at city expense any training mandated by the state of Georgia, and also attend to schedule any special training arranged by the city of Tifton. Do you affirm?

Congratulations. We appreciate you.

Let you sign that right there, Brent, and then I will sign it. Again, we just want to say thank you to Lester and Brent for agreeing to serve on these two important boards. All right, gentlemen, moving forward, under old business, we have, you remember we talked about, we had at the workshop and then we had the special hearing for the potential rezoning of approximately 29 acres on South Carpenter Road from wholesale light industrial to residential professional to allow for multifamily apartments as requested by Stafford Coons Investments. And so that is before you tonight to approve that or not approve that. So I'll take a motion concerning what you'd like to do.

I move to approve.

Okay, we have a motion to approve the rezoning. Is there a second?

Second.

So we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries unanimously. Our next item is new business. That is a resolution approving the school resource officer agreement with TIF schools. Is our police chief here to talk about that? This is something that we do every year, so it's nothing new, but I just want to see if he's got any. updates. Anything new on this resolution, Chief?

Same as it has. We're down to from three SROs to two. Okay. And we're filling in this year is going to be at the high school and the one right there behind a street middle school.

Okay. All right. So you have that resolution in your package. You can see, like I said, this is something that we do each year, and we do renew that with each coming school year. So I'll take a motion concerning that resolution for the school resource officer agreement.

Move to approve.

All right. Is there a second? So we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion or questions of Chief? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries. Thank you, Chief. All right, our next item is a resolution for acceptance of the right-of-way deed for Eastgate Drive. Rob, do you want to address that with everybody?

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you.

Okay. Back when we annexed that property for Travis Hurst, I went back and looked at the annexation documents, and basically it was the understanding of the city and Ms. Hurst that we would be taking over Eastgate Drive once the annexation occurred. So basically what we need to do is have Mr. Hurst

um dedicate that uh that road to the city and then uh the city would then take over the responsibility for the uh for the maintenance of that road all right any questions gentlemen it's pretty straightforward it was just something that was omitted when the property transferred uh was annexed in um it just didn't that that road right away just didn't get done so this will clean all of that up so you have that resolution in your packet so i'll take a motion concerning that

Make a motion for approval. Okay, thank you.

So we have a motion and two seconds. Is there any further discussion or questions? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries. All right. financial report, and Larry, we are so happy to have you back. Yes, Larry was out for a little while and with some health issues, but we kept you in our prayers and our thoughts, and those prayers were answered, I think, so we are very thankful to see you back. Amen. I appreciate all the prayers. Yeah.

Definitely. Just going over the financial report, this is for last year's fiscal year, the whole 12 months, ending June 30th, 2026. Looking at the general fund, total revenues, $18,813,205. Expenditures, 19,079,432, with a little bit of a deficit of 266,226. Just looking at some of the revenues, the revenues were a little under what we had budgeted. Looking at property taxes, there's about 210,000 outstanding on property taxes. Had that come in, we would have been a lot better there on the bottom line. But that'll come in next year as the appeal process uh go through that uh so we should realize that later on okay uh but if you remember last year on the property taxes there was like 350 000 that was outstanding and we got in 338 000 of that this year so same thing will happen with this 210 000 we'll just see it further down the road there so uh so that was a little bit of a shortfall uh looking at the The local option sales tax, it's about 7% over last year, so that's good indication the economy's holding its own. Also on building permits, that's almost three times what it was last year, up 266%, so that's another good indication good things going on in Tifton. and looking at expenditures expenditures were actually 206 000 under budget so that helped out the bottom line also we're pretty much about where we anticipated when we budgeted this year we had like 600 000 in capital expenditures for vehicles and equipment and we had planned on using that out of our fund balance so we've only actually used 266 000 of our fund balance so we still have a nine nine and a half month reserve in the general fund so we're still looking good there okay on the enterprise funds uh water fund uh revenues uh four million nine hundred thousand two eighty one total expenditures four million one twenty nine five seventy seven net revenue seven hundred seventy thousand seven oh four We had, you know, with this Elmig project, we have to repair water lines as we're doing that. So we had about five or 600,000 in expenditures replacing water lines that took the water fund down a little bit, but it's still doing very good. On the sewer fund total revenues, 5,821,584. Total expenditures, 4,421,224. Net revenues over expenditures $1,400,360. Gas fund total revenue $6,313,338. Total expenditures $4,831,463. Net revenues over expenditures $1,481,875. And then solid waste total revenues $4,589,660. Total expenditures $3,997,385. with net revenues over expenditures $592,275. And hopefully that will improve with the new tipping fee, so that'll help out the bottom line there on the solid waste. Perfect.

All right, gentlemen, any questions of layering on the financial report? Very detailed. Thank you for providing all of that. I appreciate that when you have the whole year, it's pretty impressive. All right. I'm going to call on Mr. Bobby Bennett for the city manager report.

Mayor, council, I've got three quick things. First of all, I'd like to congratulate Councilman Hall on being nominated and elected to third vice president of GMA. I think that's a big, big deal. for around the state and also learning a lot of things that can come back and help us. I'd like to thank Councilman Cromer for coming to our leadership class last week. We had three fantastic speakers who did a great job talking about leadership and the fire service that can be used on a day-to-day basis. And then the fire department, the junior firefighter camp started today and they had 16 youth show up, which was a big up from last year.

That's it. That's it. Okay. Well, we're just glad you keep showing up for work every day, Bobby. That's all I got to say. All right. Before we close out, we have mayor and council comments. Gentlemen, anything you'd like to share? Anything good? Good? How was your back-to-school program?

Really good. Appreciate all the support from everybody. Good, good, good.

There you go. Rob, do we need to go into executive session tonight? Okay. All right, gentlemen, then we will stand adjourned. Thank you so much.