HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - CC - 03/20/2023Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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CALL TO ORDER
Mayor Jamison: All right. Good evening, everyone. I would like to call the regular
meeting of the Milton City Council for Monday, March 20th,
2023, to order. The city strongly recommends that you review
tonight’s agenda carefully. And, if you wish to speak on any item
on the agenda, then please bring your comment cards to the clerk
as soon as possible. While the Milton rules allow a speaker to turn
in their comment card up until the clerk calls the agenda item, once
the agenda item is called, no more comment cards can be accepted.
Will the city clerk please call the role and make general
announcements?
ROLL CALL
City Clerk: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I’ll be happy to call role for the
March 20th, 2022, Regular City Council 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
comment, you are required to complete a public comment card.
Your comment card must be presented to the city clerk prior to the
agenda item being called. Any cards received after the item has
been called will not be accepted. All speakers please identify
yourself with 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 cards to me
now. Demonstration of any sort within the chamber is prohibited.
Please refrain from any applause, cheering, booing, outburst, or
speaking with anyone speaking. Anyone in violation will be asked
to leave. As I call roll this evening, please confirm your
attendance. Mayor, Peyton Jamison?
Mayor Jamison: Here.
City Clerk: Councilmember Andrea Verhoff?
CM Verhoff: Here.
City Clerk: Councilmember Paul Moore?
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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CM Moore: Here.
City Clerk: Councilmember Juliette Johnson?
CM Johnson: Here.
City Clerk: Councilmember Jan Jacobus?
CM Jacobus: Here.
City Clerk: Councilmember Rick Mohrig?
CM Mohrig: Here.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
City Clerk: And, for the record, Council Member, Carol Cookerly is absent.
Would everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance?
All: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and
to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Mayor: Mayor Peyton Jamison present.
Councilmembers Present: Councilmember Andrea Verhoff, Councilmember Paul
Moore, Councilmember Juliette Johnson, Councilmember Jan Jacobus, and
Councilmember Rick Mohrig.
Councilmembers Absent: Councilmember Carol Cookerly.
APPROVAL OF MEETING AGENDA
Mayor Jamison: And, next, is approval of the meeting agenda. We do have one item
that I would ask Council is to postpone Zoning Agenda Item No.
23-048 to a future date. And then, Steve, do we have an executive
session?
Mr. Krokoff: I don’t believe so.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. So, that would be the only requested change. I’ll open up for
a motion.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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CM Moore: Mr. Mayor, I make a motion that we accept the meeting agenda
with the adjustment that you have asked for.
CM Johnson: Second.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Moore and a second
from Councilmember Johnson to approve the meeting agenda as
amended. All in favor, please say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Moore moved to approve the Meeting
Agenda with the following amendment:
• Postpone Zoning Agenda Item No. 23-048 to a future date.
Councilmember Verhoff seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0).
Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
PUBLIC COMMENT
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? All right. That’s unanimous. Next is General Public
Comment. Tammy, do we have General Public Comment?
City Clerk: We do, Mayor.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. The next item is General Public Comment. Public Comment
is a time for citizens to share information with the mayor and the
City Council to provide input and opinions on any matter that is
not scheduled for its own public hearing during today’s meeting.
Each citizen who chooses to participate in Public Comment must
complete a comment card and submit it to the city clerk prior to the
agenda item being called.
Please remember that this is not a time to engage the mayor or
members of the City Council in conversation. When your name is
called, please come forward and speak into the microphone stating
your name and address for the record. You will have five minutes
for remarks. The city encourages you to review the agenda and, if
you wish to speak, to bring your comment cards to the city clerk
right now. If you will, please call the first public comment.
City Clerk: I will, Mayor. Bear with me.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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Mayor Jamison: Okay.
City Clerk: Mayor, please bear with me one moment, please. My apologies.
Bear with me, Mayor. I was given the wrong copy. So, let me just
get the right copy.
Mayor Jamison: You’re good.
City Clerk: My apologies for the delay. We do, Mayor. In fact, the General
Public Comment is one that will be read into the record. This
general comment is from Benjamin Nations, a resident in Milton
that lives in White Columns, and I have the address. Per a City of
Milton ordinance, personal transportation vehicles, PTVs, are
considered legal for use on city-maintained roads. The city
ordinance includes safety parameters such as an age restriction,
speed limit, seat belts, headlights, blinkers, etc.
We own a PTV as defined in the ordinance. The roads in the non-
gated section of White Columns meet the criteria for legal PTV
usage. The covenants of White Columns restrict golf carts, no
PTVs from the neighborhood. Georgia Code Section 40-1-117.2
and 40-1-143.1a provides separate definitions for golf carts and
PTVs. Our covenants were written with the intent to keep private
golf carts from being used to play golf on the golf course. There is
no Georgia case law that speaks to an HOAs authority to limit the
types of vehicle that may be driven on public streets. The case law
cited by the City Attorney deals with a different set of facts that do
not apply here. We feel that it was inappropriate for a City of
Milton affiliate to opine on this neighborhood issue. The authority
of the City of Milton should not be extended to advise the types of
legal vehicles that can be driven in neighborhoods. There are many
legal vehicles being driven on our subdivision public roads that
may seem dangerous to some; bicycles, motorcycles, cars driven
by teens to name a few. However, it is not a proper function of a
city to give an opinion on whether certain vehicles can be
restricted by an HOA. This is a clear issue.
The covenants of White Columns do restrict PTVs on the streets in
our neighborhood. I’m sorry. I read that wrong. The covenants of
White Columns do not restrict PTVs on the streets in our
neighborhood. We ask that the City of Milton not get involved
with this neighborhood disagreement. That concludes that general
public comment.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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The next is a public comment. And I would like to invite Mr. Jeff
Pedowitz to the podium, please. And this is on the Reports and
Presentation Item A.
Mayor Jamison: There’s not public comment on that, so if you come up now and
make –
City Clerk: You have to do it during General Comments.
Mr. Pedowitz: – at Mayfield Road with Heritage Walk. Obviously, that’s a great
concern to us as a property owner. So, until we have a – or least
consulted with or are involved in the process, we strongly oppose
any moratorium or motions to develop our property without
permission. So, that’s really what I wanted to share this evening.
Mayor Jamison: All right. Thank you. Do we have another?
City Clerk: That concludes Public Comment, Sir.
CONSENT AGENDA
Mayor Jamison: Okay. That will conclude Public Comment, and we’ll move on to
Consent Agenda. Will the city clerk please sound the items?
City Clerk: Mayor, that first item is Approval of the March 6th, 2023, Regular
City Council Meeting Minutes, Agenda Item No. 23-062.
B. is Approval of the March 13th, 2023, Work Session Meeting
Minutes, Agenda Item No. 23-063.
Item C is Approval of Change Order #2 to the Professional
Services Agreement between the City of Milton and All Termite &
Pest Control LLC doing business as All Exterminating for
Continued Prevention Termite Treatment and Warranty for Bell
Memorial Park’s Concession Stand, Broadwell Pavilion, and
Bethwell Community Center. It’s Agenda Item No. 23-064.
D. is Approval of a Construction Services Agreement between the
City of Milton and Prudencio Hernandez Romero doing business
as Exceed Tree Care for the Removal of Hazardous Trees at
Providence Park, Legacy Park, Mayfield Park, and the Milton City
Park and Preserve; Agenda Item No. 23-065.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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E. is Approval of a Master Service Agreement and Addendum No.
1 between the City of Milton and Lexi Pool, LLC for a Local
Government Administration Manual and Daily Training Bulletins;
Agenda Item No. 23-066.
F. is Approval of Change Order No. 1 to a Task Order with
BM&K P.C. to Provide Right of Way Acquisition Services for the
Morris Road Widening Project; Agenda Item No. 23-067.
G. is Approval of a Professional Services Agreement between the
City of Milton and Pond & Company, Inc for Design Services at
the Intersection of Cogburn Road and Webb Road; Agenda Item
No. 23-068.
H., and our final item for consent, is Approval of a Professional
Services Agreement between the City of Milton and Pond &
Company, Inc for Bridge Maintenance Plans at Various Locations
Citywide; Agenda Item No. 23-069. Mayor?
Mayor Jamison: Thank you. Do I have a motion on the Consent Agenda?
CM Jacobus: Mayor, I make a motion we approve the Consent Agenda as right.
CM Moore: Second.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Jacobus and a second
from Councilmember Moore to approve the Consent Agenda as
read. All in favor, please say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Jacobus moved to approve the Consent
Agenda as read. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion
passed (6-0). Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
REPORTS AND PRESENTATIONS
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? That’s unanimous. So, we’ll move on to Reports
and Presentations. Will the city clerk please sound the first item?
City Clerk: Mayor, that first item is The District at Mayfield Concept Plan
Presentation presented by our Community Development
Department. And we have Miss Shubha Jangam coming up.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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Ms. Jangam: Good evening, Mayor and Council. Shubha Jangam, Senior
Planner. I’m here with Ryan Snodgrass and Caleb Racicot from
TSW to give you an update on District at Mayfield.
Mr. Snodgrass: Thank you, Shubha. Well, the presentation again. My name is
Ryan Snodgrass with TSW. I was on the consulting team for this
project. Along with me tonight is Caleb Racicot, who I believe you
all are familiar with. And he will have the second part of this
presentation. Let’s see. Oops. It looks like it might have froze.
Okay.
So, as Shubha said, tonight, we wanna review the process to date
as well as share the preferred concept plan that came out of this
process, and then review the outline for the next steps as far as
what items should be taken care of in the following months to
complete the process.
With that, we’ve – I first came before you in December 5th of this
past year to introduce the process, reviewed how we would
approach this. And then we started in January with the public
process. And we had quite an extensive public outreach for this
small area plan, essentially. With the first public meeting, inviting
the public at the January 19th meeting, where we had a very
thorough live survey using Mentimeter, where participants in the
auditorium here were able to log into their phones and do live
polling with us.
And that was a great way for us to get feedback directly from the
community, and they see the results live on the screens as it’s
populated. And that was very successful. And so, the next meeting
then was a public design workshop, where we invited the public to
sit down with us and actually draw and talk and have that
communication. We had two stations set up for that meeting. One
with one of our founding principles, Tom Walsh, and another one
of my colleagues, Jia Li, who assisted in that as well as public
staff. And then we also had a visual preference survey happening
at that meeting.
Point being, we had a lot of great feedback, and I do wanna review
some of that with you. I’m just gonna do it high level; although, I
have presented this in more detail at the following public meetings.
But I wanna show kinda the process, and you’ll start to see some of
the trends that came out of this public input and how it was pretty
consistent.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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So, the first set of slides is from the menti.com. This was the live
survey activity that we held on January 19th. The first sets of
questions we discussed were thoughts on the site today, asking
what their opinion was on unique attributes. What are the top
challenges and threats? I know this is the first slide, but it’s
probably stuff that you’ve already heard since citizens talk about,
which is what led us to this process. Looking at the historic,
wanting to maintain a small town, rural, walkable, potential
challenges or overdevelopment, loss of heritage, again, the desire
to experience in an – and if the area has improved, stayed the
same, or declined within the last 10 years. I should say for each of
these responses, we had between 30 and 35 people submit answers.
So, we had a pretty nice sampling for these. And, again, you can
see that the desire to experience is to maintain that smaller scale
village with the cottage commercial and smaller mixed-use. It was
with 27 votes the consensus was that the area had improved over
the 10 years, so the development that we see happening. Also, part
of this process on this January meeting is we selected a sample of
the district – of what makes up the District of Mayfield.
And we selected a sample site and decided to do three concepts
based on the code today to start getting feedback from the
community on what – and this was to tell us what aspects of the
code might need a closer look in the second part of this process
and what could potentially be the design challenges. So, you can
see kind of how the citizens ranked these in the live polling all the
way with the first concept only receiving a 2.8 with the highest one
being the 1b. receiving a 3.3 rating out of six, which still isn’t
great. And you can see those concerns, which were already starting
to be voiced in that first couple of slides.
Following that exercise, we then looked at – the questions then
turned to “Well, what is your preferred concept direction?” And so,
again, we start seeing words like historic and newer commercial
office but in a small scale start to be stated. And we even dove into
a little bit of the historic aspect relating to the existing buildings on
site, asking if that new construction should relate to those existing
buildings. As you can see, that received just about a 5, at a 4.45
rating. So, we knew the plan wasn’t gonna reflect a strong
preservation aspect, but it had to be acknowledged, that it was a
desire that we acknowledge these resources and so on. And this
was the last slide for this.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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So, again, should we apply additional restrictions to the allowed
uses? What is the desired program open space and midblock
connection to the library? So, this started to tell us some elements
that should be included. What was the desire to see in that concept
plan that we took this information back to the studio to develop?
And that’s what the plan is that you see on the screen now. This
plan was brought to the February 9th public workshop to use as a
base, to start the conversation. We wanted to come in with
something to have that dialogue with the community based on the
input that we had received to date. And that was quite successful.
As I said earlier, we had two workstations set up with two people
from TSW hosting those stations. I floated around talking to the
community and having side discussions as well as assisting with
the visual preference survey that was going on at the same time.
The visual preference survey looked at amenity elements was one
board. Another board looked at architectural forms in commercial
mixed-use structures, and then architectural forms in residential
structures, purely residential. I will share those top images in a few
slides once I get to the preferred concept because I’ve keyed those
to areas on that concept of where those inspirations images might
apply.
So, based on that feedback from the public workshop, we did
another revision to the concept plan. Again, it was a live document.
We were building this, continuing to build and refine based on
input as we received. At this March 2nd meeting, we had a great
turnout. We had two boards presented in the back, and that allowed
the community to engage with staff and us the consultants in
dialogue on what they liked, what they didn’t like. We got a lot of
Post-it notes, and we were able to categorize those. Overall
consensus was this was the direction that the community was
pleased with, with some minor changes, which is then reflected in
the preferred concept plan, which we will get to now.
So, on your screen now is the preferred concept plan. This was
developed based on all of that input and those final comments at
that last March meeting. One of the biggest changes you’ll see
from that – the last concept plan that was presented earlier this
month in March was the removal of the roundabout as well as
some slight reorganization of the buildings making a more village
feel, going to smaller footprints but maintaining square footages to
max out the densities allowed by code, which was the five building
units an acre.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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So, we wanted to make sure we were consistent on that but also
create that village feel. I wanna go through a couple of slides to
explain the concept, and then I will pause for some questions
before I pass it over to Caleb.
On this slide, I’ve applied the top three images for preferred open
space amenities that we received from that visual of preference
survey in February. Keyed on the plan are some areas where these
images might be applied. Again, this is a concept plan, so it’s just
suggestions on where these spaces could potentially be designed
should this plan go into development. So, we see smaller spaces
more in that cottage feel.
The first one is, I would say, family-oriented was really a theme of
the open spaces here. And then the semi-public spaces, which
might be tucked in a little more of a quiet corner such as maybe in
fronting these cottages here or maybe in a smaller pocket park is
where it could be a little more of a quiet space. But the overall
consensus was the pedestrian corridor here as well as some of
these larger plaza spaces to be the really family-oriented public
spaces. And that reminds me. I overlooked a major part of this
design, which is the closure of part of Mid Broadwell. If anybody
has followed the concept plan and development, you saw that
come into play after the workshop, actually.
That was a big idea that came out of the workshop was to look at
mitigating the backup of traffic here and the awkward intersection
that happens at Mid Broadwell and Mayfield, look at potentially
closing that portion of the road, turning it over into a pedestrian
street, if you will, that really creates a unique space to come and
shop, go at a coffee shop, small boutiques within a pedestrian
street where it’s friendly to families at that point. You would be
safe from the traffic. The little U-shape here that you see there is
intended to be a service alley.
That is not an open road, so you wouldn’t have cars that could just
pass through that portion of the pedestrian street. It is intended that
there would be ballers there, and the road would really only be
accessed for service and life safety needs. But with that – also, we
start to see a theme here of the desire for the type of commercial
buildings, again, low scale, one to two stories in height. Even some
commercial structures that are designed to look like residential are
potentially – it could be renovating some of those existing houses
from the turning of the last century on Mayfield into cottage
commercial buildings.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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So, that was very much a desire and feedback that we saw through
the community process. And that was part as well as making some
of these footprints smaller as to suggest that residential architecture
could apply to those buildings, and then next to it be a more of a
standard 1920s kinda main street commercial building that you see
there in the middle. I should note that all the buildings that you see
on that image preference that were the top 3 of the image
preference survey are new construction. I wanted to make sure
through that process that we were looking at buildings that were
plausible today to construct. And so, that’s what the citizens voted
on.
Lastly, the slide of preferred residential style architecture.
Residential dwellings in this concept plan is limited. The only time
we have pure residential is just for the four cottages down in the
lower corner. This aspect of the design was discussed with the
property owner adjacent. They were involved in talking about how
those cottages were laid out as well as the distance between the
front façade and the parcel line. That’s one of the benefits of
having the design workshop. It allowed us to have that
conversation, and that property owner sat down with one of our
designers and drew that out and, from my understanding, was quite
pleased how it turned out there. Other aspects of the plan, I should
say, there’s – really, it’s about that small cottage feel.
And I know I keep saying cottage cottage, but it was really about
that village-cottage aspect. And we wanted – because we were
looking at smaller footprints, we wanted to make sure a. that we
could park everything, get the square footage to max out the
building units per acre for the property owners as well as park it.
So, one of the areas – how we came about this was we looked at
dividing the plan into four areas, A through D. This is based on
majority property owners. So, while some of these – not each of
these areas is purely owned by one person. There is a majority
owner such as, in Area A, I think is about two or three property
owners.
Area B has two property owners. C, actually, I believe is one
property owner. And D is one property owner with exception of
how this right of way comes in. That would be split on the
common property lines, so it’s fair to each parcel owner there. And
you can see how these break down into the sides. So, we are at or
very close to getting each of these areas at maxing out their
building units per acre as well as making sure it met code on
parking standards and so forth. So, with that, I kinda did a high-
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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level overview of the plan. I’m happy to dive into it a little closer.
But I wanna stop here and get feedback from the Council as to an
area if you want me to describe further.
Mayor Jamison: Any questions from Council? Jan.
CM Jacobus: I was just overall, excuse me. I was just a little surprised on how
little housing was involved in this. Why so little? I would have
thought we would’ve mixed in a little bit more on some of the
streets.
Mr. Snodgrass: Yeah. So, yeah. You know, in some of our earlier concepts, we did
have – we had townhouses, and we had more cottage product. But
it was overwhelmingly heard that the community wanted to pull
back on that. They didn’t want single-family detached or the
townhouses. And so, there’s limited second-floor dwellings as you
can see through the land use matrix here and then only the four
detached product. And that’s what we heard was desired.
CM Jacobus: Of the, I think, it’s 18 acres on 23 – there’s 23 parcels, correct?
Mr. Snodgrass: Correct. Yeah, I believe so.
CM Jacobus: Of the individuals that own those 23 parcels, how many owners
actually participated in your sessions? Do you know that?
Mr. Snodgrass: That’s good. I would ask staff if they have a record of that.
[Inaudible]
CM Jacobus: I would like a better idea of how many of the property owners
actually participated in the process.
Mr. Snodgrass: I would have to go back and look at the sign-in sheets, which we
have on file, as Shubha stated in case anyone couldn’t hear. Staff
did invite everyone within this district to the meetings. I do know
there is probably about three property owners that were very
engaged in this process, I know for a fact. Others could have been
there. I might not just have been aware of that. We did not
specifically identify property owners when they came into the
public meetings.
CM Jacobus: Okay.
Mayor Jamison: Paul.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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CM Moore: Just a couple overview comments. I like where the community has
expressed their interest in so much of it being cottage-like. I think
that’s in keeping with a look and feel that I’ve heard from both the
community as well as my peers here on the dais. One of the
disconnects for me was some of the pictures that were shown on
the common area spaces and knowing some of those firsthand
because they’re in the area and some of the space that was
dedicated to that in the layout appears to be smaller in the ability to
reproduce what was depicted. I’d love to see maybe if there’s a
way to balance that where you can maybe instead of – you’re
showing three areas, I think. Find a way to balance that where you
can actually get a more full-blown representation of what was
depicted as the objective, as the example.
Mr. Snodgrass: Okay.
CM Moore: But I love where you guys are going with this, and I really
appreciate the – for the sake of the business owners or property
owners, they’re looking at the business aspect of this. I think this is
a great – you’re on the right path to be able to give them an
opportunity to maximize the outcome. So, it looks great.
Mayor Jamison: One quick question. You mentioned density. So, what we’re seeing
here matches what a current form-based code can build, so we’re –
everyone’s gonna get the same amount of density, is that correct?
Mr. Snodgrass: Essentially. So, as you can see, obviously, Area 1, we’re like .1
over.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
Mr. Snodgrass: We’re very close. It’s very plausible to make it at five. So, the
current code maxes out building units within an acre at five. You
can get up to nine with TDRs.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
Mr. Snodgrass: So, we wanted to make sure we stuck at five, not assuming a
property owner could go buy TDRs.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Any other questions, Council? Yeah. You can continue.
Mr. Racicot: Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Caleb Racicot
with TSW, and I’m going to be talking to you about the next step
of the process, which is really updating the Crabapple Form-Based
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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Code to support the vision that Ryan has just shared. And that
process is really being guided by four goals that I did want to
review with everyone before we get into the details.
The first is: the intent of the code updates would really be to ensure
conformance with the vision that you just heard and do that in a
way that respects the incremental nature of parcel ownership. And
so, we’ve made a very deliberate effort to recognize that the vision
and the code work hand in hand. And to the mayor’s point, part of
that has been to make sure that density is properly allocated in a
way that respects and reflects what is the current regulatory
framework today. On that point, that idea of making sure that this
vision and this code are density neutral has been very important.
And so, as we think about sort of taking it from vision into
regulation, that is also going to be one of our guiding frameworks.
We’re not going to propose any increase in density, but we are
going to propose several changes to design. And so, most of what
I’m going to be talking about this evening are changes that need to
be made to the form-based code in order to support the finer grain
village character of the Mayfield District. And, generally speaking,
the changes are going to fall into two pieces. The first part is going
to be a series of updates to the regulating plan, which is the
effectively zoning map for Crabapple. And the second part is going
to be actually to update the text of the code, the actual writing.
Now the regulating plan is going to need several modifications.
And you have sort of an excerpt of it here. We are going to
continue to keep it zoned T4 open, which is say a zoning district
that allows for a combination of residential and commercial uses
but with a smaller scale than what you might see in the
developments by Adam Orkin right on Crabapple Road, much
smaller scale, very consistent with what is already required in the
T4 open. We are going to make a couple of changes, however. The
first thing that we need to do is we need to make sure that the open
spaces or the civic spaces are in fact required with development.
And so, much in the same way that the current regulating plan
shows open spaces, we would actually add those new open spaces
within the Mayfield area. The other thing that we’re going to need
to do is to update the thoroughfare network. If you just – looking at
the map here, you can see that the proposed roadways are from
2014 and don’t necessarily align with the vision. And, as a
reminder, these are roadways that are generally required to be built
when private development occurs. As part of that, we wanna make
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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sure that there are sufficient protections for the city regarding the
closure of Mid Broadwell Road.
And so, we wanna make sure that whatever comes out of that
process that it is very clear that that would only be appropriate if
the engineering department agrees to it and the City Council
decides to move forward with it. And then, finally, there are some
updates to the Milton Trail Plan, which are currently about nine
years old in Crabapple. And so, we would wanna make sure that in
this particular area, any trails that come through this property are
also updated to reflect the current citywide trail plan. And so,
that’s the regulating plan, not a lot, a very simple amendment to
the map.
The second part of it, however, is to actually update the standards.
And what we envision doing is a strategy very similar to what was
done about 10 years ago on Deerfield, where you may recall that
there was a study for the Northern end of Deerfield – of Highway 9
almost in Forsyth County. And there was a special sub-area of that
form-based code created called the Five Acre Road Zone. And so,
within that zone, which was actually shown on the map, there were
customized standards that reflected the vision of that planning
process. And so, we wanna do something very similar here in
Crabapple to create, effectively, a new sub-area for lack of a better
word for Deerfield. It has a couple of things that customized to the
particular needs of the vision.
The first one is to allow for slightly smaller civic spaces than your
current code requires today. When you look at the Crabapple code,
it is geared towards much larger properties. And so, by allowing
smaller properties and actually requiring them, that will go towards
this more village scale, very fine grain vision of what Ryan just
presented. Additionally, there are some standards that we would
like to modify regarding the placing of buildings. Many of the
buildings drawn in the plan are actually a bit closer to the street
than the current T4 open would require. And so, we want to update
it to allow that. We also wanna make sure that buildings are
allowed to properly – have proper setbacks around civic spaces.
As you know from the images that were shown, the civic spaces,
the public spaces are both a function of their actual design but then
a function of how far the buildings are from them. And so, we
wanna make sure that whatever was drawn is in fact what the code
permits in this particular area. The second set of standards we are
going to be looking at are some modifications to building height.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 16 of 50
Today the T4 open district has a maximum building of three
stories. We would like to recommend taking that down to two and
a half just to reflect the vision of what we’ve heard to date.
Additionally, the discussion of architecture was very central to the
conversation for the plan. And so, we would like to recommend
that we refine, that we narrow down the permit of allowed
architectural styles in this particular area to create more of that
residential look, more of that village look, rather than I would call
the more main street type buildings that you’d see on Crabapple
Road. And so, as part of that, we would work very closely with
Bob Buscemi and determine which of those styles are really in
keeping with the more village character. But the goal is going to be
to make sure that the ones that are more rural or farmhouse style
are what we continue to permit in that area.
And then, finally, there are going to need to be a couple of changes
to the parking requirements. As Ryan mentioned, there is an idea
in the Mayfield area that we could have a centralized shared
parking facility. And even though the code does have some
allowances for that today both in the form-based code and the
citywide code, we wanna make sure that it’s absolutely clear that
it’s permitted in this particular sub-district of Mayfield. And so,
assuming that that plan is something that the Council supports, that
the vision is something that the City Council supports.
We’re ready to get started writing those regulations immediately.
We do have a very tight schedule because of the moratorium. And,
assuming we have your blessing this evening, we would start
immediately with writing some of those code changes for your
consideration in the future. So, with that said, I would love to
answer any questions you may have.
Mayor Jamison: Any questions? One thing. Hey, Steve if you – or maybe you could
have Bob reach out to Mr. and Mrs. Pedowitz regarding their
property and how the right-of-way acquisition could potentially
work on the street that they were talking about.
Mr. Krokoff: Absolutely.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Good. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Mr. Racicot: Thank you.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. If the city clerk would please sound the next item.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 17 of 50
City Clerk: Mayor, that item is Discussion of Property Management at
Mayfield Farm presented by our Public Works Director, Miss Sara
Leaders.
Ms. Leaders: All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. At the March 6th
meeting, the Mayfield Farm property was discussed both at our
meeting and at Alpharetta City Council Meeting. And, based on
the feedback we heard from Alpharetta’s meeting, this was a
follow-up to discuss the property management for the Mayfield
Farm property that we jointly own. So, the decision point we’ll get
to near the end of the presentation is if there’s an interest and
support to move forward with a proposal Alpharetta made to move
ahead with a demolition and clean-up phase for the property.
And, to get the point, we’ll cover the – again, I’ll recap where the
property is, old background on the property itself, how property
management’s currently handled, as well as the proposed phase for
clean-up. Then we’ll recap the partnership IGA that’s in the works
and how that could set the stage for this property management
phase, look at funding available, and the estimated cost for moving
ahead with this first phase, and then how that supports the vision,
and then reach that decision point.
So, this is a jointly owned property between Milton and Alpharetta.
It’s about 500 feet East of the last property in Milton on Mayfield
Road. It’s a 12-acre former homestead. It’s got three houses. They
vary in age. The oldest was built around 1949 to 1960 are about the
ages of those three home sites. And then there’s quite a few
accessory structures from barns to chicken houses to sheds, lots of
smaller structures on the property.
So, the history – the background of this property itself. It was
acquired in 2017 through a memorandum of understanding
between Milton and Alpharetta. The partnership IGA, which was a
component of that original MOU was discussed with both Councils
on March 6th, and there’s been past and ongoing staff-level
discussions related to possibilities for the properties.
Current property management, there – it’s really limited to just
some contracted mowing, and it is currently a shared cost and
would be solidified and formalized in this IGA we’re working on.
So, it’s a shared cost right now just for mowing. All the buildings
are deteriorating in place. There’s been no maintenance on the
buildings themselves, and they’ve been referred to as really just an
attractive nuisance for the neighbors. And the property doesn’t
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 18 of 50
have complete fencing around it. So, it’s not that they are
completely closed off or someone to wander on the property.
The proposed phase is what we’re calling a demolition and clean-
up phase. It’s gonna be looking at where there’s possibly asbestos
on the property, so there would need to be that – those measures
taken for any demolition. The proposal presented by Alpharetta is
that all structures would be removed there. They’re all in disrepair,
and there’s also some site debris cleanup just really to create a
blank slate for the property and, again, improve the current safety.
This partnership IGA will really – it’s underway right now but
would set the terms for how we move forward with doing anything
on this property. We’ll talk about decision-making, the
maintenance, how capital projects are done, and programming.
And, currently, the proposed ideas with that is that both cities
would approve any decisions related to the property. Because the
property itself sits in Alpharetta, we would look to Alpharetta to
lead the procurement and oversight of any capital projects, and we
would be looking at a 50/50 split on cost.
So, the estimated funding based on a preliminary quote for
demolishing all the structures on the property is around $120,000
to $180,000. So, it’s looking at $60,000 to $90,000 each based on
that 50/50 split. We have an existing capital funding account for
Mayfield Farm, specifically for that parcel, has $35,000 that was
put in in fiscal 2019. And it was originally put there as a planning
initiative. We also have a general passive park capital account.
And the slide shows the balance in that general account’s really to
address repairs or improvements to some of these passive parks
and green spaces that don’t have master plans.
So, the near-term vision is to move quickly on this demolition
phase to improve the safety of this property we jointly own. We
feel like, by moving forward with this vision, getting a blank slate
of the property, be prepared to work towards some future
environmental or agricultural usage and initiatives that you heard
about back a few weeks ago.
Just wanted to land back on the decision point to see if there’s an
interest and support to move forward with this phase and what that
would entail to move forward would be following the IGA. There
would be some form of a agreement or consideration if there’s an
interest to move forward. We do still plan to continue on this
partnership IGA that was spelled out, again, when we purchased
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 19 of 50
the property. So, we’re gonna be working on that. And then, if
there’s an interest in moving forward with the demolition, to go
ahead and have consideration of the additional funding that could
be needed for that to happen. And we’re proposing that could just
be a swap within the internal passive parks capital account to make
up for the balance of what would be needed. Like I said, any kind
of advance on the property management would come back before
you all as an agreement for consideration for moving ahead with
this near-term vision. I’d like to try to answer any questions you
may have.
Mayor Jamison: One quick question, Sara. What’s the balance needed that would
have to go from other passive capital account?
Ms. Leaders: So, if we’re at $35,000 and say it’s $60,000, so that would – the
low end is gonna be $25,000.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Okay. Any other questions for Sara?
CM Moore: No, I think this all makes sense. We need to take a hard look at
this, make sure that we keep it safe and usable, and cooperate with
MOU to maximize it for use of all the citizens.
Mayor Jamison: Thank you, Sara. Please call the next item.
City Clerk: Mayor, that next item is The Public Works Strategic Plan Update,
also given by our Public Works Director, Miss Sara Leaders.
Ms. Leaders: All right. I’m excited to give you the first quarterly update for
public works projects that are part of the Strategic and
Comprehensive Plan. So, we are very busy in the public works side
of the Strategic and Comprehensive Plan with 60 individual line
item projects identified. We got 42 of those active, completed 14,
and 4 haven’t yet started yet. So, of those completed, I wanted to
highlight the ones that were recently done in calendar year 2022.
So, starting with the spring of 2022, the Green Community
Certification was improved from Bronze to Silver. And then,
remember around April of last year, the first trails at the – now the
Milton City Park and Preserve were opened, so two key things in
the Spring there.
In the summer of 2022, the Citizens Trails Committee was created,
and they’ve been meeting since then and have been a great
contribution to looking at trail improvements and updates to trails.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 20 of 50
The Local Road Safety Plan was completed in August of 2022 as
well as in late summer/early fall, the initial improvements
recommended by the Equestrian Committee at Birmingham Park
were completed with that parking lot and equestrian amenities.
At the end of 2022, one of the last meetings had the Chadwick
Landfill, the agreement for closure on that. And, lastly, the Adopt a
Roundabout Program. We got the first roundabout adopted at the
very last meeting of 2022.
I’m gonna highlight the projects that are underway in a couple
buckets. And I’m not gonna get into each of those projects but just
some general updates on how we’re working to achieve those.
The first one is the Comprehensive Transportation Plan. And
there’s really seven projects that fit under that that we’ll be able to
accomplish through that planning effort. Right now, we’re
selecting our consultant and hope to have that contract on the April
10th agenda for consideration. The plan’s also going to help us lay
out TSPLOST II, so the funding plan as well as the specific project
list on moving forward with spending the TSPLOST II funds.
Some other areas that we’ll be covering under this are roadway
design elements, intersection effectiveness, and reducing red lines.
Next bucket is Smart Transportation. There’s four projects that fit
under this. And, really, the biggest highlight on this that is
underway right now is some of our pedestrian safety improvements
and looking at where we can use technology as well as some best
practices to improve pedestrian safety.
In Trails, there’s 13 specific projects. These have to do with
implementing the Trail Prioritization Plan as well as equestrian
improvements throughout the city. And we have the Big Creek
Greenway Connection Project as well that has a few items tied to
getting the plans in place and getting that design underway and
project constructed.
Recycling and Solid Waste Area, we have four specific projects.
And the current update is really getting ready to kick off that
Recycling and Solid Waste Management Plan with the appointees
to the Sustainability Committee that’ll provide a vital piece of the
input in creating that plan as well as engaging other stakeholders in
looking at improvements and the future of recycling and solid
waste. The last one I wanted to highlight on this slide is we
recently heard back that we didn’t get the first round of funding
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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through Georgia EPD Recycling and Waste Reduction Diversion
Grant, but that they are interested in reevaluating our application
for a potential next round of funding. So, we’re working on
gathering the feedback that they gave us and submitting some
additional information to be considered for some additional
recycling infrastructure.
Environmental, we got eight specific projects. And right now, what
we’re focusing on is looking at stormwater and green
infrastructure, what kind of policies and guidelines and ordinances
we can put in place to encourage that on all of our projects. Green
Communities, we’re looking at the possibility of upgrading from
Silver and the feasibility of getting some additional points through
Green Communities. And, lastly, Public Space is the – looking at
roundabout art, including some potential horse additions to some
of our roundabouts.
I think this is the last one. Local Road Safety, I talked about this a
few months ago. We have a lot going on with implementing our
Local Road Safety Plan. And the big updates on that are we did
hear some positive feedback from DOT on our speed limit
submissions, but we haven’t gotten the final review yet. But it
sounds like it’s going in the right direction. So, we’ll be looking to
submit some additional roads to them once we get their final
feedback and recommendations.
The Bicycle Safety Initiative, I’ve taken a few steps towards that
with our signage as well as another project we’re going to do with
the Mayfield Road repaving with some additional bicycle
accommodations and to promote bicycle safety. Lastly, Installing
Measures, so that’s some of the small, lower-cost things that you’ll
see us doing as well as part of the Local Road Safety Plan, so some
of the flashing warning signs at curves or roundabout approaches.
And that’s it.
Mayor Jamison: Any questions for Sara? I know you’ve been busy. All right. Thank
you, Sara.
CM Jacobus: Thanks, Sara.
Ms. Leaders: Thank you.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Will the city clerk please sound the next item?
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 22 of 50
City Clerk: Mayor, that next item is the Update and Discussion of the 2023
Milton Municipal General Election; our City Manager, Mr. Steve
Krokoff.
Mr. Krokoff: Good evening, Mayor and Council. Apparently, we’re gonna
watch how this is made. I’m here tonight to provide you with a
brief update on our progress as we gear up for the 2023 municipal
election. I’ll begin by providing an overview of significant
deadlines and milestones, both internally and externally driven.
Next, I’ll discuss some of the training and certification
requirements followed by options for advanced voting and
election-day voting. You’ll notice the last three objectives on the
slide contain decision points. Please note that no decisions must be
made today. First, though, I’d like to go over some key terms used
throughout the election administration process.
The first is advanced voting. And these are the three weeks prior to
election day, and that’s often referred to as early voting and
advanced in-person voting. Council district, which you’re all
familiar with. It’s the three council districts within the City of
Milton where Council Members must reside. Election Day is the
first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in odd-numbered
years specifically for municipal elections. Polling place, that’s a
physical location, where voters cast their ballot and it’s
synonymous with a polling location.
Precincts is a group of voters or electors from a geographic area
that vote at a common polling place. When you think of precincts,
think of people. When you think of polling locations, think of
buildings. And, finally, a voting district, which is somewhat
Milton-specific. And that is how we will be describing, at least for
now, for a group of precincts that are assigned to the same polling
location, which we’re familiar with here. Next, we’ll go over some
deadlines and milestones, and I’m not going to read this for you.
Just to talk about some, we’ve got a – it’s a list of the external
deadlines by which we are regulated.
So, most of this falls within the OCGA of the State of Georgia.
Some also comes through the Attorney General’s Office and the
Secretary of State. This is a high-level view but one that highlights
crucial deadlines for us to be aware of. And you’ll notice that we
already completed the first one, which is fixing and publishing the
qualifying fees. The next are internal milestones or deadlines. And
these are the more softer things that aren’t necessarily directly
regulated by date with the state. So, here you’ll see some of the
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 23 of 50
internal milestones that we need to meet to be successful with our
external deadline. Like the previous slide, I’m not going to read
these all to you. But it gives you an idea of some of our key
milestones and critical dates.
In an effort to provide you with the most accurate information to
make your decisions, Stacey, Tammy, and I attended some training
and obtained one important certification. The first training received
was the Georgia Registered Voting Information System or
GARVIS, training led by the Secretary of State’s Office. This is a
new voter registration system launched by the Georgia Secretary of
State’s Office that replaces the old eNet system and is being
described as one-of-a-kind technology, purpose-built for Georgia,
and is a tremendous step forward in the security and accuracy of
Georgia’s voter registration system.
Additionally, we attended the Elections 202 training, which is a
six-hour credit course. It was conducted by the Carl Vinson
Institute of Government and also led by the Secretary of State. This
course provided in-depth instruction on the entire election process
from appointing a superintendent all the way through records
retention following the election. It was extremely informative and
valuable. And, finally, the three of us just received our municipal
election official certification, which is a combination of an 11-
module course for elections from beginning to end.
So, we are all now municipal election superintendent certified.
And then, finally, just under training, there will be upcoming
training for our poll managers, our assistant poll managers, and all
of our poll workers. I’m gonna roll a little bit into the
superintendent roles and responsibilities. And this is specific for a
municipal election superintendent. So, the municipal election
superintendent manages all aspects of the municipal election, has
no role in voter registration at all.
That person prepares and publishes all notices and advertisements,
selects and equips the polling places, purchases, preserves, stores,
and maintains necessary election equipment, recruits and appoints
poll officers, instructs and trains poll officers and their duties,
receives, canvasses, computes the returns, and certify the results,
prepares the election budget, becomes certified as a superintendent,
and follows all aspects of the laws and regulations in conducting
elections. As you all know, the Council retains the authority to
appoint the municipal election superintendent. That member must
be a member of staff or a resident of this or an adjoining county.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 24 of 50
The Election Feasibility Committee recommended appointing a
member of staff. This is a decision that we are hoping to receive
from the Council, hopefully, by the next Council Meeting, which is
April 10th because that is really the first step we would need to
make. Does the Council have any questions either about this
appointment or anything I’ve mentioned to this point?
Mayor Jamison: Council? Nope.
Mr. Krokoff: We’ll move on, go into advanced voting. So, as you recall from the
key terms, advanced voting, which is also known as early voting, is
the three-week period before Election Day. This year it’s from
October 13th to November 3rd, including two mandatory
Saturdays and two optional Sundays as required by SB 202. The
Feasibility Committee recommended one location for advanced
voting as we have done in the past, except for the 2022 non-
municipal election cycle. In our review, we believe that one
advanced voting location will meet our needs.
And we have recognized the Milton Library and the Milton City
Park and Preserve as two viable options as both have been used in
the past as polling locations. However, you are not restricted to
those two locations if you prefer another. Additionally, we’ll need
some guidance regarding the optional Sundays. But before you
now, is a breakdown of the utilization for advanced voting. As
you’ll see, we did not utilize advanced voting in 2019 but did so in
2021. The turnout was 28 electors on the first Sunday and 47 on
the second.
A decision we will also be asking from the Council, potentially,
hopefully, by the 10th will be regarding offering advanced voting
on those optional Sundays. Another question regarding advanced
voting will be regarding a location. So, the two that I had discussed
already was the Milton Library, which has been historically used
as the advanced voting location, and then the Milton – sorry, I have
– MCCP has also been used. We used it in that last cycle and both
were successful. They both have all the requirements you need to
qualify as a polling location.
So, one of the things regarding – we just threw out some quick
pros and cons. The Milton Library, it’s historically been the voting
location for advanced voting. People know to expect it there. It’s
already been approved. And, if staff is leading this, it’s close to
City Hall, so that is an advantage for us. Some of the cons, we lose
structural control, right? It’s not our building. It’s less centrally
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 25 of 50
located than some of the other facilities that we are gonna see
shortly, and the lines form outside in the weather. So, if it’s poor
weather outside, that could impact the people. The other location is
the Milton City Park and Preserve. So, some of the pros of that is it
is more centrally located in the city. We have more control over
that because it’s our facility, and it's already been approved as a
polling location similar to the library. Some of the cons, it’s further
from City Hall, so it would just be a little more difficult to manage
from afar. And the other would be the impact of programming for
the few weeks prior to Election Day.
Let’s go into the Election Day polling locations. Actually, before I
move on that, do you have any questions regarding the advanced
voting aspect of what I brought up? You don’t have to decide on
locations today. We have some time. But any questions regarding
what I’ve brought up regarding advanced voting?
CM Mohrig: Just one question. I’ve heard different things of a state
requirement. I know the committee said let’s keep it basically the
same as Fulton County has done. So, we don’t – is it true that we
can in fact – and I’m not recommending that for this election but
we could under municipal elections – we could reduce the number
of advanced voting days?
Mr. Krokoff: I don’t believe can reduce the number of advanced voting days.
I’m gonna have to look to –
Mayor Jamison: Right behind you.
Mr. Krokoff: Oh. I don’t think that – that’s gotta be during that specific period.
Ms. Inglis: Just for advanced voting, we have to have – it must be three weeks
prior. It must start on the Monday three weeks prior to the Election
Day, and it has to be two Saturdays – two mandatory Saturdays.
The only thing that we have an option of is the two Sundays, so
that’s it.
CM Mohrig: Okay. So, the rest is mandated still by State.
Ms. Inglis: That’s correct.
CM Mohrig Okay. Thanks.
CM Jacobus: When I looked at the maps, it gave the population that voted, I
guess, by district or – to me, it looks like more of the population is
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 26 of 50
closer to Milton City Park and Preserve versus the library. Is that
correct, or am I looking at it incorrectly?
Mr. Krokoff: Just by its geography, it’s gonna be more centrally located, and
would probably be closer to the larger more populated area of the
city.
CM Jacobus: Okay.
Mr. Krokoff: And we’ll have those maps up shortly for everybody to see. Any
other questions on that? All right. I’ll move on to Election Day and
polling locations. So, previously, Fulton County, when they were
acting as our agent, has run municipal elections in eight locations
on Election Day, though they have been discussing publicly
reducing those numbers. The Feasibility Committee recommended
two locations based on the number of electors which tend to vote
on Election Day, which of course, is a fraction of the number that
vote throughout the process, or there are other options.
So, I’m actually going to ask Tammy to take over the lectern, and
we’re gonna discuss some of those options. Tammy, I’m going to
pull that part up for you real quick. Gosh, I should’ve let you –
City Clerk: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I am happy to review these
maps with you. I did want to let you know before I got started, you
do have a packet of these maps printed for you. I would like to
probably let us refer more to the digital copy because I’ll be
pointing out sections on that. But please take this with you because
this will be helpful for you to review as you make some future
decisions.
Historically, Milton has had eight Fulton County polling locations
on Election Day. The Feasibility Committee proposed that if
Milton does conduct its own election, then these locations should
be reduced to two polling locations on Election Day.
Based off the suggestions, staff took the initiative to begin creating
the new voting districts for the 2023 Milton Municipal General
Election. We have created proposed maps for you to review. I
would like to walk you through our thought process of each map
slide by slide to provide as much explanation as I possibly can. I
will pause after each map to make sure that what I’ve explained
make sense. However, if you don’t mind, I kindly ask that our full
discussion and questions remain till the end after we’ve presented
the maps because we might go over some question – or answer
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 27 of 50
some questions that you might have, and then we can look together
at everything as a whole.
So, the map in front of you is the Fulton County’s 2021 Election
Day voting numbers in precincts. This map is actually the actual
election data from that 2021 municipal election. So, let’s look at
this map together. You will notice at the bottom – well, first and
foremost, all of these maps will have an identifier by a map
number at the top, if you notice, Map No. 1. So, that will be an
easy way that we will be able to reference each map, and it will go
from 1 to Map 5. Okay? If you also look at the legend, you will see
down at the bottom that the legend it has the Fulton County
precincts in color codes.
You will see the color code reference there. You will also see that
each precinct was assigned a Fulton County code, which is
reflected on the map. I am going to use the pink section as my
reference. And you’ll notice that the code is there in ML-01A and
ML-01B. Under each code, we have provided the total Election
Day voters and the total registered voters for that specific precinct.
If you look outside the city limit boundaries, you will see color-
coded corresponding text that match the colored precincts. And
they provide the combined Election Day and total registered voters
for that precinct area.
In our approach to create the new Milton voting districts and to
reduce the number of polling locations from eight locations to two
locations, we use this 2021 Fulton County data and the precinct
area as is. Therefore, we keep these Fulton County precinct areas
intact throughout all proposed maps. Any questions before we
move on to Map 2? No. Okay. Map 2 – my apologies. I went a
little too far. Map 2 is the first option of the two locations that we
can present to Milton for the voting area districts. It proposes two
voting districts split east to west, which will each have one voting
location decided upon by Council.
Please note, we have to keep the Fulton County precincts poll,
which will cause the line to appear a little unbalanced, but we have
accounted for registered voters as well as Election Day voters as
evenly as possible when creating these lines. Also, please note
throughout the rest of these maps, the Fulton County precinct
codes that you referenced on the first one have all been removed,
but you will still see the total combined Election Day and
registered voters number there available for you. The red and green
radio dials indicate your options for polling locations within each
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 28 of 50
voting district. You do see seven locations, and I’ve provided all
seven locations because those meet the criteria of being a valid
voting location and perhaps a previous location and is a location
that we try to keep as close as possible to the voter’s previous
voting locations in years past. Future decision by Council will be
for you to decide if you like this east-to-west split. And, if so,
which one location in each voting district would you like to
choose? Any questions before we move on to the second option?
Map 3 is this two locations, second option, which is a north-to-
south split.
You will see that there are still the seven locations that you can
choose for your one location in each voting district, and you will
also still see the total number of registered Election Day voters –
I’m sorry – total registered voters and the total Election Day
voters.
When we looked at this, and we only kept it to the two locations,
we did decide to take an extra step to look at what the map would
look like if we presented three locations versus the two. Please
keep in mind the committee recommended two locations, but we
thought it would be beneficial to see what that visual would look
like if we take it to three.
Map 4 is three locations, Option 1. If you will notice that these
three locations do provide a polling location in every Council
District. Again, you’ll see the seven locations that you will have to
choose and where you would like if you do choose this three
location, Option 1. If you’ll also notice, too, you might see that
there’s going to be at the very top of the red location, that it might
seem difficult that people would have to drive all the way down to
City Hall or to Milton Library. But keep in mind, this is just for
Election Day. So, this would be a one day that they would have to
make that trip.
Again, you’ll see the combined numbers. You can see that we can
try to keep them as balanced as we possibly could. Now, one thing
I want to make you aware of, and you notice before we move onto
the second option of the three locations, I want you to focus on this
area here, which is the area with the total of the Election Day
voters of 27 in green. And I want you to notice this specific area
here in blue. And, if you notice, we tried to look at these numbers
because most of these stayed a little bit more balanced with the red
and the green, but the blue seemed to be just a little bit higher.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 29 of 50
So, we tried to see if we could balance that number out by moving
this green section to the red area – pink, and then this blue precinct
area to the green. And that is the results of our Option 2 for the
three locations. And you can see that it did even it out a little bit
closer. So, you can kinda just see the differences. Again, there’s no
way that we can get to a well-balanced between registered voters
and Election Day voters, but this will give you an idea of how this
will look if we move those areas into another colored area on a
map.
Mayor Jamison: Question. And I think I already know the answer to this, but I gotta
ask it. So, why wasn’t it just split up based on Council Districts? Is
it because we had to go strictly on precincts, is that correct?
City Clerk: When we did this, we stayed within – the very first map, we stayed
within those precincts that were already created.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
CM Mohrig: Yeah, because we don’t determine the precincts. The precincts are
already set, so that – I think that just makes sense then, to however
you get the shape, to actually include the existing precincts just to
determine which polling location.
City Clerk: And, if you notice when we switched from Option 1 and 3, we
were able to do that because this green area is already a defined
precinct area. So, we took that whole area as a whole to move it. I
didn’t divide it or split it in half so to speak.
Mayor Jamison: Got it. Got it.
City Clerk: So, those are your options for the maps that you have to look at.
Again, this is not a decision that you will make tonight, but one
that we would like for you to make a future decision on. And also,
if there is other suggestions or a different view that you would like
to look at, then we would take Council’s direction and work on
that for you.
I would like to open up and discussion that Steve or Stacey and I
can do at least on this map part unless, Steve, you want to go all
the way to the end. But this would be a time that we could have a
fuller discussion if you had across the different maps that have
been proposed.
Mayor Jamison: Any questions for Tammy? No?
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 30 of 50
CM Moore: I think you’ve given us some good choices, Tammy, to look at. I
know the committee’s recommendation was two. And there was a
lot of debate – I think Rick will agree – about two or three best
serving the community. And we were looking at cost as one of the
driving factors of that. I think that’s where we settled on two as a
more important factor than the three. But we wanna make sure – I
just encourage Council, as you guys think about this, that you think
about making sure that we can make it as easy as possible for all
voters to have a chance to cast their vote. And it’s not that
significant a difference in cost to go from two to three.
Mayor Jamison: Yeah. Because I think it was originally – eight is what everyone’s
kind of accustomed to, which I think – obviously, I think was a lot
when you had only a handful show up on voting day. So, I think
getting the right number is gonna be good for this first time to
make sure it’s successful. All right.
CM Jacobus: The way that north/south is split though, to me, the two just seems
– of all of these when I look at them all, north/south 2 seems to be
the most logical of where the voters are. And, you know, you don’t
have somebody running from the top of the city all the way down
to the bottom.
Mayor Jamison: Steve, do you have anything else for us because have a question? I
see we have a lot of decision points and was curious how – so, is
this April 10th, you expect us to make some of these decision
points to be made?
Mr. Krokoff: So, I just wanna show you some dollars associated with it.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
Mr. Krokoff: Stacey’s gonna give you an idea of what the locations and what the
cost could look like. And then I would plan to be back before you
on the 10th at the same decision points. Hopefully, we could
provide any additional information leading up to the 10th to be
able to provide you whatever you need to make those decisions.
The critical one for April 10th is the election superintendent. We
would like to get the locations if at all possible because one of the
things we need to do is we need to notify the Fulton County
Registrar where the polling locations will be for the cards to go out
and what the precincts.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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They wanna make sure what the precincts are gonna look like. So,
that is another critical piece for us. The only ones I showed you
tonight were the more critical decision points. We’ll have other
decision points, especially as we roll into the budget piece, but
those are the critical ones we would need right now.
CM Jacobus: I’m under the assumption that we’ve made it clear that we’re going
this alone.
Mayor Jamison: That’s the assumption we’re going on, yeah.
CM Jacobus: Okay.
Mayor Jamison: Yeah. Isn’t that correct, Steve?
Mr. Krokoff: I believe we are the only North Fulton city administering our own
election this cycle.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Paul, you had a question?
CM Moore: Oh, just to make a comment on that. When we prepared – this is
for you, Steve, as much as it is for Stacey. When the committee
went through the process to get to this point, one of the things that
we carefully assessed is opportunity to ensure our success for
Milton and the integrity of that and meeting the needs of our voting
community that are part of Milton. I think it was maybe a surprise
to some of the other surrounding areas that we were gonna be bold
and take that step. But it was grounded in good decision-making
and research and a lot of input from the community, good, bad, and
ugly, that we had to measure our way through.
I think when we made that decision to go forward, all of the
sudden there were some others who said, “Hey. That might be a
pretty darn good idea.” But I don’t think – so, this is the point of
my whole comment is I don’t think it’s a bad idea for us to have a
chance to do this alone so we can ensure, without any distraction,
not that I’m disparaging any of our surrounding sister cities that
are all wonderful places, but we need to ensure our own success.
And because this is gonna be under such scrutiny, it’s not a bad
thing that we’re gonna have a chance to do this on our own. I
applaud the great work that you guys have done to get us to this
point with some of the decision points. I think there’s some
important ones we have to address, many of which you brought up
tonight. I think that’s all I have to say.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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Mayor Jamison: Question. On the one question on the budget, on the advanced
voting, does that include the Sunday or does that not include the
Sunday? It does. Okay. All right. So, I guess we have these
decision points to be made. And I wanna make sure we have a
smooth meeting because, obviously, I might have a different
opinion than Councilmember, Johnson, who might have a different
opinion than Councilmember, Mohrig. And we have multiple
decision points to be made. So, what’s the best process you think
to handle that?
Mr. Krokoff: If we could, I’d like to run through these last few slides real quick
because that will actually lead into the final decision point.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I’m just getting right to the point, right?
Mr. Krokoff: Clearly. But if you’re prepared to give guidance tonight, then I –
I’m certainly not going to say no to that either.
Mayor Jamison: Is the superintendent the biggest one that needs to be done first?
Mr. Krokoff: It’s probably the first move we need to make.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I think we can probably get to that tonight.
CM Mohrig: I would ask that we could have a little time to digest the locations
because that was a lot of information. But I think we need to, in
our minds, look at what’s the pros and con and what makes most
sense.
CM Verhoff: Yeah.
Mr. Krokoff: I’m gonna let Stacey move on with the budget.
Ms. Inglis: And I have to piggyback on your comment, Councilmember,
Moore. Having the ability to go through that feasibility study for
the length of time that we went through gave us the ability to
research and make fantastic connections throughout the whole
process. And that is one thing that we have relied heavily on with,
not only the study but ever since the Council has decided to
conduct our own elections. We’ve made even more connections
throughout the training and all of that stuff. And I must say, the
connections that we have made, it has been a welcome relief to be
well received by them. Everybody that I’ve spoken to have been so
helpful and so happy to help. And I must say, it’s been a pleasure
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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to get to make those – to meet all these amazing people throughout
this process.
So, before we dive into this slide, I want you to please keep in
mind that these are projected numbers. And they will continue to
evolve based on the decisions that you make and as we get further
along in the process and be able to shore up some of these
numbers.
And then we’ll be presenting these to you for a budget amendment
at a future meeting. So, on this slide, we are showing the projected
budget for two locations for Election Day and eight locations for
Election Day. And, as mentioned previously, the two locations is
what was recommended by the committee, and eight locations is
what Fulton County has done previously for our municipal
elections. So, there are three expense categories plus a 10%
contingency that I wanted to bring your attention to.
So, there is a general expense category. And that is expenses or
costs that are not specific to advanced voting or Election Day, so
things like a consultant if we need one, ballot printing and
preparation, and just general supplies. Advanced voting expenses
are expenses associated with the three-week voting period prior to
the election. And that includes one poll manager, two assistant poll
managers, and three poll workers for each day, and it is for 19
days.
CM Moore: At each location?
Ms. Inglis: At advanced voting.
CM Moore: Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke.
Ms. Inglis: Yes, one location for advanced voting.
CM Moore: Yep, one location.
CM Jacobus: How many people – could you repeat that again? How many
people at that location?
CM Moore: It’s the advanced voting, so it’s one – yeah.
CM Jacobus: Right, but…
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 34 of 50
Ms. Inglis: One advanced voting location? It would be one poll manager and
two assistant poll managers, which the three of those are required
by law, and then three poll workers to manage the polling location.
And then for Election Day –
CM Jacobus: Thank you.
Ms. Inglis: For Election Day, the costs – these are costs that are associated
with a polling location on Election Day. And so, there’s two
polling locations, and there’s eight polling locations. And each
location will include one poll manager and two assistant poll
managers as required by law, and then five poll clerks for each
location. And so, what we’ll change – before I get to that, in each
category, expense category, there’s recurring costs and one-time
costs. So, what I’m showing you on this slide is first-year costs,
and then I’ll show you another slide that shows recurring costs for
future budget years as you project the costs.
I want you to focus your attention on the Election Day costs
because the costs are the same for recurring – for general costs and
advanced voting costs. You can see both of those are the same no
matter how many polling locations we have on Election Day,
obviously. And then the Election Day per location will be two here
and eight here and, obviously, costs that are associated with each
one of those. And then the contingency varies based on those costs.
And it’s a 10% contingency. So, as you can see, that there is – total
first-year cost for two locations, it’s a little over $98,000. And then
total first-year cost for eight locations is a little over $166,000.
There’s about a $68,000 variance between those two.
And so, for future budgets, these are recurring costs that we’ll have
for general recurring costs, advanced voting, and Election Day per
location. And so, we have the number of locations will be two,
obviously, on the left-hand side and then eight on the right-hand
side. It would be a little over $62,000 for two locations, a little
over – almost $91,000 for eight locations with a variance of about
$28,000 between the two of those. So, as we talked previously and
Tammy whenever she showed you the maps, there is that third
option of three locations. And these would be – the cons are listed
on the slide.
So, they would be – it would allow for closer proximity to the
voters for, really, three locations. It’s far less costly and complex
than eight polling locations. And it’s only slightly more than two
Election Day polling locations, say, the comparison between two
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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and three here. So, first-year cost for two locations would be about
$98,000 as we talked about on the previous slide. It’s the same
exact data. And then for three locations, it’s a little over $109,000,
which is $11,000 difference. And that’s first-year costs. And future
cost is $62,000 for two locations and about $67,000 – so, which is
about a $5,000 variance between those two for future budget. Any
questions? And so, we’ll be bringing forth to you at – looking for
some guidance on whether you would like to have two, three, or
eight polling locations on Election Day and whereabout those
would be. Do you have any further questions about those slides?
Mayor Jamison: Any questions?
Ms. Inglis: Great. That’s the end of the presentation.
Mr. Krokoff: Any general questions?
Mayor Jamison: You want some guidance on superintendent tonight?
Mr. Krokoff: Only if you wanna provide it.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Does Council have any suggestions on the superintendent? I
know I’m perfectly fine with our City Manager being that
superintendent. And having him have some leeway in asking for a
consultant to help out maybe. But go ahead and just say our
superintendent will be the City Manager. Is everybody okay with
that?
CM Moore: Just a question before we go that far.
Mayor Jamison: Sure. Yeah.
CM Moore: Steve, I think, in the course of the last couple of weeks in
correspondence or just maybe just conversations, I’m aware that
there were a couple of different superintendent potential
contributors to our process. Have we talked to all those choices if
they are still available?
Mr. Krokoff: We’ve spoken to three of them. And two or three of them seem
like viable superintendent candidates.
CM Moore: Okay. And are they – so, there’s two parts to this. And so, there’s
superintendent candidate or the consultant role, which would be
subordinate to the superintendent, which is kinda the path where
I’m going down is I don’t take any issue at all with the fact that
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 36 of 50
you guys have pursued the certification to be a superintendent. I
can certainly support you becoming our superintendent, but I
would also like to not necessarily negate the opportunity to provide
the assistance of a consultant who’s been through the process some
times before that may also share those appropriate credentials and
could make a contribution and just wondered if you could make a
comment on. With the people that you’ve had a chance to talk to,
do you see any of those providing a value in the consulting role
rather than superintendent role?
Mr. Krokoff: There were actually four we spoke with. I spoke with only of them.
They came back with a figure of over $100,000, so we put that one
aside. The remaining three remain interested in working in
potentially some type of consultation role. They have different
levels of experience and knowledge, and that is an option.
CM Moore: So, what is your – is there any – with the experience that you’ve
gained in the course of receiving your certification, are there any
areas that perceive in particular that would be advantageous to us
to have a consultant contribute to?
Mr. Krokoff: Well, considering it’s our first time through, it’s like going to
medical school but never doing surgery. So, I think every aspect of
the process would be nice to have somebody that’s been there,
done that. We’re fortunate. And kinda what Stacy said, we’ve got
some great peers around that have been running them for quite
some time. To give an example, Gwinnett County doesn’t run
municipal elections, so we’ve made some great connections in
some of the cities over there. Come Election Day, they’re gonna
have their hands full with their own things going on. So, I think it
would be of benefit if we can get a reasonable price on a qualified
consultant.
Mayor Jamison: The budget’s $20,000. Is that right?
Mr. Krokoff: That’s what’s in there.
Mayor Jamison: Something we’d have to look at.
Mr. Krokoff: I don’t know that we’ve run numbers by anybody to see if that
would be the appropriate number except for the one that came with
their proposal at over a $100,000.
Mayor Jamison: Well, I can tell ya, we wanna have this to be a success. I think a lot
of people will be looking at us, a lot of neighboring cities. So, I
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 37 of 50
think we wanna give you all the tools necessary within reason to
kinda make it work.
CM Jacobus: I personally think having Steve run it would be great for the city
because we know how much he cares about it and he’d be into it.
But I think it’d be dangerous not to go the extra step and get a
qualified consultant to be there to help you. I just think that – even
if you knew all the answers just to have somebody confirm that
that’s the right way to go, I think is important and would be
helpful.
Mr. Krokoff: That would be great support for us, yeah.
CM Mohrig: I’m good personally with – Steve, with you taking the reins as far
as superintendent. I’d echo kinda the other comments. I know we
have – I’m not aware of all the candidates. I’m aware of one that
has had experience, and I think is also certified in all three
categories. So, getting someone – well, how much you need, I
guess that’s where you’d have to say “Based upon where you’re
right now, what level of expertise do you need? What do you want
them to do when you bring them in?”
And then I think that gives you negotiating capacity because
you’re not – I don’t see you as bringing somebody in saying
“You’re gonna run it all, and we’ll just watch.” I think you’re
looking at someone that’s gonna – you’re already laying the
groundwork, but bring someone in that can walk alongside and
give you advice on security, how you handle the ballots, all of
those type of things.
Mr. Krokoff: Like someone that’s done this, that can review our project plan,
make sure our setups are according to code, make sure we know
exactly how to manage poll watchers, and other items that could
become sticky when it comes to election time. So, I think there
would be great value in someone that’s kinda been there done that,
can look where we put the lines and things along those lines. And,
yeah, I think you’re never gonna turn down help, especially in a
situation like this.
Mayor Jamison: Any other council feedback because I think that’s direction enough
for you, right?
Mr. Krokoff: That’s more than I was expecting tonight.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
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CM Moore: I’d just like to remind everybody that Steve played – you were at
our shoulder throughout the entire process, although not an official
member of the committee and a non-participating member of the
committee. But he had the benefit of listening to a lot of the
discussion and debate and areas that we dove into. So, by osmosis,
Steve benefitted to know what the committee was thinking having
been on our shoulder throughout the process. So, thanks for that.
Mr. Krokoff: And we’ve got a fantastic team with Tammy and Stacey. We have
other positions that need to be filled and people to oversee certain
aspects of this, and I’m confident that we have the know-how and
the will to be able to do well. A consultant will be the only missing
ingredient.
Mayor Jamison: All right. Good. It’s April 10th for everything else?
Mr. Krokoff: Yes, please. And, in the meantime, please, any information that
you need – and if you’re not prepared on April 10th for some of
these other decisions, that’s okay too. We just need to do it soon.
CM Jacobus: Let’s just be prepared.
Mayor Jamison: Let’s plan on April 10th. Yeah.
CM Moore: Yeah.
Mr. Krokoff: Thank you.
Mayor Jamison: Thanks, Steve.
CM Jacobus: I think we can get our act together.
Mayor Jamison: All right. There are no First Presentation items. So, we’ll move on
to the Public Hearing. I’ll pause a little bit before I rush and let the
city clerk come to the dais. Will the city clerk please sound that
item?
City Clerk: Sorry, just Speedy Gonzalez tonight. Before I do, I would like to
mention the last map in your packet is the Council District Map for
you to refer to just as a good reference point when you’re looking
at the locations.
Mayor, I will be happy to read the next Public Hearing item. It’s
Consideration of the Issuance of an Alcohol Beverage License to
SRNS LLC doing business as Persis Biryani Indian Grill, located
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 39 of 50
at 631 North Main Street, Suite 100 in Milton. It is Agenda Item
No. 23-070, our Finance Director, Miss Karen Ellis.
Ms. Ellis: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I’ll be just a minute. I have
before you tonight a alcoholic beverage license for your approval
and review for SRNS LLC doing business as Persis Biryani Indian
Grill. They are located at 631 North Main Street, Suite 100. They
are applying for consumption on premises for wine, malt beverage,
distilled spirits, and on-premise Sunday sales. And it was
advertised in the Milton Herald on 3/9 and 3/16. This is a map
showing where there is other alcohol licenses, which you’ll see are
at [inaudible] [01:36:44].
This is kind of a funny, little lowercase “h” for our area, but it is
right off of Main Street across from Queen of Hearts and the
storage spaces, so not a lot of other food or restaurant areas within
that area. They’re a full-service restaurant. And, for a full-service
restaurant, the seating must be at least 40% of the gross. As you
can see in the map, they do meet these requirements at 52% and
also qualify for Sunday sales, which they must meet a minimum of
50% of its total annual growth sales from the sale of prepared food
or meals. And, if you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer
them.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Any questions for Karen? Okay. Do we have any public
comment in support or opposition?
City Clerk: We do not, Mayor.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. So, I’ll close the Public Hearing, and we will vote on that
later on in the night.
Ms. Ellis: Thank you.
Mayor Jamison: So, the Zoning Agenda Item was postponed during the approval of
the Meeting Agenda, so we will move on to Unfinished Business.
Will the city clerk please sound the item?
City Clerk: Mayor, that item is An Ordinance to Amend Chapter 4, Article III,
Division 3 of the Milton Code of Ordinances (Alcohol Beverages)
to Clarify Requirements for Alcoholic Beverage Licensing Related
to Non-Standard Consumption on Premises Licenses. The First
Presentation was at the March 6, 2023, Regular Council Meeting.
It is Agenda Item No. 23-058; our City Manager, Mr. Steven
Krokoff.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 40 of 50
Mr. Krokoff: Good evening again, Mayor and Council. On October 17th, 2022,
Milton City Council adopted significant changes to Chapter 4,
Alcoholic Beverages. Contained within those changes was a
prohibition against accepting new applications for non-standard
consumption on premise licenses. We’re permitting those already
possessing those licenses to apply for renewal. Section 431 of the
Milton Code of Ordinances requires a separate application for each
location of the sale of the alcoholic beverages. Additionally, 4-36
requires an applicant to post a notice on the premise to be licensed
in advance of a public hearing held for such license.
These sections combined prevent the existing establishments that I
just mentioned that possess non-standard consumption on premise
licenses from moving from one location to another in the City of
Milton. As a new location, we require a new application pursuant
to 4-31. Proposed amendments to Chapter 4, Article III, Division 3
seek to permit the existing licensed establishments, which there are
two of them, to apply for a new license for the sole purpose of
moving to another location in the City of Milton subject to no
change in ownership. That’s all I have.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Questions for Steve? Do we have any Public Comment,
Tammy?
City Clerk: We do not, Mayor.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. So, I’ll close Public Comment, and open up for a motion or
any Council discussion. Okay.
CM Jacobus: Does it matter where they move? So, I’m assuming it’s gotta be
zoned that way for them to move there, but are there restrictions
within where they can go to?
Mr. Krokoff: Only related to zoning.
CM Jacobus: Just to the zoning.
Mr. Krokoff: That is correct. But you do bring up a point that I’d like to
consider.
CM Mohrig: That was the only question that I think I seen.
Mayor Jamison: What’s the –
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 41 of 50
Mr. Krokoff: I’m just processing this. Just give me one second because I don’t
want to give you the wrong information. I don’t wanna
unnecessarily delay anything either.
Mayor Jamison: Right.
Mr. Krokoff: There may be a zoning issue.
Mayor Jamison: So, can you explain kinda why we’re in this position?
Mr. Krokoff: I can. So, there is one business right now. It’s a limited tap. And
it’s one of the two non-standard licenses. And limited tap is one of
the lowest uses of alcohol. You can only have, I think, five taps in
it. It’s very limited. And they’re moving about 500 yards. And it
didn’t register at the time that we were doing this that they
wouldn’t be able to move from one location – it’s in Crabapple –
to another location in Crabapple. So, that’s the purpose of this
amendment. However, when we redid – well, as I’m thinking
through this, as we redid our alcohol code, certain things are
allowed based on – by right like a full-service restaurant or by use
permit that has to come before Council.
And both of those businesses – I don’t think either one required a
use permit, which of course, is zoning, which is related to the
location in which it exists. To give you an example not alcohol-
related, Matildas. If Matildas wanted to move from one location to
another, they would have to apply for a new use permit, right,
because it’s specific to the location in which Matildas exists. My
only thought on this is it didn’t require a use permit on the front
end. The Council didn’t consider this going forward in moving to
another location for the potential need for a use permit or any other
requirement and now it can move to another location. That would
be my only concern.
Mayor Jamison: I’m having a hard time following because – in this location, they
didn’t need a use permit.
Mr. Krokoff: Agreed.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
Mr. Krokoff: And that’s what I’m trying to make sure that I’m processing
correctly for you all as you asked the question. Had you not
eliminated the possibility for a new non-standard premise on
consumption licenses, would you have considered requiring zoning
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 42 of 50
action, i.e., a use permit if it was going to be in another location?
That’s my only consideration I want to bring before you. I want to
make sure you’re doing this with eyes wide open.
Mayor Jamison: There’s only one of these in the entire city, correct?
Mr. Krokoff: There’s two.
CM Mohrig: Two.
Mr. Krokoff: You’ve got one limited-service food – limited food service
restaurant, and the other one is the bike shop. It’s a limited tap.
CM Jacobus: But depending on the type of business it actually is, where it’s
located, to me, could make a difference on whether you really
wanted it or not. I mean, there’s –
CM Moore: Building on that, we only have two. And we’re not allowing – if I
remember correctly, we’re not allowing any future applications of
this kind.
Mr. Krokoff: That’s correct.
CM Moore: So, we’re accommodating the relocation of the one business. There
will be no others to consider in the future.
CM Jacobus: Say the other one that exists decides that it has outgrown its
location and wants to go to another area that’s zoned similarly but
say it’s closer to townhomes and everything. And I’m not sure
we’d wanna approve that.
CM Moore: So, here’s how I can reconcile this. I can reconcile this in
understanding we have a known entity with a known cooperative
experience with us and has never posed a problem to us with their
license, with any incidents, or any claims, etc. I can, in good
conscience, approve something like this evening knowing that
we’re not doing anything extraordinary that would put us in
jeopardy for future zoning like that. I’d also suggest that we take
that under consideration so that we’re not prohibiting this business
from securing the license that they’re looking for under our current
zoning, not hold them up, be able to grant what they’re looking for
this evening, and then immediately do a text amendment or
whatever’s required to shore up that part of it because we’re not
contemplating anybody else in the future. We’re only dealing with
these two.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 43 of 50
Mr. Krokoff: That could easily be done.
Mayor Jamison: I like that option then.
CM Jacobus: That sounds fine to me.
Mr. Krokoff: Yeah, and just wanna make sure we didn’t make anybody –
CM Moore: That’s a good catch on how important it is that we take stock of
that. But because we’ve got a limited inventory of these, it’s not
like there’s gonna be a gold rush to make changes. But I suggest
we immediately take action to resolve the question. That’s a really
good question.
Mr. Krokoff: We’ll be able to take immediate action.
Mayor Jamison: Okay.
Mr. Krokoff: It’ll go through the, obviously, zoning process, but…
Mayor Jamison: All right. That’s good. All right. Any other questions? Okay. I’ll
open it for a motion.
CM Jacobus: I make a motion we approve Agenda Item No. 23-058.
CM Verhoff: Second.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Jacobus and a second
from Councilmember Verhoff to approve Agenda Item No. 23-
058. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor, please say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Jacobus moved to approve Agenda Item No.
23-058. Councilmember Verhoff seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0).
Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
NEW BUSINESS
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? Okay. That’s unanimous. Okay. So, we’ll move on
to New Business. Will the city clerk please sound the first item?
City Clerk: Mayor, that first item is Consideration of a Conflict Waiver to
Allow Jarrard & Davis to Memorialize the Intergovernmental
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 44 of 50
Agreement between Milton and Alpharetta Regarding the Jointly
Owned Property Located at 1470, 1480, and 1490 Mayfield Road;
Agenda Item No. 23-071, from our City Attorney’s Office, Mr.
Jeff Strickland.
Attorney Strickland: Good evening. How’s everyone doing today?
City Clerk: Good.
CM Jacobus: Outstanding.
Male Speaker: Excellent.
Attorney Strickland: I have a conflict waiver in your packet, fairly standard document
that we’ve processed previously when we’re assisting in
transactional work between the City of Alpharetta and the City of
Milton. This relates specifically to the Milton Mayfield Farm
rather. You heard the discussion earlier tonight about the Mayfield
Farm and the IGA documents that would be constructed between
the two municipalities would be work that our office, or perhaps
more specifically me, would handle putting together.
And so, just to make sure everything’s transparent, we typically
will process between both the City of Milton and the City of
Alpharetta, the City Councils, these conflict waivers to get it in
place. I’d be happy to answer any questions anyone may have.
Mayor Jamison: Any questions? Okay. I’ll open it for a motion.
CM Mohrig: I’ll make a motion, Mr. Mayor that we approve Agenda Item No.
23-071.
CM Jacobus: Second.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Mohrig and a second
from Councilmember Jacobus to approve Agenda Item No. 23-
071. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? That’s unanimous. Okay. Will the city clerk please
sound the next item?
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 45 of 50
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Mohrig moved to approve Agenda Item No.
23-071. Councilmember Jacobus seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-
0). Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
City Clerk: Mayor, that next item is Consideration of a Resolution to Adopt a
City of Milton Right of Way Acquisition Policy. It’s Agenda Item
No. 23-072, our Public Works Director, Miss Sara Leaders.
CM Jacobus: Busy person.
Ms. Leaders: Okay. So, this item is the right-of-way acquisition process. We’ve
not had one of these formalized before. So, the purpose of this
resolution and this policy is to formalize how we do right-of-way
acquisition. We discussed this at the February 22nd Council
Meeting and went over the proposed terms of this policy. And
because it involves Council action, within the policy, it’s
recommended that we adopt this by resolution tonight. So, the
outcomes of having this policy in place will be a streamlined and
transparent process for how we do right of way. It will allow us to
obtain all the necessary signatures to close the properties.
It’ll accelerate as much as possible the process to get to closing,
limit the need for the number of executive sessions related to
public works land acquisition, and really reduce the number of
individual agenda items needed related to these purchases. So,
these are the sections of the procedures portion of the policy. It
highlights the pre-acquisition process, which I’ll talk about fair
market value as well as a blanket right-of-way acquisition
agreement. It has a section on donations, how we handle those;
The acquisition process, which is our negotiations, condemnation,
and then highlights City Council action points throughout the
process.
So, for fair market value, State Law does require, unless there’s an
adopted policy for something less than appraisal – it requires
appraisals unless we adopt a policy that says if it’s under a certain
value, we can value it based on comparable sales. So, what we’ve
recommended as part of our policy is exactly like Georgia DOT
uses in their evaluations. If it’s less than a $15,000 estimate and
there’s no complex issues, we can use a cost estimate that’s above
or has something complex like a damage or a cost occur, then we
would get an appraisal. And the other two points to note are the
property owner can request an appraisal and that no property can
be condemned without an appraisal.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 46 of 50
For administrative negotiating, we did not put the specifics of what
are allowed on that in the policy. Instead, we’re including that at
the adoption of the policy as well as reaffirmed following local
council elections, that those would be set in executive session.
Whatever amount we determine or percentage, we would add that
to the fair market value, and that would be presented as a blanket
agreement total. And I’ll talk about the blanket agreement next. So,
next two slides go through the process. The blue boxes are really
staff or acquisition team items. The green are when you will see
them before you for consideration. And the red just to indicate that
the process is stopped. You’ll see some of those on the next slide.
So, the first step in the process is to finalize the right-of-way plans.
We then get titles and perform that initial cost estimate. Based on
those values, we would get to fair market value. And then adding
to that, the negotiating room would come up with an acquisition
budget, which would be those values plus negotiating room, and
we’d present that as a New Business Item. And another benefit of
having that before you is it’s a presentation of the final layout of
the project before we start acquiring right of way. Then I’m gonna
real quickly run through a couple different scenarios of how the
negotiating process works and when you would see items related to
right of way.
So, we’ll start with the fair market value offer is made to the
property owner. If the property owner accepts, it moves straight
into closing, and there’s no further action needed from Council.
And, occasionally, that happens, but more than likely we’re gonna
discuss counter offers or other considerations. So, when the owner
comes forward with a counteroffer, we’ll look back at what our
negotiating room is. And, if that value is less than what we’re
authorized, we’ll move ahead with closing. Again, no additional
agenda items needed.
If they’re asking for more than we’re authorized to make, at that
point, we’ll go to Executive Session to discuss. If that counteroffer
is approved in Executive Session, then it will be placed on Consent
Agenda and considered for approval. And, if approved, it would be
accepted and closed. The values not approved in Executive Session
but a final offer is presented to the owner, if the owner chooses to
accept that, then it would, again, be on Consent Agenda Item. If
that’s approved, accept the offer, and close the property. If after
that final offer or the iteration that we go through and reach the
final point, if it’s not accepted, we move ahead with condemnation.
And that would come before you as a resolution, as a New
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 47 of 50
Business Item. And given that resolution, the City Attorney would
file the condemnation with the court. The land is acquired. But just
to point out, negotiations always continue. So, the process really
doesn’t end here. If we do have to go to condemnation, we circle
back and reconsider counter offers through Executive Session. So,
next steps are consideration of this policy by resolution tonight and
then look for future blanket right-of-way acquisition agreements
and plans for the upcoming public works projects. Glad to answer
any questions.
Mayor Jamison: Questions for Sara? Paul?
CM Moore: Sara, can you go back to the process slide? I just wanna maybe
state the obvious and just so we can say it out loud in this meeting.
And that is, when we make a full market value offer, although
we’re talking about a process that accommodates your team
dealing with a counter from them, that it’s not necessarily just an
understood that there’s always gonna be negotiating room above
full market value, that the staff would only move forward with the
authority granted to you provided there is a valid reason to move
above fair market value. So, I just wanna put that in the record, that
it's not like, “Okay. We’ve made it full market value. What’s your
next offer gonna be?”
CM Mohrig: Right.
CM Moore: Because I didn’t accept your full market value. There would have
to be a profound reason for us to go above full market value that –
when we’re looking at conservative expenditures of taxpayer
dollars, that we would make good judgment. And it’s not just an
automatic.
Ms. Leaders: We always have our acquisition team look at it as a outside party
as well. They run a – we call it a administrative settlement
analysis, where they look at what’s being countered and they see if
it makes sense based on some maybe additional sales data the
owner presents or possibly a fence or landscaping that’s impacted
that we didn’t consider. So, that’s more of the negotiating beyond
fair market value that happens, and it’s always, yes, considered in a
administrative settlement review as well.
CM Moore: Great. Thank you.
Mayor Jamison: Anything else? Any Public Comment?
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 48 of 50
City Clerk: There are none, Sir.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Close Public Comment, and we’ll open it up for a motion.
CM Jacobus: Mr. Mayor, I make a motion we approve Agenda Item No. 23-072.
CM Moore: Second.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Jacobus and a second
from Councilmember Moore to approve Agenda Item No. 23-072.
Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? So, that’s unanimous. Thanks, Sara.
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Jacobus moved to approve Agenda Item No.
23-072. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0).
Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
CM Moore: Thank you, Sara.
Mayor Jamison: Will the city clerk please sound the next item?
City Clerk: Mayor, that item is Consideration of the Issuance of an Alcohol
Beverage License to SNRS LLC is doing business as Persis
Biryani Indian Grill at 631 North Main Street at Suite 100 in
Milton. It is Agenda Item No. 23-070, Miss Karen Ellis.
Ms. Ellis: Mayor and Council, this is the item I previously presented. So, if
you have any new questions, I’ll be glad to answer them.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. Any questions for Karen?
Male Speaker: No.
Mayor Jamison: All right. Any Public Comment?
City Clerk: There are none.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. We’ll open it for a motion.
CM Mohrig: Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve Agenda Item No. 23-070.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday, March 20, 2023
Page 49 of 50
CM Moore: Second.
Mayor Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Mohrig and a second
from Councilmember Moore to approve Agenda Item No. 23-070.
Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? That’s unanimous.
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Mohrig moved to approve Agenda Item No.
23-070. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion passed (6-0).
Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
Ms. Ellis: Thank you.
Mayor Jamison: Thanks, Karen. So, that’s it. Any Council Reports? No? I have
nothing to report on. Steve, are you good? Anything to report on?
Mr. Krokoff: No.
Mayor Jamison: No? All right.
Mr. Krokoff: Good to be back.
Mayor Jamison: All right. No Staff Reports. No Executive Session. I’ll have a
motion to adjourn.
CM Mohrig: So moved.
CM Moore: Second.
Mayor Jamison: All right. A motion from Councilmember Mohrig, a second from
Councilmember Moore. All in favor, say aye.
Councilmembers: Aye.
Mayor Jamison: Any opposed? That’s unanimous. Good night.
Motion and Vote: Councilmember Mohrig moved to adjourn the Regular
Meeting at 7:58pm. Councilmember Moore seconded the motion. The motion
passed (6-0). Councilmember Cookerly was absent from the meeting.
Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council
Monday , March 20, 2023
Page 50 of 50
Date Approved: \,. Ap y( / I O I IJ.O 1,.5