HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes CC - 03/08/2007 - MINS 03 08 07 WS (Migrated from Optiview)Work Session of the Milton City Council
Thursday, March 8, 2007, 5:30 PM
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Work Session of the Milton City Council was held Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 5:30 p.m.; Mayor Joe Lockwood
presiding.
All Councilmembers were present.
Mayor Lockwood stated that Work Sessions are a more informal setting to update the Council on business items. No
votes will be taken. Public comment is allowed if it is germane to an agenda item. If you wish to speak, you are
required to fill out a public comment card and turn it in to the City Clerk. Public comment will be allowed for a total of
10 minutes per agenda item, 2 minutes per person.
Ethics Ordinance
City Manager Bovos stated that Jim Langlais of Alston & Byrd would be presenting the discussion of the Ethics
Ordinance; however, Mr. Langlais is currently stuck in traffic so we will actually begin with Item 2.
Call Handling Process
Business Systems Manager John Abrera said he wanted to go over how the calls are handled once they get to City
Hall, go through the telephone system installation and let the Mayor and Council know some statistics on citizen calls
coming in such as what time they are calling, the different types of things they are requesting, and how the requests are
handled.
Hours of Operation:
Calls are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Calls are answered by the City Hall receptionist from 8:00 am – 5:00
pm, Monday through Friday; but not on holidays. Calls are answered by an answering service at all other times.
Who is actually answering these calls?
The receptionist is the main call taker and transfers calls, takes messages, and answers as many questions as possible.
The receptionist also handles any email messages coming to City Hall through the info mailbox. There are
administrative assistants who are back-up call takers when the receptionist is out sick or takes lunch. We have an
answering service which is used for after hours, weekends, and holidays.
Types of calls we are receiving from citizens:
First of all, we will talk about receptionist’s calls. He said if you have not gone by and visited her, Angie Arnold is the
receptionist. The receptionist’s calls, which are the bulk of our calls, are mainly transfer calls. In other words someone
calls in and wants to speak with someone, she takes messages. They are given general information. Primarily folks are
calling in and asking about forms, permits, directions, and specific phone numbers. A lot of folks are calling in to get
information on how to get to the website. To give you an example of the different types of things that occur during the
week; Mondays and Tuesday seem to be kind of slow; it looks like Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are heavy call
days. During the day itself from 9:00 – 10:00 am, we have very high call volume as well as noon and lunch time. He
said it looks like there are a lot of folks that are calling in around the lunch time hour to take care of business. From
2:00 to 4:00 pm and 2:00 to 5:00 pm, there are a lot of folks calling in during that time too. They are calling in for
business licenses, occupational licenses, permits, and reporting an issue either in Community Services or Code
Enforcement.
What happens when a call is received?
We are in the process of putting this programming in place here on our phone system, but the receptionist has 2
incoming lines. In addition to that the calls will bring 6 additional telephones. The way this is set up is that there will be
an extra line or button on each of the other phones and that will light up so that folks will know that there are people
calling into City Hall. In that way, we should be able to catch all the phone calls that come to City Hall in a timely
manner. Before 8:00 am or after 5:00 pm and on weekends and holidays calls are transferred directly to the answering
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Thursday, March 8, 2007, 5:30 PM
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service. They catch things that might occur at night or on weekends, if there are things occurring outside Code
Enforcement issues or Community Services issues.
After we get a call how is the specific request handled?
The department administrative assistant takes the calls or email and actually logs that particular information into a
program. We mentioned GBA. Depending on the nature of the request, we may open a work order. Other departmental
requests are handled by the different department administrative assistants. Once the request is taken care of or services
performed, the citizen is called back if requested. Sometimes citizens call in if they just want some information or they
just want to report something, but sometimes they want to be called back. Basically, that is how the request process is
handled.
He wanted to explain some things that occurred during the start-up of the phone system. He said it is a new voice over
IP telephone system here at City Hall. We had some time spent on configuring the system; we still are in the process of
configuring the system right now. We have new staff on the phone system and again, we had a start-up of the answering
service and how that whole process works. In starting up the phone system, we had a number of different things happen.
We all would like for technology to work right away, but it took some time to get this work through. Some of the
complaints that we are getting is folks could not get through, mailboxes were full, there were loud beeps while on hold
and transferring and the call taker having problems transferring calls.
What do we look like now?
The receptionist was given an additional line that has helped alleviate a lot of issues that we were having. Other staff
members are now supplementing the receptionist. The transfer/hold now has music. We have folks commenting on
what type of music, but it is music never the less. Phone mail boxes are now checked during the day; messages are
distributed to a different department. After hour calls are handled by the answering service and then they are routed to
the department depending on the type of call. We are currently configuring the system to allow for multiple phones to
be able to see if the main number is ringing. That will allow more people to be able to answer and cover the calls. He
wanted to bring up Bill Doughty to talk about how we are going to be promoting the phone number.
Communications Manager Bill Doughty said we will try to provide a multi-prong approach trying to get the word out.
We have added a tag line to our community news releases that has been implemented. We are in the process of creating
a standard email signature for all City staff that is part of that verbiage will be at the very bottom of all the email
signature lines for all City employees. We have moved the information on the homepage so it is up at the very top and a
bit more prominent. We have put signs at all public entrances and on a lot of the tables, we will have to get a stronger
cardstock so they remain upright. We are going to do periodic press releases in terms of talking about call volume and
perhaps any particularly interesting issues that have been raised and addressed. An overall annual report will be a part
of the City’s annual report. Those are all no cost types of items and a lot of them as you see have already been
implemented. Some of the things that might involve cost are a little bit more logistical work; such as our listing in the
phone book, can we get the media to either print or broadcast the public service announcements with the information on
it. Ultimately, the last would be a paid advertising program which would be expensive, but in order to keep the
information in front of people when they need it, that is what advertising does. The information is there when you are
ready for it, but to be there you have to have it there all the time and that could be rather expensive. Those are the
options we are looking at.
Councilmember Mohrig asked if on the standardized email signature, you can also have employees list their own
phone numbers as part of that.
Communications Manager Doughty said yes.
It was inaudible, but someone asked about how quickly call backs were made.
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Thursday, March 8, 2007, 5:30 PM
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Business Systems Manager Abrera said it depends on what type of call that they are calling in on. In other words if
they are calling in on a specific service that may take some amount of time to complete, then the request would take a
little longer to get completed. In terms of getting called back, he believes we are calling them back as quickly as we
retrieve the messages. He is making an assumption that they are either coming in through the answering service and if it
does come in through the answering service, if it is an emergency, they do know who to contact immediately. If not
those calls are returned the next morning if received the night before.
Communications Manager Doughty said just as a quick note, the email is being routed in generally the same fashion
as the phone calls through the receptionist for log in and distribution to the appropriate person for response.
Communications Manager Doughty answered questions from the audience.
Councilmember Lusk said he has never been put on hold and asked what music is playing while on hold; is it a radio
station?
Business Systems Manager Abrera said no actually it is a canned music that comes with the system.
Mayor Lockwood asked if there was any more Council discussion or public comment or questions.
The CIP Plan Update.
Community Director Wilson said this evening’s presentation concerning the Capital Improvement Plan is to give you
information as elected officials on our plans for capital improvements for the City of Milton, to give you the kind of
information about the City’s infrastructure and what we will need to plan going forward. He said he is going to talk in
general terms and he will be followed by several other speakers. Carol Wolfe is going to give you a broad overview of
the CIP process; to tell you what it is, why we have one, why it is important for the City, what are the elements, and we
will have an opportunity for questions and answers at the end of that as well. We are also going to hear from Public
Safety Director Chris Lagerbloom who will talk about the public safety aspects. Charles Millican is going to talk with
us about fire safety as well. Mike Tuller will talk a little bit about some of the community development aspects that feed
into the CIP process. He will also speak concerning recreation and parks. Our traffic engineer Abbie Jones is going to
give you information about our traffic systems, our transportation systems throughout the City of Milton, and we will all
be followed by Carol Wolfe who will give you some closing items and comments and really bring the whole thing
together so that you get a comprehensive understanding of why we have the process in place.
City Treasurer Carol Wolfe said we are going to take this opportunity tonight to go through the CIP Planning Group
that consists of the folks that you are going to hear talk tonight, and we want to take this opportunity to get it in front of
you for the first time talking about capital improvement planning and the fundamentals of what is a Capital
Improvement Plan, what is a CIP. This is just a little education process on what staff recommends our process will look
like throughout the year to identify and prioritize capital improvement projects and how that feeds into the annual budget
process, etc.
So what is a CIP? A CIP is a multi-year plan that identifies projects, project costs, funding mechanisms, operating
impact, etc. A capital project by our policy is defined as expenditure with a useful life exceeding three years with an
estimated total cost exceeding $50,000, either one of those. You will, however, see project land on the CIP that may be
$20,000 simply because it better belongs in a Capital Project Fund than it does in expenditures out of General Fund. A
capital project can also be an improvement or addition to an existing capital asset no matter the cost. The Capital
Improvement Plan is updated and prioritized annually during the budget process and that results in an annual capital
budget appropriation.
What is the purpose of a CIP?
A CIP is the City Council’s formal mechanism for decision making. Your CIP can also serve as an operational link for
long range plans, comp plan, transportation plan, and recreation and parks plan. It is a financial management tool so we
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Thursday, March 8, 2007, 5:30 PM
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are always looking forward, at least 5 years, to see what kind of capital improvements we need to make, what our
funding mechanisms might be and give us a good planning tool for approaching those funding mechanisms. It is also a
communications reporting mechanism. We use it extensively during the budget process; it is a good communications
tool to let our citizens know just what priorities we are placing on capital projects and what is going on with our capital
project plan.
The advantages to having a CIP: 1) We focus attention on community goals and needs. Because we update and
prioritize the CIP during the budget process, there are many opportunities for our citizens to get involved to let you
know what is important to them in the community as far as capital improvement. We focus the attention on the
community goals, build public consensus for projects and build community awareness, again which is the
communications part of a CIP. It improves intergovernmental cooperation and communication and endures financial
stability because we are always anticipating what financial resources we may need to fund our Capital Improvement
Project.
The annual CIP process will really start with a capital needs assessment. Capital needs assessment is to identify an
inventory, our current capital assets (what we own right now) to document the condition of those assets, to look at
current facility renovation or expansion need, and look at replacement schedules for machinery, equipment and vehicles.
She wants to take this opportunity to say that staff will always recommend your priority during the annual CIP update
process for the maintenance and renovation of what we currently own before we fund the purchase of new assets.
Identification of new projects will follow that inventory of what we currently own. We will get a status of our currently
funded projects, take requests for new projects from departments (this will happen during the budget process), submittal
of a project scope, how much it is going to cost, what kind of operating impact, the expenditure schedule, all the
pertinent information we need for new requests and all of this information is collected during the budget process. After
we take new requests, we will assess the financial capability and our funding options. That is determining the amount of
funds available from existing revenue resources; and in the financial world or capital planning world, that is called “pay
as you go.” You will hear that term a lot as we begin to talk about how we fund capital projects. This pay as you go is
cash and not any kind of external funding source. Then we will identify our other revenue sources for funding and
understand the impact of any external revenue resource. We just tried to list some of the external revenue sources that
might be available for capital funding; grants, impact fees, lease purchase agreements, bonded debt, public/private
partnerships, foundations, CID’s, tax allocation district, storm water utilities, development authorities. Those are just
some of the revenue sources that are available, however, you always have to talk about these during our annual CIP
process, what the impact of external funding sources are. If we get a grant, does that mean we have to get a grant for
year one but then have to fund that from cash year’s two to five. If we sell debt, what does that mean? There is a lot of
impact to external funding sources that we will talk about as we go through the process. After we assess our financial
capability, we are going to evaluate and rate the projects. We will look to the Council and the decision makers to have a
lot of interaction during this process. We will present to you evaluation criteria for ranking importance of a project.
Some evaluation criteria may be is this project a help or safety hazard, does it have a future operating impact, is it a
maintenance item in relation to an adopted plan that have environmental or water quality issues, legal mandate, pre
requisite, etc. When we begin to get closer to the budget process, you will have a grid, a matrix, in order to be able to
help you prioritize projects according to some of these evaluation criteria. If a project is a legal mandate, it would take
priority over a project that may have an economic impact. We will present those evaluation criteria to you to help make
those decisions. The evaluation process is most effective when you all are involved and our citizens are involved in
helping us prioritize our projects. Again, this will take place during budget workshops and public hearings so there will
be opportunity for citizens to present capital projects that are important to them as well as for you all to have discussion
on priority. All of this process ends with the annual adoption of the capital improvement program and the capital
budget. We talked about the CIP being a five year plan, year one of that plan every year becomes the fiscal year capital
budget. So you will have a rolling five year plan with year one always being your current year capital budget. The
appropriations will improve our project and they are tracked in a separate fund and by account so we can always account
for transactions and balances, etc. needing funding for projects.
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This is just a graphical depiction of what our fiscal year 2007 Capital Project Budget is. We have a Capital Project Fund
and this year we appropriated $450,000 in that Capital Project Fund back in October and November when we were
presenting and adopting the budget. Of that $450,000, $260,000 (58%) was allocated to transportation, $94,000 (21%)
to pubic safety, $24,000 (5%) to parks and recreation and a 16% contingency. Our goal and by policy is to carry a 3%
contingency or 3% reserve in that fund. This year we did appropriate 16% contingency as a start up year. We really did
not know what kind of capital emergencies may come up, but our goal is to always carry a 3% contingency in the capital
project fund to fund those capital emergency needs, the things you cannot plan for, the things that are not on your five
year plan. This year, the transportation, if you will recall, consists of matching funds for three intersection
improvements. The parks and recreation capital was for the purchase of our park land from Fulton County. Public
Safety capital was furnishing for fire stations as well as the purchase of those fire stations from Fulton County. After we
adopt the annual CIP and the first year capital budget, departments will then be responsible for managing their capital
projects; there will be ongoing monitoring for schedule and budget comparisons and we will present monthly
expenditure reports to Council and departments and we can produce expenditure reports that really status reports as
needed. At this point, we are going to move to talking about some recommendations by staff of projects that we have
identified. This is just a starting point; we want to get this information in front of you now so you can begin to look at it
and analyze it, and get feedback from your citizens in preparation for July, August and September when we start talking
about the budget.
We are going to go over department by department, talk about some recommended projects and things we see right in
front of us that need to take place. In the end, she will pass out a spreadsheet that lists all the projects we recommend
and carry those out into a five year CIP so we can begin to see what these projects cost by year.
We will start with information technology which falls in the Operations Department. Some items we have identified for
capital improvement would be website enhancement, records systems, central record systems for the City, as well as
specific records management system for public safety, additional server needs, hardware additions like the full size
plotters and scanners in our GIS department, transportation department additional software packages, and enhancements
to our GIS and aerial mapping functions.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom walked through a couple of slides, the first of which is an overview and he said we
will address each of the two fire stations we have, numbers 10 and 14, that we anticipate would have some needed work.
The inspections were done and in fact they confirmed that we have some needed work to do to those two fire stations.
In public safety, what we plan to need in the first five years deals with current facility renovation and repair. We will
talk about, future facilities, vehicles and apparatus, machinery and equipment and community safety items. Let us look
first at fire station number 10. This is the Station that is on Thompson Road up from Hopewell Road. It is by far the
oldest of the three stations that exist in Milton and it is the traditional Butler building that has just a back end capability
to the front door; it is not a passenger drive through station. Right off the bat, we know that we have water heater
replacement that needs to happen, insulation repair and a general spruce up; general painting, landscaping, interior
improvements, bathrooms. It is kind of a gym, hang your gear, multi-purpose room and gives you an idea of what the
living conditions are certainly livable, but definitely in need of some work. The next one is the Fire Station 14. This is
the one on Arnold Mill Road at the intersection of Providence Road. It is a little bit newer, but still in need of some
pretty drastic repair. You can see the water issue there in the roof and you can see that part of the bay door is missing
some glass pieces. The kitchen cabinets do not have any fronts on them anymore; which other than esthetically is not
pleasing. The dishes stay there, but anyone who comes to visit the fire station is going go be able to see right into the
cabinets; generally not the type of living environment he thinks we want our firefighters in especially at deployment.
We know at this station, window replacement, insulation repair, and ceiling and tile replacements, HVAC various
repairs, overhead door and opener replacement, some roof and other type of replacement, general painting, landscaping,
interior improvements, kitchen, sleeping area, locker area and bathrooms. Those inspections were done last week and
this week and this is the result of those two inspections. Some of our future public safety facility needs that we perceive
are (referring to the chart) the top one on the list is a temporary fire station in the Deerfield area and whether that is here
or whether we find some other way to bring that up we know we have that fourth piece of fire apparatus coming and we
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know that it needs to be deployed in this area. We have also identified another need in the area of Freemanville Road
that is kind of a broad area, but we know where the fire stations exist today. Presently, Freemanville Road is being
served by Thompson Road station and the distance is further than would normally be. At some point, we would like to
look and probably add as a part of additional capital planning to have a more permanent main fire headquarters building
coupled with a police precinct and that could actually be part of the City Hall planning process. The bottom two are
possible joint ventures in a firing range or training facility; these are things that our folks would need in Milton, but they
are also things that when we develop those things and share them with other places that they have the ability to generate
revenue. We are not just looking in the CIP for ways to spend, spend, and spend. We are also looking ways to branch
out and see if we can do the right thing, but also be attractive to other agencies that may need those things.
Regarding public safety vehicles and apparatus, we have a schedule in place for the current fleet in the fire apparatus and
replacement schedule. Right now probably the highest mileage we have on a car is 1,000 so we are not in any risk of
having any of them wear out tomorrow, but we need to have a plan in place. Because of the size of Milton the miles will
go on police cars quicker than cities that have fewer square miles. We are in the process of evaluating what type of fire
apparatus in addition to these first four deploying apparatus would be recommended for the style of community that
Milton has with its water challenges, as well as with its long driveways and roads that a traditional fire truck could not
get down. That is why there is some recommendation there and then increasingly anticipated number of officers. We
will begin talking with you about why we need that moving into the budget process and the equipment that goes along
with that such as machinery and supplemental equipment. This is a fairly standard practice in fire service; you have a
firefighter that has one set of turnout gear and it just seems to happen that one set will be used on a call early in the shift.
Once fire gear gets wet, once it gets torn, it lacks its integrity and it seems to be appropriate as is most jurisdictions
around here to have a back up set for each of their firefighters. A records management system and automatic citation
technology exist just in planning for the correct one. Automatic citation technology just adds efficiencies in law
enforcement and that is something we are interested in doing; adding the efficiency and stating personnel time that all
equates to the dollar savings. Safety items, automatic defibrillator or AED’s, as they are sometimes termed, the medical
research at this point and our medical direction staff says that AED’s save lives and we believe that. We are working on
getting those in all City vehicles and placing them in all parks and community buildings. Tornado warning sirens is
something that we will research and investigate after we deploy, as well as thermal imaging cameras. Those are cameras
that go on the fire trucks that help you find heat in walls or heat in places that you just cannot see. Potential public
safety external public funding options; Homeland Security Grant, Justice and Administration Grant, Fire Assistance
Grant, Fire Prevention Grant, a whole host of grants here. Public Safety Foundation is still something that is in progress
for the City of Milton. Impact fees, local business partnerships and local neighborhood partnerships, as well as any
other creative funding sources that we can find in public safety because they do exist. This is just a minor snapshot.
Mayor Lockwood wanted to make a comment on the thermal imaging cameras. One of his neighbors had donated one
for station 14 and he wanted to make sure it stayed there. He has mentioned that to Lynn Riley several times, but just
wanted to make sure of that.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said yes, we are hot on that. We actually got the newspaper article from several
years ago from the review where it was donated.
It was inaudible, but it appears someone asked a question about Section 18 Freemanville not being served. Does Section
18 not help?
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said it would serve the north end. Freemanville. The area that is in need would be
the area south of Providence Road where the schools are.
Councilmember Thurman said it is her understanding that we have requested a grant, or our representative has, for
this.
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Thursday, March 8, 2007, 5:30 PM
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Someone asked about the ownership of Thompsonville and if it had been determined and the response was yes.
City Attorney Scott said as long as it is used as a fire station it does not matter who owns it; it has to be used as a fire
station.
Planning and Zoning Director Michael Tuller said since Tom Wilson is ill he asked him to speak on CIP as it relates
to Community Development. As most of you know, the City of Milton is operating under the 2025 Comprehensive Plan
that was drafted a couple of years ago by Fulton County. Part of the charge in Community Development we will be
looking at a revision to Fulton’s 2025 Plan that will be a major update for the City of Milton. The plan will be under the
new Department of Community Affairs guidelines, where the Fulton County plan that we are currently under is the old
DCA plan that was originally subscribed. In addition, we are going to be looking at revisions to our design guidelines to
the different master planned areas; certainly the Crossroads area and Crabapple in Birmingham. Also, we will be
looking further on State Route 9; there has been a lot of interest in the Arnold Mill Road corridor both through
annexations and development opportunities. There is a GDOT project to look at improvement on that corridor and we
are also going to look at it from a land use perspective. What might be appropriate for new development and existing
developments along the corridor and a design is complementary to the constituency in Milton. As we had heard in a
recent presentation from the Sizemore Group, there does appear to be interest from the community at large to look at a
revision to the Crabapple master plan and we will, through the comp plan, update and in other subsequent meetings look
at further revisions to that. As part of the comprehensive plan update, there is a section called the Capital Improvement
element that we would consider as a component to a potential impacted program that would likely happen in a year or
two.
City Treasurer Wolfe said she had a quick comment on this. For those of you who are not familiar with governmental
budgeting, funds appropriated in the general fund offering lapse at the end of the fiscal year. Different from those funds
appropriated as capital project funds carry over from year to year until that project is complete. This past budget year,
we appropriated money for a comp plan update in the general fund. What you are going to see either in the mid year or
in the 2008 budget is staff recommending we reclassify that appropriation from the general fund over to the capital
project fund because of this comp plan update. She does not want those appropriations to lapse so we are going to move
that and reclassify that appropriation over to the Capital Project fund, no physical impact, just moving it from one plan
to the other.
Community Services Director Greg Wilson said under the area of Recreation and Parks we identified all of the parks
that the City operates and wanted to first begin with an identification of what those facilities are and talk about some of
the conditions they are in. At Belle Memorial Park Community Building, there were several ball fields, four (4) if you
will. We have taken a look at Birmingham Park, Bethwell Community Building, and Crabapple Community Building.
There are various trails throughout the City of Milton. One playground that also happens to be at Belle Memorial Park
and long range plan we are looking towards the future and purchase and development of Providence Park. Right now
Providence Park has not been released to us because of some of the EPA issues, but we know we are going to own it at
some point so we are starting the plan forward for its use. One of the challenges for us is looking at balancing the
demand for the use of these facilities in their current conditions. As we started that assessment, we noticed that there are
several major issues that need to get identified as capital improvements for these particular facilities. Beginning with
Bethwell Community House, it is in serious need of repair; there are major roof leaks; lots of interior issues that need to
be repaired there. What you cannot really see, but there is a little dip in the roof so there is actually a hole in the roof.
At Belle Memorial Park, the park itself is in very good condition, however, we need to look at the concession stand that
is in need of some repair, there are several fire code issues that we have identified there, some compliance issues that
need to be addressed. At Crabapple Community House, restroom repairs are needed; several exterior repairs and some
repairs that we would determine as cosmetic. We are still inspecting these facilities; those inspections are currently
underway to identify other renovations that would need to be in place and also specific other repair needs. The 2025
Comprehensive Plan that has been adopted looks at the recreational parks and the standard. Here are some numbers that
identify what should be the standards for park land, 5 acres per 1000 is in population; adult baseball fields, 1 per 2000;
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youth baseball fields, 1 per 2000; football fields, 1 per 30; soccer fields, 1 per 20,000, tennis courts 1 per 5000;
playgrounds, 1 per 2000; recreation facilities 2000 square feet per 1000. Again, this just gives you some sense of
baseline for the needs as adopted by the standards. Going forward, looking at the Milton demand and our current
supply, we have also looked at the National Recreation and Parks Association to balance or at least have some
comparison for those standards. On the left column you see “Standard of Demand” 100 acres, 10 ball fields, etc. for
park land and adult ball fields. Current supply is 203 acres. The far right column that says “Private/Other Government
Available Supply” that is actually Alpharetta North Park and since it is within our boundaries, if you will going forward,
we wanted to identify those facilities and talk about some cooperative relationships that we might build and at least look
at it as a future opportunity since, again, this is a long term planning document and we wanted you to be able to have
some information for comparison going forward. What you see on the far right column are facilities available at
Alpharetta North Park and our current supply, in the middle column, most of those ball fields being at Belle Memorial
Park. He pointed out the two (2) football fields and two (2) soccer fields, which is not four (4) fields but is actually two
(2) fields that are multi-use fields. For instance, we were there today and they have the football goals but they take those
away and they put the soccer goals there; so those are actually the same fields. Under the area of Storm Water, we have
looked at and identified bridges and culverts throughout the City, impact on our storm water management system.
Several of our bridges are in need of rehabilitation, not all of them are maintained by the State, and some of them will
fall on the responsibility of the City of Milton. We are looking at going forward at some point in the future with some
discussion about storm water utility and also addressing certain needs within the confines of a storm water ordinance. In
one area we have identified a need for dam repair. What you see in this photo at the bottom is one of our employees;
this is actually Birmingham Park. There is a large pond and that dam is actually giving way so at some point we feel
that that is going to be a breach; fortunately, it is going to be contained inside the park so there will be some level of
environmental impact, but we know that that is going to happen and we are planning for that going forward. Also a key
point there is that the City only maintains storm water within the rights of way. There are times when we get citizens
calls about things going on inside the properties and we wanted to make this an education exercise as well to talk about
the City’s responsiveness only in the rights of way. Going forward, looking at storm water in the future, certainly
addressing bridge rehabilitation, bridge replacement, there are several where there are specific needs we have identified.
Metropolitan North Georgia is a planning agency that we will be working with closely around water conservation
around storm water management following some of their guidelines. We certainly have need to model our ordinances
and State law and EPD requires certain ordinances and how we manage the storm water system within the City of
Milton. There are several conservation methods that are suggested and we should start the public dialog around those
things. The EPD website identifies a lot of those issues and things we should start talking about going forward to help
conserve water and water use within our system. We need a policy for private waste water assistance. There are
situations where private systems are potentially causing environmental impact and at some point we will need a policy to
address some of those issues. Last but not least, some dialog and policy around flood plains management. Bridges and
culverts, we have identified several bridges and several culverts throughout the City. On the State maintenance list there
are two (2) that we have identified; both of these are in the step. Bridges and culverts in Milton, we have identified
twenty-nine (29), most of them are in very poor condition. The bridge inspection, we do need a report; we need a
professional assessment of the condition of our bridges so we will know exactly how to plan going forward for the
funding. Also a point being that these bridges be structured and designed around a fifty to one hundred year life cycle
expectancy so some of them may be beyond what we would normally call the useful life but certainly looking at them as
structures and identifying when we might go about the process of repairs and upgrades.
There was a question from the audience, but it is inaudible.
Councilmember Lusk stated that he understand that Sandy Springs is looking at forming a storm utility or storm water
authority, and asked at what point in time do you think it would be appropriate for us to do that.
Community Services Director Wilson said he thinks the way that we position the planning, we looked at forming or at
least initiating storm water utility around five years out. So it is a short term horizon if you will.
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Transportation Engineer Abbie Jones said when you look on the spreadsheet for the budget at the end of the meeting
that City Treasurer Wolfe will be handing out; she believes we had looked at potential implementation and FY 2010.
That is the earliest possible….it takes quite some time to change laws and get enough community support and you have
to do aerial mapping, and there are a lot of technical things that have to happen.
Councilmember Lusk had a second question. On your bridge inspection, when do you anticipate engaging the
engineering firm to do bridge inspections?
Community Services Director Wilson said he does not have a good date in mind right now. At this point, we are still
trying to get an assessment of what is going on out there. We have not targeted a specific date, but we do know it is a
future need.
Councilmember Lusk said there are some critical bottlenecks - one right down the road comes to mind. He is not sure
the bridge is not a traffic hazard at certain bottlenecks.
Community Services Director Wilson said part of this is, and Carol is going to address this as well, we looked at the
infrastructure throughout the City and one of the things that we wanted to do was put all of the information forward so
that we could then determine what would be the priorities.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said when you talked about Providence Park; she knows that we as Council and Mayor
and others in the room as well, would appreciate a quick update that the environmental assessment of Fulton County is
still underway.
City Manager Bovos said yes that is absolutely correct. He received a phone call from Scott Graham today, at
Commissioner Riley’s office with respect to Providence Park. The EPA is going to require Fulton County to do
remediation for an additional two to three years; they submitted a remediation litigation plan in December. The EPA has
two to three months to approve that plan, but right now the issues are ground water contamination. When the plan is
approved they will then go forward with trying to remediate that ground water contamination, but again it is going to be
two to three years at the earliest before the EPA will come back in and do another evaluation.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said in terms of purchase price and agreement we have at Fulton County, she knows
we have liability issues and a whole range of other things, but is the price point to be required is that to be applied to
Providence Park.
City Manager Bovos said as long as they do not by resolution change their original resolution.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said that same purchase price will be applied to, at least in theory. A quick
observation, the chart is very, very helpful, when you are identifying the fields and things; she does not know if it might
be helpful to identify some of the fields that you have total location of Crabapple, Crawford Elementary, and the YMCA
field that is there and that is used for soccer and different things and she thought that might at least be worthy of noting.
Her other quick question, as you look at possible locations for CIP, would green space be one of the considerations?
She knows there are some grants out there, but as you evaluate the planning process, she just wandered if green space
would be a consideration as we look out for these.
Community Services Director Wilson said that these will actually be addressed in the spreadsheet that Carol Wolfe
has. That is one of the items that we discussed.
City Manager Bovos said he would just remind everybody too that this is just a list from staff and no priority order.
From the Council’s perspective, you get to take our list, as well as the list that you generate yourselves, during the
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budget process and prioritize those. If green space is not on our list then you add it to your list and you all get to
prioritize that.
Councilmember Lusk said just to be clear on Providence Park, we do not own it at this time, is that correct?
City Manager Bovos said that is correct.
Councilmember Lusk asked if that would mean we have no liability.
City Manager Bovos said correct.
Councilmember Lusk said he noticed the property is posted “no trespassing”. He knows first hand of someone who
was over there recently and the buildings were not secured; that is why he brought up the liability issue.
Mayor Lockwood said he wanted to clarify one comment that Councilmember Zahner Bailey said, we were talking
about having the option that we could still buy that land at the same price, but we also do not want to push that forward
and inherit something at a very inexpensive price and have the liability. It would be better not to have the park than to
inherit the liability right now.
Councilmember O’Brien asked Community Services Director Wilson if he was going to reflect any gains
from…withdrawing to a successful conclusion of annexation over in the Arnold Mill area.
Community Services Director Wilson said that is correct. He did not include those in any of his estimates at this time.
Councilmember O’Brien asked if Community Services Director Wilson would agree that we would need to impress
that issue going forth from a budget stand point.
Community Development Director Wilson said that is correct.
There were questions from the audience which was addressed by City Treasurer Wolfe.
City Treasurer Wolfe said we will have public workshops leading up to the budget and two required public hearings to
review and adopt the balanced budget. She suggested that one would talk to Councilmembers and staff and the
department directors and bring forward any projects that are a priority. We will include them in the prioritization
process as the decision makers begin to formulate the five (5) year CIP and what would be funded year by year. We will
issue press releases and do our part in communicating to the public how they can talk to elected officials and staff on
projects that are important to them. We will also post this PowerPoint presentation on our website so folks can see what
some of the recommendations are at this point and begin communicating what projects in the community that are
important.
Community Services Director Wilson said he wanted to reiterate a couple of key things; one, citizen input is certainly
important and the second thing is that from our perspective as a staff, these are not priorities, these are just items that we
have identified that we want to present so that people can start the dialog and then address and shape the priorities.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey had an observation. On this 100 acres, most of this is at Birmingham Park and it might
be worth noting that at some point, and you may or may not have that page that is on the GIS system, but to be able to
highlight what percentage of that is non developable because a lot of that land is very steep, based on some of the earlier
settings conducted by outside consultants. This might help everybody understand that some of that acreage is not
necessarily even possible for use in recreation and activities.
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There was a comment from the audience regarding the school.
Transportation Engineer Jones said the first thing that she will do is point out why we have the map over here. This is
just to show how much of our area is served by streams and creeks. If you look down in the lower corner in Alpharetta
they do not have as many creeks. That is just to show you how important storm water will be to the City of Milton;
there is another copy of the map out there. This map is showing some of the transportation improvement locations. She
thought that would be helpful for folks to look at it after the presentation. She also wanted to recall everyone’s attention
to the provided handout and the Community Service Helpful Definitions page. She is passing it around for folks that do
not have it and she put copies on the table. She said she will be using lots of acronyms; she thought that would be
helpful for everyone. We will get started on the transportation portion of the Capital Improvement Plan. As you can
see, we do not want Milton to look like the GA 400. We want it to be a rural area and staff is aware of that and has
inventoried our system. You can see the list of inventory items. One of the first things that City Treasurer Wolfe had
mentioned earlier in the evening about maintenance and how maintenance of our current assets is a very important part
of any budget. One of the most important assets that we have right now is our roadway system. So the maintenance of
our roadway system is essential. Just as the odometer on this flag waves 99 thousand miles, but our roadway system is a
little bit old. We know that there are sections in poor condition; we have an entire analysis that is being done right now
and it will incorporate digital pictures and all sorts of information together in order to get pavement conditions. We will
incorporate that into a GIS system to be able to prioritize where those needs are most important. The next line is deep
mill and patch. These are some kind of slang words for us engineer geeks. Deep mill and patch is a capital
improvement item, but overlay is a maintenance item; that is just an important differentiation to make. If a road publicly
fails, you have to do a deep mill and patch; if you are just doing regular scheduled maintenance that is an overlay. Your
staff has been researching all available funding options; this is a fairly detailed list of the transportation funding options
that are available. Some of them would require additional ordinances or new laws and many of them would require long
term planning, which is why we are talking about it under the Capital Improvement Program. As we are talking about
long term planning, they also get to talk about Fulton County inheritance. We have three projects that started as Fulton
County and were in charge of this area and now that the City of Milton is in charge of this area we have three projects
that are currently in process. The first of which is Bethany and Providence. We have an approved concept report; we
are in the design phase and it was programmed for construction in 2007. In talking with the consultant that did the
design, because of the detour route, it is highly advised that we do this project during the summer. That was something
of importance to note that our programmings are fiscal years. Again, the total local match is $300,000 but the budget
matched for 2007 is just $110,000. If you look through the definitions section, you will notice some of the things about
air seek, the STIP and the TIP and all sorts of things that starts getting into this local match idea. Generally, if you are in
a partnership with the state government, GDOT, it is an 80/20 match. They pay 80 percent and we pay 20 percent local
match. We are getting a lot more bang for our buck. So Freemanville at Providence Road just around the corner from
the last intersection will also have detour issues and it has been suggested by that consultant that that work take place in
the summer and ideally not at the same time that the previous project will be taking place, again, because of the detour
route. It would be a new signal and $60,000 is the local match in 2007. Birmingham Highway and New Providence is
not quite as far along as the other two projects; there has just been some initial survey work completed, there is not an
approved concept report or concept drawing for this project, which is why it is $90,000 budgeted for 2007. GDOT State
projects are rare. A state project is when they are going to do 100% of the funding. Instead of an 80/20 split that is
when they do 100% of the funding. That is what will be happening with the State Route 140 project that some of you
have heard about. To give you some very quick information about this project, it is still in the long term plan for
construction, but as you can see from the dates listed on here, they are beginning to have some citizen involvement in
some of the conceptual ideas for the project. The construction money is still in the long term plan which is 2010 to
2014. Again, this is 100% GDOT funded. It is a midyear intergovernmental agreement recommended that would be
since it is 11 miles goes from Roswell, Alpharetta, Milton and Cherokee County. All of the municipalities involved will
be involved with an intergovernmental agreement so that we can all come to the table and discuss design concerns. You
can also see that beginning in April there will be a citizen’s public advisory meeting. She said she had given some
information to City Manager Bovos where the state had asked for our elected officials and such to appoint people to a
committee and that is the Citizen’s Advisory Committee that will begin meeting very soon, but again, they are not going
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to be doing construction for a very long time. The Citizen’s Advisory Committee is not an elected forum. The elected
official portion of this will be with the IGA; there will be separate functions for citizens and for elected officials. We as
your staff know of lots more areas that need transportation improvement and we have identified a list and we continue
adding to that list, but again, these are in the long range plan at this point and time. She would encourage you to look at
the map at the end of the presentation and we will be having public information open houses on projects; we will be
having a transportation survey posted to our website in the near future; and we will be presenting more specific
information May 11 at an additional work session for Council.
Councilmember Mohrig had a quick question on Bethany Road and Providence and said did he read that is going to be
a roundabout?
Transportation Engineer Jones said that is the approved concept design.
Councilmember Lusk asked how far along is the design?
Transportation Engineer Jones said they have their approved concept report. She spoke with the consultant and she
has boxes of the drawings that showed they have a nearly complete preliminary set of plans which goes through another
approval process to the state and then you purchase rights of way.
Councilmember Lusk asked if it was unlikely that it would happen this summer at that rate.
Transportation Engineer Jones said one of the many challenges that we have had as staff is transitioning from Fulton
County to Milton and part of that is a PMA, which is a project contractual agreement, and staff has been on that like you
would not believe.
Councilmember Lusk said judging from what he knows, these transportation projects and other projects and how they
proceed though the conception stage, it looks like….
Transportation Engineer Jones said it will be tough. Given the dates that we are showing right here are the dates that
are currently under program. Staff is not just wildly changing things. There is due process to do that. One thing, she
guesses is of importance to know that, Crabapple sidewalk phase 2 all of that has been installed by a developer so we
would not need to come up with the million dollars plus to fund that project.
There was a question from the audience about a traffic light at Providence and Freemanville.
Transportation Engineer Jones said the approved concept report is a light. If there is a design change to that, we
would need to resubmit the concept report and that would take months for GDOT to approve and then we would need to
readjust all of our fiscal years. The reason why staff did not adjust any of their dates on our projects at this point in time
is because if you do not, if a city jurisdiction does not put money into a project that they are required to have a portion of
a match in a fiscal year, you could actually lose a project. This is why staff, back in October, worked so hard to make
sure they had those dollar amounts right for the 2007 project so as not to lose a project. It is not completely impossible
to change, but right now the wheel is in motion for a signal. One thing that is important to also mention when we are
talking about transportation and capital improvement projects is that there is a particular cost benefit ratio and timeline
associated with that, and what she is trying to say is there is a 20 year life span. You have to build something that will
not fail for 20 years and sometimes that is the problem with some roundabouts. Since it is somewhat new in the US,
although in Australia and all sorts of foreign countries you have roundabouts everywhere, America is actually unique in
having stop signs, and that is sometimes surprising for folks to know. Roundabouts do not have a great life expectancy
because of the generation of cars; how many drivers we have in Georgia at this point in time. So the traffic prediction is
what she is saying. That might be why this is not a roundabout because they predicted the traffic count would be over
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25,000 vehicles per day and that would make it qualify for a signal. There are all sorts of technical reasons. A light will
carry more cars than a roundabout in the US the way that the rules are written.
There was a comment from the audience that was inaudible.
Transportation Engineer Jones responds by saying that is a level of detail that is not decided at the conceptual level,
which is something that is decided upon as you move into the preliminary design. That is something we are going to be
discussing at the Right of Way Ordinance, which she thinks the first read is the 26th of this month where we will be
discussing any and all of the things that will be in the rights of way which include mast arms, includes traffic lights, and
all sorts of different things.
Councilmember Mohrig stated that he thinks it is more of long term taking a look at what type of look and feel that we
want to have in our City.
Transportation Engineer Jones said there is a long term maintenance associated with any of the decorative poles that
is not associated with the galvanized pole, just to make sure folks are aware of that.
City Manager Bovos stated, as reference, it is April 26, 2007.
Councilmember O’Brien asked what the issue for summer timeline for those of us who are not familiar with the
process.
Transportation Engineer Jones said no, it is traffic.
Councilmember O’Brien asked as far as timeline does that imply that they might break ground to expand lanes there in
the fiscal 2010 timeframe.
Transportation Engineer Jones said that is the earliest possible time that could happen. They have not set an actual
date for the project, so there is not an actual official date at this point in time. Since it is still long range, the earliest
possible date would be 2010 and the latest would be 2014 at this point of time. The way that funding is she would not
guess on the ground break time frame.
Councilmember Lusk asked who will be leading this project.
Transportation Engineer Jones said if it is a project that is 100% GDOT project, GDOT will be letting it. It all
depends on the PMA, the particulars of the contractual agreement, but generally GDOT lets the project and the
community would be involved in the utility relocation costs, the rights of way purchase cost and then a portion of the
construction cost, the 20% of the construction cost, but 100% of the utility relocation and 100% of the rights of way.
Councilmember Lusk asked if the Birmingham/New Providence Intersection, since that is a state road would that be
100% funded by the state.
Transportation Engineer Jones said no. Because it is a state funded facility they rarely fund the whole project. Just
because it is a state facility does not mean they will do 100%. The fact that we have a project, even on our long range,
that does not mean it is 100% GDOT funded. That is extremely rare. It means that GDOT really wants the project to
happen and has very specific needs in mind that they are trying to meet when they want to do a 100% GDOT project.
Basically, Milton may not see another 100% GDOT project, she would say for 20 years or more.
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Councilmember Zahner Bailey said just along that same intersection, when you mentioned approved design, she does
know that Fulton County had at least worked on two possible designs and she wanted to make sure hopefully that she
and staff have the benefit of those designs that have at least been worked on.
Transportation Engineer Jones said she visited the Fulton County loading dock this week and put about 13 boxes in
the trunk of her car and felt somewhat illegitimate doing so.
Councilmember Mohrig asked what would be the earliest that intersection would have an improvement. That is
probably one of our most dangerous intersections from a line of sight. People are taking a chance every time you try to
get across there. When do you think we would actually see that? He knows that the GDOT process takes a long time
getting them to approve the plans, back and forth, but when do you think we are actually going to be able to see the
improvements there.
Transportation Engineer Jones said what she listed is the program dates. She said if the Council is interested in
moving up within that fiscal year that would have to do with how you are trying to make sure it happens the front part of
the fiscal year instead of the December part of the year, which is something you can do without a whole lot of
paperwork. But, if you want to change fiscal years, first of all you have to have the money; which right now that is a
little bit tough, and then you can go through the paperwork.
Councilmember Mohrig asked if the hardest part on that was actually getting GDOT to approve the plans and get an
agreement on what we are going to do with that intersection.
Transportation Engineer Jones said no, not for that particular intersection. It does not have anything that is
particularly onerous on the plan review side for them, like environmental mitigation, or stream buffer or something like
that. At this point in time, a signal is planned for that intersection, but there is not an approved concept report and there
would be a public information open house.
There was a comment from someone in the audience regarding the possibility of a public/private partnership for
improvement on the 140 Corridor.
Transportation Engineer Jones said anything is possible. Since it is currently programmed as a 100% GDOT funded
project, which is obviously better for our bottom line as a City with a budget that we are trying to keep as tight as
possible. But as far as a particular public and private partnership on that corridor, right now she does not know of
anyone that has pursued that option.
There was a question from someone in the audience. (It was inaudible)
Transportation Engineer Jones responded by saying at this point in time as a new City, you cannot just immediately
do impact fees; you have to do a study, you have to come up with a very comprehensive…..the way you plan to put the
state Law in this is quite detailed. It is twenty pages of OCGA, great read. It is about a two year process to create
impact fees legally. You cannot just say by gavel, we are going to do impact fees. It is an onerous process because you
have to have a plan in process of how are you going to spend this money. The money that you are collecting and
keeping those profit monies separate, if you have a parks impact fees, it stays in the park pot of money; if you have a
road impact fee it stays with the roads. You have to have all those accounting things in place.
City Treasurer Wolfe said to address the impact fee question, staff is going to recommend we fund the impact fee cost
study in fiscal year 2008 so that we can begin to move forward with looking at an impact fee program. A City Hall
complex is really just one area that we need to address moving forward for future facilities. If we want to put this on the
radar screen, it is towards the end of the 5 year plan, looking at a City Hall complex plan, design, possible inclusion of
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making this truly a complex with a fire station, precinct, possible green space or park area and the construction stage of
that City Hall complex.
What are our next steps? You have heard a lot tonight on various projects, our next step, again, these are staff
recommendations not staff priorities. We ask that the citizens be involved in the priority process. Where we go from
here is to continue the development of the draft PIP by staff, continue to add to it and get more details on projects that
we know of; additional workshop and updates. Tentatively, on May 11th, we will come back to you again in this type
setting and talk about TIP again. In mid June, we are going to begin the fiscal year 2008 budget process. That would
include beginning to accumulate requests for capital projects to be added to the PIP by staff. During the budget process,
you are going to begin to see much more detail for each project, a lot more detail than you saw tonight. On July 28th, we
would like to plan a budget retreat; this will be a fiscal year 2008 budget retreat and will include maintenance and
operating general fund budgeting as well as TIP budgeting. On August 10th there will be a budget extended workshop;
we are hoping we could start the workshop at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, have a dinner break and continue on with the
workshop that night for budget planning. On August 17th, we plan to present a balanced budget to the Council that
includes the Capital Project Fund. September 7th, will be our first public hearing. Then on the 14th, we will have the
final budget workshop. The 21st will be our second public hearing and adopting the budget. October will begin fiscal
year 2008 and the implementation of the Capital Improvement Budget. She said that concludes our presentation tonight
and she handed out a spreadsheet for the Council to take with them that actually puts some estimated dollar amounts
with the projects talked about tonight. She said she would take any more questions and comments that you might have.
City Clerk Marchiafava said there was no public comment.
Mayor Lockwood said at this time he thinks we could address the inner sewer issue; he knows that Dennis Potts is here.
We have a couple more pretty lengthy things, and asked City Manager Bovos if you want to divert.
City Manager Bovos stated that unfortunately Tom Wilson is extremely ill and actually went home yesterday ill. So we
are not discussing the issue of Mr. Potts this evening; it will be deferred until the next month’s work session. He
apologized, he thought that staff had actually notified Mr. Potts based on the very brief conversation he had with
Community Development Director Wilson. He will certainly have Community Development Director Wilson get with
him tomorrow and work through those issues.
Break:
Mayor Lockwood said he would like to take a 3 minute break and if nothing else everybody stand and stretch because
we have a couple more issues. He apologized and stated that we were trying a new format and fortunately, but
unfortunately, we had more people show up than we thought. He personally thinks it is nice for Mayor and Council and
staff to be at a table and it is probably OK with the people here, but unfortunately he does not think the people outside
would agree. We will certainly keep that in mind, but thank you for working with us tonight.
Discussion on the Ethics Ordinance
City Manager Bovos said he wanted to give a little bit of background on this particular ordinance and introduce a great
colleague who is here, Jim Langlais of Alston & Byrd to discuss the Ethics Ordinance with you. We did invite him this
evening to discuss the Ethics ordinance and make a presentation since they are all of your nominees with respect to
serving on the Ethics Committee. We have several documents in front of you with respect to the Ethics Ordinance and
he would ask as well, that if you are here in the audience and are a member of the Ethics Committee that you raise your
hand. We have two documents that you also need to receive; tonight City Clerk Marchiafava will pass both of those out.
Again, it is my pleasure to have Mr. Langlais with us this evening and he has done a great job in preparation for tonight
with respect to walking us all through the Ethics Ordinance. He does know that Council has provided some suggestions
with respect to moving forward and having the Ethics Committee work on some additional projects and certainly we
would be open to those discussions at the conclusion of Mr. Langlais’ presentation.
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Jim Langlais, Alston & Byrd, said what he will tell us is he is open to having people send him emails or call him if you
have any questions, whether it is someone on the City Council or the Ethics Committee or general public. He has no
problem with the questions because he knows that twenty minutes is not much time to get through this rather lengthy
ordinance. He thought it would be helpful to tell you how the City of Sandy Springs approached this Ethics Ordinance.
He sent around an email to City Manager Bovos and you should have all received a copy, but he will go ahead and
briefly tell you what we did. The City of Sandy Springs, the City Council and the Mayor decided that it was a good idea
to form a committee of citizens. The Mayor formed the committee; each member of City Counsel nominated someone.
It was a committee of five people; on that committee were two (2) attorneys, including himself. At each of the meetings
that we had and we had roughly six meetings, there was also the City Attorney, Wendell Willard, as well as the City
Clerk. He will say they do miss City Clerk Marchiafava. What they did was looked around at neighboring
communities; we received copies of their old ordinances and we also reached up to the GMA. To those who are not
familiar with GMA that is essentially the organization that is the Georgia Municipal Association and they have a
Certified City of Ethics Program. We reached out to them to see which ordinance they would recommend and actually
have a model ordinance that was put together by the IMLA, the International Municipal Lawyers Association. We had
those in front of us and we thought since the GMA was promoting this model ordinance, we should probably go ahead
and at least start with that; we did not want to reinvent the wheel. It turns out that if you are familiar with the Carl
Vincent Institute, they also recommended that cities and counties look at that ordinance as kind of a starting base. After
reading it, we realized there were some redundancies within the ordinance itself and there were also things in the
ordinance that were covered by State Law already. So to avoid any conflicts with our ordinance and State Law, we
thought that we would hope that our Legislature did a good job passing the State Law and we just would remove those
sections. Our goal was also to make something that is readable; there is no sense in having a law that no one
understands. He knows that attorneys and legislators are guilty of sometimes doing that with legalese, but we try to
remove the legalese where we could and put together an ordinance that was workable. He thinks a few things that we
entered into this process is that we had some goals in mind and he guesses the first goal, which was really more of an
understanding, was that this Ethics Ordinance was really setting the minimum standards to expect our public servants to
live up to. It was really the base line and our hope was that the ordinance itself would encourage those to exceed these
minimum standards. We wanted to make sure that everyone knew that these are the minimum so if you are getting
close to that line, you probably should rethink that. What they have told their City Council is that really it is the smell
test; if it does not smell right then it probably is not. Another thing that we recognized is that this, like any law, has to
be living and breathing; you have to review it from time to time and make amendments where necessary and what we
have done is actually empowered the Board with the ability to go back and look at the ordinance and make changes
where necessary. The interesting thing about an Ethics Ordinance for a lot of cities and other counties throughout the
United States is that a lot of them have never used Ethics Ordinances because they have not had ethics complaints come
up for one reason or another. So you have the understanding that you do not really know how good the Ethics
Ordinance is until it gets applied. What they have done is set up a system where the committee actually reviews the
decisions from around the country and we will take the facts of those cases and in a closed session apply those facts to
our ordinance and kind of work through it to see how the ordinance will function. We are beginning that process and if
we see problems with the ordinance we will recommend changes and why; he said he would recommend we do the same
thing. In reaching out to the different cities throughout Georgia, we came to a quick conclusion that many of them have
never had an ethics complaint that they had to deal with, some others have and they were not as willing to talk to us,
unfortunately, for obvious reasons. He thinks the other thing to realize is that, and most people may not know this, but
something can be unethical and not necessarily be criminal or not necessarily rise to the level of civil liability. So it
does not necessarily have to break the law to be unethical and we have explained that to our Council as well and hope
that our ordinance captures that concept. You should all have before you an outline of the ordinance; it has the text, the
section and to the right of that some comments.
The first introduction part is really just recognition that the ordinance needs a set up of what is expected of our
government officials and our public servants. He guesses he should make this point early, this applies to public servants
and that broadly defined is to include not only people on the City Council, but the Mayor, also its employees,
contractors, and volunteers. We wanted to make sure that it captures volunteers because even though he is a volunteer,
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he is still in a position where he could use his position to benefit himself. So we needed to make sure that it covered
volunteers as well and anyone who contracts with the City or anyone who is authorized by the City to act on their behalf;
it covers paid and non-paid folks, it covers elected and non-elected people. The one area that it does not cover is with
the Magistrate Judges because State Law has provisions that governs them and they are also governed by Judicial Canon
that actually goes pretty far beyond even what we have. So we did not want there to be a situation where an ordinance
conflicted with the judicial channels or State Law; Magistrate Judges are excluded from this ordinance. The next few
sections is basically recognition that it is important to create this trust in the Government. It is important to cultivate an
environment where if people believe there is unethical behavior that they can come forward and they can either ask for
an advisory opinion of the committee or if they are pretty sure it is an ethical violation, they can bring a complaint
without worrying about there being retribution. It is really about setting expectations of what you are going to tolerate
from your public servants as well. That is really what these first sections are, just a recognition of the importance of
having high ethical standards within the Government. One thing he does want to point out in 1C, what that section
essentially recognizes is that as City Council members and the Mayor, you are entitled to have opinions and you can
share those opinions; people may not agree with what you have to say, but there is a recognition in here that we do have
free speech in the Country; we do have the ability to share opinions, not everyone has to agree with them, not everyone
has to like them but you have that ability and you should not be punished for sharing those opinions. That really is not
to be perceived that someone could have an ethical complaint brought against someone simply by sharing an opinion.
Section 2, which identifies the purpose of the ordinance, and again the purpose is to set minimum standards; to create a
process where people feel they can disclose what they believe are unethical behaviors or violations of this ordinance;
and also create a fair process that when ethical complaints are made, that they are handled in a transparent way and that
the people are given the opportunity to speak and that we cover all the due process requirements that the law has. They
will be given an opportunity to speak; they will be able to face their accusers; and there will be an open dialog about the
reported unethical behavior and there will be a set process that would be followed each time there is an ethical
complaint. Hopefully, you will not all have to deal with this soon. He can tell you that what the City of Sandy Springs
is doing now is making more detailed rules of procedure that go beyond the ordinance itself and they hope to have those
done soon. And again, they are not reinventing the wheel; they are looking around the country to see how others are
doing it; and those, just like the ordinance, will be reviewed and modified as necessary. Section 3 covers exemptions
and really this may be mislabeled. The whole point of Section 3, he believes is that certain actions are not going to be
deemed, just by them happening, they are not going to be deemed to be ethical violations. Our whole point of doing this
is to make sure that there is a case by case analysis of things that come up that just because something appears a certain
way does not actually mean it is unethical and that there will be a case by case analysis done and a thorough evaluation.
For example, if you look at B, which is on page 4 of 27, it says “no public servant shall be deemed to have a conflict of
interest by virtue of carrying out any contract pursuing which the public servant directly or indirectly receives income or
benefit.” Now you may say to yourself, hey wait a minute that sounds like an ethical violation. But what we really want
in situations like that, we want people to peel it apart and to truly see if it is an ethical violation. He will give you an
example. In some companies you often get into a situation where there are companies that seem unrelated but when you
really peel apart the whole structure, it turns out that a company is, through five or six subsidiaries, related to the main
company. So what do you do if you have a City Council member who works for this subsidiary that is five or six times
removed and that they have come before then the parent company and even the City Council member does not know that
there is a relationship there. If there is a bidding and that company wins the contract… he guesses the point of this
section, it would say that it may be a violation of the ethical ordinance but it is not going to be deemed a violation; there
really should be a case by case analysis on whether or not there is a true violation. If you look at D, no public servant
shall be deemed to have a conflict of interest by virtue of sharing directly or indirectly in the benefit of a lawful City
action. An example of that would be if the City Council is deciding an action on a particular piece of property and
maybe, not necessarily adjacent to but a couple of properties down is a property owned by a City Council member, the
rezoning of this property to say from commercial to residential, may be something that benefits the public and it is the
right choice. However, it could turn out that by rezoning it the property a couple of streets down is going to increase in
value because of that decision. The point here, he is not saying that is unethical, but it should not be deemed ethical;
there should be a case by case review of that. He certainly thinks that that is something that City Councilmembers or the
Mayor should disclose and may want to recluse themselves from making that decision, but still if the remaining City
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Councilmembers rule in favor and actually rezone the property, there is a chance that that Councilmember who recluses
themselves is going to receive a benefit, albeit it indirect. So again, this is why with the Ethics Ordinance, it is really a
tough balance between setting the Ethics Ordinance, having very specific prohibitions and making the prohibitions more
general because you can not possibly cover every possible scenario. You want to leave yourself some possibility to be
able to work within the ordinance, but also at the same time, you want to put people on notice what would be considered
unethical. Their hope was in drafting these sections is that we built in that flexibility by having things not be deemed
unethical without forcing the committee to do a case by case evaluation of it. The other point and this was actually
added by Wendell Willard, he wanted there to be a recognition that it would not be unethical for City Councilmembers
and the Mayor during the election year to be out raising campaign funds. We wanted to make sure that that was still
allowed. He is not quite sure why Wendell wanted it in the ordinance because it is already covered by State Law, but it
is in there. Number 4, which is on page 5, talks about who is covered and again, he has already made this point, that this
goes beyond just City employees and City Officials; it covers volunteers and it covers contractors and anyone else
authorized to act on behalf of the City. Section 5 lays out the duties of the ordinance and he thinks those are self
explanatory; he thinks one thing to point out here is that there is a duty imposed upon public servants to come forward
with information they have of unethical acts. He is just going to use an example. If you know that there has been a
bribe taken with respect to a property rezoning and you have that information. Well if you do not come forward, you
have violated the Ethics Ordinance because we do not want to promote that kind of behavior either. Section 6 is pretty
self explanatory. Our hope with Section 6 was to leave some flexibility in there to allow City Officials to meet with
members of the community over say lunch or dinner, to talk about things. Our view in Sandy Springs was we wanted to
have an open form of government; we wanted to have an accessible form of government and we did not want to draft the
ordinance in such a way that would prohibit people from meeting over a cup of coffee. That is different; it does come to
a point where it becomes questionable if you are having a $1,500 dinner. He has never had many of those or at least
those that he has paid for, but they wanted to leave some flexibility in there because they thought it was important for
the Government to be open and accessible to members of the community. In Section 7, they thought they needed to
point out that in a situation where there is even an appearance of impropriety, that there is even a question from a
Councilmember or in the Mayor’s mind, they should not be voting on something that is before the Council. He would
suggest that you try to get an advisory opinion beforehand, but as things often work out, things will slip into the agenda
that maybe were added at the last minute; if you feel that there is any question on whether or not you should be voting
on something, he suggests that you at least remove yourself from the meeting itself and try to seek some counsel with
maybe the City Attorney or a member or two of the committee just to cover your basis. The whole goal with this
ordinance too was to make this a situation where members of the community and members of the Council are proactive
as opposed to reactive. What we also have built in here is the ability for anybody to seek an advisory opinion of the
committee and they thought that was important as well. He does not have the fortunate right to go before a judge and
say “listen your honor, I have this hypothetical situation I would like for you to rule on…” that does not happen but we
have that here, we have that at least in Sandy Springs. That was something that they carried over from the model
ordinance that they used. Again, that is just to be proactive as opposed to reactive; find out ahead of time if what you
are going to be deciding or voting on or a certain action you are going to take would violate the ordinance. Section 8 is
probably one that he will have to ask you to send him an email on. That one will require and will take up a lot of
discussion dealing with public contracts, some of that is handled by State Law, but again, that is a section that there is so
many different scenarios that could come up with respect to public contracts…we tried to leave this flexible. The next
section deals with the disclosure of conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest. Again, what we were trying to
promote here is that if something does not smell right, do not try to make the analysis yourself, it is better to get it on the
table and have some dialog about it and people may just say, well you know we do not think that even comes close to an
ethical violation or violation of this ordinance; but it is better to get it out on the table. That is why we put this section in
there about potential conflicts. Section 10 deals with unauthorized outside employment. Throughout the ordinance
there is recognition that and as an example, City Officials in Sandy Springs make about $15,000 a year. He can tell you
that that is probably not enough to pay their heat for the year. So we recognize that people need to make a living and we
wanted to draft the ordinance in such a way that allows that, but we also have a recognition in this ordinance that if you
are doing something that either interferes with your ability to do a good job for the City or in some way causes the City
damage, then there are certain things that we wanted to lay out that you probably should not participate in. One of the
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points to make here is that for example in the City of Sandy Springs, and this is hypothetical, a City Councilmember
works for an accounting firm and at one point the accounting firm got involved in the bidding process for a City contract
and it was thought that while we recognize that the City Councilmember needs to make a living, in that situation, that
would be a case where that should not even be a possibility. We should not have the company that the City
Councilmember works for bidding on a contract even if it is a closed process, which it is, it just has the appearance of
being improper. At the end of the day if that company is the one who actually won the bid, someone from the outside
looking in would say wait a minute, a company that won the bid, the city council member that voted on that or even one
that recluses himself, they won the bid on that raises questions in people’s minds that they begin to question the entire
process even if the entire process was legitimate. Stuff like that probably should not happen. Another example, and one
that we are facing in Sandy Springs, deals with police officers having moonlighting at night clubs. Now, he does not
think that they have actually resolved that. There has not been, and he does not think for now that the City is allowing it.
He can tell you that if you are familiar with American Pie, Fulton County police officers are actually moonlighting there
and none of those with Sandy Springs have been authorized to moonlight there. While there is an understanding that
they have a right to earn extra money on the side, there is also a concern that they are going to do what is in the best
interest of the night club while they are working there and that may not necessarily be in the best interest of the club
itself. So that is one issue we are confronted with, and that would certainly be something that the committee would have
to look at to see if there were violations or not on the part of those public servants of this ordinance.
Councilmember Lusk asked if that is only applying to businesses where a police officer would work for a business;
how about directing traffic for a church on Sunday.
Jim Langlais said that one is a little easier because there is no alcohol involved. He used the example of the officers
moonlighting at night clubs because of the alcohol that is served. Now, the concern there is what if an officer who is
uniformed happens to bounce someone for the club, breaks their arm in the process. If it is on the attorney for the
person who broke their arm, they are probably going to come after the City. He will say listen, he was there uniformed,
it gave the appearance that he was authorized to be there on behalf of the City. The City allows this and so the City
would probably be on the hook for that. Or at least that is what he would argue. He thinks it is an easier call with
respect to someone directing traffic on a Sunday but has not really thought about that example. He is just coping with
this one. He said this is probably one of the most difficult ordinances that he has had to put together for the City because
you want to, in one respect, make sure your government is open and you want to give them the flexibility they need to
do their jobs well and the other sense you realize that there is a need to delineate what you consider to be unethical and
just so people have certain expectations and there are certain standards that they are asked to live up to. Until it gets
applied, you do not really know how well the ordinance is going to work. Section 11 provides examples of the type of
conduct that is prohibited. He thinks it speaks for itself but again these are just examples because you cannot possibly
cover every scenario. An example of one that he would point out because he confronted this in his office; it would
actually be a violation of the Sandy Springs Ethics Ordinance if this person had worked for the City. He had an
employee who was running a real estate business during business hours from her desk and that kind of stuff would be
the type of activity and the type of conduct that we would want to prohibit as well. That just caused a world of
problems; some obvious and some less obvious. He has this employee who is conducting a business out of his office, or
was, that has been fixed, he is aware of that and he continues to allow that to happen and she does something during her
lunch or goes out to visit a house and there is a problem and she hurts someone or someone is hurt when she is showing
a house, could I be held liable? He does not know. He has seen attorneys make stretches before and it is just a concern.
And he thinks the remainder of most of these sections deal with the power of the Board and you can read through that
and again, it is self explanatory.
He will make a few points and they are important points, the Board is quasi judicial in the sense that they have the
ability to subpoena either documents or people to come to hearings, they have the ability to put people under oath, to
give sworn testimony, but the important thing to remember is that as a Board, we do not have the ability to impose
certain penalties. As a Board, their only job is to do admonitions and reprimands. Really the only difference between
those is an admonition is not quite as bad as a reprimand; it is basically a public scolding and a reprimand is a louder
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public scolding. We do not have the authority to terminate someone’s job; we do not have the authority to demote
someone, to suspend someone, or to put them on paid leave of absence or anything like that. But what the Board does
have the ability to do is make recommendations to the Council, Mayor, or to the City Attorney on what we would
recommend but we do not have the ability to impose those types of penalties. The other important thing to take from
this section and it may not be in this section, but it is a good time to mention it is that violations, as he said before or
something that does not need to be criminal or civil to have any civil liability to the violation of the Ethics Ordinance.
But, at the same time, just because this is not the only punishment that someone could face, if it is deemed that that
violated the Ethics Ordinance, that there could also be some civil or criminal liability in what they have done.
Therefore, people need to be put on notice of that; it is not the end all, be all if you go before the Board. In fact since
you have taken a sworn oath your testimony could be used later on in court and face potential perjury charges. Not
unlike someone testifying before senate committee and later appearing in the trial. That is when testimony could be
used to contradict things that you have said. He thinks probably the last point he would make because he knows he is
running short on time, is who may request the Boards action. The answer is anybody. It does not have to be a citizen of
the City; the reason we allow others to file ethics complaints is, say for example, you have a company out of Milwaukee
that is down here bidding on a contract and they determine that there has been a bribe or a payoff, they should be in a
position to come forward with that potential ethics violation. Like he said he is going to go back and clean this up a
little bit and probably add a few things and he meant it when he said you can shoot him an email probably anytime of the
day or night he will probably respond quickly. Unfortunately, he has the blackberry so he can be tracked anywhere.
City Attorney Scott said a question that was posed to him today by some of the planning commission members is
would it be appropriate to provide that much information on an issue coming before the meeting. He does not think that
smells right and wanted to get his opinion.
Jim Langlais said this actually recently came up in the City. He had someone pose a question, what they asked was is
there a prohibition against approaching the people on the Planning Committee. Now there is not a flat out prohibition
and you can talk to them, but there is a certain line you can not cross. You cannot ask them how they would vote on a
particular matter; if it is just a matter of giving them information before hand, he does not necessarily see that as being a
problem if that is all there is, but if you run into a situation where it is going beyond that and they are almost
campaigning for the Planning Commission to vote a certain way, then he thinks that comes pretty close for not passing
the smell test. But again, he thinks it involves a case by case analysis; knowing all the facts and that might be a perfect
instance where you would want to do an advisory opinion. One thing he would point out with the advisory opinion is it
is only as good as the facts that were presented and if one or two facts are held back the advisory opinion is not good.
There was an additional comment from the audience that was inaudible.
Jim Langlais said he is sitting there trying to digest this example; the thing he would say is if the information is so
important, would not that information go to the planning department first. What he would recommend in that instance is
stuff like that gets filtered through the planning department and that information is part of a package so there is no
opportunity for the developer to, quote unquote, campaign the public commission. You should also avoid the
appearance of impropriety. Let us face it, it is a small, even Sandy Springs of 86,000 is a small town and if he walks
into a coffee shop and he sees the developer sitting down with people from the Planning Commission and he sees plans
laid out on the table, it just does not look right and he would question if it is that important that you want to get before
the commission. Just submit it through the planning department and they will get it to them and it will be part of the
record and you will avoid that appearance of impropriety.
Councilmember Mohrig asked would the reverse be also true; let us say someone on the Planning Commission hears
about something and tries to take position without actually hearing the whole case; he guesses that would be for Council
too, we would wait until that goes through due process, correct.
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Jim Langlais said yes, obviously withhold your opinion until you have been presented with all the facts and that is the
whole point of having the planning department is that they are there to make sure that the application is complete and
that you have the information you need to make an informed decision. Again, you are talking about getting into
someone’s head.
Councilmember Mohrig said we need to be careful either we are on the Planning Commission or we are on the Council
and not making a decision until it comes forward in due process or state an opinion until we actually hear the case.
Jim Langlais said part of what he does is mostly environmental litigation, but he also does some land use litigation.
Oftentimes, he will get involved early in the process and he will get involved in the application stage. There have been
many times before the application is even filed, we already know and heard from Fulton County Board of
Commissioners on how they are going to vote. It should not happen, but he is telling you that sometimes it does and
your hope is that you have elected people who are going to assess all of the facts. That was part of the reason why he
was behind Sandy Springs becoming its own City.
There was comment from the audience that was not audible.
Jim Langlais said all he could do is give an example. He thinks that if a developer is contacting people on the Planning
Commission with the intent to influence their decision on a particular matter, he thinks that the individual on the
Planning Commission first needs to admonish the real estate development and say we cannot have these discussions and
then maybe go back to the planning department and the Councilmembers or even at that point. That may be a violation
but again, they are not necessarily covered by they are not really acting on behalf of the City. The real estate developer
does not fall within the ordinance so it is not like you can file an ethics complaint against the developer. He does think
in a case like that there would be an obligation on the part of the person on the Planning Commission who received this
call to make it known that they were contacted by the real estate developer and that they felt that the real estate
developer was attempting to influence their decision. Otherwise, if the information surfaces later there is going to be the
perception that, especially if that individual votes in favor of what the real estate developer is promoting, regardless of
whether it is above board there may be a perception if it is learned later that these discussions took place. One of the
things in this Ethics Ordinance that we do with respect to anything that comes before the board is if there is an
admonition or no ex parte communications. Now that does not quite fall under this example, but he would think that
you would want to be in a situation where people on the Planning Commission are having these discussions outside the
view of the public, especially when there are subsequent discussions. It is one thing if they are just transmitting
information, but again you question why that would even happen because it really should go through the planning
department.
There was a question from the audience, asking if openness is on the Councilmember, board member, staff member for
full disclosure.
Jim Langlais said yes and that is something that would definitely need to be disclosed. What you struggle with
everyday is balancing those two things; in one hand you want to have an open form of government; if you want to have
it be transparent, you want to be receptive, you cannot say no development, you want to have smart growth; on the other
hand, you also want to avoid situations where people are giving unfair advantage and they have more of a voice than just
a regular individual in the public.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said Mr. Langlais had mentioned early on in his presentation some comments
about there are some cities that never have ethics violations come before them. One question would be what are some of
the typical violations? She is assuming that the whole zoning issue with land development, especially for our City, is
going to be a big issue. From that perspective that is probably where we are going to see some challenges; some of
those would probably be erroneous. People bringing ethical violations that are erroneous, but what are some of the
typical ones that he sees?
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Jim Langlais said most of what he has seen when he has looked around the country is they have been instances where
people are basically given promises of future compensation for voting one way or another. There is really a couple of
reasons why some of these cities may or may not be faced with these ethical complaints; either that no one knows about
it, no one even knows that there is a process in place and there are actually unethical behaviors happening and they just
do not know that there is even a process for bringing that or everyone is truly just walking around with a halo. He will
give an example. The City of Atlanta has had its issues and has had its problems and they have actually had an increase
in ethics complaints recently because they instituted and that they have made public that they have an ethics hotline.
That is something that the City of Sandy Springs is looking at; to have an ethics hotline, to get people, if for no other
reason to give them an opportunity to vent, but the ethics hotline in Atlanta has worked well. He will give you some
more examples, one that happened in the City of Atlanta. He does not know if it ever became public and keep in mind
this is a friend of a friend telling him, but there was someone in their permit department who said you know you have
got this specimen tree and for $1000 you can get permission from me to cut down the tree or you can go through process
and for $2500 through the City you can get permission to cut down a tree. That kind of stuff is what he has been seeing
around the country. There are more; some other examples of where there is a very tenuous line to a very indirect benefit
that someone is receiving. He used the example before where you have property here that is being rezoned and a
Councilmember owns the property about a mile down the road and what is happening is the progress and development is
moving towards that property and basically what has been happening is this property got redeveloped and they are
headed in that direction. That may be the right thing to do; give them the rezoning but the Councilmember is receiving
some indirect benefit from the rezoning. In that instance, that kind of stuff needs to be brought forward and disclosed.
He is not saying there is an ethical violation, he is just saying that is something people should know about and to make
an informed decision on whether or not that would violate the ordinance. But again, you have to do a case by case
analysis.
There was a question from the audience. If someone is accused of doing something unethical and the Ethics Committee
says they have, so what. We have been here for 30 minutes talking about this; what is the bottom line?
Jim Langlais said if the Board determines it to be unethical, the Board would then make a recommendation to…let us
just say that there is something that warrants termination of this person, the Board would recommend termination and it
would be up to the City Council to act on that recommendation. The difficulty that you run into is as an Ethics Board, is
that we do not have the authority to remove people at certain levels, we do not have the authority to move elected
officials that would run afoul of Georgia constitution and other laws and we also do not necessarily have the ability to
remove even City Manager level. So we have decided that regardless of the level within the City we are going to make
recommendations to the City Council and it is upon them to act. Keep in mind too that as the committee, if we come
across something that we believe is criminal, we are going to take that information and we are going to turn it over to the
authorities.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said she thinks one of the reasons we spend so much time on something like, if
she may, from all of our discussions that we have had, is because all of this is on us to spend a lot of time on these
ordinances that bring the greatest opportunity for the City.
Jim Langlais said what we are going to try to do in the City of Sandy Springs is to make this a very public thing. Right
now the committee is actually working on recommending to the City Council an education program not only for
employees and other public servants but also for the general public. We are going to make this a public thing because
we feel it is about accountability. If you know you are being watched you are less likely to do something that rises to
the level of an unethical act. But at the end of the day, people are going to do what they are going to do and you can not
make people behave. He has a 3 year old and a 5 year old; as much as he loves them and as hard as he works to have
them make the right decisions, they do things that probably do not rise to a violation of the ethics ordinance but you
know. We made the decision to have the entire process, with the exception of the advisory opinions, because that is
really hypothetical, with the exception of that we made the decision to have it public. Now, you are going to get some
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alleged violations that clearly are bogus, but our thought is that we run the risk of ourselves committing ethical
violations if we do not keep this open. What he would say is that maybe not with elected officials but with public
servants, if someone comes and makes a bogus claim against an employee of the City and it turns out that was only done
with that intent, that person has the ability to bring a defamation suit under Georgia Law. City Officials because they
fall into a different class, you kind of understand that people can say bad things about you and you just have to take it. It
is a lot harder for a City Official to bring a defamation claim and actually win.
There was a question from the audience. How do you make the ordinance public?
Jim Langlais said we are working through how we are going to do that right now. The first thought is we are going to
have something on our website; an ethics type hotline where people can access the Ethics Ordinance, access other
materials that explain the ordinance. We are working through that now and crossing our fingers in hope that we can
actually get all this done before someone brings a complaint.
Mayor Lockwood said he would like to say he thinks from our perspective, the ordinance and our committee, we are
using it in a proactive way; not that we are looking to bust somebody or whatever, but it gives us guidelines if we have a
question. We are all new, and we can go to our Ethics Board and say we are not sure about this.
There was a question from the audience. What about hearing what your constituents feel about a re-zoning or some
other matter for instance, so if you have people that are very much for a re-zoning in an area and you have some that are
against that; he assumes that is OK to talk to your Council about, right?
Jim Langlais said there is this imaginary line and where that line is drawn, he can not say for sure. There has got to be
obviously a conduit where they can talk to officials and voice their concerns of different things that are coming up for
vote, but at the same time, there is a point where they can cross a line and cross over into going beyond just assessing
their opinion and getting to what he would call influencing the campaigning phase. If you know the answer to how you
balance that, let him know. He is not asking them to ignore them, but what he is saying is that there is going to come a
point where the person is more than just voicing their opinion about a particular activity and actually getting what he
would call, influencing the campaigning phase.
Mayor Lockwood said he thinks that brings up a good point because we are going to have in the future a lot of things
come up and he is sure we are going to be contacted by a lot of people. We need to know where that line is. Of course,
they are going to request meetings and that kind of stuff.
Councilmember Mohrig said what he is hearing Jim Langlais say is you have to be careful and not respond and say,
“oh I agree with that” or take a position.
Jim Langlais said yes. The kind of discussions you should not be having is telling them how you plan to vote on a
particular issue; that is what he is talking about. This was the most difficult ordinance because there are so many
different scenarios and there are so many things that can happen and it is a balance thing. He is sorry he does not have a
better answer for your question, but he guesses what you all need to do is to balance having the open form of
government and having….you want people to come to you and express their opinion, but you need to be careful not to
necessarily express yours on how you intend to vote whether you vote yea or nay on a certain matter because that is
where he thinks it will cross over. He also thinks you can run afoul of the ethics order and he hates to pick on
developers because he has a lot of developer friends. There may come a point where you get someone who is really
aggressive and it is going beyond just sharing their opinion and they are really asking you to vote…you need to vote this
way…there comes a point were it is going beyond just sharing their opinion and it is hard to say when that line is
crossed. Again, you are going to have to rely upon your officials to use some common sense too. He is sorry, we can
not really draft an ordinance that can capture all scenarios and that can draw those lines.
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City Clerk Marchiafava stated that time was up for that item.
There was a question from the audience. Do the guidelines as far as the people who are appointed….if the law says 6
months…are you going more into that?
Jim Langlais said our ordinance has those guidelines and we also will do background checks and all that on folks who
are going to be on the committee and one thing that we ran into there was how do these people get appointed. Our
thought was you are going to appoint people who are your friends because you know them the best and you think they
can do the best job so you could end up in a situation where there are a lot friends of Councilmembers who are on the
committee; it is difficult to avoid that because you have a choice between appointing someone you do not know
anything about versus appointing someone you know and respect and you believe they have got the integrity to do a
good job. Again, sometimes it comes down to if you do not think your elected officials are acting ethical. Probably the
best way to fix that is to vote them out of office and there is nothing to prevent someone from bringing an ethics
complaint against someone on the Board. We have made that clear in our ordinance as well; the Board has a
responsibility to recuse themselves from voting and participating in certain things.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said she had a really quick question. If you have been offered something or, you
wrote this down pursuant to page 11, number 11, but you do not accept it, what should be your obligation to disclose
that? Like if you go in front of a developer, he has a heck of a deal for you; let me give you a week at my cabin, or what
have you. Maybe there is nothing associated with it, but you still cannot accept that kind of stuff.
Jim Langlais said he thinks someone looking at that from the outside even if that developer does not have a deal on the
table, it is clear that they are trying to garner your favor. Someone could look at that and say they are doing it for future.
So he would say in that instance you probably would want to disclose it. You want to disclose it and you want to avoid
taking things like that. Under our ordinance, you would disclose it to the City Attorney then the City Attorney would
then in turn disclose it to the committee. But you may also want to disclose it to your other Councilmembers.
City Manager Bovos said we have several members of the Ethics Committee here tonight and he does not know what
your time frame is but if people from the Ethics Committee have additional questions he could certainly facilitate
additional time for you all to ask Mr. Langlais questions about some things of interest.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said she wanted to ask one question logistical as far as the committee. You made
reference to the fact that you have two attorneys, yourself and someone else, on the committee. She is not sure of the
makeup of our committee, but she thinks in looking at the GMA website and everything certainly there have been
recommendations as such to have attorneys on the committee. In lieu of all the things that have been going on as far as
working with the Charter and the City Attorney, she is kind of curious, did you have time working with the City
Attorney when you were doing your ordinance?
Jim Langlais said just so there is no confusion, we have the committee that developed the ordinance and we
recommended that ordinance to the City who then voted on it and then we have got the Board. Those are two different
bodies. He can tell you that most of the people who are on the committee are now serving on the Board because we
worked through this so we are the ones most familiar with it. As far as determining a makeup of the Board, he is not
sure how they determined that but he thinks what they did is they brought on people who have done a lot of volunteer
work for the City. He was selected not because he was an attorney, but because he was willing to basically work for free
and volunteer for the City. He does think it is important to have a good cross section of your community on the Board.
But as far as us setting out any kind of guidelines for that, we did not do that. We relied upon the City Council to make
those determinations and select those people who they felt would best serve. What we have done is all the members on
our Board all have the terms staggered so there will always be someone on the Board who is familiar with that and has
been on the Board so you do not have this mass exodus and all this fresh blood coming in. We also have built within the
ordinance that you cannot serve two consecutive terms on the Board. That is not to say that ten years down the road
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after his term is done he could not come back and serve but they do not want basically people serving back to back
terms.
Mayor Lockwood said he thinks for the committee, you are open to emails.
Jim Langlais said yes to send him emails if he can answer your questions he will certainly do it. One thing he would
suggest, and he talked to City Manager Bovos about this, is he thought that maybe the committee for the City of Sandy
Springs, he means the Ethics Board of Sandy Springs and the Ethics Board of Milton could get together and just have
open dialog and work through. Right now what they are doing is putting together more detailed procedural rules, but we
would love to share those with you and work through it and to be quite honest, another thing that has been put upon us is
that as we worked through those and as we become more familiar with the ordinance, if we see something in there that
needs to be fixed, we will make a recommendation to all Council that they make the change and we would love to have
that kind of dialog with the Ethics Board up here if you all are open to that. Well the Ethics Ordinance as he said, covers
volunteers as well because we felt that it was important because even though you are not being paid for your service,
you are still in the position of some power to be able to receive….you are subject to everything that a paid public servant
is subject to.
Mayor Lockwood said one thing that he would like to and for everybody to acknowledge and thank Jim Langlais for
coming here tonight and also because he is here on his own time. We certainly appreciate his help.
City Clerk Marchiafava asked with the Mayors’ approval to move to the Noise Ordinance.
Discussion on the Noise Ordinance
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom passed around the working draft and said at this point and he would like to walk
through it with each of you and explain kind of what we have done over the last month. This has been into a first
reading, it was deferred into a workshop and this is the second workshop, so he comes before you with that version of
the Noise Ordinance. He knows there is some interest in the Noise Ordinance so if we have room in here have folks
come in before they get started. Let him start the discussion, Mayor and Council, by letting you know that the first five
pages of this packet are really what would be an updated draft of the Noise Ordinance that he would like to walk through
and explain how we ended up at this particular draft. That last page that is in your packet is in no way intended to be a
part of this ordinance, but just simply as point of reference for you as we start to talk about some of the levels that are
indicated in the ordinance before you. If you do a search on the internet you would probably find about 10,000 of those
different tables, so he just wants you to know that that is the one that happened to pop up on yahoo search number one
so know that he has not gone through it and realized that it is absolutely valid, but he thinks it takes a decent picture for
us as we move forward. The committee was Tom Wilson, himself and the City Attorney, have listed to what he thinks
your interests are as well as the public’s interest over the last couple of months and we really changed directions based
on those comments. We changed directions because he truly thinks we are not ever going to solve the problems of noise
if we stayed on the path we were on. Now he thinks we were on a good path with an apparent Noise Ordinance; there is
a different type of Noise Ordinance, and that is the measured Noise Ordinance, and there is a third type, which is kind of
a little bit of the best of both worlds. We found that the little bit of the best of those worlds he thinks is what is going to
work best for Milton. It has a very objective component to it but then also allows for the subjectivity in the
reasonableness factor could kick in if in fact we are not able to use the objective standard. So that is a little bit of the
basics behind where we went and he would like to walk through this with you and explain why he thinks this is a better
ordinance. He can tell you that we will get through here and you are going to see some different measured levels and
those are just simply some starting points. That is where the Mayor and Council will be able to make your community
valued decisions and let us know where you think those levels should be which is why he provided that table that is at
the back to kind of give you an idea of what 65 decibels is, what 70 decibels is and as we walk through he would like to
show you what the apparent component is which also ties in where we have been over the last month. There is a
variance process in this ordinance that we will talk about as well and he is happy to display in demo, a decibel meter for
you tonight that we have been loaned from the City of Roswell. The City of Roswell has a very successful Noise
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Ordinance. He had a good opportunity to meet with Chief Wilson of the Police Department. He was the one who loaned
us this meter and he can kind of explain how technology has increased, he thinks that is something we could use in the
City of Milton. He said, if you join with him on the first page and he will try not to cover that as he has been doing this
whole meeting but we go traditionally through a definition section, nothing unique or bizarre about that other than we
define two different classifications of places for sources of sound and to receive sound; and those are residential and
commercial districts. You can see based on the zoning classifications are how those two areas are defined.
That is important when we get here to the second page, we will drop down to the Maximum Permissible Sound Level
and you can see a different level based on where the sound is originated versus where it is received. And even though
that is a four block section you will see that the maximum level receiving would in a residential area at this point is 65
and a commercial at 70. If we move into Section 5, this is where we start to really get into the meat and potatoes of how
this ordinance works and where he thinks it allows for what our citizens have asked for, which is for the potential to
have a louder sound during the day but a very quiet night. You can see in Section A, one of the modifications to that
chart is that the decibel level would be decreased or reduced by 5 decibels between 10:00 pm and 7:00 am. So we would
get to a residential decibel level at 60 at night and commercial at 65, understanding that this is sound that crosses the
property line. If you were to stand at your property line and measure the sounds that would be the number it would have
to be below. If you will go to Page 4 you will see that there are provisions for the increase of decibels above that
amount and that would be between 7:00 am and 10:00 pm and nothing during the night time hours, but between 7:00 am
and 10:00 pm we would be at the ability to have a 5 decibel increase for a total of 15 minutes in any one hour, a 10
decibel increase for a total of 5 minutes or 15 decibel for a total of 1 ½ minutes for any one hour period. And this
accounts for chain saws, leaf blowers, and those other things that just are the very nature of being used in a residential
area; we want to make sure that the people are allowed to cut their yard in Milton and not violate a Noise Ordinance. So
that is some of these concepts and why there are allowances for going above that decibel during those hours that are
considered daytime. Public Safety Director Lagerbloom asked if there were questions for him.
Councilmember Lusk asked if dirt bikes or two cycle engines, recreational equipment would be included.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said yes. Noise at the property line is the big thing that he wants to stress tonight.
If he were to turn the decibel meter on right now, he is probably talking too loud with his amplified sound based on what
that chart is. But if you were to go stand on Deerfield Parkway at the sidewalk, which would truly be the property line,
you would likely not hear me. So even if we were to turn a noise meter on in this room tonight, he knew that question
would potentially come so he will address it now. He would be happy to turn it on and show you but he does not want
you to use that in your judgment as to what the appropriate decibel level. As we walk through the exemptions to these
sounds, the exemptions would be noises caused by motor vehicles used for highway maintenance or noises caused in the
performance of emergency work for the immediate safety and welfare. Sounds created by bells or chimes that are
intended to be those sounds that would happen as the result of church service potentially. Sounds originating from
aircraft in flight or from watercraft. Sounds created by safety and protective devices, release valves. Sounds created by
fire arms. Sounds created by the operation of equipment or facilities of surface carriers. Railroad, we have a lot of that
in Milton. Sounds originating from officially sanctioned parades and other City sponsored events to which the general
public is solicited to attend without charge. Sounds caused by natural phenomenon. Sounds produced as a result of
construction activities. We talked about that before; we all of a sudden say that we are exempting all construction
activity forever from this Noise Ordinance. They are exempted in Section 6 from the provisions of Section 5. There is a
section that will follow here in a second that specifically addresses construction because he thinks he heard the public as
well as the Mayor and Council define more specific the hours of construction to include no work on Sundays and
holidays, which is why the exemption is in this section, but it is accounted for later in the ordinance.
There was a question from the audience, where do dogs fall under.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he thinks there is a section where dogs would apply because dogs are not
going to maintain any type of consistent decibel level. Under Section 7, Exempted Sounds During Daytime Hours, these
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are daytime hours which are defined as 7:00 am to 10:00 pm; again those are hours that can change if you decide you
want to define daytime hours differently. Exemption, plus the construction of such incidental things which exist in
home: fences, decks, patios, carports, swimming pools, ponds, walkways. Also, sounds created by blasting or sound
created by the installation or repair of essential utility services of public road projects. “B” gets us to the exemption on
construction and what he heard the Council say and he thinks what he heard the citizens say at the last workshop was
from Mondays to Fridays construction work between 7:00 am to 7:30 pm; 9:00 am to 6:00 pm on Saturdays; and no
construction on Sunday or Federal holidays. That is what he thought he heard and he thought were the wishes of the
Council, if that needs to change we certainly can.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said she thought 7:30 was a little late and to make an allowance for daylight
savings time, but during the winter months when it is dark at 5:00 and these kids go to sleep at 7:30.
There was discussion amongst Council, Mayor and Public Safety Director Lagerbloom regarding the start and stop
times.
Councilmember O’Brien stated that Sandy Springs had a matrix that had all the neighboring cities including Atlanta
and suggested they defer to that but he does not have it in front of him so he would rather not shoot from the hip. He
thought they had a very thoughtful and fair set of hours that were probably more restrained than anywhere else, but not
so much as to present hardship.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said they will wait until the copy of the matrix is available to review and decide.
Section D is an exemption that allows for a higher level decibel reading and this is another place that he would be
interested in; this was just a number put in here as a placeholder to indicate that this could potentially be higher than
what existed in another place in the ordinance. Again we would like the Mayor and Council to make the community
valued decision and that would be the sounds that come from a league or school sponsored sporting event; they should
be exempt so long as they do not exceed a certain decibel lever, or would take the recommendation that that should be
removed and then it would fall in line with the other matrix that existed in Section 4.
Councilmember Thurman asked a question. Can we legally regulate noise from the school? She has been told that we
could not.
City Attorney Scott said that he can tell you that you cannot legally regulate zoning issues regarding schools, but he
does not see any reason why we cannot regulate noise. He would like to know her source of that information. He has
not seen any reason why we can not. He can certainly tell you that you can not regulate zoning; they do not have to
reply to zoning. Although, on the other hand, we have been discussing this ordinance for some time now and whether or
not they are willing to work with us.
Councilmember Thurman said she thinks that is something that we really need to know.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom continued now that everyone has the matrix, have a quick look that there is an
existing and a proposed. The existing is what he was reading out of the ordinance and there may be some move to
propose a different timeline.
There was further discussion on the start and stop times.
Mayor Lockwood asked a question. Would there be a policy for exemptions? He will use this as an example, keeping
in mind that he certainly is not going to do any construction in Milton, so that would be fine. Fortunately, we do not
have much commercial, but there may be a big project going on and they may have to pour concrete, and they may have
to start at 6:00 am or 5:00 am.
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Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said Section 8, which we are going to get to here in a second describes both
emergency and non-emergency variances. Did we need to move on from the times? He was hearing 7:00 am to7:00 pm
and 7:00 am to 8:00 pm and he also heard 7:30 am to 7:30 pm and 7:30 am to 8:00 pm. The City Clerk is going to ask
for public comment on this issue. We have 5 speaker cards already, if you want to speak on the Noise Ordinance, if you
could fill out one of the speaker cards he is sure she would appreciate it.
Mayor Lockwood said on the Noise Ordinance, after we get public comment, we will come back and get more
information and decide later.
Councilmember Lusk asked under Article D that pertains to schools, are we going to set a time limit on them?
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said correct. That would be moving forward into the variance section. This would
exempt those sounds up until 10:00 pm. They would get louder than what was in the matrix but still had to fall within
that 7:00 to 10:00 pm. Once 10:00 pm hits, we go into a more of a nighttime environment where the decibel levels start
to reduce from where they were and other noises stop at that point. For the variance Section, he will turn it over to City
Attorney Mark Scott.
City Attorney Scott said there are two categories of variance; one is a short term emergency variance and the other is
more of a longer term plan variance. The short term is for cases where there are unplanned and unusual physical or
economical circumstances and they can only be used twice in a six month period and then for only two consecutive days
at the most. These do have to be approved in advance but they do not require advanced notice to the community in
terms of mailing. You have to post it and certainly they have to work through the Department of Public Safety. That
contrasts slightly and it is not a huge difference but it contracts slightly to the longer term variances; you can only have
one of them in a six month period and they can be longer than 2 days but no longer than 7 days. Notice has to be mailed
to all property owners within 300 feet and it also has to be posted and notice given to the Department of Public Safety.
The first one is for a less plan, but it is shorter in duration. He supposes if you have a long ongoing situation where you
have an economic hardship or you have a construction issue and it all of a sudden comes up you can get the 2 day
variance quickly and immediately apply for the longer one if you need a longer amount of time; get that mail notice out
to the public and satisfy both. We are not going to get this very often and we are certainly not going to get this to people
more than once or twice depending on the category in that six month period. This is for those emergency type situations
for construction projects and that sort of thing. Section 1 said in those cases where unplanned, unusual physical or
economic circumstances arise, so if you were going to ask for one of those, when actually applying for the variance you
would have to state that. It is not emergency, just unplanned and unusual circumstances. He thinks that that essentially
means there may not be a dire health emergency, but it is a situation of urgency. There was a question if these will be
posted on our website. He stated that all of our ordinances are posted on our website. There was another question
asking if variances will be posted on the website. That question was not answered.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that mailing is passed along to the applicant and that applicant is the one that
is responsible for notifying; it is not City staff that would be sending out letters to the public. If we move on to the
Public Disturbance Noises, which is Section 9, this is where we bring back in an apparent component to this Noise
Ordinance that talked about measures up to this point, but there still becomes that noise which potentially would be 64
decibels, for example based on that chart that truly is determined to be not reasonable and we believe that this public
disturbance noise section gives that ability to be enforced back to the enforcers or police officer or code enforcement
office to order that noise to stop if it was determined not to be reasonable to the community. Public Safety Director
Lagerbloom asked for comments on that section.
Mayor Lockwood said the only comment he would say, in looking if you go back to our 65 and 70 decibels; are we
comfortable that if you go to your matrix here. Conversation will speak of 60 soft popular music is 70 and are those
decibels reasonable and enforceable.
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Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he could tell you where they got those numbers from. We started at numbers
that were decibels less that what Roswell had in its ordinance, so we took the ordinance that we talked to Chief Williams
about. Chief Williams thought was a strong ordinance and he has had reasonable success with its enforcement in the
City of Roswell and dropped the decibels down from what they allowed. Could we go further? Absolutely! They were
nice enough to loan a decibel meter to him and we have had the opportunity just to go out and we checked to see what a
chainsaw sounds like or what air conditioner noise sounded like in his neighborhood last week. He let the noise meter
run and just regular neighborhood noise during the day fluctuated on the meter between 56 and 65 depending on how
many kids playing, etc. So we certainly could address those numbers, could we drop it to 62, drop it to 60, absolutely.
Mayor Lockwood said he was actually thinking the other way. He was just afraid it is not enforceable. If you are
talking about regular conversation and anything above that being out of the Noise Ordinance, you night have a hard
time.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that is just where he wants to remind you that the decibel level is that which is
heard at your property line or any points therein. Regular conversational tone at your property line that would be
enforceable and if it was 65 or 70 at your property line that would indicate that inside your house it would be…
Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated at some point….just so that we can hear those and we can imagine what a
person’s conversation is in the house at the property line, but to your point Mayor, would it be helpful to hear some of
those noises and stand at someone’s property line and say, I think it is too loud or I think it is… 65 decibels on paper
may be very different that what is experienced at.
Mayor Lockwood asked how many decibels are there during our conversation with the microphone. Public Safety
Director Lagerbloom responded 70.4.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that is the thing to realize that 76 or 79 that he is talking at right now
amplified you probably could not even hear him at the entrance to the building.
There was audience comment that the thing to remember too is that inside you have the acoustics and it is bouncing back
off the wall; outside it can be disbursed into the atmosphere.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he would be happy to get with any of the Councilmembers between now and
when this comes up for its first reading at the next Council meeting; Chief Williams has not asked for this back anytime
soon, at least he has not called him yet saying that it is missing and he needs it. The Mayor asked if he had stood over
near Montana’s with that. He responded he had not.
Councilmember O’Brien asked where in this set up would fall the summer time lawn work and so forth. Let us say
that you or someone you hired comes along and mows your lawn for half an hour, clean out the drive way, would that be
a permitted activity?
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that would be addressed in Section 7 A1 where it says, “the following sounds
are exempt between 7:00 am and 10:00 pm and that sound is originating from things that also included, but not limited
to, lawn mowers, saws, hammers, gardening.” That is an exempted activity so long as it occurs between 7:00 am and
10:00 pm.
Councilmember O’Brien asked if we stayed with 10:00 pm that seemed kind of late.
Councilmember Mohrig responded that he thinks what you are doing is allowing the difference between residences and
construction. You are saying that in residences, are you going to tell someone that they can not mow the lawns at night.
Is that what you are trying to differentiate?
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Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that is correct.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom responded to Councilmember O’Brien that the place to be exempted during the
day if it was commercial would be in Sections 4 and 5, which would be the modifications which would allow for the
increased decibel levels for a period of time, but not to include the whole hour. The last thing he would like to explain is
how this works. It is the decibel meter because he knows there has been discussion about how it is calibrated and does it
stand up in court. He can tell you that they have specified, and this was good information that we learned with their
interviews with Roswell, that we specified in the ordinance the standard that the decibel meter that would be used have
to comply with, and there is specific type 1 and type 2 American National Standard Institute Specifications, etc. that
relate to these types of devices, which would mean the decibel meter that you might buy somewhere is not going to
comply with that. The nice thing about the technology that exists today is that these are self calibrating units which
means that they do not have to go any where, it is sent to a calibration setting on its face, using a screwdriver that is
included and set it at exactly 94.0 and then go back to a metering setting and you are ready to read and you can
demonstrate that you calibrated immediately before using it. So technology exists today. It has even gone one step
further in addition to this which we could explore which would allow the reading to be printed and saved as evidence if
we had to go to court. So that exists too. This specific unit, Roswell elected not to buy printers; they said they use radar
and they use laser guns and their speed enforcement and they do not have a print out and officers swear and testify to the
fact that it said 74 miles an hour every day, they did not feel that they needed to go one step further in thinking that they
would swear to the truth on a decibel meter. He guesses that he agrees with that, but just note that that even exists today.
It is a fairly simple, has stood up on Roswell’s court with Judge Hilliard on several occasions according to Chief
Williams and they have used it effectively to reduce sound where they thought they did but then also, and he was very
frank to say that they have used it in times when an annoying sound, maybe something completely but an illegal sound
and that is something also that he said they have been successful in dealing with. He is happy to work with each and
every one of you between now and when we get to a council meeting in April, we can go drive around in Milton in
places that you might be interested what the sounds are. We will take the meter and measure and he is happy to do that
with each of you between now and next month.
Councilmember Lusk asked what the cost would be.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said less than $200 and they would likely acquire 2 or 3. Roswell owns 3 and he
has one of them. We certainly would not need one in each car, but we could do it at little cost to Milton.
Councilmember Mohrig asked if the calibration on those, if you can in fact do it right on site. This is the problem we
heard of in prior years, now you can set it, and that is it.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said this one, he just turned it to calibrate and it calibrates at 94. You turn it on
and it is registered 95.5, and now he just went way too far; he needs to stop talking while he does that. He would bring
it down to 94.0, which is where it is at and then go back to a metering and it has been calibrated right before he used it.
Now it has been calibrated accurate. That is as simple as it is.
Councilmember Mohrig asked if Public Safety Director Lagerbloom would talk about the reasonableness factor and
explain how that plays out.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he thinks we need to have the reasonableness factor in that section that is later
on because he thinks that would be that opportunity at some point where we just can not account for every circumstance
that might exist with the number. If he equates that to, if we go back to the speed limit thing, if the speed limit on GA
400 is 55, if 56 is speeding although he thinks it might be reasonable for somebody about to give birth that 56 is
probably a good speed. Maybe even 70 or 80, he has been know to have leniency in his life when it comes to those
things simply because he is not good at delivering babies, but he thinks that opportunity also exists with the noise
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ordinance that if we have 65 set as a level and for some reason on specific days we end up with a 62 that is repetitive,
intermittent and continuous and we have for example a situation dealing with someone who might be elderly and that
one situation where that specific situation might say that the reasonable thing to do is to drop the noise level.. This
clause gives us the ability to do that and not be able to say, well I am sorry, but we cannot do anything for you because
even though we know what is reasonable and that we would like to be able to help you, the law of the ordinance that is
written just simply does not allow us to. He has seen that happen in the last month as he has been watching some of the
noise complaints around Milton as they have been coming in and he has been getting emails about them and that kind of
thing in the ordinance that exists presently is not easy to incorporate. And whereas he thought it might have been
reading it when he came to you and made a presentation right off the bat that he thought we needed an absolute apparent
noise ordinance and do not even bring him any concept of a measured noise ordinance. When he heard different police
officers saying, one, I think it is too loud he thinks we probably need to turn it down versus another police officers’
interpretation, dude it is a bar that is two very different interpretations of what might be reasonable. So he really thinks
that coming back to you tonight and saying a month ago, he thinks we were wrong and he thinks this is more along the
track of where we need to be because of accounts for both components of a good sound ordinance. He thinks that is
where we come tonight and say, he is glad that we went from workshop to workshop because tonight we are giving you
something to discuss and talk about for the next month until we actually set these levels. But something that is going to
be able to be enforced but also solves some of our problems.
Councilmember Mohrig asked what is the ability to calibrate those schools and the cost, and how sensitive they are.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that is not a concern of his and Chief Williams can confirm that if practical to
use in a sister city and is being successful in use and litigated and used in court cases and being upheld in courts and so
he does not have any reason to believe that it would not be upheld and honored.
Councilmember Mohrig said suppose we had a business owner to say that lengthensy mythical set and measure then it
takes away some of that. You can accommodate that and you can also go to move it to the property line.
Mayor Lockwood said before we have public comment, he would like to commend Public Safety Director Lagerbloom
and his committee for going back and looking at it and also stepping up to the plate and saying hey, we are changing
gears and being open-minded.
City Clerk Marchiafava said we do have seven people who would like to speak and she respectfully asked the Mayor
and Council to extend the time period with two minutes each. For those who would like to speak, please come to the
microphone if you want your comment in the record.
Richard Light, 1190 S. Bethany Creek Drive, had his comments read into the minutes: “Bethany Creek residents and
homeowners. The citizens of Bethany Creek expect the City of Milton to enforce a reasonable and fair noise ordinance.
Thanks for your response to our concerns so far. We eagerly await a positive outcome.”
Joe Costanzo, 1105 S. Bethany Creek, Milton, said he has sent a log to you guys via emails so he is sure you read many
of those things and he really just wants to say that he likes what he hears. He was kind of iffy. His brother is a police
officer and he told him to stay away from the decibel meters, but he does like what he hears. Mostly, he just wants to
say that 43 families actually have been complaining or more. Not just paper, not just names, but they are actual families,
and his house is actually the closest to the bar. His property line is within 50 feet. He can hear the music within his
home. For instance, when watching TV he can actually hear the music. He is going to sleep to it, is waking up to it and
also in regards to trash in the morning, it is being picked up again today. Today, at 5:40 am trash smashing into the
truck and being picked up. The noise is really bothering the residents and we just want you guys to know that there are a
lot of us out here that are families that are here for the same reasons the City is here; community, preserving what we
have here and families.
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Phil Crammer, 1040 S. Bethany Creek Dr., Milton, GA, similar to what Joe has said, he likes what he is hearing. He
guesses he would just ask that our community is really in your hands at this point. The sanctity of our community is in
your hands at this point. What you guys do not know is for a year and a half, he has had to sleep with his TV on; for a
year and a half he cannot sleep with his window open; for a year and a half we have seen residents move out; these are
friends, these are families, these are neighbors; a year and a half and that is a long time. We used to look forward to
weekends and he said he dreads them now. He knows come 10:00, 11:00 at night on a Friday or Saturday, we have to
call 911; five 911 calls last weekend. He dreads the weekends now and also seeing our friends and families move out
for a year and a half now with no resolution. Fulton County, two thirds of the times they do not want to help us, in fact
they make Montana’s feel like the victim. A year and a half; 75 weekends you cannot turn that music off in your house.
You are lying in bed with your heart racing, pounding, 75 weekends, it is frustrating. Thank you.
Craig Kaufman, 555 Parkbrook Trace, Alpharetta, GA 30004, for the record he wrote his comments: Having been
involved with the wrangling over noise for the last 18 months, I stress the need for an unambiguous enforceable noise
ordinance which will be understandable and predictable.
Marta Daley, 1055 S. Bethany Creek Dr., Alpharetta GA 30004, - No response
John McMillan, 14255 Thompson Road, Alpharetta, GA 30004, said he just had a question and asked does this discuss
or address the occasional use of fire arms in the city.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said at this point, there is no fire arms exemption or inclusion in the noise
ordinance; nothing that specifically addresses fire arms.
John McMillan asked if it prohibits it or allows it.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom continued and said neither. It does not prohibit nor allow it. It is really silent on
it.
Mayor Lockwood said he thinks that needs to be in a firearms ordinance, most everybody else has that totally separate.
Paul Moore, 15290 White Columns Drive, Milton said just a couple comments to the little things that came from
discussions, in your reference to the sporting events from the high school, he would encourage you to contemplate things
besides just stating it as sporting events. There are events at the high school including the marching band, for example.
He thinks attempts to host a number or trying to host more public competitions where it would not be sporting events.
Again, in the assessment of your hours of operation, he too asks that you consider a little bit later start in the morning
and 7:30 conclusion in the evening. At 7:30 am, he is stressing because he actually lives on a golf course but he is not a
member of the golf course and he thinks the ordinance is at 7:30, they are staged and ready to go at 7:30. There are days
in the first of the year that 7:30 comes awfully early. Last thing, he does not know if it contemplates it in your noise
ordinance, but the sound coming from vehicles. Whether it is music or what appears to be a more recent trend is the
muffler sound, the racing sound. That used to be where he grew up in the Midwest, which was a regulated sound; you
could not have glass packs or anything that would produce that kind of sound; he encourages you to think about that in
the ordinance as well as the music coming from vehicles.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that a couple of those items are addressed in State Law, which is good. So,
many of those are already enforceable.
Paul Moore, said one more thing, he thinks it was a case where the principal was trying to take a politically correct
decision, a popular decision with the sporting community. It used to be that the high school would celebrate
touchdowns, which we did not have very many this year, with a canon celebration and that has gone because of
apparently one home owner. That was a standing tradition in excess of 25 years at the Old Milton High School and he
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would love to see it come back as a part of the sporting community. It was just for football games; he does not know
that there is consideration for others, but he does not know if we could address that as well.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said actually based on the way the ordinance is written today that would be an
allowable sound because it would not violate that excessive decibel for a minute and a half.
Brooke Hunter, 14680 Wood Road, said she would like to ask questions about those of us who live on 20 some odd
acres who have grandchildren who ride dirt bikes, who have allowed church parties and hayrides to be on our property
where 200 some odd people come where we have allowed a youth dance to come. They are over by 10:00 or 10:30 pm,
but are we going to have to start becoming an officially sanctioned event every time we invite people or church groups
to use our area.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said as the ordinance is presented tonight, being on 20 acres is definitely your
friend because this is a property line.
Brooke Hunter said at night we can hear Milton and we are three or four miles away from Milton. We can hear them
when the drums are beating. So at night the sound carries much further; so we do have some dilemmas there for
personal rights.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said what you are describing tonight if it occurred after 10:00 pm it would be held,
based on what you are describing; it would be held to the 60 decibels level at the property line.
Brooke Hunter said if we went to 10:30 pm, she does remember a youth dance to happen and we did have sound
enrichment and they called the police. They came and said because none of the kids are running away, they knew there
was no drinks and there was no drinking, but they knew that there was an over abundance of adults, that we would have
to suddenly not be able to allow a lot of things to happen on our property. So maybe that could be part of the discussion.
There are a lot of people who still do have property and night sounds do carry further so it is just something to discuss.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said the City Manager thinks that would be one of the things, depending on how
frequently it occurred, may be eligible for a variance. And if it is not frequent, that would be something that you could
apply for an exception. (There was short discussion on this.) Up until 10:00 pm based on the way the ordinance is
written today, it would not be just exempted on its merit, it would still have to comply with the decibel requirement. It
would not qualify for a complete exemption from that during the day unless we want to entertain a different, another, he
does not know what we classify that as, but we could entertain another exemption if that is what the Mayor and Council
wanted to do that would account for that type of activity. We will just need to account for that type of activity in the
whole City and not just on specific case basis.
Mayor Lockwood said the other thing is the decibel, your decibel sounds may not be at peak.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he would rather check it than assume based on perception just because again,
there is a difference between what somebody would determine to be annoying and illegal sound.
Mayor Lockwood said quite honestly, this may be something a year from now we have to look at.
There was a question from the audience regarding the matrix. In a residence, can it not exceed 65 decibels coming from
Montana’s or are they entitled to 70 decibels because they are commercial?
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said the way that matrix reads, you can give them 70; they can only give you 65.
For example, if he is making a noise coming from a residential area; if it is received in a commercial area, yes it could be
70 although he is receiving in the commercial area at 70 likely his neighbors across the street are receiving it at 70 as
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well. They made that decision, at least to present tonight, that rather than trying to figure out…which we started with
three different figures there. We felt that it was more appropriate and easier just to realize and identify two specific
areas and then if it was received in residential it was 65, received in commercial it was 70. Just remember there is that
time in there that once the 10:00 pm hits until 7:00 am the next morning those numbers we would like to recommend
drop down by five.
There was a question from the audience. Does this mean that 65 at your property line an average property owner if they
are in their home with their windows closed they will not be able to hear that noise.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that was right. He said he guesses he should qualify that it has a lot to do with
house setbacks and those kinds of things, but it has been our discovery in the last month that if it is 65 at a property line,
it has not been heard in the house.
Mayor Lockwood said he thinks you would have to make exceptions because certain houses with certain type windows,
you could not have an absolute. But like Councilmember O’Brien was saying, the other side of that wall the glass is
inside your house and we are talking in normal conversation you probably would not hear it.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he will work with the concerned citizens within the next couple of weeks so
that we can get some accurate readings. That way we can bring it back to the Mayor and Council. We will stand on
property lines and we will look at that. He does not know that they will do it tomorrow or Saturday but probably a week
from tomorrow on Saturday. We want to get a true and accurate reading.
Discussion on an Ordinance Regulating Sexually-Oriented Businesses and Related Ordinances.
City Attorney Scott said we have been before you previously on the zoning ordinance amendment regarding sexually
oriented businesses. The reason we need to do this and the reason he is recommending this to you is because when we
passed the sexually oriented businesses ordinance, we realized that they would only be allowed an M1 in the City and
the are only 11 acres of M1’s so it is similar to what Ms. Anderson said to you last week about billboards. If we grant it
on one hand and take it away on the other hand we are essentially denying the use all together and as we know these
kinds of businesses are protected by the First Amendment whether we like them or not so we have to allow them
somewhere. Well in the course of dealing with this, we had this on for first reading and then we had some discussion
about it and we took it off the second reading. It was actually combined with the expansion of the sign ordinance. We
are not going to do that now, but he is getting something ready for you and wanted to bring it to you for discussion
tonight. What you have in front of you that City Clerk Marchiafava has provided for you is a slightly altered ordinance
which he is going to recommend we alter one more way, which he will discuss in a minute. To deal with where we are
going to allow adult bookstores and adult entertainment establishments based on the Fulton County ordinance that we
adopted as our zoning ordinance, part is based on some studies we did map wise that the GIS people at CH2M Hill did
for us which we are very pleased with. He has a series of maps. He wants to show you where they started. The
ordinances he drafted for you originally required a 1000 foot buffer from Suburban A, Suburban B, Suburban C, R1, R2,
R2A, R3, R3A, R4A, R4, R5, R5A, R6, TRA, AL, AG1 Zone properties, all property conditioned or used for residential
purposes as well public recreational facilities, public or private institutional uses including but not limited to churches,
schools, universities, colleges trade schools, libraries, day care centers and other training facilities where minors are the
primary patron. He knows they had some discussion about karate schools and day care centers, that was included all the
time we just had not looked at the language closely enough to be honest with you and it was already in the existing
zoning ordinance. We were not changing that at all, all we were changing was the zoning categories, zoning districts
where you could have these things in the first place. So what does that mean when we apply that to 1000 foot buffer?
What we find is that, and again just so you understand, there has also been some discussion about which parts of the City
we are going to allow these in. The initial thought was we would allow it at Highway 9; understandably folks who live
off Highway 9 were concerned about that so we changed the language to say, C1 and C2 Districts not located within
Crabapple or Birmingham Crossroads. So it is basically anywhere else in the City. It almost gives you the same net
effect but he wants to show you the maps where we are and what it actually means from a practical perspective. If we
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have a 1000 foot buffer, see the pink areas, those are the only practical areas that you could have it. What concerns him
about that is that it is so small that it is not enough. Because we allowed it on one hand, but we have completely taken it
away or just about so much on that. That is current zoning. If you extrapolate that to future land use you could
conceivably have it in a few more places, but we probably will not allow it in terms of rezoning anyway. So, then the
next question is what can we do to, at least on paper, open it up slightly more without opening up the flood gates? What
results is a map that is facing a 500 foot buffer, which he is going to recommend to you which bring in to you these
areas. If you look at that map you will see where that is. Now, the question was brought up, what provided agreements
say about those properties. He thinks we probably already told you that the Deerfield Development, which you have a
map of; he is going to hold this map slightly like this because it better jives with the City. If you look at this, all of this
area here, going all the way out to here over to Webb Road and to Highway 9, all that area is the Deerfield area. We
have a copy of the deed restriction. They do not allow these types of businesses within the property which they have
developed. We have the deed restriction we know that it is not allowed. Just so you understand very clearly, there is
case law that specifically says that we can allow it but if there are private agreements that do not allow it, that does not
mean that we are not allowing it.
Mayor Lockwood said so the question though is, is that at the sole discretion of the property owner if they would ever
change that.
City Attorney Scott said property owners can not change it because it runs with the land. It is renewable and it is going
to be renewed because Deerfield and these businesses are not going to want to have it. It would have to be voted to take
it off. His advise to you, his suggestion to you is, he has a draft ordinance in front of you it says 1000 feet. His
suggestion is going to be that we drop that to 500 feet because when you take it to 500 feet, all that allows is this area
(referring to the chart) and according to this chart from Deerfield and according to the deed restrictions we got from
them it is deed restricted. So you are safe is what he is saying to do it this way.
Councilmember Mohrig said so when he looks at this map, it shows Windward Parkway, it shows that section of
Highway 9 then across going up to Morris Road, which we know is residential and asked is this the area we are going to
need to apply it. At one time you said you were going to cross Highway 9.
City Attorney Scott said no, they are not going up Highway 9. On paper without the restriction of 500 feet from all
those types of zoning categories we talked to and all these types of use, you could conceivable go up there but because
we have put in these offsets, buffers, you have to have in terms of distance from those types of use, it is not just for the
use, it actually says that the boundary lines of property within the use permit must be located at least 500 feet from the
properties listed below.
Councilmember Thurman said, so that area has to go to all commercial before you have to worry about.
City Attorney Scott said the only area in the whole City that is all commercial is right here is right where we are
standing.
Councilmember Mohrig said what would the map with this, what area are we allowing it.
City Attorney Scott said the pink, the magenta. Now that is the future map that you have there he believes.
Mayor Lockwood said as a point of clarification, he wants to make sure Jason Wright is clear on this process. The
reason he wants to say that is he is afraid a lot of people in the Highway 9 area think that we are just throwing them to
the wolves and allowing it, we are not. We are essentially disallowing it, but we have to do it legally.
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City Attorney Scott said he almost hesitates to say this with the press present because he would not want somebody
who would want to open a sexually oriented business to hear this. By doing this we are putting it here where it is deed
restricted.
Councilmember O’Brien said he thinks what we are doing is bending over backwards to be constitutionally sensitive
by the definition of the places those types of businesses could be cited. However, we are aware that there are some deed
restrictions at present that might preclude that, but that is not really the City’s concern. In fact, the City is just as
obligated to acknowledge or honor the fact that those deed restrictions exist.
City Attorney Scott said not really. A deed restriction is private zoning, it is not our affair.
Councilmember Mohrig said looking at the map that he sees a couple other spots where potentially it could be
allowable, but we have a cigar and liquor store in this area; we also have residences there.
City Attorney Scott said the buffers that are created by those restrictions, in terms of distance from those types of uses
where those zoning districts push it down to this very southeastern most corner of the City. This is the future land use
map, so this contemplates what the land use plat could allow those uses to go towards in the future, but remember, you
have the control over that rezoning. These are currently zoned for commercial use. You have the power to require that
restriction as a condition of rezoning; future land use with the 500 foot buffer.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey had a question. Because the goal is obviously to allow, but to necessarily promote it
and being sensitive to the fact that we of course want everybody that lives near that highway to understand that this is
not coming to their back door. She is similarly concerned that while we have heard those concerns we now understand,
and wonders why we would also want to open it up to the 140 area when we have addressed the concerns that have been
noted. We want to make sure that we are not placing it all on Highway 9, and let’s go ahead and make sure we are
placing it somewhere else as well.
City Attorney Scott said his suggestion is this; the 140 area is not yet identified and we can still rezone with conditions.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said her question is still, we opened up and extended this to include 140 in response to
people’s perception it was all going to Highway 9. We just went through an exercise to say that perception is not
accurate; perception can only be here in this area and deed restricted for 30 years. Her question is why would we simply
to respond to concerns that are not that we just said are not. She does not want to say it is legitimate and there are
always legitimate concerns, but we just said that those concerns have been legitimated by the good work of this
ordinance.
City Attorney Scott said he trying to simply respond to the reaction that he received from the public who lives in the
Highway 9 corridor and from the Councilmembers who represent the Highway 9 corridor to say please do not create the
perception in our constituents that we are being targeted.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said the reality is that we have not created that area on Highway 9. Whether we add
140 or not, we still have the perception. It is not the perception, but the reality that people on Highway 9 do not want
these businesses. We have addressed that.
Councilmember O’Brien said he thinks we have acknowledged that like those constituents who have expressed a
concern, we are assured that we probably do not want that type of business. However, we are obligated as officials of
the City to permit it because it is constitutionally protected. However, it seems not too much has changed; all you have
done is additional research that would be probably reassuring to someone nearby.
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Councilmember Zahner Bailey said her concern is why are we opening it up to Highway 140. Well, effectively we are
not opening it up if we say that some future Council or this Council would know to restrict that zoning.
City Attorney Scott said if the consensus of this Council is you want me to go back and take and change the language
back to what it was that said require Districts M1, M2 Industrial, C1 and C2 located within the Highway 9 Overlay
District. If you want me to go back he will.
Councilmember O’Brien said he thinks the more we talk about it the less happy we are going to be with it.
Councilmember Thurman said if we did develop Arnold Mill with a Master Plan, we could exclude it from that
overlay district.
City Attorney Scott said precisely, and we can even amend this to include the Arnold Mill Overlay District when we
create one.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said her concern is just as we do not want people on Highway 9 to have them, and we
just said that we effectively eliminated it because we have deed restrictions, she is afraid we are going to end up with
unintended consequences that we are going to say, you know what, you do not even have any deed restrictions over
there, but you have some existing commercial property.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said but you are limiting it to Highway 9 and the challenge is that Highway 9 has
then allowed for being developed. The overlay misrepresented and we are continuing that if we do not. If we use the
designation of the commercial in one as in the ordinance, then basically by default there is no other available right now.
That does not mean that it may not be available in the future. But she thinks that we are, if she was reading what you
and what the attorney had said, we then have not opened ourselves up for litigation because we are just defining it to one
area.
Mayor Lockwood said he thinks the problem with that is we are setting precedence, like saying OK the pool is fine, you
jump in, but I am not going to do it. He is afraid, if we feel comfortable that this is blocking it here then it should be
here too.
There was some discussion among the Councilmembers.
City Attorney Scott said this is with 1000 foot buffer. The 500 foot buffer current zoning, there is nowhere currently
that would allow it. Future land use, you have, he thinks, future land use. It is a different projection.
Councilmember Mohrig said the concern he would share is we have already said it cannot be by Crabapple, and it
cannot be in Birmingham. We have already eliminated a couple, then we say but we only want it over here at Highway
9.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said the reality is that is not the reality and she is just trying to address the perception.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said in order to protect 141 today, even though they do not really need protecting,
we are going to give the impression to our Highway 9 residents that, maybe you have not seen all the emails that we
have received from the people in District 5 and District 6, is to please do not do this to Highway 9; please do not make
Highway 9 the commercial dumping ground.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said her point is regardless if it is 140 or another area is the message that indeed there
is deed restriction. She would vote that they respond to all those folks and say you know what we have protected the
Highway 9 area through this ordinance. She must not be communicating well, her point is this; even if you include the
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140, she would hope that our message back to any resident, because whether you also include 140 or not, she wants to
be very clear, we are not looking for Highway 9 to be a dumping ground. That is the message that the gentlemen
obviously from Milton Herald would take back. Regardless of what areas we include, we absolutely do not want
Highway 9 to be a dumping ground. What she is so pleased about is that tonight we have addressed the issues that
people along Highway 9 have brought forth. So that is what she wants to address, even though someone may have the
perception that it was going to be a dumping ground, tonight we just heard that that is not the reality.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said you just do not realize how many issues there are on Highway 9 and the
damage that has been done to that corridor.
Councilmember O’Brien said if he may again emphasize, he thinks that without betraying what may have been
covered in Executive Session, he thinks that the constituents that may be served by 4, 5, and 6 can be reassured that they
have been faithfully represented and he thinks that they have reached a perfect stopping point. If we go further we risk
compromising the success that we may enjoy.
City Attorney Scott said he thinks that all the concerns be addressed when the time comes to deal with Highway 9.
This way we do not single out Highway 9. That is the concern that he received loud and clear.
Councilmember O’Brien said whether it is sexually oriented businesses or noise, he thinks that we start to get on a
very treacherous territory if we try and specifically respond to an individual situation. Whether it is a hay ride or a
neighborhood near a bar, or any of these circumstances. It then becomes a hodgepodge and a mess.
City Attorney Scott said he wants to be clear that we have a consensus that we are going to move forward with this at
the next Council meeting and put this on the agenda for April 12.
Mayor Lockwood asked if we have any public comment and City Clerk Marchiafava said she had not received any.
City Clerk Marchiafava said moving to Item 7.
Discussion of a Resolution to Govern the Conduct of City Council Members as They Relate to Boards,
Commissions and Authorities and the Training Sessions of Such Boards, Commissions and Authorities.
Councilmember Lusk said when in a course of human events, it becomes necessary to form a more perfect City
Council, certain rules or guides for conduct need to be adopted. About two months ago, we adopted rules of procedures
for City Council meetings and hearings. That was not all inclusive of other activities or meetings that we are engaged
in. He feels that we need to go maybe another step further to control ourselves in different situations and he specifically
called out City Councilmembers conduct as it relates to boards, commissions and authorities and training sessions for
such boards. He would recommend that we approve the attached rules of conduct for City Councilmembers as it relates
to boards, commissions and authorities, and training sessions thereof providing for an orderly process of conducting
business for other purposes. The background on this is Section 16, Decorum of the Amended Rules and Procedures for
the City Council Meetings and Public Hearings for the City of Milton Georgia. It does not address the decorum and
conduct of City Councilmembers at those boards, commissions and authorities meetings. In compliance with the
amended rules and procedures for the City Council meetings and public hearings, conduct and decorum for other
meetings need to be established in order to maintain ethical and professional standards. The resolution reads, “A
resolution to govern the conduct of City Councilmembers as they relate to boards, commissions and authorities and the
training sessions for such boards commissions and authorities; and Whereas board, commissions and authorities are
established to provide independent studies, evaluation and recommendations to City Council and whereas it is
imperative that those boards commissions and authorities remain unbiased and impartial and; Whereas it is the intent
and wish of City Council to have boards commissions and authorities autonomous within the confines of their
neighboring ordinance and able to employ sound judgment in order to make informed recommendations to City Council
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while always free of political influence. Now, therefore, be it resolved that no elected official shall participate in,
comment on, or influence the operation of any board, commission or authority in any training sessions for such boards,
commissions or authorities.” That is the resolution that he proposes.
Councilmember Thurman asked what if you were invited by one of the boards to come and sit. Are you saying that if
some members of the Board of Zoning Appeals asked if she would come and speak to them because of her past
experience serving 12 years on the Board of Zoning
Appeals she could not attend. She would really not be there in her capacity as a City Councilmember, but she would be
there based on her experience as a former member of the Board of Zoning Appeals. Could we make an exception if you
were asked by a member of that board?
Councilmember Lusk said he would accept that based on whether we had approval of the entire or the majority of
those board members and the majority of City Council and Mayor to present to those committees and boards.
Mayor Lockwood said he had a question for Council and staff. Obviously, we do not want to influence, but if it is a
public meeting and we are there and we either have a productive comment or someone asks us a question, would we be
able to make comment.
There was discussion among the Councilmembers regarding Councilmembers attending other meetings.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said it does send messages that now we are adopting rules of conduct for our
Council specifically, and asked how widely adopted are those among other council.
Councilmember Lusk said we already have rules for procedures in conduct in meetings and he feels that this just takes
it the next step further.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams asked how widely other cities adopt this type of contact, do you have any
experience with that.
Mayor Lockwood said the concern he has is maybe if we were limited to commission meetings or whatever; let us say
there is a training session that we all need and want to go to as well as the board members and we want to interact in the
classes. He just worries that we may put too many parameters on it.
There was more discussion among Councilmembers regarding this matter.
Councilmember Lusk said he introduced this because we have recently been birthed. We have not been through these
processes before and he thinks they need to be cognizant of our conduct and how we are perceived by members of these
committees or boards and members of the press and even residents. We are all enthusiastic about what we are doing
here and he thinks at times we need to check our enthusiasm for the sake of not being over influential.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said can she ask the question again, do you have experience where other cities
have this type of formal adoption of rules of conduct or does our City Attorney.
City Manager Bovos said in his experience, rules of conduct that we currently have adopted are pretty common. He
has not seen anything and he has not researched it.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said she had one thought. She thinks the gentleman who spoke earlier, Jim Langlais,
made a great presentation and obviously a lot of great work on ethics ordinances. One of the things she noticed, what
she heard him talk about is their ethics ordinance are including some process and some policies, and she wondered if we
could ask him that. He did offer us a suggestion that we could contact him and she would be curious if what he talked
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about was from the ethics ordinance; the ethics ordinance talks about conduct, so rather than to maybe have a separate
activity, it would seem, at least she would ask, that we get his input as it relates to the ethics ordinance and whether or
not some of what is intended tonight, which is good intention, whether or not that intention could be covered by the
ethics ordinance.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said you could include something in that very Section 11.
Councilmember Mohrig said if he stepped back and looked at it, if he reads the paragraph before (he read the
paragraph) that basically, it is saying that they can work autonomously; we can interact as required. That is what he had
said. He said what if I was requested because of past experience to come. He thinks the way he reads this is basically
we want to make sure we do not influence them because we are appointing them to represent the citizens.
There was further discussion among Council regarding this issue.
Councilmember Lusk said it is appearance and it is perception; we are mandating any particular decision. Keep in
mind now, he developed this prior to the introduction of this ordinance and he felt it would be a proper adjunct to the
Rules of Conduct for City Councilmembers in meetings.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said what she would suggest is we go forward with the resolution and then we also ask
our ethics committee to work with our City Attorney in adding this possibly to the ethics ordinance.
There was further discussion among Council regarding this issue.
Councilmember O’Brien said he would say it is great to be led to higher accountability if we can be, however, if the
need is great or considerable that a resolution such as this is in effect an exclamation point and a reminder to us as a
body that also is a statement to those, some of who are present, who we delegate the responsibly to help lead the City.
We are expressing trust in their actions and acknowledging we will not interfere or disrupt. He does think that this is
relevant and he does think that it is appropriate.
Councilmember Lusk said on the reverse side too, he thinks it is intrusive to those boards and committees as to what
they can expect or not expect from City Councilmembers.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said she would hope that they can self regulate and work professionally. Resolution or
not, she thinks that they need to be able to attend a meeting, as an example of the planning commission, and this does
not say do not attend it. She thinks part of our job is also to be the ears listening to citizens. She thinks in order to really
do and take our responsibility we have been given, we need to be able to be at meetings and hear what citizens might
have to say.
There was more discussion among Councilmembers regarding this issue.
Councilmember Lusk stated it is not nearly the spoken word; it is the unspoken word and body language that goes
along with just the presence of one of us being at one of those meetings. It may be intimidating to some and influential.
He thinks we have probably all seen it at some place one time or another and he thinks it is a real issue at not only those
board meetings, committee meetings, but even regular council meetings, commission meetings.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said we are in a position to hear input. As an example, we were talking about the
water tower issue the other night. That was a Fulton County meeting and she sure would hope that we are not saying
that we should not participate in the business of the City; otherwise, she is not sure why we are at this table. The
question was raised about people attending that meeting. Her only point and she was emailed and asked about whether
we had a quorum or not, she thinks it speaks to the larger issue that as people that are helping to try to make good
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decisions on ordinances, noise ordinances, etc. She thinks they need to be careful that they do not over regulate where
we can attend meetings and gather data in order to be able to make sound decisions for the City and that is her only
point. She does not know how they balance that. She surely understands the intent and thinks they all should be
mindful of that. She still goes back to the fact that they had great input tonight from Jim Langlais. He is obviously a
professional who has done a lot of research and his ethical dialog is not just about ethics and we need to ask him how he
would handle this issue and that would be her suggestion.
Councilmember Lusk said he would propose that we defer our table. He said all of us are enthusiastic about what we
are doing and he wants to make sure they do not carry that enthusiasm too far.
Councilmember O’Brien said he thinks one of the hardest parts of this job is knowing when to lean back and you know
he would love to attend a lot of meetings, but does not. He consciously decided not to attend the water tower meeting
for the reasons we are talking about. He said maybe he is erring on the side of letting the process play out. But he
would rather be responsive to the worker protocol that when people present at work sessions or at a council meetings
that that is our opportunity to fairly and in an unbiased way act as Councilmembers in his case or her case, but he thinks
you can create organizational disruption if you short circuit that process. Again, we are not perfect from error. We are
new at this and he thinks they need to acknowledge that.
Mayor Lockwood said we do have some public comment.
Carol Lane, 14810 E Bluff Road, said she would think, and this is her opinion, that you do not need to write that out
that that is your intention because then you need to write out your intention for the next thing, and the next thing, and the
next thing and all of that should be in writing. She believes the ethics board is going to fine tune this document and
these are things that the ethics board should come up with as conduct. She does believe, as a citizen of the City of
Milton, we are a new City and a lot of people have not been real involved in City things, it is very important to go to the
meetings because then you understand what the public wants. She does not know that you really understand it when you
are at a City Council meeting because there is not many of the public there. She would suggest that you do attend every
single meeting you can because it is a learning process. Thank you.
Skip Gray, 3652 Avonsong Village Circle, said he is on the board. This is one time he knows that he is absolutely
going to agree with the Mayor. You guys beat dead horses and mules to death and you just talk too long on the same
thing and just keep repeating yourself. You got to go to a power core meeting or go to Toastmasters and put yourself on
a time limit and stop.
Paul Moore said he thinks you need to look at this from two different perspectives. First is the citizens and community
who look forward to your good discussion and good stewardship of the City’s issues and the role that you have to play
as elected officials. That is the first thing and he applauds the kind of discussions you are having which is really sorting
through the issues that really need to be addressed and how you conduct yourselves if you are in a public setting or in
official meetings. He thinks that is worthy of the time you have spent tonight. As a citizen, he would also speak to you
as if he were presenting to you or if he was presenting to a board on a hot topic in the community. He would hope that
you would respect the appointees that you have put in place, the authority you have granted them in that role to allow
that board to take its actions without undo influence by your presence there. A written comment made to the paper to
allow that board to enact its role as you had so carefully chose that board member to do that. If he is a citizen presenting
to a board and you are in attendance, he would recognize the importance of the role that you play for the City. He
might find himself presenting to you rather than to the board. So he cautions about your attendance. And then, talking
to you this evening as a board member, sitting on a board that he thinks will have community activity and spirited
discussion in the role playing as the planning commission. He would go back to his comment a minute ago, he would
hope that you would entrust him as an appointed member of that board to act on your behalf having sought in some
instances probably your guidance on hot topics, but also having sought the guidance of the community, it is what the
community wants to say. Also then he has the unbiased ear to hear the value of the petitioners that evening. Your
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presence in that meeting he does not think allows all those things to take place. He will encourage you to think very
hard about those that you do choose to attend and choose not to attend and make sure that it is for the right reasons and
although information gathering is an important part of that. He thinks that you can without knowing it, have undue
influence that you did not intend to have.
Councilmember Thurman said it is a difference in us attending a board of commissions or authority for information
gathering, it is very, very different than that. And this does not limit us from going to those meetings.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said all she is saying is she does not think we need a formal document for us to do
that. We had a meeting early on where we said as the Council and from our staff and recommendation of our City
Manager that it is really not appropriate for you to go to this community meeting and nobody went. We have not said
Councilmember Zahner Bailey it is really not appropriate for you to go to these meetings, as far as a formal discussion
with Council. Her opinion, as mature adults but also as elected officials that should be at a level to govern ourselves.
She thinks it is appropriate that we had the discussion and said it is not appropriate to go. If she was just speaking for
herself, for example, if we had this discussion about not knowing and agreed not to go, it would not put her on the
defensive of not going to the meeting; like a formal document that screams conduct. Maybe she is being a little ultra
sensitive about that, but that is sending a negative perception.
Mayor Lockwood said moving right along we have taken some advice.
Discussion on amending the Work Plan to add a Historic Preservation Ordinance, and to establish a
wireless telecommunications ordinance.
Councilmember Lusk said in discussions with our City Attorney based on some issues that we had in our
neighborhood a few years ago, we recognized the need for regulation of wireless telecommunication facilities, short
term, cell towers. Our City Attorney has taken it upon himself to draft an ordinance and based on (City Attorney Scott
indicated he drafted an ordinance and it is a pretty rough draft). He thinks City Attorney Scott is familiar with it, he
believes he has researched case law on this and from what he has seen in here he does quote some case law. What he
would like to do is add this item to the City Council work plan. The existing 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act
preempts local governments’ ability to govern placement of wireless communication facilities. Existing local
ordinances are good examples of dealing with this issue and this is what Attorney Scott has given him. This will
primarily be a legal task and legal time can be minimized. Staff time will be minimal; his considered opinion is time is
of the essence in adopting something like this; it is as critical as science. In this ordinance development, he believes can
run concurrently with other projects that we currently have on the work plan without impeding performance of
developing the other items on the work plan. (There was a question from the audience but it was inaudible.)
Councilmember Lusk said he will defer this to the City Attorney who can speak more intelligently on this than he could.
City Attorney Scott said the main issue is regulating where you can put a tower and regulating whether or not a tower
should built when there are other ways of locating antennas. Requiring the cellular providers to collocate with other
antennas or use existing structures, that sort of thing. (Like the fake pine trees). They can be encouraged to locate them
on existing water towers, he has even heard of some church steeples. The point simply is without an ordinance, all that a
wireless company has to do is come in (they have to get permission from the landlord) but all they have to do is they
come in, they ask for the building permit and we just about have to issue it to them because if we do not and they can
prove that they are going to be deprived of the signal in that area, they can take us to court and get it reversed
immediately.
There was discussion among Council on this matter.
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Councilmember Zahner Bailey said a couple of quick thoughts. One is that through Fulton County there has been a lot
of work done back in November 2005. Specifically, she wants to be effective and efficient, Fulton County has a lot of
things that have been kind of airing them out; height of cell towers, location of cell towers, alternative structures, there
has been a lot of discussion from that industry. If we are going to look at this she would suggest that we leverage a lot
of that work that was already done because we will be able to go back to those minutes and identify the objections that
those industry representatives put forward and we go pretty close on an ordinance that was going to be similar to what is
being proposed to be added to the work plan and that whole point about efficiency so it should include alternative
structures. They caution about allowing location of why church steeples should be included; there are a lot of issues.
We went through this for months and months and months within Fulton County; talking about sitting and listening to
lots of different perspectives, people are very concerned about this being located in commercial districts or on a church
or on a school. She hopes you would be cautious and not presume that we do not locate one there.
City Attorney Scott said the only thing he would say about that, and it is just precaution, that there have been many
times when people have tried to use health related or radiation type issues as an excuse to keep them out of places. But
the act specifically says you can not do that.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said as we talk about this and other ordinances beyond the ones we are talking about
today, separate from the court, cell towers, and she thinks we all agree is important to the community, there is one or two
other things that we are going to talk about the work plan. She would just ask that she have the opportunity to maybe
talk about what has to do with residential development standards, like with buffers. If we are going to open up the work
plan, her question has to do with how do you then prioritize these relative to the other things that we had already put into
a priority order.
City Manager Bovos said it sounds like some work has already been done on that and he does not know how that
occurred, but he guesses from the perspective of it is ready to go it can certainly more forward at a work shop and then
come to Council. It would probably take just as long, quite honestly to get the resolution amended as if all of this had
already been done to get that before Council.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked if she could ask a question as whether or not it goes without saying that Tom
Wilson would way in on such a decision.
City Manager Bovos said from staff’s perception, yes.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said but if she hears what you are saying, it is more about the procedure of the
work plan. If we adopted a work plan when we voted on everything, we left it on the table.
City Manager Bovos said we left a lot on the table actually.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said so now we are bringing other things. So if these can be handled a different
way, it would be better than adding it to the work plan.
City Manager Bovos said he just reminds you that there is a finite number of people to get not only what is on the work
plan and what is not on the work plan done. Just understand, from staff’s perspective it does not necessarily make us
any difference if it becomes a work plan or not. If it is Council priority it is going to get done, but what he does not
want to have happen is we come back as a work plan and half the work plan is not done, but then we list all these things
that were done in advance of the work plan. We need to be cognizant that that is the decision of Council.
Councilmember Mohrig said he guesses he would suggest as we look at what we have accomplished this year, we are
keeping track of the things that we did accomplish in addition to the work plan then hit the work plan and use this one
that we did put in place so we get credit.
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City Manager Bovos said he just wants everybody to understand it is difficult to do. What we are basically saying is
we went to a two day retreat to fine tune the work plan and now we are going to add to it. That is fine as long as
everybody is ok with that. It is difficult then he guesses to plan a future work plan session if we are not going to use the
work plan as the work plan, if that makes sense.
Councilmember Lusk said if he may respond to that. You asked how it happened, he guesses it was in a discussion off
the record so to speak, with City Council and there are several model ordinances out there that govern this issue here. It
was his understanding with City Council that these were tested ordinances out here and it would be a relatively simple
task to pull this all together. And, he will say it again, he thinks time is of the essence on this particular issue here and
he thinks they better move ahead as quickly if not quicker than the sign ordinance. It is something that he believes could
pop up anytime.
City Manager Bovos said and again from staff perspective, it is your work plan so they will do whatever it is the
Council wants to do. He just wants everybody to understand there is a finite amount of resources. If we are doing
projects off the work plan, because that is the goal we just need to acknowledge that. He said that he thinks that is the
goal.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said that is not the goal for us to have you take things off the work plan or add to
the work plan. We have to be cognizant that we can not continue to add to it.
Councilmember Lusk said to the point also, in a two day session or how ever long it took us to develop that plan, he
does not think they conceived or could have conceived all of the issues.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said she does agree with that. She thinks they should revisit that work plan and
maybe reprioritize.
Mayor Lockwood said based on this one particular issue what he is hearing from our City Attorney is that it will be a
minimal amount of work, obviously whatever you have done so far, right. It should not precede our work plan. We can
move on to the next item.
Councilmember O’Brien said he just had one quick comment. He thinks it is fair to say it is consistent with the
philosophy that we have discussed that, without suggesting that this may in fact qualify, there are things we
acknowledged may come along, perhaps with very little overheard that we could just knock out. So if it is, we can
overlay and it is not a huge impact use, this may be an example of something like that.
City Manager Bovos said again he does not have an issue with what gets added or changed or what the part of the
Council. We went through a two day process to prioritize.
Mayor Lockwood asked if there was any public comment.
Historic Preservation Ordinance
Councilmember Lusk said he will try to speak a little quicker than he usually does. He would propose that we add this
to our Council work plan as a legacy project to establish a historic preservation ordinance. He has spoken with several
citizens and he thinks pretty much the consensus in this effort there have already been volunteers engaged in research
and different aspects of developing this ordinance. He believes this pass can run currently with other legacy projects,
existing research and structure inventories, and documentation already exists. He feels that historic structures are in
jeopardy of being lost and lost forever. He thinks that has been evident here in the last six months; details of Fulton
County’s tenure up here. Crossroads community structures, sites and oral history need to be preserved to the greatest
and most practical extent possible. Historic markers, signage, photos, recordings, need to be employed as the key
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element in recognizing our heritage and further declining our comprehensive land use plan. He has talked with
Community Development Director Wilson about this and he pretty much concurs that this effort can run concurrently
with our land use plan or comprehensive land use plan review and probably conclude long before that effort is
concluded. He has spoken with a couple or at least one historian in the area, Aubrey Morris, and she is a wealth of
knowledge and to the point of preserving our oral history he would propose that we interview folks like him and other
long time residents. That is his proposal.
Councilmember Thurman said she has done some research on this herself and actually worked with Fulton County
when they originally came up with the historic preservation ordinance and have not really gotten anywhere. Basically,
what she would like for them to do is to establish this historic preservation commission and the model ordinance actually
has been provided by Georgia Department of Community Affairs, we do not have to go and create an ordinance. There
is one that is out there. Inventory distort structures, which she understands the Milton Volunteer Patrons are currently
working on, and this included commercial property, residential property, out buildings, churches, cemeteries and others
which could be gardens, which could be fences, it could be anything of a distort nature, evaluate all the items collected
in a historic inventory, current historic description, validate against significant items of character, which includes
porches and that type of thing, do condition analysis and actual history of the structure, if we can get it. Then determine
design guidelines to the renovation which will maintain the original character, material guidelines and structures,
landscape guidelines, parking lot guidelines and expansion guidelines that would be typical for that type of structure for
the period which it was originally built. And then also she would like to say on special zonings for qualified restoring
historic properties in keeping with their original use of the property and also come up with a relocation policy to allow a
historic building to be moved in an appropriate location based on certain guidelines if the location they are currently in is
not, there is no law on appropriate locations for them.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked Councilmember Thurman if this falls under one of the committees that she and
Mayor Lockwood are discussing to bring before the Council. The Heritage Preservation Advisory Board was the
predecessor to the Design and Review Board and it is not uncommon for historical structures to fall under that Design
and Review Board so we may already have, in addition to the ordinance, she would ask that they at least consider as they
think about historic preservation and design guidelines that that be part of the Design and Review Board because the two
are typically, at least in other jurisdictions, sometimes they are one and the same and they are related. We may already
have a facility that can help.
Councilmember Thurman said she thinks that the Design and Review Board would help with the design guidelines.
She does not know if they would be the ones that would actually help with the inventory, and the evaluation as much.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said we already have a data survey on that the volunteers would be continuing with
that data survey. She thinks we need to be careful because right now the Design and Review Board also reviews
demolitions so that board is already authorized to make sure that we do not demolish historic structures. She sees that
being a collaborative towards an approach between the volunteers with the work that is being done right now.
Obviously, additional staff and legally look at historic preservation ordinance and at the same time we have an existing
Design and Review Board that should have and is already sanctioned to make sure we do not end up with demolition of
historic structures.
Mayor Lockwood said he is going to break in and just kind of get back to proper order. We have several public
comments for discussion.
Travis Allen 13095 Region Trace, Milton GA said he will try to be brief. He would just like to impress upon you all
how much there is in the community and to the preservation. As Councilmember Lusk said, we have historic structures
that are in jeopardy of being lost. We have got historic structures that have already been lost. We are aware of them; we
have had several of them that were moved. There are historic structures endangered, you have a lot in Crabapple
Birmingham Crossroads. You have barns, you have sheds; some people might see them as an eyesore, some people
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might think there might be something we can do to show them up. They are landmarks; they are our Big Chicken.
Looking at the ordinances we have seen from other cities and other areas, they generally impress upon the fact that these
buildings, structures, locations, monument, whatever they may be are part of our historical cultural and esthetic heritage
and we need to preserve that. It is just really necessary he thinks. We have a rural city, we are going to have old barns,
you are going to have old sheds, you are going to have old picket fences, and these are going to be there. We just really
would like to see them later on. He does not want to drive around the City of Milton and in 10 years and be like, “oh
look I am in Roswell”. We really have an opportunity here to do a lot of preservation and we have done a lot of work on
this and like they are saying, there is an inventory, about 11 years old. They are in the process of updating that. He can
tell you right now, they divided it into seven zones, probably about 65% of his zone. He just thinks this is a unique
opportunity to do something right in this case.
Skip Gray, Avonsong Village Circle, (Inaudible…) that is the Sons of the American Revolution. Of course they
brought up the water tower. When he cornered Lynn Riley and he said, “When are we becoming Milton County?” Her
response was, “we need to do it as fast as we can”. So that ought to be one of our priorities then we will not have to put
up with Fulton County.
Paul Moore, 15290 White Columns Drive, Alpharetta GA said as you are looking at the measure that the preservation
of historic structures to him means where they are in their original intended use as best as possible. Without
consideration for mending the structure to bring it to additional use today by sending it or adding on to it. It is historical
because of what is today, so as best as we can preserve it in its’ current location into its original condition is where he
would like it to go as we pursue those conditions and authorities to that. He thinks you loose all the value of it if it is
moved or changed.
Brooke Hunter, 14680 Wood Road sand in relationship to the group that is called the Pacers, they are soon going to
expand in a sense and we are going to become a historical society, the Milton Circle Society. They feel that the ad hoc
is fine; they have gone out and done some things but the only way it is really going to be happening is if we become our
own, independent. Ms. Hunter addressed Councilmember Thurman in two things about the ordinances, and stated that
they do have an ordinance that is a suggested one for them to look at. She is sure that Councilmember Lusk has the
copy of it to at least to give you a chance to begin with. We ask that you do something with it, as he said, put it in
legacy, that it is not something to wait any longer. When she and Marilyn went out looking they found what a third that
is still there. That is not very many.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked if she could ask a quick question. When you think about historic elements that
she heard Mr. Allen mention, picket fences and other things, without complicating, when you talk about trees is that a
separate ordinance. When surveying do you also identify the heritage trees?
Mr. Allen responded that they do take into account the older trees.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said as you are capturing that, if you happen to see one, it just might be good judgment
to go ahead and capture them.
Councilmember Lusk said that was one of the things that he left out here and Councilmember O’Brien mentioned that
to him a couple of days ago to suggest that we identify those too. But to one last point here and he will be brief, not all
historic structures may be preserved in their original location. There is a collection of historic structures from around the
state. There are a couple of others he knows down on the Florida border, mid-Georgia and western New York there are
about 43 historic structures on about 300 acres up there. Well preserved, maintained and it was a private effort that was
put forth to preserve those. While we are still speaking about New York State, he might mention here of historic
markers; New York State is covered with historic markers, signs about the same size as the Civil War markers and they
identify not only structures but battle sites, bridges, everything imaginable that deals with New York State history. This
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is what his vision is and he would just like to see us move forward on this. It is a long term project, but he thinks it is a
legacy project that deserves consideration.
Mayor Lockwood said he is pretty sure we have complete statistics that is very important to all of us, and asked what is
the best way to move forward.
Ms. Wilkins said it is the volunteer group, society or committee or whatever to work on it.
Councilmember Lusk said he would suggest and Councilmember Thurman has commented on it already that we
possibly form a little task force to determine how we move forward on this.
There was discussion on the committees.
City Manager Bovos said the committee that has been formed already is really just an out branch, if you will, of the
MVP Program, which is absolutely great. But he thinks for this purpose we want to go through some of the things that
Councilmember Thurman initiated, that are really more of a commission or formal committee and he thinks their
recommendations from staff would be to formally create that committee. It could very well be the members who are
already working on it, but if we are going to designate that for a specific purpose, he would prefer to make that a little bit
more formal than just a portion of the MVPs.
Councilmember Thurman said she in the best interest of everything if we can keep the original structures where they
are and keep in the location as much to the original character as possible. She is saying at times when this is not
possible to find a way to relocate to another place that could be utilized other than being torn town.
There was an inaudible response from the audience.
Councilmember Thurman said and also back to that comment, quite often structures did expand over time, it kept up
with the original Old Rucker and there are like six or seven additions onto it. We certainly would not want to get rid of
the character of the house, but there may be times that you could expand it within the character of it.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said she is assuming that we would also consider the DNR and standards of the state
level that have to do with what is defined as historic. The point about movement would have been a great example of
how to meet and to have been able to encourage the Birmingham community to preserve that historic structure had there
been other measures in place.
Councilmember O’Brien said he wanted to thank Mr. Allen and he believes he was sort of leading the historic roots of
the MVP. He just had a couple of quick points in talking to Councilmember Lusk; the oral history he thinks is a really
easy thing. We have the capability to inexpensively record that. He sited the example out on the trail he talked to a
gentleman that lives on new Coopers Standing; they talked about when he was a little boy, trading eggs that were in the
store at the corner of what is now Bethany and Hopewell. That really is neat and he is sure there are thousands perhaps
or hundreds of those stories and he thinks the oral history piece of this is important as well as the structures. He does
believe, not withstanding the appropriate comments made, and that redundancy is probably OK as long as it is not
counterproductive. So if a historic society or association overlaps design or use slightly, he thinks that is perhaps
acceptable within some limits and he does appreciate the mention; he was sort of conceptual, 45, 250 tree projects where
we seek to identify 25 most historic trees within Milton, protect them, mark them and perhaps additionally identify 250
other significant assessment trees. Not necessarily hardwoods, as long as they are not at the very end of their life,
according to the arborists, or if they are not he thinks that would be a neat project. The other issue as it pertains to the
historical level, he confesses he does not know but he probably should especially the confederate history in modern
history and tying into that. Perhaps we could go forward and establish history in consider naming sites, roads, cross
roads, in honor of significant veterans whether they be confederate or again modern. We certainly see them everyday.
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There have been several Medals of Honor awarded recently and some are local. So he would ask that perhaps that be
taken under consideration and he would support the efforts in any way he could.
Councilmember Thurman said one other thing that she would like to throw out for consideration is she thinks it was
probably 20 years ago, right when the Northwestern Elementary School closed down, the last PTA put out a cookbook
and the cookbook actually had a lot of history of the Crabapple area. It was definitely a lot of history and pictures of the
old area. If we could find out who had that original old cookbook it might be neat if we could resurrect it and find a way
to sell it. We could get it reprinted because it really has a lot of good pictures of the area and the people of the area and
it is a really good cookbook.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said she knows that the Arts Council from a photographic perspective there has been a
lot of discussion about trying to gather the old photographs. In addition to a cookbook as an example, also try to capture
photographs just like the oral history to make sure that we end up with a compellation before those things move on.
Councilmember Lusk said noted contact here in the City is Mr. Gronnans who is the director of the Atlanta Historical
Society that would be a good resource also.
Mayor Lockwood said he thinks we are all on the same page there. He believes the next item on the Agenda would be
a Resolution on Meeting Times.
Resolution Regarding Meeting Times
Councilmember Mohrig stated he thinks that meeting times should be considered by a resolution that would essentially
be the intent that is best considered on this Council and future council recommendations that non-regularly scheduled
meetings be scheduled on weekdays at 7:00 pm or on weekends. The exception would be for emergency meetings that
Council approves. We are going to have meetings that are set and it is the only time that we can meet and we need to do
it. But as a normal course of business, he is just suggesting in this resolution that we have meetings held on weeknights,
for a task force, a retreat or work session. Again, asking for consideration so people who do run for City Council in the
future can be working people that actually participate. The exception would be if you have got an emergency meeting
then you do it, but not regularly scheduled meetings during working hours or on weekdays.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said maybe we should also regulate the length of time.
Councilmember Thurman said that Johns Creek has something they mentioned the other day is they do not make
decisions after a certain time. We cannot make a decision at 3:00 in the morning that is a rational decision.
Councilmember Mohrig said he did not address work sessions; this is for regularly scheduled meetings.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said she is happy to support that. She thinks that we do have to have a cap on
them because at 11:00 pm, she has worked all day and we have to get up and be somewhere at 8:30 in the morning. She
is not just whining for herself, she is sure she is not the only one, but is just willing to say it. You cannot make a good
decision when it is real late.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said she also does not hope that they rush a decision just because people want to make
a meeting three hours. If some of those issues mean then that we are not going to get some of the things done quickly
that is the balance. Personally, she would rather stay an extra hour to just get things done.
Councilmember Mohrig said just to restate this, looking beyond this Council; you want to have people who can
participate that actually work. And if you are working you are the primary breadwinner and are limited as to how many
times you can actually take off.
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There was discussion among the Council and staff regarding the days of the meeting.
Mayor Lockwood said the weekends are harder for him to get off than during the week.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said we have all got challenges.
Councilmember Mohrig said he guesses what he is saying is, things that we control as Council of the City are the
meetings that we can dictate; when do we want to meet.
City Manager Bovos said he does want to add, and he knows this is a little bit different topic than Councilmember
Mohrig’s discussion, that the April Work Session on the 26th has a longer agenda than this one. From staff’s perception,
we are really struggling with not being the traditional government and delaying things 3 or 4 months because we cannot
get on an agenda. If you do not want long meetings, then you may all consider going to four meetings a month. He does
not know, he is just saying, it is a balance.
Councilmember Thurman said if they have to add an extra meeting one or two months to get over this hump, then they
will do it.
Councilmember Zahner Bailey said at this point, basically none of us want to stay nights until midnight or whatever.
She is not going to sit in a meeting we did not need to have to have some of the items on this agenda tonight to push this
meeting past 11:00 pm.
Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams said when you do an ordinance without time you have to restrict and be cognizant
of start times and the length of time.
Mayor Lockwood said we need to have guidelines on the time because there is going to be some times when it is going
over a few hours or longer. We need more structure.
Councilmember Thurman said a lot of cities do not even allow public comment in a work session.
Councilmember O’Brien said he believes Johns Creek has Council meetings, work session, Council meeting, and work
session so they get two and two every month. We may need to do that and he would commit to do that.
Discussion on Video Speed Enforcement Regarding School Zones and Intersection Safety.
Councilmember O’Brien said be apologizes for being last, but please do not hold it against him. He will very quickly
give you the background. As discussed or mentioned, the staff is busy, we prioritize from a lot of important things to
some critical items. He thought that in order to assist the consideration of the pubic safety establishment and
consideration for safety as a priority in Milton, he wanted to look into sort of as a side project. He stated that just
scratching the surface he looked into automated enforcement systems that would contribute to public safety. As many of
you know, neighboring municipalities have red light systems and one of the leaders if not the leader in the industry is a
company called Nester Traffic Systems, they are based in Providence Rhode Island and he was able to arrange a
technical demonstration of another system they have which is actually referred to as poly scan, which is a speed system.
Just as background, in Alpharetta he believes they have five intersections that are covered by red light systems. The
advantage is, it is relatively irrefutable, actually not that intrusive system, no one’s privacy is compromised more than
any other enforcement issue that would be present and these types of programs are worth considering because they can
be implemented in a cost neutral posture or perhaps even slightly better than cost neutral, so with our budget situation,
we are not in a position to engage in a very expensive program and this would perhaps not create a problem for us. The
statistics about red lights, the national highway safety administration suggests recent years over thirty thousand crashes
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daily, over forty two thousand fatalities and a forty billion dollar annual cost of speed related crashes; fourteen billion
would be the annual cost of red light related crashes. He has two handouts if you would like, you can refer to that. He
will just quickly go through the high points of these handouts and again he is just offering this as some background as a
possible consideration as we develop policies subject to our public safety directors input. Public Safety Director
Lagerbloom is certainly well familiar with Nester products. Today, he has a very favorable quote from Chief George.
Another quick statistic if he can, every year in the US red light running causes 200,000 thousand crashes and 1,000
fatalities with costs in excessive of $14 billion. So the two systems that Nester offers as an industry leader, they have
the red light systems which are very technically advances and they have a very good reputation as a company. They also
are the sole US agent for a European system which is their speed system which is, for the one that was demonstrated
right outside here on Deerfield Parkway a few days ago, and it looks, he thinks we are all familiar with the red light
system, the speed system can be a fixed or mobile system and there is a support band and it can be remotely located over
or approximately as much as 800 feet away. In Akron, OH, they implemented this system they have 91 of these systems
that cover school zones and they have had a very dramatic favorable impact on their safety there. Unfortunately, Akron
had been in discussions in a preliminary way with Nester and sadly they experienced a fatality of a child and of course
that accelerated their implementation. So if he may, the handout with the blue Akron with the client report chart on the
front. Notice that their citations issued when they instituted their systems they were issuing 1500 citations a week and
that dropped dramatically to approximately 300. So it is a huge reduction in the citations issued as well as the advantage
that would constitute a breech of the red light compliance, if you will. Additionally, they point out that in cities and
towns where these systems are in use, the behavior of the driver is favorably influenced so it is not just the red light
systems that are actually having favorable behavior. Other traffic lights throughout cities where this type of enforcement
is in place, have a significant reduction in non-compliance, now you notice there are some statistics on the next page,
April 2006, notice that they go from about 500 issued citations referenced in week 13, down to about 150 at a low in
week 16. Then we turn to a memo from the City of Germantown that they talk about their automated enforcement
systems; it looks like they experienced 20 to 30 percent reduction in crashes after the systems are put in place. They
also mention in the next paragraph, they talk about the numbers that may appear small but a fatality according to USD
for Highway Safety is valued in monetary terms at over $200,000 dollars so it can be a very significant financial impact
and the human losses is huge and certainly worth considering. On page 2 under “Automated Enforcement for
Germantown” on their memo, they refer to the first year their revenues were modestly in the red and noticed that in the
second year the gross revenues were about the same amount in the black. He said that they are not hugely in the black,
this is no windfall, but the experience is generally neutral to slightly revenue positive as it would pertain to a concern of
the budget effect as having a system such as these and what they have done is they devoted some of that additional
revenue, which again is relatively modest, he would say, but they diverted it to some safety and education programs
which would seem appropriate. We had a two hour evaluation where they placed the mobile system right outside on
Deerfield Parkway. They were covering both lanes southbound on Deerfield Parkway for two hours and they, you can
probably see if you flip through, you may or may not stumble across it, what the system looks like but it almost looks
like a heavy duty surveyor’s tripod with a little box on it. It is actually not that noticeable, especially with as much
construction and things on the side of the road that we see here and you would never know what is going on because the
van is remote up a few feet away on the parking lot of City Hall. In that two hour demo, evaluating a 35 mile per hour
speed limit on Deerfield Parkway, they noted 657 vehicles during this test. Of those 69 were in excess of 15 miles per
hour over the limit and there were 122 that were in the 10 to 14 mile per hour range over 35. So you had almost 200,
probably a quarter, not quite a third of the vehicles on Deerfield Parkway in a two hour period that were traveling more
than 10 to, in some cases, over 20 miles per hour over the limit. Relatively significant. In Milton, we have a couple
issues he would offer for consideration. We have got more that a dozen schools and we have several intersections which
would have multiple approaches that might be candidates subject to further study for red light enforcement. The speed
systems, as he sees it, might be appropriate for some other areas in town. We have, Creekside Drive has a very
significant problem with cut through traffic and they are considering spending almost $100,000 for speed tails to affect
the behavior of drivers speeding as they cut through from Francis Road to Highway 9 and back. They fixed poly scan
speed systems, if it were deemed suitable and it was the City’s decision to support that and if the neighborhood wanted
it, could have a favorable affect in influencing driver behavior and dramatically impact the safety in Crooked Creek. So
he would say that however we approach the public safety challenge of our roads, speed enforcement and in so doing
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support our world class public safety department, he thinks that we should be mindful that we should set an example and
make it clear that we expect people to respect our children, our families, our roads and we want them to enjoy their time
in Milton as they drive through but do so safely and carefully. He would advocate that we keep this on our scope so let
him just refer you to the other handout which has the Nester traffic system logo and it says Speed and Safety. He
highlighted just a couple of things and some questions and answers and then he will finish. Speed is a contributing
factor in a third of fatal accidents. Two thirds of drivers exceeded the posted speed limit in school zones during a survey
of 27 cities a couple of years ago. Here is a critical statistic: Children are 8 times more likely to die hit by a motor
vehicle going 30 versus 20. Note, that the stopping distance is almost double if 30 rather than 20. Theft and injury
second lead cause of unintentional injury related death among children 5 to 14. You will notice on the next page there
are some questions and answers on red light cameras. Remember, we are talking about two systems and the
enforcement can have two paths, whether it is like a parking ticket where you do not have points on the license, it is just
the vehicle. So if the vehicle is observed technically speeding or violating they connect the license plate to the event and
the driver is fined but there is no, Chris can help him with this, one is like a moving violation that would cause you
points on your license and impact your insurance.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said one is a criminal charge and one is a civil penalty.
Councilmember O’Brien continued by saying, so there are different ways to go and what we are talking about is two
different systems that may have applicability in Milton. So he will flip up to number six and he will let you read this at
your leisure, but number six, Safety Benefits for Red Light Cameras. A couple of studies show that camera enforcement
reduce red light running violations by about forty percent and they noted that there was carry over to single lane
intersections indicating community watch changes and driver behavior. Generally, looks like about a third reduction in
collisions. Down at the last paragraph on item number six, note that because the types of crashes prevented by red light
cameras tend to be more severe than rear end crashes. Research has shown there is a positive aggregate benefit. One of
the chief complaints about red light cameras is while you are going to have rear end collisions because people can jam
on the breaks to avoid a fine, well there may be a minor collision as a result of that perhaps, but you may be saving lives
because of severe head on crashes from running an intersection. The research clearly demonstrates that the aggregate
effect is very positive. Over to number eight, he thought this was significant. Who Runs Red Lights? As a group, red
light runners are younger, less likely to use safety belts, have poorer driver records, drive smaller and older vehicles than
drivers who stop for red lights. Three times likely to have multiple speeding convictions on their driving records. In
fact, his wife mentioned to him a family member of hers has a new baby, was just hit by a red light runner in
Birmingham. She and her baby were, fortunately they survived, but they were pretty shaken up and banged up. The
individual operating the other vehicle, unlicensed, uninsured, the vehicle is unregistered and this person was from
another country as a matter of fact. Up to number fourteen, is not The Main Purpose to Make Money? No, the main
purpose is to deter violators. Independent audits of red light camera enforcement have found that these programs
generally do not generate excess revenue. How people perceive the use of red light cameras briefly, about three quarters
of American drivers support the use of camera enforcement. So he will also point here, you keep flipping; Communities
with Red Light Cameras. Georgia has a fairly robust participation rate, there is over 23 cities and towns in Georgia or
counties that have red light cameras. At present there are no speed systems in Georgia because although they are not
prohibited, they are not typically provided by legislation. Depending on the environment presented by legislature, we
may or may not be able to use that system at the present. But again, he offers that based on the research he had. So, this
may factor into our forthcoming decisions about public safety and how we can cost neutrally favorably influence the
behavior of drivers in Milton and safety of all of us really and our families especially.
(There was an inaudible question from the audience.)
Councilmember O’Brien answered it does not cost us anything. The way they typically negotiate an arrangement with
the client and they are very keen to have speed systems in a municipality in Georgia because they believe it would be a
test case and they expressed significant willingness to cultivate a lead municipality and they felt that Milton might be a
very good place because of the nature of the community, the roads that go through here, again, our City Attorney has
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expressed some concerns and questions and it would probably boil down to some of his input and the indemnification
that we would need, but again, it is food for thought. They do not basically charge anything. They install the systems
and as you would expect, they get a portion of the ticket, average ticket is about $100 and typically they might yield
somewhere in the range of thirty from the ticket.
Councilmember Thurman’s statement was partially inaudible…state legislature this year about …. Red light tickets
can range from $75 to $135.
Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said he would love to speak on that in just a second just so that we have that
information. He had the ability to learn about video speed enforcement when he had the time that he spent in Alpharetta
in a prior legislative section. He guesses he could tell you, let him start his little statement here by saying that he is
about safe roads, not necessarily concerned about how we get those, there are many different ways that we can. But he
is concerned about safe roads but he is also concerned in leading the public safety department that we are financially
responsible. These systems, video speed enforcement specifically, is based on the idea of being cost mutual, revenue
positive, or whatever these words we want to throw out there is, but he can tell you a couple of years ago or last year
when they went forward to try to change Georgia’s law to allow for video speed enforcement to come to school zones, it
was embraced in Georgia but it was embraced to the extent that every fine dollar that was collected went to fund medical
research and the legislatures truly said, they are glad that you all came as a group and said that you are not interested in
raising revenue and you should not be, you should be interested in making your roads safer. So to put your money
where your mouth is, let us take all the revenue from the video speed enforcement and put in research and while we are
at it, let us take the revenue should it exist from your red light enforcement, let us send that to research too. And that
was about the fasted hot potato he has ever seen any City collectively drop at one time and that just went away. So just
know that that challenge is there, he does not know if the legislature now might be open to entertaining legislation which
would allow for this. He knows there are some questions whether or though just because it is not prohibited means that
is allowed for. Taking the two components separately, the video speed enforcement, that is where he thinks right at this
point he is open to other interpretations. At the end of the day to see these speeds on a sheet means we have got speed
work to do and how we do that will be a function of the public safety agency, whether is this or whether it is some good
old fashioned speed enforcement which we were out testing speed enforcement equipment this morning on Deerfield
Parkway to figure out what the right stuff was to bring to Milton because there are many different options. Taking video
speed enforcements separate than red light camera enforcement; has he seen red light camera enforcement work, yes.
Does he think it is a decent product or a good system, he is not as, he does not know if he is ready to say one way or
another yet as to whether or not that is right for Milton, probably because the intersection needs a good study to
determine if it is even a good idea. If there was a good study and it needs to be an independent study that goes to the
intersection and says, yeah you have got a problem that is big enough that it would justify installing one of these
systems. He does not think that is a decision, and he certainly would not recommend that is a decision that Milton make
and it may even be required. To Councilmember O’Brien’s point, and they discussed this earlier tonight, he does not
think that Nester would be even in the business to put a system on an intersection that did not demonstrate a need.
Taking the two different components independently, the public safety agency certainly will do whatever we are directed
to do through our city manager as far as gathering additional research and if that becomes one of our work plan items,
we are happy to do that. He would hope and would appreciate separating the two just so if one of them we happen to
move forward with, that we know what our focus is and not just globally have it as video enforcement.
Transportation Engineer Jones said she just wanted to make a couple of things very clear. Right now when you ask
the traffic engineer in the state of Georgia, are automatic speed enforcements legal, the answer is that they are not legal
and they are not recommended by any transportation engineer in the State of Georgia at this point in time. That is not to
say that things will change, but at this point in time, very clearly, it is not an approved method. Stationary devices are
especially not well liked by transportation engineers. She knows that school zones have some special accommodations,
but she just wanted to make sure that that one particular thing is true and she is just going to make two really brief
comments. When you are looking at traffic study data, you always want to have speed studies from staff. One of the
items in our capital program that we listed was traffic count equipment for 2008. So that is something that staff is able
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to do speed studies and hopefully that is based on our capital program. Also that there are all sorts of journals on
transportation research that have independent data; most of the data that we are seeing tonight is from the venders
themselves, which is always going to be positive. The third party research done by institutes, Aston or the Institute of
Traffic Engineers, they have even more information that is available and again if the City Manager desires the
transportation folks to get with you on this, we can do that. And then lastly, the Right of Way Ordinance that will
becoming before Council in the next month. We will discuss traffic calming measures because there are all sorts of
traffic calming measures and we would be able to provide a whole toolbox of items to work on these problems.
Mayor Lockwood asked if there was any public comment. There was none.
After no further business, the meeting adjourned the Work Session at 11:35 PM.
Date Approved: June 7, 2007
_______
Jeanette R. Marchiafava, City Clerk Joe Lockwood, Mayor