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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - CC - 03/15/2021Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 1 of 35 CALL TO ORDER Mayor Lockwood: I'd like to call the regular meeting of the Milton City Council for Monday, March 15th, 2021 to order. We strongly recommend that you review tonight's agenda carefully, and if you wish to speak on any item on the agenda, then please bring your comment card to the City Clerk as soon as possible. While Milton does allow people to turn in their comment card until the Clerk calls the agenda item, once the agenda item is called no more comment cards will be accepted. Will the City Clerk please call roll and make general announcements? City Clerk: Good evening Mayor and Council. I'll be happy to call roll for the March 15, 2021 regular meeting. I would like to remind those in attendance to please silence all cell phones at this time. Those attending the meeting who would like to make a public comment, you are required to complete a public comment card prior to speaking on the item. Your comment card must be presented to the City Clerk prior to the agenda item being called. All speakers, please identify yourself by name, address, and organization before beginning your comment. If you are representing an organization, an affidavit is required stating you have the authority to speak on behalf of that organization. Please review tonight's agenda, and if you would like to make a comment please bring your comment card to me now. A demonstration of any sort within the chamber is prohibited. Please refrain from any applause, cheering, booing, outbursts, or dialog with any person speaking. Anyone in violation will be asked to leave. As I call roll this evening, please confirm your attendance. Mayor Joe Lockwood? Mayor Lockwood: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Paul Moore? Mr. Moore: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Peyton Jamison? Mr. Jamison: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Laura Bentley? Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 2 of 35 Ms. Bentley: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Carol Cookerly? Ms. Cookerly: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Joe Longoria? Mr. Longoria: llere. Councilmembers Present: Mayor Joe Lockwood, Councilmember Paul Moore, Councilmember Peyton Jamison, Councilmember Laura Bentley, Councilmember Carol Cookerly, and Councilmember Joe Longoria. Councilmember Absent: Councilmember Rick Mohrig. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE (Led by Mayor Joe Lockwood) City Clerk: And for the record, Councilmember Rick Mohrig is absent. Would everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? Several: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible. Mayor Lockwood: Again, good evening tonight. I also want to give a special thanks to Michelle Kennedy here with Barry Dunn, who is here tonight to be here for our Strategic Plan when we go over the item, but thank you for being here with us tonight. I'll ask the City Clerk to sound the next item. APPROVAL OF AGENDA City Clerk: That item is Approval of Meeting Agenda, Agenda Item No. 21- 065. Mayor Lockwood: Okay. I'd like to add an Executive Session to discuss land acquisition, potential litigation, and personnel to our Agenda. Is there anything else anybody wants to add? Okay, I'll open it up for a motion on the Agenda. Ms. Cookerly: Hi, I make a motion that we approve the meeting agenda no. 21- 065 with the addition of an Executive Session. Mayor Lockwood: All right. I have a motion in favor as read from Councilmember Cookerly, second from Councilmember Moore. All in favor, please say aye. Council Members: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Cookerly moved to approve Agenda Item 21-065 as amended. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. PUBLIC COMMENT Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. Do we have any public comment tonight? City Clerk: We do not, Mayor. CONSENT AGENDA Mayor Lockwood: I'll move on to the Consent Agenda. Tammy, if you'll please sound those items? City Clerk: The first item is Approval of the Financial Statements and Investment Report for the period ending January 2021, Agenda Item No. 21-066. Our next item is Approval of an Agreement between the City of Milton and Municode Corporation, known as Municode for Meeting and Agenda Management Services, Agenda Item No. 21- 067. Our third item, Approval of the Subdivision Plat and Revisions; the name of the development is Georgia Choice Properties, Maher Budier, Land Lot 475 and 534, District 2, Section 2, the Frontage on Thompson Road and Hopewell Road. It is a minor plat to be subdivided into two tracts with a total of 23.204 acres, and the density is 0.086 lots per acre. It's Agenda Item No. 21-068. Our next item, Approval of a Construction Services Agreement with Allied Paving Contractors Inc. for the Fiscal Year 21 Citywide Asphalt Resurfacing Project, Agenda Item no. 21-069. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pro Page 3 of 35 Mr. Moore: Second. Mayor Lockwood: All right. I have a motion in favor as read from Councilmember Cookerly, second from Councilmember Moore. All in favor, please say aye. Council Members: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Cookerly moved to approve Agenda Item 21-065 as amended. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. PUBLIC COMMENT Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. Do we have any public comment tonight? City Clerk: We do not, Mayor. CONSENT AGENDA Mayor Lockwood: I'll move on to the Consent Agenda. Tammy, if you'll please sound those items? City Clerk: The first item is Approval of the Financial Statements and Investment Report for the period ending January 2021, Agenda Item No. 21-066. Our next item is Approval of an Agreement between the City of Milton and Municode Corporation, known as Municode for Meeting and Agenda Management Services, Agenda Item No. 21- 067. Our third item, Approval of the Subdivision Plat and Revisions; the name of the development is Georgia Choice Properties, Maher Budier, Land Lot 475 and 534, District 2, Section 2, the Frontage on Thompson Road and Hopewell Road. It is a minor plat to be subdivided into two tracts with a total of 23.204 acres, and the density is 0.086 lots per acre. It's Agenda Item No. 21-068. Our next item, Approval of a Construction Services Agreement with Allied Paving Contractors Inc. for the Fiscal Year 21 Citywide Asphalt Resurfacing Project, Agenda Item no. 21-069. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 4 of 35 Our fifth item is Approval of a Safety Policy to Comply with Local Government Risk Management Services known as LGRMS Grant Requirements, Agenda Item No. 21-070. Our next item, Approval of a Construction Services Agreement with Southern Environmental Services, Inc. for Existing Building Demolition at Fire Station No. 42, Agenda Item No. 21-071. Next, we have an Approval of a Construction Services Agreement with Atlanta Petroleum Equipment Company, Inc. for Removal of the Fuel Master Equipment and Veeder-Root Probe for the Fuel Tank at Fire Station No. 42, Agenda Item No. 21-072. Our eighth item, Approval of a Professional Services Agreement between the City of Milton and KCI Technologies, Inc., for TSPLOST Batch 3 Design Services, Agenda Item No. 21-073. Our next item, Approval of a Parks and Recreation Department Athletic Association Facility Use Agreement between the City of Milton and Milton Mustangs Swim Team to Provide Youth Swim Programming and Clinics, Agenda Item No. 21-074. The tenth item, Approval of a Task Order with Pond and Company, Inc. to Provide Preliminary Engineering for Big Creek Greenway Connection Trail Project, PI0015078, Agenda Item No. 21-075. Next, we have an Approval of a Parks and Recreation Department Athletic Association Facility Use Agreement between the City of Milton and Hopewell Youth Association to Provide Youth Baseball Programming, Agenda Item No. 21-076. Our final Consent Agenda item is Approval of a Professional Services Agreement with Universal Engineering Services for an Asbestos Survey for the City -owned House Located at 13760 Hopewell Road, Agenda Item No. 21-077. Mayor Lockwood: Okay. I'll open up for a motion. Mr. Longoria: Mayor, I move that we approve the items as read. Ms. Bentley: Second. Mayor Lockwood: I have a motion from Councilmember Longoria with a second from Councilmember Bentley. All in favor, please say aye? Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 5 of 35 Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Longoria moved to approve the Consent Agenda as read. Councilmember Bentley seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. FIRST PRESENTATION Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. Tonight, we don't have any items under Reports and Presentations, so we'll move on to our First Presentation. Tammy, if you'd please read the First Presentation? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. That First Presentation item is consideration of an ordinance of the City of Milton, Georgia to amend Chapter 2, Section 2-54 of the Code of the City of Milton, Georgia to clarify the Council Meeting Agenda Setting Process, Agenda Item no. 21- 078. Our second and final item under our First Presentation is Consideration of Zoning Text Amendment RZ21-03, Section 64- 1609, Swimming pool private (as it relates to location of swimming pools on flagged lots), Agenda Item no. 21-079. Mayor Lockwood: Good. Do I have a motion on the First Presentation items? Ms. Bentley: Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the First Presentation items as read. Mr. Jamison: Second. Mayor Lockwood: I have a motion from Councilmember Bentley with a second from Councilmember Jamison on the first presentation. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Bentley moved to approve the First Presentation items as read. Councilmember Jamison seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. 1 Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 6 of 35 NEW BUSINESS Mayor Lockwood: Any opposed? That's unanimous. There's no items under our Public Hearing or Zoning Agenda or Unfinished Business, so Tammy if you'll please sound the next New Business item? City Clerk: That first item is Consideration of the City of Milton's Strategic Plan 2021 to 2025, Agenda Item No. 21-080, Mr. Steven Krokoff. Mr. Krokoff: Good evening Mayor and Council. Momentarily, I'm going to introduce you to Michelle Kennedy, our consultant with Barry Dunn, but before I do that, I'd like to briefly describe the process that got us here today. More than a year ago, before any of us really knew what COVID was, your leadership team began the preliminary stages of seeking the guidance and support we'd need to create a strategic plan of this magnitude for the City of Milton. We knew that to create such a plan that would resonate with our staff, our elected officials, and appointed officials and most importantly our citizens we would need to be very deliberate in our approach. First, we were insistent that this plan build upon the plans that came before it. Our 2016 update to our Comprehensive Plan, a citizen -centric process designed to capture the vision of our City became our foundation. Our other important plans, including our Comprehensive Transportation Plan, our Parks and Recreation Master Plan, and several other plans became the support. Then, the extensive community outreach, in spite of the limitations that COVID presented provided our framework. From that, this body identified our five-year vision, our mission, core values, and strategic objectives that it felt would best lead us toward achieving that vision. Next, you gave your staff experts the opportunity to identify goals, objectives, and outcome measures that would guide us on our journey to achieving our vision. That was no simple task, but it was one of the most exhilarating and rewarding experiences of our professional careers as we collaboratively worked to add actionable strategy. I'm very proud of what is being presented to you today, and the entire Team Milton thanks you for allowing us to engage in this process. I am now going to turn the lectern over to Michelle Kennedy. As you know, Michelle has been our partner in this project. I've worked with many consultants over my years, and I must say that Michelle is the epitome of what we should expect in a partner. She was a leader, a mentor, an expert, a coordinator, a task master, Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 7 of 35 and many other important roles. Most importantly, she was a friend of Milton as she took the time to understand our City, truly understand it, which was a significant factor in what makes this plan so great. With that, I'll bring up Michelle. Thanks. Ms. Kennedy: What a warm introduction. What button do I need to hit to make this slide presentation —? Female Speaker: [Inaudible] [00:14:31] Ms. Kennedy: Mayor Lockwood, it's so great to see you all again, and it's a pleasure and a privilege to be here this evening to present to you for your consideration the draft of the Strategic Plan that we've been working on since September. So, my plan for my presentation is to keep it brief. I don't intend to go through the plan page -by - page, although I can answer any specific questions if you have them. Instead, what I'd like to do is to give you some highlights of the process. I'd like to take you through the structure of the plan and what's there and really, in particular highlight the things that are a little bit different from this plan from the previous plan. That's gonna be the structure of my presentation, and so just to highlight that, I'm gonna give a couple of quick highlights about the process itself. I want to talk for a little bit about stakeholder engagement because we did a pretty specific effort this time out to make that broader. Also, I'm gonna walk through the pieces that you were heavily involved in in providing strategic guidance for the rest of the City, talk a little bit more deeply about what the City departments did to finalize this plan for you, and then talk about the resulting document itself and what it represents to the City. Real quickly through the process, it took from spring until about fall to get everything in place to begin this process, so we really began it in earnest in late September with a stakeholder engagement process that we engaged as much of the community as we possibly could. I'm gonna describe that in more detail. By January, we were in your Work Session to work on the vision and to identify the strategic priorities that would go into the plan. Then, we spent the rest of January and February working to flesh out the plan which you are now considering this evening. In a few short months we were able to get to the finish line. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 8 of 35 One of the things that our company asks strategic planning clients at the very beginning of the process is what do you want to get out of this planning process? What do you want to be different this time around than the previous time around? We get expectations right up front. We heard a couple of expectations, and one expectation that was set very clearly by your City Manager was we want to try to engage more people in this process. Strategic planning can be really dry and boring, and we wanted to make it something that would engage the public a little bit more. We took some extra steps to reach out extensively and engage each part of the City of Milton, each interest, each population. What's represented on this slide are all the different groups we were able to get to through our stakeholder engagement process. That engagement ranged from one-on-one interviews, which we did with all of you as Council Members at the very beginning of the process to set the stage to some group interviews. We did a survey of the City's employees. We used social media, and we used a community engagement platform that I'm gonna talk about in just a little bit more detail in a moment. There was effort made to engage people. One of the things that was just fascinating to me as I interviewed people; we got thank yous and expressions of appreciation for being invited to participate in the process. That is not something that we always experience as consultants, so that's something I wanted to call out and highlight that your members of the community were really excited to be able to participate in that way. This is where I'd like to point out the extra effort that we took. In the middle of the pandemic, what we would normally do is we would normally have town halls and community forums in person where people can gather. They can get together in groups and talk to each other. Well, we wanted to be able to replicate that, so we used a social engagement platform called Social Pinpoint, and we created a site that is unique to Milton. You can see some examples of it up on the screen. We offered a number of different ways for people to give input on this site. They could share ideas in six categories that we gave them; residential growth, business development, preserving Milton's character, Parks and Rec, building connections, and effective government. Those bubbles that you see there, the green, the black, the bluish purple, and the red are actual comments and ideas that residents of Milton wanted to bring forward and put on that idea wall. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 9 of 35 Then, we had a survey which about 175 Milton residents contributed to, and so that gave us another bit of input. Then, we had a part on the site where you could write a narrative about what you wanted for Milton's future. So, we had that piece as well, and when all was said and done, there were 2,000 visits to that site. There were 670 people that actually did something on the site, and there were 175 survey responses and 32 ideas, so that was all input that we were able to bring to you when you had your Council Work Session. The other thing I'd like to mention that we did was our firm looked at over 20 plans, documents, reports, studies to help take all of this input and build it into an environmental scan, which we used at the front end of your work session to get you all on the same page and level of understanding of the current state of Milton and what the opportunities are for the future. So, in your Council session we focused very strongly on the vision. We also focused on the values. You might recall I asked you all to do an exercise where you would . actually talk about what do we expect from our city government in terns of the way we want our employees to cant' out the City's business and the kinds of behaviors we want to see from them? So, we spent a lot of time talking about the values, the City's values. You put a lot of thought into that, and what you see there in the bolded statements were your ideas. What you see in the description after the bolded statements is how the City departments took those values and really embraced them and went to a much deeper level of description to try to call out and identify, what are the behaviors that people need to display to demonstrate those bolded statements that you as a council came up with? I said I would point out the things that were different and enhanced in this plan, and that was one of them. It was one of the things that I think was a really meaningful piece. I want to underscore this because when employees have it described to them in that detail, it allows them to live those values on a day-to-day basis, so that was really, in my view a significant improvement that you made in your plan. This next slide shows the three strategic priorities that you all set as a council. You went through a process of really deeply considering where do we want to go in the future, and what's important to us and to our community? And so, you came up with these three strategic priorities. One of the things that I asked the Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 10 of 35 departments to do after you identified that strategic direction; I said for each of those three strategic priorities let's define the current state, but let's also define the future state. It's really clear. When I see that strategic priority, ensure Milton's sustainability and resiliency those words actually mean something. We can say what it looks like when we've achieved that strategic priority, so that's another new thing to this version of your Strategic Plan was the description of the current state and future state that you're headed towards. That's a new piece. Then, we get into the goals, objectives, and outcome measures which Steve mentioned. This is where the departments really rolled up. their sleeves. I have to commend the departments for the work that they did on these. We set them up into cross -functional teams, and they spent a lot of time thinking about these, thinking about those three strategic priorities that you as a council set and trying to identify some very tangible, short-term objectives that would lead the City towards those strategic priorities and the completion of those. What you can see here as an example is this is just one page out of the plan, but it's related to strategic priority 3, which is acquire, manage, and develop public land and resources to support Milton's high quality of life: So, these are two of the goals and sets of objectives and outcome measures that are part of that strategic priority. The one thing that makes this plan actionable is those short-term objectives that they came up with. That isn't new to your plan, but I think these are really crisp. The next thing that is new to this plan is the definition of some outcome measures. I want to differentiate these for you from just performance metrics. Outcome measures are trying to measure the actual impact that this is having on the community, and so a lot of thought was put into, how are we gonna measure so that we can hold ourselves accountable so that the City Council can hold us accountable and so that the public can hold us accountable for this plan and making progress on it. Finally, I'd just like to underscore the importance of the plan. One of the things that was impressive about the City is that you didn't take this on as a check -the -box exercise. I've seen other organizations do that. It was a meaningful process. This plan is a living document, and it has specifics in it because it's actionable and you can measure your progress on it, but it's a living document Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 11 of 35 that you can continue to revisit through the life of the plan, which is a five-year period, from 2021 to 2025. One of the benefits of having a strategic plan is being able to know where you need to make investments to get the kind of future that you want to have and so that you can make investments into things that are truly your priorities. It serves as a decision making tool for Steve and his staff, and it serves as a way of you being transparent to the public about what you're doing and also showing the public and demonstrating to the public that you are acting on the things that are important to them. As a final comment, I just really want to thank the dedication and commitment of Steve and the Strategic Planning Steering Committee, which was made up of Sarah LaDart, Stacey Inglis, Greg Botelho, and Tammy Lowit, who put a lot of effort into this, getting this to the finish line. And then, finally to say it was a privilege to work on this project with the City; I'm so glad I was able to be here in person for my firm to present it to you this evening. With that, I'm gonna turn it back over to Steve, and he's going to say a few words about how the City is gonna manage the plan going forward. Then, if you have questions I'm here to answer them. Mayor Lockwood: Thank you, Michelle. Mr. Krokoff: Thank you, Michelle. Should you approve this plan, staff will immediately build upon the action plans that have already been identified and present them to this council for approval. Quarterly, we'll report on progress and make recommendations to this body for changes as some objectives are achieved or environmental conditions change. This will also be an opportunity for the community to weigh in and you, our Mayor and Council, to make any changes that you'd like to see. For instance, our CPAC will be completing its work and will soon have a new, short-term work plan likely this fall. That's a great opportunity for the Council to make any necessary changes to this plan. Long term, the comprehensive planning process will precede the strategic planning process. I'd like to thank you all again for having the courage and providing support necessary to make our 2021 to 2025 Strategic Plan possible. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 12 of 35 Your staff eagerly awaits not only the opportunity to start executing this strategy but to meet outcomes and exceed community expectations. Thank you again, and both Michelle and I are available for any questions that you may have. Mayor Lockwood: Okay. I want to also thank everybody that was involved. I'm obviously including our citizens and our stakeholders, too. So, is there any questions for either Steve or Michelle or comments? Laura? Ms. Bentley: Thank you for .such a great plan. It's nicely put together, and the pictures are great, and it's easy to read. Steve, just as we move into the actionable items you'll report on those quarterly? Is that the plan? Mr. Krokoff: We will report on not only our progress on what's there quarterly, but we'll be adding to them quarterly. However, I envision there will be times that we're not gonna want to wait until the quarter to add something on, let's say a new item that may help with our large lot incentives or things along those lines. I anticipate those will come on in between the quarters, but then we'll report on the quarters on our progress. Ms. Bentley: So, will the finished product of the Strategic Plan have the detail of those action plans? I mean I'm just trying to equate it to the comp plan where we have work programs that the community can see what's out there and what we're planning to do to accommodate the plan. Mr. Krokoff: One hundred percent — you'll be having a presentation, I think it's the next Council meeting, either the first one or the second in April that Bernadette's going to be doing. It's going to allow us to be able to display in live time, in real time what progress we're making on our Strategic Plan; what's been completed, what's not, what's coming on, and everything as this plan goes through its life cycle. Mayor Lockwood: Anybody else? Joe? Ms. Cookerly: I'm extremely [inaudible] [00:29:43] part of the process. Mr. Longoria: Okay, just one quick thing to follow up on, Laura, what I was thinking about. Is there any way to, when we talk about going through this on a quarterly basis and changing it and showing where we are in the process, is there any way to put that maybe Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 13 of 35 online showing the citizens where we are in the process of it? Mr. Krokoff: I envisioned a written report that would be presented to the Council quarterly. So, I would anticipate as long as it's okay with the Mayor and Council that we would put those online. Mayor Lockwood: Paul? Mr. Moore: I want to thank Steve and you and your staff. I just thought the process was incredible. This is the first strategic plan that I've been a part of, and I just thought the way it was transparent and engaging and so inclusive with the way we were asked to be a part of it, I really appreciate the way we went about it. I also wanted to thank Michelle. It was rather remarkable the way you embraced Milton and the things that are Milton. It's unusual somebody coming out of the box the way you guys did to have really captured the essence of Milton that is, what we think unique. Maybe not so in some other places of the country that we don't know, but it sure is to us. You did just an amazing job of grasping who we are, and the end result I think is gonna put us in a great place to go forward. So, thank you. Mayor Lockwood: I'm gonna add on that same path that Paul brought up, and I'm gonna put a plug in for not City staff or us or our consultant, but our citizens and our stakeholders because it was very interesting. As Michelle got started and was reaching out and contacting, again citizens, stakeholders, and getting input, she had never been to Milton. We were talking on the phone and she's like, I can't wait to get there. I just feel that this is a great place. I'm just sensing it. Anyways, I want to put a plug out to everybody in Milton and how fortunate we are to have such a great community. All right. Anything else? Thank you. With that, if there's no questions, I will open up for a motion on this item. Ms. Bentley: Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the Strategic Plan for 2021 through 2025, Agenda Item No. 21-080. Mr. Jamison: Second. Mayor Lockwood: Okay. I have a motion for approval from Councilmember Bentley, and a second from Councilmember Jamison. All in favor, please say aye. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 14 of 35 Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Bentley moved to approve Agenda Item 21-080. Councilmember Jamison seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: And that's unanimous. Thank you again, Michelle for being here tonight. Tammy, if you'll please sound the next New Business item? City Clerk: That next item is Consideration of a Final Plat. The location is the Grove at Sweet Apple on Ebenezer Road, land lot 1073, District 2, Section 2. It is a final plat. It's nine single family lots with a total of 9.71 acres, and the density is 0.93 lots per acre. Ms. Tracie Wildes. Ms. Wildes: Good evening Mayor and Council. Tonight, I'm gonna present to you for consideration the final plat at the Grove at Sweet Apple, which is located off of Ebenezer Road. The site plan for the Grove is a proposal for a rural subdivision of nine one -acre lots with a private road. It's a total of 9.71 acres. It is a private road, a no - curb -and -gutter road rules section. The development has installed a bio retention pond, which provides water quality for all nine lots, and then the storm water detention pond will be shared with the neighboring Sweet Apple development. The developer and the builder is Brightwater Homes, and they've done other developments nearby, one being Sweet Apple, the other The Conservancy at Sweet Apple, and then of course the Grove. The great thing about that is that the final product for the Grove will be in line and in character with the adjacent properties nearby, and they've already sold, or pre sold seven of the nine lots. I've got some photos so that you can have a visual for the development. You see here that the entrance road, the private road is rural. There are enhanced swells or ditches on either side of the road. That road terminates into a bio retention pond at the back of the development, which will provide for the water quality. One thing to note is while this subdivision is small, all of the trees say that they've maintained throughout the development. The neighboring Sweet Apple development, the model home architecture is in the lower left hand corner, so this will be an idea of the character, the architecture that the final product will be. Are 1 1 Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 15 of 35 there any questions? Mayor Lockwood: Questions on this? There's no questions. Go ahead. Ms. Wildes: I'm done. Mayor Lockwood: That's what I thought. If there's no questions, I'll open it up for a motion. Ms. Bentley: Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve Agenda Item no. 21- 081. Mr. Jamison: Second. Mayor Lockwood: I have a motion for approval from Councilmember Bentley with a second from Councilmember Jamison. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Bentley moved to approve Agenda Item 21-081. Councilmember Jamison seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. Thank you, Tracie. Will the City Clerk please sound the next New Business item? City Clerk: That next item is Consideration of an Application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, Assistance to Firefighter's Grant (AFG) for the Purchase of a Cascade System and a Turnout Gear Washer/Extractor and Dryer, Agenda Item No. 21-082, Chief Benmoussa. Chief Benmoussa: The AFG grant is an annual grant that's put out by FEMA. It's to the tune of $300 million, and we have an opportunity to apply for this grant. This will equip our Station 42 with a Cascade system so we can fill our SCBA bottles, but also provide for an extractor to wash our turnout and gears, and that's in line with we have some right now, but if we equip that station it will enable the firefighter at that station to be able to clean their turnout gear post -fire. It's in line with our cancer prevention initiatives we have in place. So, I ask for your support and approval for the application. Mayor Lockwood: Is there a match that we have to —? Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 16 of 35 Chief Benmoussa: Yes, it's about $6,000.00 for the City as a match as required. Mayor Lockwood: But there's still, obviously a benefit for the City that we would have had to pay for more than that? Chief Benmoussa: Yes. The project is about $60,000.00, and the City's share is 10 percent, about $6,000.00. Mayor Lockwood: All right. Thank you, sir. I'll open it up for a motion. Chief Benmoussa: Thank you. Mr. Moore: Mayor, I move that we approve Agenda Item 21-082, the Consideration of the Application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, for the Assistance of the Firefighter's Grant for the Purchase of a Cascade System and Turnout Gear Washer/Extractor and Dryer. Ms. Bentley: Second. Mayor Lockwood: All right, I have a motion for approval from Councilmember Moore, and a second from Councilmember Bentley. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Moore moved to approve Agenda Item 21- 082. Councilmember Bentley seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. If our Clerk could please call the next New Business item? City Clerk: Our fourth item is Consideration of an Amended Emergency Ordinance of the Mayor and Council of the City of Milton, Georgia under Section 3.18 of the Charter of the City of Milton, Georgia to Provide for the Operation of the City of Milton, Georgia during the Public Emergency known as the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 Global Pandemic to Become Effective Upon Adoption by the Council to Supersede the Existing Emergency Ordinance; and for Other Purposes, Agenda Item No. 21-083, City Attorney Mr. Ken Jarrard. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 17 of 35 Mr. Jarrard: Mr. Mayor and Council, thank you. I have a lot of familiarity with this. This is simply another iteration of the 30 -day iteration of the Emergency Pandemic Ordinance. This is something very utilitarian. It does become effective on April 86`, so just because of the timing of Milton meetings, trying to link them up with the gubernatorial decorations of emergency vehicles we have on tonight's agenda, but again the other ordinance will go ahead and play out until April 8d' and this will play back in for an additional 30 days. I think the language is exactly what you've seen before except for some maybe modest changes that Ms. LaDart is going to go over with us. Ms. LaDart: Good evening, Mayor and Council. Like Ken was saying, because it's spring break we're bringing in the April emergency order to Council a few weeks early. Last spring, when these were first implemented we did a couple of emergency temporary measures to support Milton businesses during the pandemic, two of which we have recommended removing from this April renewal. One measure is allowing reasonable new temporary signs without having to go through the City's normal sign permitting process, and the other is to allow restaurants that currently hold an on - premise consumption license to also offer to go beer and wine for customers without requiring a retail managed license. Recent revisions to Chapter 4, specifically Section 4.75 has made it possible for qualified restaurants to apply for that retail package license, and businesses that have made use of the measure to put up temporary signs without permits can apply for the proper permits through the Community Development department. We sent an email out last week to all of the businesses notifying them that we were recommending this, and I received no feedback positive or negative from that email. We are ready to send out a letter to all of the restaurants tomorrow morning if this passed as written tonight. These notices will allow businesses that wish to continue with either of these new practices enough time to get proper licenses and/or permits as this doesn't go into effect until the middle of on-site, the second week of April. Thank you. Mayor Lockwood: Okay. Any questions for Sarah or Paul? Mr. Jamison: For a quick clarification, I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. The email that will go out tomorrow to the businesses Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 18 of 35 isn't going just to the restaurants. It's going to all of the businesses? Because I recognize there's an alcohol component of it. There's also the sign component of it. Ms. LaDart: The email that went out last week now to all of the email that we have on file for the businesses, the letter, this snail mail letter going out tomorrow is only going to the restaurants: Mr. Jamison: Thank you. Mayor Lockwood: Any, questions for Ken? How about a motion? Mr. Jamison: Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve Agenda Item No. 21-083. Mr. Moore: Second. Mayor Lockwood: Okay, I have a motion for approval from Councilmember Jamison with a second from Councilmember Moore for approval of this item, the Amended Emergency Ordinance. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Jamison moved to approve Agenda Item 21-083. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. So, if our City Clerk will please sound the next New Business item? City Clerk: That item is Consideration of the Issuance of an Alcohol and Beverage License to Convenience Food, Inc. doing business as Exxon Food Mart, located at 13020 Moss Road, Suite C, Milton, Georgia 30004, Agenda Item No. 21-084, Finance Director Ms. Bernadette Harvill. Ms. Hary i 11: Good evening, Mayor and Council. Before you this evening is a request for an alcohol and beverage license for a package and retail sales and Sunday sales for Exxon Food Mart in the Deerfield district. They're currently undergoing a transition of the business agreement with the previous owner, who had a license in the establishment, so this officially approved would be contingent Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 19 of 35 upon that business agreement going through on April 1St. They are in compliance in every other way, and we recommend approval. Mayor Lockwood: Are there any questions on this? Do we have any Public Comment on this? City Clerk: We do not, Mayor. Mayor Lockwood: We'll close the public hearing part on that and open up for a motion. Mr. Longoria: Mayor, I make a motion that we approve Agenda Item No. 21-084. Ms. Bentley: Second. Mayor Lockwood: Okay, I have a motion from Councilmember Longoria, and a second from Councilmember Bentley. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Longoria moved to approve Agenda Item 21-084. Councilmember Bentley seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. All right. Tammy, if you'll please sound the next New Business item so Bernadette can stay up here. City Clerk: That final item is Consideration of the Issuance of an Alcohol Beverage License to Rihaan Liquors Inc., doing business as Milton Package Store, located at 13093 Highway 9, Suite 1010 in Milton, Agenda Item No. 21-085, Ms. Bernadette Harvill. Ms. Harvill: Good evening again. It's good to see new businesses coming into Milton. This will be a new establishment right there off of Highway 9 in the Deerfield district in that Kohls and Target Shopping Center, again for package retail sales and Sunday sales. The business is in compliance and staff recommends approval. Mayor Lockwood: Okay. Do we have any questions? On this one do we have any public comment? City Clerk: We do not. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 20 of 35 Mayor Lockwood: We'll close the hearing portion and open up for a motion. Ms. Bentley: Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve Agenda Item No. 21-085. Mr. Moore: Second. Mayor Lockwood: Okay, I have a motion from Councilmember Bentley with a second from Councilmember Moore on approval. All in favor please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Bentley moved to approve Agenda Item 21-085. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. Thanks, Bernadette. Ms. Harvill: Thank you very much. STAFF REPORTS Department Updates 1. Community Development Mayor Lockwood: We'll move on to reports. Anything that Council would like to report on? Okay, so we'll move on to staff reports. Could we start with Community Development? Tracie, do you have the time? Ms. Wildes: He's gonna do great. Mayor Lockwood: Just kidding. Mr. Buscemi: Mayor, Council, and special thanks to Tracie, who puts these together for me. It's a lot of work actually. Tonight, just some quick updates; we are going through all our active, open consulting contracts to determine exactly which ones are still open, which ones are active and actually performing the work and which ones are just sitting there, the expiration dates, the amounts, all of that. So, very shortly we should be able to come back and tell you Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 21 of 35 which ones we have, how many we have, and what we are looking to do with each one of these. We have some open task order contracts that I'm not using and things like that, so if we need to we'll look at it. CPAC is going very well, and thanks again to our CPAC members and Council Members who sit on CPAC. We did some community education sessions on transportation and smart technologies, and that was on March 1 11'. That's going very well. The steering committee recently had some deep discussions about the Arnold Mill Road form based code, and we went through all the background on that so we could sit there and really discuss where we should go with on Arnold Mill Road. It looks more like it's going to be a future work work item that we would put together a small area plan on and discuss it later and bring it back to Council. It won't be really part of the CPAC other than just the recommendation to do this plan. It needs more attention and more time. The website, our section website is being updated. I've got some folks working on that, and I think we're doing really good on that. We're really analyzing our web page. City View, the nice part about City View is that we've done everything we need to do from a staff perspective at this point, and it's back at City View. They're doing their final configuration. We've done a download already of data from Community Core, so that's all there. Then, just at the very end we'll just do a final download. The other thing is we're starting to do internal training of the program, which is pretty nice. What's happening? We have Code Enforcement. We do have a lot of stop work orders that are being issued. We're looking at that. I have some folks coming in. Every time we issue one, I actually call them in and say, let's sit down, have a meeting, and find out why we're issuing these and what we can do to fix them. We have some on pools, a lot of pools and things like that. They tend to be the same folks over and over. So, I just want you to know that we are really working very diligently to make sure we have all this compliance and to really work with people, pull them in, and say listen, this is what we need to do. Let's try to fix it and work with them so that they better understand the process. The sign sweep we were looking to do after the COVID was over, Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 22 of 35 but I know now that they're looking to do some minor changes with the signs and things, so we'll look at that later. LDP and permit applications are extremely high-volume. I think it's just spring. Everyone's working post-COVID. People feel COVID is over, and I will tell you the market is very strong. The financial is extremely strong. Prices are still climbing faster than we can keep track of. People are coming in telling me everything is going up in price, construction is going up, and the whole baseline is going up, which is a good thing I guess for Milton. It's doing well. Some of the projects we have; Providence Park, I just want you to know we have the final drawings in for permitting. We're reviewing those now. MCC Community Building, the final drawings are in, too. We're doing the final permitting and review. Fire Station 42, the final drawings are in. We're doing a page turning tomorrow with the Fire staff just to look at them, but they're in for permitting as well. The utility disconnects are complete. The fuel tank removal is complete, and the asbestos abatement is complete. You saw some of those contracts on your Consent Agenda tonight, so I just want you to know they're all being tended to. We really have three nice projects that are all really moving along. This one, I just wanted to show you Fire Station 42. With the help of Ken's office, we approached the adjoining properties at the piece of property on the left is ours. The one on the right, somebody purchased even tonight actually for some items on the agenda. He was sitting in the back. He left. I approached him because of bringing the initial was to bring the septic all the way down to Bell Park. And then, when he came in and said, listen, I purchased the property I said, geez, would you consider giving us this little sliver? You'll see it on the right here, a little sliver of land on your property as an easement so we could put our septic right there and save a whole lot of money and time in maintenance, future maintenance bringing it down to Bell. So, he was interested in that, and he said, "Okay, send me everything." So, Ken's office prepared all the easement, initial letter of intent and all. He's reviewing it now, so hopefully that goes through. I just want you to know we're really trying to save some money there. This is also a potential landowner who really came in with 1 1 Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 23 of 35 one acre lots on this piece of property. When we talked to him, we convinced him, and he said okay. He's going back and reassessing and doing a three -acre proposal for this. It was a good overall meeting. I think he's gonna go with three acres, and he's also potentially can give us the land for the septic, so it was like a double hit. I think it will look really nice. He was very happy about our Fire Station 42 design. He thought it would be an asset to his lot. So, that's another large lot development that we're working with. On the other side of town, Deerfield, we're looking at Frys and Crescent. I just want the Council to know that we're really working with these applicants to join these two pieces of property together. It would be 38 acres to combine them and to work together as one big, large development. Although, tonight I don't specifically have anything to show you, we are working up the plans and proposals and some concept drawings to really work with them to see what we can get in there. From the CPAC meetings, things like Milton Visitor's Center, all the items that CPAC started coming up with, and the amphitheater was another big one, a public amphitheater. So, all of the things that CPAC was saying, geez we'd love to see. We'd love to see in the Deerfield side of town. What I did was when we approached them, we said, well listen. It's just part and parcel of what we've been extracting from CPAC. Would you be interested in putting it together? He said, well, could you kind of show us how that would work? So, I did. I went back and redrew it up for him and showed it to him. They have it now, and they said, geez, they walked away pretty happy. They looked like they were gonna go, so you never know. Maybe they come back. Maybe they say no and the deal falls through financially. It could be something other than us. This would be a real big one, and just so that you know, former City Hall, where it says former City Hall they came in last week and sat down with me. They didn't realize — he was an out of town applicant — so, he didn't realize that he was our former City Hall site. So, he's sitting there telling me about the site and doing all of this stuff, and I'm thinking, geez, we all know the site and the buildings. I said to him, he just wants to redo all the landscaping. When I told him what we were doing around the perimeter, he said, geez, maybe he'll go back and talk to Trans Western, who owns the property. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 24 of 35 They're gonna come in next week. I'm gonna sit with them to see if we could do some enhanced development on that site. That would give us Frys, Crescent, the Target shopping center, the 10 acres north of Deerfield Parkway on Highway 9 and then maybe potentially former City Hall and then the property to the bottom where it says Crescent, just to the bottom of the page there. It looks wooded there. We were trying to get Mr. Reddy to come in and do a hotel there. He's been interested in it, but he couldn't get access to the site. So, now I approached Crescent and they said that they'd. be willing to give him access. Thatwhole thing just might come. It's almost like it all has to come together simultaneously, but I think I can get that to work. This one here is a daycare on Webb Road..These are just pictures that they came in with initially. We looked at it, so I sort of wanted to show to Council the process of what we do. This one here, I just didn't like any of it. The front had no real grants there, no entrance. It was just a big wall, so you can kind of see where people come in with initially, and here's a little view of the back. The back actually looks a little bit nicer than the front, but I wanted to just show you. This is how we go through and redline the proposals that come in. We sit with the applicants and we redline the whole thing. We give them all of this enhanced architecture on the building and really sit with them and say, look, let's study the window patterns, the roof massings, how people approach the building. So, all of these items are being addressed. I just kind of wanted to show the Council the level of complexity of when they come in, how we go back with the applicant, tell them they need to raise the bar. They need to meet the Milton standard, every little detail. Every little detail that's in that building is thought of, reviewed, and checked. They were willing to do it. Mr. Jamison: Hey, Bob quick question; what did they do when you gave them that? Mr. Buscemi: The owner called me up and said that he spoke to some of the other business owners. The daycare that's on Cogburn, they told him that the day they opened the line was literally half a mile long and that they've never had trouble. So, he says, geez, when I got that feedback — he says, you know what? If you want it, I'll do it because I want occupants in my building. I want to have that level Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 25 of 35 of enrollment. I said, well, once you've finished this you'll get it. I just wanted to kind of show the Council what we're doing as the process because I always show you the renderings at the end. All right, so this one here I don't have too many of them. I'm gonna try to do two projects per session here. This one here, I just wanted to show you this; it's 23 acres on Thompson Road. The applicant came in with one acre lots, and so he had 15 one acre lots on 23 acres. Initially, we all thought that was pretty good. I sat him down. We really went through it. We went through all of this stuff and said, look, you need to do large lot incentives. It's what the Council wants. This is how we're gonna do it, so I just want to show you how it looks. He said he would do it with large lots, so it's a little bit before and after. There's your three acre, minimum lots. He's got seven three -acre lots. I kept the old one up in the corner to show you the difference. You can really see the difference, so we cut that density down. He was willing to do it. I just want to give you the feedback because I think our large lot incentives are working. We sort of have to show them how to do it, but once we do I think we've put the tools in place. This Council has put the tools in place, and it's working. They're all converting. They're looking for it and voluntarily they're saying it's working. The Council did put the tools in place. I mean it is cheaper. They don't have to do ponds and roads and all of these things that normally you would get hit on with a subdivision, but we're getting them. Ms. Cookerly: Excuse me, Bob. Are they doing the back of the envelope or [inaudible] [00:57:27] cost efficient? Mr. Buscemi: Yeah, but when they come in, I sit them down and we go through that math. I go, listen, this is what it's gonna cost you for a pond. This is how much money you're gonna end up spending on curb and cutter. This is what you're gonna end up spending on street lights and all of these items. It's very simple. We could put that math together for them and then say, listen, not only is this cheaper to invest in, but it's more desirable for people to purchase. That's another good thing is people want these bigger lots. If people didn't buy them it wouldn't work, so actually right now I'm not seeing a big demand on, say five acre lots. Sometimes, I try to get them to do fives, but there's just no demand on fives. I can't get the math for it, but the math is working on the three. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pra Page 26 of 35 Everybody is going for it because they want to be able to sell them as quickly as they subdivide it. I just kind of wanted to get this through that. Robyn will do the next one. Ms. MacDonald: Good evening, everybody. I just wanted to give you a heads -up. What about us zoning people? You almost forgot me, but anyway upcoming next week, Tuesday — I believe it's the 23rd — 7:00 p.m. here as well as online we have a couple of items on our Community - Zoning Information meeting. I'll go through the ineetings for these two sets of items for public hearings. The first one is a proposal for a rezoning from AGI to CUP, six lots on approximately nine acres. This is going to propose of a family compound if you want to say. They want to keep the existing house that is there right there and then add five more lots. This area of Freemanville is fairly hilly, and so instead of coming in after the fact asking for some variances they proposed to do a CUP where they have the property or the houses closer to the street. As you can see here, we have the rural view shed that they'll be required to do. It's fairly vegetated already, but you can see there's really no houses near Freemanville at all, but anyway we will see what happens. Again; that's a proposal. It's probably the first CUP we've had in years and years. Yes? Mr. Jamison: Quick question; I know from our years on the Planning Commission it would really help me whenever it does come to council to see what this would be at AGI. Ms. MacDonald: Right. That's part of the package that they have. This is just kind of an overview, so yes they're required per the CUP to show what would be on a normal AGI showing your septic, et cetera. The other one is pretty busy; and I thought this was — Ms. Bentley: Robyn, do you recall what our smallest CUP is, lot size? I'm sorry. It's just something I'd be interested to know. Ms. MacDonald: We used to have what was called an NUP, which was a Neighborhood Unit Plan, which was the smaller lots and really more that was around where there were sewered areas. So, if we look at just AG 1, non-sewered septic it's pretty typical to have an acre. Triple Crown is a CUP. Parts of White Columns is a CUP. Kingsley, up off of Freemanville is a CUP, so their minimum lot would be an acre. Typically, those subdivisions did not go to the Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 27 of 35 center of the road if that's what you're thinking. It was they have a true right-of-way. They may be private roads, but they're true minimum one -acre lots. I will say that an older subdivision is Atlanta National off of Providence. That was done in the `80s, so they have minimum two -acre lot requirements for their CUP. It just depends, and then again Crooked Creek is your typical Fulton County CUP where you have different pods of sized lots, but obviously that's all sewer. So, those are the smaller lots. The latest one that you all looked at was off of Batesville. It was after the recession, and Brightwater actually took over the property. It, again was fairly hilly. They felt like to be able to get the right product on the lots they needed to have the front reduced, the front setback, and that's what they did. I think they were fairly successful at that. Anyway, it depends on the circumstance whether to use it or not. The next item is three use permits and its various concurrent variances on two different requests. This is Painted Horse Winery that is coming. It will be three different use permits, but I'm gonna put them all together so it's not like you have go through three different processes. The first request will be for agricultural related activities on the subject site. That would include, I call it the kid item. It's the birthday parties, the day camps, everything that involves kids. That is going to be requested along with a couple of concurrent variances. This is, by the way approximately 18 acres. You can see here that part of the property will be taken up by the new roundabout at Bethany Bend and Hopewell. The second use permit that's gonna be requested concurrently is gonna be the rural event facility. This would be your typical, like Little River Farms, a wedding venue. So, that's what's covering that, and there's no concurrent variances with that. Lastly, festivals or events indoor/outdoor, which is commiserate with having concerts outside. Again, this is a little bit of a square peg in a round hole, and so there's a fair amount of concurrent variances just like there was with the other one at Matilda's. So, those are the three use permits and their concurrent variances that are gonna be requested. Again, this will come before you. I'lI just go through the meetings. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 28 of 35 CZIM is next Tuesday. The following, next meeting will be the Design Review Board. It's just a courtesy review. Let me just interject that the applicant is proposing a 12,000 square foot ... right here is a building for a proposed future winery and tasting area. There it is, right there and then also just a covered area, an open covered area up over here as well. Those are two new structures that they're proposing on the property, so I just wanted to make you aware of that. Again, back to the meetings; Design Review Board April 13th. The Planning Commission is April 28th, and if it doesn't get deferred, you will be hearing it on June 7th. So, I just wanted to let you know all about that, and that's all I have to say if you don't have any questions. Mayor Lockwood: Questions for Robyn. Thank you, and I also wanted to take a moment. I know it's already publicized, and I believe Steve said something in the last meeting, but I want to also congratulate Bob on being the, instead of interim but our Community Development Director, so accepting that position. Congratulations, and thank you on that. Police? Chief Austin? STAFF REPORTS Department Updates 2. Police Chief Austin: Greetings, Mayor, members of Council. Looking at our crime numbers, we're currently just a few incidents up from where we were last year on crimes against persons, however we're 10 percent down on property crime and 9 percent down overall. Looking at our crash data, we are currently 31 percent down, and we are also down 42 percent in personal injury crashes. The big buzz in the Police department right now is our CALEA assessment. You may have heard a little bit about this, but the Police department is currently going through its recertification process with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. This is an international law enforcement accrediting body, and although this is a voluntary process it's very intense. We will have the assessors here virtually from across the country to review our policies and our procedures to ensure that we are policing according to national best practices. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 29 of 35 Though we do have an annual compliance check each year, every four years an agency must show its policies and procedures meet the CALEA standards and supplement those policies with documentation known as Proofs of Compliance, a very time - intensive process. The accreditation process focuses on several key areas of law enforcement. They'll be looking at use of force, constitutional requirements, operations, personnel structure, training, organization and management, and traffic operations among other areas. In addition to maintaining a separate state certification through the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, our agency must be in compliance with 181 CALEA standards. In Georgia alone, there are only 43 agencies including Milton that are CALEA accredited. Across the state, there are over 628 law enforcement agencies which equates to only 6.8 being CALEA certified. Likewise, only approximately 5 percent of law enforcement agencies across the United States are accredited through CALEA. Next Monday and Tuesday we'll be hosting virtually two CALEA assessors to comb through our agency files and ensure that we are still meeting CALEA standards even after our annual compliance reviews. Normally, we would host two assessors in person and they would be able to physically walk around our building and inspect our documents and interview City staff and citizens. However, this time around our entire assessment process will be conducted over Zoom with interviews of many Police personnel, City staff, and we'll have two public call-in sessions over the course of those two days. The call-in sessions are an opportunity for citizens, business owners, and visitors to share their opinions of our agency's practices and procedures as they relate to complying with accreditation. Our assessors have documented their findings after that process. They compile a very detailed report that gets forwarded back to me, which I will share. The final report goes before the 21 -member CALEA Commission for review at the next annual CALEA conference, which will be held in July of this year. The review committee recommends by motion the status of the agency's reaccreditation, which is valid for four years. So, our last process was in Providence, Rhode Island back in 2017. This is a big milestone for us to get our second accreditation. The process is going very well right now, so I'm confident that when I stand before you again that we'll be well on our way to receiving this Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 30 of 35 national accreditation again. Mayor Lockwood: Any questions? I will say I will be on vacation next week in a different time zone, but I did schedule my interview at 8:00 that time. I'd make sure I'd be there for that. Chief Austin: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mayor Lockwood: Thank you. Thanks for all you guys do. All right, Sam from H.R.? STAFF REPORTS Department Updates 3. Human Resources Mr. Trager: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I wanted to speak with you about some of our ongoing work in H.R. right now. There are several things going on. The first thing, since it's right past the end of the year we're able to look at our retention numbers from 2020. We had a retention rate of 87 percent for last year, which that equated to about 20 people separated from city government with us, which is a little higher than we normally see. A lot of that, though was driven by rapid turnover situations where we had about six employees who left us within two years of employment. Several of those were simply a bad career choice that people made and didn't make it through post or something like that that happened to them. That accounts for a lot of our turnover from last year. We're excited that we're able to start offering our employees a new benefit, a 529 plan. That's at no cost to the city. We're able to set that up for employees. Employees are able to take advantage of that throughout their career and fund their children's education. Right now, to date since we just started this a couple of pay periods ago we have five people signed up. We do have a lot of interest in that plan. Our employee check -ins finished up for last year, also since the last time we spoke. Again, this was our new performance management system that allows employees and supervisors really to facilitate a conversation about how they're doing and what their goals are and where the employees want to be and how their supervisor is working with them to get them there. Those universally have been well received. All of the feedback we get have been very positive on this employee check-in system. We're looking forward to our next batch that goes out, probably Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 31 of 35 starting, should be starting in June for our next round of these. We're gonna do them bi-annually. LeaderGov is another program that we started. It's employee training based. We've been several months with our leadership crew of about 46 employees. We studied things like emotional intelligence, strategic goals, change management, and our upcoming one is on organizational performance management and how to gauge that. We're really excited to say that starting in April we're gonna roll this out to the rest of our employees. The first one of those will be on April 20th and then on April 260' for those folks. It's a separate program that focuses more on for non -managers. The topics include how your personality affects your work, servant leadership, time management, and being open to change. We're starting to crank back up our employee wellness. It was a little dormant last year due to COVID, but we've reconstituted our Employee Wellness Committee. We're starting to build some Lunch and Learns for our employees. The first one will take place later this month. We're discussing fitness challenges and we're also gonna sign up and do angio screens again later this year, which was very well received back in 2019. Finally, H.R. is working on our internal wage survey. We've put together a team of employees from Police and Fire and admin who are looking at the data now being developed recommendations to present to the City Manager very soon and discuss pay issues from various areas within our government. Any questions? Can I answer anything? Mayor Lockwood: Any questions? All right. Mr. Trager: Thank you very much. Mayor Lockwood: Also, there's a couple of bills going through the Senate that I would like to see if Stacey can do a brief update on those. Ms. Inglis: I'd be happy to, Mayor. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do it. We've got two House bills that we're watching closely. One is House Bill 328, and this concerning telecommunication fees. When a telecommunication company puts fiber in a right-of- way, there are two ways that they pay due compensation back to the City. One is based on a per -mile rate, which is $5,000.00 per mile, roughly $0.95 per linear foot, or if they have a retail Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 32 of 35 customer they pay 3 percent of the gross revenues for that retail customer. Just to give you an example, we have Crown Castle, who has about 10 miles of fiber in our right-of-way. They were paying us around $50,000.00 a year in due compensation for use of our right-of-way, and they had one retail customer, and now they pay $288.00 a year because of that one retail customer. Just to give you an example of the two fee structures that our telecommunication companies can pay the City of Milton. This bill that is going forward in the Senate, right now it's in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee. This bill is proposing a very large rate reduction for the per -mile rate. Like I said, it's $0.95 per mile. They're proposing putting it down to $0.05 per mile, which is roughly $264.00 a year. Crown Castle aside, they're already paying the 3 percent rate, so we don't have to worry about their fees that are reducing, but we do have two other companies that the City of Milton has in our right-of- way. One is Unity Fiber, and the other one is Zayo Technologies. With this rate reduction in the bill, we'll be losing about $57,000.00 to $60,000.00 a year in annual reviews. So, we wanted to bring that to your attention. Senator Albers is actually an ex -officio. member of the regulated committee. I wanted to just put it out there that if the Council wanted to reach out to him or if you wanted to do anything with that particular bill, I just wanted to bring that one into your attention because there is a potential revenue loss that we would experience as a City. The other bill is House Bill 302. By the way, both of these bills were sponsored by Representative Martin Momtahan, which is out of District 17. This second bill is dealing with the building permit fees. There are several ways that you can charge a permit fee or base the charges for permit fees. One is flat rate, one is hourly rate, and one is based on the valuation or the square footage of the building being built, which is what we use. We use the last one of those three. Most cities, if not all cities in Georgia use that valuation. What they are effectively trying to is do away with the valuation rate and either make cities charge the flat rate or the hourly rate. With the hourly rate, it would be an administrative nightmare if we did that because you have to basically be like an attorney. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 33 of 35 Mayor Lockwood: Not that there's anything wrong with that. Ms. Inglis: No, nothing wrong with that, but you'd have to track the hours and time spent on every single project. We don't have the software that does that, and I am trying to understand other fees that we can add into that. It doesn't look like — it looks like we can add administrative fees to that — but I don't see where we can add in costs for overhead, costs for utilities, hardware for computers, trucks. I don't see where that can be configured into the cost of providing the service. The purpose, I think ultimately is to make cities accountable for charging the right fees for the service that is being provided and to try to lower the fees. They feel that with cities charging the actual fee for the service that's being provided that it would decrease the permit fees. I don't know if that's necessarily the case. We haven't gotten that far into the analysis of the bill about what it would actually end up costing, but I wanted to bring that to your attention because administratively it is going to be a difficult one to try and manage. We'd probably have to look at new software for that and just a whole new way of doing business. There would have to be a true up at the end because you had to do some sort of estimate in the beginning, so I just wanted to bring your attention to that as well. Senator Albers is the chair of the finance committee, which is where this bill currently resides. I wanted to bring your attention to those two. Mayor Lockwood: Any questions on that or —? Ms. Bentley: When is crossover day? Ms. Inglis: Crossover day happened last Monday, so it's crossed over. I spoke with Charlotte Davis and Ryan Bowersox. They're our legislative advocates at GMA about these two bills, and they feel that House Bill 328, the one about the telecommunication fees has a strong chance of passing through committee and then being presented to the Senate. We'll see how it goes. The committee is meeting tomorrow at 3:30, and that particular item is on the agenda to be discussed during committee tomorrow. The other one may have some legs on it as well. That is truly the one that we are most concerned with. Obviously, losing around $60,000.00 per year in the telecommunication fees is a hit, but the permit fees, for building permit fees it's gonna be a struggle to Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 34 of 35 administer. So, we're really concerned about that one. I'm not sure what the favorability of that one coming out of committee is. It could go either way, so I wanted to bring those two to your attention. Mayor Lockwood: I think to Stacey's earlier point on that, the City of Milton does a good job charging the correct fees. We're not trying to make any money but not trying to lose any money but to cover the cost. I think that's the gist of that bill for other municipalities that it might be a profit center or whatnot. To your point, it's a way — and we talked before — that we could prove to the public and the business community that our structure is a fair structure. Depending on what they do in the bill though, it could affect us. Ms. Inglis: We've been doing some work on that front, so we have no problem showing we're being transparent in that respect. EXECUTIVE SESSION Mayor Lockwood: Okay. Anything else? All right, then I'll open up for a motion to move into Executive Session for land acquisition, personnel or potential litigation as added on our agenda.- Mr. genda:Mr. Longoria: Second. Ms. Bentley: Second. Mayor Lockwood: I have a motion from Councilmember Longoria and a second from Councilmember Bentley to move into Executive Session. All in favor please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Longoria moved to move into Executive Session to discuss land acquisition, potential litigation, and personnel. Councilmember Bentley seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: That's unanimous. Mr. Longoria: I make a motion to Reconvene. Mr. Moore: Second. u Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, March 15, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 35 of 35 Mayor Lockwood: All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Longoria moved to reconvene the regular City Council meeting. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting. ADJOURNMENT Mayor Lockwood: Do I have a motion to dismiss? Mr. Longoria: Move to dismiss. Ms. Cookerly: Second. Mayor Lockwood: All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Moore moved to adjourn the City Council meeting at 7:22 pm. Councilmember Cookerly seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0). Councilmember Mohrig was absent from the meeting.